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FORM B BUILDING
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION
MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD
BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Photograph
View from SW.
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
90-156-0 Harwich BRE.515
BRE.516
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
East Brewster
Address:2821 & 2827 Main Street
Historic Name: Higgins-Foster House & Barn
Uses:Present: single-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: ca. 1822
Source:deeds, historic atlases
Style/Form: Federal/hip block
Architect/Builder: unknown
Exterior Material:
Foundation: stone
Wall/Trim: wood shingles/wood
Roof:asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
barn (BRE.516)
garage
Major Alterations (with dates):
alterations to northerly and westerly sides of wing
alterations and additions to barn for residential use
Condition:good
Moved: no yes Date:
Acreage:0.35 + 0.50 = 0.85
Setting: The house is situated in a dense residential area
characterized by summer cottages and retirement homes
built in the mid-20th century.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2821 & 2827 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
BRE.515
BRE.516
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 Higgins-Foster House, built ca. 1822, is a two-story wood frame mixed-use building (now single dwelling) with a hipped roof
designed in the Federal style. Its four-bay front façade faces southwest and is perpendicular to the street. It contains an
entrance, off-center on the northwesterly side, flanked by half-sidelights and set within a Neoclassical surround. The fenestration
pattern is skewed slightly off-center, probably because of the location of the chimney. The eaves of the house, with a simple box
cornice (replaced?), ride directly on top of the second-story windows in a traditional manner. Three windows on each story of the
street (southeast) elevation also are skewed around the center with one bay positioned at the front and two at the opposite
corner. A long, two-story gabled wing is engaged to the northeast side of the house. It has a door and window close to the
junction and another door and window at the other end with a pair of windows in between. A porch spans the entire façade with
four irregularly spaced windows above in the second story. The entrance in the far end suggests the wing had, at least in part, a
commercial function. A narrow cross-gable ell, two-stories in height, extends from the back of the wing; its fenestration has been
altered on all sides. The rear (northwest) façade of the house has experienced alteration as well.
A story-and-a-half wood frame barn, perhaps as old as the house, is located north of it, now renovated as a dwelling and located
on a separate parcel. The general form and gable roof indicate its original use. An entry vestibule is centered on the front with a
small wing added to the southwest end and a large wing constructed on the rear. There also is a wood frame two-car garage
with a gable roof extant on the lot.
The house is sited close to the highway with the barn set back behind a parking area shared by both properties. Likewise a large
rear yard overlaps on both lots.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
It is not possible to determine from maps when the outbuilding standing just northeast of 2821 Main Street was built. It is
depicted on the 1880 map of East Brewster, but the 1858 map of this section of town does not include representations of
outbuildings. It is possible that the building stood on the lot at that time, when Orleans-born trader George W. Higgins lived at
2821 Main Street with his family. It was not divided from the main lot on its own separate parcel until the late 1960s.
George Washington Higgins (1800-about 1875) married Abigail Freeman Crosby (1801-90) in Brewster in 1822 and had lived in
the town, probably at 2821 Main Street, since the late 1820s. He and his wife had three children—George W., John A., and
Thomas J.—between 1829 and 1838. Son George was a carpenter in 1850, while John, then 18 years old, was at sea. Zenas
Crosby and his wife Fanny were part of the Higgins household in 1850 and 1855, and the 1858 map shows Higgins’s store on
the corner of Ellis Landing Road (the East Brewster post office was in the store at that time) and his residence next east of the
store. In 1852 sons George and Thomas moved to Chicago, where they started a meat packing business later called Chicago
Packing and Provision Company. In 1864 George and Abigail Higgins sold their East Brewster real estate to Nathan Crosby
(1793-1882), Abigail’s older brother, and followed their sons to Chicago.1 Crosby had his daughter Emeline F. (1825-1908) and
her husband, Brewster mariner Joseph Foster (1826-51), occupy the property. They had married in 1851, and by 1865 they
were almost certainly living in 2821 Main Street with their daughters Fanny C. and Emeline E., born in 1860 and 1861
respectively. After Nathan Crosby died in 1882, his will left the house Emeline and her husband then occupied to them.
Like his father-in-law, Joseph Foster was a trader and postmaster, though at the time of his marriage he had been a mariner.
