People often have trouble finding the Rochester Historical Museum on their first try. It has to do with the confusing house numbers and the inability of GPS to figure them out. County Road, as we know it today, runs from Rte.28 in Wareham until it reaches Rte.105 in Marion. If you were to stand in the middle of the road (not at all recommended) in front of the museum, you would have one foot in Rochester and the other in Wareham. Further down the road, you would be half in Marion and half in Wareham. It’s this sharing of the road with three towns that causes the house number confusion.
In the earliest days of Rochester, County Road was known simply as the road from Rochester to Plymouth. Later, it was Division Street and marked the town boundary between Rochester and its former precinct of Wareham. The oldest house on the road was built in 1773, most likely by Samuel Briggs, a ship captain. Inside the house, which is a good example of a Cape type residence, is a beam with a slight curve. It’s believed that the beams came from a ship whose parts were being used in the construction of the building.
When the house was first built, its location was quite isolated, and it was a stagecoach stop that was 13 miles from Plymouth and 13 miles from New Bedford. Because of that, it was known as the ” Halfway House.”
Because of the many members of the Briggs family that lived along the road, it was called Briggs Lane. Over the years, the ” Halfway House” had many owners. Some of them were Theophilus Peale, Jireh Swift, William Crapo, Samuel Sprague, Lemuel Swift and Marcus Morton, who was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1840. According to the 1879 map of Rochester, Mortons were still living in the home. The Morton and Swift names are connected to the building of the East Rochester Church and gravestones bearing the surnames of some of the house’s former residents can be found in the Woodside Cemetery.
The “Halfway House” is still on County Road at #405, though as years have passed and the road has been widened, the house now perches on its very edge.
By Connie Eshbach