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HomeMy Public PortalAboutMainSt_3447Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form.12/12 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 and Neil Larson Organization: Brewster Historical Commission Date (month / year): April 2018 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 114-46 Harwich BRE.174 BRE.464 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): East Brewster Address:3447 Main Street Historic Name: Alonzo & Lydia Rogers House and Frank Foster’s Grocery Store Uses:Present: single-family residential Original: single-family residential Date of Construction: ca. 1839 Source:deeds, censuses, historic maps, vital records Style/Form: Federal Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: stone Wall/Trim: wood clapboard/wood Roof: wood shingle Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Store, formerly East Brewster Dist. No. 4 Schoolhouse moved to site 1905 Garage/guest house In-ground swimming pool Parking lot Major Alterations (with dates): Additions to west side of house, late 20th century Window sash replaced Addition to store, late 20th century Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: 1905 Acreage:3.10 Setting: This house is set back from the north side of Route 6A behind a row of evergreens. The area north of the property contains a residential subdivision; south is a state park. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 3447 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 BRE.174 BRE.464 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 Alonzo and Lydia Rogers House is a one-story wood frame single dwelling built about 1839, with numerous later additions. The small house has an off-center chimney indicating its placement between front and back rooms connected by a side passage. The front façade contains an entrance on the east side onto the side passage, offset by two windows in the front room on the west side. The cornice and frieze board is tight to the tops of the windows; the frieze is interrupted by a four-pane transom over the entrance. The front door and windows are recent replacements. Corner and window trim and the frieze are of modest Greek Revival scale. A one-story kitchen wing with central chimney and a three-bay center-entrance façade may have been constructed with the house or added somewhat later. Additions have been made more recently to the rears of both house and wing. A one-story wing with an exterior chimney on the front had been added by the time the photo was taken for the 1980 Massachusetts Historical Commission building form. This wing has been either enlarged and renovated or replaced in the years since. Frank Foster opened a grocery store in a mid nineteenth-century one-room schoolhouse he moved to the street frontage in 1905. The iconic rural schoolhouse form still is discernible in the front section of the extant building, although large shop windows now flank the center entrance, and a long one-story wing was added to the rear of the east side in the late twentieth century. A sizeable parking lot is located east of the store on the opposite side of the driveway. A third building appearing to be a garage with domestic space above is a late twentieth-century addition to the site. Much of the property is taken up by driveways and parking areas. The rest of the property is comprised of lawns, particularly in the front and rear of the house. Maps show a pond in the southwest corner of the property, but it seems to have silted in. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE Though the date of their marriage does not appear to have been recorded in Massachusetts, Alonzo Rogers and his wife Lydia C. Hurd were married and had their eldest child Alonzo in Brewster by 1839. The core of the house at 3447 Main Street was very likely built by the time of their marriage, if not a generation earlier.1 The deed transferring what was originally a four-acre parcel has not yet been located, but the enumeration order of the 1840 federal census in Brewster shows Alonzo Rogers in this section of East Brewster in a household of four persons.2 He is shown in tax records from 1841 with a house and land valued at $200; the valuation of the house and lot dropped to $180 by 1845. Rogers also had a barn worth $40, a 6-acre parcel, two tons of salt marsh, and a cow in 1841; by 1844 he had added a half-acre peat swamp to his holdings but had no personal estate.3 Born in Orleans in January 1813, Alonzo Rogers (1813-96) was the son of Seth and Naoma Young Rogers and a grandson of Joshua Rogers Jr., who had owned land in Brewster from the first decade of the nineteenth century. Alonzo Rogers appears to have come to East Brewster after his first cousin, Zaccheus Rogers (1818-1907) settled there, no later than 1830. Zaccheus Rogers’s house was east of Alonzo’s and, like his, was on the north side of what was then called King’s Highway or the County Road. The 1850 census identifies Alonzo Rogers as a shipmaster with $460 in real property and living with his wife Lydia, the daughter of Luther and Olive Hurd of Orleans, and their three Brewster-born sons—Alonzo Jr. (born 1839), Edwin R. (born 1845), and Orin A. (born1846). The 1858 map of East Brewster attaches the name “A. Rogers” to the house on this site, and the family remained together at 3447 Main Street through at least 1865. Censuses through 1870 list Alonzo Rogers as a mariner, seaman, or master mariner, and some vital records term him Captain Alonzo Rogers. He is probably the man of that name who commanded the Orleans fishing schooner George Washington when it was struck off Race Point by an unidentified “large 1 The writer of the 1980 B Form deduced the materials and construction methods associated the house with a ca. 1790 construction date, although no documentary evidence was found at that time, 2 Kati Grenier, e-mail to authors, 23 April 2018, notes that all but one of the then-existing 94 volumes of Barnstable County land records were destroyed by fire in late October 1827, and that though many deeds were re-recorded, pre-1827 records remain incomplete. 3 Brewster Assessor’s Records, Brewster Town Hall Archives. The 1840s tax records are alphabetical and do not show addresses. Only the last of three volumes (P-Z) exist for 1841 and 1844; the earliest extant full tax record dates to 1845. