Cambridge Grant Historic District

Cambridge Grant Historic District is a 322-acre rural neighborhood on the southern and eastern slopes of Russell Hill in eastern Ashburnham, Massachusetts. It takes in a large part of a colonial land grant of just over 1,000 acres. Along Russell Hill Road and Wilker Road stand seven houses built between 1788 and 1834, together with six barns and other outbuildings, stone walls, a farm pond, a burial ground, a brick kiln site and the foundations of a tanning shop and an early schoolhouse. The Thomas Russell House is the oldest surviving dwelling in the grant. The brick John Adams, Jr. House, built about 1798, was the first brick house and the largest in town. Other Federal farmhouses and a large bank barn, possibly the earliest in the region, show how local builders adapted regional forms. The district retains open pasture, orchards and woodland with long views toward Boston, giving a well-preserved picture of an early farming community.