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Gc 974.402 P62c 1630825
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01100 1978
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019
https://archive.org/details/pigeoncoveitsear00cham
4.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CHARLES H. CLEAVES
THE OLD CASTLE BUILT IN 1713
PIGEON COVE
ITS EARLY SETTLERS
THEIR FARMS
1702-1840
allora Chando
Copyright, 1940 By Village Improvement Society of Pigeon Cove, Inc. All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
THOMAS TODD COMPANY BOSTON . Printers . MASStts
1630825
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
S TATEMENTS herein are based upon public records except where a foundation upon tradition is admitted. The records consulted are those of the Commoners, of the Town Meetings, of the Selectmen, and of the Assessors, also the published Vital Records, all of Gloucester; also the deeds and probate papers recorded at the Registry at Salem; the United States Census of 1790; the Federal tax on dwellings of 1798, the original of which is in the library of the New England Historic Genealogical So- ciety, Boston; available Town of Gloucester tax records from 1784 on; and certain maps and plans filed with the State Archives at Boston. The compiler is also indebted to Mr. Paul A. Polisson, City Engineer of Gloucester, and to Mr. Alvin S. Brown, Jr., Town Clerk of Rockport, for permission to examine their plan files, and to Mrs. Alonzo L. Whitney of Pigeon Cove for permis- sion to examine historical papers in her collection, as well as for generous assistance in genealogical matters and the interpreta- tion of deeds. Another source of information is the History of the Town of Gloucester (1860), and Notes and Additions, Part First, to that work (1876), both by Dr. John J. Babson. Through the courtesy of Mr. Foster H. Saville, Curator of the Sandy Bay Historical Society and Museum, documents and publications in his custody were made available for study.
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Contents
PAGE
OLD STYLE CHRONOLOGY. · 7
THE CAPE COMMON AND ITS FOREST
. 9
THE EARLIEST HIGHWAYS ·
I3
PIGEON HILL SEA MARK 18
EARLY FARMS OF PIGEON COVE
25
LANESVILLE NEIGHBORHOOD
25
John and James Lane, Edward Jumper, Benjamin Hoppen, Thomas Wise
SAMUEL LANE . 26
Samuel Lane, Jr., Daniel Marchant, Jr., Daniel Marchant, 3d, Caleb Marchant, Joel Griffin
WILLIAM WOODBERRY
30
William and James Norwood, James Gooch, David Babson
SAMUEL GOTT AND HIS SONS . 34
Samuel Junior, Daniel, Joseph, Benjamin, Nathaniel, Joshua, Joshua Gott Junior, Nathaniel Parsons, Joseph Wheeler, Joseph Bailey, John Story
WILLIAM ANDREWS AND HIS SONS .
43 William Junior and Jonathan Andrews, Stephen Knutsford Senior
JOSHUA NORWOOD, THE GARRISON HOUSE
·
47
Elias and Job Davis, John Procter, Moses Wheeler
JETHRO WHEELER, THE OLD CASTLE
·
53
Benjamin, Benjamin Junior, John Dane Wheeler
PIGEON HILL FARM
.
·
. 57
Thomas Harris, John Kimball & Company, Barnabas Dodge, John Rowe
THE WOODS SETTLEMENTS 60 Richard Langsford, Stephen Gott, Stephen Gott Junior, Benja- min Stockbridge, John Thursten, Thomas, Stephen Junior and William Knutsford, John Blatchford, Andrew Woodbury Junior, James Story, Job and Solomon Knights
THE NORTH VILLAGE OF 1840
70
·
THE ORIGINAL QUARRIES:
Nehemiah Knowlton, William Torrey, Ezra Eames, Beniah Colburn, Zacheris Green (The Boston & Gloucester Granite Company), John Stimson, Charles S. Rogers
THE VILLAGERS AND THEIR HOMES IN 1840 71
·
MAP LEGEND
94
MAP OF EARLY PIGEON COVE FARMS
AND HOUSES OF 1840 Facing page 94
Old Style Chronology
T HROUGHOUT these records instances will be noted where the years are " double dated," as the saying is, as, for ex- ample, February 27, 1687/88, when the Town Meeting granted the Pigeon Cove six-acre lots. This merely represents the confu- sion which existed wherever English rule extended until the year 1752, at which time the Gregorian calendar went into effect in accordance with an Act of Parliament of 1750.
