een occupied for almost
two hundred and seventy-five years by the same family, which is now in
the eighth generation of the name. The house is surrounded by
magnificent old elms, and was built by Jonathan Fairbanks, who came from
Sowerby, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, in 1633. The
cupboards are filled with choice china, and even the Fairbanks cats, it
is said, drink their milk out of ancient blue saucers that would drive a
collector wild with envy.

The house is now (1902) the home of Miss Rebecca Fairbanks, an old lady
of seventy-five years, who will occupy it throughout her lifetime,
although the place is controlled by the Fairbanks Chapter of the
Daughters of the Revolution, who hold their monthly meetings there.

[Illustration: FAIRBANKS HOUSE, DEDHAM, MASS.]

The way in which this property was acquired by the organisation named
is interesting recent history. Miss Rebecca Fairbanks was obliged in
1895 to sell the house to John Crowley, a real estate dealer in Dedham.
On April 3, 1897, Mrs. Nelson V. Titus, asked through the medium of the
press for four thousand, five hundred dollars, necessary to purchase the
house and keep it as a historical relic. Almost immediately Mrs. J.
Amory Codman and Miss Martha Codman sent a check for the sum desired,
and thus performed a double act of beneficence. For it was now possible
to ensure to Miss Fairbanks a life tenancy of the home of her fathers as
well as to keep for all time this picturesque place as an example of
early American architecture.

Hundreds of visitors now go every summer to see the interesting old
house, which stands nestling cosily in a grassy dell just at the corner
of East Street and the short "Willow Road" across the meadows that lie
between East Street and Dedham. This road is a "modern convenience," and
its construction was severely frowned upon by the three old ladies who
twenty years ago lived together in the family homestead. And though it
made the road to the village shorter by half than the old way, this had
no weight with the inflexible women who had inherited from their long
line of ancestors marked decision and firmness of character. They
protested against the building of the road, and when it was built in
spite of their protests they declared they would not use it, and kept
their word. Constant attendants of the old Congregational church in
Dedham, they went persistently by the longest way round rather than
tolerate the road to whic