The Macy-Colby House is a historically significant seventeenth Century saltbox

Saltbox

A saltbox is a building with a long, pitched roof that slopes down to the back, generally a wooden frame house. A saltbox has just one story in the back and two stories in the front...

 home located in Amesbury

Amesbury, Massachusetts

Amesbury is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. Though it officially became a city in 1996, its formal name remains "The Town of Amesbury." In 1890, 9798 people lived in Amesbury; in 1900, 9473; in 1910, 9894; in 1920, 10,036; and in 1940, 10,862. The population was 16,283 at...

, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

. It is a historic house museum and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2008.

History

The house, at 257 Main Street, was first built in 1654 by Thomas Macy, a merchant who served as Amesbury's first Town Clerk. A few years later, Macy was forced to leave town, after he allowed a group of Quakers to take shelter in his home for a few hours, during a thunderstorm. ("Harboring Quakers" was considered a criminal offense.) The house was acquired by prominent Amesbury citizen Anthony Colby. Around 1712, the original house built by Macy was torn down. By 1745 the saltbox style house that exists today was completed by Obadiah Colby. The house remained in the Colby family for nine generations, and was used as a private residence by Colby's descendants until 1958 http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~colby/colbyfam/, after which time it was acquired by the Daughters of the Revolution, which owned it up until 2000.

The Friends of the Macy-Colby House have maintained the house as a museum since 2000. In 2008 the house was added to the list of National Register of Historic Places.

See also

• List of historic houses in Massachusetts
• List of the oldest buildings in Massachusetts

External links

• Macy-Colby House - official site
• Macy family information
• Colby family information
• Colby family information
• photos of Macy Colby house
• Amesbury Treasures, umbrella organization for historic societies in Amesbury