Under the old Roman or Julian calendar March 25 was New Year's Day. Under the calendar decreed by Pope Gregory XIII in the sixteenth century, and which had been in effect in many countries since that time, January I became the first of the year. Thus Scotland, before it became a part of Great Britain, adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1599. In England, however, the " new style," as it was called, remained long in abeyance, partially owing to religious scruples, and in a measure perhaps to the tra- ditional English conservatism toward all innovations.
As will be noted by anyone who examines the older Gloucester records, months were for some time recorded, not by name but by number, as " the 5th of the last mth 1644," meaning, according to the old style calendar, February 5, 1644/45, or " the first of the IIth mth," meaning January I.
A little later the English began to call the months by name, and this necessitated the practice of double dating from January I through March 24, until the Act of Parliament established the Gregorian calendar as the standard for England and all its pos- sessions.
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The Cape Common and Its Forest
W HEN early Gloucestermen had occasion to refer to the northern and eastern shores they called the region The Cape. This designation seems to have embraced the coast north- erly from Hodgkins Cove at Bay View through Lanesville to Halibut Point, and southerly and easterly around Sandy Bay. Except for the rough fields and pastures that had been cleared in connection with the farming hamlet now known as Dogtown, the entire area to the east and north was covered with the forest primeval, and was owned in common by the townsmen. There is ample evidence to show that this was an unusually fine piece of woodland even for those days, and the original Proprietors' Records clearly indicate that Gloucester appreciated its value as a public asset. Within less than a month after the incorporation of the Town in 1642 the voters began to place restrictions upon the cutting of the timber from those common lands, and these regulations were continued and stiffened during the succeeding fifty years or more.
The first recorded regulation was passed in June 1642. It for- bade the sale of any timber out of town without permission under a penalty of ten shillings in the pound. About three years later, February 5, 1644/45, a Proprietors' meeting caused it to be recorded that "It is ordered that whoever hee bee that shall from this date forward cutt downe anie Tymber trees without leave shall paie the vallue of 10$ per tree." Also, to avoid any claim that the tree used had been found already cut by some other person and abandoned, it was forbidden to utilize any down tree without leave. Even the cutting of hoop poles without per- mission was prohibited, and a fine of three shillings a hundred was the penalty for a violation. Before permitted timber could be removed after cutting the " overseer " was required to meas- ure it to ascertain that the permitted quantity had not been exceeded. The penalty for overcutting was one-half of the permitted amount.
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On March 22, 1649/50 it was voted that all timber grants should be recorded as to place of cutting and quantity desired, and that a time limit for the cutting should be fixed. The per- mittee was required to pay a recording fee of four pence, and the cutting of unrecorded timber carried a penalty of fifteen shillings for every tree. The townspeople were allowed to cut twenty cords of wood a year per family for domestic use, but care seems to have been taken that no one exceeded his limit.
By 1667 it would appear that the outside market for Cape Ann cordwood had grown to considerable proportions, and it was voted that cutting should be permitted along the eastern shore from Brace's Cove, northerly around the cape to Plum Cove, for a distance of 660 feet back from the sea. During the follow- ing year there seems to have been the fear that, as those shore fronts were cleared, outsiders might attempt to squat upon them. A vote was then passed prohibiting such settling. It would ap- pear that wood cutting became unusually active about this time, and that the competition among the operators may have led to price cutting. The answer of the Town to this was a vote " that there should be no cordwood sold out of town under three shil- lings and six pence per cord." The townsmen also began to fear that their timber supply was in some danger of becoming ex- hausted. As a hedge against this possibility some forestry minded person prevailed upon the Town Meeting to pass a vote on Janu- ary 4, 1670/71 that whenever any trees were " marked with a necks " (meaning an X) they were to be left for timber or to bear " ackhorns " (acorns), and were not to be cut by anyone under penalty of a fine of ten shillings a tree.
