The Crosby plan indicates only two properties with buildings and standalone outbuildings. The Sparrow Plan, drawn up in August, 1915, displays nine houses on the Heights, and includes our Bennett House, with a 270 degree, wraparound porch. The survey drawing does not include the “barn”, which must have been built later. Since Louisa S. Bennett acquired the land under the house in April, 1913, it’s a safe bet that the Bennett House was built around 1913-1914, and then shows up on the Sparrow Plan in 1915. Curiously however, the earliest photograph of the Bennett House does not exhibit a South facing porch, which conflicts with what shows up on the Sparrow drawings. Perhaps the photo was taken in 1914, and the south porch added before the Sparrow drawings in 1915. Otherwise, it’s a mystery.
The property passed on to Alice Bennett Rollins (b. 8/1/1905) in 1956. She had married Fiske Rollins on 9/20/1930, about a year after Fiske’s graduation in the Harvard class of ’29. Before their marriage, Fiske had spent his beach weekend life two houses away to the north on Nauset Road, in the Rollins property (for some time now owned by the McGee family). 
Alice and Fiske shared their weekend lives at the Bennett House in the summer; upon retirement, they purchased their winter house a distance away…on Captain Curtis Way, also in East Orleans (then, as now, winters were harsh on the Heights). Alice passed away on January 5, 1980, and Fiske died on July 1, 1991.
Alice and Fiske shared their weekend lives at the Bennett House in the summer; upon retirement, they purchased their winter house a distance away…on Captain Curtis Way, also in East Orleans (then, as now, winters were harsh on the Heights). Alice passed away on January 5, 1980, and Fiske died on July 1, 1991.When we acquired the Bennett house and barn, the property was rife with problems. The northwest corner of the house, for example, sagged 10” from horizontal. Why? Because Fiske, having purchased a new clothes washer, did not wish to tax the processing capacity of his seriously compromised septic tank by draining the clothes washer into it. So, he addressed the problem by cutting a hole in the floor next to the washer and draining the water below, next to the brick pillar footings of the house. Draining over time washed out the northwest corner footing, causing the severe sag. The house would have sagged further, but for the fact that the corner rested heavily on a rusting oil tank for the furnace.
The house’s electric distribution panel and fuse box was affixed to the wall of the shower enclosure. The circuit breaker, moreover, had a capacity of two amps. Since that capacity was not nearly enough, even in Fiske’s day, he “solved” the problem of blown fuses by inserting copper pennies into the fuse box. There was (and still is) a homemade chandelier over the dining table, made from an old spinning wheel, suspended from the ceiling by four chains. When one bumped the chandelier while its four bulbs were on, sparks would shoot out from a dozen spots where old wiring wove through the chandelier’s supporting chain links. There was no real insulation in the house, except for Homasote panels, cut and placed between wall studs; there were no internal wall surfaces beyond these panels.
The original “wart”, the long, skinny extension of the house off the west side, was the outhouse, with a two holer. The wart also contained a water pump, which pumped water from a cistern just to the north of the wart. The two holer is now gone, as well as several thousand scraps of wood which were piled right to the rafters when we acquired the house.
Finally, there is the barn. As noted, the 1915 Sparrow Plan does not show a barn on the property. The barn was added later, probably by the Bennett household. Some time before Alice passed away, a new addition to the barn appeared, more or less scabbed over the top of the old garage. Why, you say? Well, it so happens, according to a neighbor’s explanation, that Fiske was strolling down the street in Boston one evening at the end of the work day, when stones from an office building’s roofline gave way, plummeted many floors to the ground, and demolished the sidewalk, only steps behind Fiske.
Fiske was unhurt. But he came back down to Orleans and reported his harrowing tale to Alice.He noted that if he had been just one or two steps slower, he would have gone to his grave…without ever having owned a powered fishing boat! So, the next day he went out and bought one. Returning to the barn to store his boat, he discovered that the barn was not long enough. Rather than demolish the barn and build a longer new one, Fiske requested that carpenters simply scab on enough building extension to cover his boat. Thus, we have our curious two-roofed garage/barn.
All of these and numerous other items were just minor distractions to us, when we first looked at the home; it possessed beautiful beaded fir ceilings and walls, yellow pine floors, a massive old fireplace, and the “great bones” of a traditional Cape Cod house. Over the past 18 years, we’ve strived to keep the bones honest, and just update where the dictates of minimal comfort suggested a needed improvement. The wart is now our storage and garden shed. The house (and chandelier) has been rewired; drywall has been added to the interior perimeter walls; modern wiring and circuit breakers have replaced copper pennies and screw-in fuses; and the barn has been restored. But the shape and soul of the Bennett house remains, along with the aged warm patina of beaded fir on the interior walls and ceiling.
The important story of the Bennett house is really the twin stories of Alice, the “angel” of Nauset Heights, and Fiske, her very kindly but occasionally foul-mouthed husband and fisherman. Alice, a 1927 Holyoke graduate, was beloved for her warmth, and respected as an earlier breaker of professional glass ceilings at MIT, and in the private sector, as a chemist. Fiske, as a Director of the Orleans Historical Society, was an early champion of the restoration of the Coast Guard 36500, and in his estate provided a $40,000 donation towards its restoration.
But, there is much more to tell. As a lead example, Fiske’s nephew, William Bennett, Jr. (whose father was Alice’s younger brother, both appearing in the photo above), recently (2/16/2010) supplied a fishing memory for us, quoted in its entirety below:
“Fiske was quite a guy. One story that I will never forget: We took his boat, just the two of us, and went flounder fishing in the bay. He knew all the spots, and aside from running aground in the sand several times (Fiske would roar), we had a great day! Many Fish.
“When we got back to the house, we cleaned all the flounder and had all these beautiful filets. I was dying to have fresh fish for dinner.
“Fiske got out a bunch of sandwich/freezer bags and divided up all we had and put it in the bags. I asked: ‘Fiske, aren’t we going to have fish for dinner???…’ a bit puzzled. He said: ‘Well, we can if you want, but I’ll have to get it out of the freezer’. He then explained that it all goes bad at some point, and so we need to eat the oldest stuff first, or it might be a waste!
“He said that sometimes, if in [the freezer] over a year, it gets so bad that not even Subby would eat it. So he dated the bags, and we took out the oldest, and ate that. Subby, by the way was short for ‘Substitute’…..it was what he named the cat after the one Alice liked died. He said he wasn’t good at making up names. Further, he was very proud that for several years, he had caught, and ‘Put up’ enough fish so that he didn’t have to buy cat food over the winter.”
For additional stories, we must rely on the rich and warm memories of the Height’s mature and senior generations. Hopefully, they will be added to this beginning effort. And just a note: Subby was immortalized by Fiske with a small engraved stainless steel plaque which remains affixed to the south side of our boat house. We shine it up every few years...
Robert Cunningham