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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): May 2019
Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number
68-56-0
68-57-0
68-58-0
Harwich B, G, I BRE.293
NRHD (02/23/1996); LHD (05/01/1973)
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
Brewster Center
Address:77 Old North Road
Historic Name: Snow-Bassett House & Barn
Uses:Present: single-family residence
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: 1837
Source:deeds, historic atlases
Style/Form: Federal/half-cape
Architect/Builder: unknown
Exterior Material:
Foundation: stone
Wall/Trim: wood shingles/wood
Roof:asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
domestic barn/garage, ca. 1870
Major Alterations (with dates):
addition on rear, 20th century
Condition:good
Moved: no yes Date:
Acreage:1.91 + 1.00 + 1.46 = 4.37
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 77 OLD NORTH ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
B, G, I BRE.293
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 Snow-Bassett House, built ca. 1839, is a story-and-a-half wood frame single dwelling with a gable roof; a cross-gable rear
wing is a 20th-century addition. The three-bay front façade contains an off-center entrance and two windows. The doorway is
framed by a Federal surround with a pronounced cornice; the roof overhangs the front wall while the eaves on the gable ends
are tight to the walls. The easterly and westerly gable ends contain two widely spaced windows on the first story and two in the
attic. The cross-gable rear wing was built on a concrete block foundation place its construction date in the 20th century. It
projects past the easterly end of the house with a doorway on the narrow front; a screened porch and dormer are located on the
westerly side. The story-and-a-half wood frame barn on the property has a steep gable roof and appears to have been built ca.
1870. It has a front vehicle bay with a hanging track door. A one-story cross-gable wing with an overhead door was added for an
automobile.
The buildings are situated close to the road surrounded by open lawn. The remaining acreage, comprising three parcels, is
wooded.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
In January 1839 Freeman Mayo, who lived roughly opposite the site of 77 Old North Road, sold the widow Tabitha Snow an
eighth of an acre “on a square” for one dollar.1 If a house was standing on this small parcel, the deed does not record it.
Born in 1781 in that part of Harwich that became Brewster, Tabitha Atwood Snow was the daughter of Barnabas and Sarah
Atwood, and in 1802 or 1803 she married master mariner Lemuel Snow Jr. (1780-1819), the son of Lemuel and Lydia Clark
Snow. The 1820 Brewster census document her in a household of three persons, and she was alone in her household in 1830.
In April 1837 she sold her late husband’s 27-acre property to Rowland F. Crosby for $75 but reserved the right to remain in the
house until October 1837. It is possible that the 77 Old North Road house was built for her before Mayo sold her the tract. The
1840 census clearly shows Tabitha Snow in a different Brewster neighborhood than the one in which she had earlier lived.2
In 1850 and 1855 Tabitha Snow was living in this house with her adult daughter Abba, and the 1858 map attaches the name “T.
Snow” to the dwelling. Tabitha Snow died in August 1859, and in 1861 daughter Abba married Brewster carpenter Thomas
Linnell Jr. In 1864 she sold her late mother’s homestead to Thaddeus Bassett for $300, and he owned and occupied it until he
died in 1916; his descendants own it to the current day.3
The son of Franklin and Huldah Bassett, Thaddeus Bassett was born in Harwich in 1840 and was living there and working as a
fisherman when he married Chatham native Mary A. Doane in 1859. The couple had three children—William A., Augusta F., and
Thaddeus A.—between 1861 and 1864, and in early January 1864 Bassett received a $60 bounty and $13 in advance pay when
he enlisted as a private in Company G of the 23d Massachusetts Infantry. He served in the ambulance corps and as a
regimental hospital attendant. His family was clearly living at 77 Old North Road when the 1865 state census was taken in early
June, and though Thaddeus was listed in the household as a soldier in the Army he was not discharged until 25 June 1865, at
New Bern, North Carolina.4
By 1870 Bassett had returned to fishing for a living and is listed in the census with $600 in real property. By then two more
children, Lydia (or Lilly) and Adelbert, were in the household, and by 1880 another three—Susan S., Isaac Franklin, and
Gertrude A.—were living at 77 Old North Road. Thaddeus Basset and his sons William and Thaddeus Jr. were “sailors,” while
daughter Augusts was a knitting factory operative.
1 Freeman Mayo to Mrs Tabathy Snow, 12 January 1839, BCD 23:192.
2 Tabitha Snow to Rowland F Crosby, 17 April 1837, BCD 21:219. This deed cites abutters as George W. Higgins and the heirs of both
Nathaniel and Edmund Hopkins; the 1820 census lists her after Nathan Hopkins, while in 1830 her household is before that of Nancy Hopkins,
the widow of Nathaniel, who died in 1826. In 1840 she is listed between Joshua Myrick and Richard Harding.
