Loading...
HomeMy Public PortalAboutOldNorthRd_30Follow 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 SW. 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 68-118-0 Harwich B, G, I BRE.133 NRHD (02/23/1996); LHD (05/01/1973) Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): Brewster Center Address: 30 Old North Road Historic Name: Mayo-Dickerson House Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: 1823 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Cape Cod/half cape Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: stone Wall/Trim: wood shingles/wood Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: garage (attached) Major Alterations (with dates): casement window added west side garage added, ca. 1960, overhead door added Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:1.22 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 30 OLD NORTH ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 B, G, I BRE.133 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 Mayo-Dickerson House, built in 1823, is a story-and-a-half wood frame single dwelling with a saltbox gable roof. The three- bay front façade contains an off-center entrance and two windows. A stair is located inside the entrance and runs up the west side wall, which contains a single window in the space behind; two attic windows are positioned in the gable. A brick chimney is located between the two rooms on the east side of the house. A picture window has been added to the back wall of the saltbox where a standard window also is located. A wing with a saltbox gable roof is engaged to the rear northeast corner of the house and may represent an earlier house cited in the 1823 deed (see below). The north wall of this section is decorated with a blind arcade; its east wall contains a bank of four windows and a door added more recently. A utility building or garage was constructed off the southeast corner of the house sometime after 1948. The house is situated in the southeast corner of a sizeable lot bordered on its west and north sides by Old North Road. The open lot is maintained as lawn. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: The house at 30 Old North Road was apparently built in 1823 by Freeman Mayo (1789-1854), the second son of housewright Thomas Mayo (1753-1825) and his first wife Hannah Atwood Mayo (1763-1803). In mid-December 1823, Thomas Mayo sold to son Freeman for ten dollars “the land on which he has built the west part of the dwelling house adjoining and connected with mine; with privileges of all the avenues leading thereto, and a free passage around the part which he has erected; with the privilege of passing to and from an outbuilding at the northeast part of my said dwelling house, which the said Freeman has built, and the land on which said building stands.”1 Thomas Mayo died two years later, and the property must have passed to Freeman: by then he was the eldest son, his brother Nathan Atwood Mayo having died in Cuba in 1825, and three of his five younger brothers had also died.2 Freeman Mayo married Sophia Low of Barre in 1815, and the 1830 census lists him with eight people in his household though the couple had only three children—Freeman Jr. (1820), Sophia (1826-51), and Pembroke (1829-1903). In 1822 he was master of the brig Iris which was taken by pirates off the coast of Cuba; permitted to travel to Matanzas to raise funds to redeem the vessel, he instead engaged the armed schooner Alligator to retake the pirate-led Iris. The Alligator’s captain was killed in the ensuing battle, which compelled the United States to send war vessels into the fray. Mayo was not harmed.3 Sophia Low Mayo died in 1848, and the next year Freeman Mayo sold the property to neighbor Bangs Pepper but probably remained in the house.4 The 1850 census lists Mayo as a ship master with $934 in real estate living with his son Pembroke, a mariner, his married daughter Sophia Bartlett, her husband Charles J. Bartlett, a shoemaker and Maine native, and their infant daughter Eleanor Sophia. Freeman Mayo died in 1854, and his will left his two sons and granddaughter Eleanor (whose mother had died in 1851) his house, barn, outbuildings and six acres to be shared or divided equally among them; he left other land to Pembroke and to Eleanor, to the latter of whom he also left a secretary with “the linen in same,” a feather bed, a mahogany dining table, a card table, and a workstand. 1 Thomas Mayo to Freeman Mayo, 12 December 1823, BCD 999011:139. Three years earlier Jerusha Clark had sold Freeman Mayo five acres of land, but the language of the 1823 deed from his father indicates that it was not this parcel. See Jerusha Clark to Freeman Mayo, 16 October 1820, BCD 999011:140. 2 Thomas died in Savannah in 1821, James Atwood at sea in the same year, and Henry had died in Brewster in 1815, at the age of 20. 3 Henry J. Sears, Brewster Ship Masters (Yarmouthport, MA: C. W. Swift, 1906), 66. Sears states that master mariner Warren Lincoln was a cabin boy on the Iris at the time of its capture and often related the story. 4 Freeman Mayo to Bangs Pepper, 10 November 1849, BCD 45:53. