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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): May 2019
Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number
26-59-0 Harwich C, G BRE.505
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
West Brewster
Address:716 Main Street
Historic Name: Nathan & Polly Foster House
Uses:Present: single-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: ca. 1845
Source:deeds, historic atlases
Style/Form: Greek Revival/cross-wing
Architect/Builder: unknown
Exterior Material:
Foundation: unknown
Wall/Trim: wood clapboards/wood
Roof:asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
barn (altered) or purpose-built store
garage
Major Alterations (with dates):
clapboard possible added
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 the19th and 20th centuries.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 716 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
C, G BRE.505
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 Nathan and Polly Foster House is a two-story wood frame single dwelling with a cross-wing plan and prominent front-gable
façade containing four windows on both floors, paneled corner pilasters, and a full pediment framing the gable with a triangular
window in the center. The entrance is located on the front of the cross wing where it intersects the main house. The façade of
the wing is flush with that of the main block, unusual in that such wings are typically recessed; the entrance is contained in a
gabled vestibule that likely is an addition. Two additional windows are located on the wing’s front spaced to leave the eastern
section blank. The west side wall contains two windows widely spaced on each floor, and a story-and-a-half cross-gable wing is
engaged to the rear with a second story created by added shed dormers. The narrow east end of the cross wing contains single
windows centered on each floor including the attic. A wing with a parallel gable roof has been added to the rear of the cross wing
as well.
The house is sited in the northwest corner of a long frontage set back from the highway behind an open yard. The west and rear
yards are dense with tree cover. East of the house is a large parking area in which a two-story commercial building and a one-
story two-car garage are located. The commercial building has the form of an English barn and may be one renovated for use as
a store.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
In January 1814, Brewster mariner Nathan Foster acquired the former homestead of Thomas Snow Jr. in this West Brewster
neighborhood for $859.46.1 The deed states John Dillingham and the widow Polly Snow among the abutters of the property, and
the 1820 census lists Nathan Foster in a six-person household between these two households. However, the extant house at
716 Main Street was not built until four decades later; evidently, this early house was lost for reasons as yet unknown. This
stylish house was built when Foster became affluent as a member of the Boston merchant firm Foster and Doane (active from at
least 1843 through at least 1851).
Born in 1780 and the son of John Foster (1741-1828) and Hannah Gould (1744-1832), Captain Nathan Foster married Polly
Dillingham, the daughter of John and Thankful Dillingham, by 1804. He was a master mariner working from the port of Boston
before becoming a commission merchant. Through the 1840s Boston and area newspapers regularly carried Foster and Doane
advertisements, offering agricultural commodities for sale and offering space in any number of Union Line vessels running
regularly between Philadelphia and Boston. Foster and his wife had three children—Laura Ann, Nathan Jr., and Polly
Dillingham—between 1804 and 1811. His 1820 household of six became a household of three by 1840, and in 1850 Foster was
a 72-year-old merchant living with only his wife Polly. The agricultural census schedules for 1850 list him with 100 acres, 60 of
them improved. By 1855 the 39-year-old Polly Dillingham had come to live with the elderly couple and was still there in 1860, by
which time Polly was working as a dressmaker and Nathan Foster had retired. He then owned 75 acres and is credited in the
census with $4,000 in real property and a $6,000 personal estate.
