USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Eastham > Eastham, Massachusetts, 1651-1951 > Part 7
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The Indians, nearly a dozen in number, signed a long pro- test to the Province general court, claiming that many were crippled veterans of the French and Indian wars who had fought "with ye English" and they claimed a legal right in the fishery at Billingsgate. The Rev. Nathaniel Stone and Joseph Hall signed it as guardians of the Potanumaquat Indians, and all asserted that Captain Snow had forbidden them to fish at their old fishing ground, and also forbidden Samuel Crook, "to build or cut thatch or whale from sd beach."
To this, Captain Snow, not only in his own right as owner, but as an agent for the town of Eastham, recited how he came into possession of Billingsgate Point. He went back to the 1644 grant to the Plymouth Church, the 1646 Nauset town act, and the 1685 Hinckley confirmatory grant, and came down to his possession through the proprietors. But, Captain Snow wrote, "the pretence of whaling is trifling." Not a whale was caught off Billingsgate in the year past, he said, and the whole complaint was much ado about nothing for, "the Harwich People ... are at the bottom of this affair."
The General Court sent a committee consisting of Gama- liel Bradford, Captain Joseph Robinson and Edward Bacon to
BLACKFISH ASHORE!
From time immemorial blackfish have stranded on Eastham's shores in large schools. On sighting them in the bay, Eastham men put out in small boats and drove them ashore for their valuable oil. Schools of more than 300 are recorded. Now the oil isn't so valuable, but blackfish still commit suicide by following their tiny food fish into shallow water, where the ebbing tide leaves them to gasp out their lives.
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EASTHAM, MASSACHUSETTS
inquire into the matter. It passed five days in Eastham, and then in writing, "Report as our opinion that the antiaent sacham of those lands conveayed the same to the Proprietors of the Town of Eastham altho the Boundaries are not clearly assar- taind by Reason of the Rivers and Brooks altering by the sand Blowing into them . . The committee then came up with a nice solution to the whole affair, saying it had interviewed Captain Snow and he consented, "that the neighbouring In- dians and their Heirs shall forever here after have a Good Right to whale on Billingsgate point; also to Cut Thatch for their whale Houses." So ended the Billingsgate whale controversy in 1759.
Fishing in the bay always engaged many men. Weir fish- ing here began in the middle 1800s and the Legislature in 1839 granted incorporation to the Eastham Fishing Company to maintain a "wear" as it spelled the word throughout the act, adjoining Henry Mayo's upland. Weirs prospered for half a century. In the 1870s there were five traps, owned by Phillip Smith, Alonzo Higgins, William Nickerson, N. S. Smith and George Nickerson. An indication of the extent of the bay side fisheries appears in an 1856 petition wherein John H. Bangs and seventy-nine others asked the County to designate the west- ern rather than the eastern road as the main way through North Eastham and South Wellfleet, from the Methodist meeting house to the guide board near Joshua Higgins' home.
"It is well known that our dependence for a living in this part of the county is almost exclusively in maritime pursuits in their various forms," said the petitioners. "Our harbours, wharves and packing establishments are all on the western shore of the Cape and of course the western road will best ac- commodate that interest. Again, our seamen who have occa- sion to go to Boston by land have to travel and move their baggage by some private conveyance from a quarter to half a mile to get on to the present stage route."
Both the bay shore and Town Cove have always abounded in shellfish-clams, quahogs and scallops. Steady taking has much reduced the yield but these shellfish still provide an im-
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OLD FRENCH CABLE STATION-A well-remembered building in North Eastham near the Nauset lights. It housed the land terminus of the French cable between 1879 and 1891. One of the lights shows faintly at the left of the station.
portant source of employment, as well as food for many fam- ilies, and, in this third century, pleasant exercise for summer residents. When Wellfleet was set off in 1765 and Orleans in 1797 provision was made that residents of each town might take shellfish on the other's shores. These provisions through the years caused a great deal of controversy. However, amic- able agreements have been worked out whereby each town's selectmen make their own regulations and residents of the neighboring towns abide by them.