3 Abbie A. Linnell to Thaddeus Bassett, 29 February 1864, BCD 84:191
4 See “Recruiting in This County,” Yarmouth Register, 15 January 1864, 2, and Bassett’s service records on Fold3.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 77 OLD NORTH ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
B, G, I BRE.293
In 1900 Thaddeus and Mary Bassett were living in the house with daughter Gertrude, who worked as a domestic, and their
youngest daughter Ina, born in 1884. From November 1895 to December 1896 the Bassetts closed their house and lived in
Boston, and they must have rented the 77 Old North Road house; indeed, it was very likely rented on a long-term basis in
October 1897, when the family was compelled to rent a cottage elsewhere in Brewster.5 Mary Doane Bassett died in Brewster in
June 1904, and it appears that Thaddeus was living in his Old North Road house by 1910, when he was doing odd jobs for
income and living with an elderly housekeeper. He was then in his early seventies and spry enough to take part in a fox hunt that
began at Pleasant Lake and ran to the shore, where the fox escaped by jumping “from floe to floe.” The Yarmouth Register
noted that Bassett “threw it right into Reynard who, considerably the worse for the encounter, made tracks for the shore,” and
quoted a verse composed for the occasion:
O’er bogs and rocks we chased the fox
From Pleasant Lake to Brewster,
Where Cap’n Thad ‘most got the lad
That loves to dine on rooster!6
Thaddeus Bassett died in November 1916, and in June 1918 his son and executor Isaac Franklin Bassett sold the homestead to
Emma Althea Farrington.7 She was the daughter of Susan S. Bassett Farrington, one of the daughters of Thaddeus and Mary,
and had been working as a chocolate factory packer in Boston when she married Milton painter (and later police officer) Fred M.
Farrington in 1892. The family had vacationed often at the Bassett homestead. Emma Althea was the couple’s first child, and by
1914 she was clerking at the Massachusetts State House and living in her parents’ household; she was a factory secretary in
1920. In 1923 she married Harold H. Claflin, the son of a wholesale shoe merchant in East Orange, New Jersey, and in July
1926 the Hyannis Patriot reported that “Fred Farrington is with his daughter, Mrs. Harry Claflin at their summer home, formerly
owned by Thaddeus Bassett.”8
Harry Claflin was a bond investment firm cashier and real estate trustee and lived in Newton with his family most of the year. He
and wife had two sons, Charles R. and William F. Harold Claflin died in January 1975, and in October of the same year Emma
Althea Claflin deeded the property and two other adjacent parcels she had acquired in 1929 and 1939 to her sons. In 1986
William Claflin transferred his interest to his brother Charles, and after Charles’s death his heirs owned the property. They
placed it in trust in 2001.9
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.
5 “Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 18 Ocrober 1897, 4, reported that Thaddeus Bassett and family “have moved into the cottage on Mr.
Woodworth’s place, formerly occupied by John F. Tubman.” See also “Brewster.” Hyannis Patriot, 11 November 1895, 3, and Yarmouth
Register, 12 December 1896, 5.
6 East Brewster: Exciting Fox Hunt,” Yarmouth Register, 27 January 1912, 1.
7 Isaac Franklin Bassett, administrator estate Thaddeus Bassett, to Althea Farrington, 18 June 1918, BCD 362:209.
8 “Brewster,” Hyannis Patriot, 22 July 1926, 6.
9 Emma Althea Claflin to William F. Claflin, Roanoke VA, and Charles R. Claflin, Newington CT, 17 October 1975, BCD 2250:63; William F.
Claflin and Charles R. Claflin to Charles R. Claflin, Newington CT, 30 December 1986, BCD 5490:58; Barbara C. Hotchkin, Anchorage AL, to
Elizabeth C. St. Amand, Newton, CT; Nancy C. Morrison, Southington CT; Susan C. newton, Berlin NH; David R. Claflin, Dumont NJ; and
Marjorie C. Milman, Gainesville FL, 10 September 2001, BCD 14287:170; Elizabeth C. St. Amand, Newington CT; Nancy C. Morrison,
Southington CT; Susan C. Newton, Berlin NH; David R. Claflin, Dumont NJ, and Marjorie C. Milman, Gainesville FL, to David R. Claflin, Susan
C. Newton, and Marjorie C. Milman, trustees Claflin Family Trust (2001), 22 November 2001, BCD 14530:61.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 77 OLD NORTH ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 3
B, G, I BRE.293
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)
View of barn from SE.
View of house and barn from NE.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 77 OLD NORTH ROAD
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 4
B, G, I BRE.293
View of barn and house from Nnorth
View of house and barn from NW.