Campbell Room | Wayland Museum & Historical Society

The Campbell Room
Part of the original 1740s house. Color of woodwork similar to that of early period. Room is furnished in late 18th century style. Wood paneling may date to Silas Grout in the 1790s.

The Campbell Room is one of the home’s four original rooms and the one with the most colonial items. When Jonathan Grout built the house in 1740, the main road turned northwest and passed in front of his house. Over the years, the house was expanded to make room for the many Grouts and Heards who lived here. The house was moved to Old Sudbury Road in 1878 and Sarah Heard and her daughters Blanche and Grace continued to live there until the deaths of the daughters in the 1950s. Shortly after, most of the contents were dispersed or sold.

When the property was purchased by Raytheon in 1955, the house was soon donated to the Historical Society and Charles “Malcolm” Campbell, a carpenter by trade, moved into the house and served as the Society’s first resident custodian. His grandson remembers visiting him in this room and listening to the birds in the fields and thickets along Old Sudbury Road. In 1962 the house was trucked to its original site. The kitchen, too fragile to be moved, was replaced in 1964.

He brought with him a collection of family furniture, some of which he donated and some he sold to the Society when he retired from his duties here. Several of these items decorate this room today. Malcolm died in 1969 at the age of 85.

HIGHBOY

A ‘married’ (1999) piece, the top and bottom from two different Wayland families; the bottom purchased from Malcolm Campbell.

WELL HOOK

Made of wrought iron most likely by Silas Grout, a blacksmith and Revolutionary War veteran, who added to and updated the house ca 1790.

QUEEN ANNE CHAIRS

Early 1800s transitional with Spanish tassel feet as in the William and Mary style. Rush bottom seats. Among the furnishings purchased from Malcolm Campbell.

MINIATURE DESK

Made by Samuel Stone Noyes (1785-1832) when an apprentice cabinet maker, ca 1805, sits under a window and often draws the attention of Wayland children who visit the museum.

COOKING ITEMS

Include toaster, grill, waffle iron, long handled fry pans. Tin items include cream skimmer and tin kitchen, a rotisserie and oven combined. The toaster comes from Reeves Tavern.

SADDLEBAGS

Doctor Ebenezer Roby’s saddlebags dated 1775.

Dr. Ebenezer R. Roby was born in Sudbury on June 15, 1732, the son of Ebenezer and Sarah (Swift) Roby. As a young man, he served in the French & Indian Wars. In 1757 he appeared on the rolls of Capt. Thomas Damon’s alarm list in the Sudbury militia, and in August of that year he marched to Springfield for two weeks as his unit responded to the Fort William Henry alarm. In 1758 he served as a military surgeon at Crown Point on Lake Champlain. A copy of his diary during the stay at Crown Point is on file at the Wayland Public Library.

Dr. Roby married Abigail Moffat on Sept. 15, 1763. They were the parents of eight children born between 1764 and 1780. He was a practicing physician and lived near the center of town on Concord Road, just north of the intersection with Old Sudbury Road. His recorded service during the Revolution was as a member of Capt. Nathaniel Maynard’s militia company, for which he was paid 50 pounds by the town in 1778. On July 18, 1786, he passed away at the relatively young age of 54.

MOURNING RING

Between the two front windows are two mourning rings commemorating the death of Beulah Rice Bent in 1760. When her daughter, Elizabeth, married Micah Rice in 1762, she had in her possession two rings-a large gold one and a small copper alloy one, each engraved with a death head. Elizabeth’s daughter married Joseph Rutter and lived on Bow Road. Their daughter Eunice took them to the barn and lost them in the hay. Only one was found. The farm was sold and later Leonard Drury bought it. One day his daughter, Emma, (born 1844), wore a strange ring to school. Her teacher, Lydia Rutter Draper saw it and believed it was the one her mother had lost years ago. According to Hudson’s Annals of Wayland and Lydia Rutter Draper:

“One day Emma Drury stopped after school to work on the blackboard. As she reached her hand up on the board from the place where I was sitting, I noticed a ring with a skull on it, the facsimile of one my mother sometimes wore and the mate to which she had told me was lost in the barn. In an instant I had crossed the room and seizing it almost frantically took and claimed it as my own. She then told me the history…and how she had worn it to school that day for sport, but as it was no heirloom to her, she was quite willing to exchange it…and this is how after sixty years more or less the ring came again to its rightful owner.”

In 1963, the rings were donated to the Wayland Historical Society by John Rutter Draper.

HEARD FARM

Eastern half of Pelham Island. Drawn in 1794 by William Goodnow.

CLOCK REEL AND YARN SWIFT

Once yarn was spun, women used a clock reel to wind yarn into skeins; a clock mechanism kept them to a standard 300 yards. The skein would then be slipped over a yarn swift which easily turned making it easy for children to create balls of yarn.

RIVER LANDSCAPE

Photographic reproduction of original oil on wood (ca 1800). Original was sold in 1956 and is now owned by Historic New England. The original over-mantel painting which is a landscape along the banks of a river with a bird sitting in a dead tree was probably painted during Silas Grout’s occupancy, later inherited by his great granddaughters, Grace and Blanche Heard. After Blanche’s death, the original was sold to Nina Fletcher Little, a well-known collector of early American folk art, in 1956. In 1993, Mrs. Little’s home, “Cogswell Grant” in Essex MA was bequeathed to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, now called Historic New England. In 1994, a reproduction of the painting was installed with the help of John Ganson, a Wayland resident, whose company photographically reproduced the picture. It was given through the generosity of the Hagger Memorial Fund in memory of Leonard and Virginia Hagger.