USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Barnstable > Three old timers: Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth, 1639-1939 > Part 1
USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Sandwich > Three old timers: Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth, 1639-1939 > Part 1
USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Yarmouth > Three old timers: Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth, 1639-1939 > Part 1
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Go 974.401 B26da 1781145
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
Go
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01104 4424
THREE OLD
TIMERS
SANDWICH - BARNSTABLE - YARMOUTH
1639 - 1939
BY
EDWARD DARLING
AND
WILLIAM A: MILLER, JR.
ESTO
PERPETUA
THE WAYSIDE STUDIO SOUTH YARMOUTH CAPE COD
HT
M
1281145
BRIDGE STREET, SOUTH YARMOUTH
So multiple and varied are the stories associated with Bridge Street that one is at a loss what to say and what to pass by. It used to be a busy thoroughfare, with a toll house at the bridge, ; and lining the street, a blacksmith shop, a paint shop, a junk dealer, an ice cream parlor, Kenney's Speedy Relief medicine fac- i tory, the Bass River Savings Bank, a grocery store, and what not. The present bakery was moved here from West Dennis by Fred Baker. Previous to its travels the building was named "Nichtheroy," after the Brazilian transport commanded by Cap- tain Ezekiel Baker during the Brazilian Revolution. Captain Baker was one of the most romantic personalities in these parts, and a great hand for the ladies. At the river docks were a grain · store and coal yard, and here the New York ckets tied up every couple of weeks or so, amid great excitement . the village.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
T O THE many patient neighbors in these three old-time towns who have freely and generously given infor- mation about their own homes or parts of the histories of the towns best known to them, in order that our facts might be as accurate and intimate as possible, our most heartfelt thanks. Naming each such helper is impossible here, and so we make them one sweeping bow.
Without the support of the original subscribers to this volume, whose interest in the affairs of Cape Cod was so great that they allied themselves and their financial assist- ance with this project, it is possible that we might never have been able to go to press at all. To them we insist on giving individual thanks. They are:
Robert O. Anthony
Francis B. Ellis
Mrs. Fred Atwater
Mr. and Mrs. S. D. Elmore
Phineas O. Baker
Mr. and Mrs. Robert G. Emerson
Walter D. Baker
Bess Fraleigh
Dr. Samuel M. Beale, Jr.
Hon. Charles L. Gifford
Elfleda J. Bradford
Dr. De Wayne Hallett
Mrs. Harrison H. Hallett
Mr. and Mrs. Harold W. Hamilton
B. Nason Hamlin
Mr. and Mrs. Frank C. Harrington Dr. C. E. Harris
Mr. and Mrs. William G. Currier Dr. and Mrs. Eliot Hubbard, Jr.
Dr. and Mrs. Giles Dowling Edwin F. Eldredge
Mary Hinckley Hutchings Mr. and Mrs. Carl W. Illig, Jr.
Ella W. Bray
A. Harold Castonguay
Sarah K. Chipman
Mr. and Mrs. Franklin F. Collins Manton Copeland
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Paul Lennon W. B. Mayo Hon. Thomas Otis Gino L. Perera Arthur C. Raymond Mr. and Mrs. R. S. Rileigh Agnes Winslow Riley Harriet W. Ryder Mr. and Mrs. Frank C. Sargent J. Simpkins
Winslow Chase Sisson Louis B. Thacher Hon. Thomas C. Thacher Dr. and Mrs. George W. Tupper Dr. and Mrs. John I. B. Vail Mr. and Mrs. Lewis P. Weil Carter P. Whitcomb Pemberton Whitcomb Dr. J. Louis White Herbert A. Wisbey, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. W. L. Woodward
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AT RISE
0 ONSCIOUS of the truth that he must be immediate in his appeal, the dramatist is at some pains to be sure that his beginning is carefully wrought. Thunder and lightning. Enter three witches .
With what event shall the chronicler of Cape Cod be- gin? Shall he present the moving ice which, eventually, produces a peninsula unique in the annals of geology? For we are assured that no other such land as Cape Cod exists in the world -rocky promontories, yes; but slen- der arms of sand withstanding the ocean's fiercest storms over centuries, no. Shall he present the Icelander, daring fearful waters and taking home grapes? The Indian look- out, standing on the dunes, askance at the incomprehen- sible visitation? The Englishmen, dead sick of sea travel, gasping for land? The motorist of the Twentieth Century, complete with camera or golf clubs? Where shall the cur- tain rise, and on what scene?
