Peter Hutchinson

Caesar Robbins’ extended family
1799 – 1882, 82 years

LAST AFRICAN AMERICAN OWNER
Peter Hutchinson and his large family were the last African Americans to own the Robbins house. Peter married Nancy Dager at the First African Baptist Church in Boston and they had six children. They lived in this house from 1852 to 1868.

PRIZEWINNING WORK
Described as “the ablest common laborer I have ever known,” Peter constructed buildings, slaughtered livestock, and sold pigs to other farmers. He won first prize in the plowing contest at the 1835 Middlesex agricultural fair. Peter signed petitions opposing railroad discrimination and the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law.

Peter “had more local knowledge of wood lots and meadow bounds than any man in town,” according to J.S. Keyes. During his time in the Robbins house, the farm lane became known as Peter’s Path, a spring was known as Peter’s Spring, and the woods nearby were called Peter’s Woods. Fifty years after his death, a local firewood business was named the Peter Hutchinson Company in his honor.

(representational image)