An interesting moment in the town's annals was the land- ing of the French cable in 1879. During the dozen years fol- lowing, the town was land terminus of the only cable connect-
FRENCH CABLE STATION CREW-An 1881 photograph showing the crew of the cable station. Front row, left to right: C. Albert Ronne, Mr. Self, A. F. "Fred" Toovey, Superintendent Charles Marsily, H. G. Wilson, George S. Hall, and Nathan A. Gill, keeper of the Nauset lights; rear row, left to right, Mr. Quinn, James D. B. Stuart, George Williams, Everett G. Dill, and John H. Smart.
ing the United States with France. It went via St. Pierre and Miquelon. The landing was dramatic. Considerable prepara- tion had been made on shore. Then, on Saturday, November 15, 1879, the steamer Faraday, laying the cable, appeared on the horizon at eight in the morning. At ten she anchored a mile off the Nauset shore. A dory manned by Captain T. K. Mayo, Fletcher Doane and Heman S. Gill put out with greet- ings. Weather and more preparation postponed the grand event of the landing to next day-Sunday. A section of the cable was then brought in, on a towed raft, in late afternoon, and touched shore, "amid the fury of guns and the cheers of the
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THREE CENTURIES IN RETROSPECT
multitude." Flags of France, America and England flew on the Faraday; more than a thousand persons watched on shore, including directors of the cable company brought from Boston by special train. The landing occurred at 5:45 P. M., and un- fortunately at too dark a moment for the photographer to re- cord the historic event. On Monday, November 17, at mid- day, the splice between the land end and that held on the Fara- day was made, and the first messages sent, an exchange of greet- ings between company officials in France and America.
Until the new station building was finished, the cable office operated in the basement of the Nauset light keeper's dwelling. The large new building housed officers, quarters for the staff and space for social gatherings. The "Compagnie Francaise du Telegraphe de Paris a New York," as the company was then named, brought to Eastham many new families from distant places. Superintendent Charles Marsily came from Belgium, George S. Hall, later superintendent, and George Self from Scotland, John H. Smart and Agnew Fontaine Toovey, al- ways known as Fred Toovey, from England, C. Albert Ronne from Brooklyn, and so on. Some Eastham men, such as Ever- ett G. Dill were also cable station employees. In 1891 the Eastham station was abandoned and the offices moved to Or- leans. For a time the land line ran overland from North East- ham, and under Town Cove, to the Orleans station. In 1908 a new cable was laid, which came directly through Town Cove to the Orleans terminus.
NAUSET AS SEEN BY VISITORS
Wonder-strand, the Norsemen called Nauset nearly a thousand years ago; The Kingdome of Nauset, some of the Pilgrims called it three centuries ago. Through the years ex- plorers, geologists, college presidents, naturalists, travellers and authors have passed this way and set down their view of East- ham's beach, plains, marshes, moors, meadows and dunes. Such impressions help one see the old town in years long past and to understand the changes time has wrought on the face of the land. The Norse applied Wonder-strand to Nauset Beach, for
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THREE CENTURIES IN RETROSPECT
instance, not because the great outer beach awed these vikings but because of its impressive length. The quotation goes:
And they gave the shore a name, and called it Wonderstrand, because it seemed so long sailing by .- From the Account of Thorfinn Karsefne's Settlement in Vineland, 1006-7, in the Icealandic Sagas.
Here are a few more impressions of Nauset from writings of the seventeenth century:
There is a large extent of open country along the shore before reach- ing the woods, which are very attractive and beautiful ... It (Nauset) would be a very fine place, if the harbour were good ... Many savages, men and women, visited us and ran up on all sides dancing. We named this place Port de Mallebarre .- Samuel de Champlain, French explorer, 1605.
Nawsel (Nauset) & Saughtughtett (Satucket-Brewster) are for ye most part a blakish & deep mould, much like that wher groweth ye best Tobaco in Virginia. In ye botume of ye great bay is store of Codd & basse, or mulett, &c .- Captain Thomas Dermer, 1620.
"The Kingdome of Nauset," an anonymous Pilgrim, probably Edward Winslow, called the place in the account known as Mourt's Relation pub- lished in London, 1622. "A Voyage Made by Ten of our Men to the Kingdome of Nauset, to seek a Boy that had lost Himselfe in the Woods" is the chapter heading over the episode when Sachem Aspinet returned the lost Billington boy to a Pilgrim party. The account closes: "The soyle at Nauset and here (Plymouth) is alike, even and sandy . .. Shipps may safely ride in eyther harbour. In the Summer they abound with fishe."
