The Jason Russell House is a historic house in Arlington, Massachusetts, in and around which at least twenty-one colonial combatants died fighting on the first day of the American Revolutionary War, April 19, 1775 (the Battles of Lexington and Concord). The house was purchased in 1923 by the Arlington Historical Society which restored it in 1926 and now operates it as a museum.
The Battle Site In 1775, Jason Russell owned, among other properties, a farm of about 40 acres at the center of the Menotomy District of Cambridge, now part of the Town of Arlington. It was on that farm, on April 19 of that year, that the largest conflict of the day would occur between the Massachusetts provincial militia and the British Army as the latter returned from the Battles of Lexington and Concord
Acquisition of the Property Jason's farm was located at the southwest corner of two main roads in Menotomy. The Concord Road (now known as Massachusetts Avenue) was the primary route connecting Boston with towns to the west, while the Watertown Road (now mostly Pleasant Street) offered access to Menotomy from the south.
In 1689, as soon as the Town of Cambridge allocated the land west of Menotomy Center as individual properties,The Register book of the lands and houses in the "New Towne" and the town of Cambridge : with the records of the proprietors of the common lands being the records generally called "The Proprietors' Records” (Cambridge, 1896), pp. 166 ff. Jason's grandfather purchased four lots on the south side of the Concord Road at its intersection with the Watertown Road.Proprietors Records, pp. 172, 200, 204. In 1699, by acquiring an additional parcel along the Watertown Road he expanded his land to a total of forty-one acres.Nylander, p. 31. He referred to these parcels as “The Great Pasture.”Middlesex County, MA: Probate File Papers, 1648-1871.Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2014. Record no. 19636, 1736 (Estate of Jason Russell), Image Nr. 26.
The younger Jason’s father diedOn 4 June 1726, according to https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/L7L2-VBK. when Jason was only ten,Jason was born on 25 January 1716, according to https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/MV6L-BGJ. leaving him and his sister in the care of their grandparents.Middlesex Probate File Papers. 1648-1871. Record no.19619, 1729 (Guardianship for Jason Russell) and Record no. 19620, 1729 (Guardianship for Margery Russell). See also Nylander, p. 31. When the grandfather died without a will in 1736, and the grandmother shortly thereafter, a series of negotiations, augmented by the grandmother’s will,Middlesex Probate File Papers. Record no. 19671, 1738 (Will of Mary Russell). Also deed of transfer on file with the Arlington Historical Society. eventuated in probate agreements that left perhaps 28 acres to Jason and the remaining acreage to Jason’s aunt Martha Dunster and to Martha’s son, also named Jason.Middlesex Probate File Papers. Record no. 19618 (Estate of Hubbard Russell), 1726; Record no. 19636 (Estate of Jason Russell), 1736. In October of 1744, Jason consolidated the farm property by selling twelve acres from the other side of the Concord Road to the DunstersDunster, p. 36 in exchange for their twelve acres abutting his own.Deed from Henry and Martha Dunster, 1744, on file with the Arlington Historical Society.
This completed the property as bounded in 1775, except that in 1740 the newly installed Pastor, the Rev. Samuel Cooke, purchased an acre of land along the Watertown Road from Jason near what is now Maple Street. The Rev. Cooke put a house and a barn on it;Cutter p. 31, Parker p. 86 the barn may have figured in the battle described below.
Finally, in 1724, at the instigation of the grandfather and other neighbors, the town voted to move part of the Watertown Road “from the northerly to the southerly side of the land reserved for a burying place.” This removed the separation between Russell’s property and that of the burying-ground, so that it, and the associated Meeting House added in 1733, would become de facto extensions of the battleground of 1775.Cutter p. 12, 22; Nylander p. 32
Geology and Geography of the Site
Why did such a major battle take place here rather than elsewhere? Because it lay at the intersection of the principal roads of the time, and secondly, because the hills west of Menotomy Center made it difficult for militias from towns to the north and south to intercept the retreating British Army any earlier.
A topographical mapU.S. Geological Survey, Lexington, MA, 1:24,000, 7.5x7.5 grid, Version 01/01/2018 of the area shows that Arlington/Menotomy has two geographically distinct areas. The hills west of center are part of a volcanic mountain range that developed over 500 million years ago off the coast of what is now East Africa, then drifted over to slam into the North American coast. On the other hand, Arlington east of center lies in the Boston Basin, a rift valley that had formed in those mountains, largely filled in by glacial deposits over the last 100,000 years. The Watertown Road (today’s Pleasant Street) traverses a subduction faultUSGS and AASG, “National Geologic Map Database Product Description Page,” Sheet 1 (“Bedrock Geologic Map”), retrieved March 25, 2026. marking the northern boundary of the Basin and separating Arlington into those two parts.
The Concord Road that passed by Russell’s farm traversed the Mill Brook Valley, which had developed over the years along another geologic feature called a “normal fault.” This cut through the normally steep northern escarpment of the Boston Basin, making it a natural passage from Boston to the towns further west such as Lexington and Concord, and so it was that Paul Revere, William Dawes, and the British Army passed by Russell’s house and farm on April 18 and 19th, 1775. Militias from the north and south, however, had to intersect the Concord Road along the Basin’s northern boundary, which brought them naturally to Russell’s farm.An 1830 map shows that still almost no roads threaded the hills abutting the Concord Road west of the center of Menotomy (which had by then become West Cambridge).