Just why the Gloucester people lost their interest in forest conservation cannot be known. Perhaps it was because they saw out of town lumbermen making what appeared to be a good deal of money out of their purchases of stumpage rights, and felt that they might as well be given a chance to get some of the business themselves. The fact is that by 1723 the common woods had all been parcelled out in severalty among the commoners. This procedure began when the fore shore from Lane's Cove, then known as Flatstone Cove, to Sandy Bay Brook, the present- day Mill Brook, was allotted in so-called six-acre parcels to all
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native males then " upward of one and twenty years of age." Number one lot was at the eastern side of Lane's Cove, and lot 82 was at Mill Brook just south of King Street. Theoretically these lots were 198 feet wide on the sea and ran back about a quarter of a mile into the land. As a matter of fact they varied considerably in width and depth, and some were triangular rather than rectangular in form, so that it is impossible to accurately determine where all the lots lay. From the descriptions in the grants, and in subsequent deeds covering some of the lots, cer- tain dividing lines and corners can be fairly definitely deter- mined. Thus lot 2 1 is known to have been bounded east by Folly Cove; the meadow through which flows the Norwood Mill Brook west of Granite Street at Folly Cove was lot 24; lots 26 to 35 inclusive abutted south on Gott Avenue and on a line thence easterly to the sea; lots 50 to 53 inclusive abutted upon the north shore of Pigeon Cove; the corner common to lots 53 and 54 appears to have been in front of 144 Granite Street, the office of the Cape Ann Tool Company; the line between lots 59 and 60 is the boundary between 139 and 141 Granite Street; the south side of Landmark Lane divides lots 62 and 63; the south side of Rowe Lane divides lots 70 and 71.
These grants were authorized at a Town Meeting on Febru- ary 27, 1687/88, and the boundaries were set by the " Lot Lay- ers " in the following July. It seems reasonable to surmise that many of these areas had been cleared of their tree growth prior to this, under that permissive vote of 1667 previously referred to, and that a goodly part of the remainder were cleared between 1688 and 1700. This idea is based upon the fact that some of the lots were bought from the original grantees by men, some of them from out of town, who had been previously engaged in lumbering in other parts of the cape. In 1708 the Town similarly disposed of a large portion of the Southern Woods between Long Cove (Rockport harbor) and Loblolly Cove, and between the sea and the eastern end of Cape Pond. Practically all that was then left was given out in 1723. That last division took in the land west of the 1708 woodlots, and everything between the 1688 shore lots, Great Hill and Dogtown.
Here and there an owner continued the sylvicultural practices
earlier laid down by the commoners for the management of their joint property, so that as recently as 1873 it was possible for Rev. Henry C. Leonard to record in his "Pigeon Cove and Vicinity " that the region between Long Beach and Cape Pond, several hundred acres in extent, "is a grand wood but slightly damaged by the ruthless axe." Since then indiscriminate cutting and repeated fires have invaded that section, until but little growth of any commercial consequence remains.
The original forest of Cape Ann was greatly superior in tree species to the woods on the adjacent mainland. For some reason the woodlands of the cape, even today, consist in the main of trees such as are normally native to Berkshire County and to southern and central New Hampshire. Professional foresters who have walked with the writer in the cape woods have in- variably remarked upon the fact that here is what is known as a " northern hardwood type " of forest. The old forest was by no means made up entirely of hardwood trees. It was unques- tionably a mixed forest, as it is in a measure today, but some of the species that probably were originally here, such as red spruce and not impossibly fir among the softwoods, and rock maple, buttonwood (sycamore), hickory, aspen, black birch, and bass- wood among the hardwoods, have practically disappeared. The house, wharf and ship builders of Boston and Salem knew the high quality of that old growth cape timber, and large quantities went to those markets until the supply was exhausted.
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The Earliest Highways
CHURCH GREEN TO SANDY BAY 1707
W HEN the first farms around " the head of the Cape " were settled, soon after 1700, there was no public road be- tween there and the most northerly settlements at Goose Cove and Annisquam. It seems evident, however, from certain inci- dental remarks in the records of some of the earliest layouts of roads across the cape, that there had been trails, or perhaps rough sled roads, which had existed for some years previously. The first official town way to any part of the Rockport shore was laid out June 2, 1707 from the Meeting House Green (Washing- ton and Poplar Streets, Gloucester) on the lines now followed
by Gloucester Avenue, the disused old Rockport road to Beaver Dam farm, thence by Main Street over Great Hill, and so to the sea near Front Beach, where Richard Tarr's land lay. That this road followed, in a general way at least, an older used route is made evident by the statement that it was to run "where the way is now and hath been for many years Last past made use of." Richard Tarr had been living on the south bank of Davison's Run or Sandy Bay Brook, now Mill Brook, for about seventeen years, and this was in part, no doubt, a rough road that he had swamped out for his own use. On the Gloucester Avenue end it was probably much older, for it led to the first mill on Alewife Brook, which is said to have been built about 1635.
