332 Balcom Road: The Jonas Balcom House

Architecture Style: Gothic Revival

Built: 1841

In 1758, Holy War fever was heating up in Massachusetts. A fresh determination to drive the French from the continent was fueled by fear and anger about the Louisbourg fortress,  captured at great cost by Massachusetts militiamen in 1745, and astoundingly, returned to France.  Resentment and fear simmered. The Maryland Gazette described the atrocities of their “brutal enemies” in hideous detail, and the colonists, themselves no innocents, read:

Friends! Countrymen! . . . Awake! Arise! . . . When our Country. . . is in most threatening Danger; when our Enemies are busy and unwearied in planning and executing their Schemes of Encroachments and Barbarity  . . . when in short our All is at Stake  . . . the Patriot Passions must be roused in every Breast …Countrymen! Fellow-Subjects! Fellow-Protestants! to engage your Attention, I need only repeat, Your Country is in Danger.

Samuel Balcom fought in Col. Elisha Jones’ regiment in 1758. When  Louisbourg was taken, New England breathed more freely.

But the victory brought catastrophe to the Acadians and the Mik’maqs of Nova Scotia, who lost everything.  Families like the Balcoms were caught up in these larger events. The “Old Colonists” who had come to Massachusetts generations before were short of land. When they heard that the lands they had defended in Nova Scotia were available,  they came to Granville Township, with other farmers and Louisbourg veterans.  Samuel and Mary [Brigham], like many of the “old inhabitants,” migrated up to Paradise and did well. Their son Henry married Anna Morse, daughter of Planters Abner and Elizabeth [Saunders]  Morse. By 1807, he declared 7 and 3/4 acres of land cleared.  Soon they owned much of the land on the Balcom Road.  Henry’s son Jonas married Salome Parker and built this picturesque Gothic Revival home, with its steep double gables. The heir to this house, James Edward, became a minister, and the farm was sold to Wallace Rumsey.                                                                                                

If Henry’s struggle had been to clear the land for his farm, Wallace’s was to find farmworkers for it. In a common practice of the day, he brought young men seeking new opportunities over from England to work on his farm. Alec Henderson, one of his “lads”, married his daughter Amy. Amy and Alec lived on “The Henderson Place” until 1961. Later owners were Ross/Constance Hawkins and Gary Wright.