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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
56-14-0 Harwich I BRE.212
BRE.482
NRHD 2/23/1996
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
Brewster Center
Address:45 Long Pond Road
Historic Name: Mary S. Tubman House & Barn
Uses:Present: single-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: 1870-84
Source:deeds, historic atlases
Style/Form: Classical Revival / end house
Architect/Builder: unknown
Exterior Material:
Foundation: stone
Wall/Trim: wood clapboards / wood
Roof:asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
Carriage barn, ca. 1880
Major Alterations (with dates):
none
Condition:good
Moved: no yes Date:
Acreage:0.55
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 45 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
I BRE.212
BRE.482
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 Mary S. Tubman House, built ca. 1870, is a fully-intact, two-story end house of a large scale typical of a summer boarding
house of the period. A distinguishing characteristic is a spacious porch that spans the front and wraps around on both sides,
terminating at short cross-gable wings in the rear. The front entrance is offset to one side of a three-bay first story, a double
window is centered in the second story and a lunette occupies the apex of the gable. The porch retains its original turned posts,
scroll-sawn braces and square balustrades. A blank space at the front of the west side wall indicates the location of stairs on the
interior; there are windows at the rear of the wall and in the wing, which has a doorway on the porch. The east side wall is similar
in fenestration except there is a large brick panel centered under the porch for a fireplace in an interior common room. A one-
story kitchen wing is attached to the rear.
The one-story carriage barn, perhaps built a decade later than the house, has a hipped roof and a central vehicle door flanked
by windows. A central hipped dormer probably contained a mow door, later changed to a window. The house is sited in the
southwest corner of a shallow lot with a long street frontage slightly elevated and set back behind lawns; a mature tree line
follows the street. A driveway enters the easterly side of the frontage and widens into a parking area on that side of the property
and in front of the carriage barn.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
In November 1869, the widow Mary P. Mayo sold to Irish immigrant Mary Shields Tubman “a certain piece of land for a house lot
the same being a part of the homestead of my late husband Jeremiah Mayo,” whose homestead stood on the south side of Main
Street considerably to the northeast of the later site of Long Pond Road.1 Tubman had been a domestic working in the Mayo
household in 1855, and in 1858 she and her husband William had a son, William S. No record of the Tubmans’ marriage has yet
been found, and by 1860 William Tubman had moved to Boston. The 1860 Brewster census assesses Mary Tubman for no real
estate; she was living with her 2-year-old son in a household separate from but enumerated after the Jeremiah Mayo household.
The 1865 state census and 1870 federal census enumerate her household in the same order as in 1860, but in 1870 Tubman is
credited with $350 in real estate. It is possible that this real property was 45 Long Pond Road, as a puzzling deed from 1884
suggests. In that deed, Elijah E. Knowles deeded to Mary S. Tubman a half-acre parcel “upon which the dwelling house of Mary
S. Tubman now stands” in exchange for the land Mary Mayo had deeded to her in 1869.2 Knowles apparently held a mortgage
on the Tubman property, which was satisfied by a transfer of land. In 1889 Mary F. Knowles deeded to Tubman another quarter
acre, and the two parcels were transferred together in all later deeds.3
Born in Ireland about 1823, Mary Tubman was the daughter of William and Mary Johnson Shields. The 1870 census lists her as
a washerwoman, and in 1880 she was working at the same trade and living alone at 45 Long Pond Road. Although there is no
record of it, the scale and design of the house and the presence of a carriage house strongly suggests that Mary Tubman
operated a summer boarding house. Son William had moved to Boston by 1880. He was working as a machinist there when he
married Henriette Cardinal, a native of Montreal; her siblings Marie J. Cardinal (1867-1945) and Hormisdas Joseph Cardinal
(1870-1942) both ultimately lived in Brewster.4 Cape Cod newspapers record the frequent visits of William Tubman and his
family to his mother’s Brewster home.5
Local tax records for 1890 list Mary Tubman with a house assessed at $250 and a half-acre homestead lot valued at $25. In
1895 she successfully sued her husband for divorce, and she died five years later at the age of 77. Her will, written four years
1 Mary P. Mayo, widow and executor will Jeremiah Mayo, to Mary Tubman, 20 November 1869, BCD 102:251.
2 Elijah E. Knowles to Mary S. Tubman, 21 March 1884, BCD 152:575
3 Mary F. Knowles to William S. Tubman, Boston, 18 August 1899, BCD 239:2.
4 They were the children of Louis L. Cardinal (1830-1911) and Philomene Henrichon (1838-80), both natives of Montreal who had lived in
Boston since at least 1870.
