The text traces the history of the Edward Winslow House, outlining successive owners, sales, and architectural alterations while describing interiors, gardens, and preservation efforts. It recounts the house's associations with Loyalist sympathies and an execution sale, and highlights noteworthy events connected to the property, including Charles Thomas Jackson's ether experiments and the marriage of Lydia Jackson to Ralph Waldo Emerson. The account details restoration work by a noted preservationist, later landscape and structural improvements, and concludes with the twentieth-century acquisition of the estate by a hereditary society to protect its historic fabric.