Built between 1787 and 1788 by a merchant from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, this National Historic Landmark is a little-altered and high quality late Georgian country house.

The Hamilton House is set on 50 acres (20 ha) of land overlooking the Salmon Falls River, the border between South Berwick and Rollinsford, New Hampshire.

It is a 2+1⁄2-story wood-frame building, with a hip roof, clapboard siding, four brick chimneys symmetrically placed in its outside walls, and gabled dormers on all four elevations.

[3] In 1783 land for the house was purchased by Jonathan Hamilton, a merchant who had profited during the American Revolutionary War by privateering.

[2] Isabella Stewart Gardner owned a copy of The Tory Lover, a historical romance novel by Jewett, that has an inscription indicating that Hamilton House was the setting for the novel.