USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Gloucester > In the heart of cape ann, or, the story of dogtown, 1906 > Part 1
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The Story of Dogtown
2020
THIS BOOK
BELONGS TO
Yarak b. Rogers
جمال مسقصاً
IN THE HEART OF CAPE ANN
OR THE
STORY OF DOGTOWN
BY
CHARLES E. MANN
WITH
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CATHERINE MERRILL FOLLANSBEE
GLOUCESTER, MASS. THE PROCTER BROS. CO., PUBLISHERS 108 MAIN STREET
DOGTOWN.
D HOUSES. · CELLARS.
DRAWN BY CHARLES E. MANN.
SBABSON PROCTER
FERRY ST
MARSH ST.
GREEN
ELLERY HOME D
/
800.00 YOLUPAIN
DANIEL AND
" DARK " TUCKER.
RACHAEL SMITH.
LYD MUZZEY
EMMONS
. NYVE NVINHO
DOGTOWN
BROWN'S
MOLLY MILLET
NATH'L DAY 0
LISCOM
TO ANNISQUAM
LIEU19 HOLDNINGSVM
OLURYEY HOUSE
O
OST
STREET
FOX
MILE
BRIGGS CON.
PAMELIN ALLEN
NOBLE HOUSE / JOSEPH ALLEN
TAMMY YOUNGER
INed Sy3 735NA 02
LUCE GEORGE.
poplar
POLES HILL
PONO LIZALS NOLSHINZUM
·
OPETER'S PULPIT TO RAIL CUT HILL
TO BLANCES -
1
.PETER LURYEY BLACK NEIL
GRANNY DAY'S
SWAMP:
tipps
MOLLY JACOBS
ISAAC DADE
DORCAS FOSTER. DEACON WINSLOW . COL. WM. PEARCE. "HETTY BALCH CA-
ANNIE CARTER .
. MOLLY STEVENS . OLD RUTH . EASTER CARTER
JOSEPH STEVENS
PHILIP PRIESTLEY
ARTHUR WHARF
JIM WHITE
SLOUGH
JUAN MORGAN STANWOOD
JOHN CLARK ,
ovoy (CHENRY DAVIS W/M. PULCIFER
BRIGGS HOUSE
STANWOOD ST GEE AVE
BACK ROAD
PLAIN
BECKY RIEN.
. TRISTKIM COFFIN " JOHN WHARF POLLY BOYNTON
HowAND
D REYNARD
GRANNY DAY
SAMMY STANLEY
ROAD
COMMONS
"LIZ" TUCKER . JUDY RHINES
DOGTOWN
MORGAN BROOK
CASTLE
ABRAHAM WHARF
PREFATORY NOTE.
THESE Dogtown Sketches were written almost wholly as the result of an effort to satisfy the curiosity of the author as to the history, biography and traditions of the deserted village, their continua- tion and publication being encouraged by the general attention they commanded. It is not claimed that they are complete, but it is believed they contain far more information than has yet been published con- cerning their subject. The added matter on " The Beginnings of Dogtown " gives a hitherto overlooked but authentic account of its origin from original rec- ords. The writer desires to express his deep sense of obligation to those who, before the publication of the matter originally prepared, and since, have assist-
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PREFATORY NOTE.
ed by furnishing facts and reminiscences. They made it possible to get together a mass of authentic history, where at first it seemed that at best, only a few traditions were to be rescued from oblivion. Of course nearly all the material was in the memories of Cape Ann's aged people, and it has been a source of unalloyed pleasure to sit by them and listen to their discourses upon the days of long ago. Among the precious memories of a year are those of many an hour spent in ancient kitchens, while sweet-faced old ladies, often with sweeter voices, or men with whit- ened locks and time-furrowed cheeks, recalled the stories told them by the fireside by other dear old women and noble old men of a past century. No wonder Gloucester has developed into such an admir- able and lovable a community, when there still lin- gers among her people so many of their honored progenitors.
CHAPTER I.
WHERE IS DOGTOWN?
E VER since Goldsmith wrote his " Deserted Vil- lage " there has been a weird, poetic and senti- mental charm about abandoned settlements, that has so exerted itself over some minds that it has become a pleasure to make the investigations incident to a correct understanding of what manner of men found it convenient or necessary to build habitations which it afterwards became advisable to desert. Archæol- ogists have given lifetimes, almost, to the investiga- tion of the modes of life of the cliff dwellers of
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The Story of Dogtown.
