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FORM B BUILDING
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION
MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD
BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Photograph
View from
Locus Map (north at top)
Source: Mass GIS Oliver Parcel Viewer.
Recorded by: Kathryn Grover & Neil Larson
Organization: Brewster Historical Commission
Date (month / year): December 2018
Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number
65-91-0 Harwich D BRE.315
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
South Brewster
Address:412 Long Pond Road
Historic Name: Nathan & Elizabeth Small House
Uses:Present: single-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: ca. 1810
Source:deeds, historic atlases, vital statistics
Style/Form: Federal
Architect/Builder: unknown
Exterior Material:
Foundation: stone
Wall/Trim: wood shingles / wood
Roof:asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
none
Major Alterations (with dates):
Dormer added
Condition:good
Moved: no yes Date:
Acreage:1.00
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 412 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
D BRE.315
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 Nathan and Elizabeth Small House, built ca. 1810, is a story-and-a-half wood frame single dwelling. It appears that it
originated as a traditional lobby-entry plan, also known as a two-thirds Cape due to the offset chimney and entrance. Evidently,
an extension adding a third window was constructed on the easterly end sometime later. The smaller house may have been built
in the 18th century, as local histories assert. An interior inspection of materials and building methods is needed to confirm the
true construction date. A long ell in line with the eastern gable end of the house extends from the rear of the house. It likely
contained a kitchen and service spaces behind it. A small chimney in the front section and the absence of one in the ell suggests
that early hearths have been removed. A shed roof dormer was raised in the roof on the rear of the ell when a doorway was
added there, shifting the principal entry from the Tubman Road façade to northerly rear end in the 20th century.
A privy and a small barn are located north of the house where a driveway enters the property from Long Pond Road. The
buildings are situated in an open area screened from the roads by heavy foliage; the east end of the parcel is wooded.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
In 1842 Franklin Hopkins of Brewster deeded to farmer Nathan Small a parcel of one acre, “being the same land that the
dwelling house and outbuildings of Nathan Small now stand on,” at the west side of the intersection of Long Pond and Tubman
Roads.1 The 412 Long Pond Road house cannot be dated through deeds, but censuses suggest that Small was living on this
land with his family by at least 1820. He may have been here from the time of his marriage which, while evidently not recorded,
probably took place by March 1806, when his first child was born. The son of James and Ann Small of Harwich, Nathan Small
was born about 1785, and he is not listed as a householder in either Brewster or Harwich in the 1810 census. It is possible that
he and his wife Elizabeth Rogers Small and children Margaret and Cornelius were then living in his parents’ Harwich household.
But by 1820 the census appears to show him in this part of Brewster, as do the 1830 and 1840 censuses. The Smalls had six
more children—Phebe, Nathan, Fanny, Godfrey, George A., and Elizabeth—between 1812 and 1831, but by 1850 only son
George, then a 23-year-old seaman, was still living with his parents at 412 Long Pond Road. The 1858 map of Brewster marks
the house on this site “N. Small.” In 1851 son George had married Eliza Frances Elliot of Vermont, and the couple had at least
three children--George in 1852, Almira in 1854, and Charles E. in 1856. By 1860, however, only George and his son were in the
household of his parents Nathan and Elizabeth Small. Though Nathan Small held $200 in real property, he and all the members
of his household were classified as paupers. Nathan was then described as a farmer in the census, while George remained a
mariner.2
Nathan Small died at the age of 77 in 1862, five months after his son George remarried, to Sarah Coombs of Harwich. In March
1865 Small’s children deeded the 412 Long Pond Road property to their brother George for five dollars.3 The 1865 state census
lists the widowed Elizabeth Small in the house at this location with her son George, his wife Sarah, and George’s two children,
George and Almira. No death record has as yet been located for Elizabeth Small, but she was no longer part of the Long Pond
Road household in 1870. In 1870 the census lists George A. Small as a seaman with $575 in real estate in a household with
wife Sarah; son George, a laborer; possible son Calvin, a fisherman; and Almira. By 1880 only George and Sarah Small were
listed at 412 Long Pond Road, and 1890 assessors’ records listed Small with only a house, exempted from taxation.
