FORM B  BUILDING MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES

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Massachusetts Historical Commission

Massachusetts Archives Building

220 Morrissey Boulevard

Boston, Massachusetts 02125


Photograph


FORM B  BUILDING MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES

View from southeast


Locus Map (north at top)


FORM B  BUILDING MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES



Recorded by: Kathryn Grover & Neil Larson

Organization: Town of Georgetown

Date: October 2012


Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number



11A-50



Georgetown



C



GEO.192



Town/City: Georgetown

Place: (neighborhood or village):

Town Center

Address: 10 West Main Street

Historic Name: Carter & Dodge Patent Medicine Factory

Uses: Present: commercial

Original: industrial

Date of Construction: ca. 1852

Source: historic maps, published history

Style/Form: undetermined

Architect/Builder: unknown

Exterior Material:

Foundation: brick

Wall/Trim: vinyl clapboards

Roof: asphalt shingles

Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:

none

Major Alterations (with dates):

Front, side & rear additions, late 20th C


Condition: fair

Moved: no yes Date:

Acreage: 0.11 acre

Setting: This building stands on the south side of West Main Street one lot southeast of the intersection with Middle Street. The area is largely commercial.




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 Carter & Dodge Patent Medicine Factory is a two-story wood frame factory building with a front gable roof located on the southwest side of West Main Street between Central and Middle streets. Built ca. 1852, the scale and form of the original building is consistent with the numerous small factories that existed at Little’s Corners in the core of Georgetown. The building was converted to commercial use by the end of the 19th century. Fenestration has been altered—windows exist only on the southeasterly side of the building—and additions have been constructed on the other three sides. A one-story front-gable storefront was added on the front and contains two businesses. It is wider than the old building and extends past the northwesterly corner and wraps across the entire northwesterly side, a one-story sing with a shed roof in line with the front gable. The side wing terminates at the southwesterly corner of the rear wall where it abuts a gabled rear addition with a different roof pitch. The rear wing contains a secondary entrance.


With its additions, the building fills the front section of its L-shaped lot. The rear section, connecting to Middle Street, which appears to have been the site of another factory building of similar size, has been paved for a parking lot.


The Carter & Dodge Patent Medicine Factory is a rare surviving example of a small mid-19th-century wood frame factory building reflecting Georgetown’s development as a rural industrial center. In spite of its more recent additions and alterations for modern commercial use, the original form of the building still is discernible. Built ca. 1852, the building is a contributing component of the village district.



HISTORICAL NARRATIVE

The 1856 map of Georgetown center identifies the building at what is now 10 West Main Street as “Carter & Dodge.” Published local histories are mute on the identity of this firm, but an 1879 U.S. Supreme Court case provides some history of the firm. In 1852 Moses Carter, who had been manufacturing wood shoe boxes in Georgetown, established a partnership with farmer Benjamin S. Dodge of Rowley to manufacture and sell numerous medicines invented by Moses Atwood, a New Hampshire native who had been making bitters and other patent cures in Georgetown since 1840. In 1842 Atwood began working with Georgetown druggist Lewis Hatch Bateman to make the medicines, among them the famed Atwood’s Vegetable Physical Jaundice Bitters, and in 1848 Carter began working with Atwood as a distributor. In 1852 Carter and Dodge bought most of the manufacturing and sales rights to the medicines from Atwood, who had earlier granted his father and brother in Maine rights to make and sell them in certain areas, including Maine. Dodge later claimed that he and Carter paid Atwood between $4000 and $5000 for the recipes.


In 1855 Atwood moved to Iowa, but Carter and Dodge were not the exclusive manufacturers of his recipes: Lewis Bateman claimed Atwood had left the formulas with him as well, and both parties made the products locally and sold them nationally. In 1855, when Moses Carter’s son Charles joined the firm, the company became Carter, Dodge, & Company. In addition to the jaundice bitters, the firm made Atwood’s Extract of Sarsaparilla and Comfrey, Dysentery Drops, Canker Drops, and Spinal Elixir. The firm also developed the distinctive, twelve-sided glass bottle with the words “Atwood’s Jaundice Bitters Moses Atwood Georgetown Mass.” molded into five of the glass panels.


