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HomeMy Public PortalAboutMainSt_1350Follow 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 north 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 47-60-0 Harwich I BRE.347 NRHD (02/23/1996); LHD (05/01/1973) Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): West Brewster Address:1350 Main Street Historic Name: Wiles-Dugan House Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: 1913 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Classical Revival Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: concrete block Wall/Trim: wood shingles/woof Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: none Major Alterations (with dates): window sash replaced Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:1.06 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 1350 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 I BRE.347 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 Wiles-Dugan House, built in 1913, is story-and-a-half wood frame single dwelling with a front-gable roof. It is designed in a very traditional and retarditaire style with corner pilasters and a Classical cornice framing the front-gable façade, a type popular in industrial villages during the last half of the 19th century. Perhaps this reflects the Wiles having lived in Somerville previously, although the front-gable end house was not entirely foreign to the Cape. The first story of the front façade contains an entrance on one side and a bay window with canted sides on the other, all tucked under a full porch fronted by column posts. Two upper- story windows are closely spaced in the gable. Three windows are spread across the east side wall, with another canted bay window and a single window on the east side; A shed-roof dormer is located in the roof above the bay window and is probably an original feature, given the late construction date. A one-story enclosed porch with a second entrance spans the rear of the house surmounted by two windows in the gable. The house is sited on a knoll above and set back from the street behind a sloping yard. A driveway enters the west side of the frontage and extends to an area behind the house. The rear of the deep parcel is wooded. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: In February 1913, William P. Doane sold an 83-square-rod house lot to Mary A. Wiles, the wife of laborer Moses Wiles, for one dollar with the stipulation, common for new house lots, that Wiles build a fence on the west and south sides of the lot bordering Doane’s own property. In June, the Yarmouth Register reported that B. F. Burgess had been hired to do the plastering “of Moses Miles’s new house,” what is now 1350 Main Street.1 Born in 1846 in Orleans, Moses Elbridge Wiles was a mariner and a wheelwright earlier in his life, and in 1868 he married Mary A. Crosby, the daughter of Asaph and Abigail F. Higgins Crosby of Brewster. By 1873 the couple lived in Somerville, where Wiles was a butcher and grocery clerk, and newspapers document that he, his wife, and their daughter Addie M. had moved back to Brewster to a rented house in 1899. They moved fairly frequently: in May 1899 they were living in the former Godfrey Hopkins house, and in November 1900 the family was living in Zoeth Snow’s Main Street house “for the winter.” By 1910 they were living with Mary’s widowed mother Abigail Crosby. In 1909-10 Moses Wiles drove the school barge, and he was carting paving materials for the new driveways at Fieldstone Hall in East Brewster when his wagon broke and threw him beneath the wheels. He broke several ribs and was cared for by members of the Grange and the Red Men. By 1912 he and his wife had bought a house “on the lower road,” but the newspaper noted that he had decided to sell this house by December 1912, and the next February his wife acquired the lot at 1350 Main Street.2 The 1920 census lists Moses Wiles as a 73-year-old “public hire” chauffeur living with his wife Mary, who died in the same year. In 1922 her widowed husband sold the house to Robert G. Foster of Providence and moved to the Medford home of his married daughter Addie Wiles Baker; he was living with her and her husband in Somerville when he died in 1929.3 Foster sold the Wiles homestead less than a month later to James F. Newcomb, who defaulted on a mortgage he took out on the property in 1928; the next owner, Ralph Phipps, also defaulted, and in January 1931 Sandwich Co-operative Bank sold 1350 Main Street to Brewster physician Louis W. Crocker for $3600, and Crocker moved to the house the next month.4 1 William P. Doane to Mary A. Wiles, 25 February 1913, BCD 323:61; “East Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 7 June 1913, 4. Some town documents identify 1350 Main Street as the B. Crocker house, but deeds do not show any Crocker as grantor or grantee; Crocker is instead shown consistently as an abutter to this parcel. 