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FORM B BUILDING
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION
MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD
BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Photograph
View from SE.
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
93-22-0 Harwich BRE.158
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
South Brewster
Address:236 Old Long Pond Road
Historic Name: Small-Eldridge House & Barn
Uses:Present: single-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: ca. 1820 – ca. 1850
Source:deeds, historic atlases
Style/Form: Greek Revival/ 2/3 Cape
Architect/Builder: Moses Swan, possible builder
Exterior Material:
Foundation: brick
Wall/Trim: wood & asphalt shingles
Roof:asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
none
Major Alterations (with dates):
none
Condition:good
Moved: no yes Date:
Acreage:2.00 acres
Setting: The house is situated in a dense residential area
characterized by summer cottages and retirement homes
built in the 19th and 20th centuries.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 236 OLD LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
BRE.158
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 Small-Eldridge House, built ca. 1820, is a one-story wood frame single dwelling of the two-thirds cape type with connected
outbuildings and barn probably added ca. 1850. The front façade faces south and contains an entrance with transom on the
west side offset by two windows. It is framed by wide corner boards and a pronounced frieze board below the eave and above
the windows. These features reflect the Greek Revival style suggesting a later construction date than the property record
indicates. The house has a center-chimney plan with a kitchen in the rear. The series of connected outbuildings appear to have
been added around 1850 when the title was transferred from the Small to the Eldridge family. A long one-story ell attached to the
rear of the house contains a kitchen and work rooms; the east façade contains an entrance on a porch tucked under the roof. A
short hyphen links the backhouse to a story-and-a-half barn with a gable façade oriented perpendicular to the connectors and
containing a wagon door offset by two windows. Bolder Greek Revival trim distinguish the façade and eaves. A one-story wing
has been added to the northwest corner of the barn and a brick fireplace and chimney is engaged to the west wall of the hyphen.
The house and barn complex is situated in the center of a two-acre parcel with small yards on all sides; the rest of the property is
wooded. A driveway enters the property from Old Long Pond Road and terminates at a sandy area in front of the barn.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
In December 1817 Eli Small of Harwich sold his son Moses (1797-1849) a tract of land with buildings on it bordering Long and
Greenland Ponds, the Chatham Road, and land owned by Moses’s cousins James and Thomas Small for $750. Moses Small
was a housewright, and in 1819 he married a woman named Ruah, possibly also a Small. He is not, however, listed in the 1820
Brewster census and may have been living with his wife in his parents’ Harwich household. The 1830 census does list Moses
Small with four persons in his household in Brewster between the households of James Small and Levi Cahoon, both living in
this South Brewster neighborhood. It seems probable that Moses Small built the 236 Old Long Pond Road for himself and his
family between 1820 and 1821, as both of the couple’s children—George P., born in 1821, and Louisa, born in 1825—were born
in Brewster. Moreover, two deeds from 1823 make clear that Small was already in Brewster. 1
Ruah Small died in 1837, and in the same year Moses Small married the widow Mary Lincoln. The couple was living in another
part of Brewster in 1840, and in February 1849 Moses Small died of consumption. His will left everything to his second wife
Mary, and in April 1850 she sold her husband’s 10-acre “homestead lot” to Jacob Eldridge Jr. (1825-1913), who had married
Mary A. Small in 1849; she was Moses Small’s niece, the daughter of his older brother Eli Small Jr. (1807-67).
Born in Harwich, Jacob Eldridge Jr. was the son of Jacob and Mercy Chase Eldridge, and he and his sons Elisha F. (born 1851)
and Jacob Andrew (or J. Andrew, 1865-1948) owned and occupied the house, as well as those at 177 and 231 Old Long Pond
Road, for many decades. In 1850 the couple was living in the Harwich household of Eldridge’s parents, but by 1855 they are
listed in this neighborhood with sons Elisha and George F. Eldridge. Jacob Eldridge Jr. was a mariner or fisherman. In 1860 the
census credits Eldridge with $700 in real property. By 1880 sons Elisha and George had moved out of the household, and Jacob
and Mary Eldridge lived at 236 Old Long Pond Road with son Andrew J., a 14-year-old fisherman.
Jacob Eldridge died in 1913, and in 1922 his son Elisha deeded the house and 9 acres to his brother J. Andrew Eldridge. The
deed states that the parcel was “a large part of the land conveyed to our father Jacob Eldridge by deed of Mary Small” in 1850.
