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HomeMy Public PortalAboutMainSt_440Follow 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 NW. 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 16-28-0 Harwich BRE.497 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): West Brewster Address:440 Main Street Historic Name: Snow-Hall House George B. Watts Restaurant Uses:Present: restaurant Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: ca. 1800; ca. 1926 Source:vital statistics, architectural evidence Style/Form: Federal Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: stone Wall/Trim: wood shingles Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: cottage, early 20th century Major Alterations (with dates): restaurant wing added, ca. 1926 dormers added, early 20th century window sash replaced Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:0.86 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 440 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 BRE.497 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 Snow-Hall House, built around the turn of the 19th century, is a story-and-a-half wood frame single dwelling (now a restaurant) with a gable roof, central chimney, and kitchen wing. The extant exterior form and detail of the house contradicts prior attributions that it was constructed in the mid-1700s; a more intensive investigation of the house is needed to make a more precise determination. The front façade of the main section has been altered to contain only two windows, one of them an oriel with a plate-glass display window; the expected doorway has been removed. An entrance was later added to the west gable end, positioned in the center between two windows on a deck accessed by stairs and a ramp. A story-and-a-half wing is appended to the east end of the house recessed back from the main façade. Except for a single window in the east gable end, its fenestration has been concealed on all sides by a large one-story addition. The cross-gable roof of what looks to be a wing added before the expansive one is visible behind the original wing. A string of windows, four each on the sides of a center entrance, distinguish the front of the restaurant addition. Four more windows are contained in the east end, and a balustrade runs above the eaves of the low gable roof. Low shed dormers have been added to the fronts of the house and wing; a series of wings have grown out of the rear sections of the building. The building is centered on its parcel, set back from the highway behind a parking lot, which covers the area on the west side of the frontage as well. A small, one-story cottage, built in the early 20th century, occupies the space east of the restaurant building. The remaining property behind the buildings is forested. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: The earliest extant record of this house is an 11 January 1814 deed from the administrator of the will of Thomas Snow Jr. to Nathan Foster of Brewster for “the whole of the homestead of the deceased” with its buildings, except for the west part of the orchard which was left to Snow’s widow, identified in the deed as Polly. Not a great deal is known about Thomas Snow Jr., except that he was probably the son of Thomas Snow whose West Brewster homestead was acquired at auction after his death by Edmund Hall in 1821. Thomas Snow Jr. had married Mrs. Polly Hopkins in Brewster in 1810, and he prepared a will in March 1812 leaving his estate to his wife Polly and some household items to his granddaughter, Sara Snow Hopkins. His homestead property was valued at $1150, and Foster acquired it for $859.46.1 His age is nowhere offered, but the 1798 federal direct tax records for Harwich list a Thomas Snow Jr. with a house and 30 acres of land amid many other families bearing the surnames of Snow and Sears. It is possible that he was the same Thomas Snow Jr. who married Rebecca Snow in Harwich in 1752 and Hannah Lincoln in Harwich in 1760 and that Polly was his third wife. It is also possible that this Thomas Snow Jr. was an ancestor in a line of Thomases; numerous Harwich men bore this name at this time. In March 1856 master mariner Jonathan Foster and his second wife Polly Sears Kelley Foster sold a house, outbuildings, and 80 square rods of land to Samuel S. Hall for $600. This parcel bordered land owned by Nathan Foster, from whom Jonathan had acquired undeveloped land in 1853. Polly was the daughter of Nathaniel and Hitty Ellis Sears of Dennis and Brewster and may have been related to Samuel Hall’s wife Thankful Snow Sears, whom he married in 1848; her parents, Constant and Deborah Hopkins Sears, lived in this West Brewster neighborhood as well. Later Brewster maps indicate that the 440 Main Street house belonged to Samuel Hall, and the 1856 deed is the first to him that involved a parcel with buildings.2 Born about 1825 in Brewster, Samuel S. Hall was the eldest son of Edmund Hall (1799-1882) and Sukey Snow Hall (1798- 1878), who lived between Quivett Creek and the north side of Main Street in West Brewster. The 1858 map of West Brewster attaches the name S. S. Hall to this house, which stands just west of the Nathan Foster homestead. Hall and his family might have lived here as early as 1850, if not from the time of their marriage, as the censuses of 1850 and 1855 list them in this neighborhood. By 1860 Samuel Hall had become a shoemaker and is listed in the census with $640 in real property. Between 1 John Dillingham, Harwich, administrator will Thomas Snow Jr., , to Nathan Foster, Brewster, 11 January 1814, Brewster town book 2, BCD 999012:255. 