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HomeMy Public PortalAboutCrosbyLane_11Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form.4/11 FORM B  BUILDING MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Photograph View from SE. Locus Map (north at top) Source: Mass GIS Oliver Parcel Viewer. Recorded by: Kathryn Grover & Neil Larson Organization: Brewster Historical Commission Date (month / year): June 2018 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 114-3 Harwich BRE.42 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): East Brewster Address:11 Crosby Lane Historic Name: Isaac & Eunice Crosby Barn Uses:Present: two-family residence Original: barn Date of Construction: ca. 1840, ca. 1984 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Greek Revival Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: concrete block Wall/Trim: wood clapboard, wood shingles Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Garage (attached) Major Alterations (with dates): Barn converted to house, ca. 1984 East wing and west 3-car garage added Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:0.74 acre Setting: The house is situated in a dense residential area characterized by summer cottages and retirement homes built in the mid-20th century. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 11 CROSBY LANE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 BRE.42 Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION: Isaac & Eunice Crosby Barn is a large agricultural building constructed in ca. 1840 attached to a house fronting on Main Street later destroyed by fire. It was converted into a two-family dwelling in 1984. The south front-gable façade, which originally contained wagon doors entering a center aisle has been altered with a domestic center entrance flanked by wood sash windows with two pairs of wood sash windows in the second story. The wood clapboard siding is consistent with the barn history as, probably are the wood-shingle side and rear walls; however, the extent of alterations suggest that the materials were added in ca. 1984. A second entrance is centered on the east side wall, providing access to a second living unit. Wood sash windows have been added at both levels; the upper story windows are smaller because that level is not full-height. Windows and a brick chimney have been added to the north gable end. A one-story wing on the east end of the front façade may have been a pre- renovation feature (milking house?), but it now represents a domestic annex with a prominent chimney. A one-story lean-to on the west side may be a remnant of the backhouse that linked the barn to the house. A one-story, gable roof three-car garage appended to the lean-to appears to be a ca. 1984 addition. The house occupies a large parcel and is centered on the Crosby Lane frontage. A parking area is located on the south side of the building with wooded yards on the west and north. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: The house numbered 11 Crosby Lane was originally the barn of the Pines, the homestead of Isaac and Eunice Crosby on the east side of Crosby Lane slightly north of that road’s intersection with Main Street. The sprawling Crosby house burned in the 1970s, but the barn, even though plans show it connected to the house, survived the fire. The youngest son of Nathan and Anna Pinkham Crosby, Isaac Crosby was born in Chatham in 1809. He and his brothers Nathan and Roland Freeman Crosby married three of the daughters of Ensign Nickerson Sr. of Chatham—Nathan married Catherine, Roland married Sally, and Isaac married Eunice Nickerson Ryder, whose first husband, Zenas Ryder of Chatham, had died in 1828. In the 1830s and 1840s the Crosby brothers all moved to Brewster. Isaac was identified as “of Brewster” when he married Eunice Nickerson Ryder in 1829; their daughter Matilda Pinkham Crosby was born in Brewster in 1837. Though Isaac Crosby bought at least two Brewster parcels with houses already on them in 1839 and 1840, he is believed to have built the house and barn at 11 Crosby Lane about 1840.1 Brewster assessors’ records for 1845 taxed him on only one house (valued at $315), the barn ($68), outbuildings ($23), and a 15-acre homestead lot. Crosby, shown in the 1850 census as a trader, also owned five other parcels, a “fish store & flakes,” 1174 feet of a salt works, livestock, and $700 in cash and securities. Crosby traded in, among other things, fish: he advertised for sale “400 Quintals Grand Bank Cod Fish, just landed from schooner Majestic,” in a July 1848 issue of the Barnstable Patriot.2 In 1851 Crosby and his brothers Nathan, Roland, and Theophilus moved to Chicago, where Nathan’s son Albert had moved in 1848, though he continued to own property in Brewster. The Crosbys initially made their fortunes in Chicago in the distilling business, and the 1860 Chicago census lists Isaac as a distiller living in the home of his married daughter Matilda and her husband Samuel Mayo Nickerson, also a distiller; they had married in 1858. In 1864 one journalist described meeting “the Cape Cod element” in business in Chicago: Here I found Samuel M. Nickerson, Esq. of Chatham, and Isaac Crosby, Esq. of Brewster, known as Sam’l M. Nickerson & Co., doing a large business in the manufacture of high wines. E.W. Cobb, Esq. Commission Merchant, of Brewster, Charles Freeman of Brewster and Calvin Snow of Orleans, Esq’rs, Packers; 1 See Haskell Crosby to Isaac Crosby, 11 March 1839, BCD 23:288, and Francis Cahoon to Isaac Crosby, 3 February 1840, BCD 8:239, both which appear to be in this general area of East Brewster. The Haskell Crosby deed is very likely the deed for the 11 Crosby Lane property, as it was a 15-acre tract with a house and was conveyed with the right to pass over Haskell Crosby’s land to both County Road and the seashore. The relation of Haskell and Isaac Crosby has not yet been determined. 