Arizona and New Mexico. There are comparatively few ruined cities in America ; and even more rare are the instances of deserted villages which were once inhabited by white men, the progenitors of people who are living to-day. It has been the pleasure of the writer during the past few years to acquaint many people with their ancestors, in a figurative sense, for in the heart of Cape Ann may be found the remains of a village which was once inhabited by the grand- parents or more distant progenitors of many who are to-day active in the affairs of Gloucester and Rock- port. Since the first edition of this volume appeared the writer has published in the Gloucester " Times" many columns of the genealogy of Dogtown, show- ing the lines of descent referred to-more particularly of the Day, Stanwood and Lane families.
To-day the only inhabitants of "Dogtown " are lowing kine, an occasional decrepit horse turned out to pasture as a pensioner, or woodchucks, crows and migrating birds. Its grass-grown streets are there, and its foot-worn door-stones may be used for rest- ing-places by the occasional summer tourist on a tramp across the cape, a curiosity seeking Appalach- ian, or by the more numerous berry pickers. The cleared land in the midst of such a waste of rocks, as is the rule in Dogtown Commons, always leads to
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The Story of Dogtown.
speculation ; even more suggestive are the walled yards and the many cellars, both of houses and farm buildings.
Concerning these old cellars novelists have woven their romance-, and poets have sung. Nearly a half- century ago they excited the interest of Richard Henry Dana and Thomas Starr King, and the circle of rare minds these men drew to Cape Ann with them. Long afterwards, Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in one of those delightful bitsof reminis- cence scattered through "Oldport Days," described a walk to Dogtown Commons from Pigeon Cove :
" What can Hawthorne mean by saying in his English diary that ' an American would never under- stand the passage in Bunyan about Christian and Hopeful going astray along by a by-path into the grounds of Giant Despair, from there being no stiles and by-paths in our country '? So much of the charm of American pedestrianism lies in the by-paths: For instance, the whole interior of Cape Ann, beyond Gloucester, is a continuous woodland, with granite ledges everywhere cropping out, around which the high-road winds, following the curving and indented line of the sea, and dotted here and there with fishing hamlets. This whole interior is traversed by a net- work of foot-paths, rarely passable for a wagon,
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and not always for a horse, but enabling the pedes- trian to go from any one of the villages to any other, in a line almost direct, and always under an agreea- ble shade. By the longest of these hidden ways, one may go from Pigeon Cove to Gloucester, ten miles, without seeing a public road. In the little inn at the former village there used to hang an old map of this whole forest region,1 giving a chart of some of these paths, which were said to date back to the first settle- ment of the country. One of them, for instance, was called on the map ' Old road from Sandy Bay to 'Squam Meeting-House through the woods'; but the road is now scarcely even a bridle-path, and the most faithful worshipper could not seek 'Squam meeting- house in the family chaise. These woods have been lately devastated; but when I first knew the region, it was as good as any German forest. Often we stepped from the edge of the sea into some gap in the woods; there seemed hardly more than a rabbit- track, yet presently we met some wayfarer who had crossed the Cape by it.
"A piney dell gave some vista of the broad sea we were leaving, and an opening in the woods displayed another blue sea-line before ; the encountering breezes
This is a reference to the " Mason " map of Cape Ann. A copy of it hangs at the present time in the office of the city clerk of Gloucester.
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The Story of Dogtown.
interchanged odors of berry bushes and scent of brine ; penetrating further among oaks and walnuts we came upon some little cottage, quaint and sheltered as any Spenser drew ; it was not built on the high-road, and turned its vine-clad gable away from even the foot- path. Then the ground rose and other breezes came ; perhaps we climbed trees to look for landmarks, and found only an unseen quarry. Three miles inland, as I remember, we found the hearthstones of a vanished settlement ; then we passed a swamp with cardinal flowers; then a cathedral of noble pines, topped with crows' nests. If we had not gone astray, by this time we would have presently emerged on Dogtown Com- mon, an elevated tableland, overspread with great boulders as with houses, and encircled with a girdle of green woods and another girdle of blue sea. I know of nothing like that gray waste of boulders; it is a natural Salisbury plain, of which icebergs and ocean currents were the Druidic builders; in that multitude of couchant monsters there seems a sense of suspended life ; you feel as if they must speak and answer to each other in the silent nights, but by day only the wandering sea-birds seek them, on their way across the Cape, and the sweet-bay and green fern imbed them in a softer and deeper setting as the years go by. This is the 'height of ground' of that wild
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The Story of Dogtown.
foot-path ; but as you recede farther from the outer ocean and approach Gloucester, you come among still wilder ledges, unsafe without a guide, and you find in one place a cluster of deserted houses, too difficult of access to remove even their materials, so that they are left to moulder alone. I used to wander in those woods, summer after summer, till I had made my own chart of their devious tracks, and now when I close my eyes in this Oldport midsummer, the soft Italian air takes on something of a Scandinavian vigor; for the incessant roll of carriages I hear the tinkle of the quarryman's hammer and the veery's song ; and I long for those perfumed and breezy pastures, and for those promontories of granite where the fresh water is nec- tar and the salt sea has a regal blue."