Slowly and with infinite. unspoken patience, the oxen push their stubborn shoulders against the yoke. Nothing can hurry them, and few things can halt that enduring progress. A stump twists a wheel to one side; the wagon lifts, only to plunk down into sand. They come, the fol- lowers of the "ten men of Saugus," to take over the names of Shawme, Moonuscaulton, Moskeehtuckqut, Cummaquid, Mattachee and make them Sandwich's
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"Trail Going East," Barnstable's "Great Marshes," and Yarmouth's "Planting Lands." They will not cease to come; and they will give Cape Cod, shortly, 1500 miles of macadam roads . . . .
They arrive at Sandwich first.
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SANDWICH
T HAT Sandwich was settled first was natural. It was nearest to Plymouth; and in the great marshes was salt hay for cattle - land which need not be cleared of wood, which offered a crop for the harvesting. But be- fore land could be occupied here, the Court had to be consulted at Plymouth. The strong hand of that Court remained the ultimate ruler of the town's affairs through the years that followed. Two men who doubted the pow- er of distant authority tested this fact: they left their families at home and began to clear land with great in- dustry in Sandwich without obtaining permission from Plymouth; and were promptly presented "for disorderly keeping house alone."
Not so the "ten men." The record as of April 3, 1637, states: "It is also agreed by the Court that those tenn men of Saugust [and then the ten names are given, with the celebrated 'Edmond Freeman' heading the list] shall have liberty to view a place to sitt down & have suffi- cient lands for three score famylies vpon the conditions propounded to them by the Governor & Mr. Winslowe."
Their own avowed purpose was to worship God and to make money. Down the Indian trails they came, and gave their land the name familiar from the Kentish sea- port; and because the movement became popular at once, that busy military man, Miles Standish, and his friend,
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John Alden, were sent to decide land titles and keep the atmosphere as clear of friction as possible. It did not always seem very possible, the principle of granting.being "to him that hath shall be given." However, there was no appeal from the decisions of the Court.
Among the first settlers were Thomas Tupper and Rich- ard Bourne, who established the first Indian church in the Colony. Tupper's house, built in 1637, is said to have been the oldest in this part of the country. It burn- ed down in 1921.
Efficient, but not luxurious, were the first "booths," so called. As a type, according to Freeman, we may think of a building one story in height, about 20 feet square, with thatched roof, boarded walls, oiled paper for win- dows, daubed with mortar in the crevices, and costing about five pounds -equivalent in those days to about · twenty dollars in silver. Shortly came the famous "salt- box" type. One of the best known is the Hoxie house beside Shawme Lake; and if any physical object is capa- ble of bridging a three-hundred-year-gap so that today seems momentarily to be yesterday, such a building as this does it. It is notable that visitors viewing the inte- rior for the first time stand wordless because of the thun- der of the years represented before their eyes, as it were, in the actual flesh.
The Cape migration was no shot in the dark, how- ever. No person aware of the acuteness in business of the Fathers could suspect them of any such gamble. Where Scusset Creek came in from Cape Cod Bay almost join- ing Manomet River flowing into Buzzard's Bay was a . short portage across the sand; and there in 1627 the first
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business was conducted between New York and eastern Massachusetts at a place called by the Indians, "Little- trap-by-the-river," or to make it shorter, "Aptucxet." You can see what purports to be an exact replica of the original trading post there now; and this has been said to be the one remaining early trading post in America.
Miles Standish had been here previously, and in 1624 was dreaming of a canal dug through at this point. That dream was not of immediate fruition, but that it was a good idea was proved in 1914, a few weeks before the world turned somersault at Sarajevo, when the first ship went through the finished Cape Cod Canal.
Thus the men of Saugus had a pretty good idea of what the possibilities were. Within two years of the original trek, the town of Sandwich was incorporated, just 300 years ago.
It seems, at first glance, like a long time. From Miles Standish to General Leonard Wood, from John Alden to Johnny Chuck (if the comparison does not crack the im- agination), from the time land here was twenty-five cents an acre and a wolf's bounty ten to twenty dollars-much water has entered and left Shawme Lake in that time. Yet we know Cape Codders over ninety years old, still ac- tive, still interested. Three such lives nearly recalls the date of the first grant of land.
Some of the famous names associated with Sandwich in the last few hundred years should be of general knowl- edge. One of the early settlers was Edward Perry; and two of his descendants made American history: Com- modore Matthew Perry, it will be remembered, opened the door in Japan; Commander Oliver Perry presided at
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the memorable tete-a-tete on Lake Erie in the ruinous days after 1812.
