In 1819, Nathan Appleton and business partner Daniel Pinckney Parker bought a house that had been standing on the property and tore it down. They then had the twin house built, designed by architect Alexander Parris and numbered 39 and 40 Beacon Street. In 1843 Appleton's daughter Frances (Fanny) was married in this house to poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Appleton was one of the great financial minds behind the early industrialization of New England, funding the Boston Manufacturing Company and developing a strategy for selling its products. He parlayed this early success into the later development of major industrial complexes at Lowell and Lawrence, Massachusetts, and also Manchester, New Hampshire. Appleton lived at 39 Beacon Street from 1821 until his death in 1861.