The URL can be used to link to this page

Home My Public Portal AboutMainSt_392Follow 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 north Locus Map (north at top) Source: Mass GIS Oliver Parcel Viewer. Recorded by: Kathryn Grover & Neil Larson Organization: Brewster Historical Commission Date (month / year): April 2019 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 16-32-0 Harwich BRE.493 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): West Brewster Address:392 Main Street Historic Name: Henry W. & Nellie Ellis House Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: 1907 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Gothic Revival Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: brick Wall/Trim: wood shingles Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: barn Major Alterations (with dates): Window sash replaced Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:1.00 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 392 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 BRE.493 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 Henry W. and Nellie Ellis House is a story-and-a-half wood frame single dwelling built in 1907 with a cross-wing plan and cross-gable roof. The front gable contains three windows on the first story, the westerly one having been infilled with shingles, perhaps originally because the entrance is around the corner on the westerly side of the house in front of the recessed cross wing. Two windows are positioned in the front gable, and two windows are contained in the front of the wing. It is likely that some form of porch fronted all or part of the wing, if only to provide access to the side entrance. Evidence has been obscured by the addition of a new layer of shingles to the walls. There are two windows on the east side of the house, and a door flanked by windows, probably added, on the west end of the wing. The house is sited in the northwest corner of a one-acre parcel set back behind a front yard humping above the street. The rear of the parcel is wooded concealing the view of a barn behind the house. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: In May 1907, Brewster laborer and fisherman Henry Wallace Ellis bought two acres of land on the south side of the state highway for $35 from James W. Ellis of Duxbury, possibly a cousin. By the time Henry Ellis took out a mortgage on the property on 1 July 1907, buildings stood on the parcel, and a deed transferring a triangular parcel to him in June 1909 cites Ellis’s “homestead lot” as an abutting property.1 Born in Brewster or Yarmouth in 1866, Henry W. Ellis was one of the sons of Benjamin and Relief Cash Ellis. His father was a farmer and fisherman. In 1889 he married Nellie Baker Deane, a native of Dennis then living with her parents Judah and Helen Deane in West Brewster. Local tax records for 1890 list Henry Ellis with a modest quantity of livestock and an obscure notation in the column where assessors listed dwellings. In 1898 the Ellises had a son, Milfred Henry, and by 1900 they were renting in Yarmouth. By 1905 he and his wife were living in what the Barnstable Patriot called “the Alice Connolly homestead in Brewster, near the Dennis line,” which burned the morning before Christmas after the Ellises had left to spend the holidays in Duxbury.2 The 1910 census lists Henry W. Ellis in a house he owned with his wife Nellie, who worked as a mail carrier, and their son Milfred. By 1919 Milfred was working at the United States Coast Guard station at Chatham, and in April that year he married Lois Gertrude Clark, a native of Brockton then living in Brewster. Ten days after the marriage Milfred Ellis was transferred to the Coast Guard’s East Orleans station. The1920 Brewster census indicates that Henry and Nellie Ellis were not living in town at the time, though son Milfred, then a chauffeur living in a rented house with his wife Lois and their infant daughter Helen, may have occupied it then. But Nellie Deane Ellis died in Brewster in 1926, and by 1930 her widowed husband Henry was working as a carpenter and living in the house by himself. Son Milfred was a carpenter renting on Upper Road in 1930 with his wife, their four children, and a cousin. In May 1936 Henry Ellis deeded his homestead property to Milfred, and the 1940 census shows him in the household with his son’s family.3 Henry W. Ellis died at Taunton State Hospital in July 1947 at the age of 81. In 1954 son Milfred transferred the title to 392 Main Street to his wife Lois, and he died in 1959. She owned the property until she died, and in 1997 her executor sold the property to Debra S. Desmarais and Thomas B. Coyne of Orleans, the owners of record in 2019.4 1 James W. Ellis, Duxbury, to Henry W. Ellis, 11 May 1907, BCD 296:32; Henry W. Ellis to William Sears, 1 July 1907, BCD 291:496 (mortgage deed); Edmund F. Hall to Henry W. Ellis, 25 June 1909, BCD 295:283. 2 “Brief Locals,” Barnstable Patriot, 2 January 1905, 2. 3 Henry W. Ellis to Milfred H. Ellis, 26 May 1936, BCD 520:56. In 1919 he had transferred title to his wife (BCD 361:413), but it reverted to him at her death. 4 Milfred H. Ellis to Lois G. Ellis, 22 June 1954, BCD 878:73; Helen Dumont, executor estate Lois G. Ellis, West Harwich, to Debra S. Desmarais and Thomas B. Coyne, Orleans, 12 May 1997, BCD 10769:308. Henry Ellis’s death certificate may be found at BCD 9159:240. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 392 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 BRE.493 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. PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2019) View from NW.