The Deacon Nathaniel Warriner Homestead

Town historian Chauncey Peck believed the Deacon Nathaniel and Margaret Warriner House was built about 1734, the year Nathaniel Warriner arrived in Wilbraham as its fourth settler. Several years earlier, in 1728, he had purchased two house lots and part of a third, providing ample land for farming along the West Road, which would become Main Street. Whether the existing house was his first dwelling or replaced an earlier structure is not known.

Deacon Nathaniel and Margaret Warriner House, 599 Main Street

Warriner was among the community's early leaders. In 1740, he joined other residents in petitioning Springfield to establish the Outward Commons as a separate precinct, citing the nine-mile journey required to attend church services and town meetings. When Wilbraham was designated a separate precinct, Warriner became its first collector and was instrumental in securing a minister and organizing the Congregational church in 1741. He supplied wood for the construction of the first meetinghouse and personally hewed timbers for the frame.

Nathaniel Warriner later became a deacon of the church. He and his wife Margaret occupied Pew No. 2 in the new meetinghouse, a position reflecting their standing in the community. When Wilbraham was incorporated as a town in 1763, Warriner served as town moderator.

The Warriners farmed their land successfully, benefiting from fertile, relatively stone-free soil fed by streams flowing west from the eastern hills. In about 1754, Nathaniel planted what is believed to be Wilbraham’s first crop of potatoes, a modest but successful harvest. In addition to farming, Nathaniel and Margaret operated a tavern in their house, which stood along a principal north–south travel route and served passing travelers.

Nathaniel Warriner died in 1780 and was buried in Adams Cemetery, where his grave is marked by one of the cemetery’s four brownstone table stones, traditionally reserved for prominent individuals. Margaret was also buried there and is remembered for her distinctive carved head and footstones. The couple had no children, and Nathaniel left the property to a relative, Noah Warriner.

Noah Warriner continued farming the land and maintained the tavern. In 1787, during the period of Shays’ Rebellion, several of Daniel Shays's followers stayed overnight at what was then known as Warriner’s Tavern before marching on the Springfield Armory. That same night, Noah Warriner, Deputy Sheriff Asaph King, Colonel Abel King, and their neighbor, Dr. Samuel Merrick, reportedly met at a nearby house, likely Dr. Merrick’s, to determine how to warn General William Shepard of the impending attack.

The 1790 federal census lists Noah Warriner’s household as fifteen people, ten of them female. Noah died on January 9, 1797, at the age of forty-eight. Tragedy struck the family again two years later when his sixteen-year-old daughter, Mary “Polly” Warriner, drowned in a boating accident on Nine Mile Pond on April 29, 1799. Polly and five other young people lost their lives when their sailboat capsized. According to a local account, Polly’s sixteen-year-old neighbor, Abigail “Nabby” Merrick, had foretold her own death by drowning about an hour earlier; she, Polly, and four others perished in the accident.

By 1810, Noah Warriner’s widow was living in a greatly reduced household of three. It was likely around this time that the property passed out of the Warriner family. The next documented owner was Mary Merrick, a seventy-year-old widow who headed the household in 1860. Living with her were Otis Meeron, a seventy-year-old farmer actively working the land, along with several women and children of varying ages. Such multi-generational households were common in Wilbraham, particularly when widowed daughters returned to live with family members, often accounting for multiple surnames under one roof.

After Mary Merrick’s death, the house passed to Sarah Mears, who was listed as head of household in 1870. Otis Meeron, then eighty and retired from farming, remained with her, as did Emily Merrick, who kept house. By 1880, Sarah Mears had left Wilbraham, and the property was occupied by Ira and Almeda Petter. Their son-in-law was Chauncey Peck, the Wilbraham historian and carriage maker, who may have lived in the house with his wife, Arvilla, while compiling the town history published in 1913.

In the early twentieth century, James O. and Emily Martin farmed the land and lived in the house with their young daughter and a boarder, Elizabeth Wright. Taking in boarders was a common means of supplementing farm income. The Martins remained only a few years before the property was acquired by Caroline and Thomas H. Nims.

Between 1910 and 1915, the Nims established one of Wilbraham’s two major poultry operations, maintaining about one thousand White Leghorn chickens and operating an egg business. Although Thomas Nims left poultry farming by 1920 to pursue work as a real estate broker, the enterprise continued under later owners. Frank E. and Matilda Bennett expanded the operation, constructing new poultry buildings and raising chickens and turkeys while selling eggs from a commercial store. Their son, Francis Bennett, worked alongside them.

By 1960, the Bennetts had shifted exclusively to turkey production. At the time Charles Merrick published The History of Wilbraham in 1963, the farm was raising approximately 20,000 turkeys, marking the final chapter of the property’s long agricultural legacy.

Unfortunately, the house at 599 Main Street was demolished in 2019 to make way for a new residence and a housing subdivision on the former property.