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HomeMy Public PortalAboutMainSt_1217Follow 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 south. 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 36-25-0 Harwich I BRE.340 NRHD (02/23/1996); LHD (05/01/1973) Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): West Brewster Address:1217 Main Street Historic Name: Clark-Cahoon House Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: ca. 1843 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Greek Revival Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: stone Wall/Trim: wood clapboards & wood shingles/wood Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: barn (connected) Major Alterations (with dates): dormers added window sash replaced Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage: 0.59 Setting: The house is situated in a dense residential area characterized by summer cottages and retirement homes built in the 19th and 20th centuries. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1217 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 I BRE.340 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 Clark-Cahoon House, built ca. 1843, is a story-and-a-half wood frame single dwelling with a gable roof, a small barn connected to the west end, and a number of more recent additions. The main section of the house has a five-bay front façade containing a center entrance with a trabeated architrave flanked by two windows on each side. Two gable dormers in the roof are recent additions. At the west end, connected to the house by a one-story hyphen, is a small story-and-half barn or shop with a front-gable roof. A center bay once containing a door now has a pair of windows; a single window is centered in the upper story and has replaced what probably had been a loft door. A one-story front-gable wing is attached directly to the east end of the house; it contains a single window in the center of the front façade and three windows and a door on the east side wall. A third wing is attached to the rear corner of the last, and the main house has been enlarged by a wide, cross-gable addition. The house is centered on a small lot bounded on three sides by roads. It is set back from the highway behind a large yard; a driveway enters the west side of the frontage and leads into a parking area in front of the old barn, which now has a commercial function. A yard of equal size occupies the rear of the parcel. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: By 1850, Brewster mariner Isaac Clark (1818-93) was listed in the federal census with $842 in real estate, but Barnstable County deed indices do not show him buying or otherwise acquiring Brewster land about this time. In October 1855 Clark sold his house, barn, and five acres to John K. Cahoon, whose name is attached to the house now numbered 1217 Main Street on the 1858 Brewster map. It seems likely that Clark had built the house about the time of his 1843 marriage to Mary Ann Wells of Boston on land that his father, Isaiah Clark (1777-1838), had left to him and his brothers William and Jeremiah in his 1838 will. Born in Brewster, Isaac Clark was the last of the four children of Isaiah and Deborah Sears Clark. His oldest brother Isaiah Jr. died in Florida in 1835, and both of his parents died in 1838. By 1850 he and his wife Mary had two children, Mary and Rosanna, and in 1852 a third child, Isaac H., was born. In 1855 Clark sold 1217 Main Street to John Kenney Cahoon Jr. (1823-67), also a mariner who had been living since at least 1850 with his wife Phebe K. and his mother-in-law Sally Baker in Brewster. Cahoon was born in Harwich and had married in 1846. The 1860 census lists him as a mariner with $700 in real property and living still with his wife and mother-in-law. John K. Cahoon Jr. died in 1867, and his widow might have remarried and remained in the house; she died in Brewster in October 1874. In her will she left the house, barn and homestead to her father-in-law John Kenney Cahoon Sr. of Harwich with the proviso that he not sell it “unless to a family agreeable to William Clark.” In 1875 Cahoon’s father sold the property to Augustus Paine Jr. for $650.1 Paine, born in 1843 to farmer Augustus Paine and his wife Relief, grew up in this West Brewster neighborhood, is shown as the owner of the house on the 1880 Brewster map and is listed in the census of that year in this neighborhood with his wife Eliza E., daughter of Nathan and Rosalie Dillingham, whom he married late in 1868. But the Paines remained in the house for only eight years, and in 1883 he sold the 1217 Main Street property to George T. Foster for $500. Foster too was a short-term owner and sold the property in 1891 to Francis E. (Frank) Eldridge for an unspecified sum; he owned the property until he died in 1933. 2 Frank Eldridge was the son of Jesse and Lydia Harriman Eldridge of Brewster and was born in 1855. He was a fisherman when he married Ella Frances Walker of East Harwich in 1881. The 1900 census lists the couple in this neighborhood with their son Roy Vernon, born in 1886 (elder son Samuel Everett Eldridge, born in1881, was no longer in his parents’ household), and the 1 John K. Cahoon, Harwich, to Augustus Paine Jr, 11 January 1875, BCD 120:114. See Barnstable Patriot, 15 October 1867, 4: “Mr John K Cahoon of West Brewster committed suicide on Monday week by hanging himself in the barn belonging to Capt William Clark,” which was just northwest of this house. 2 Augustus Paine Jr. to George T. Foster, 20 February 1883, BCD 154:28; George T. Foster to Frank E. Eldridge, 7 March 1891, BCD 196:216. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1217 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 I BRE.340 1910 Brewster map attaches Eldridge’s name to this house. By 1910 Eldridge was doing odd jobs but probably still farming, his wife was a dry goods “agent,” and they provided lodging to 14-year-old Erma J. Cahoon. In 1920 the couple was at 1217 Main Street by themselves, and Eldridge again identified himself as a farmer. Ella Walker Eldridge died in March 1932 and her husband Frank died almost exactly a year later. In October 1933 son Samuel sold the property to Philip George Hettrich, whose family owned the property for almost two decades. Born in New York City in 1882, Hettrich was a city fireman, and he and his wife Violet appear to have occupied the West Brewster house seasonally; they lived most of the time in the Beechurst section of Queens, New York,. In November 1952, after Hettrich had died, his widow Violet sold 1217 Main Street to Dorothy Vernon Tucker of East Orange, New Jersey, who owned it until 1970. The property afterward changed hands fairly often. The parcel was subdivided in 1971, and in 2009 John E. Duffin III and Jane Schelpert- Duffin acquired it. They were the owners in 2019, and the property then housed Wisteria Antiques.3 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. 3 Samuel E. Eldredge, Harwich, executor will Francis B. Eldredge, to Philip G. Hettrich, 31 October 1933, BCD 497:461; Violet Hettrich to Dorothy Vernon Tucker, East Orange NJ, 7 November 1952, BCD 826:405; Dorothy Vernon Tucker to Patrick Arthur Patton and Eleanor Doran, 7 April 1970, BCD 1468:707; Federal National Mortgage Association to John E. Duffin III and Jane Schelpert-Duffin, 9 December 2009, BCD 24237:97. The property is shown as Lot 1 on “Subdivision Plan of Land in Brewster, Mass. Made for Patrick Patton and William J. and Eleanor Doran,” April 1971, BCP 274:53. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1217 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 I BRE.340 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018) View from SW. View from NE.