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HomeMy Public PortalAboutMainSt_3708Follow 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 Locus Map (north at top) Source: Mass GIS Oliver Parcel Viewer. Recorded by: Kathryn Grover & Neil Larson Organization: Brewster Historical Commission Date (month / year): June 2018 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 126-83 Harwich BRE.44 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): East Brewster Address:3708 Main Street Historic Name: Freeman-Knowles-Eldridge House Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: ca. 1793 Source:deeds, historic atlases, vital records Style/Form: Federal Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: brick Wall/Trim: wood clapboard, wood shingles Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: garage Major Alterations (with dates): Additions on west side & rear, mid-20th century Window sash replaced Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage: 1.80 acre 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 3708 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 BRE.44 Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION: Although the precise construction date has not been documented, this one-story, center-chimney-plan house has the form and decoration of Cape Cod traditional houses built at the turn of the 19th century. An intensive examination of its materials and construction methods is necessary to place the house in an architectural context. The plan seems to follow the pattern of two front rooms flanking the center chimney and entry in the front and a third room in the rear. It also appears to have been built with a cross-gable kitchen in the rear. The front façade contains a center entrance with an arched transom and unusual flanking paneled pilasters surmounted by grooved consoles. This latter feature as well as corner quoins and a dentil band running across the frieze probably are later additions. Fenestration on the gable ends reflect the presence of a finished bed chamber on each end, centered on the ridge line where there is the greatest height with two windows in the gable, and smaller spaces partitioned under the eaves, each with a small window. On the first story, windows at the fronts of the end walls are located in the front rooms, while those at the rear are contained in spaces to the sides of the rear room. The one-story kitchen ell was doubled in size and altered in the 20th century. Also, a one-story, hipped roof addition on the west end of the house was built in the late 20th century for a dentist’s office. The house is sited close to the highway frontage set back behind a small yard with mature trees and plantings. A parking lot is located on the west side of the house, created to provide access to the dentist’s office wing. On the east side, the house and yard are heavily screened by foliage from a road leading to a residential subdivision south of the house, built on farm land once associated with it. A large lawn extends back from the rear of the house where a driveway entering from the east terminates at a barn-like garage of recent construction. The extreme rear of the lot is wooded. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: In 1837 Elijah Knowles (1801-1882) mortgaged the house at 3708 Main Street to his brother-in-law, Solomon Freeman (1800- 1887), describing the property as “the entire farm or homestead which I lately purchased of said Solomon Freeman,”1 Freeman was a shipmaster, as well as a holder of local and state elective offices. Knowles, a blacksmith, was married to his sister, Abigail Freeman. It is likely that this homestead had belonged to their father, Solomon Freeman (1770-1820), a farmer, and built around the time he married Abigail Clark (1769-1851) in 1793. The 1840 census enumerates Elijah Knowles next to Seth Crosby, who is cited as an abutter in an 1842 deed. A native of Eastham, Knowles had lived in Orleans until about 1836; the first five of the couple’s six children were born in that town between 1827 and 1836; son Albert Francis was born in Brewster in 1839.2 Assessors’ records for 1845 show Elijah Knowles as owning a house (valued at $293), a barn and outbuildings, a blacksmith shop, his house lot, more than five acres in two parcels, livestock, and stock in trade. Two years later, however, Knowles was adjudged an insolvent debtor, and his financial difficulties forced him to convey the property back to Solomon Freeman in 1842. In September 1849 Solomon Freeman deeded the homestead property back to Elijah Knowles for $195.3 The 1850 census shows Knowles as a blacksmith with $1244 in real property in a household with his wife and six children—Jonathan Freeman (1827-56), who was mentally disabled; Elijah Edwin (1829-99), who was then at sea and became a master mariner; Solomon Freeman (1831-1905), a laborer; Henry (1834-93), also then at sea; Alpheus (1836-83), and Albert Francis, then ten years old.4 By 1855 Elijah E., Henry, and Albert were all mariners, and by 1860 the household included Elijah and Abigail, son Alpheus, who was farming with his father; Henry, a master mariner; and Albert, a mariner. In 1867 Elijah Knowles deeded his homestead to his son Albert and reserved for himself lifetime occupancy of the property.5 He and his wife are listed in this neighborhood in the 1880 census with Abigail Freeman Knowles’s sister Thankful Knowles Dalton 1 Elijah Knowles, blacksmith, to Solomon Freeman, master mariner, 14 April 1837, BCD 25:100 (mortgage deed). 