The Inman House, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Courtesy, Cambridge Historical Commission

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Inman Estate
This estate was purchased by merchant Ralph Inman. Surrounded with orchards, fields, and outbuildings, the house, which has been destroyed, was situated close to the main road in Cambridge, today’s Massachusetts Avenue. Elizabeth (Murray) Inman was here when the Battle of Lexington and Concord broke out.

During the Revolutionary War, the estate was used for a time by the Continental Army, including General Israel Putnam and his family. The house was named “Barrack number one,” soldiers chopped down the trees to construct temporary wood structures for themselves, and the property became home to 3460 soldiers.

For more information, see An Historic Guide to Cambridge, comp. Hannah Winthrop Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, 2d ed., (Cambridge, Mass., 1907), 175; and Patricia Cleary, Elizabeth Murray: A Woman’s Pursuit of Independence in Eighteenth-Century America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000).

For a description of commencement party the Inmans held, see the  account  in theBoston Gazette, 20 July 1772. Also, see the 1775 correspondence between Ralph and Elizabeth (Murray) Inman.