Nathan Foster died in January 1862 at the age of 81, and his wife died in December 1863. His will stipulated that his widow
retain use of the estate and that Polly Dillingham had the right to occupy at least half of the house as long as she was single and
chose to continue living with Polly Foster; if she chose to keep her own house Foster’s executors were directed to supply her
with whatever kitchen and dining utensils she wished to have. Among numerous other bequests Foster left to his son Nathan his
homestead—identified in the will as a house, a barn, outbuildings, cleared land, and meadow—another parcel of meadow, the
land on which his salt works stood, and $120 a year. The will stated further that if Nathan Foster Jr. “should not occupy his part
of my dwelling house and out buildings, he must not put any other family in the house unless it be perfectly agreeable, and by
the consent of Polly Dillingham whilst she shall occupy the same.” Exactly who Polly Dillingham was, and what immediately
1 John Dillingham, Harwich, administrator will Thomas Snow Jr, Harwich, to Nathan Foster, Brewster, 11 January 1814, Brewster Book 2 BCD
999012:255. In the early 1850s Foster sold the parcel on which 440 Main Street stands to Jonathan Foster, and the deed states the parcel is
bordered on the east by Nathan Foster’s own land.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 716 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
C, G BRE.505
became of her, is not clear, but she may have been the unmarried Polly Dillingham who died in Chelsea in 1904; her death
record identified her as the Brewster-born daughter of John and Reliance Dillingham.
By 1865, though his family is also still listed in Harwich, the state census shows that Nathan Foster Jr. had in fact moved to his
father’s West Brewster homestead. Born in 1807, he had worked as a merchant in Harwich for decades earlier. He married
Lydia Sears, daughter of Judah and Lydia Hale Sears, by 1833, and the couple had six children—Lydia S., Martha S., Polly D.,
Nathan, Judah E., and Persis F.2 By 1865 the four youngest children were still at home, and Nathan Jr. was working as a farmer.
The 1870 census credits Foster with $3,000 in real property and $35,000 in personal property, and by then only three children
were at home: Nathan III was a tin worker, Judah was doing farm work at home, and Persis was fifteen. By 1880 Nathan was
still farming, daughter Persis was a music teacher, and widowed daughter Martha Doane was also living at 716 Main Street.
Lydia Sears Foster died in 1888, and Nathan Foster died three years later. His 1890 will named daughter Persis his executor.
Persis, always unmarried, was a lifelong friend of Ella Sears, a native of Dennis whose father had died when she was nine years
old and whose mother, Thankful Hall Sears, was the daughter of Edmund and Thankful Hall of West Brewster. By 1883 Ella
Sears was superintending the knitting factory of Robbins and Everett in Brewster, where Persis worked, and by 1886 the women
had moved to New Bedford, where Ella Sears worked at St. Luke’s Hospital. By 1900 Sears was matron at Morton Hospital in
Taunton, and she often spent her vacations with Persis at the Foster homestead.3 When Nathan Foster Jr. died, he left haf of his
homestead to Persis and the other half in trust to Martha Foster Doane, and he stipulated, “It is also my will that my daughter the
said Persis S. Foster provide a home for her friend Ella Sears in my dwelling house during the life of the said Persis S. Foster,
and as long as the said Ella Sears shall remain single and unmarried.” When Ella Sears died in Taunton, she left Persis shares
in a Nebraska lumber company, her diamond ring, any other personal items she might want, and use of “my personal effects as
may be found in her house at West Brewster, Mass. as long as she occupies said house as her residence.” Sears’s will further
directed that if Persis sold or rented the 716 Main Street house of died, these assets were to be given to a niece. Everything that
remained after several other small legacies was to be held in trust for Persis Foster during her life and to be turned over to
Morton Hospital after Foster’s death.
Persis Foster owned and at least some of the time occupied 716 Main Street until 1912, when she sold the property to the
brothers Valentine Bernard Newcomb (1877-1948) and Ahira Percival Newcomb (1881-1966).4 The Yarmouth Register noted
that she “intends to start for California, where she will visit her sister, Mrs. Christopher Crowell, and may build there.”5 The 1910
map attaches her name to the West Brewster property, but in that year she was already shown as living with her sister, Polly
Foster Crowell, in Los Angeles. She died in that city in February 1915.
