Built in 1735, this is the oldest standing house in Berkshire County and was the home of Colonel John Ashley, a wealthy landowner who enslaved at least five people, including a woman named Bett. In 1773, Ashley hosted the drafting of the Sheffield Resolves, an early declaration of colonial rights, in his upstairs study; Bett is said to have absorbed its language that "mankind in a state of nature are equal, free and independent." After Ashley's wife Hannah attempted to strike another enslaved woman with a heated shovel and Bett took the blow protecting her, Bett sought out lawyer Theodore Sedgwick and, in the 1781 case Brom and Bett v. Ashley, successfully sued for her freedom on the grounds that the new Massachusetts Constitution's equality clause was incompatible with slavery. The ruling, and the related Quock Walker case decided the same year, are credited with judicially ending slavery in Massachusetts. Bett took the name Elizabeth Freeman and lived as a free woman for nearly five more decades.