In Woburn, on Elm Street, at the northern intersection with Route 38, is a red painted Colonial style house that is now a museum as the birthplace of Benjamin Thompon, better known as Count Rumford.
The house is located at 90 Elm Street, which is near the northern intersection with Route 38, and across the street from a bank. A couple web sites, links below, have some information about the house and Benjamin Thompson. The house was built by Benjamin Thompson's grandfather, Captain Ebenezer Thompson.
Benjamin was born on March 26, 1753, in the west end of this house. His father died in 1754, but his mother and he continued to live there, with his grandparents, until his mother remarried in 1756 and moved to her new husband's home, down Elm Street, by the original location of the Baldwin mansion - the home of his best friend, Loammi Baldwin. The source indicates that the foundation may still be there. Thus, Benjamin Thompson was there for about three years. I'm sure that he visited his grandparents often, however, and, thus, was often seen at the house as he grew up.
Thompson was taught by a well known teacher, John Fowle, in Woburn and received more teaching from Mr. Hill in Medford. Later he would be an apprentice to a merchant in Salem. His friend, Loammi Baldwin, went to Harvard University, and invited Benjamin to go with him. At the age of 17, Loammi went to Concord, NH, then called Rumford, to be a teacher, but later returned to Woburn. He married, Sara Rolfe, in Concord. But when the skirmished broke out that began the American Revolutionary War, he stayed a devout Tory, and when the British vacated Boston in March 1776, he left with them, abandoning everyone including his wife. He lived in Britain, and later Bavaria. It was there that he received the title of Count Rumford in 1791, after serving is a general during a war. In his later life, he is considered the inventor of the Rumford fireplace, a shallow fireplace that maximizes the heat given out. He also conducted experiments with gunpowder and other experiments that established basic understanding of heat and heat transfer. At age 29, he had been elected to the presitgious Royal Society.
The web site states that the house is open on weekends from 1 to 4:30 pm but is closed during the late fall and winter months. The house contains period furniture (not necessarily owned by the Thompsons), and the crib that Benjamin Thompson slept in. The house also contains models of experiments that Thompson conducted concerning heat and heat transfer.
Additional Sources:
(
visit link)