Many impressions have come down of Eastham in the seventeenth century, but few in the eighteenth century. Presi- dent Ezra Stiles of Yale did make a horseback tour of the Cape in 1762, and mentions: "Rode south until against Eastham meetinghouse, then struck southwesterly . . . Had a runaway Negro on foot in company, which retarded travel . . . A belt of oakes across to about 1 mile below Truro meetinghouse. Then
SALT POND AND NAUSET INLET
One of Eastham's many beautiful views is this scene, looking out over Salt Pond, Nauset inlet, Salt Pond Bay and the marshes of Nauset Harbor, with the thin line of the dunes on the horizon.
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THREE CENTURIES IN RETROSPECT
belt of pines to within about a mile of Nauset. Then oaks and shrubs." But after Dr. Stiles came another Yale president, Timothy Dwight, whose record of his visit on Cape Cod in 1800 gives an unusual picture of Eastham. Of his down trip he wrote:
In Eastham the surface became a perfect plain; and the peninsula so narrow that we had a full view of Massachusetts bay and the Atlantic at the same time. The bay was everywhere magnificent and on the North was like the ocean, without limits. We were, therefore, presented with the prospect of two immense oceans, separated only by a strip of land, three miles in breadth. Few spots on a continent unite two such objects in a single view.
When Dr. Dwight returned travelling south, he noted:
Nothing can exceed the dreariness and desolation of this scene (the bay side of Eastham) ... The impression made by the landscape cannot be realized without experience. It was a compound of wildness, gloom and solitude. I felt myself transported to the borders of Nubia .. . a troop of Bedouins would have finished the picture.
Some of this same picture is repeated by Dr. James Free- man writing for the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1802:
The county road from Harwich to Wellfleet passes over barren sands; and conveys to strangers, who are naturally induced to take this way, a worse opinion of Eastham than it deserves. Soon after entering on this scene of desolation, a road turns to the right and leads over the good land. These two roads meet on the narrow neck which lies between Long Pond and Mill pond, where again they diverge, the road on the right hand being very good for this part of the county; but in favour of the other nothing can be said, except that it is the shortest, and that it is not as bad as the roads in Wellfleet.
Another early nineteenth century traveller, Edward A. Kendall, an Englishman who visited in 1807-8, left an inter- esting account:
THOREAU MAP
Eastham, as shown on a portion of a little known map drawn by the great Henry David Thoreau himself. The original, done in pencil, was given to the Concord Free Public Li- brary by his sister Sophia. Note the "200 a. good land as any in Concord with three cedar swamps on," indicated at Nauset; also "pretty good for corn" in the northeastern part of the town.
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As I travelled the road through Eastham, on my journey downward, I left on my right a glittering mansion, white and black, that rose con- spicuous over the level champaign by which it was surrounded, and ap- peared to be the chateau of the domain. On making inquiries concerning it, I learned that it belonged to Captain Collings, and that I might be well entertained in it on my return. I found, too, that the road leading from the light-house passed its door. I stopped therefore, at Captain Collings's to dine.
Kendall's account of his dinner is undesignedly hilarious. His Eastham host damned King George roundly, or as the guest put it delicately, referred to him as "- - George." To which the Englishman mildly objected, remarking that he was an English subject and if the host expected him to stay, he should not abuse the sovereign. Captain Collings then commented that Kendall must have come over as a child, since he spoke English altogether too well for an Englishman; "he had never known an instance of an Englishman that spoke the language as well as a native of the United States." So the meal went. The Eastham mansion where the traveller dined was perhaps the colonial house still occupied by Collins'es on Nauset road.
Passing over the next half a century, and the many inter- esting pages of Henry David Thoreau on Eastham and its beach, which deserve reading in their entirety, one comes to Ralph Waldo Emerson's pointed comments after a Nauset visit :
"Tis strange how many particulars worth keeping one brings home from so barren a place . . . They say the wind makes the roads, and a large part of the real estate was freely moving back and forth in the air.
Many modern writers have found a strange kind of beauty in Eastham, as these examples show:
NAUSET BEACH IN SUMMER
Here Henry David Thoreau began his walking tour of Nauset Beach in 1849, and here a century later, each summer, thousands of visitors enjoy the sun, sand and surf. High on the bluff stands the red and white tower of Nauset Beach Light.
