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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
56-24-0 Harwich BRE.479
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
South Brewster
Address:200 Harwich Road
Historic Name: Osborne A. & Maggie Newton House
Uses:Present: single-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: ca. 1910
Source:deeds, historic atlases
Style/Form: Summer Cottage
Architect/Builder: unknown
Exterior Material:
Foundation: stone
Wall/Trim: wood shingles / wood
Roof:asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
none
Major Alterations (with dates):
Dormer & porch added on rear, ca. 2000
Condition:good
Moved: no yes Date:
Acreage:0.92
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 200 HARWICH ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
BRE.479
Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.
If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form.
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION:
A house is not mentioned in the deed by which Ella M. Newton conveyed the Osborne A. & Maggie Newton House to Anna Ellis
McAnistan in 1946; however, the design of the house suggests it was built earlier by its first owner. It is a simple one-story
cottage with a gable roof, three-bay, central-entrance façade and a broad front porch on the street side. A brick chimney is
engaged to the exterior of the south end wall, and a shed dormer and porch on the rear (west) side are more recent additions.
The house is screened from the two streets by thick foliage and tree lines on the other two sides; a driveway enters the property
from Long Pond Road. The north end of the parcel along Harwich Road frontage is maintained as an open meadow.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
In late March 1910, the town of Brewster sold a half-acre tract at the northwest corner of Harwich and Long Pond Roads to
Osborn Arthur Newton of Boston, whose family owned the property for the next 36 years.1 Born about 1864 in Jetersville,
Virginia, to African American laborer John Newton (ca 1832-94) and his wife Pocahontas (1842-1922), Newton was working as a
store porter in Petersburg, Virginia, in 1882, but by 1888 he had moved to Boston and there too was employed as a porter. That
same year in Boston he married Margaret Sickles, a native of Miramichi, New Brunswick, Canada. Newton was working as a
coachman in Boston in the early 1890s when he became politically active. In 1890 he was elected secretary of the Benevolent
Fraternity of Coachmen, and in 1894 he was elected from the city’s Ward 11 to the Boston City Council and served as a
delegate from that ward to the city’s Republican caucus. By 1899 he had moved to Ward 10, described by the Boston Post as
“the bailiwick of the colored contingent,” and was elected as a representative to the Boston Common Council.2 A year earlier
Newton’s wife Margaret died at the age of 35, and the 1900 census lists Osborn A. Newton as a widower and member of city
council renting 15 Burbank Street in Ward 10 with his brothers Andrew E., Jefferson D., and George W., all working as waiters,
and M. L., a hotel bellman. Osborn Newton’s son and namesake, born in New Brunswick in 1894, was also part of the
household.
By 1901 Osborn A. Newton was a constable in Boston, but under unclear circumstances he was removed from that office in
1904. He was by then a realtor, and he ran unsuccessfully for alderman in Boston in the same year. In 1905 in Rhode Island he
married Ella N. Mann, and by 1909 he was again serving as a constable in Boston. In 1910, the year he bought the 200 Harwich
Road parcel, he was working as a chauffeur and living with his second wife Ella in an African American lodging house in the
tenth ward.
The Newtons must have used the Harwich Road cottage for a summer home, for rental income, or both. In 1918 Osborn A.
Newton died, and in 1920 his widow was an elevator operator boarding with the family of a Barbadian-born steamship waiter. By
1934 she was living on Washington Street in Roxbury and doing housework for Pullman porter Clarence A. Wentworth. She
remained at this address at least through 1956.
In March 1946, Ella M. Newton sold 200 Harwich Road to Anna Ellis McAnistan, who in turn sold it the next year to Ethel M.
O’Day of Morristown, New Jersey.3 In 1958 O’Day sold the property to Roland O. and Mildred Miller Hudson of Norristown,
1 Inhabitants of the Town of Brewster to Osborn Arthur Newton, 30 March 1910, BCD 301:436. Strangely, the Sandwich Observer of the day
before (29 March 1910, 3), reported under its Brewster notes, “Mr. O. A. Newton made a short visit to town last week.” No other mention of
Newton or his wife appears in the Barnstable Patriot archives.
2 See “Will Ride on the Box,” Boston Globe, 9 January 1890, 4; Boston Globe, 8 November 1894, 4; 17 November 1894, 1; 14 November
1900, 1; Boston Herald, 7 December 1899, 3, and 23 June 1904, 7; Boston Post, 26 September 1901, 4; 19 November 1901, 6, and Edward
Byron Reuter, The Mulatto in the United States (1918; reprint, New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1969), 236.
3 Ella M. Newton, Boston, to Anna Ellis McAnistan, 25 March 1946, BCD 643:323. In an affidavit recorded the same day, Ella Newton stated
that her husband had received the land from the town in 1910, that her husband had died intestate in Boston in 1918, that there was no
probate of his estate, that she was his only heir (no record of Osborn A. Newton has been found after 1921), and that the value of his property
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 200 HARWICH ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
BRE.479
Pennsylvania, who in 1969 petitioned the state land court to describe, register, and confirm the property boundaries.4 The
Hudsons sold 200 Harwich Road in 1970 to Joyce Jensen in 1970, and the property was owned in 2018 by the Jacqueline
Emma Jensen Irrevocable Trust.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.
PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018)
View from east.
did not exceed $5000. The house is shown on “Plan of Land in Brewster Mass. to be Conveyed by Anna Ellis McAnistan,” October 1947, BCP
80-93-2.
4 Ethel M. O’Day, Morristown NJ, to Roland O. and Mildred Miller Hudson, Norristown PA, 18 July 1958, BCD 1012:210; Commonwealth of
Massachusetts Land Court in re: petition 36162 of Roland O. and Mildred Miller Hudson, Dennis, 16 June 1970, BC Certificate of Title 48798;
“Plan of Land in Brewster,” June 1969, Land Court Plan 36162-A.
5 Roland O. and Mildred M. Hudson, Dennisport, to Joyce Jensen, River Edge NJ, 12 November 1970, Certificate of Title 49924; Joyce
Jensen, Bronx NY, to Joyce Jensen and Jacqueline Jensen, Riverdale NY, trustees Joyce Jensen 2006 Revocable Trust, 11 January 2007,
Certificate of Title 182134; Jacqueline Jensen, surviving trustee Joyce Jensen 2006 Revocable Trust, to Jacqueline Jensen and Jacqueline
Mia Foster, 19 August 2014, Certificate of Title 204736; Jacqueline Jensen and Jacqueline Mia Foster, Riverdale NY, to Jacqueline Mia
Foster, trustee Jacqueline Emma Jensen Irrevocable Trust, 4 June 2015, Certificate of Title 206677.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 200 HARWICH ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 3
BRE.479