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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): June 2018
Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number
126-23 Harwich BRE.470
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
East Brewster
Address:3873 Main Street
Historic Name: Oscar I. & Bessie A. Rogers House
Uses:Present: mixed residential & commercial use
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: 1892-96
Source:deeds, historic atlases
Style/Form: Classical Revival
Architect/Builder: unknown
Exterior Material:
Foundation: stone
Wall/Trim: wood shingles
Roof:asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
Barn (attached)
Major Alterations (with dates):
Window sash replaced
Condition:good
Moved: no yes Date:
Acreage:2.20 acres
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 3873 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
BRE.470
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 story-and-a-half wood frame dwelling has a cross-wing plan with gable roofs and a large barn connected to the rear. The
front-gable façade contains a large, one-story bay window with five sash units on the ground floor and two windows in the attic.
The gable is decorated with a substantial projecting cornice and frieze boards that wrap around on the eaves on the side walls.
Corners are distinguished by pilasters and the bay window is surmounted by a tall entablature. The entrance is located in the
front façade of the cross wing near its intersection with the front-gable section. It is balanced with a single window under a porch
that spans the front of the wing and wraps around on the west end where a bay window is visible. The east side of the house
contains three windows bays and a bay window positioned in the rear. A story-and-a-half barn with a front-gable façade just
behind the house echoes the form of the house. A vehicle door on the façade has been in-filled with a domestic doorway. One-
story cross-gable wings on both sides appear to be additions. The one on the east side is fronted by a porch and has a garage
door in the gable end. The westerly wing is connected to the rear of the house by a one-story hyphen containing an entrance.
The house is sited close to the westerly boundary of a square lot set back from the highway behind a deep yard. A driveway
enters the easterly side of the parcel now containing a parking area for the commercial use. There is a yard in the rear of the
house with the northerly and easterly edges of the property wooded.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
The house numbered 3873 Main Street is one of three on Main Street in East Brewster built on land owned by Samuel William
Doane Jr. (1840-1924) for his adult children. Doane, the son of Samuel W. and Bathsheba Clark Doane, was living in his
parents’ household in Harwich in 1850, but the family had moved to Brewster by 1855, and in 1860 Samuel W. Doane Sr. had
real property valued at $150 in Brewster. Samuel W. Jr. was then a 19-year-old mariner. In 1867 he married Bessie Anna
Eldredge, the daughter of Ebenezer and Elizabeth Dunlap Eldredge of Harwich, whose uncles, Abner and Christopher C.
Eldredge, also moved from Harwich to East Brewster. In 1871 Samuel W. Doane bought the former William Freeman
homestead on the north side of Main Street,1 and he set off parcels from his homestead and other land to his children—in 1891
to daughter Bessie Anna Doane Rogers (1867-1931), husband of Oscar I. Rogers, for whom the 3873 Main Street house was
built; in 1896 to son Herbert William (1874-1943) at 3771 Main Street (BRE.45); and in 1918 to youngest son Eugene Franklin
Doane (1885-1967), who built 3825 Main Street (BRE.469) and sold it in 1924 to his married sister Evelyn May Doane Ellis
(1882-1971).
Bessie Anna Doane Rogers was the oldest of Samuel and Bessie Doane’s four children, and at the end of 1891 her father sold
her an unspecified quantity of “tillage land” east of his homestead for $75.2 Two years earlier she had married Orleans farmer
Oscar I. Rogers, the son of John R. and Susan Rogers, who might have been working in East Brewster at the time.3 Local
assessors’ records for 1896 indicate that Oscar and Bessie Rogers had a dwelling taxed on a value of $400, a barn at $50, a
four-acre homestead lot and 18 acres of woodland. The 1900 census shows Oscar and Bessie Rogers living alone in a
household on this section of Main Street, and the 1905 and 1910 Barnstable County maps attach the name “O. Rogers” to the
house on this site.
The couple appears to have divorced by 1908, when Bessie Rogers, then living in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, deeded the 4-
acre homestead parcel and its buildings to Chatham attorney Heman A. Harding. The deed includes unusual language
suggesting at least acrimony related to the property: it describes the premises as the same parcel that was “conveyed by
Samuel W. Doane to Oscar I. Rogers December 30th, A.D. 1891, by a deed from which the name of Oscar I. Rogers was
1 Solomon Freeman to Samuel W. Doane, 19 May 1871, BCD 104:428; Caroline Freeman to Samuel W. Doane, 19 May 1871, BCD 104:427.
2 Samuel W. Doane to Bessie A. Rogers, 30 December 1891, BCD 214:387.
3 Two Barnstable Patriot articles, 15 January 1889, 3, and 5 February 1889, 3, notes that an Oscar Rogers was working for the widow Eunice Crosby when he
broke “some of his ribs” and had recovered sufficiently by the latter date to “assume his duties at Mrs. Eunice Crosby’s.”
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 3873 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
BRE.470
afterwards erased and in which in place thereof the name of Bessie A. Rogers was inserted wherever the name of Oscar I.
Rogers occurred by Alexander T. Newton, a Justice of the Peace who had no connection whatever with the original transaction
between Samuel W. Doane and Oscar I. Rogers.” By the time the deed was made Oscar Rogers was living in Chatham, and he
petitioned the state land court to establish legal title; the court decided in favor of Heman Harding.4 In December 1912 Harding
deeded roughly half of the 4-acre parcel to Oscar Rogers.5 Oscar may have lived at this address in 1920, when the census
enumerates him with his second wife Sarah just before Samuel W. Doane.
Though a deed or certificate of title attesting the transfer of the property has not yet been located, by 1929 cranberry grower
Alford Reed was probably occupying the house with his wife Grace. Born in Fowler, New York, in 1870, Reed was living in
Brewster and working as a shell fisherman by 1910. His household included his wife, also a New York native, and children Mac-
Minn, Earl, Vera, Grace, and Audra. By 1920 Reed was a farmer living somewhere on Main Street. In 1936 Reed transferred title
to 3873 Main Street to his wife, and he died in February 1939.6 The 1940 census shows his widow in the house with daughter
Grace, then working as a maid, and 16-year-old Audra.
Grace Reed died in Brewster in 1944, and title passed to her children. In 1946 they sold the house to Arthur E. and Beatrice C.
MacGregor, who owned the property for six years. Timothy Jon and Barbara Ann Struna acquired 3873 Main Street in 1987 and
have operated Struna Art Gallery in the house ever since.7
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.
4 Bessie A. Rogers, Gilmanton NH, to Heman A. Harding, Chatham, 26 February 1908, BCD 288:165; Oscar I. Rogers, Chatham, Decree of Registration, 3
December 1908, BC Land Court Certificate of Title 69.
5 Heman A. Harding to Oscar I. Rogers, 20 December 1912, Land Court Document 182-1, BC Certificate of Title 129.
6 Alford Reed to Grace N. Reed, 5 February 1936, BC Certificate of Title 3869.
7 Mac-Minn N. Reed, Albert E. Reed, Vera M. Johnson, Grace E. Dwyer, and Audra O. Young, all Orleans, to Arthur E. and Beatrice C. MacGregor, 18 July
1946, BC Certificate of Title 8247; Robert F. Arena, Hopkinton, to Timothy Jon Struna and Barbara Ann Struna, Montville OH, 30 November 1987, BC Certificate
of Title 113109. “Plan of Land in Brewster,” July 1907, BC Land Court Plan 2049-A shows the lot but no buildings.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 3873 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 3
BRE.470
PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018)
View from SW.
View from SE.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 3873 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 4
BRE.470
View from SE.