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HomeMy Public PortalAboutMainSt_2512Follow 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 NW. 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 78-97-0 Harwich B, G, I BRE.409 BRE.513 NRHD (02/23/1996); LHD (05/01/1973) Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): East Brewster Address:2512 Main Street Historic Name:John & Bridget Corrigan House & Paine Barn Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: ca. 1860 (house) ca. 1840 (barn) Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Gothic Revival/cross wing Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: stone Wall/Trim: wood shingles/wood Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: barn (BRE.513) Major Alterations (with dates): sun porch added east side of house wing added west side of house Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:3.00 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 2512 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 B, G, I BRE.409 BRE.513 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 John and Bridget Corrigan House, built ca. 1860, is a story-and-a-half wood frame single dwelling with a cross-gable roof designed in a late Gothic Revival style. The house displays characteristics typical of the post-Greek Revival period—steep roof pitch, absence of cornice returns, deep eaves, and truss work in the gables. It evidently replaced an earlier house documented to have been on the property in 1860. A survivor of the earlier farmstead is embodied in the small story-and-a-half wood frame barn with a saltbox gable roof, cited as extant in an 1860 deed. The house has a three-bay front façade with an off-center entrance distinguished by a shed-roof hood mounted on truss-work braces. Two windows in the upper story are skewed to the west side. The roof overhangs the gable and side walls with deep, boxed eaves ornamented only by truss work at the top of the gable. A story-and-a-half cross-gable wing is set back on the east side and is fronted by a full porch supported by scroll-sawn board posts. An off-center door, standard window, and bay window with canted sides comprise the façade of the wing. The gable end of the wing contains single windows centered in both stories and truss work in the gable. An enclosed porch on the south side of the wing wraps around the corner to the east end. A rear wing appended to the rear may be a later addition. A one-story hipped-roof wing on the west side of the house also is an addition, probably for a bathroom. The buildings are concentrated in the northeast corner of a three-acre parcel, set back from the street behind a large parking lot. (The barn now functions in a commercial use.) The house is bordered by a large yard on the west and south sides; a house lot has been subdivided west of the house leaving a U-shaped frontage. The rest of the property is indicated as bog and is mostly wooded. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: In September 1860, James and Mary Berry of Brewster sold to John Corrigan (spelled Coraken in the deed) 5 acres with a house and outbuildings and “the old barn standing on land of Rowland Paine on the east side of the premises.”1 The barn extant at 2500 Main Street may be the one alluded to in the deed; Paine lived across Main Street from this property. Though separately numbered as 2512 Main Street, the building has transferred as part of 2500 Main Street since at least 1860. Born in 1816, James King Berry was the only one of four sons of David and Thankful King Berry to survive the 1830s. According to Brewster vital records, his oldest brother Jonathan was “lost on Cohasset rocks” on 31 January 1833, and brothers David and Nathaniel were both lost at sea in 1833 or 1834. In 1839 his sister Almira married Rowland Paine, which no doubt accounts for the transfer of the barn. James Berry and his family moved to Chatham by 1865. John Corrigan, the next owner, was born in Ireland about 1815 and was living in Brewster by September 1862, when he and his wife Bridget Costello, also an Irish immigrant, had their first child, James. By 1870 the census lists Corrigan as a farmer with $800 in real estate and living with his wife and three children, James, Patrick, and Mary. The 1880 Brewster map attaches his name to the property, and in that year Corrigan was a farm worker living with his wife and daughter Mary; son James was working for and living in the nearby household of Tully Crosby. Tax records for 1890 assigned no value to Corrigan’s house and barn and credited him with a 5-acre homestead and half an acre of cranberry land, but he was exempted from taxation. In 1890 son James married Elmira E. Mosher, a native of Nova Scotia then working as a domestic servant, and in 1892 daughter Mary married Dennis shoemaker William B. Chalke. John Corrigan died in 1893, and in his will he left children James and Mary one dollar each and wife Bridget the rest of his estate. In 1 James and Mary A. Berry to John Coraken, 14 September 1860, BCD 76:17. The Berrys owned the property in April 1859, when they took out a $50 mortgage with Josiah Foster on it; on the same day as the deed to Corrigan Foster transferred title to James Berry. See BCD 69:185 and 73:549. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2512 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 B, G, I BRE.409 BRE.513 1900 Bridget Costello Corrigan was working as a housekeeper and living at 2500 Main Street with her son James, a farmer and milk dealer, and James’s wife. Bridget Corrigan died in June 1903, and her will, written three days earlier, left daughter Mary one dollar and the rest of her estate to James and his wife. The will further stipulated that at their deaths her estate was to be divided equally among her grandchildren—she then had one, her daughter Mary’s son Bartlett Chalke—and if James should die without having had children her estate was to pass entirely to Chalke. The 1910 map assigns James Corrigan’s name to the homestead, but he and his wife had moved to Amesbury in 1908 and by 1910 were living in Wakefield, where James worked as a street car motorman. He and his wife returned to Brewster in 1921, and by 1926 he began to work on the Nickerson estate in Brewster. The 1929 directory lists James Corrigan as a caretaker living with his wife on Main Street, and the 1930 census lists them alone in their household.2 James Corrigan worked at the Nickerson estate until he died in November 1938, and his widow Almira died in October 1939. As John Corrigan’s will directed, the Main Street property passed to William Bartlett Chalke, daughter Mary’s son. Born in Brewster in 1893, William B. Chalke was living in his parents’ household in Dennis in 1900; his father worked as a fish peddler at that time. By 1910 the family had moved to Cohasset, where Chalke worked as a private chauffeur. By 1920 William B. Chalke Jr. was a stenographer, and he is afterwards usually shown as a clerk; by 1936 he was working at the Quincy post office and was living in his parents’ household in Weymouth. He was never listed as a Brewster resident in censuses and either occupied 2500- 2512 Main Street seasonally or rented it. In 1972 he added his wife Ruth to the title, and after his February 1976 death she sold the property to Paul E. and Eleanor Bowker. In 1993 and 1994 the Bowkers transferred it to Peter Edwin Bowker, who owned it until 1998. Benjamin P. and Nina J. Gregson, owners in 2019, acquired the property from Bowker in that year.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. 2 “East Brewster,” Hyannis Patriot, 13 January 1908, 3: “We learn that Mr. and Mrs. James Corrigan are soon to remove to Amesbury where Mr. Corrigan has obtained a position. We hope that prosperity may attend them in their new enterprise. We are sorry to have them leave our village as they are nice people and good citizens. We hope they will in due time, return to our village.” The same newspaper noted the Corrigans’ move to Wakefield (18 May 1908, 4), and in 1921 they returned to Brewster after six years in Brockton; see “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 14 May 1921, 1. 3 William B. Chalke to William B. and Ruth G. Chalke, 24 October 1972, BCD 1742:158; Ruth G. Chalke to Paul E. and Eleanor J. Bowker, 2484 Main Street, 10 October 1978, BCD 2801:336; Paul E. and Eleanor J. Bowker to Peter Edwin Bowker, 29 November 1993, BCD 8923:349 (3/7 interest); Paul E. and Eleanor J. Bowker to Peter Edwin Bowker, 16 November 1994, BCD 9447:115; Peter Edwin Bowker, Taylors SC, to Benjamin P. and Nina J. Gregson, Sterling MA, 25 June 1998, BCD 11526:187. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2512 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 B, G, I BRE.409 BRE.513 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018) View from NE. View of barn from NW.