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Home My Public Portal AboutLongPondRd_20Follow 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 east. 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 56-94-0 Harwich I BRE.329 NRHD 2/23/1996 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): Brewster Center Address:20 Long Pond Road Historic Name: Ellis-Briggs House Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: ca. 1910 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Classical Revival / end house Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: stone Wall/Trim: wood shingles / wood Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: 2 small shops, ca. 2000 Major Alterations (with dates): 1 sty wing or porch enclosed, E side, late 20th c. Entrance moved from N to E side Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:0.59 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 20 LONG POND ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 I BRE.329 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 Ellis-Briggs House, built ca. 1910, is a two-story wood frame single dwelling with a gable end facing the street. The irregular spacing of the three first-story windows on the street (north) façade suggests that the original entrance was on the east side in the space of a window currently offset. Two windows are evenly spaced across the second story, and a single attic window is centered in the gable. An end house plan would have had two principle first-floor rooms front to back on the west side of the house, where groups of two and three windows are located. The entry hall and stairs would have been on the opposite side, which was altered when the entrance was moved to the east side of the house and contained in a porch (later enclosed) or a one-story, hipped-roof addition. The house is situated on the street frontage of an awkwardly shaped parcel within a small yard. A driveway enters the west side of the property and terminates in a parking area on which face two small shops added in the 21st century. Behind a spacious rear yard are woods. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: The house now numbered 20 Long Pond Road was very likely built between 1907 and 1912 by Brewster fisherman and farmer Joseph Preston Ellis (1845-1943), who had lived for many years on Satucket Road in West Brewster. Ellis had acquired a half- acre parcel on the southwest side of Long Pond Road in 1907 from Mary F. Knowles, and when he sold a slightly larger parcel with the same abutters in 1912 a house stood on it.1 The 1910 Brewster map shows a house with the name “J. Ellis” on the southwest side of Long Pond Road, but it seems to be further south on the road than 20 Long Pond Road actually is. Joseph P. Ellis was the son of Ezra and Rosana Chase Ellis of Brewster. He married Mary Hallett Robbins in 1863, and the 1880 census shows him and his wife in a household with their five children near that of Ellis’s widowed mother. Ellis was then fishing for a living, but by 1900 he was working as a blacksmith and by 1910 as a farmer. In December 1912 he sold three- quarters of an acre and the house on the parcel to Mary A. Wiles, the wife of chauffeur Moses Wiles and daughter of Asaph and Abigail F. Higgins Crosby. Wiles sold the property six months later to Charles S. Briggs, who owned 20 Long Pond Road for 24 years.2 Born in Brewster in August 1876, Charles Snow Briggs was the son of Charles F. and Mary Snow Walker Briggs. In 1900, when he married Myra E. Cahoon on Brewster, he was working as a laborer, and over the course of his life he was also a shell fisherman, a farmer, and a laborer for the New Deal-era Works Progress Administration. In 1910 he was doing odd jobs and renting in another part of town with his wife and their first four children—Theodore G., Avis E., Myra B., and Charles S. Jr. By 1920 the census clearly lists them in this neighborhood with two more children, Mary and Frederick. In 1930 he was working in the shell fishery and living in the house with son Charles Jr., a chauffeur, and Frederick, a laborer; the household also included 9-year-old granddaughter Althea, whom Charles and Myra Briggs had adopted. Charles Briggs had mortgaged 20 Long Pond Road with Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank, and in 1937 he defaulted on the loan. The bank auctioned the property to Ella I. Byrne of Harwich, whose family owned it for less than three years and was the first of a long string of short-term owners including Muriel D. Stone of Cambridge (1940-41), Clarence L. Walsingham of Cambridge (1941-46), A. Harold Castonguay of West Yarmouth (1946), Charles M. Roza (1946-50), and William S. Dunsford Jr. and his wife Frances (1950-53).3 Boston Federal Savings and Loan Association acquired 20 Long Pond Road through 1 Mary F Knowles to Joseph P Ellis, 15 April 1907, BCD 319:46; Joseph P. Ellis to Mary A. Wiles, 13 December 1912, BCD 319:470. 2 Mary A. Wiles to Charles S. Briggs, 25 April 1913, BCD 321:438. 3 Charles B. Briggs to Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank, 11 May 1937, BCD 525:488 (foreclosure deed); Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank to Ella I. Byrne, Harwich, 13 November 1937, BCD 533:396; see also BCD 567:153, 589:191, 653:254, and 657:259. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 20 LONG POND ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 I BRE.329 foreclosure early in 1953 and sold it the next month; the property continued to change hands often afterward.4 Its second long- term owners were Richard D. and Gloria Bigos of Barnstable, whose family occupied 20 Long Pond Road from 1976 to 1999. In 2018 the owner of 20 Long Pond Road was Michael O. Orbe, who bought it in 1999 and uses part of the property as a woodshop and gallery.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 William A. Dunsford Jr. and Frances E. Dunsford to Boston Federal Savings and Loan Association, 30 January 1953, BCD 834 (foreclosure deed); see also BCD 844:321, 869:285, 974:161, 1253:429, 1277:243, 1447:184, 1484:986, and 2017:187. 5 Bass River Savings Bank to Richard D. and Gloria Bigos, Barnstable, 20 December 1976, BCD 2444:238; Richard D. Bigos, West Barnstable, and Gloria Bigos, 20 Long Pond Road, to Gloria Bigos, BCD 2731:242; Kellie Bigos, 20-22 Long Pond Road, to Michael O. Orbe, 18 March 1999, BCD 12134:192. See also Richard D. Bigos, declaration of homestead, 24 March 1977, BCD 2483:237. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 20 LONG POND ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 I BRE.329 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018) View from north. View of sheds from north.