Col. Higginson hints in the above passage at many of the topographical and geographical features of the Heart of Cape Ann. The old road from Sandy Bay to 'Squam is what is now known as Revere street. He draws the line between Dogtown village and Dogtown Commons with as much care as the most particular old-timer could wish. He also mentions Lamb or Raccoon ledge, it is difficult to say which.
Dogtown is a pathetic, fascinating place. Why did more than one hundred families exile themselves from the life of the villages so near them, and dwell in lone-
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The Story of Dogtown.
liness and often in poverty, in this barren and secluded spot? The name " Dogtown," it is well understood, came from the canines kept by the so-called "widows" of the place, when the evil days came that saw their natural protectors either in their graves or buried be- neath the ocean. " Commons" of course suggests the days when the "'Commoners " still controlled the allotment of the common lands, of which these pas- tures appear to have been the last.
There are many approaches to Dogtown. I have quoted Col. Higginson's description of the route from Pigeon Cove, by way of the old road from Sandy Bay to the 'Squam church, which is still passable. Com- ing from 'Squam, one may leave the church, walk a mile through the same road, past the Cape Ann Granite Co.'s quarries, the road passing through the upper end of one, to the house of David Dennison, an ancient gambrel-roofed lean-to, built by Mr. Den- nison's first ancestor on Cape Ann, and a fine sample of the better class of the Dogtown homes. From here he can branch off to the right, by the Whale's Jaw, and thence to the deserted village. The road by Goose Cove, near Riverdale, leads to the same point, the Whale's Jaw, a great boulder split by light- ning, or more probably by frost, to resemble the open jaws of a whale. Gee avenue and Stanwood street,
"WHALE'S JAW."
-
C.M.F.
4
-
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The Story of Dogtown.
in Riverdale, lead past the cellar of Judith Ryon (or "Judy Rhines,") to that of Abraham Wharf, and thence to the main street of the village.
Persons coming from East Gloucester may, if they are strong on their feet, go up Webster street and enter the pastures by crossing Lamb Ledge-no small task, for it is one of the most wonderful terminal mo- raines in New England, the boulders being piled one upon another in the most orderly confusion until they reach the level of the Commons from the deep valley into which some glacier swept them ages ago. It is a good hour's stint to cross the ledge, and then one passes by Railcut Hill, the highest point on the outer Cape, to the old Rockport road, another picturesque and grass-grown highway of olden times, and enters the Pigeon Cove or " Parting Path," which continues by the Whale's Jaw, at the clearing once occupied by James Witham, son of Thomas and grandson of Henry, the first of the line in this country.
Witham was born in 1693, and built this house at what is known as Stacy's Pines, the location bearing for 150 years, as ancient records show, the suggestive title of the " Parting Path." He engaged in tending flocks for the Low family, for $300 annually, his son Thomas succeeding him in his work. Only the cel- lar of the house remains. It was in later years, until
F
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The Story of Dogtown.
its demolition, a "great resort for young people for mirth and jollity." The path continues across the val- ley in which the Gloucester Branch of the Boston & Maine railroad runs, which bears the marks of the tides on its sentinel ledges -showing that once they flowed through here from Good Harbor or Long Beach to the 'Squam river-and thence to a big rock, which in the distance looks like a pitch-roofed house, which stands directly on the Dogtown road, near the end of the main settlement. The following diagram may give a clearer idea of the foregoing :
B
C
A
The straight lines in the triangle represent the general direction of three very crooked roads. A is the point on Dogtown road, beyond the intersection of Reynard and Cherry streets, where the road from B meets it. From A the Dogtown road continues up what old residents of Riverdale call "Gravel hill," past the Vivian barn, and on to the rock already re- ferred to at C. It then winds on to the Whale's Jaw.
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The Story of Dogtown.
Opposite A is the site of the Nathaniel Day house ; B is the point where Gee avenue and Stanwood street meet. The grass-grown road from B to C is the " Dogtown Commons road," that is, it is the road over the Commons to Dogtown. That from A to C is the " Dogtown road," and that from A to B is par- adoxically called the " back road," though it is nearer civilization than either of the others. Were a prize of $50 to be offered a person who would start from A, go to B, thence to C and back to A without get- ting off the road, he probably never would receive it. I have been over it many times, and never failed to get lost for a few moments at least. Perhaps the spirit of Peg Wesson, who did not live in Dogtown, of Luce George, or of Judy Rhines, if Judy really was a witch, has bewitched me for the contemplated sacrilege of writing them up. All the old maps indi- cate that the village road and Commons road were parallel and did not quite intersect at " C."
