“The house now owned and lived in by Richard Cunningham was built by Hezekiah Fuller for the first minister of the Grantville church, Harvey Newcomb. The land was owned by Dexter Ware and was lot No. 1, being a square lot reaching up on to Mangus Hill.

The house on the west side of Washington Street in Wellesley Hills Square, owned by George Dexter Ware, has been in this branch of the family for years. It was built by George Hoogs, cousin of the one who kept the tavern at the Falls, and is a very good example of the old New England style of village architecture. Ware and Wilder’s store was here for several years. The long, low narrow building formerly standing next to it was the home of Mary Jane Dix and her mother, and later it was used as a store by Mr. A. R. Clapp’s father, the Huntings, Seawards, Rowells and others. It was torn down about thirty years ago.

Back of these buildings where the waterworks and railroad are now was a good sized pond, almost a lake in size.

The small, white house, also belonging to the Ware estate, was once a blacksmith’s shop, owned by Frank Daniels, who lived in the present home of Dr. Hazelton about 1825. His wife was the aunt of Miss Dix, the first wife of L. Allen Kingsbury.

Other existing Ware houses are the Reuel Ware house built by Daniel Ware on Brook Street, now owned by Robert H. Monks; the Captain Reuben Ware house on Walnut Street, now owned by the Millers; and Mr. Sheridan’s at the junction of Oakland Street and Brookside Road, where across the road, tradition says, is the old spring used by Mangus. This is probably part of property which in 1833 the town of Needham sold to Isaac Keyes. The deed records thirteen acres on Worcester Turnpike, and, no doubt, is part of the land deeded by Ephraim Ware to the Needham Parish. (These Wares are buried in the Needham Cemetery.)”

Source: History of the Town of Wellesley, Massachusetts, by Joseph Emery Fiske, 1917, pages 59-60

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