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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
75-21-0 Harwich D BRE.218
BRE.490
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
South Brewster
Address:724 Long Pond Road
Historic Name: William & Betsey Hopkins House & Barn
Uses:Present: single-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: ca. 1830, ca. 1876
Source:deeds, historic atlases
Style/Form: Greek Revival / two-thirds Cape
Architect/Builder: probably William Hopkins
Exterior Material:
Foundation: stone
Wall/Trim: wood shingles
Roof:asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
Barn, ca. 1830 (BRE.490)
Shop, recent
Stone walls
Major Alterations (with dates):
Cross-gable wing added ca. 1876
Casement windows added to wing
Condition:good
Moved: no yes Date:
Acreage:1.51
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 724 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
D BRE.218
BRE.490
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 William and Betsey Hopkins House originated as a one-story, wood frame two-thirds Cape-type house constructed ca.
1830. The house currently faces south, away from the road, but it may have fronted on Long Pond Road before the existing
story-and-a-half cross-gable wing was added in ca. 1876 and changed the orientation of the house towards the east. The south
façade contains an off-center entrance and two windows; the chimney is positioned on the west end behind the entry. It is
possible that the wing was added by George C. Hopkins, brother of William, during the time he owned the house (1853-76), as
he and his wife Abbie produced eleven children during that period and could have used the additional space. Alternatively, it was
built by George C. Hopkins’s son, George W. Hopkins, who gave a mortgage to the Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank in 1876.
The design of the wing with its steep roof, tall two-over-two windows, Classical trim, and broad veranda is consistent with
building practices and the taste of the period. It is awkwardly joined to the old house, projecting out from the east gable end the
depth of the veranda, where the new entrance was located, and raising the upper story. The existing wing may have replaced a
smaller, more conventional kitchen ell, although physical evidence will have to confirm this. In the 20th century, the east façade
of the wing was altered with the replacement of original features with a three-unit casement window. The street-facing gable has
distinctive, wide trim in the corners and along the eaves with two windows evenly spaced on the first story and a single attic
window centered in the gable.
The property includes a rare surviving barn of similar age as the house. An English barn in form with a central door and
threshing floor in the traditional manner, its ca. 1830 date is indicated by its large size and attached cow shed. A second wing on
the rear probably was added later to provide more interior space for animal husbandry and feed storage. The 1985 MHC B Form
reported a privy was located behind the barn (not visible from the road), and a shop building has been added west of the barn,
apparently recently. Fallow meadows flank the house on both sides. A wood picket fence runs along the street frontage in front
of the house and its yard with the rest of the distances, east and west, distinguished by stone walls. The rear of the property has
reforested.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
The house at 636 Long Pond Road was one a cluster of dwellings on this street that belonged originally to Edward Hopkins
(1748-ca. 1809) or his descendants. Born in Harwich, Edward Hopkins was the son of Moses Hopkins (1722-76) and Hannah
Berry (1723-1809) and a fifth-generation descendant of Mayflower passenger Stephen Hopkins. He married Mary Mayo (ca.
1748-1820) in 1767, and the 1798 federal direct tax listings for Harwich (of which Brewster was then still part) show him with a
house. His exact date of death is not known, but one deed documents that he had died by January 1809. His descendants,
particularly the family of his son Moses (1783-1864), owned a great deal of property in this section of South Brewster, and it is
therefore difficult to untangle deeds. Moses Hopkins was a carpenter, as were his sons William (born 1804), Edward (1809-50),
Moses Jr. (1811-70), Elisha F. (born 1824), and George Crocker (1828-1909).
Deeds do not always make it possible to determine which part of the Hopkins family lived in which Long Pond Road house, but
by 1858 the Barnstable County map indicates that the house on this site was owned and/or occupied by “G. Hopkins.” This was
almost certainly George Crocker Hopkins, the youngest son of Moses Hopkins, and it was very likely the house built by his
eldest brother William after he married Betsey Wing of Brewster, probably soon after the couple filed their intent to marry on 10
October 1829. In December 1830, William’s father Moses sold to him 0.75 acre of “cleared land on which he the said William
hath lately erected a dwelling house.” which adjoined a lane that led to Moses’s barn. William Hopkins is listed before his father’s
household in the 1830 census and is listed in the neighborhood in 1840. At some point between 1840 and 1853 he moved his
family to Brooklyn, New York, and in September 1853, he sold the house and its 0.75-acre lot and other buildings to his brother
George C. for $300.1
1 Moses Hopkins, housewright, to William Hopkins, housewright, 18 December 1830, BCD 24:476; William Hopkins, carpenter, Williamsburg
NY, to George C. Hopkins, carpenter, 26 September 1853, BCD 56:72. The 1860 Brooklyn census lists William, his sons Joseph and John,
and his nephew Otis (a son of Moses Hopkins Jr. then living with him) as carpenters.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 724 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
D BRE.218
BRE.490
In 1849 George C. Hopkins married Abbie M. Freeman of Brewster, and in 1850 he and his wife were living in the household of
his parents, Moses and Betsey Crocker Hopkins. By 1855 the state census lists him in his own household, very likely at 724
Long Pond Road, with his wife and children George W., Mary A., and Charles H. By 1860 the couple had two more children,
Walter and Annette, and by 1865 two more, Jerome and Wilbour. Four more children (Gertrude, Susan, Harriet, and Henry C.)