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THE OUTERMOST HOUSE-"My house stood by itself atop a dune, a little less than halfway south on Eastham bar," wrote Henry Beston. "I called it the Fo'castle ... The coast guards at Nauset, a scant two miles away, were my only neighbors. South lay the farther dunes and a few far-away and lonely gunning camps; the floor of the marsh and tide parted me on the west from the village and its distant cottages; the ocean besieged my door. North, and north alone, had I touch with human beings. On its solitary dune my house faced the four walls of the world." In this photograph it stands silhouetted darkly on the rim of the dunes. Here Mr. Beston passed the four seasons and wrote the book which gave this house its romantic name: "The Outermost House-A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod."
Long, low marshes, level and softly tinted, like delicate pastels, con- tribute now to the sad and lovely scene-quite different in its wistful charm from the other towns about it. Its solitary roads, leading off from the state highway to remote houses, are wanly mysterious. Its desolation is not unattractive. But its beauty-for it has an unmistakeable beauty of an unearthly quality-is such as to appeal to the eye of the artist rather than to that of the farmer .- Agnes Edwards, Cape Cod New and Old, 1918.
If I were judge of a beauty contest and the fifteen towns of Cape Cod were marched before my eyes, I think I should give the prize to Eastham. Her hard old features are not regular; her complexion is lumped and full of scars from her everlasting duel with the sea, and there is no "pose" in her smile, which comes grim and sparing through the wrinkles of centuries. But you will not have to look long to find "character" in this old townface. -Jeremiah Digges, Cape Cod Pilot, 1937.
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THREE CENTURIES IN RETROSPECT
The color (at Nauset Beach) begins to get you. Beyond the white surf the green combers pounding out their eternal rote, the green blending out into the water, the blue sparkling away into silver as it makes for Spain. Perhaps a pinpoint of white sail or a wisp of distant smoke accents the immensity of the sea. The bluffs or sandy dunes are creamy-buff, with patches on their tawny sides of gray-green beach grass or the darker scrub pine or oak. Far in the distance the three lines of bluff and sand and sea appear to meet-but if they don't, you can't prove it .- Katharine Crosby, Blue-Water Men and Other Cape Codders, 1946.
And finally, to many the best of all modern writings on Eastham is Henry Beston's The Outermost House, with its sen- sitive chronicle of the four seasons at Nauset, which, like Tho- reau, should be savored in its entirety. Just two sentences go:
Outermost cliff and solitary dune, the plain of ocean and the far, bright rims of the world, meadow land and marsh and ancient moor: this is Eastham; this is the outer Cape. Sun and moon rise here from the sea, the arched sky has an ocean vastness, the clouds are now of the ocean, now of the earth.
EASTHAM IN 1951
If population be any kind of index of a town's well being then Eastham's best years lie just ahead, for, like many other old towns, it has waxed and waned and now waxes once again. Before the setting off of Wellfleet, Old Eastham was largest town on Cape Cod. The first census in Massachusetts, that of the Province in 1765, showed it with 1,331 inhabitants (in- cluding eleven Negro slaves and four Indians ), while Wellfleet, then but two years old, had 928 inhabitants. Thus Old East- ham just before this census had some 2,200 inhabitants, which was more, even, than old Barnstable, the Cape's shire town.
When the first Federal census was taken in 1790 East- ham reported 1,834 inhabitants; thereafter the setoff of Orleans in 1797 left it, at the second census in 1800, with only 659 in- habitants. From 1800 to 1850 Eastham grew steadily and enjoyed its liveliest years-those in which maritime pursuits prospered. In the century from 1850 to 1950 Eastham never reached the hightide of population it saw in 1830, but it is now well on the way toward equaling and exceeding that.
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EASTHAM, MASSACHUSETTS
Of Eastham at the close of its third century and begin- ning of its fourth, what shall one say? For one thing the face of the land surely is handsomer now than a century or two centuries ago, as one sees those years through other eyes. The tumbling masses of dunes on the bay side now rest at anchor; no longer do sands pile across fences and cartways, nor could the most imaginative visitor look for a troop of Bedouins. When man ceases to till the soil nature takes over and now pitch pines, scrub oaks, beach plum, bayberry and poverty grass car- pet with green much of the old dreariness. From the broad black ribbon that divides Eastham-once the King's Highway now U. S. Route Six-smaller surfaced ways wind picturesquely off to the bay shore and its fine beaches: First Encounter, Kings- bury, Thumpertown, Camp Ground and Silver Springs. To the east, the ocean side, Doane and Cable roads carry the visitor swiftly to all the beauty and majesty of Nauset beach. Cliff and dune have retreated a little before the Atlantic's assault and the entrance of Nauset harbor has moved southerly, but the beach and the plains, the moors, marshes and bayshore flats, remain essentially as the Pilgrims found them three centuries ago.