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 30 OLD NORTH ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 B, G, I BRE.133 After Freeman Mayo’s death, Bangs Pepper, who was also the executor of his will, leased the house to Dean Nickerson, and in November 1859 he sold the property to Nickerson for $100.5 Nickerson, born in Harwich in 1806, had married Zilpha Kenney by 1836 and had eight children—Rufus H., Dean Jr., William Franklin, Miriam, George W., Almena, and the twins Augustus and Gustavus—between 1827 and 1847. The 1860 census lists Nickerson as a farmer with $600 in real property in a household with his wife and five of the children—Franklin and George, both mariners, and Almena, Augustus, and Gustavus. By 1870 Gustavus, George, and Almena were still in their parents’ household, and Gustavus was working a huckster. Zilpha Kenney Nickerson died in 1878, and in 1880 the 30 Old North Road household included her widowed husband; son George, still a mariner; daughter Almena, a seamstress; and son Gustavus, still a peddler. Dean Nickerson died in August 1887, and the three children in the household in 1880 remained there after his death. By 1900 George was working as a day laborer and living with Almena and Gustavus, both working at their long-time occupations. From the early 1880s Almena had also done theatrical readings, sometimes in costume, at events aimed to benefit the Brewster Ladies’ Library, the local Grange, and other organizations.6 In 1903 Gustavus Nickerson died, and in 1910 George and Almena lived at 30 Old North Road with their older brother Rufus, who had lived for many years in Chatham; he was then 81 years old.7 In August 1913 George W. Nickerson died, and in November of the same year Rufus Nickerson died in Brewster. Scarcely a month later Almena Nickerson died; she was 73 years old. “Miss Nickerson was the last of a family of eight brothers and sisters all of whom she had nursed and care for in their last illness, the last two brothers having passed on a few weeks before,” the Barnstable Patriot noted at the time of her death.8 In December 1914 the heirs of the Nickerson siblings sold the homestead to Frederick Young Jr.9 Born in Brewster in 1891, Frederick Allen Young Jr. was the son of farm worker Frederick Young and his wife Lucy Doland Young, who had emigrated from Ireland in 1886. Young was a house carpenter in 1910 but a chauffeur in 1913 when he married Edna Coggeshall, then working as a domestic servant. Young sold the property in 1934 and moved to Falmouth.10 New owners Arthur W. and Mary B. Bush came to Brewster from Worcester and owned 30 Old North Road for more than 20 years. Arthur Walsh Bush was born in Lawrence in 1891 and worked as a telephone installer, electrician, and public utilities instructor. His wife, Mary Brearly Bush, was born in England and came to the United States in 1898. The Bushes occupied the house as a second, summer home. In 1957 they sold the property to Frederick Z. and Evelyn M. Ellis of Concord.11 Born in 1906 in Hyde Park, Frederick Zwicker Ellis was a gas station proprietor and an insurance agent in Waltham and also occupied 30 Old North Road seasonally. The Ellises sold the house and lot to Philly M. Cosand of Brookline in 1965, and she in turn sold it in 1998 to Charles M. Beck Von Peccoz and his wife Marian in 1998. They were the owners of record in 2018.12 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. 5 Bangs Pepper to Dean Nickerson, 18 November 1859, SBCD 73:8. 6 See, among other newspaper notices about Almena Nickerson, Barnstable Patriot, 8 February 1881, 2; 8 January 1895, 3; 19 December 1898, 3; 11 March 1901, 3, and Yarmouth Register, 2 May 1908, 4, and 21 January 1911, 5. 7 Sandwich Observer, 28 February 1911, 3: “Rufus Nickerson, one of our highly respected citizens of Brewster, formerly of Chatham, has been sick for a number of weeks. He is with his sister, Miss Almena Nickerson, and has the best of care.” 8 “Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 12 January 1914, 4. 9 Emma L. Nickerson, Helena Eldredge, Frank H. Nickerson, and Eimer K. Nickerson, Mattapan; Myra F. Wright, Enfield; Albert N. and Abbie M. Clapp, Stoughton; Ida M. and George L. Eldredge, Chatham; Willie F. and Anna M. Eldredge, Chatham, to Frederick Young Jr., 29 December 1914, BCD 335:574. 10 Frederick Young Jr., Falmouth, to Arthur W. and Mary B. Bush, Worcester, 8 September 1934, BCD 506:52. 11 Mary B. Bush to Frederick Z. and Evelyn M. Ellis, Concord, 9 August 1957, BCD 980:284. 12 Frederick Z. and EvelynM. Ellis to Phyllis M. Cosand, Brookline, 22 May 1965, BCD 1301:548; Phyllis M. Cosand, Dennis, to Charles M. Beck Von Peccoz and Marian L. Beck Von Peccoz, 31 October 1998, BCD 11779:261. The 30 Old North Road parcel is shown on “Plan of Land in Brewster, Mass., Property of Arthur W. and Mary B. Bush,” August 1948, BCP 83:149. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 30 OLD NORTH ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 B, G, I BRE.133 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. FIGURES Plan of Land in Brewster, Mass., property of Arthur W. & Mary B. Bush, Aug. 1948 (BCD Plan 83:149). INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 30 OLD NORTH ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 4 B, G, I BRE.133 PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2019) View from NW. View from north. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 30 OLD NORTH ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 5 B, G, I BRE.133 View from east.