The URL can be used to link to this page

Home My Public Portal AboutLongPondRd_441Follow 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): December 2018 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 66-56-0 Harwich D BRE.489 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): South Brewster Address:441 Long Pond Road Historic Name: Caton & Mary Silver House Uses:Present: multiple-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: 1889-94 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Classical Revival Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: stone Wall/Trim: wood shingles / wood Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Barn (attached) Major Alterations (with dates): Window sash replaced Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:0.41 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 441 LONG POND ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 D BRE.489 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 Caton and Mary Silver House, built 1889-1894, is a story-and-a-half wood frame single dwelling with a center-hall plan. The front façade contains a center entrance with a pedimented hood mounted on ornate scrolled brackets; paired windows flank the entrance. The gable ends contain two windows on each level; a porch has been added to the east side. Windows are framed with wide moldings with cornice moldings. A story-and-a-half rear ell with a lower cross-gable roof attaches to a barn by a one- story hyphen. The barn has been converted into domestic space and the easterly gable end has a recessed entrance in the north corner and a small elevated window in the south corner, which suggests the position of an interior stair. Shed dormers have been raised on both sides of the gable roof. The house is sited in the center of a small lot, reduced in size by subdivisions, with a small yard on the east side and a parking area on the west side. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: In March 1889, Brewster farmer Alvan Sears sold Hyde Park plasterer and stucco worker Charles R. Walmsley two parcels, one of them a three-acre tract and neither of them, according to the deed, with buildings on them. No house is shown at this site, just north of the Long Pond-Tubman Road intersection, on the 1880 map, but by the time Walmsley sold the two tracts to Caton Silva in August 1894, the deed documents the existence of buildings. Walmsley had been visiting Brewster since at least 1887 with his sister Martha L. Rich, daughter of Sandwich native and musician Andrew J. Rich, and Caroline Greenleaf, wife of coppersmith William H. Greenleaf. In 1889 the Barnstable Patriot reported that he had acquired the store “formerly owned by Nathaniel Myrick and it is soon to be moved to other quarters where he will use it for a grocery store.”1 Whether Walmsley ever operated a grocery store in Brewster is not yet known. Born in Brava in the Cape Verde Islands in 1865, Caton Silver was born Caitano Silva, and he is almost certainly the man of that name who listed Cape Cod as his destination of the Rapoza do Mar passenger list in 1893. He had been in the United States earlier, for his two children—Ralph, born in 1889, and Anna M., born in 1891—are both listed as having been born in Massachusetts in the 1900 census. It seems likely that the whole family had returned to these Portuguese-owned islands, for the 1893 passenger list also incudes 20-year-old Maria Silva, a domestic born in Massachusetts, 4-year-old Ridolphu Silva, and 2- year-old Anna Silva, all bound for Cape Cod. By 1900, Caton Silva was doing railroad work and living at 441 Long Pond Road with his wife Mary (a second-generation Azorean American), children Ralph and Anna, and a Portuguese immigrant boarder. The family does not appear in the 1910 Brewster census, but the county map of that year for some unaccounted reason marks the house “E. Silvia.” In 1920 the census describes Caton Silver as a mulatto farm worker born in Cape Verde, and he and his wife Mary were alone in the household. In 1914 daughter Ann had married Harwich laborer Herbert F. Eldridge, and the couple honeymooned at the East Brewster home of Eldridge’s sister, Nellie C. Rogers, the wife of L. Fillmore Rogers. Son Ralph had married and was driving a taxi in Boston by 1920; by 1930 he superintended a zoological garden in Opa-locka, Florida, and lived there with his wife Frances and their daughter Virginia, born in 1919.2 By 1930 Caton Silver was working as a picker on a duck farm and living on what was then called Depot Road with his wife. Mary Silver died in Brewster in 1936, and her husband died two years later. In 1945 the Silvers’ daughter Annie M. Eldridge sold 441 Long Pond Road to Herbert L. Bradford, who sold it the next year to Milton C. and Almira M. Willis. The property changed hands often afterward. Lawrence B. and Leona H. Doyle owned it from 1951 to 1966; Dulcie A. Oringer of Braintree owned 441 Long Pond Road from 1966 to 1985 and subdivided it in the latter year. Alfred P. Franz Jr. subdivided the property a second time in 1986. Stephan P. and Melissa A. McMahon, acquired 441 Long Pond Road in May 2017.3 1 By 1903 Caroline Walmsley Greenleaf owned a Brewster cottage “at the beach.” See “Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 20 September 1887, 3; 2 April 1889, 3; 3 September 1900, 3; and 15 June 1903, 3. 2 “East Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 9 February 1914, 3. “Brewster,” Hyannis Patriot, 5 July 1928, 12, noted that Ralph Silver and his wife and daughter Virginia had spent the past four years in Florida and were then visiting his parents in South Brewster. 3 Annie M. Eldridge to Herbert L. Bradford, 25 September 1945, BCD 634:137; Herbert L. Bradford, Harwich, to Milton C. and Almira M. Willis, 11 June 1946, BCD 649:59; Milton C. and Almira M. Willis to Lawrence B. and Leona H. Doyle, 9 February 1951, BCD 776:234; Lawrence B. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 441 LONG POND ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 D BRE.489 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 west. and Leona H. Doyle to Roy and Dulcie A. Oringer, Braintree, 27 October 1966, BCD 1352:238; Dulcie A. Oringer to Alfred P. Franz Jr. and Alfred P. Franz Sr., New Britain CT, and Doris Hedstrom, Newington CT, 23 October 1985, BCD 4768:275; Long Pond Holdings LLC, Orleans, to Stephan P. and Melissa A. McMahon, 11 May 2017, BCD 30479:261. See also “Subdivision Plan of Land in Brewster, MA, Prepared for Dulcie A. Oringer,” 10 July 1985, BCP 406:47, and “Plan Showing Division of Land in Brewster, MA, Prepared for Alfred P. Franz Jr.,” 12 May 1986, BCP 417:72.