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FORM B BUILDING
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION
MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD
BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Photograph
View from SW.
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
114-44 Harwich BRE.449
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
East Brewster
Address:36 Crosby Lane
Historic Name: Nickerson Tenant House
Uses:Present: single-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: ca. 1890
Source:deeds, historic atlases, appearance
Style/Form: Classical Revival
Architect/Builder: unknown
Exterior Material:
Foundation: stone
Wall/Trim: wood shingles
Roof:asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
Garage, 21st century
Major Alterations (with dates):
Rear wing added, late 20th century
Porch reconstructed, 21st century
Painted shingles added (probably)
Dormers added
Window sash replaced
Condition:fair
Moved: no yes Date:
Acreage:0.70 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 36 CROSBY LANE
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
BRE.439
Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.
If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form.
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION:
The Nickerson Tenant House is a large, two-story house with a front-gable roof. Its front façade contains an entrance with
sidelights offset to the north corner and a single window on the first story and two windows on the second story aligned with the
openings below. A single attic window is centered in the gable, which is decorated by a modest broken-bed pediment. (What
appears to be recent painted shingles may have obliterated corner pilasters and frieze boards typical of this period.) A broad
front porch wraps around partially on both sides. Fenestration on the south side is regularly spaced with a wide space at the
front end where a chimney and partition are located; a bay window has been added to the wall at the rear of the first story. The
front section of the north wall is blank in relation to a run of stairs on the interior. There are four windows on the first story and
two on the second. Three shed-roof dormers have been added to the roof recently. Attached to the rear is a one-story wing that
looks to have been added in the 20th century; a one-story cross-gable addition attached to the south side of the wing projects
past the south wall of the house.
The house is sited close to the street in the center of a wide frontage. A parking area, paved with shells occupies the portion of
the yard south of the house and a macadam driveway enters the parcel and runs along the north side of to a one-story wood-
frame two-car garage of recent construction with a front-gable roof. Lawns cover the areas north of the driveway and east of the
rear of the house.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
A dwelling identified with Mrs. L. Crosby is depicted in this location on the 1858 map of Barnstable County; however, the extant
house at 36 Crosby Lane does not look to have been built this early. A house more fitting to this period is located at 190 Crosby
Lane, but this building is not indicated in its location in 1858, nor in 1880 or 1905. Additionally, a building is not identified at 36
Crosby Lane in 1880. These apparent contradictions raise the possibility that the house at 190 Crosby Lane was moved to this
location from #36 and the current house erected on its original site. An image of Tawasentha (the Crosby Mansion) published in
Deyo’s History of Barnstable County in 1890 includes a view of the house at #190.
A house was built at 36 Crosby Lane between 1850 and 1858 for the family of Theophilus Crosby (1806-52). Crosby was the
seventh of eight children of Nathan Crosby (1768-1838) and Anna Pinkham Crosby (1767-1854) and far less documented than
his brothers Nathan Jr. (1793-1882), Roland Freeman (1799-1874), and Isaac (1809-83), who married three daughters of Ensign
Nickerson Sr. of Chatham. In 1829 Theophilus Crosby married Lurana (sometimes Leurena or Lurania) Hurd of Orleans, and in
1830 his younger brother Isaac deeded him half of a salt works near the house of Robert Snow; the salt works is clearly shown
bordering Cape Cod Bay on the east side of Linnell Landing Road opposite Snow’s house on the 1858 map. In 1835 his father
deeded him the east half of his own house, which stood south of the salt works on the west side of Crosby Lane (now
incorporated into the Crosby Mansion at 163 Crosby Lane), and a parcel of 0.15 acres adjoining this house. In 1844 and 1850,
after the death of Nathan Crosby Sr., his widow and sons Nathan, Roland, and Isaac deeded two parcels in the vicinity of
Crosby Lane to their brother Theophilus. He and his wife are shown in their own household in this neighborhood in the 1830
federal census and in the 1840 census with three of their four young daughters. Though Anna Pinkham Crosby had been shown
in her husband’s household in 1830 and as a widow in her own household in 1840, in 1850 she shared a house with her son
Theophilus and his family. Both Anna and Theophilus are shown as owning real property. This property seems likely to have
been his father’s homestead, but Theophilus may have built a new house at 36 Crosby Lane soon afterward and before moving
to Chicago with his brothers where he died in July 1852. The 1855 state census lists Theophilus Crosby’s widow Lurana and her
daughters Lurana, Adelia (or Delia), Mary (or Mariam), and Abigail in the household of her niece Mehitable Crosby Freeman and
Mehitable’s husband Charles. The 1858 Barnstable County atlas associates “Mrs. L. Crosby” with a house at 36 Crosby Lane.1
1 Isaac Crosby to Theophilus Crosby, 2 August 1830, BCD 17:33; Nathan Crosby to Theophilus Crosby, 10 February 1835, BCD 19:138; Anne Crosby, Nathan
Crosby, Rowland F. Crosby, and Isaac Crosby to Theophilus Crosby, 2 February 1844, BCD 47:526; Anne Crosby, Nathan Crosby, Rowland F. Crosby, and
Isaac Crosby to Theophilus Crosby, 29 April 1850, BCD 47:527.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 36 CROSBY LANE
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
BRE.439
The 1860 census shows Lurana Crosby with $800 in real property in a house with her four daughters, then between the ages of
12 and 24. By 1870 the three eldest girls had left the household, with Lurana remaining there with daughter Abby, who
sometimes worked as a seamstress. In August 1883 the widow sold the property to Isaac P. Sparrow for $350, and she died just
short of two years later.2 Sparrow, an Orleans native and a fisherman, had married Sarah E. Cottell of Brewster in 1872 and was
living with her near the home of her parents, Peter D. and Harriet Cottell on Linnell Landing Road. Based on the appearance of
the house, it seems that Sparrow had it built around the time of the purchase.