2 The 1850 census lists residents’ towns of birth, which can be confirmed in vital records. 3 Barnstable Patriot, 5 May 1847, 3; Solomon Freeman to Elijah Knowles, 7 September 1849, BCD 79:18 4 See [Frederick Freeman], Freeman Genealogy, in Three Parts (Boston: Franklin Press/Rand, Avery and Co, 1875), 112, 188, 279. 5 Elijah Knowles to Albert F. Knowles, 10 June 1867, BCD 93:171. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 3708 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 BRE.44 (1798-1882) and a domestic servant. Elijah Knowles died in Brewster in January 1882, and 1890 tax records credit his estate with a house valued at $350, a barn at $100, a four-acre homestead lot, and 18 acres of pasture, woodland, and cranberry land. In 1891 Abigail Freeman Knowles died at the age of 87, and in January 1894 Elijah Knowles’s heirs sold the homestead to Abner Eldredge for $750.6 Born in Harwich in 1835, Abner Eldredge was the son of Jacob and Mercy Eldredge, and he married Reliance Bassett of Harwich in December 1858, the same day his brother Christopher C. married Matilda E. Cahoon on Brewster. Christopher Eldredge and his family were living in Brewster with his in-laws by 1860. In 1880 Abner was still in Harwich and working as a boot finisher; the couple’s son Abner L. was then 17 and driving an “order cart,” son Nathan Bassett was 15, and daughter Eliza was 13. The 1900 census shows the family in East Brewster. Abner Eldredge, his wife Reliance, and their adult children Abner L. and Eliza lived with a grandson, Judah Eldredge, probably in this house, while son Nathan B., who had married Christopher Eldredge’s daughter Grace, was in his own household enumerated just before his parents. In 1910 Abner and Reliance Bassett shared their household only with son Abner, by then working as a shell fisherman. Abner Eldredge died in 1919, and his son Nathan died four years earlier. In 1920 the households combined: widow Reliance Eldredge shared the house with adult children Abner and Eliza, her widowed daughter-in-law Grace Eldredge, and Grace’s seven children, ranging in age from 8 to 26. Abner L. Eldredge married his brother’s widow Grace in 1922, and Reliance Bassett Eldredge died in 1928. In 1930 Abner L. and Grace E. Eldredge lived in the house with five of her children; son Walter Stanley lived there with his wife Winnifred and son Walter Jr. and rented from his mother and uncle. By 1948 both Abner L. and Grace Eldredge had died, and Grace’s children and heirs sold the property to Robert W. and Norma R. Alsup, then living in Fall River.7 Born in Middletown, Ohio, in 1899, Robert W. Alsup work as a clerk, a mechanic, and by 1930 as an experimental engineer at an automobile factory in Flint, Michigan. By 1941 he was a methods engineer at AC Spark Plug in the same city. By 1942 he was living in Fall River when he married Norma M. Rumans, a stenographer from Flint. The Alsups owned 3708 Main until 1970. In 1974 Raymond T. and Peggy H. Escher bought the property, and Raymond and Mark K. Escher were the owners of record in 2018.8 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. 6 Elijah E. Knowles, Mary F. Knowles, Solomon F. Knowles, Mary J. Knowles, and Lizzie D. Knowles, heirs of Elijah Knowles, to Abner Eldridge, 6 January 1894, BCD 209:436. See also Barnstable Patriot, 17 January 1893, 2: “Mr. Abner Eldridge of East Harwich has purchased the homestead of the late Elijah Knowles of East Brewster.” Abigail Freeman Knowles’s death is noted in Barnstable Patriot, 10 November 1891, 3, which states that she had been a Unitarian for 30 years. 7 Earl M. Eldridge, Walter S. Eldridge, and Judah N. Eldridge, Orleans; Harold B. Eldridge and Reliance M. Baker, Brewster, and Grace E. Weber, Brockton to Robert W. and Norma R. Alsup, 11 June 1948, BCD 698:230; George E. Armeson, guardian of Mildred A., Clifton, Frances, and Allen Eldridge, to Robert W. and Norma R. Alsup, Flint MI, 1 July 1948, BCD 698:228. 8 Norma R. Alsup to Vernelle G. Hamilton, 5 October 1970, BCD 1486:725; Anna B. Wuskell to Raymond T. and Peggy H. Escher, 6 December 1974, BCD 2129:204; Raymond T. Escher to Raymond T. and Mary K. Escher, 19 February 1987, BCD 5571:124. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 3708 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 BRE.44 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018) View from SE. Detail of front (north) façade. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 3708 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 4 BRE.44 [Delete this page if no Criteria Statement is prepared] National Register of Historic Places Criteria Statement Form Check all that apply: Individually eligible Eligible only in a historic district Contributing to a potential historic district Potential historic district Criteria: A B C D Criteria Considerations: A B C D E F G Statement of Significance by_____Neil Larson___________________________________ The criteria that are checked in the above sections must be justified here. The Freeman – Knowles – Eldridge House appears eligible for the National Register under Criteria A & C as a significant example of a traditional Cape Cod center-chimney house constructed in the late 18th- century. In addition to its architectural distinction and intact physical condition, the house is historically significant for its association with the locally prominent Freeman family and as a landmark in Brewster’s evolving cultural landscape. Long-term owners in the Knowles and Eldridge families were engaged in agricultural and maritime occupations important in the town’s past.