The URL can be used to link to this page

Home My Public Portal AboutMainSt_523Follow 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 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): April 2019 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 16-21-0 Harwich C, G BRE.4 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): West Brewster Address:523 Main Street Historic Name: Smalley-Baker House & Barn Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: ca. 1829 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Federal Architect/Builder: probably Anthony Smalley Exterior Material: Foundation: brick Wall/Trim: wood shingles Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: barn (1878) Major Alterations (with dates): window sash replaced barn enlarged & renovated for comm. use ca. 1969 Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:0.6 + 1.30 = 1.36 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 523 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 C, G BRE.4 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 Smalley-Baker House is a one-story wood frame single dwelling with a gable roof built ca. 1829. It has a traditional New England center-chimney plan and a five-bay front façade with a center entry and transom contained within a Neoclassical architrave. Windows contain twelve-over-six sash windows. A rear cross-gable kitchen ell may be original. The house is situated in the center of an irregularly shaped lot set back behind a large yard with a driveway running up the east side. The rear of the property borders on a bog. The barn occupies a separate, smaller parcel adjoining on the west with a parking area in front and the bog in the rear. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: In May 1829, Edmund Hall of West Brewster sold a parcel of more than six acres that had earlier belonged to the late Thomas Snow of Harwich to Anthony Smalley for $153.12.1 Smalley was a carpenter from Harwich, and he probably built the 523 Main Street house immediately after he bought the parcel: the 1830 Brewster census lists him in a household of five just before the household of Edmund Hall. Born in Harwich in 1798, Anthony Smalley was the son of Edward and Lydia Smalley, and in June 1823 he married Laura Ann D. Foster, the daughter of Nathan and Polly Foster, who lived nearby in West Brewster. Smalley and his family are enumerated next to Hall in the 1840 census, and through the 1840s he was active in local affairs; he was on the school committee, a one- term selectman, and overseer of the poor. The 1850 census lists him as a carpenter in a household with his wife Lauriann and their children Julia, Nathan F., and Albert B, born between 1829 and 1845. Smalley had acquired additional acreage from Snow heirs in 1837, and the 1850 agricultural census schedules credit him with 20 improved and 35 unimproved acres and modest quantities of both crops and livestock. Despite the farm, Smalley consistently identified himself as a carpenter in censuses. By 1870 he and his wife shared the house with son Albert, who had epilepsy and was categorized in the census as “idiotic,” and the elderly Edmund Hall, who had sold him the property, and Edmund’s wife Sukey Snow Hall. In June 1878 Smalley’s barn burned along with two tons of hay, his carriages and harness, and all of his farming tools; only a horse survived, though “in a somewhat singed condition,” according to the Barnstable Patriot. Smalley had built a new barn to replace the destroyed one by late September 1878 (at 509 Main St., now renovated for a dwelling).2 In December of the same year his wife Laura Ann died, and in December 1879 he himself died. In 1880 son Albert shared the house with farmer Marshall Chase and Chase’s wife Flora, and Albert died in June 1883. In 1888 Smalley’s son George and other heirs sold the house and an acre of land to Susan A. Baker, who owned the property for more than half a century. Baker was the daughter of Darius and Amelia Clark of Brewster and had married Dennis mariner Ezra A. Baker in 1881. The 1890 tax lists for Brewster credit her husband with the house, valued at $500, the barn (at $25), and a four-acre homestead. Ezra and Susan Baker are listed in this neighborhood in the 1900 census with their seven children— Ezra M., Susie R., Amelia K., Mertis L., Leroy L., Anna M., and Theron S.—all born between 1881 and 1898. Ezra Baker died in 1902, and his widow stayed on in the house with her adult daughters Susie, Amelia, and Mertis. All of them were working, Susan and daughters Susie and Mertis as household servants and Amelia as a milliner with her own shop. By 1920 only Susan, her married daughter Marion Hall, and her grandson Shirley F. Hall were living in the 509 Main Street house. By 1929 Susan Baker moved to Stony Brook Road and rented the Main Street house to her son Theron Stanley Baker, who was working as a chauffeur when he married Jennie Pearl Black of Brewster in 1919.3 By 1929 he was working as a caretaker, and the 1930 census lists him with his wife Jennie and daughters Olive, Emily, and Barbara in the Main Street house. By 1940 he 1 Edmund Hall to Anthony Smalley, 7 May 1829, BCD 8:225. 2 See “Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 11 June 1878, 2; “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 21 September 1878, 2. 3 Theron Baker’s 1918 draft registration card indicates that he was a chauffeur for Ernest Nickerson in Cotuit at that time. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 523 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 C, G BRE.4 had become a house carpenter, daughter Olive was a telephone operator, and wife Jennie and daughters Emily and Barbara were all doing domestic work. In 1942 Susan A. Baker transferred the title to her son Theron. In 1957, just before he died, Theron and his wife Jennie widow divided the property and sold the east part with its house to Guy W. and Louise W. Swallow of Melrose; after his death his widow sold the west part with the barn to John J. and Ann W. Sullivan of Boston. The Sullivans acquired the house and its lot from the Swallows in 1959, and the Sullivan family has owned the entire property since that transfer.4 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) Photo of house from 1986 B Form. 4 Theron S. and Jennie P. Baker to Guy W. and Louise W. Swallow, Melrose, 3 April 1957, BCD 972:185; Jennie P. Baker to John J. and Ann W. Sullivan, Boston, 15 October 1958, BCD 1019:485; Guy W. and Louise W. Swallow, Melrose, to John J. and Ann W. Sullivan, Boston, 26 February 1959, BCD 1051:155; John J. and Ann W. Sullivan to Ann W. Sullivan, 27 April 1933, BCD 6235:142; Ann W. Sullivan, Boston, to John J. Sullivan, Boston, and after his death to John W. and Hilary Ann Sullivan, Charlestown, 17 September 1991, BCD 7685:70; John W. Sullivan and Hilary S Hickcock, 523 Main Street, to John W. and Kathryn Sullivan, Ipswich, 25 July 2008, BCD 23135:135. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 523 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 C, G BRE.4 View of barn from SE. View of barn from west.