Boston) and from the John Hancock house, Boston, the mantel from 
the Stuyvesant house in New York, the front door from the Edward 
House, Boston, etc. Here are collected the various fire-arms and a 
drum that was carried by the Newbury Company at Bunker Hill. 
In the fire-place of the old kitchen adjoining, are various cooking 
utensils of that period with an unusual collection of old pewter, china 
and early American furniture. Overhead is the old chamber fur- 
nished as it was at that date with the high-boy filled with family clothes 
also of the period. 
In one of the parlors is a set of chairs which was at Mt. Vernon 
in Washington's time and in a chamber a bed which belonged to and 
was slept in by Napoleon. 
The study is filled with interesting articles including the carpet 
on which Lincoln stood when taking his first oath of office as President 
in front of the speaker's desk in the Senate Chamber, a chair that 
was used by John Quincy Adams when a member of the House of Rep- 
resentatives after he was President and on which he was resting when 
he suffered the stroke of paralysis from which he died. 
The house is built entirely of brick and stone and is furnished 
throughout with early American furniture collected by the various 
owners. It contains over forty rooms and is still occupied in the 
summer time by the family. 
The garden which was laid out by English gardeners comprises a 
long walk up the hill, 800 yards long to a summer-house at the top 
and at one time was much more extensive with intersecting walks 
and beds. 
In 1857 the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture of- 
fered a prize of $1,000 for the best plantation of forest trees of not 
less than ten acres and ten years' growth for which Major Poore 
competed. He planted thirty acres and won the prize. This was the 
first systematic planting in this part of the country. All prizes awarded 
the farm have been, from time to time, put into silver which is used 
in the house. 
This modest account of past and present glories tells too little 
of the delightful hedge-walled garden gaily planted with Damask 
Roses and other plants from ancient herbals which border the central 
grass path, truly a tapis vert. It should go into detail and describe the 
striped brocade dress folded away in the high-boy and worn by a young 
Miss Poore of ancient days to her brother's Commencement at 
Harvard. Nor does it speak of the hair-cloth-covered parlor set 
perennially known as the "new furniture." It ought to tell of the 
astute Squire Poore who regretted the fact that his house stood so 
near the road and set about to effect a change. He invited the select- 
46 
