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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): April 2019
Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number
48-67-0 Harwich C, G, I BRE.358
BRE.510
NRHD (02/23/1996); LHD (05/01/1973)
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
West Brewster
Address:1531 Main Street
Historic Name: Freeman-Perry House & Carriage Barn
Uses:Present: single-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: ca. 1847
Source:deeds, historic atlases, newspapers
Style/Form: Greek Revival/end house
Architect/Builder: unknown
Exterior Material:
Foundation: brick
Wall/Trim: wood clapboard
Roof:asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
carriage barn (BRE.510)
Major Alterations (with dates):
rear wing porch enclosed, shed dormer raised
garage added to rear
window sash replaced
Condition:good
Moved: no yes Date:
Acreage:1.95 acres
Setting: The house is situated in a dense residential area
characterized by a mix of 19th-century farmhouses and 20th-
century summer cottages and retirement homes.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1531 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
C, G, I BRE.358
BRE.510
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 Freeman-Perry House, built ca. 1847, is a two-story wood frame single dwelling with a front gable roof designed in the
Greek Revival style. The front façade is distinguished by corner pilasters with panels wrapping on both sides, a trabeated
entrance with paneled pilasters and pediment echoing the full pediment in the gable, and a short lancet window in the center. A
tall frieze continues along the eave lines on the side elevations. The westerly side wall contains four window bays on each floor
with three of them in the front false and filled with clapboards where the stair is located in the entry hall. The easterly side
contains two window bays at opposing ends. In the rear a bay window with canted sides occupies the first story, and a blank
window is contained in the second. A one-story kitchen wing with a gable roof is appended to the rear. Its porch on the easterly
side has been walled and a shed former has been raised on the westerly side. A mid 20th-century wood frame garage is
attached to the rear of the wing.
In ca. 1870 a one-story carriage barn with wood shingle siding and a mansard roof, the top section of which peaked at a tall hip
to provide more volume in the hay mow, was built on the lot. The street façade contained a central wagon door surmounted by a
mow door in a wall dormer. There evidently was an animal door in the easterly side of the center, although that area has been
compromised by the addition of an overhead vehicle door. A shed roof wing is attached to the easterly side of the barn.
The house is situated near the front of a deep lot set back from the highway behind a large yard. A driveway enters the
southeasterly corner of the frontage and runs past the house to an open area behind the house and its attached garage and
thence farther back to the barn. A large rear yard extends to the back of the parcel buffered on all sides by mature trees.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
This house was very likely built about 1847 and may incorporate parts of an earlier house that stood on the lot by about 1810.
That earlier house was built for Elkanah Freeman (1760-1834), a master mariner born in Harwich and the son of Elkanah
Freeman (1727/28-ca. 1777) and Abigail Mayo Freeman. According to a family history, Elkanah Freeman Jr. was captain of a
privateer during the War of 1812; he was taken prisoner and held in Dartmoor prison for some unspecified time.1 In 1786 he
married Mary (Polly) Myrick (1766-1844), and Brewster censuses show them and their growing family (twelve persons were in
his household by1820) through 1830. Elkanah Freeman Jr. died in October 1834, and his will, written six years earlier, left his
house and real estate to his wife during her life and then to his sons William (1789-1870), Frederick (1803-58) and Edmund
(born 1806) in quarter shares after her death; the fourth quarter went to them in trust to support son Elkanah (1795-1882) and
his heirs. The 1840 census lists Mary Freeman in the household with two of her sons and five of her daughters. She died in May
1844, and by early 1847 the house on the site was occupied by Ann P. Cobb Freeman, the wife of Frederick, and the family of
Ebenezer D. Winslow, a Plympton native and stone cutter who had married Elkanah and Mary Freeman’s daughter Harriet in
1824.
A newspaper account of a fire in the Elkanah Freeman house in early February 1847 documents the occupants of the house,
which was there described as a “large two story house” valued at $1200. The Barnstable Patriot had initially reported that it was
the nearby house of Captain David Lincoln that had burned, but a correction indicated that it was instead “the house of the heirs
of the late Mr Elkanah Freeman” and offered this account from E. D. Winslow himself:
There having appeared two statements respecting the fire in Brewster on Monday morning last, one in the Patriot,
and one in the Register, both being incorrect, and as many questions are asked, I wish to state the facts. Myself
and wife retired at half past eight, leaving the only fire in the house well secured in a fire place with stone hearth
and jambs, leaving no one up—one person only being out, who came in and lit a lamp some two or three hours
after. Near two o’clock I was aroused from a sound sleep by the smell of smoke, being in the chamber directly
1 Frederick Freeman, Freeman Genealogy (Boston: Rand, Avery and Co., 1875), 256, which cites Massachusetts Records vol. 166.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1531 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
C, G, I BRE.358
BRE.510
over the one in which we left the fire. On going below, found the floor from the end of the hearth burnt through for
about two feet, and the plinth and pilaster of the chimney piece in a live coal nearly to the mantle, and the blaze
passing up rapidly in rear of the wood work. With this we leave the public to judge the cause. Every exertion was
made to stop the fire, but to no avail. About one half the furniture was saved. Mrs. Freeman’s loss was trifling, her
effects being mostly in the one room on the ground floor, and remote from the fire. Loss near $2000: no
insurance.2
In May of that year, Elkanah Freeman’s eldest son William, who lived in Boston and was executor of his father’s will, advertised
that he would sell as much of his father’s real estate as needed to realize the $1700 needed to pay his father’s debts and
legacies. He sold his second cousin Benjamin Freeman (1808-84) a tract bordering his 1480 Main Street house for $325 and
Boston merchant Elisha Atkins the 25-acre Elkanah Freeman homestead, 10 acres of tillage, and six woodlots totaling 35.5
acres for $1085.3 Atkins sold the property back to Freeman about two months later for $1200. The earlier deed to Atkins may
have supplied the funds to replace or rebuild the damaged house, which in 1850 was occupied by the family members who were
living there at the time of the fire. Ebenezer and Harriet Winslow are listed in the census with Frederick Freeman, a shipmaster;
his and Harriet’s unmarried sister Mary, then 56 years old, and Hannah Bartlett of Watertown, possibly a domestic servant. By
1855 only Frederick and Mary Freeman were listed as occupants, and Frederick is described there as “partially insane”; he died
at the Taunton State Hospital in 1858. His sister Mary had married the much younger Orleans laborer Jonathan Young about a
year earlier.
