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Home My Public Portal AboutMainSt_3966Follow 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 NE. 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 138-64 Harwich BRE.472 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): East Brewster Address:3966 Main Street Historic Name: Herbert W. & Danena Doane Cottage Uses:Present: commercial Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: ca. 1905 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Craftsman Architect/Builder: Edward E. Vesper, probable builder Exterior Material: Foundation: stone Wall/Trim: wood shingles Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: none Major Alterations (with dates): Window sash replaced Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage: 1.22 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 3966 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 BRE.472 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 one-story wood frame house was built ca. 1905 with a broad hipped roof covering a center-hall plan and a veranda on the front and sides tucked under the house roof. The center entrance is flanked by two windows on one side and a single window on the other. A single shed-roof dormer is positioned above the doorway; similar dormers are located on the sides. The veranda is fronted by square posts with a low railing. The porch extends about halfway along the side walls and abuts an enclosure the depth of the porch on the east side and a hipped-roof wing on the west. The roof spans over a deep extension of the plan in the rear. The house is situated in the center of a wide, shallow lot set back on the front and west side behind sizeable yards and a parking lot on the east side; the building is tight on the south boundary, beyond which is wetland. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: In October 1906, Herbert William Doane, who had only recently built a house at 3771 Main Street (BRE.45) in East Brewster, bought a house, an outbuilding, and 14 acres of land on the south side of Main Street in East Brewster from Mary E. Vesper.1 Vesper’s husband Edward, a Vermont-born carpenter, bought the property in 1901 from the partitioned estate of farmer William M. Lee (1813-95), whose house is shown near the site of 3966 Main Street on the 1880 Barnstable County map.2 The deed to Vesper does not mention buildings, but when he sold the property to Doane a house and another building stood on the tract. Vesper had been in East Brewster since at least 1898, when he built a cottage for Henry K. Cummings “at the beach,” but by 1910 he and his family had moved to Claremont, New Hampshire, where he worked as a market gardener.3 Herbert W. Doane (1874-1943), the son of East Brewster farmer Samuel William Doane Jr. and Bessie Anna Eldredge Doane, had probably moved to Watertown, Massachusetts, by 1900 (though he has not been located in the 1900 census), and he was certainly running a store in that city by December 1901, when he married Lena Campbell, a laundress from Cape Breton Island who had come to the United States in 1896. Directories from 1903 to 1910 show Doane as a retail grocer on 46 North Beacon Street in Watertown, while the 1912 Watertown directory notes that he had “removed to East Brewster.” Though census records often show Doane’s wife as Lena, the record of her birth, from Inverness on Cape Breton Island, gives her name as Danena Campbell. She was born in 1879, and she is listed as Lena Campbell on the list of passengers on a steamship from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, to Boston in late 1896. In 1900 she was boarding in the Watertown household of laundry salesman Wilbur C. Chase on 67 North Beacon Street, not far from Doane’s grocery store. The 1920 census lists Herbert W. Doane as a farmer in East Brewster living with his wife and a boarder, Lillian Gertrude Rowell, born in Salem in 1901. Her mother Martha Groce Rowell had died in 1908, and at some point after 1910 Lillian came to live with the Doanes. She is cited as a Doane’s foster daughter in the 1940 census. The Doanes owned a summer house at 3771 Main Street and must have rented this house to others. Local historians state that he ran his Windy Hill Farm Stand at this site. A postcard view of the stand, published by H. A. Dickerman and Son of Taunton (active 1907-36), notes on the reverse that the stand offered vegetables in season, eggs, and milk “all raised on our farm.” The 1930 census indicates that Lillian Gertrude Rowell, Doane’s foster daughter, handled sales at the roadside stand.4 In October 1944, after Herbert Doane’s death, his widow Danena and Gertrude Rowell sold the 14-acre tract to Leonard and Ethel M. Walsh of Assonet but reserved to themselves “the right to use and operate the roadside stand within the area enclosed and surrounded by a fence at the extreme northwest corner” of the property.5 The Walshes sold the property two years later to a 1 Mary E. Vesper to Herbert W. Doane, Watertown, 3 October 1906, BCD 619:183. 2 Henry M. Percival to Edward E. Vesper, 14 May 1901, BCD 248:540. William M. Lee bought at least part of his homestead property in 1872; see Joseph Atwood, Orleans, to William M. Lee, 9 April 1872, BCD 118:30. 3 See Barnstable Patriot, 21 November 1898, 4. 4 Metropostcard.com, which includes a list of postcard publishers and their active dates, offers the information on Dickerman’s company. 5 Danena Doane and Gertrude Rowell to Leonard and Ethel M. Walsh, Assonet, 9 October 1944, BCD 619:276. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 3966 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 BRE.472 group called Cape Cod Enterprises, whose treasurer was William Winslow Dunnells. Born in Andover in 1903, Dunnells was the son of George C. Dunnells and his wife Sadie E. Winslow Dunnells, a daughter of J. Howard and Emma Harden Winslow of Brewster. The Dunnells family summered at least part of the time in Brewster since the turn of the century.6 W. Winslow Dunnells lived most of the year in Andover and worked at various times as a printer, a janitor at Phillips Andover Academy, and a machinist. Cape Cod Enterprises sold 3966 Main Street in 1963, and the property changed hands five times by late 1986, when Margaret I. Cornwall sold it to Jeffrey J. and Eileen A. Smith. The Smiths sold 3966 Main Street to Handcraft LLC of Orleans, and it has since been operated as Handcraft House, an art and craft gallery.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. Postcard view of Doane farm stand (not extant). 6 See, for example, Barnstable Patriot, 8 April 1901, 3; 6 March 1905, 4; 30 August 1920, 6; Sandwich Observer, 8 August 1911, 3; and Hyannis Patriot, 23 April 1923, 2, and 19 August 1926, 6. 7 Leonard and Ethel M. Walsh, Assonet, to Cape Cod Enterprises, 13 August 1946, BCD 657:271; Cape Cod Enterprises to Donald and Helen C. MacGregor, 27 May 1963, BCD 1209:129; Margaret I. Cornwall, Sears Point Brewster, to Jeffrey J. and Eileen A. Smith, Stoney Brook Road, Brewster, 10 December 1986, BCD 5447:57; Jeffry J. and Lileen A. Smith, Orleans, to Handcraft LLC, Orleans, 1 August 2016, BCD 29833:158. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 3966 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 BRE.472 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018) View from NW. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 3966 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 4 BRE.472 View from SE.