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The new house, in front of High Rock's summit, would be made of stone quarried from the building site.  In the second half of 1846, the dwelling went up  -  evidently quickly.  A Lynn newspaper reported that it  "is situated at the base of the highest rock, yet it is sufficiently elevated to command a fine view of our great and growing 'City,' Nahant, the beach, the ocean, and in the distance can be seen the little town of Boston."

Jesse and Susan had taken up residence in Stone Cottage by the time John went for a visit in March 1847.  In May, Abby described them as "nicely settled."  It was not long after this that they began taking in boarders, because they were gregarious people and also to help offset their expenses.  "[I]t is rare indeed,"  said John,  "that such a company of choice spirits assemble in one household as Jesse and his guests."  And from the beginning, he kept the summit of High Rock, which he owned, open for friends, neighbors, and total strangers to visit and enjoy the often spectacular view.

A couple years later, Jesse wrote,  "I have . . . erected a cottage and other buildings in front of the rock . . . made roads [ and ] walls, . . . planted some trees and vines, and brought under cultivation an acre or more of excellent garden land. . . . "

"Old High Rock,"  like most of the best original songs of the Hutchinson Family,  had lyrics by Jesse and music by Judson.

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The Hutchinsons' success in Europe caused great excitement in the United States.   An early biography said,  "They had achieved [a] European reputation, and[,] the correspondents in England of the chief American journals having given full accounts of their triumphant progress there, more anxiety than ever was evinced to hear and welcome them back."

The quartet started with concerts in New Hampshire.  In Concord, they attended the Independent Democratic Convention.  As their friend John P. Hale finished his speech, the Hutchinson Family rose, unannounced, and sang,  "There's a Good Time Coming."  At the end of the song, the audience was  "electrified."

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The singers received a sad message from Nathaniel Peabody Rogers.  "At the time when this good friend was lying on his death-bed,"  said an 1852 biographical booklet,  "the Hutchinsons . . . happened to be in Concord.  Mr. Rogers sent for them 'to sing him to sleep.'  One of the brothers [ Judson ] immediately repaired to his house, but whilst waiting for admittance to his room the last sleep commenced."

Nathaniel P. Rogers died on Friday, October 16, 1846.  He had broad interests and knowledge; and he was a vastly talented writer in the service of universal freedom.  No doubt it was with heavy hearts that the group moved on into Massachusetts.

Advocates of various reform movements generally seemed to suppose that the Hutchinsons were sympathetic to their cause, and this included advocates of labor reform.  On October 22, the quartet sang at City Hall in Lowell.

The quartet advertised that they would  "introduce a programme of old and new productions and selections which have been received with approbation abroad."   "The Bridge of Sighs," "The Indian Hunter," and "We're With You Once Again" were among the songs listed.  The Voice of Industry said,  "'Let us love one another,' 'Excelsior' and 'there's a good time coming;' there is a meaning to their songs, a love of the true, the good and the beautiful  -  an earnest desire of freedom for all, and a detestation of every thing that savors of slavery and oppression."   "We attended the concert given by these birds from the mountains, last Thursday evening, and were in perfect ecstacy, and on the point several times of speaking to some one to pull our hair just to remind us that we were still an inhabitant of this terrestrial globe."

Crowds of music fans wanted to hear the Hutchinsons on this, their first American tour in over a year.  In Lowell the group's popularity created an unusual problem for some ticket holders.  The entrance to the hall was blocked by a crowd of people who wanted to buy tickets.  The door keepers thought they must sell to these people and let them in, so they could "get at" the advance-ticket holders who were somewhere farther back.  Thus, the hall was over-sold, and many who paid for admission beforehand were turned away for lack of space.

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In Boston the quartet filled the Melodeon to overflowing on Saturday, October 24.  The Boston Sun published a friendly and favorable review of this concert, but thought their performance of  "Excelsior"  was not as good as usual and also found opportunities for improvement in their singing of Dempster's  "Let Us Love One Another."  The notice closed by saying,  "With some faults (which could scarcely be fewer or less obvious) they are still our noblest singers  -  great in song and greater in soul."

During their series of engagements in Boston, one Whig journal took exception to the antislavery songs on their program and suggested that, should they persist in singing material of this nature, they might find themselves facing an angry mob.  Jesse then added a verse to the family song.

John observed,  "[W]e knew an impatient public was waiting for our songs."  But then he said, in contrast,  "We found it harder to sustain popularity than to earn it, for our audiences grew critical."

Following a Lynn concert in late October, their friend Dr. Edward A. Kittredge  -  "Noggs"  -  challenged the Hutchinsons to keep improving as concert singers.  His remarks, here and there, could be taken to imply that they were not fully rehearsed for this, the first leg of their tour.

"Progress is the order of the age,"  he added,  "and should be the desire of all;  and however well we may be doing, we should continually try to do better."

"At each place,"  said John,  "we gave good satisfaction, except when we sang what the Democrats called 'politics.'  Then we usually received a volley of hisses."  It is often thought that there was some question among quartet members, in their early days, about whether they were primarily musicians or social reformers.  By the time they returned from Europe, that question was pretty much answered.  The Hutchinsons were reformers.  Reference to hissing  -  a quite common phenomenon at Hutchinson Family concerts in these years  -  is evidence that the singers were not preaching only to the converted.