1 Franklin Hopkins to Nathan Small, 24 August 1842, BCD 77:72. The house was numbered 412 Tubman Road on the 1986 MHC B Form.
2 No Brewster birth record exists for Almira Small, and a possible son Calvin, listed in the 1870 census, may be Charles E. though his birth is
recorded there as having occurred in 1853.
3 Cornelius Small, Godfrey N. Small, Nathan Small, Joshua G. and Margaret Baker, Jeremiah and Phebe Eldridge, Lorenzo and Fanny Kelley,
Harwich, to George A. Small, Brewster, 10 March 1865, BCD 206:162.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 412 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
D BRE.315
In 1893 George A. Small sold the 412 Long Pond Road house and .75-acre lot to Richard F. and Celia Hopkins for $150 and in
the deed reserved to himself the right to remove his furniture and furnishings at his convenience.4 Born in Brewster in 1852,
Richard F. Hopkins was the son of farmer Richard H. Hopkins and his wife Emily Eldridge, and in 1871 he was himself working
as a farmer when he married Celia Lothrop Thacher of Dennis; George R. Thacher of 280 Long Pond Road was her nephew. By
1880 Hopkins was working as a telegraph agent, and he was a merchant in Brewster when he died of heart failure in 1898, at
the age of 46. His widow then moved to Middleborough to live with her married daughter Eva and Eva’s husband Herbert Place,
a hardware dealer. Celia Thacher Hopkins later lived in Dorchester, Newton, and Rochester, New Hampshire, but she continued
to own 412 Long Pond Road through 1920.
In August 1920 Susan S. Howland, the wife of Irving Howland, acquired 412 Long Pond Road from Hopkins. They owned the
property for 23 years. Born in Brewster to Thomas and Dorcas Ellis Howland in 1876, Irving Howland was a railroad worker and,
by the late 1920s, a foreman. In 1899 he married Susan Snow Chase for Harwich, and by 1900 the couple was renting in this
neighborhood with their daughter Zeta Lamond, born in April of that year. By 1910 Howland was a section master for the
railroad, and by 1920 the census lists him as foreman at the rail station. Daughter Zeta, then 21, was a telegraph operator. By
1930 Zeta had left her parents’ household, and they lived alone at 412 Long Pond Road.
In 1953, Susan and Irving Howland sold 412 Long Pond Road to Harriet Gates, who four years later sold the property to Fred H.
Gray Jr. of Cranford, New Jersey. Gray owned it until he died, and in 2002 the executor of his estate, Jeannine T. Morris of
Norwallk, Connecticut, acquired the property and shortly after sold it to Elizabeth A. Johnstone of Garrison, New York. Town
records showed her as owner of the property 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 George A. Small to Richard F. and Celia L. Hopkins, 8 April 1893, BCD 208:139. “Orleans,” Barnstable Patriot, 25 May 1896, reported that
George Small and his wife had moved to the home of Mrs. Alvin Sears in Brewster. George Small died (“insane” according to his death record)
in August 1899. A record of Sarah Small’s death has not been located in Massachusetts.
5 Susan S. Howland to Harriet Gates, 12 May 1953, BCD 841:361; Irving and Susan S. Howland, Hyannis, to Harriet Gates, 19 September
1957, BCD 948:260 (corrected deed); Harriet L. Gates to Fred H. Gray Jr., Cranford, NJ, 23 September 1957, BCD 984:260; Fred H. Gray Jr.,
Cranford NJ, to Fred H. Gray Jr. and Edwin S. Kozik, Manville NJ, 30 March 1962, BCD 1158:109; Jeannine T. Morris, Norwalk CT, executor
estate Fred H. Gray Jr., to Jeannine T. Morris, 31 January 2002, BCD 14793:308; Jeannine T. Morris, Norwalk CT, to Elizabeth A. Johnstone,
Garrison NY, 28 May 2002, BCD 15219:350.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 412 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 3
D BRE.315
PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018)
View from SE.
View from west.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 412 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 4
D BRE.315
View from north.