page_title: Harriet Nevins
section_title: Nevins Family
hierarchical_section_title: Harriet Nevins / Nevins Family
caption_attribution_description: Interior of the Nevins Estate at the corner of Hampshire St and Broadway in Methuen Massachusetts Circa 1909. Built by David Nevins, Sr. and his wife Eliza, left to his oldest son Henry Coffin Nevins and wife Julia, and then passed to widow of his second son David Nevins, Jr., Harriet Nevins. The estate was razed to make room for an ugly municipal building.
context_page_description: Harriet Francoeur Nevins née Blackburn, was an American philanthropist and animal rights activist born in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Widow of David Nevins, Jr., she used her inheritance to leave a legacy to the people of the Bay State. She died November 14, 1929 at her home in Methuen, Massachusetts.
context_section_description: Harriet Nevins' father George Blackburn, was born in Bradford, England, there he learned the trade of mill machining.  At nineteen he was part of a group of men sent to the United States to work in the developing industry. He worked at the mills in Webster, Massachusetts and in the Fitchburg Duck Mills. He married Nancy Hill Bugbee of Wrentham and they had three children: George, William Henry, and Harriet. By 1861, Blackburn had partnered with David Nevins, Sr. to rebuild the recently destroyed Pemberton Mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
  In April 1862, 18-year-old Harriet married 22-year-old David Nevins, Jr. David Jr. and his brother increased the Nevins family fortune in the industrial boom of the late 19th century, and the couple moved to South Framingham. 
  Unfortunately none of their children survived to adulthood, but the couple did act as a guardian to a boy named Hiram Appleman, who later became a minister and adopted a young girl; Elise Nevins would later marry William Finley Morgan of Boston and go on to author books of a religious nature.
  In 1894 David Nevins, Jr. built an elegant colonial revival shingle–style home on Nantucket for their summer retreat.
  David Nevins Sr. died in 1881, and in 1890 Harriet and David Jr. moved to Boston to live with his mother, Eliza.  For five years, the couple took care of Eliza in her Beacon Street home, but in 1895 the 78-year-old matron died. Three years later in 1898 David Jr. died while on a trip to Europe, leaving a 57-year-old Harriet a wealthy widow. Shortly afterward Harriet moved to the family farm in Methuen, which sister-in-law Julia had left after her husband Henry Nevin’s death in 1892.
  Mrs. Nevins spent the next thirty years socially active and involved with many organizations, donating to worthy causes such as the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Boston Children's Mission and the International Association of Rebekah Assemblies (female branch of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows).
  On November 14, 1929, at 88 Harriet died quietly at her home in Methuen, Massachusetts, after a lengthy illness, the last twelve months almost entirely at her estate. It is said her death was hastened by that of her beloved chauffeur John G Kilmurray who was struck by a drunk driver on Christmas eve of 1928 while delivering Mrs. Nevins' Yuletide remembrances.
  In her will, Mrs. Nevins left money to all her favorite organizations, including the Animal League of Boston, the Red Acre Farm of Stow, and the Ladies Union Charitable Society which operated the Lawrence General Hospital. She also left $2,500 to both towns of Methuen and Walpole to fund the construction of fountains for horses and dogs; the bowl of the Methuen fountain remains in the Methuen Square and is used as a planter and the Walpole fountain is now dry but still stands on School Street opposite the old Stone School (now Walpole Town Hall).
caption: Interior of Nevins Family Estate where Harriet lived until her death.
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