Submit your home: Volume one

Today we begin a new content feature, in which we invite you to submit your own historic home for us to profile! This feature has been inspired by our followers who live at today’s home, 77 Maple Street, who wrote to encourage us to feature houses like their own, an unadorned worker’s cottage of the 19^th century.

They tell us that they have loved living in their home for its many original details, such as pine floorboards, cedar support beams, and the chimney that runs right through the house. In their backyard they have found pottery shards and other Victorian debris; in the crawlspace they have found newspaper clippings from a century ago. They have also learned about the last long-term resident of the house, Virginia Hanley, who lived here from her birth in 1928 until her death in 2007.

Virginia’s family was here for much longer than that. The house was purchased newly-built from a contractor by John Heaton in 1857. Heaton was an Irish immigrant who had married a widow, Anastasia Riley, whose children had migrated with her from Ireland to America. Anastasia’s daughter, Mary, had married Cornelius Casey, an Irishman living at 97 Maple who would found a flower nursery that would, over time, become one of the longest-running businesses in Massachusetts. This connection explains all of the broken pottery in the backyard.

Heaton served in the Massachusetts 42^nd Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, and was taken as a prisoner of war by the Confederate Army at Galveston. He was released and eventually found his way back to Melrose. Cornelius Casey also served in the war, as did William Riley (later of 32 Sanford Street), one of Anastasia’s sons from her first marriage, giving her the distinction of having a son, a husband, and a son-in-law all serving in the war.

All five children of John and Anastasia’s marriage predeceased them, and Anastasia handed over the house to Mary Casey in 1893. Mary’s daughter, also named Mary, married Michael Hanley; their son, Cornelius, married a woman named Mary, and their daughter, Mary Virginia Hanley, lived in the house until 2007, meaning six generations of the same family lived in this house over a span of exactly 150 years.