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Home My Public Portal AboutThadEllisRd_27Follow 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 NW. 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 89-29 Harwich BRE.474 BRE.475 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): East Brewster Address:27 Thad Ellis Road Historic Name: Raymond & Marion Eldredge Cottage & Barn Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: 1925 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Summer Cottage Architect/Builder: E. Raymond Eldridge, probable builder Exterior Material: Foundation: stone Wall/Trim: wood shingles Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: barn Major Alterations (with dates): Exterior doors replaced Condition:good Moved: no yes Date: Acreage: 0.27 acre Setting: The house is situated in a dense residential area characterized by summer cottages and retirement homes built in the mid-20th century. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 27 THAD ELLIS ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 BRE.474 BRE.475 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 one-story wood frame summer cottage has a hipped roof. Its front façade faces north and contains a center entrance and hipped-roof porch flanked by paired windows. The street (west) façade contains two standard windows and smaller paired windows elevated above counter height inside. A second entrance and paired and single windows are contained in the south wall. The cottage is centered on the frontage of an L-shaped lot with yards on the north, east and west sides. An unpaved driveway enters the south end of the frontage and passes the house to terminate at a small barn in the rear of the parcel. The one-story building has a front-gable roof fronted by a common entrance and window and a wide shed extension on the south side containing a vehicle bay closed by a hanging track door. This building probably functioned in the owner’s carpentry trade and cranberry farming. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: The house numbered 27 Ellis Road is not shown on the 1910 Barnstable County map, and it was probably built in 1925 by East Brewster house carpenter Eliot Raymond Eldridge shortly after he bought the lot on which it stands from Niles Nelson, who owned property just to the north at the southeast corner of Main Street and Thad Ellis Road. Nelson had bought a house, outbuilding, and an acre here in 1882 and sold part of that homestead property, a parcel 153x82 feet square, to Eldridge in August 1925.1 The deed does not mention the existence of a building on the tract. Assessors’ records for 1926 show Eldridge with two houses, one valued at $2200 and another at $200, as well as a modest personal estate, a quarter-acre homestead parcel, and four pieces of cranberry land. Born in Brewster in 1897, E. Raymond Eldridge was related only distantly, if at all, to the other branch of this family in East Brewster; his family, from Chatham, consistently spelled the surname Eldridge, while the Jacob B. Eldredge branch, from Harwich, used an “e” instead of an “i.” Raymond’s father James Emery Eldridge was a weir fisherman. In 1921 Raymond Eldridge married Marion Whitman, and it is possible that he built the 27 Thad Ellis Road house at the time of his marriage even though Niles Nelson did not deed the tract to him until 1925. The 1929 directory lists Eldridge as a carpenter living on King’s Highway (Main Street), while the1930 census lists him on Railroad Avenue; thus, he may have used the 27 Thad Ellis Road house for rental income at that time even though deeds document that he later lived at this address. In 1936 the administrator of the estate of Niles Nelson’s widow Augusta sold Marion Eldridge a 70x140-foot tract bordering her husband’s land and seven acres of woodland on the north side of Sheep Pond.2 E. Raymond Eldridge died in 1964. Two years earlier he had deeded his property, including the 27 Thad Ellis Road house with its furniture and furnishings, to Alice Hillquist of Medford with the stipulation that he retain a life estate in the property. She deeded the 47 Ellis Road property back to him the next year.3 Hillquist, who had acquired 11 Captain Dunbar Road and its cottage jointly with her sister Anna in 1944, was born in 1909 in Boston. Their mother, Hannah Erika Ostling, had emigrated from Sweden in 1904, and their father, machinist John Frederick Hillquist, had come to Boston from Sweden in 1906. By 1930 daughter Alice was working as a secretary for a wool company and by 1940 was a registrar for an unnamed association; she lived with her parents in Medford through at least 1940. She continued to own the Thad Ellis Road property until 1999, by which time she was living in South Dennis; in that year her guardian sold the property to E. Steven Anderson of North Eastham. Anderson was the owner of record in 2018.4 1 Melissa Freeman to Niles Nelson, 2 December 1882, BCD 172:386; Niles Nelson to E. Raymond Eldridge, 21 August 1925, BCD 416:79. 2 Albert T. Nelson, administrator estate Augusta F. Nelson, to Marion Eldridge, 24 December 1936, BCD 537:513 3 E. Raymond Eldridge to Alice Hillquist, Medford, 26 April 1962, BCD 1155:214; Alice Hillquist, Medford, to E. Raymond Eldridge, 29 April 1963, BCD 1200:58 4 Stephanie Lowell, guardian Alice Hillquist, South Dennis, to E. Steven Anderson, North Eastham, 12 May 1999 BCD 12264:141. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 27 THAD ELLIS ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 BRE.474 BRE.475 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. PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2018) View from SW.