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ant in Captain Lamson's Company, Jonathan
marched towards Concord on the 19th of April, 1775, and a year later, as
Captain, marched his own company to Dorchester Heights to assist General
Washington in the siege of Boston. Somewhere along the way
Jonathan added an e to his surname. He had a good excuse for doing so —
his mother's maiden name was Mary Fiske and his wife's Abigail Fiske,
both with es.
Jonathan's youngest son, Isaac, was my
great-great-grandfather. He was born on the Fiske farm in 1778,
graduated from Harvard College in 1798 and in 1802 married Sukey, the
daughter of Ebenezer Hobbs, a well-to-do North Avenue resident who ran a
successful tannery on Hobbs Brook near Kendal Green.
At first Isaac and Sukey lived in the old Hobbs house at
the corner of Church Street and North Avenue — my great-grand- father,
Augustus H. Fiske was born there in 1805 — and later built the large
square house at 639 Boston Post Road, as well as the little law office
where the Weston Historical Society now has its
headquarters. In 1815 Isaac bought the house next door to
his own — an ancient building known as "Baldwin's Tavern" which stood
across the street from his law office — and sold
his former residence to the Reverend Joseph Field, the new minister in
town. The "Baldwin Tavern" continued to be his Weston home until his
death in 1861. This memorable old building burnt to the ground in
1890 and many family papers went with it.
Isaac and Sukey were very productive in a family way but
seven of their nine children died young, mostly from tubercu- losis, and only one, Augustus, had issue. Houses in the eighteenth
century were so cold and drafty that many children lost their |
