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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
48-88-0 Harwich C, G, I BRE.356
NRHD (02/23/1996); LHD (05/01/1973)
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
West Brewster
Address:1480 Main Street
Historic Name: Benjamin & Betsy Freeman House
Uses:Present: single-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: 1846-50
Source:deeds, historic atlases
Style/Form: Greek Revival/cross-wing
Architect/Builder: unknown
Exterior Material:
Foundation: brick
Wall/Trim: Aluminum clapboards/wood
Roof:asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
none
Major Alterations (with dates):
aluminum siding added
shed-roof dormer added
rear wing added
Condition:fair
Moved: no yes Date:
Acreage:0.60
Setting: The house is situated in a dense residential area
characterized by summer cottages and retirement homes
built in the 19th & 20th centuries.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1480 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
C, G, I BRE.356
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 Benjamin and Betsy Freeman House, built 1846-50, is a story-and-a-half wood frame single dwelling with a cross-gable plan
and roof. The front gable section of the façade contains two windows on the first story and a blank space on the wing side that
either had a door or window now covered over with added siding or is as built with the entrance on the side wall accessed from
the porch fronting the cross wing. (There are other examples of this odd design in the town.) Two closely spaced upper-story
windows occupy the gable space. Raking cornices and eave returns are visible in the gable, but corner and frieze boards
wrapping onto the side walls are concealed by the siding. The façade of the recessed story-and-a-half cross wing is obscured by
overgrown foundation plantings, and a porch is barely visible. A shed-roof dormer, probably and addition, is centered in the front
of the roof. Single windows are centered in each story in the southwest gable end. A one-story rear wing looks to be a later
addition.
The house is situated in the front of a small rectangular lot set back behind a sizeable front yard. A driveway enters the westerly
corner of the frontage and expands into a parking area on the southwest side of the house. The rear of the parcel is wooded.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
In June 1846, William Freeman of Boston, acting as executor of the estate of Elkanah Freeman (ca 1760-1834), sold Elkanah
Freeman’s Brewster land to settle debts and pay legacies.1 He sold master mariner Benjamin Freeman (1808-84), a first cousin
of Elkanah, 3.5 acres between the south side of the County Road and an unnamed pond, almost certainly Schoolhouse Pond.
The 1850 census seems to locate Benjamin Freeman in this part of Brewster, though it is possible that the house was built after
he retired in 1855. The name “B. Freeman” is attached to the house at this location on the 1858 Brewster map.
Born in Brewster, Benjamin Freeman was the second child of John Freeman (1768-1852) and his wife Bethiah Crowell (d. 1837)
and was commander of numerous ships including the Ellen Brooks, Coromandel, Scargo, and Climax. He was also one of the
original directors of the Cape Cod Railroad when it opened in 1865 and served one year as town selectman, in 1859. The 1850
census credits him with $4350 in real property. He and his wife Elizabeth Snow Winslow, who married in 1833, had no children,
but the household always included at least one domestic servant. By 1860 the census reported that Freeman owned $5,000 in
real property and a personal estate of $18,000; by 1870, when he was described as a ship broker, he owned $6,800 in real
estate and had personal property valued at $28,000. Freeman’s wife Betsey died in 1871, and the 1880 census lists him as
retired and sharing the house with two servants.
Benjamin Freeman died in 1884, and his will left $21,250 in cash outright to his four sisters, his twelve nieces and nephews, a
great nephew, servants, and people who had helped him and his wife in their old age. His widowed sisters, Lurana Freeman
Winslow and Tamsen Freeman Gifford, each received $2,500, while his other married sisters and all the nieces and nephews
received $1,000 each. He left $250 each to James Higgins, “my faithful servant,” and Mary E. Ellis “for her long and faithful
service.” He left other funds in trust to nephew John freeman and niece Caroline Winslow, to be invested and the income from
which to be used on the Freeman family lot in the Brewster cemetery. The most sizable bequest was to Caroline Winslow, the
daughter of Nathan Winslow and Freeman’s sister Lurana, who had cared for him in his “last days”: she received the use of his
homestead, all of the real property, his furniture, stock, carriages, and harness, and whatever remained of his estate once debts
and legacies were paid. Caroline was then 44 years old, but she soon became mentally ill; she died of what her death record
termed ‘brain disease” in 1888, and the Main Street property passed to his sister Lurana Winslow.2
1 William Freeman, Boston, executor estate Elkanah Freeman, Brewster, to Benjamin Freeman, Brewster, 16 June 1846, BCD 38:315.
