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FORM B BUILDING
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION
MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD
BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Photograph
View from NE.
Locus Map (north at top)
Source: Mass GIS Oliver Parcel Viewer.
Recorded by: Kathryn Grover & Neil Larson
Organization: Brewster Historical Commission
Date (month / year): May 2019
Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number
37-87-0 Harwich C, G BRE.507
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
West Brewster
Address:1064 Main Street
Historic Name: Viola M. Perry House
Uses:Present: single-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: 1925
Source:deeds, historic atlases, newspapers
Style/Form: Colonial Revival/Bungalow
Architect/Builder: unknown
Exterior Material:
Foundation: concrete block
Wall/Trim: wood clapboard & wood shingles/wood
Roof:asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
in-ground swimming pool
formal parterre garden
Major Alterations (with dates):
front façade possibly renovated, ca. 1957
window sash replaced on front
Condition:good
Moved: no yes Date:
Acreage:0.37
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 1064 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
C, G BRE.507
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 Viola M. Perry House, built in 1925, is a story-and-a-half wood frame single dwelling with a gable roof. The form of the
house is based on a Craftsman bungalow model, a consolidated plan with a deep front porch tucked under an extension of the
house roof with a central dormer above. However, either by original design or later renovation, the porch section is walled in and
incorporated into the house with a three-bay front façade framed by corner pilasters and a roof-edge entablature finished in a
Colonial Revival fashion and containing a central entrance with sidelights and a trabeated architrave flanked by wide windows
surmounted by cornices. All the cornices, eave, entrance, and windows are decorated with dentil bands. The front façade and
dormer are clapboarded while the end walls (and presumably the rear) are sided with wood shingles; if the extant front is the
result of a later alteration, there is no evidence of it on the end walls. The west end, which is unpainted, contains three windows
on the first story and two in the gable. The east end is painted with half of it covered by a small one-story wing with cross-gable
roof and a three-bay front façade with a central door flanked by windows and finished in the same manner as the front of the
main house.
The house is sited near the front of a small irregular lot with yards on all sides. A driveway enters from the east side of the
frontage and extends to the rear of the property where a large in-ground swimming pool and formal parterre garden are located.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
In January and February 1925, West Brewster house painter Alliston D. Rogers sold two parcels bordering his own land on the
south side of the state road in West Brewster to Viola M. Perry, a woman sufficiently well known and liked in her town that the
construction of her “bungalow” on the lot was recorded in the local newspapers.1 The Yarmouth Register reported in late
January 1925 that Perry “bungalow is to be located opposite Mr Tabor’s shop, on the road to Dennis, just this side of Ed. B.
Ellis’s,” and that work had begun on the cellar; the same newspaper noted on 11 April 1925 that Perry had moved “into her new
house this week.”2
Born in Brewster in 1883, Viola Perry was the daughter of Brewster mariner and tax collector Charles W. Perry and his wife
Sarah D. Long. Her father was a shoe repairman in 1900, and she and two of her siblings—Chester R., working as a cooper in
1900, and Sadie, then in domestic service—lived in their parents’ household. Viola M. graduated from Brewster High School in
1901, and in 1905 the Yarmouth Register noted that she was “peddling peas” and wished her success. She was active in the
local Grange, and by 1910 she remained at home with her parents and her sister Sadie’s daughter Helen A. D. Tabor. Sadie had
been working in a shoe factory in Brockton when she married Brockton plumber John Henry Tabor in 1907, and she is shown
there in the 1910 census, doing shoe factory “table work” and living with her husband in the home of her uncle Arthur Perry in
Brockton. In 1913 Vioia’s mother Sarah Long Perry died, and in August 1915 her father died as well. The Register offered this
account of Viola a few weeks later:
People often ask what good would women derive from equal suffrage. Well, here’s a case in point. If Miss Viola
Perry were eligible for office she would undoubtedly be chosen to succeed her late father as tax collector. Miss
Perry did practically all the work for years, Mr Perry being an invalid. Now she is deprived of the little income of
the post in her orphan state. Is this fair?3
In 1918 Viola’s sister Sadie Perry Tabor died in the flu epidemic, and in 1920 Viola was still living in her parents’ West Brewster
house with her niece Helen Taber. She took in boarders now and then until February 1925, when she sold the family homestead
to Henry and Helena Jackson of Winthrop, Massachusetts.4 She moved into her bungalow on Main Street two months later.