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 3447 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 BRE.174 BRE.464 schooner in light trim” which failed to offer help to Rogers and his imperiled crew. As the George Washington and its haul of cod sunk, Rogers and his shipmates “took to their boat and reached Gloucester by day light.”4 The 1870 federal census lists Rogers as a seaman with $800 in real property and living at that time only with his wife Lydia.5 The 1880 census describes him as a farm laborer with “neuralgia on brain.” In 1882 Lydia Rogers had deeded the property to their son Orin, and the 1890 tax records for Brewster taxed Orin on the house, valued at $275, a barn worth $50, the 4-acre homestead parcel, and a half-acre cranberry bog; the total value of Rogers’s real estate is shown as $535.6 Lydia Hurd Rogers died in 1886 and Alonzo Rogers died in April 1896. Tax records for 1896 show him with a house valued at $275, a barn at $50, a 4-acre homestead lot, and a half-acre cranberry bog. Son Orin, who worked as a railroad conductor, dispatcher, and ticket agent and had lived in Boston since at least 1870, continued to own the house until 1899, when his wife sold it to Herbert F. Foster 2d of Brewster for $400.7 Born in Brewster in 1859, Herbert “Frank” Foster (whom records often label Herbert F. Foster 2d to distinguish him from another man with the same name who was living in Brewster at the same time) was the son of mariner Samuel F. Foster (1831-82) and his wife Malvina Myrick Foster. In 1884 he married Florence C. Cahoon, also a Brewster native, and for some time the family lived in the Boston suburb of Jamaica Plain. Town assessor’s records for 1896 show him as resident, but he owned only a horse and three acres at that time. By 1900, however, the couple had bought the Main Street property and lived there with their sons Edgar C. and Herbert E.; Frank Foster was then working as a farm laborer. The 1901 Cape Cod directory lists Foster as a bookkeeper working in Bridgewater and living on Main Street in East Brewster “near the railroad.” In August 1905 Foster bought the former East Brewster (No. 4) district school on Main Street, moved it to the property from its original location a short distance to the west, and converted to “an attractive grocery store,” according to the Barnstable Patriot. The 1910 census lists Foster as a retail grocer living here with his wife Florence and son Edgar, both of them working in the grocery store.8 Frank Foster ran the grocery and lived at the address until he died in January 1927. Tax records for 1926 credit him with a house assessed at $400, a barn at $50, the store at $600, the 4-acre homestead lot at $200, a half-acre cranberry bog at $50, and another 4-acre parcel. He also owned a horse, hens, and the store’s stock in trade, collectively valued at $800.9 His widow Florence Cahoon Foster lived in the household of Gilbert Ellis Sr. and worked as a housekeeper for him and his wife Lydia in 1930; in 1936 she conveyed her share in the house and store to her son Edgar and his wife Mertis L. Baker Foster, who was the daughter of Ezra H. and Susan Baker of Brewster; they married in 1913. The 1929 Cape Cod directory shows Edgar C. and Mertis Foster as grocers; Mertis was also the East Brewster postmistress from 1919 to 1957. She also developed a small group of stores around an old Coast Guard barracks in the center of East Brewster; by 1951 the store and post office had moved to this complex. By 1940 Florence Foster was living with sister-in-law Delia Morse on Main Street, and she died in 1959. By 1930 Edgar Foster appears to have given up the grocery and was working at a riding stable laborer. He and his wife had the income of three boarders, one of them store salesman Arthur Coakley, who continued to live with the couple in 1940. How long the Fosters’ grocery store continued in business is not yet known. In 1969 Mertis Foster sold the property to William M. Baxter and Allen J. Ward, who converted the grocery store into an antiques shop. The property was placed in trust in 1994, and Adailton F. and Rachel C. Figueiredo acquired it in 2014.10 4 Barnstable Patriot, 3 September 1850, 2. 5 The house is not shown on the 1880 Brewster map. In the March 1980 Massachusetts Historical Commission form for 3447 Main, Teresa Ellis has suggested that its absence from that map is due to the fact that the house is set far back from the north side of Main Street. 6 Alonzo Rogers to Seth Rogers, Orleans, 1 March 1855, BCD 58:424; Seth Rogers, Orleans, to Lydia C. Rogers, 3 January 1868, BCD 96:12; Lydia C. Rogers to Orin A. Rogers, Boston, 21 March 1882, BCD 151:33. 7 Lizzie L. Rogers, Somerville, to Herbert F. Foster 2d, 28 March 1899, BCD 238:227. 8 “East Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 21 August 1905, 2. Vital records document that the Fosters’ son Herbert Eugene died of drowning in July 1906. The other Herbert F. Foster was a house painter who lived on Herring Brook Road in the 1920s. 9 The 1926 tax records appear in the 1926 Annual Reports of the Town Officers of Brewster Massachusetts. In this year son Edgar seems to be shown as part- owner of the store, as he was taxed on stock in trade and a store valued at $350. He also owned his own house, the store’s two gas tanks, a 1-acre homestead lot, and a half-acre cranberry bog. 10 Mertis L. Foster to William M. Baxter and Allen J. Ward, 18 July 1969, BCD 1443:700; William M. Baxter and Allen J. Ward to William M. Baxter and Allen J. Ward, trustees Baxter & Ward Trust, 12 August 1994, BCD 9351:218; Albert F. Ford, Boston, trustee Baxter & Ward Trust, to Albert F. Ford, trustee Allen J. Ward Trust, 28 March 2013, BCD 27255:35; Albert F. Ford II, trustee Allen J. Ward Trust, to Adailton F. and Rachel C. Figueiredo, 3447 Main St, 28 June 2014, BCD 28305:57. The property is shown as Parcel One on “Plan of Land in Brewster, Mass. Made for Robinson Drake,” May 1964, BCP 188:7. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 3447 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 BRE.174 BRE.464 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 Assessor’s 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. PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018) Detail of historic core from south. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 3447 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 4 BRE.174 BRE.464 Store building from south. Screen capture from google.com/maps. Aerial view of property showing store and parking lot near highway at bottom of image and house and pool in upper left and garage/guest house upper right. Screen capture from google.com/maps.