2 Owen J. Mullaney, Barnstable, to Frank C. and Dora Mabel Macomber, 29 December 1938, BCD 547:242, spells out an usually detailed
history of the property. It states, “This was land formerly of Benjamin Freeman who died in Brewster in 1884, case No 8651 Barnstable Probate
Records.It passed under his Will to Caroline Winslow who became insane and died February 18th 1888, Case No 4885 Bristol County Probate
Records. it passed from her to her mother Lurana Winslow who died November 3d 1899 and passed under her will to her daughter Emily
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1480 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
C, G, I BRE.356
Nathan Winslow had died in 1856 and left his widow with three children (Caroline, Nathan Jr., and Emily) and a relatively large
farm of 80 acres. She grew the usual crops and was known for her cranberry vines, which she sold; in April 1860 she offered two
acres of these vines, “perfectly free of grass or rushes, and warranted to be as many vines to the rod, and of as good quality, as
can be found in Barnstable County.”3 Her daughter Emily married Taunton teacher and principal Seth C. Macomber in 1874, and
both Lurana and her daughter lived in Taunton most of the year after that point. Lurana died in Taunton in November 1899, and
she left her brother’s homestead to her daughter Emily. The 1905 Brewster map marks the house “Mrs. S. M. Macomber.”
In 1908 Emily Macomber sold 1480 Main Street to farmer James R. Ellis, born in Brewster in 1864 and the son of Benjamin and
Relief Cash Ellis. He was working as an expressman when he married Mary B. Phillips Rogers in 1896, and he was living in
Barnstable in 1900; the household included his wife, daughter Mabel, and his brother Benjamin W. Ellis, a livery stable keeper.
The 1910 census clearly places him in his neighborhood in a household with only his wife. The couple moved to Brockton by
1920, and in 1922 Ellis sold most of the Brewster property to Frank C. Macomber of Chatham, a great nephew of earlier owner
Seth C. Macomber.4 Born in Raynham in 1873, Frank Clinton Macomber was living in Brockton in 1910 and running a
restaurant; by 1918 he was living in South Chatham but working for the New Bedford shoe firm E. E. Taylor. His first wife
Ernestine had died by 1920, when the census lists him as a single shoe cutter boarding in the home of Mary Higgins with
another boarder, school teacher Mabel D. Eldridge, and two lodgers. Eldridge, also shown in documents as Dora Mabel
Eldridge, was a native of Chatham, and in 1923 she and Frank C. Macomber married.
The 1930 census clearly shows Frank and Mabel Eldridge Macomber in the 1480 Main Street house. He was by then farming,
and the family had an elderly boarder named Daniel W. Barnes. When James Ellis sold the property to Macomber in 1922, he
transferred everything except the “small cottage” on the property where Barnes was then living. Born in 1842 in Brewster to
mariner Daniel C. Barnes, Daniel Barnes had been a fisherman, at least once traveling to Florida to fish in the winter months.5 In
Brewster he lived with his married brother Adelbert Barnes in this section of town in 1900 and 1910, but by 1922 he had moved
to the cottage at 1480 Main Street. When he died in August 1931, he was said to be the oldest man in Brewster.6
By 1935 the Macombers were spending winters in New Bedford and summers in Brewster, but the 1940 census lists Macomber
and his wife on State Road in Brewster. He was described as a shoe cutter and was probably working off Cape for at least some
of the year. In 1947, his wife Dora, then living in Plymouth, sold the house to Carrie A. Adams of Truro, who owned the property
for six years; Ruth A Charron owned it from 1959 to 1987, when she sold it to Dana J. and Roberta C. Munsey of Miami, Florida;
the Munsey family still owned 1480 Main Street in 2019.7
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.
Macomber, Case No.15780 Bristol County Probate Records, being the same premises this day conveyed by Frank C. Macomber to Owen J.
Mullaney.”
3 “In Yarmouth History,” The Register, 22 April 2010, 15.
4 James R. Ellis, Brockton, to Frank C. Macomber, Chatham, 6 May 1922, BCD 387:361
5 “Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 22 May 1888, 5.
6 “Cape Cod Briefs,” Hyannis Patriot, 13 August 1931, 15; “Daniel W. Barnes,” Yarmouth Register, 15 August 1931, 5.
7 Dora Mabel Macomber, Plymouth, to Carrie A. Adams, Truro, 16 May 1947, BCD 672:315; Carrie A. Adams to Maude M. Francis, 31 August
1953, BCD 854:229; Maude M. Francis to Arthur W. and Ruth A. Charron, 23 June 1959, BCD 1045:255; Ruth A. Charron, 1480 Main street,
to Dana J. and Roberta C. Munsey, Miami FL, 9 June 1987, BCD 5766:329; Dana J. and Roberta C. Munsey, Miami FL, to Joyce Munsey,
1680 Main Street, 28 August 1989, BCD 6886:27.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1480 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 3
C, G, I BRE.356
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, 2019)
View from NW.