CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
EN/FR
Search
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

Nourse-Farwell House

house in Harvard, Massachusetts

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 1, 2025
Entity authorityQ22059527 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Nourse-Farwell House is located in the Harvard Center Historic District, a U.S. Historic District in the center of Harvard, Massachusetts.

The house is believed to have been built in c. 1800 by Harvard resident Benjamin Nourse. The house was sold in 1833 to John Farwell who served as a Harvard town selectman in 1854 and assessor from 1860 to 1863.

The house still stands today located on Elm Street located off of the Harvard Town Common.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Nourse-Farwell House” is house in Harvard, Massachusetts. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Nourse-Farwell, House and house, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1800, 1833, 1854, 1860—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1800. For this dossier, Nourse-Farwell, House and house is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “house in Harvard, Massachusetts” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q22059527. Authority coordinates are 42.501, -71.585. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1800, 1833, 1854 and 1860.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Nourse-Farwell House”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Nourse-Farwell House primary sources, Nourse-Farwell House archive and Nourse-Farwell research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Nourse-Farwell House”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Nourse-Farwell House” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.