Home / VOL. VII NO. 18 10/15/2026 / Notes from the Lenox Historical Society

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Notes from the Lenox Historical Society

President Charlie Flint proposes…

I have an important question concerning the redirection of Main Street in 1790. I know of no other town that underwent such a major change to its downtown area. Would your committee (Lenox Historical Commission) consider piecing together a map showing the original properties and their owners before the road was altered?

One starting point could be the eighteenth-century General Patterson house, now the bank at the corner of Main and West Streets. From there, we could work northward, tracing the names of abutting property owners through the deeds. I would be happy to work with you on this project.

The Lenox Historical Society has an outstanding report on General Patterson’s house written by AJ Rudin for Shirley Vincent’s ninth-grade class at Lenox High School, as part of the research project “Ourselves, Our Town.” We considered it college-level work and one of the most impressive student reports we have ever read. It could provide a valuable foundation for this research.

This pre-1790 information is a missing link in our rich history. I have long felt that additional colonial records must exist somewhere—in early newspapers, the Massachusetts State Archives, or the Registry of Deeds etc. A change of this magnitude, affecting homes and properties in the center of town, surely deserves further investigation.

I believe this project would be a perfect fit for your committee and the Lenox Historical Society to work together, and it would be a meaningful contribution to our understanding of early Lenox.

Thank you for considering it.

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