Grover Cleveland used to live in what is now Gray Gables Inn at Monument Beach. With Joseph Jefferson, whose place was called the Crow's Nest and was located not far from the president's, he loved to fish. Jefferson, as one probably doesn't have to be reminded, was the most famous Rip Van Winkle, and there are uncounted tales of him in connection with his Sandwich days - the faces he made for twenty-five cents for a Cape boatman; his boast that while he couldn't buy a house here, no- body could stop him from being buried here; his state- ment that Sandwich is the prettiest village outside of England.
Richard Watson Gilder, editor of Century, fished with them, too. General Leonard Wood had a place at Pocas- set. Daniel Webster came to hunt and fish until 1825, when the operators at the glass factory took out dogs in such numbers that the game grew scarce; and of course there are many stories of Webster, too, and it is very possible that, as tradition asserts, he used to bang against the wall and call for rum, which was presently handed in through a sliding panel. The panel does not now appear, however.
Thornton W. Burgess was born on School Street in 1874; and according to the story we had from the pres- ent occupant, it was entirely an accident that Burgess was born in that house. His mother had to move out of a neighboring dwelling because sickness was there, and this edifice, being at the time a boarding place, took them in. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that the
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workers of Monument and other parts of the town gath- ered the sticky fluid, some of which was sent to Boston for distilling, some of which was made into tar and pitch.
Pocasset had its iron works; Charles W. Spurr put out patent veneers, marquetries and wood carvings; east of the grist mill was a woolen factory; Levi S. Nye made jewlers' boxes; there was a factory beside the grist mill which made and printed tags. Sandwich was humming with industry.
Undoubtedly the most famous product of the town was glass, and although the facts are pretty familiar, re- collection is in order at such a time as this. The Sand- wich glass works were the country's biggest for thirty years and the beauty of the glass made history. To start things off with a bang, the first melt was made on the Fourth of July, in 1825; and here the first pressed glass and the first lace glass in America was made. It was Deming Jarvis who came down from Boston and started it all. He saw the immense pine forests which would make easily transported fuel - and the sand here is not supposed to have had anything to do with it. In fact, the sand used in the glass came from elsewhere. Before he was done, the glass works owned railroads, ships, cement plants, and two thousand acres of forest land. Within twenty-five years of its beginng, the works em- ployed five hundred skilled craftsmen and turned out one hundred thousand pounds weekly from four furnaces. They made rum decanters and sugar bowls and lamp founts and candlesticks and novelties until 1888, when there was a strike. Threatened with a statement that the works would never be operated again if the fires went
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out, the men insisted on having their own way; and that was the end of Sandwich glass for all time. Of the original works, soon only three buildings were left, one being used for a pulp mill, one a print shop, and one a fish freezer. Turn up by the depot and you'll come as close to the home of Sandwich glass as anyone can today.
Of the Quakers in Sandwich a large volume could be written. The townsfolk were friendly to them, and many of the sect found a haven here; but the Plymouth Court was vitriolic in its indictment of them. Treatment ac- corded them by the Court seems incredibly severe to us of a later day.
Because Sandwich town officers wouldn't persecute this peaceful people, the Court appointed the infamous George Barlow a special marshall to stamp them out. He used the utmost cruelty, exacted the utmost penalties, was responsible for floggings and ruinous fines. Possibly the most famous of his persecutions was that of William Allen, whose total fines for allowing meetings in his house and so on, amounted to 86 pounds, 17 shillings; and Barlow took in payment 18 cattle, a mare, two colts, and other goods. Allen was ruined, jailed; but the house, lands, a cow, and a little corn were left out pity for his family. Barlow, drunk, according to the story, seized the cow, the corn, a bag of meal, and even a copper ket- tle, with the words, "Now, Priscilla, how will thee cook for thyself and thy family? Thou hast no kettle." To which Mrs. Allen responded that one day his need would be greater than hers; and poetic justice is happy to record that in his broken days Barlow begged for food from the same lady and found her generous.
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An explanation is manifestly called for. Why should a noncombative and peace-loving group be so rudely handled? The answer is not far to seek. They were ex- ceedingly stubborn; they rebelled at paying taxes in sup- port of the established church of the Colony; and their doctrine of the "inward light" negated the necessity for ministers; hence a community regarding the ministerial office as sacred, and church organizations as essential to mankind's spiritual wellbeing would naturally regard Quakerism as pernicious and demoralizing.
