Hannah Winthrop House

During pre-Revolutionary times, Hannah Winthrop, born Hannah Fayerweather, lived in Cambridge on the corner of Mount Auburn and John F. Kennedy streets with her second husband, John Winthrop. John was a professor at Harvard College who taught mathematics and natural sciences. As a wealthy woman in Cambridge, Hannah corresponded by letter with other ladies of her social rank. Her colorful correspondence with other well-known women including Mercy Otis Warren and Abigail Adams painted a vivid picture of Cambridge life preceding and during the American Revolution. Her letters captured the difficult realities of her time and circumstance. Following the battle of Lexington and Concord, Winthrop documented the chaos that ensued, “Not knowing what the event would be at Cambridge at the return of these bloody ruffians, and seeing another brigade dispatched to the assistance of the former, looking with the ferocity of barbarians, it seemed necessary to retire to some place of safety till the calamity was passed...We were directed to a place called Fresh Pond, about a mile from the town, but what a distressed house did we find it, filled with women whose husbands had gone forth to meet the assailants, seventy or eighty of these, with numbers of infant children, weeping and agonizing for the fate of their husbands.”

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