History

Captain Heman Smith was born in Orleans on March 26, 1821.  He married Louisiana Crosby on November 27, 1845.  The couple had six children between 1848 and 1864, who were each born while the Captain was away at sea.          

This Federal/Italiante styled house was built overlooking the Town Cove in 1862 by Captain  Smith.  On December 6, 1876,  Mrs. Smith sailed From New York with her husband  on the bark Burnside on his last ocean voyage before his retirement. The bark was carrying  a cargo of grain to Leghorn, Italy. The Captain was lost at sea along with his wife and all hands when the ship foundered on December 9, 1876.

The house was subsequently sold by the surviving children to their sibling, Francis M. Smith.  Mr.  Smith was a harness maker and beginning in 1886 rented rooms to summer visitors. In 1898, they sold the property to George Newcomb, a farmer who also used it as a summer boarding house. Since then, the property has changed owners at least thirteen times.

Two hundred feet south of  The Captain Heman Smith House was the the home of Jeremiah Smith who left his name to "Jeremiah's Gutter". Jeremiah's Gutter was the remnant of the old canal by which it was possible in the 18th and early 19th centuries to travel across the Cape by boat.  It linked Cape Cod Bay with the Atlantic Ocean via the canal and the Town Cove.