2 Brewster Assessors’ Records, Brewster Town Clerk Archives; Barnstable Patriot, 5 July 1848, 3. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 11 CROSBY LANE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 BRE.42 Geo. W. Higgins and Thos. J. Higgins, Esq. of Brewster, Packers . . . Heman Foster, Esq. manufacturer of light barrels, of Brewster; and U. H. Crosby and Charles S. Crosby, Esq’rs sons of R. F. Crosby, of Brewster. U. H. Crosby is a manufacturer of Alchohol [sic] and Cologne spirits, and is very wealthy. . . . Mr. U. H. Crosby does not allow his wealth to remain without use to the public. To meet the wants of the music loving people of Chicago, he is now building a large Opera House at a cost of $400,000, and when completed, will not be excelled in architectural beauties by another building in the city. Samuel M. Nickerson, above mentioned, is a millionaire, and still a young man. The company Sam’l W. [sic] Nickerson and Isaac Crosby, paid taxes to the government, from July 1, 1863, to July 1, 1864, $723,372. A new company for distilling purposes was organized, with a paid up capital of 300,000. Of this company, Sparrow M. Nickerson is President, John A. King, Treasurer, and S. J. Crosby is Secretary, the Directors are, Sparrow M. Nickerson, Isaac Crosby, Sam’l M. Nickerson, and Francis Crosby. The estimated amount of taxes this concern will pay to government, when running full, will not fall short of $15,000 per. day. This is a pretty good show for the sons of Cape Cod in Chicago.3 The 1860 federal census also enumerates Isaac Crosby and his family in Brewster and describes him as a farmer. He lived with his wife, sixteen-year-old son Isaac Francis, and a domestic servant; his daughter Mehitable and her husband Charles Freeman lived in the house enumerated just before, and the 1858 map shows Freeman on the north side of Main Street just southwest of the Isaac Crosby house. Crosby might have moved back to East Brewster permanently by the summer of 1865; the Barnstable Patriot reported in August that year that Samuel M. Nickerson “is now on a visit with his family to his father-in-law, Isaac Crosby, Esq., in East Brewster.”4 In 1868 Crosby paid more in taxes to Brewster than any other resident except Elisha Bangs, and by 1869 his property was worth more than that of anyone else in town, his taxes more than double those that Bangs then paid. He was a trustee of the Hyannis Savings Bank and First National Bank of Hyannis in the 1860s and 1870s. In 1880 the census lists Isaac Crosby as a retired merchant; he lived then with his wife and one servant. Isaac Crosby died in May 1883, and his widow Eunice, who had deeded the 11 Crosby Lane homestead to her daughter Matilda in 1880, remained in the house and often hosted visits from her Chicago daughter and son-in-law. After Eunice’s death in October 1892, Matilda P. and Samuel M. Nickerson made the Pines their summer home.5 Matilda Crosby Nickerson is shown as the owner of 11 and 36 Crosby Lane on the 1910 map of East Brewster. She died in New York City, where she and her husband had begun spending winters in March 1912; Samuel Mayo Nickerson died in July 1914 at Fieldstone Hall, the East Brewster mansion his daughter-in-law Addie Daniels Nickerson built after their first summer house on this site burned in 1906.6 The 11 Crosby Lane property passed to Addie Daniels Nickerson and then, though no deed appears to record the transfer, to her daughter Helen Nickerson Sears.7 Both women died in 1940, Helen in June and Addie in September.8 Helen N. Sears’s property on Crosby Lane was then subdivided and registered with the Massachusetts Land Court, with title vested in Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company, which had been designated trustee of her estate in her will. The company sold 11 Crosby Lane in April 1945 in Albert H. and Jane Humphreville of Falmouth, who sold it six years later to E. Kenneth and Helen R. Graham of Maplewood, New Jersey.9 The Grahams owned the property for less than a decade. In 1966 William M. Baxter and 3 “Trip to the West by Rail and Steam,” No. 14, Chicago, Sept. 5th, 1864, Barnstable Patriot, 27 September 1864, 1. Charles Freeman was probably the man of that name who had married Isaac Crosby’s daughter Mehitable in 1849. U. H. Crosby is Uranus (sometimes shown as Uriah) H. Crosby, who returned to Brewster around the turn of the twentieth century. 4 Barnstable Patriot, 29 August 1865. 