J. Andrew Eldridge had married Maria Bassett of Brewster in 1891 and had been living at 177 Old Long Pond Road. Whether
they actually moved to 236 Old Long Pond Road is unclear, but the couple owned the property until shortly after J. Andrew
1 Eli Small, Harwich to Moses Small, Harwich, 11 December 1817, BCD 999011:273. Eldredge Small to Moses Small, 28 April 1823, BCD
999012:183, transferred three parcels of more than four acres and a blacksmith shop and half a barn near the house of Moses’s older brother
Eldridge Small to him and cited Moses’s land as an abutter to one parcel; Jonathan F. Bangs, merchant, for himself and Mary Bangs and heirs
of late Benjamin Bangs of Harwich, to Moses Small, 22 March 1823, BCD 999012:182, transferred four acres abutting both Eldridge Small and
Moses Small’s orchard. See also Eli Small, Harwich, to Moses Small, 29 March 1825, BCD 2:117 and 2:118.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 236 OLD LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
BRE.158
Eldridge’s death in 1948. In August 1949 his widow Maria (or Mary) deeded 236 Old Long Pond Road to the couple’s son Curtis
C. Eldridge, born in 1893. In 1914 Curtis Eldridge took over the North Brewster grocery business of Franklin B. Crocker, and two
years later he married Edna C. Whitten of Brewster. The Curtis Eldridge family did not occupy 236 Old Long Pond Road and
sold it three years later, in 1952, to Jean E. Leek and Etta Leek, both of Weston.2 Jean E. Leek was the daughter of the Rev.
Claude Albert Butterfield and his first wife Nettie Maude Howells; her father and his second wife, Mildred Moore Butterfield,
acquired 156-58 Old Long Pond Road in the same year. In 1938 in Newton Jean E. Butterfield married Jacques Leek (1913-60),
who had emigrated with is parents and siblings from Holland in 1915 and was by then a supervisor of ice cream stores for
Brigham’s, founded in Newton in 1914. By the time of his death, which took place while he addressed a convention of the Retail
Confectioners Association in Philadelphia, Leek was vice president of Brigham’s and president of the New England
Confectioners Association.3 Etta Leek was Jacques Leek’s sister.
In 1960, after Jacques Leek’s death, his widow and sister sold 236 Old Long Pond Road to Andrew and Katherine S. Meyer of
Rockville, Maryland, who owned it until 1981, when they sold it to William B. and Maria I. Lyman. The William B. Lyman estate
sold 236 Old Long Pond Road in June 2018 to Walter Stephen Fyler Jr. of South Orleans.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.
2 Curtis C. Eldridge to Jean E. Leek and Etta Leek, both Weston, 20 August 1952, BCD 884:309.
3 “Jacques Leek Services Set for Tomorrow,” Boston Herald, 6 January 1960, 28; “Brigham’s Official Dies Addressing Convention,” Boston
Globe, 5 January 1960, 41.
4 Jean E. Leek and Etta Leek, Sherborn, to Andrew G. and Katherine S. Meyer, Rockville MD, 26 August 1960, BCD 1087:567; Jean E. Leek
and Etta Leek, Sherborn, to Andrew G. and Katherine S. Meyer, Rockville MD, 26 August 1960, BCD 1087:567; William B. Lyman, 236 Old
Long Pond Road, and Maria I. Lyman, Harwich, to William B. Lyman, 31 January 1985, BCD 4403:215; Joanne N. Amerault, individually and
as representative of estate William B. Lyman, North Eastham, to Walter Stephen Fyler Jr., South Orleans, 21 June 2018, BCD 31355:292.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 236 OLD LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 3
BRE.158
PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018)
View from SW.
View from SE.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 236 OLD LONG POND ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 4
BRE.158
[Delete this page if no Criteria Statement is prepared]
National Register of Historic Places Criteria Statement Form
Check all that apply:
Individually eligible Eligible only in a historic district
Contributing to a potential historic district Potential historic district
Criteria: A B C D
Criteria Considerations: A B C D E F G
Statement of Significance by_____Neil Larson___________________________________
The criteria that are checked in the above sections must be justified here.
The Small – Eldridge House & Barn, built between ca. 1820 and ca. 1850 appears individually eligible for the
National Register under criteria a and C as an intact and distinctive example of a farmstead with connected house,
barn and outbuildings. The house likely was built by its first owner, Moses Small (1797-1849) in ca. 1820, and it
represents a significant example of the Two-Thirds Cape type, a common middling dwelling the town in the 18th
and early 19th centuries. The barn and outbuildings served both in farm and fishing functions for the families.
Moses Small was the son of Eli and Elizabeth Small of Harwich who in 1817 sold him a tract of land bordering
Long and Greenland Ponds, the Chatham Road for $750. Moses Small was a housewright and had built the
house by 1821 when his and his wife Ruah’s first child was born in Brewster in 1821. The 1830 census is the first
to enumerate the family in the neighborhood. In 1850 the ten-acre “homestead lot” was conveyed to Jacob
Eldridge Jr. (1825-1913), a fisherman, who had married Mary A. Small, Moses Small’s niece, in 1849. Eldridge
grew up in the neighborhood in a large family group. The family owned the house until 1952.