Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site

The original house was built in 1759 for Loyalist John Vassall Jr.[2] owner of a slave-labor sugar plantation in Hanover, Jamaica.[3] He inherited the land along what was called the King's Highway in Cambridge when he was 21. He demolished the structure that had stood there and built a new mansion,[4] and the home became his summer residence with his wife Elizabeth (née Oliver) and children until 1774. His wife's brother was Thomas Oliver, the royal lieutenant governor of Massachusetts[4] who moved to Cambridge in 1766 and built the Elmwood mansion.[5] Vassall, who kept an usually high number of people enslaved on the property,[6] served for a time as a warden of nearby Christ Church.[7] Vassall's house and all his other properties were confiscated by Patriots in September 1774 on the eve of the American Revolutionary War because he was accused of being loyal to the King.[8] He fled to Boston and later to England where he died in 1792.[9]

1854 image of the home labeled as "Headquarters, Cambridge 1775" in reference to George Washington

The home was used as a temporary hospital in the days after the Battles of Lexington and Concord.[4] Colonel John Glover and the Marblehead, Massachusetts Regiment occupied the house as their temporary barracks in June 1775.[10] General George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the newly formed Continental Army, initially used the Benjamin Wadsworth House at Harvard College as his headquarters,[11] but he decided that he needed more space for his staff;[12] he moved into the Vassall House on July 16, 1775, and used it as his headquarters and home until he departed on April 4, 1776. During the Siege of Boston, he found the view of the Charles River from the house particularly useful.[13] The home was shared with several aides-de-camp, including colonel Robert H. Harrison.[14] Washington was visited at the house by John Adams and Abigail Adams, Benedict Arnold, Henry Knox, and Nathanael Greene.[13] In his study, he also confronted Dr. Benjamin Church with evidence that he was a spy.[15] It was in this house that Washington received a poem written by Phillis Wheatley, the first published African-American poet. "If you should ever come to Cambridge", he wrote to her, "I shall be happy to see a person so favored by the Muses".[16]

Martha Washington joined her husband in December 1775 and stayed until March 1776.[9] She brought with her Washington's nephew George Lewis as well as her son John Parke Custis and his wife Eleanor Calvert.[14] On Twelfth Night in January 1776, the couple celebrated their wedding anniversary in the home.[10] Mrs. Washington reported to a friend that "some days we have [heard] a number of cannon and shells from Boston and Bunkers Hill".[13] She used the front parlor as her personal reception room, still furnished with the English-made furniture left behind by the Vassalls.[17] The Washingtons also had several servants, including a tailor named Giles Alexander, and several slaves including "Billy" Lee.[14] They also entertained very often. Surviving household accounts show that the family purchased large quantities of beef, lamb, wild ducks, geese, fresh fish, plums, peaches, barrels of cider, gallons of brandy and rum,[18] and 217 bottles of Madeira wine purchased in a two-week period.[19]

Washington left the house in April 1776.[20] Nathaniel Tracy had made a great fortune as one of the earliest and most successful privateers under Washington, and he owned the house from 1781 to 1786. He then went bankrupt and sold it to Thomas Russell, a wealthy Boston merchant who occupied it until 1791.

Andrew Craigie had been the first Apothecary General of the American army, and bought the house in 1791.[21] He hosted Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn in the ballroom; Prince Edward was the father of Queen Victoria.[22] Craigie married Elizabeth while living in the house; she was the daughter of a Nantucket clergyman and only 22 years old, 17 years younger than he.[10]

Craigie overspent trying to restore the home,[20] and left Elizabeth in great debt when he died in 1819. She took in boarders to support herself,[23] most often people connected to nearby Harvard University.[19] Short-term residents of the home included Jared Sparks, Edward Everett, and Joseph Emerson Worcester.[24] Sparks moved into the home in April 1833 while he was preparing a biography of Washington based on original documents. He recorded in his journal: "It is a singular circumstance that, while I am engaged in preparing for the press the letters of General Washington which he wrote at Cambridge after taking command of the American army, I should occupy the same rooms that he did at that time."[25] Another lodger was Sarah Lowell, an aunt of James Russell Lowell.[26]

