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Home My Public Portal AboutHarwichRd_197Follow 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 NW. Locus Map (north at top) Source: Mass GIS Oliver Parcel Viewer. Recorded by: Kathryn Grover & Neil Larson Organization: Brewster Historical Commission Date (month / year): November 2018 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 56-35-0 Harwich BRE.478 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): South Brewster Address:197 Harwich Road Historic Name: Charles H. & Harriet M. Leeds House Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: 1927 Source:deeds, historic atlases, newspaper Style/Form: Craftsman / Bungalow Architect/Builder: Charles Henry Leeds, builder Exterior Material: Foundation: concrete block Wall/Trim: wood shingles / wood Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: garage rock-faced cast concrete gate posts Major Alterations (with dates): Front porch facade altered, screens added Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:0.65 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 197 Harwich Road MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 BRE.478 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 Charles H. and Harriet M. Leeds House, built in 1927, is a one-story wood frame Bungalow-type single dwelling. The house is distinguished by low walls and a large gable roof that extends in the front over a deep porch surmounted by a central, hipped- roof dormer. Tucked under the porch, a central entrance is paired with a fixed window and flanked by window pairs. The front knee wall has been paneled over and the open sections closed in with mesh screening. A triple window unit is contained in the dormer. The gable ends contain three windows on the first story and paired windows in the gable. The house is situated at the front of a deep, narrow lot set back behind a large yard fronted by a rail fence with squat pillars built of rock-faced cast concrete blocks flanking openings for the driveway, walkway and lot lines. The driveway follows the southerly lot line to a detached one- car garage of similar date and construction as the house. The rear of the property is wooded. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: In late October 1926, Charles Crosby Jr. and his wife Grace deeded about two-thirds of an acre of the much larger farm property owned by Crosby’s mother Mary C. Crosby, and earlier by her father, Elkanah Winslow (BRE.123) to Harriet M. Leeds, the wife of house carpenter Charles H. Leeds. No buildings are cited in the deed, which stated that a house built on the site may not be more than 1.5 stories and must cost at least $4500 to build. On 28 April 1927 the Hyannis Patriot pinpointed the construction date of the house now numbered 197 Harwich Road. “Charles Leeds expects his new home on the Harwich road to be finished and ready for occupancy by June 1,” the Patriot reported. “The cost of construction is in the neighborhood of $7000. Leeds has only recently completed another house in the vicinity for C. C. Eldridge.”1 Born in 1868 in Boston, Charles Henry Walmsley Leeds was the son of Maine-born tailor Matthew Leeds and his wife Catherine Walmsley Leeds. The family lived in the Hyde Park section of Boston, had been summering in private homes and hotels in Brewster since the 1890s, and had relatives in town: Catherine Walmsley Leeds’s older brother Charles R. Walmsley owned land now part of 441 Long Pond Road since 1889.2 Charles H. W. Leeds married Margaret Collins of Dedham in 1897, but she died in 1904 of tuberculosis; at some point between her death and 1910 Leeds moved to Brewster. The 1910 and 1920 censuses list him as a house carpenter or contractor and a homeowner living alone. In 1922 he married Brewster housekeeper Harriet M. Keniston. The 1930 census shows Charles and Harriet M. Leeds on Harwich Road with $4000 in real property; also in the household were children Mildred, Doris, and Harold, born between 1916 and 1926. Early in 1929 Harriet Leeds mortgaged the property with Sandwich Co-operative Bank, and by 1931 the Leedses apparently defaulted on that loan. In August 1931 the bank sold the parcel and its buildings to Joshua A. Nickerson 2d of Chatham, who sold it less than a month later to Alden H. Adams.3 Born in Dedham, Alden Hale Adams was a laborer in 1898 when his intention to marry Mary L. Black of Brewster was recorded, but the actual marriage is not recorded; in 1906 he was living in Montague and working as a carpenter when he married Myra E. Plympton of Wendell. In 1920 the couple was living in Groton, Connecticut, with their children Alden and Dorothy, and in 1930 he was a widower living in Stonington Connecticut with his two children and a niece, Mabel E. Morse, and her two children, Edmond and Muriel. Born in Connecticut in 1890, Morse was earlier married to farm laborer Carl Clifford Morse, and though she identified herself as a widow in the 1930 census. Carl Morse was alive and living in Woodstock, Connecticut, in 1942. The 1940 census lists Alden Adams has a 61-year-old boat builder living on the Harwich road with his niece Mabel Morse and her daughter Muriel, then 20 years old; Muriel served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War II. In 1937 Adams deeded 1 Charles and Grace E. Crosby to Harriet M. Leeds, 29 October 1926, BCD 438:351. 2 Alvan Sears to Charles R. Walmsley, 25 March 1889, BCD 190:76. see also “Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 27 September 1897, 3, and 3 September 1900, 3. 3 Harriet M. Leeds to Sandwich Co-operative Bank, 9 January 1929, BCD 462:73; Sandwich Co-operative Bank to Joshua A. Nickerson 2d, Chatham, 27 August 1931, BCD 485:45; Joshua A Nickerson 2d, Chatham, to Alden H. Adams, 19 September 1931, BCD 486:7. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 197 Harwich Road MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 BRE.478 197 Harwich Road to his niece Mabel Morse, and he died in Brewster in 1943.4 The house remains in the Morse family: in 1987, after the death of Mabel Morse, it passed to daughter Muriel Morse Zarra, who lived in Roseland, New Jersey, with her husband James M. Zarra. She died in 1997, and James M. Zarra was the owner of record in 2018.5 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. 4 Alden H. Adams to Mabel E. Morse, 14 October 1937, BCD 531:36. 5 See release of estate tax lien on 197 Harwich Road, 14 September 1987, BCD 5925:284. Muriel Morse Zarra is buried in East Woodstock, Connecticut, the longtime home of her father Carl C. Morse. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 197 Harwich Road MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 BRE.478 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018) View from SW. View from NW.