How long Sparrow owned and occupied 36 Crosby Lane is unclear, as the chain of title becomes hard to follow after his
acquisition of it. However, if it is true that the Crosby house was moved to 190 Crosby Road by 1890, then Sparrow had vacated
the premises by then and the property deeded to Matilda Pinkham Crosby Nickerson, the wife of Chicago distiller and banker
Samuel Mayo Nickerson, who also owned the homestead of her parents, Isaac and Eunice Crosby, across the street at 11
Crosby Lane. She is indicated as the owner on the 1905 Barnstable map. And probably the builder of the extant house. The
property was later conveyed to Matilda’s daughter-in-law Addie Daniels Nickerson and, before 1940, to Addie’s daughter Helen
Nickerson Sears.3 Neither lived in the house, which likely was rented to either permanent or seasonal tenants. Both women died
in 1940, Helen in June and Addie in September.4 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 36 Crosby Lane to James Bruce MacGregor and his wife Gladys in April
1945. The house is shown with its wraparound porch and an outbuilding in the southwest corner of a large lot on a 1939 plan.5
The 1940 census lists James MacGregor, born in New Jersey and the son of Scots immigrants, as a private estate manager; his
1942 draft registration card documents that he was working for Addie D. Nickerson at Fieldstone Hall, where he and his family of
four probably then resided. The MacGregors owned 36 Crosby Lane until 1961. Allen H. and Mary Glidden owned the property
from 1978 to 2008.6
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.
Brewster Assessors’ Records, Brewster Town Clerk Archives and 1926 Town Report.
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.
2 Lurania Crosby to Isaac P. Sparrow, 10 August 1883, BCD 153:543. The sale was reported in the Barnstable Patriot, 18 September 1883, 2: “Mr Isaac Sparrow
has bought and now occupies the house formerly owned by Mrs. Lurana Crosby at East Brewster.” Lurana Crosby’s death was also reported in “Brewster,”
Barnstable Patriot, 4 August 1885, 3: “On Wednesday, July 29, Mrs. Lurana Crosby passed away after several weeks of great suffering. A week before her
death, she entered upon her 80th year. Hers had been an active and useful life until blindness came upon her and compelled comparative retirement. She was
only a week behind her sister, Mrs. William Freeman, whose death was reported last week. She was a very tender and devoted mother and leaves three
daughters and one grandson, to mourn their loss.” Less than a year later daughter Delia, who had married Dennis native Charles E. Sears in 1860, died in
Council Grove, KS, on 8 March 1886, and her unmarried sister Laura, then living in Franklin, died the next day; see “Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 23 March
1886, 3. Daughter Abby married her sister Delia’s widower in 1891.
3 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.
4 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.
5 Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company, trustee under will Helen Nickerson Sears, to James B. and Gladys E. MacGregor, 25 April 1945, Certificate of Title
7327. The 36 Crosby Lane parcel is shown as Parcel B on “Plan of Land in Brewster,” May 11, 1939, Land Court Plan 17399-A. Land Court Plans 17339-B
(March 1948), 17339-I (August 1960), and 17339-N (November 1972) show the house and its outbuilding.
6 Allan H. Glidden? (next text illegible) to Allen H. and Mary C. Glidden, 20 March 1978, Certificate of Title 73502; Allan H. and Mary C. Glidden, 36 Crosby Lane,
to Allan H. Glidden, trustee Allen H. Glidden Revocable Living Trust, 6 March 1997, Certificate of Title 143773; Bruce H. Glidden, trustee Allan H. Glidden
Revocable Living Trust and executor estate Allan H. Glidden, to Philip and Janine Howarth, Rudyard UK, 16 December 2008, Certificate of Title 187614.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 36 CROSBY LANE
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 3
BRE.439
PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018)
View from south.
View from NW.