Sandwich, however, as a town, didn't bother them. Quakers in 1695 were given ground for their own burial place "on the hill above the Canoe Swamp between the ways."
The charm of Sandwich today consists of a hundred small details- a beautiful ancient graveyard, ("The Towne hath agread that the letell nick of land that lieth again William Nulands hows shall be appropreated for a buriall plas for the Towne"), a winding sandy road, an old house. But the first of all doctrines for those ad- vancing on the soil of Cape Cod should take the form of a commandment: Thou shalt not hasten! That the modern horseless buggy can travel with ease and with- out noticeable vibration at the rate of fifty miles an hour is entirely beside the point the moment the Cape Cod Canal is crossed.
Haste will not present the timeless allure af that small rounded point on Shawme Lake where the rude fore- fathers of the hamlet sleep, where light and shade com- bine with memory and imagination to create an irre- placeable beauty. Speed cannot understand the aspiring
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white glory of the Christopher Wren type spire at the lake's edge - a spire unsurpassed on Cape Cod. Nor was hurry concerned with the raising of the Hoxie house with its brick marked 1637. Time made Sandwich what it is, time gave the ancient wood that wonderful soft gray; and the visitor should take time to see the town. Most definitely is Sandwich not streamlined. If we make a list it must include surely :
1. The old burying ground by Shawme Lake
2. The Congregational Church, with Wren type spire
3. Hoxie house
4. The Historical Museum
5. The Old Grist Mill
6. Meltiah Bourne house, with saltbox roof
7. Daniel Webster Inn
8. Site of the Sandwich Glass works
9. Joseph Jefferson's grave in Bay View Cemetery
10. State Fish Hatchery and Game Preserve
11. The oldest Quaker meeting house in America
12. Alvin Wing house
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DANIEL WEBSTER INN, SANDWICH
Long before Daniel Webster was ever heard of, a continuous progression of drift whales paid for the raising of this building: and to the Rev. Rowland Cotton is accredited the idea of pay- ing the minister in shares of such derelicts. The parsonage went up in 1694. Later it became the Fessenden Inn in the years when Sandwich was the Cape's only wet town. The stagecoach made a regular stop here; and farmers in the neighborhood brought their earthen jugs to the inn to be filled with grog. To this hos- pitable house came Daniel Webster in due time, for his hunting and fishing.
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MELTIAH BOURNE HOUSE, SANDWICH
Over the front entrance is the date 1693, and the name of the old house is Whytemere. It has been in the hands of only two families since the beginning, when it was built by Meltiah Bourne, a relative of Richard. Part of the tradition associated with the building has been keeping it in the original state as much as possible, so that the traveler today sees, to all intents, the house that he would have seen in the old days, even to color.
Meltiah, a Unitarian, objected to the Congregational Church being built so close to his own property, according to tradition, and in retribution he built a barn as close to the church property as possible, in order that odors and sounds of the barnyard might annoy the church-goers. That barn has been moved, and is now the home of the Historical Museum, Mr. Ambrose Pratt, the present occupant, states.
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OLD MILL, SANDWICH
Perhaps the oldest building in town today is the grist mill, seen just at the left of the present tea house in the illustration. Its date is probably 1636, and certainly not later than 1637; it has never been entirely rebuilt. It was never a home, always a mill. The present shop beside it was made into a factory be- cause there was plenty of water power for both industries. Also beside the mill was an Indian trading post.
The builder, Thomas Dexter, had the first iron foundries in America, according to Mrs. Philip Harvey, present owner, and when he put in water wheels, they were iron turbines. The old wheel is still here; another one like it is in Scituate.
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ALVIN WING HOUSE, EAST SANDWICH
Living today in this beautiful ancient building is Miss Cora M. Wing, the last of her line to inhabit the homestead. Wings have lived here since Stephen, Sandwich's first Quaker, built it, according to the bronze tablet, as a blockhouse in 1641. The old blockhouse timbers are intact and unharmed, as solid as rock, and the old walls are a foot or more thick and two stories high. The right side as you face the house constituted the fort. In the early days, Indians had a trail going past this point, which per- mitted them to detour around the wide creek; and the fort was built just in case any trouble arose. Apparently it never did.
During the Revolution, a soldier was hidden in the big chim- ney; and a cannon-ball from a British frigate pierced the wall, according to legend.
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QUAKER MEETING HOUSE, SPRING HILL
That Sandwich should have the oldest Quaker meeting house in America is not surprising. The Massachusetts Bay Colony would not tolerate Quakers; Plymouth was bitter against them; but in the new lands on Cape Cod the people had plenty to do without bothering about the religious tenets of others.