GOOSE COVE TO HALIBUT POINT 1707
THE next road to the east led from " the gravel pit by the grist mill " at Goose Cove northerly by way of Annisquam, Bay View, Lanesville, and Folly Cove to Samuel Gott's house, now standing on Gott Avenue. That road was laid out October 2 1,
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1707. The record description begins at the eastern end " at the southwest corner bound of Samuel Gott's land " next William Andrews' land. Thence it ran westerly "along by the head of Charles James' lot " (i.e., lot 30) to William Woodberry's dwelling house. To that point it ran on the lines of the present- day Gott Avenue. Woodberry's house was at what is popularly known as Babson's Corner on Granite Street. Thence it ran over a corner of Woodberry's land " where it now goeth " to land of Samuel Lane. His farm lay between the Norwood Mill Brook and the present town line. The road passed along the northern end of Lane's land " between his bounds and the water- side," then on common land, meaning probably Folly Cove town landing, to John Stone's land and Thomas Wise's dwelling house. It is suspected that Wise may have lived in the old house still standing on the southerly side of Washington Street, number 1261, a little east of Folly Cove Brook. It then ran on the lines of Washington Street (Langsford Street did not come into be- ing until about 1850), passing over Robert Standford's land and along the side of John Lane senior's land. The latter owned three or four lots next east of Lane's Cove. The road then passed the house of Samuel Sargent and continued on the lines of Wash- ington Street to Hodgkins Cove at Bay View. From there it continued, still on Washington Street, between the homes of Lieutenant John Davis and Benjamin Harraden, and so to Joseph Harraden's, Benjamin York's and John Butman's. That road departed from what is now Washington Street near the Annis- quam church and followed the lines of Bennett Street to the point where the brook enters the northeast end of Goose Cove.
BEGINNINGS OF SOUTH STREET 1708
IN 1708 the Town laid out a road from Long Cove, now Rock- port Harbor, to Starknaught Harbor beach landing, now Little Good Harbor beach, and so to Gloucester. The description seems a little jumbled, but it is clearly the beginning of Mt. Pleasant and South Streets to Cape Hedge, Long Beach, Brier Neck and thence to Meeting House Green, very likely via Witham Street and the " Old Rockport Road " and Gloucester Avenue.
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HALIBUT POINT TO SANDY BAY BROOK 1716
THE beginning of the highway now known as Granite Street, from Gott Avenue to Knowlton's Corner, and as Beach Street thence to the present-day Mill Brook at Front Beach, is found in the layout of March 19, 1715/16, confirmed in Town Meeting on June 23, 1719. By that time four farms had been settled be- tween The Garrison House (188 Granite Street) and the quarry bridge. Obviously this road had been opened by these settlers and this town action was merely its acceptance as a public way. The official description begins at " the highway that leads to the now dwelling house of Samuel Gott at the gate by the now dwelling house belonging to the heirs of William Woodberry deceased," meaning, of course, the corner of Gott Avenue and Granite Street. Thence it ran southerly between the lands of Woodberry and Gott (they owned on opposite sides of Granite Street) to Joshua Norwood's fence. That point was at the south- erly corner of the northern end of Curtis Street. Then it ran southeast over Norwood's land and easterly "before the said Joshua Norwood's now dwelling house." He then lived in The Garrison House. From there it ran southeasterly to the head of Pigeon Cove " to a basswood tree a corner bound between land of Norwood and Jethro Wheeler." That tree probably stood just north of the Cape Ann Tool Company's office building, 144 Granite Street, at the edge of the cove beach. It was stipu- lated that Wheeler was to maintain gates and bars, probably at his boundaries on the road. A deed of 1791 shows that there was a gate at his southern boundary in that year. From the basswood tree, which was said to be " at the entrance on the land of Jethro Wheeler," that being The Old Castle, the road ran south by west " by a great rock and by the west side of a ledge " to the boundary between Wheeler and the land of John Harris. This boundary is now the line between 139 and 141 Granite Street, and the ledge referred to was a great mass of granite that rose some twenty to thirty feet from the easterly edge of the road and covered the sites of 143 to 151 Granite Street. That ledge was quarried away about 1830.
From Gott Avenue to the basswood corner on the cove beach
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no distances were given in the layout, but from the beginning of Wheeler's land south to Sandy Bay Brook the measurement across every man's land was given. (See distances in 1792 re- location following.) Wheeler's frontage was given as 72 rods (1,188 feet). Across Harris it was 45 rods (742 feet). Next came Daniel Gilbert's land (he was one of the partners of John Kimball & Co.), with a frontage of 84 rods (1,386 feet). That southerly corner of Gilbert was just south of the present Rowe Avenue. Gilbert abutted upon Samuel Stevens who owned a single lot, number 71, the width of which was given as 12 rods (198 feet), and that distance took the road just about to the quarry bridge. From there to Sandy Bay Brook all the land was owned by John Pool, who lived at the corner of King and Smith Streets. The distance across Pool was given as 164 rods (2,706 feet).
