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HomeMy Public PortalAboutOldLongPondRd_236Follow 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 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.