2 Jonathan and Polly Foster to Samuel S. Hall, 14 March 1856, BCD 82:19. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 440 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 BRE.497 1850 and 1859 he and his wife had five children—Helen A., Thomas S., Samuel C., Charles E., and Frederick. By 1870 Hall was a salt manufacturer with $3,000 in real property and $2000 in personal property. The couple by then had three more children, Susie D., Elisha, and James C. Eldest child Helen was then working as a tailor in 1870. Samuel Hall died of “malarial fever” in April 1878, when he was 53 years old. His will, executed the day before he died, left $1000 each to his daughters Helen and Susie and $150 each to his four eldest sons; the two youngest sons, Elisha and James, were to receive the same amount when they came of age. His wife was left the rest of Hall’s estate, and the 1880 census lists here in the house with the three youngest children, Susie, Elisha, and James. In 1900 the widow Thankful Hall and her daughter Susie were alone in the household and enumerated between the households of her brother-in-law Edmund F. (“Frank”) Hall and her son Charles E. Hall (1856-1926), who had bought the homestead of her father-in-law Edmund Hall in 1883.3 Thankful Sears Hall died in 1905, and her will left the homestead and its furnishings and a 3-acre woodlot to daughter Susie. The 1920 census shows her alone in the 440 Main Street house, and in 1926 she sold the property to George B. and Ella F. Watts of Swampscott.4 She apparently moved to Rockland, Massachusetts, where she was living in 1935, and then boarded in Dennis in 1940; she died in 1943. New owner George Bechford Watts was born in Lynn in 1858 and was working as a shoe shop stock fitter and living in Swampscott 1880. He married Danvers native Ella Frances Chick in 1886, and by 1910 Watts had opened a restaurant in Swampscott, probably with his son-in-law William H. Wheeler, who had married the Watts’s daughter Gertrude in 1904. The 1910 census lists George Watts as the restaurant’s proprietor, wife Ella and daughter Gertrude as waitresses, and son-in-law William Wheeler as cook. The restaurant was known as Watts’ Café by 1910, and it was still operating in 1920. Watts bought 440 Main Street in early October 1926 and moved his restaurant to this location. Two months later his wife Ella died in Brewster. He, his daughter and son-in-law, and their daughter Geraldine kept up the restaurant during the summer: the 1930 census shows Watts as a restaurant owner, William Wheeler as the chef, daughter Gertrude as the manager, and granddaughter Geraldine as assistant manager. George Watts died in Brewster in December 1934, and five years later his daughter sold the property to John A. and Genevieve C. Rogers of Clearwater, Florida, who owned it for the next 26 years and subdivided the parcel in 1959.5 The family of Norman M. and Doris S. Schepps of Nutley, New Jersey, owned 440 Main Street from 1971 to 2011, when Doris Schepps sold it to Yingzhao Lui of Natick; he was owner of record in 2019.6 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. 3 See Barnstable Patriot, 24 April 1883, 2. 4 Susie D. Hall to George B. and Ella F. Watts, Swampscott, 2 October 1926, BCD 395:556. James C. Hall, Springfield, to Susie D. Hall, 2 October 1926, BCD 440:222, transferred her brother’s interest in the property to her, and in 1883 all of the Hall children had transferred their interest in their father’s estate to their mother; see BCD 278:290. 5 Gertrude E. Wheeler to John A. and Genevieve C. Rogers, Clearwater FL, 19 October 1939, BCD 558:580. Watts’s obituary appeared in Boston Herald, 30 December 1934, 15, and “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 5 January 1935. 6 Joseph T. O’Connor and William J. O’Neil to Norman M. and Doris S. Schepps, Nutley NJ, 1 December 1971, BCD 1565:273; Norman M. and Doris S. Schepps to Norman M. Schepps, trustee Brewster Real Estate Trust, Wellfleet, 17 December 1981, BCD 3425:322; Doris Schepps, Palm Beach FL, trustee Brewster Real Estate Trust, to Yingzhao Liu, Natick, 13 April 2011, BCD 25385:203. The 440 Main St property is depicted on “Land in Brewster Subdivision Plan for Genevieve C. Rogers,” November 1959, BCP 152:13. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 440 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 BRE.497 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 NE. View of cottage from NE.