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Home My Public Portal AboutLongPondRd_76Follow 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 NW. 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 56-61-0 Harwich I BRE.331 NRHD 2/23/1996 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): Brewster Center Address:76 Long Pond Road Historic Name: Sears-Eldridge House Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: ca. 1929 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Craftsman / Cottage Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: rock-faced cast concrete block Wall/Trim: vinyl clapboard / wood Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: 4 outbuildings of indeterminate function Major Alterations (with dates): Porch enclosed Vinyl siding added Condition:fair Moved: no yes Date: Acreage: 1.383 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 76 LONG POND ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 BRE.331 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 Sears-Eldridge House, built ca. 1929, is a one-story wood frame single dwelling designed in the Craftsman Cottage mode. The low, front-gable-roof building has a narrow front façade with its central entrance concealed within an enclosed hipped-roof porch. A lunette is centered in the gable apex visible above the porch roof. The westerly side of the house has a central cross- gable bay; it appears that original windows with characteristic four-pane divided upper sash are intact. An enclosed rear porch and outdoor shower are located on the rear. A compound of four outbuildings is located at the rear property, the function of which is unknown but probably related to fishing or boating. The narrow, deep lot is largely clear and defined by lawns and driveways. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: In February 1929 Marie J. Cardinale sold a 1.383-acre portion of the former Doyle farm to Charles E. and Leila E. Sears. The deed does not mention the existence of buildings on the parcel, but the extant Craftsman Cottage was built immediately after, as the 1929 Cape Cod directory lists Sears on “Station Road,” one of the earlier names for Long Pond Road.1 Boston native Marie J. Cardinal (1867-1945) was a frequent visitor to Brewster. Her sister Henriette had married Brewster native William S. Tubman, and Tubman’s mother Mary lived at 45 Long Pond Road and possibly operated the large dwelling as a summer boardinghouse. By 1916 William and Henriette Cardinal Tubman had moved to Brewster, probably to his mother’s 45 Long Pond Road house, the same year Marie bought the 24-acre Doyle Farm (see 90 Pond Rd.) from the Rev. Joseph H. Eikerling of Wellfleet, to whom Louise L. Doyle had bequeathed the property in 1915.2 The son of Alvin W. and Elnora F. Cahoon Sears, Charles Ellery Sears was born in Brewster in 1875, and in 1880 he and his parents were living in the Brewster home of his grandfather, the farmer Alvin Sears. He and his parents had moved to Brockton by 1896, the year Charles married Leila M. Carr of Brockton. He was then working as a teamster. The 1900 census lists Sears, his wife and their son Carlton in his father Alvin’s Brockton home; both father and son worked as railway motormen. In 1903 Charles Sears lost both of his parents and his brother. Rheumatism had virtually incapacitated his mother by that year, and in October she was thrown from her carriage in East Brewster when the horse drawing the vehicle was startled by an automobile; the accident occurred near the spot where her son Frank had drowned in May of the same year. Elnora Cahoon Sears died in Brewster a few days later, and her husband Alvin died in Brockton in December.3 The 1910 Brockton census lists Sears as a motorman living with his wife Leila (son Carlton, born in 1896, had died at a camp in Virginia in 1918) and three lodgers, all of them women shoe factory workers.4 By 1920 the census shows Sears in Brewster, renting in the center of town with his wife Leila. The 1930 census clearly indicates that the couple was living on Long Pond Road; Sears, then working for a private school, was credited with $3500 in real property, and his wife was working as a domestic servant. Leila Carr Sears died in 1939, and in 1940 Charles Sears lived alone at 76 Long Pond Road. In August 1945 he sold the property to Washington Irving Eldridge Jr. and his wife Pauline.5 Born in 1914 in Brewster, Washington I. Eldridge was the son of Washington I. Eldridge and Fannie Howland, and in 1930 he was living in the parents’ household on Upper Road with his sisters 1 Marie J. Cardinal to Charles Ellery and Leila Edith Sears, 27 February 1929, BCD 463:259. 2 Joseph Eickerling, Wellfleet, to Marie J. Cardinal, 7 June 1916, BCD 350:101. Louisa L. Doyle’s will is online at Ancestry.com. She appointed Eikerling as her executor and left him all her property without restriction; she also left him $500 in trust to say Masses “in some Roman Catholic Church for the repose of my soul and the soul of my deceased husband John Doyle.” 3 “Serious Accident to Mrs. Alton W. Sears,” Barnstable Patriot, 12 October 1903, 2 (reprinted with addendum from Brockton Enterprise, 7 October 1903. All vital records and censuses list her husband’s name as Alvin. The article notes that Mrs. Sears had been visited her sister, Mrs. Wixon, in East Brewster. 4 On the death of Carlton Sears, see Hyannis Patriot, 7 October 1918, 2. 5 Charles Ellery Sears to Washington I. Eldridge Jr. and Pauline F. Eldridge, 24 August 1945, BCD 632:273. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 76 LONG POND ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 BRE.331 Anna, Catherine, and Barbara. In 1939 he married Pauline F. Peters, the daughter of African American teamster George Peters and his wife Lydia J. Howland, who lived in Sandwich. By 1940 Washington Eldridge Jr. was living on Main Street and working as the general manager of the golf course. He served in the United States Army during World War II and worked on state forest fire patrol; at some point in her life Pauline Peters Eldridge was Brewster’s shellfish constable and a school bus driver. Washington I. Eldridge Jr. died in January 2002, and Pauline Peters Eldridge died in October 2015. The 76 Long Pond Road property was owned by their daughter Susan in 2018.6 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 See death certificate for Washington I. Eldridge, BCD 14792:146, and Findagrave on Pauline Peters Eldridge, which provides a brief biography of her. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 76 LONG POND ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 BRE.331 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018) View from SE. View of outbuildings from SW.