Many notices from this trip say the quartet was jamming fans tightly into large concert halls, and such reports would continue for a long time to come.  On November 3, the group returned to the Melodeon in Boston.  According to the Chronotype on the 5th, the room was packed and even the aisles were full.  One might surmise that the singers were making a great deal of money.

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By November 18, the Hutchinsons had worked their way to New York, where they entertained that night.  "The spacious Tabernacle,"  said the Tribune,  "was never more closely packed than last evening. . . .   Intemperance, War and Slavery were all well hit off in several songs.  'The Old Granite State' was brought out with new words adapted to the times.  When the line, 'O we're paying dear for Texas,' was sung, there was considerable hissing, but more applause.  The Concert as a whole was by far the best as well as the most successful that the Family have ever given in this city."  The new verse, mentioned here, said:

While the familiar  "friends of emancipation"  passage was a very general statement, and caused little problem with most audiences, the new verse was much more explicit.

John wrote that  "The papers came out the next day roaring like lions against such sentiments being uttered in a concert-room by persons singing for the public favor and money."  In fact, the concert did inspire a public debate over this question.

"Instead of the simple and pleasing melodies which their old friends and admirers expected to hear,"  said the Courier and Enquirer,  "the Hutchinsons gave a series of abolition songs. . . .   The abolitionists present, of course, applauded vociferously, and this excited corresponding disapprobation from other quarters.  For a great part of the evening the concert was made a scene of utter and disgraceful confusion."   "Of their performances, in a critical point of view, we must speak in terms of unqualified disapprobation.  The music which they sing is miserably poor; and their singing of it is almost equally wretched, without method, expression or effect."

The National Antislavery Standard copied the Courier and Enquirer piece on its front page; and, elsewhere in the issue, it said,  "The music of the spheres would be discord in the ears of the editor of that paper, if there was a strain in it for Freedom.  We marvel, however, that he should have so little shrewdness as to couple his criticism on the singing of the New Hampshire minstrels, and his angry denunciations of their Anti-Slavery in the same paragraph.  The one is too palpably the effect of the other."

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The New York Tribune offered this judgment about the political content in Hutchinson Family concerts:

Amid the engagements at the Broadway Tabernacle, the quartet made another side-trip to Sing Sing Prison to entertain the inmates on Thanksgiving day.  Then on November 28, they sang at Newark, where  "Washington Hall was crowded almost to suffocation, and many were obliged to leave the door who could not obtain even a standing-place within."

On December 4, the group gave a concert to another crowded house, this time at the Brooklyn Institute.  The next day, the Eagle said,  "every seat, nook and avenue, was packed."  Many audience members took exception to  "Get Off the Track!"  and the  "Paying dear for Texas"  verse in  "The Old Granite State,"  though generally the songs were received with  "rapturous acceptance."

The group returned to the Brooklyn Institute on the 7th and closed their series at the Broadway Tabernacle on the 10th.  To the end, New Yorkers were divided in their reactions to the Hutchinsons' lyrics, but they filled concert halls anyway.

In Philadelphia on December 16, the quartet made its season debut before an immense, enthusiastic audience.  Another show followed on the 19th.  These engagements promised to be very profitable.  On December 25, they gave their fourth concert at Musical Fund Hall.  At least one member of the audience took exception to the group's practice of allowing ticket-holders to sit where they pleased, without regard to race.

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"On Saturday evening  . . .  about the time of opening the Hall,"  said the Pennsylvania Freeman,  "Mr. Jesse Hutchinson . . . was waited upon by a person understood to be the Mayor's clerk, and notified that he must make arrangements to exclude all colored people, or there would be a mob."  Jesse refused.  Then, he was told, Mayor John Swift would do it for him.  No patrons were excluded, though, nor was the seating segregated.  More people than before hissed the Hutchinsons' antislavery lyrics; but the great majority of listeners expressed delight at their musical performances.

On Tuesday, the group was approached by the Musical Fund Hall superintendent, Thomas J. Beckett.  He said that, if they should persist in singing abolition and permitting integrated audiences, he would close the hall.  This was followed by a meeting between Jesse and some of the Trustees, who withdrew the objection to antislavery songs.  But they demanded that the Hutchinson Family exclude people of color from their audience, because they  "had warning from the Mayor that there was danger of a mob, and that if they allowed colored people to enter the hall, on them would rest the responsibility."  The Trustees went further and instructed the people in charge of the hall to admit only whites.

On Wednesday, the singers advertised in city papers, saying that the present series of concerts was cancelled.  It went on to report that the trustees of the Musical Fund Hall

The Pennsylvania Freeman announced,  "Be it known that mob-law is still the practical code of Philadelphia, as really so, though there happen just now to be no open outbreaks, as it was when the present incumbent of the Mayors' office addressed as his police the genteel rabble that burned to the ground Pennsylvania Hall."  It added that now  "The work of the mob is accomplished by the constituted authorities.  People are 'warned' out of their rights by the chief magistrate, and threatened out of them by his officious underlings. . . . "

"I hope  . . .  it will be no injury to the cause,"  said Sister Abby,  "but rather make people more zealous in the Anti-Slavery cause.  'There is a good time coming' by and by, though we may wait long and anxiously."

Ironically,  during this tour the Hutchinson Family found a friendlier spirit in Delaware  -  a slave state.