were born to the couple between 1869 and 1878. By about 1876 George C. Hopkins had moved with his wife and younger
children to Attleboro, and the 724 Long Pond Road house passed to his eldest son George W. Hopkins, who had married
Malvina Bassett of Brewster in 1871. George W. Hopkins, also a carpenter, mortgaged the property to Cape Cod Five Cents
Savings Bank in 1876 and defaulted on the mortgage in 1880. By 1880 Lewis H. Foster was shown on the county map as
occupying the house, which he appears to have acquired from neighbors Richard H. and Emily Eldridge Hopkins, distant cousins
of the Moses Hopkins branch but also residents of this neighborhood.2
Born in Brewster in 1842, Lewis H. Foster was the son of farmer Lincoln Foster (1813-87) and his wife Sally Baker Foster. They
and their children lived further south on Long Pond Road with Lincoln’s mother Catherine, the widow of John Foster, who had
died in 1829. Catherine Foster died in 1863, and Lincoln apparently inherited the house. In 1868 Lewis H. Foster, then a
mariner, married Amanda S. Cahoon on Harwich, and he working as a fisherman and living with his wife in a household
enumerated between those of George C. Hopkins and his father Lincoln Foster in 1870. The 1880 census lists him as a
fisherman in a household, probably 724 Long Pond Road, with his wife, their children Effie L. and Lewis N., and his 65-year-old
father Lincoln.
In April 1895 Amanda Cahoon Foster was killed in an influenza outbreak that swept through Brewster that spring, and almost
exactly a year later daughter Effie married Frederick Irving Hopkins in Attleboro. Fred I. Hopkins was a son of George W. and
Malvina Bassett Hopkins, who had earlier owned the 724 Long Pond Road property. The 1900 census lists Lewis Foster as a
railroad laborer living in this house with his daughter and son-in-law and their daughter Helen, born in 1898. Lewis H. Foster died
in July 1904 after having been gored and severely injured by a bull; he lived five days after the attack. His son-in-law Frederick
Hopkins was appointed executor of his estate. Four years later Effie Foster Hopkins sold the 7-acre 724 Long Pond Road
property and other parcels to Eugene Farnsworth.3 Born in Lancaster, Farnsworth was a civil engineer who was living in Harwich
when he married Nellie Blanche Simpson, a milliner born in Lowell. The couple was living in Brewster by 1900 and in this house
by 1910. Eugene Farnsworth died in 1919, and his widow remained in the house until her own death in April 1928. In August of
the same year, the Hyannis Patriot reported that “Frank Hall and sister of Lynn are at the late Mrs. Blanche Farnsworth’s place in
South Brewster for a couple of weeks.” Though the deed transferring the property to the siblings Frank W. and Annie E. Hall,
actually of Lowell, has not been located, the Halls had acquired 724 Long Pond Road by 1948, when Warren Burgess sold Hall’s
son Robert land on the north side of Long Pond Road opposite Hall’s “homestead.”4
Born in Lowell in 1849, Frank W. Hall was the son of manufacture Wilder Hall, and by 1880 he was working as a typesetter in
that city. He and his wife Harriet G. Hall, a Woonsocket, Rhode Island, native, had son Robert A. Hall in Boston in 1890, and by
1900 Frank W. Hall was a widower. In 1910 he was living in Lowell with his son Robert and sister Annie. The siblings remained
together in their Lowell household through at least 1940. Son Robert had married by 1927 and moved to Fitchburg, where he
was an attorney; he and his wife Theodora had a daughter, Harriet Marie, in 1921. The two generations of Halls apparently used
724 Long Pond Road as a summer home. In 1984 Stephen G. Williams of South Yarmouth, possibly the husband or son of
Harriet Marie Hall, sold his half-interest in the 724 Long Pond Road property to Andrew H. Williams of Fort Bragg, North
Carolina; the deed cited the estates of Robert A. Hall, Harriet Hall Williams, and Theodora G. Hall. In 1985 Williams
sold the property to Neal F. and Holly H. Hanlon, the owners of record in 2018.5
2 George W. Hopkins, Harwich, to Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank, 19 August 1876, BCD 124:516; George W. Hopkins to Cape Cod
Savings Bank, 6 February 1880, BCD 144:52 (notice of default); Richard F. Hopkins and Annie Y. Fessenden to Lewis N. Foster, 21
September 1881, BCD 141:349. Lewis Nelson Foster was then only seven years old and died in 1885; the deed probably meant to indicate his
father, Lewis H. Foster.
3 Effie L. Hopkins, Yarmouth, to Eugene Farnsworth, 14 April 1908, BCD 288:329.
4 “Brewster,” Hyannis Patriot, 23 August 1928, 16; see also Warren Burgess to Robert A. Hall, 23 October 1948, BCD 705:552.
5 Stephen G. Williams, South Yarmouth, to Andrew H. Williams, Fort Bragg NC, 20 September 1984, BCD 4281:264; Andrew H. Williams, Fort
Bragg NC, to Neal F. and Holly H. Hanlon, 724 Long Pond Road, 15 March 1985, BCD 4457:97. See also “Plan of Land in Brewster, Mass., As
Surveyed for Robert A. Hall,” April 1965, BCD 196:105, and “Subdivision Plan of Land in Brewster, Mass., as Surveyed and Prepared for
Andrew H. and Lynne A. Williams,” 21 November 1984, BCP 394:20.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 724 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 3
D BRE.218
BRE.490
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 north.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 724 LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 4
D BRE.218
BRE.490
View of barn form north
View of barn and shop from NE.