The Newcomb family owned 716 Main Street for 70 years. The 1920 census shows the brothers, both by then farmers, in
adjoining households with their families; which of them occupied 716 Main Street is not yet known. The brothers were sons of
Nathan Henry Newcomb (1854-1937)and Evelyn Phillips Newcomb (1857-1937) of Brewster and grandsons of fishing vessel
captain Valentine B. Newcomb (1829-82) and his wife Mary H. Kenney (1832-1920). In 1900 Valentine Necomb was a laborer
and Ahira, always called A. Percie, was a grocery salesman, and both lived with their parents in the home of their maternal
grandparents, Jonathan and Althena Phillips. A. Percie Newcomb married Sadie Freeman Clark in 1904, and Valentine married
Blanch King Tillson, a schoolteacher from South Carver, in 1908. A. Percie and Sarah Newcomb had two daughters, Dorothy
(1904-42) and Pauline Marie (born 1919), while Valentine Newcomb and his wife apparently had no children.
E. Percie Newcomb was elected Brewster town clerk in 1917, and by 1959 he had served 43 consecutive one-year terms in that
position. His election was uncontested in sixteen consecutive elections, from 1949 to 1965. He also served as town treasurer
and now and then as tax collector, and by 1930 he and his brother, who had earlier been a cranberry grower, were asparagus
farmers.6 By 1934, according to a New Bedford newspaper, 275 acres of land in Brewster, Eastham, and Orleans had been
2 Simeon L. Deyo, History of Barnstable County, Mass. (New York: H. W. Blake Co., 1890), 917, states that Nathan Foster Jr. lived in Harwich
for 40 years and then owned and occupied his father’s Brewster homestead.
3 See, for example, Barnstable Patriot, 22 July 1879, 2; 24 April 183, 3; 3 August 1888, 3; 17 July 1888, 3; 23 April 1889, 3; 8 October 1889, 3;
Hyannis Patriot, 27 March 1894, 3; and Yarmouth Register, 8 July 1882, 1; 14 October 1882, 1; 22 September 1900, 5.
4 Persis S. Foster to Valentine B. Newcomb and Ahira P. Newcomb, 18 September 1912, BCD 317:222.
5 “Twenty-Five Years Ago,” Yarmouth Register, 29 October 1937, 5.
6 On Newcomb as clerk see Boston Daily Record, 3 March 1959, 8; Boston Globe, 2 March 1965, 10, and “Brewster Re-elects Newcomb,”
Boston Herald, 2 march 1965.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 716 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
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devoted to asparagus, a crop expected to realize between $30,000 and $40,000 after harvest that year; “in the Brewster, area,
which developed fast,” A. Percie Newcomb was identified as one of town’s four growers.7 Daughter Dorothy was a commercial
artist in the 1930s and died in 1942; daughter Pauline married Thomas F. Hooper in 1943. The Newcomb brothers also owned
Brewster’s early grist mill and refused all offers on it because they wished it to be preserved for the public; in 1941 the town and
private donors raised funds to repair the building and restore its waterpower.8
Blanche Tillson Newcomb died in 1947, her widowed husband Valentine died in 1948, and E. Percie and Sarah Newcomb lived
at 716 Main Street until their deaths, Percie in 1966 and Sarah in 1978. The only survivor of the two families was Pauline Marie
Newcomb Hooper Harnar, who was living in Alexandria, Virginia in 1982. In that year she sold the property to Joseph T.
O’Connor and William J. O’Neil. The property changed hands relatively often afterwards. It was owned in 2019 by Oor Hame
LLC, which had acquired it in 2016.9
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.
7 “Asparagus Season Opens,” Yarmouth Register, 19 May 1934, 3, from the New Bedford Standard-Times.
8 “Story of Mill Stream Traced to Indian Days,” Yarmouth Register, 4 April 1941, 3.
9 Pauline Newcomb Hooper Harnar to Joseph T. O’Connor and William J. O’Neil, 23 September 1982, BCD 3566:53; Wind Reef Inc., 15
Breakwater Road, to Oor Hame LLC, 716 Main Street, 9 November 2016, BCD 30075:312. See also “Plan of Land in Brewster, Massachusetts
for Pauling Hooper Harnar,” 16 August 1982, BCP 367:27.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 716 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 4
C, G BRE.505
PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2019)
View from west.
View of outbuildings from NW.