5 See, for example, Barnstable Patriot, 23 August 1881, 2, and 11 August 1885, 3.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 45 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
I BRE.212
BRE.482
earlier, left her entire estate to her “dearly beloved son William S. Tubman,” who continued to live in Boston for some time: the
1910 census lists him as a mechanical engineer in that city living with his wife Henrietta and daughter Etta, then twenty years
old.6 In 1913 he was working in Boston as an elevator engineer and repairman and was the New England sales agent for
Gurney Electric Elevator Company. But by 1917 he and his wife had moved to his mother’s 45 Long Pond Road house, possibly
along with his wife’s siblings Marie J. and Hormisdas J. Cardinal.7 The four are shown in the 1920 census in this neighborhood;
Tubman and Hormisdas Cardinal where then working as garage machinists, and Marie J. Cardinal was a confectioner with a
retail operation.8
William S. Tubman died in Brewster in April 1925, and his wife Henriette died in August 1929. The 45 Long Pond Road house
passed to Henriette’s siblings. The 1930 census lists Hormisdas J. Cardinal in the house and working as a garage proprietor,
and Marie was then not working. They were probably living at 45 Long Pond Road, though since 1916 Marie Cardinal had
acquired other parcels in Brewster, some with houses standing on them.
Hormisdas Cardinal died in 1942, and in 1944, the year before she died, Marie Cardinal sold 45 Long Pond Road to her nieces
Agathe P. Gervais and Mariette P. Gervais Arthur, daughters of Marie’s youngest sister Agathe Philomene Gervais (1863-1940)
and her husband, violin maker Treffli Gervais.9 Mariette Arthur, wife of machinist Edwin M. Arthur, owned 45 Long Pond Road
until 1986, when her guardian sold the property, thus ending at least a century of Tubman-Cardinal family ownership. Ronald W.
Dunham, Cynthia L. Dunham, and George T. Barrett owned the property from 1986 to 1994, when they sold it to Elizabeth B.
and Jeffrey S. Blanchard of Orleans; Elizabeth B. Blanchard was the owner of record in 2018.10
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.
6 Etta died in 1918. The couple’s other children, Grace and Mabel, also died young, both before the age of ten.
7 “Brewster,” Hyannis Patriot, 28 May 1917, 3, reported that Henriette Tubman was elected second vice president of the Brewster Woman’s
Club, and ibid., 15 October 1917, 4, stated that the club’s regular meeting was held at her Brewster home.
8 Cardinal frequently catered woman’s clubs luncheons, and in 1920 she made a cake for newlyweds John E. and Evelyn R. Brier with a ring, a
thimble, and a coin baked into it, often a custom in wedding cakes; the ring symbolized success in current or future romance, the thimble a life
without marriage, and the coin financial success. See Barnstable Patriot, 8 November 1920, 28 Mary 1921, 9 January, 13 April, and 14
December 1922.
9 Marie J. Cardinal to Agathe P. Gervais and Mariette Gervais Arthur, Boston, 18 September 1944, BCD 618:359.
10 Barbara A. Ridge, guardian of Mariette Arthur, Readville, to Ronald W. Dunham, Cynthia L. Dunham, and George T. Barrett, 29 November
1986, BCD 5434:260; Ronald W. Dunham, Cynthia L. Dunham, Northboro, and George T. Barrett, Framingham, to Elizabeth B. and Jeffrey S.
Blanchard, Orleans, 3 August 1994, BCD 9308:284; Elizabeth B. and Jeffrey S. Blanchard, 45 Long Pond Road, to Elizabeth B. Blanchard, 30
September 2004, BCD 19107:323.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 45 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 3
I BRE.212
BRE.482
PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018)
View from SE.
View from SE.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 45 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 4
I BRE.212
BRE.482
Detail of front façade from SW.
View of carriage house from south.