1 Alliston D. Rogers to Viola M. Perry, 12 January 1925, BCD 406:450; Alliston D. Rogers to Viola M. Perry, 25 February 1925, BCD 406:488.
2 “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 24 January 1925, 1, and 11 April 1925, 5.
3 Yarmouth Register, 21 August 1915, 5.
4 Viola M Perry to Henry M. and Helena G. Jackson, Winthrop MA, 21 February 1925, BCD 415:546.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1064 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
C, G BRE.507
By 1929 John H. Tabor had moved from Brockton to North Brewster, where he painted houses and sold ice cream and sundries
on Main Street, and he was boarding with Viola Perry with an adopted son, Allen P. Tabor; Perry also had rental income from
Ella M. Whittemore, who lived in the house with her two young children. Tabor’s daughter Helen was then a student boarding at
East Greenwich Academy in Rhode Island; what became of her is not yet known.
In September 1930 Viola Perry sold the bungalow to her older brother, Chester R. Perry, and in 1934 she married Taber.5
Chester Perry, born in 1876, worked as a cooper in 1900 and was a barrel manufacturer by 1910. He had married Cora B.
McAnister of Dennis is 1900 and had a daughter, Blanche in 1904. His wife died in a car accident in 1913, and by 1920 Chester
Perry and his daughter were living in West Brewster with a housekeeper, Florence I. Castonguay and her son Samuel, both
Connecticut natives.6 By 1930 he and Castonguay were the only two members of the household.
In 1940 Chester Perry transferred the title to 1064 Main Street to Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank, and he and Castonguay
moved to Dennis. The bank sold the West Brewster property in August 1943 to Francis H. and Adelaide F. Maloney of
Dorchester, who owned it for only four years. In 1957 Karl Leroy Clark and his wife Mildred acquired the property. Clark, the son
of Willis Emery and Ella Higgins Clark, had grown up in his parents’ West Brewster household at 699 Main Street (BRE.504) and
was working as a surfman for the U.S. Coast Guard by 1929. He married in that year, and he and his wife had four children—
Karl Jr., Willis, Edward, and Nancy—between 1929 and 1937. The 1064 Main Street property has remained in the Clark family
since 1957.7
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.
5 Viola M. Perry to Chester R Perry, 9 September 1930, BCD 477:296. Perry’s marriage to Tabor was reported in Yarmouth Register, 6
January 1934, 8.
6 An account of the accident appears in “Fatal Accident,” Barnstable Patriot, 19 May 1913, 2. Because Chester Perry was driving the car the
state revoked his license; see “Many Motorcar Licenses Revoked,” Springfield Union, 22 July 1913, 6.
7 Chester R. Perry to Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank, 3 May 1940, BCD 565:334; Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank to Francis H. and
Adelaide F. Maloney, Dorchester, 25 August 1943, BCD 605:198; Francis H. and Adelaide F. Maloney, Dorchester, to Jean W. McLeod and
Maria D. McLeod, Cambridge, 28 October 1947, BCD 681:371; Laurence D. McLeod to Karl L. and Mildred F. Clark, 31 January 1957,
964:524; Robert R. Clark, Edward F. Clark, Harold F. Calrk, Brewster; Willis E. Clark, Karl L. Clark Jr., Orleans; Nancy Castleberry, Danville IL,
to Robert R. and Marcia G. Clark, 8 December 1976, BCD 2437:347.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1064 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 3
C, G BRE.507
PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2019)
View from NW.
Aerial view from south. From google.com/maps.