2 See “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 4 March 1899, 8; 6 May 1899, 4; 12 November 1900, 3; 17 September 1910, 8; and 14 December 1912, 2. 3 “Moses Wiles,” Yarmouth Register, 2 February 1929, 6; Hyannis Patriot, 31 January 1929, 13. 4 Moses E. Wiles to Robert G. Foster, Providence RI, 13 July 1922, BCD 389:187; Robert G. Foster, Providence RI, to James F. Newcomb, 12 December 1922, BCD 391:355; James F. Newcomb to Sandwich Cooperative Bank, 6 January 1927, BCD 441:567; Sandwich Cooperative Bank to Sandwich Cooperative Bank, 8 June 1928, BCD 457:146; Sandwich Cooperative Bank to Ralph L Phipps, 17 September 1929, BCD INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1350 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 I BRE.347 Born in Brewster in 1897, Louis Winthrop Crocker was the son of Winthrop N. Crocker (1869-1961) and his wife, Weymouth native Florence E. Bates (1875-1951), who married in Brewster in 1896. Both of his parents were teachers, and by 1900 Winthrop Crocker was superintendent of schools in Dartmouth, Massachusetts; by 1900 he was a teacher and “school master” in Waltham. Louis Crocker went to Bridgewater Normal School and served with the American Expeditionary Force in France during the First World War. By 1920 he was working as a wool factory sorter and living in his parents’ household. In 1922 he also was teaching and in that year married Catherine Cecilia Meagher of Fall River. By 1928 the couple was living in Fall River, where Crocker worked as a state automobile inspector, but by 1929 he and his wife Catharine had returned to Brewster with their daughter Louise, born in 1924. The 1940 census records Crocker on State Road in a house he owned; he was still a motor vehicle inspector, and he lived at 1350 Main Street with wife Catherine, daughter Louise, and son Dean, born in 1933. Crocker also served in World War II—the only Brewster resident to serve in both world wars, according to the Register—as a “link training instructor” at the Air Transport Command base on Presque Isle in Maine. The Crockers owned and occupied 1350 Main Street until 1944, when they sold it to Dennis Enos Dugan Jr. and Dorothea Dugan.5 Dugan, born in 1915, was the son of Azorean immigrant Dennis Enos Dugan, who was living in Brewster when he married Irish immigrant Frances E. Smith, then working in domestic service, in 1897. His father was a farmer and cranberry grower, and Dugan grew up on State Road. By 1940 Dugan Jr. was a trucking contractor and was living in his parents’ household, and in 1942 he married Dorothea Murray in Brewster. In the same year he enlisted in the Army served in the medical corps in North Africa. By 1944 he had been discharged, and the Yarmouth Register reported that he and his wife “were occupying their new home on Main Street, formerly owned by Mr and Mrs L. N. Crocker.” He went back to work as a contractor and was active in town politics and civic affairs; in 1948 he donated an asphalt driveway to the Unitarian church in Brewster center.6 Dennis Dugan Jr. died in November 1978, and in 1990 his widow reserved a life estate in her home when she transferred title to the property to their children, Dion C. Dugan of Brewster and Diane D. Bronsdon of Chatham, in 1990.7 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. 467:272; Sandwich Co-operative Bank to Louis W. Crocker, 31 January 1931, BCD 480:20. See also Hyannis Patriot, 29 January 1931, 8: “The house built and formerly owned by the late Moses Wiles was sold at public auction last Monday afternoon to Louis W. Crocker.” Hyannis Patriot, 5 February 1931, 8, notes Crocker’s move to the property. 5 Louis W. Crocker to Dennis E. Dugan Jr. and Dorothea Dugan, 6 October 1944, BCD 619:162. On Crocker’s military service see “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 29 October 1943, 3. 6 On his military service see “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 10 September 1943, 4; 22 October 1943, 4; and 29 October 1943, 4, when Dugan was home on hospitalization furlough and helped his father with his cranberry crop; on occupying 1350 Main Street see “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 24 November 1944, 2. Dugan’s mother is shown as Mary Smith in her 1897 marriage record but as Frances E. in all other sources. 7 Dorothy Dugan, 1350 Main Street, to Dion C. Dugan, 1643 Main Street, and Diane D. Bronsdon, Chatham, 30 March 1990, BCD 7114:214. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1350 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 I BRE.347 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2019) View from SW.