The House In 1745, according to family lore and a dendrochronology study,Carlson, Carolyn, “What do we know about the construction of the Jason Russell House?”, Arlington Historical Society, October 14, 2014. Also Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory, Report 2012/45. Mill Farm, Mapledurham, South Oxfordshire, RG4 7TX, 2012. On file at the Arlington Historical Society. Jason Russell built a house at the western endAccording to Russell’s probate records, the house was situated in the westernmost 17-acre parcel of the divided 40 acres. (Middlesex Probate File Papers Record no. 19637, 1775 (Estate of Jason Russell)). of his 40 acres. He oriented it so that it faced east and a little south,See, for example, Bohy and Clark, “Figure 10” on p. 137, reproduced from Leach and Welch. giving it a view across the lower part of that parcel toward the Watertown Road on the other side.
The house is a typical New England farmhouse with five windows across the front, a front door and a stairway in the center and a large chimney in the middle of a pitched roof. The lower of two rooms on the south served as a kitchen, while the room above, still roughly finished, was perhaps a bedroom. The two on the north – a “best room” below and another bedroom above – had paneled fireplace walls and deeper window recesses.Nylander, pp. 33-35.
Initially, Russell must have constructed the house without first excavating for a basement, as it was later found to have a large chuck of bedrock directly beneath the south side (and more) of the house.Boulding, pp. 9, 11 This limited (and limits) the size of the basement to part of the north side.
A dendrochronology studyOxford Dendrochronology Laboratory, op. cit. revealed that many of the timbers used in the house were made from lumber cut in 1684–85 or earlier and so may have been recycled from the house inherited from Jason’s grandfather, who had built a house around that time at the northwest corner of the Concord and Woburn Roads (the latter now known as Mystic Street).
An unusual feature of the kitchen is its spotted ceiling, preserved and uncovered when the house was restored in the early 20th century. The ceiling had been left unplastered, then decorated with whitewash and black sponge painting.Nylander, pp. 33-34.
Nylander also claimed in 1964 that after the house passed out of the family in 1896, “a subsequent owner moved it partly off its original foundation to install a furnace.”Nylander, p. 41 Bohy and Scott, however, assemble evidence that this was not so, including the age of the mortar between the foundation stones and the results of a ground-penetrating radar study,See Leach and Welch. indicating that the house remains on its original foundation.Bohy and Scott, pp. 71-76. Bohy and Scott reproduce much of the ground-penetrating radar study as their Appendix III (pp. 129-139).
April 19, 1775 On April 19, 1775, the house and its surrounding yard were the site of one of the biggest conflicts of the first battle in the Revolutionary War, resulting in more colonial troop deaths than anywhere else along the battle road.[MSAR 1894]. pp. 126-127 As British troops marched back towards Boston, heavy fighting occurred along their route through then Menotomy (which in 1807 was renamed West Cambridge and in 1867 given its present name of Arlington). Houses along the way were ransacked and plundered by the retreating British.Fischer, p. 258 The running battle continued to Jason Russell's house, where Russell was joined by men from Beverly, Danvers, Lynn, Salem, Dedham, and Needham at his house.
The history of the Jason Russell House on April 19, 1775, is also the history of a family. Jason and Elizabeth Russell had raised six surviving children here. Three had married and moved to Mason, New Hampshire; a fourth, Thomas had established a grocery store across the street in 1773Nylander, p. 38 and had married the following year.Cutter, p. 298 Remaining at home were Elizabeth (called Betsey by the family), who was 18, and Noah, who had just turned 12 the previous month.Nylander, p. 36. Ages from Cutter 1880, p. 298
But on that day the history of the house and yard became the history of a whole region as part of the Battle of Menotomy.
Around midnight of the night before, Paul Revere had ridden past the house on his mission to warn that the British regulars (soldiers) would be coming by on their way to Lexington and, ultimately, to Concord. About half an hour later William Dawes would pass by with the same message.Paul Revere's midnight ride: "Ride"
Around 3:30 in the morning about 700 British troops under the command of Lieutenant Col. Francis Smith would march “quietly” by.Arlington historians Cutter, p. 58, and Parker, p. 182, followed S. Smith, p. 14, writing that Smith’s troops reached Arlington around two o’clock in the morning. But this cannot be so. Sources (Fisher p. 123 and Coburn [1912a] p. 47 ) indicate that the troops did not even leave their assemblage at Lechmere Point until one or two in the morning, and the army was then spotted in East Cambridge at 2:30 (Fisher p. 124). Galvin, p. 116, reports that it was not until after three that the column reached the Menotomy River, the eastern border of Menotomy. From there, covering an additional 1.6 miles at a pace of a mile every 16 minutes (Fisher p. 126) would have had them passing the Jason Russell House at around 3:30 am.
The Troops Assemble