The 1858 map of Brewster attaches William Freeman’s name to the 1531 Main Street house, but in late June 1866 he and his
siblings Mary Freeman Young and Edmund transferred the homestead property to William’s eldest son William Frederick
Freeman (1817-88). Less than a month later William F. Freeman sold the property for $3,000 to Benjamin Freeman, who in turn
sold it about a month after that to his nephew John Freeman Jr. (1835-1900) for $2900.4 The 1531 Main Street remained in his
family until 1946.
The son of John Freeman (born 1800) and his wife Ruth Sears Freeman, John Freeman Jr. was at sea by the 1855, when he
was 20 years old. The Yarmouth Register later noted that he “was a successful sea captain, being engaged in the foreign
carrying trade. He commanded some fine ships. Capt. Freeman, after leaving the sea, engaged for a while in the ship-chandlery
business in Boston” and had been s selectman in Brewster.5 In 1859 in New Bedford he married Dennis native Jane Sears
Nickerson. In 1860 the couple was living in the Brewster household of his parents; John Jr. was a master mariner and his farmer
a farmer. In 1870 the census clearly lists John and Jane Freeman in the 1531 Main Street house with their daughter Roberta J.,
born in 1864, and a domestic servant. In 1880 John, Jane, and Roberta Freeman lived in the house with 13-year-old nephew
John Henry Freeman, the son of John Freeman Jr.’s younger brother Benjamin, who had died five years earlier.
In 1900 John and Jane Freeman were living at 1531 Main Street where their daughter Roberta, a nurse who had trained at St.
Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford, Canadian-born domestic Agnes Folley and her infant son Frederick. In June of the same year
John Freeman died, and five years later John Freeman also passed. Newspapers document that she let rooms in the house to
two Brewster schoolteachers in 1905. In 1907 daughter Roberta, then 44 years old, married widowed mariner Francis Howard
Perry, whose first wife, Rebecca Bassett Perry, had died in 1903. Frank Perry’s name is attached to the 1531 Main Street house
on the 1910 Brewster map. In 1920 he and Roberta Freeman Perry were alone in the household. She died in 1929, and in 1930
Perry shared the house with John Freeman, then a cranberry grower and said to have been Roberta Perry’s adopted brother in
her obituary.6 In 1930, Roberta’s cousin John H. Freeman deeded 1531 Main Street to Frank Perry.7 He must have married
again, for the 1940 census lists him in the house with Anna L. Perry, a Maine native born about 1871.
2 “The Fire in Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 3 February 1847, 2.
3 Barnstable Patriot, 26 May 1847, 3, and “Executor’s Sale,” ibid., 7 July 1847, 3; William Freeman, executor estate Elkanah Freeman, 23 July
1847, BCD 43:97 (notices of license to sell real estate); William Freeman, Boston, executor of estate Elkanah Freeman, to Benjamin Freeman,
23 July 1847, BCD 43:97; William Freeman, Boston, executor estate Elkanah Freeman, to Elisha Atkins, Boston, 24 July 1847, BCD 43:178;
Elisha Atkins, Boston, to William Freeman, Boston, 18 September 1847, BCD 43:179.
4 William Freeman, Boston, Edmond Freeman, Springfield, and Mary F Young, Brewster, to William F. Freeman, Boston, 28 June 1866, BCD
85:319; William F. Freeman, Boston, to Benjamin Freeman, 10 July 1866, BCD 89:234; Benjamin Freeman to John Freeman, 13 August 1866,
BCD 89:273.
5 “Brewster: Capt. John Freeman,” Yarmouth Register, 30 June 1900, 4.
6 “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 5 October 1929, 7.
7 John H. Freeman to Francis H. Perry, 30 December 1930, BCD 479:362.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1531 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 3
C, G, I BRE.358
BRE.510
Frank Perry died in June 1945, and in January 1942 the executors of his will sold the property to Elvin M. and Edith W. Bragg,
who owned it until 1952. born in North Carolina in 1885, Elvin Monroe Bragg was a a public utility engineer living in Dorchester
and by 1918 had married Edith Matilda Nickerson, daughter of fisherman David Nickerson and his wife Isabel Perry of Bourne,
who might have been related to Frank Perry. The property changed hands often afterward. The owners in 2019, James F. and
Corinne M.Tabulsie, acquired the property in 2011.8
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.
8 Nelson F. Perry and Mertis H. Cahoon, executors will Francis H. Perry, to Elvin M. and Edith W. Bragg, 12 January 1946, BCD 639:483; Elvin
W. and Edith W. Bragg, Boston, to Mary E. Kavanaugh, Dorchester, 11 July 1952, BCD 816:165; Brian E. Warburton to James F. and Corinne
M Tabulsie, 22 August 2011, BCD 25635:161.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1531 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 4
C, G, I BRE.358
BRE.510
PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2019)
View from east.
View of carriage barn from SE.