2. 5 Eunice Crosby to Matilda P. Nickerson, Chicago, 30 October 1880, BCD 146:479. Obituaries for Isaac and Eunice Crosby appear in “Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 22 May 1883, 3, and “The Last of the Old School,” Barnstable Patriot, 18 October 1892, 2. The same newspaper often noted the visits of the Nickersons to the Crosby house throughout the 1880s and early 1890s. An account of the Pines and other Crosby and Nickerson homes in East Brewster appears in Henry Haynie, “Cape Cod Towns and Homes,” Boston Herald, 22 August 1897, 35, with illustrations of both the Pines and the “country residence” of their son Roland C. Nickerson. 6 See “Death of Mrs. S. M. Nickerson,” Barnstable Patriot, 18 March 1912, 2, and “Death of S. M. Nickerson,” Barnstable Patriot, 27 July 1914, 2. 7 1926 assessors’ records taxed Addie D. Nickerson on six dwellings (including one for a “manager” and one for a teamster), numerous farm buildings, and slightly more than 1100 acres in 13 parcels (one of them a 942-acre “deer park and wood”) and Helen N. Sears on four houses and their homestead properties, a barn, a “stable and garage,” a bath house, a gas tank, and an outbuilding. All told Sears owned nearly 300 acres in Brewster, including 246 acres of woodland. See 1926 Brewster Town Report. Most if not all of the two largest parcels became Nickerson State Park. 8 See death notice for Addie D. Nickerson in Boston Herald, 11 September 1940, 27, and for Helen Nickerson Sears in “Proceedings of the New England Historic Genealogical Society,” New England Historic Genealogical Society Register 95 (January 1941): 73 and (April 1941): 151. 9 Commonwealth of Massachusetts Land Court in re: petition 17399 Helen N. Sears, 12 December 1944, Certificate of Title 7183; Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Co to Albert H. and Jane Humprheville, Falmouth, 5 April 1945, Certificate of Title 7306; Albert H. and Lillian M. Humphreville to E. Kenneth and Helen R. Graham, Maplewood NJ, 11 October 1951, Certificate of Title 13257. “Plan of Land in Brewster,” May 11, 1939, BC Land Court Plan 17399-A, shows the INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 11 CROSBY LANE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 BRE.42 Alan J. Ward of Boston acquired the house and operated it as an inn and restaurant until 1970, when Rehabilitation Realty Trust of East Dennis bought it and the house was used as a home for boys with special needs. The house burned during this decade, though the exact date of the fire has not yet been discovered. In 1984 Janice Hyland of Hyannis, trustee of Hyland Family Realty Trust, acquired the property and converted the barn to a two-family dwelling. Hyland and Alan J. Granby were still the owners in 2018.10 BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES American Ancestors.org. Massachusetts vital, tax, and probate records. Ancestry.com. Federal and state censuses, vital records, historic maps, and “Valuation List of the Town of Brewster 1890.” Barnstable Patriot Digital Newspaper Archive. Sturgis Library website, http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/APA/Sturgis/default.aspx#panel=home. Deyo, Simeon L. History of Barnstable County, Mass. New York: H. W. Blake Co., 1890. Freeman, Frederick. The History of Cape Cod: The Annals of Barnstable County. Boston: George C. Rand and Avery, 1858-62. Otis, Amos. Genealogical Notes on Barnstable Families. 2 vols. Barnstable, MA: Patriot Press, 1888. Sears, Henry J. Brewster Ship Masters. Yarmouthport, MA: C. W. Swift, 1906. Simpkins, John. “Topographical Description of Brewster.” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society 10 (1809): 72-79. MAPS Walling. Henry Francis. Map of the Counties of Barnstable, Dukes & Nantucket, Massachusetts. Boston: 1858. Atlas of Barnstable County, Massachusetts. Boston: George H. Walker & Co., 1880. Atlas of Barnstable County Massachusetts. Boston: Walker Lithograph & Publishing Co., 1910. The barn at 11 Crosby Lane is partly visible at right in this postcard view. Courtesy Faythe Ellis. connected house and barn. “Subdivision Plan of Land in Brewster,” February 1956, BC Land Court Plan 17399-C, shows a more detailed footprint of the rambling house and barn and two outbuildings. 10 Chase Street Village Inc., Harwichport, holder of mortgage from E. Kenneth Graham, to Chase Street Village Inc., 25 October 1965, Certificate of Title 36279; Chase Street Village Inc., Harwich, to William M. Baxter and Alan J. Ward, Boston, 11 May 1966, Certificate of Title 37663; William M. Baxter and Allen J. Ward to Paul E. Affleck and Yvon J. Letendre, trustees Rehabilitation Realty Trust, 31 August 1970, Certificate of Title 4935; Kenwood Inc., Orleans, to Janice Hyland, trustee Hyland Family Realty Trust, Dennis, 1 July 1985, BC Certificate of Title 102320; Janice Hyland, Hyannis, to Alan J. Granby and Janice Hyland, 30 April 2003, Certificate of Title 169077. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 11 CROSBY LANE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 4 BRE.42 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018) View from east. View from NE.