24 Chestnut St. is at a crossroads — not literally, of course.
Geographically speaking, 24 Chestnut St. is off of Atlantic Avenue, making it part of the Shipyard neighborhood. Historically speaking, numerous important figures and themes in Marblehead’s formation can be traced back to the house.
Going back to even before the extant house was built, the plot of land itself reveals its historical significance in three ways: Marblehead’s residential expansion, connection to the train system, and shoemaking history.
The Shipyard neighborhood was developed in the second half of the 19th century by Joseph R. Bassett and William Fabens. Both men were prominent in the community for different reasons. Fabens was a state senator in the 1850s, and Bassett was the owner of a shoe-manufacturing factory, which he set up by the relatively new Marblehead and Salem branch of the Eastern Railroad.
Later in life, the two men joined forces to develop a tract of land which stretched from Rowland’s Hill to Marblehead Harbor. According to a document in the Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System (MACRIS), in 1852, the pair laid out a plan of the tract, which divided it into 122 residential lots. This would become the Shipyard neighborhood.
In particular, Bassett had experience in real estate, as he sold and mortgaged homes to his employees on the land near the factory.
Eighty-six years after Bassett and Fabens laid out their plan, the building at 24 Chestnut St. was finally constructed in 1938. Samuel G. and Margaret J. Peach purchased the land, made of parts of lots 39 and 40, which had sat vacant under the ownership of Patrick Martin.
Here is where yet another piece of history enters the mix.
Samuel Peach came from a long line of Peaches in town, a line in fact so long that it stretches back to 1649, when Marblehead formed its first Select Board (then referred to as a Board of Selectmen).
John Peach Sr., along with Moses Maverick, Samuel Doliber, Francis Johnson, Nicholas Merritt, John Devereaux, and John Bartoll, formed the town’s first executive branch and established in the town the same system used to this day.
The house remained in the Peach family into the 2000s, as Samuel Peach’s daughter, Mary Ellen Farrar nèe. Peach, owned and lived at the house.
Many houses in Marblehead have a connection to the town’s history, but to be connected to so many aspects of its history, as 24 Chestnut is, is rare.