Seventy-six years later, July 17, 1792, the Selectmen "re- newed the bounds " of this road and recorded a description on the Town books that differs slightly from the original in some of the distances across the various frontages. The probability is that the measurements made with a surveyor's chain, both in 1716 and in 1792, were not made precisely, though it might be presumed that the later survey would be more nearly exact than the earlier one.
The 1792 description began at James Norwood's house, which was at the corner of Gott Avenue, and ran southerly to " a gate where the Maple Tree formerly stood," three rods wide with a stone wall on each side. (Ancient deeds show that " the Maple Tree " stood on the easterly side of the road opposite Curtis Street at the northerly boundary of the Garrison House farm next William Andrews.) Thence it ran southerly by Moses Wheeler's stone wall on the westerly side of the road to the place " where the Basswood tree formerly stood at Pigeon Cove, an Original Bound between Joshua Norwood and Jethro Wheeler's Land." The distance from the maple tree to the basswood tree was given as 171 rods (2,821.5 feet). Thence the road ran through the land of Benjamin Wheeler (i.e., across the Old Castle farm) to " a gate the Bounds between said Wheeler and Major John Row's Land " for a distance of 76 rods (1,254 feet).
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Thence it ran through Rowe's land to " a gate the Bounds be- tween Row's Land and the Land belonging to the Heirs of Mr. John Pool deceased " for a distance of 132 rods (2,178 feet). That point was just south of Rowe Avenue. Thence it ran to the northerly side of the beach (i.e., Back Beach at Knowlton's Corner) 104 rods (1,716 feet), then over the beach 52 rods (858 feet), then to Sandy Bay Brook 28 rods (462 feet). The road was two rods wide except through Norwood, where it was three rods wide, and along the cove and along the beach, at which points no width was specified.
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Pigeon Hill Sea Mark
T HE sightly five-acre field on the summit of Pigeon Hill, with the water supply standpipe located on its southwest corner, has an interesting history. Since 1929 it has been the property of the Town of Rockport, it having then been pur- chased from heirs of Ezra Eames for public park purposes. For more than a century previously it had been privately owned, but before that, from the incorporation of Gloucester until 1819, it had been the property of the Town of Gloucester, which had set it aside as a distinctive landmark for the guidance of mariners.
In another chapter will be found the story of the granting of the land along this shore in 1688 to the then inhabitants of the town, and of the gradual development of those lots into the earli- est farms. Those early grants of only six acres each were nar- row, about 200 feet wide on the sea front, and ran back for about 1,300 feet. Thus the westerly ends of the lots lying on Pigeon Hill did not quite touch the summit. After 1700, when the shore lots began to be settled upon and farmed, the Town granted relatively small contiguous areas west of the six-acre pieces to some of the settlers. By or before 1713 nearly all of the common land on all sides of Pigeon Hill had been passed over into private ownership.
The summit five acres, however, had never been parted with by the commoners. Whether the retention of this piece was by design or by inadvertence is not known. It would seem that perhaps they had had it in mind to keep this area in public owner- ship, for on March 5, 1712/13, it was voted at one of the Com- moners' meetings that " all the Common that belongs to the town upon Piggon Hill is to lie comon still perpetually to bee for a sea mark, and that no trees shall bee cut down upon the land that is reserved for said sea mark upon the penalty of 20 shillings for every tree that shall be cut downe or caused to be cut downe, one half to the informer and one half to the poor of the town."
Captain Joseph Allin and John Pool were named to lay out the
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reservation. The records show that five days later Allin and Pool stated that they had laid out " for a publick good " about 5 acres " bounded at the southeast corner by a red oak tree, being an old bound of one of the old lots which was formerly Captain Joseph Allin's (he had owned lots 62 and 64), thence northerly to a black oak marked on four sides and the broad arrow set on it on the south side, thence southwesterly to a white oak marked on four sides and the broad arrow on the east side, thence south- easterly to the first bound." The broad arrow, in this case carved on the trees, was the English mark of public ownership. This report was approved at a Commoners' meeting on October 6, 1713.
That description, with only three corners mentioned, produces a lot of triangular form. Whether this was actually the shape of the reservation, or whether Captain Allin and Mr. Pool inad- vertently omitted one entire side from the description in the report, cannot be positively known. If it was an error it seems strange that this was not discovered by the Selectmen, or by some voter before approval was given at that October meeting.
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