Carter, Dodge & Company lasted until about 1858, when Dodge left the firm and returned to his Rowley farm. The partners assigned themselves certain territories, and both Dodge and what became M. Carter and Son continued to manufacture Atwood’s medicines, as did Louis Bateman. Dodge ultimately sold his rights to the business to William B. Dorman of Georgetown and M. F. Manning of Mystic, Connecticut, later Manning & Noyes.1


The 1870 directory shows Moses Carter and his sons as patent medicine dealers on Main Street (the family lived on North Street), but whether they were in this building is unclear. By 1872, in any event, the building appears to have become part of the Little and Moulton shoe factory complex, one of the largest shoe shops in town. The 1884 map shows the building, mistakenly, as brick, and as occupied by Daniel E. Moulton of Little and Moulton, who had by then retired; he died in 1888.


Who owned the property then cannot be established from maps. By 1919 Elizabeth A. Bailey of Beverly owned both 10 and 18 West Main Street and sold them both in that year to Arthur J. Hughes.


BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES

Arrington, Benjamin F., ed. Municipal History of Essex County in Massachusetts. NY: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1922.

Field, Jane. A Brief History of Georgetown Massachusetts 1838-1963. Rev. ed. 1988. Georgetown: Georgetown Historical Commission, 1988.

Gage, Thomas. The History of Rowley, Anciently Including Bradford, Boxford, and Georgetown, from the Year 1639 to the Present Time. Boston: F. Andrews, 1840.

Georgetown, Boxford, Byfield, Newbury, and West Newbury, Massachusetts, Directory. Boston: W. E. Shaw, 1901-2, 1905, 1909, 1912, 1914, 1916-17, 1918, 1925.

Hill, Edwin P. “History of Georgetown, Massachusetts.” In Standard History of Essex County, Massachusetts. Edited by Cyrus M. Tracey, William E. Graves, and Henry M. Batchelder. Boston: C. F. Jewett, 1878.

Hull, Forrest P. Georgetown: Story of One Hundred Years, 1838-1938. 1938. Reprint. Georgetown, MA: Georgetown Historical Commission, 2006.

Merrill, Samuel. A Merrill Memorial: An Account of the Descendants of Nathaniel Merrill, an Early Settler of Newbury, Massachusetts. Cambridge, MA, 1917-28.

Nelson, Henry M. “Town of Georgetown History.” In Hurd, D. Hamilton. History of Essex County, Massachusetts, with Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men. Vol. 1. Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis and Co., 1888.

Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell, for Georgetown Historical Society. Images of America: Georgetown. Portsmouth, NH: Arcadia Publishing, 2002.


MAPS

Map of the Centre of Georgetown in 1800.” In Perley, Sidney H., “Centre of Georgetown in the Year 1800.” The Essex Antiquarian: A Quarterly Magazine Devoted to the Biography, Genealogy, History, and Antiquities of Essex County, Massachusetts 2, 7 (July 1898): 201.

Map of Georgetown in 1810 and 1840. In Gage, Thomas. The History of Rowley, Anciently Including Bradford, Boxford, and Georgetown, from the Year 1639 to the Present Time. Boston: F. Andrews, 1840. 320.

Map of New Rowley Surveyed and Drawn by Philander Anderson 1830.” Georgetown Historical Society.

Map of Georgetown. 1856. In Walling. H. F. A Topographical Map Essex County Massachusetts. Boston: Smith and Morley, 1856.

Atlas of Essex County, Massachusetts. Philadelphia: D. G. Beers and Co., 1872). Plates 59 and 61.

Town of Georgetown Mass.” and “Village of Georgetown Mass.” In Atlas of Essex County, Massachusetts (Boston: George H. Walker, 1884).

Georgetown, Mass. 1887.” Drawn and Published by George E. Norris, Brockton, Massachusetts. Troy, NY: Burleigh Lithographic Establishment, 1887.”



PHOTOGRAPHS (all photos by Neil Larson, 2012)


FORM B  BUILDING MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES





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 Carter & Dodge Patent Medicine Factory is a rare surviving example of a small mid-19th-century wood frame factory building reflecting Georgetown’s development as a rural industrial center. In spite of its more recent additions and alterations for modern commercial use, the original form of the building still is discernible. Built ca. 1852, the building is a contributing component of the village district.





1 See Transcript of Record, Supreme Court of the United States, No. 333, The Manhattan Medicine Company, appellant vs Nathan Wood and John T Wood, Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Maine, Filed October 13, 1879, http://books.google.com/books?id=fSQrAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=%22carter+and+dodge%22+%26+georgetown&source=bl&ots=ZNasheC5nC&sig=33jLhnT7sOZO0JU9yUsyrv8z5_s&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uiqIUPnqIcux0AHF7YHYBA&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22carter%20and%20dodge%22%20%26%20georgetown&f=false.


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