Practically all the old people agree in calling the roads by the names I have given. The Commons road is also sometimes called the " walled-in " road, as the walls occasionally cross it. Old people do not consider the cellars on the latter road-of Morgan Stanwood, Judy Rhines, Moll Jacobs and others-as in " Dogtown ; " they are on the " Commons." The
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The Story of Dogtown.
reader will probably be incapable of drawing so fine a distinction. There are obvious reasons why people who lived on the Commons road should have chosen to do so, although their own thoroughfare became finally the home of Judy Rhines, Molly Jacobs and Sarah Phipps.
CHAPTER II.
THE "QUEEN OF THE WITCHES."
THE HE most natural, because the most interesting ap- proach to the village, is by its outpost, the cellar of " Tammy " Younger, the " queen of the witches," at Fox Hill. She was more often seen by the pred- ecessors of this generation on Cape Ann, was better known, and far more respected and feared than any of her confreres. Perhaps the reader will be better able to judge whether the title bestowed on Tammy for two or three generations was deserved, after a careful perusal of this chapter. It is possible that after reading it he may be disposed to transfer the hon- or to her aunt, the redoubtable " Luce George."
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Coming from the Harbor village of Gloucester, through Maplewood avenue, one reaches Poplar street, and after turning to the left, soon reaches the bridge at Alewife brook. Beneath a solitary poplar, on a little rise of ground, is the cellar of Tammy Younger. An apple orchard stands near. The cellar has been cleared recently of a growth of sumacs which nearly obscured it. Thomazine Younger was born July 28, 1753, and was the daughter of William Younger, sojourner, and Lucy Foster, who were married on March 6, 1750, by Rev. John White, pastor of the First Church, of whom much may be learned in the second part of this book.
A recent writer claims that this house was in later years the resort of buccaneers and lawless men. For- tune telling, card playing and other amusements whiled away their time. Money was found in the cellar after Tammy's death. These assertions are denied by members of her family who still remain, and apparently with good reason.
A friend of the writer was, a few years since, chasing a woodchuck, which went into the cellar. In digging for the animal he unearthed a handsomely ornamented snuff box, the cover bearing a represen- tation of a full rigged ship. It was probably Tam- my's, as she is said to have been a snuff taker as well
The Story of Dogtown.
as smoker, but it has been credited to a possibly myth- ical British sea captain who was wont to visit the house.
Mr. John Low Babson, long one of Gloucester's oldest residents, told me that in the early twilight of an autumnal evening he was going from Fresh Water Cove to his home, still standing near the Green in the " up in town " village, and had to pass through the burying ground near the bridge. A man was digging a grave. "Who is that for?" he asked. " Tammy Younger," the sexton replied. "Is she dead ?" was young Babson's surprised query. "We don't very often dig graves for folks that aint dead," was the testy response. Mr. Babson gave a good illustration of the prevalent impressions concerning Tammy, in a reminiscence of his boyhood. He was driving home the cows, past her dwelling, when she came to the door and accosted him, begging him, with strong expletives, if he loved her life, to get her a pail of water. He got it, of course, from the brook behind the cabin. No one ever refused Tammy.
Mrs. Elizabeth Day, of Wheeler's Point, informed me that Tammy died Feb. 4, 1829. She was there- fore 76 years old. Mrs. Day's father, John Hodg- kins, was a cabinet maker, who lived in the house just above the railroad track, on Washington street.
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The Story of Dogtown.
Elizabeth was a child of ten years. For two or three years Tammy, who often saw her, had taken a fancy to her, and would often ask her to come and live with her at Fox Hill, as she was lonely. Tammy used to make butter and carry it to the Harbor to sell, and whenever she passed along other members of the family would say, " Here comes Aunt Tam to take you up to her house with her." The little girl's heart was thus constantly terrorized with the thought that Tammy would some time capture her, and her feel- ings may well be imagined when on that stormy win- ter day word came that Tammy was dead and that Mr. Hodgkins must make her coffin.
Old Mrs. Pulcifer, whose daughter recently died at a great age, had attended Tammy in her last sickness, and Oliver, Tammy's nephew, who was brought up by her, had deferred to Mrs. Pulcifer's advice as to the funeral arrangements. He said he wanted to do everything that could be done to have things nice, so when advised to have as good a coffin as could be made, with a pure silver plate, he at once ordered it. It was of course thought the thing in those days to have " spirit " on funeral occasions, and in deference to Mrs. Pulcifer's opinion, he ordered no rum, or other cheap liquors, but cordials, wines, and other of the better class of beverages. Mrs. Pulcifer is
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remembered to have said afterward that her only regret was that she had not ordered the church bells tolled for Tammy, as she was sure it would have been done.