The son of Heman and Polly Crosby Foster, Joseph Foster was the postmaster in East Brewster from 1862 to 1881, and the
1870 census describes him as keeping a “country store.” He died in 1881, and his widow Emeline was postmaster until 1886. By
1900 she occupied the house with her youngest child, Sally, a dressmaker who had been born in 1865. In 1902, Sall married
Boston-born mariner Charles H. Freeman.
1 George W. and Abigail F. Higgins to Nathan Crosby, 11 October 1864, BCD 98:302. No death record has yet been located for George W.
Higgins Sr., but his wife was a widow by 1878; she died in Chicago in 1890.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2821 & 2827 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
BRE.515
BRE.516
Emeline Crosby Foster died in 1908, and her will named married daughter Emeline as her executor. The younger Emeline was a
teacher when she married carpenter William A. Fawcett, a native of New Brunswick or Newfoundland, in 1897. Fawcett died in
1902 in Brewster, though the couple lived most of the year in Framingham. In 1909 Emeline Foster married again, to Falmouth-
born farmer Willard Slade Hamblin (1877-1941). In 1912, Sally Foster Freeman deeded her interest in her mother’s estate to her
sister Emeline Hamblin.2 The 1920 census shows Willard and Emeline Hamblin (sometimes spelled Hamlin) alone in this County
Road household. Willard Hamblin was the town’s highway superintendent by 1929 and remained in that job through at least
1940. Emeline Foster Fawcett Hamblin died in 1933, and the 1940 census shows Hamlin in the same house he had occupied on
State Road in 1935 with his second wife Grace Ida Wilson, who operated it as a tourist home.
Willard Hamblin died in 1941, and his widow Grace sold 2821-27 Main Street in 1943 to Thomas S. and Gertrude V. Higgins,
both the children of Irish immigrants and no relation to the Higginses who had formerly owned the property.3 Thomas Higgins
was born in 1890 and was a police officer in Boston in the 1930s and early 1940s. The Higginses sold 2821-27 Main Street in
1951 to G. Everett Ellis, and after his death in 1952 his will left the property to his second wife Clara. In May 1966 Frank E. Lee
of Orleans acquired the property, and in 1959 he recorded a plan that divided 2821 and 2827 Main Street. Lee sold 2827 Main
Street in 1972, and it changed hands fairly often afterward. In 1977 Gerald I. and Florence L. Palmer of Andover bought it and
placed it in trust in 2017. The Palmers were the owners of record in 2019.4
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 Sally F. Freeman, Jersey City NJ, to Emeline F. Hamblin, 30 March 1912, BCD 313:208.
3 Grace W. Hamlin to Thomas S. and Gertrude V. Higgins, 17 September 1943, BCD 606:261.
4 Thomas S. and Gertrude V. Higgins to G. Everett Ellis, 4 September 1951, BCD 792:39; Clara M. Ellis to Walter H. and Susan B. Sinervo, 20
November 1957, BCD 989:225; Walter A. and Susan B. Sinervo to Frank E. Lee, Orleans, 6 May 1966, BCD 1336:1132; Frank E. Lee, Big
Pine Key FL, to Raymond James Bailey and Gregory A. Manach, 3 April 1972, BCD 1630:168; A. J. Cosmetto, Miami FL, to Gerald I. and
Florence L. Palmer, Andover, 18 July 1977, BCD 2559:171; Gerald I. and Florence L. Palmer, 2821 Main Street, to Gerald I. Palmer and Lisa
D. Brown, trustees Gerald I. Palmer Living Trust, 21 December2017, BCD 30992:298. See “Plan of Land as Surveyed for Clara W. Ellis in
Brewster, Mass,” October 1957, BCP 138:107, which show the buildings on an undivided parcel, and “Plan of Division of Land in Brewster,
Mass. as Surveyed for Frank E. Lee,” May 1969, BCP 231:159.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2821 & 2827 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 3
BRE.515
BRE.516
FIGURES
Plans 138:107, 1957 (top) and 231:159, 1969 (bottom)
show the parcel before and after subdivision.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2821 & 2827 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 4
BRE.515
BRE.516
PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2019)
View house (left) and barn (right) from SE.
View of house from NW.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2821 & 2827 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 5
BRE.515
BRE.516
View of barn from SW.
View of garage from south.