Longfellow moved to Cambridge to take a job at Harvard College as Smith Professor of Modern Languages and of Belles Lettres,[27] and rented rooms on the second floor of the home beginning in the summer of 1837.[22] Elizabeth Craigie initially refused to rent to him because she thought that he was a student at Harvard, but Longfellow convinced her that he was a professor there, as well as the author of Outre-Mer, the very book that she was reading.[28]

Longfellow's new landlady had earned a reputation for being eccentric[23] and often wore a turban. In the 1840s, Longfellow wrote about an incident where canker-worms were devastating the elm trees on the property. Elizabeth Craigie "would sit by the open window and let them crawl over her white turban. She refused to have the trees protected against them & said, Why, sir, they have as good a right to live as we—they are our fellow worms".[20] He wrote to his father in August 1837, "The new rooms are above all praise, only they do want painting."[29] The rooms that he rented were the same ones once used personally by George Washington while it was his headquarters,[13] and he wrote to his friend George Washington Greene: "I live in a great house which looks like an Italian villa: have two large rooms opening into each other. They were once Gen. Washington's chambers".[20]

The first major works that Longfellow composed in the home were Hyperion, a prose romance likely inspired by his pursuit for the affections of his future wife Frances Appleton, and Voices of the Night, a poetry collection which included "A Psalm of Life".[23] Edward Wagenknecht notes that it was these early years at the Craigie House which marked "the real beginning of Longfellow's literary career".[30] His landlady, Elizabeth Craigie, died in 1841.[31]

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with his sons Charles and Ernest and his wife Frances

Joseph Emerson Worcester leased the property from Elizabeth Craigie's heirs after her death, and he rented the eastern half to Longfellow.[32] Nathan Appleton purchased the house in 1843 for $10,000; Longfellow married his daughter Frances, so Appleton gave him the house as a wedding gift.[33][32] Longfellow's friend George Washington Greene reminded them "how noble an inheritance this is — where Washington dwelt in every room".[34] Longfellow was proud of the connection to Washington and purchased a bust of him in 1844, a copy of the sculpture by Jean-Antoine Houdon.[35]

Longfellow lived in the house for the next four decades, producing many of his most famous poems including "Paul Revere's Ride" and "The Village Blacksmith",[36] as well as longer works such as Evangeline, The Song of Hiawatha, and The Courtship of Miles Standish.[31] He published 11 poetry collections, two novels, three epic poems, and several plays while living in this house, as well as a translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.[37] He and his wife most often referred to it as "Craigie House" or "Craigie Castle".[38]

Longfellow oversaw the creation of a formal garden, and his wife oversaw decorating the interior.[39] She purchased several items from Tiffany & Co. in New York, as well as $350 worth of carpets.[40] They installed central heating in 1850 and gaslight in 1853.[39] The family hosted artists, writers, politicians and other famous people. Specific visitors included Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, singer Jenny Lind, and actress Fanny Kemble.[41] Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil also visited the house privately and requested the company of Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and James Russell Lowell.[42] The couple also raised their three daughters and two sons in the home.[22] They stayed in the home until their respective deaths but spent their summers after 1850 in Nahant, Massachusetts.[43]

Longfellow in his study by George Kendall Warren

Longfellow often wrote in his first-floor study, formerly Washington's office, surrounded by portraits of his friends, including charcoal portraits by Eastman Johnson of Charles Sumner, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Cornelius Conway Felton. He would write at the center table, at the desk, or in the armchair by the fire.[41] His second wife Fanny died in the home in July 1861 after her dress accidentally caught fire. He attempted to quell the flames, managing to keep her face from burning,[44] but he was burned on his own face and was scarred badly enough that he began growing a beard to hide it.[45]