Daniel Webster House

Built circa 1805 by developer John Bowers who laid out Somerset Street. Number 39 was first occupied by Uriah Cotting (1766-1819), one of Boston's leading real estate developers and the mentor and business partner of Francis Cabot Lowell (1775-1817). It was successively occupied by U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster (1782-1852) from 1819 to 1822; Abbott Lawrence (1792-1855); the Rev. Ephraim Peabody (1807-1856), of King's Chapel; maritime mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838); and, William Ropes (1784-1869), merchant between Boston and St. Petersburg who lived here from 1842 until his death in 1869. In the 1870s it was divided into five apartments for gentlewomen, notably female teachers, including Mary Carter, Mrs Gilchrist, Mrs Modjeska, Miss Anderson etc. The house is thought to have been lost to fire in 1938.