'This ancient building has not suffered a noticeable change for many generations. Its bleakness is typical of Friends' meeting houses, which are traditionally utterly without adornment. An unusual feature in the burying ground beside it is that some of the stones, instead of naming the months by number (August is "Eighth Month"), give the profane nomenclature; and some are ornamented, which is contrary to Quaker usage. Ordinarily in Quaker cemeteries, exemplified at South Yarmouth, no stone differs from its fellows: a symbol that all are equal before God.
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BARNSTABLE ·
A NYBODY who understands the needs of cattle can see what a part of the allure of Barnstable must have been in the old days, in the days before the woods were cleared, when a man had chopping enough to do to get some sort of a shelter built without having to clear a grazing land, too. The Reverend Joseph Hull was quick to perceive the rich salt marshes where enough hay waved in the fall breezes to keep many times the cattle he owned.
Hull sought out Barnstable because he didn't get along with the Weymouth folk and had to move somewhere. He was pretty well established on the banks of Coggin's Pond with his small following when another group came down the peninsula, led by a man who must have been one of the most magnetic pastors of history - the Rev- erend John Lothrop. Lothrop's flock from the Congre- gational Church in England had followed him to Scituate; and when he decided to come to Barnstable, most of them packed up and came along. Thus the Barnstable organization can claim to be the oldest Congregational society in the country.
Lothrop and his followers arrived in October, one of the most golden months in the year on the Cape; and in the same year, 1639, the town was incorporated, with the Devonshire seaport town lending the name.
It was not particularly difficult to otain land three
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hundred years ago, so that often, shortly after a new town had been formed, certain pioneer spirits set out for still fresher grounds and established other towns of their own. This happened in Barnstable after about twenty years. The first group to leave - probably a band of Quakers-went out to Succonessett in 1660 to form their own village. Later the town was called Falmouth.
In the same year the first shack was put up in Hyannis. A trader by the name of Nicholas Davis built a shelter on Lewis Bay; but people didn't begin moving over that way for another twenty years. Even as late as 1871, when O. F. R. Waite brought out out his Guide Book for the Eastern Coast of New England, Hyannis was nothing like the present metropolis. Says Waite: "Hyannis is a small village in the town of Barnstable, and is the point of departure for steamboats for Nantucket Island, for which it is principally noted, and is sometimes called the 'jumping-off place' The people of Hyannis are principally engaged in business appertaining to the sea." Davis said that Sachem Yanno gave him the land. Kit- tredge, whose attitude toward early Indian trading ap- proaches irreverence for the purity of the White Man's motives, puts that "gave" in quotation marks, and pos- sibly the point is well taken. The land was well taken, in any event.
Whaling came naturally to Barnstable, owing to the shallow water on the Bay Side, where whales would come in to bask and get caught when the tide went out.
As in Sandwich, the ministers used to get paid in terms of whales, and the picture has been drawn of more than one pastor keeping watch for his pay to get stranded.
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Credited with killing the first whale on these shores is one William Hamilton. They say that he was ill thought- of in consequence, it being held that he must have had traffic with the Devil in order to be able to slay the huge sea mammal. If so, he was not the only one so to traffic.
From the outset Cape Cod had little trouble with the Indians, in fact, many a time the early settlers might have perished completely without the aid of their sav- age cousins. Thus when the call came to the Cape to send her sons away, during the Colony's Indian wars, Barnstable presented her quota, although it made some of the town fathers anxious to note that local fighting power was reduced. Local fighting power was never need- ed, however. The Cape Indians refused to join King Philip against the Whites.
There was Captain Gorham; and his son, Lieutenant- Colonel John Gorham, who commanded one of the whale- boat fleets against the French; and his son, Shubael Gor- ham, who was present at the taking of Louisburg, 1745.
But it is of the Revolution that the merriest tales are told of Barnstable - tales of the Widow Abigail Free- man, who was tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail for talking too loudly in the King's favor; of the Liberty Pole on the green opposite the present St. Mary's; of the free-for-all between Captain Sam Crocker, who was a moderate patriot, and Colonel Joseph Otis, who was a fire-eating extreme patriot, upon the occasion of the Cap- tain's drilling his men and their clubbing their muskets instead of saluting when the Colonel passed. Otis said Crocker told them to offer him this insult, and he smack- ed Crocker with his cane, in plain sight of all the militia;
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