But to return to Mr. Hodgkins and Tammy's cof- fin. All that rainy day he toiled upon it, and toward night it was ready for polishing. He had a large kitchen, and it was his custom when polishing coffins to bring them into that room, where he had a better chance to work. The children were therefore used to seeing them. But on this particular night the storm was so severe that he did not care to risk spoiling his work by taking it back to the shop, so after rubbing it down with beeswax he stood it up in the corner, blew out his candle and said nothing.
Soon bedtime came. The children, sitting by the comfortable open fire in the adjoining room, were warned by their mother to retire: "Come John, it's time for you and Elizabeth to go to bed." John took a candle, and started. It was necessary to go through the kitchen in order to reach the chambers above. As he opened the door, the light of his candle fell on the shiny coffin in the corner. Other people might not believe Tammy was a witch; on that night John was sure she was both a witch and a ghost. He be- gan to whimper, " I won't go to bed with Aunt Tam
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Younger's coffin in the house," said he. As he drew back, Elizabeth bravely stepped into the breach, but one sight of the coffin was enough, and she too, be- came panicky, and declared that there was no sleep for her if that coffin was to remain. Mother impatiently got up, and boldly threw the door wide open. She was never known to be afraid of anything, but a look unnerved her also, and she joined with the children and said she would never go to bed with that thing there. In vain the father said the rain would spoil it; it was three against one. " Spoil it or not," said the good housewife, " I won't stay in the house with it." So " pa " gave in, got a quilt, wrapped it up, and bore it through the storm to the shop.
-
-
Tammy had a square window in the rear of her house, with a wooden door. This was kept shut, there being a long string attached to it, by which Tammy could open it at will. The sound of a team crossing the bridge over the brook was usually a signal for Tammy to swing open the shutter and boldly communicate with the driver. A footstep on
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the bridge, also, would serve to open the window. If Tammy asked for a mackerel or any other thing she saw in the hand or the team of a passer-by, she usually got it, or the unlucky traveller got a piece of her mind. On one autumn day a luckless youth pass- ing noticed a big pile of pumpkins sunning against the rear of the house. Crossing the lot to avoid the steep hill, as many do to-day, he thoughtlessly pulled out one, low down in the pile. The effect was unex- pected, for at once the whole collection coasted down the hill into the brook. Tammy's window flew open. A torrent of vocal pyrotechnics accompanied the hours of labor that followed, as that unhappy boy fished out the pumpkins, and toiled back and forth up the hill until they were piled up again.
As is well known, a good deal of the land on Dog- town Commons is in the hands of the Younger family. I have said that Oliver Younger was brought up by his aunt, and it seems that he was unaware of the fact that the land belonged to his father and not to her. Many years after his father's death, he was remarking to one of the Allens, a neighbor, what a care his aunt's land was to him, and Allen responded, " Well, it's all yours, anyway. Your father willed it to you, for I signed the will as one of the witnesses." This was news to Oliver, but acting on the hint given
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he waited an opportunity when Tammy was away, and then ransacked the house. In the secret drawer of a small table, he found the will. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been outlawed, but as this was the first knowledge anyone had of its exist- ence it was admitted to probate.
"
While Tammy Younger won for herself a reputa- tion as a woman with a very choice vocabulary, es- pecially in the line of invective, she evidently was " not as bad as she has been painted," as Mr. Benja- min P. Kidder of Rockport has said, and his testi- mony is confirmed by Miss Betsy Elwell, an aged woman who remembers her well, as also by Mrs. Almira Riggs, but recently deceased. The truth seems to be that Tammy had an aunt, known by the name of "Luce (Lucy) George." She it was who originally lived in the Fox Hill House, and who used
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to stand at the door of her cabin and bewitch the oxen so that they would stand with their tongues run out, but could not come up the hill until some of the corn they drew was contributed to her. She, like Peg Wesson, is said to have had the art of so bewitching a load of wood that it would not stay on the ox team until a portion had been unloaded at her door. It is said she would go to the wharves, when the fishing vessels came in, and exact her tribute of fish. Of course these are traditions, but I give them for what they are worth to credulous minds. Tammy Younger lived with her aunt. Hence the confusion of the two. Tammy was not tall and raw-boned, as some have alleged, but short and inclined to plumpness.
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