Of Eastham as a body politic which has survived for three centuries what shall one say? That its inhabitants have lived under the sovereignties of eight kings and queens and one lord protector, and under the administrations of thirty-two presi- dents of the United States and through them all it has retained its democratic town meeting form of local government little changed. Now, as in the days of the first comers, its citizens gather annually in town meeting duly warned and assembled, to choose their town officers and run their town affairs as they see fit, which has always been in shipshape fashion.
Eastham is an old New England town with a memorable past, through which move Nauset Indians and Pilgrims, men going to and returning from the French and Indian wars and the Revolution, seamen leaving beloved homes for short voy- ages and long and many not returning, farmers and fishermen tilling soil and sea. It is a town built by a rugged old stock
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THREE CENTURIES IN RETROSPECT
which still persists, a town where no single event has over- shadowed all others to give it fleeting fame, a town which has seen both prosperity and adversity and little changed its course for either, in short, a town perhaps typically American yet un- like any other in America.
Eastham has not grown as swiftly nor changed as rapidly as most Cape Cod towns, and many are happy it is so. What the next century may bring, it is given to none to fathom, but none can doubt, either, that this town far out in the Atlantic, which now marks the close of its first three centuries, will again pause a century hence and with pride survey again its long past, while the pines sing and the marshes and moors cast their ancient spell, and the Atlantic ceaselessly rolls against its sandy shores.
STATISTICS, NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
Eastham's land area covers 9,118.4 acres; its fresh water area, 223 acres; its total area 9,341.4 acres or 14.60 square miles-Annual Report, Harbor and Land Commissioners, 1915.
Eastham's population, Province census of 1765, was 1,327; by first Federal census, in 1790, 1,834; both figures before the setoff of Orleans. Since then, the Federal census returns have been:
1800
659
1860
779
1910
518
1810
751
1870
668
1920
430
1820
766
1880
692
1930
543
1830
970
1890
602
1940
582
1840
955
1900
502
1950
874
1850
845
(Preliminary )
Eastham has four great ponds (by law ponds over ten acres in area) : Depot, 31 acres; Great, 109 acres; Meetinghouse, 21 acres; and Herring or Coles, 43 acres .- Report of Commission on Waterways and Public Lands, Senate No. 289, 1918. Smaller ponds are Minister, Jemima, Widow Harding, Moll, Muddy and Salt ponds.
NOTES-Written sources used here may be found in the bibliogra- phy which follows. Little space is devoted to what has already been well set forth in older histories, Pratt's and Freeman's especially. Thus, only brief accounts are given of the Whidah shipwreck, the Captain "Hoppy" Mayo affair and like subjects because they may be found at length else- where; but more attention is given to Bradford's account of the founding, to the confirmatory grant, Seth Harding, and other matter not easily found in earlier works. The Eastham confirmatory deed or grant could not be located in the original Plymouth Colony records but a contemporary at- tested copy was found in the State Archives. Some subjects, such as the proprietors, and the several divisions of lands, are too complex for brief summary. Old maps consulted include the 1795 town map, reproduced in part here, and the 1831 survey by John G. Hales. Both these maps, in the State Archives, show churches, windmills, schools and burying grounds.
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NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
A good deal had to be omitted to keep this sketch within necessary bounds; which meant, this being history, no room for geography or geol- ogy or any of the color, folklore and tradition which comes down in this old town beside the sea. But then, the tales of Eastham's sand dobbies, of Black Bellamy, Goodie Hallett, Cyprian in the Rain, and others have al- ready beautifully been told by Elizabeth Reynard, in The Narrow Land. This year, in The Mutinous Wind, Miss Reynard weaves an old Eastham legend into "A Sorcerer's Tale" with Maria Hallett the central figure, and with Pirate Sam Bellamy, witchcraft, storm and violence. The two books mentioned as the most memorable on the Cape Cod bookshelf, those of Henry Beston and Henry David Thoreau, are rich in Eastham lore and the temptation to freely quote from them has been resisted simply because everyone who loves Eastham should know the originals.
BIBLIOGRAPHY-Should Eastham's tercentenary and this small volume awaken in any the desire to pursue the subject further, and we hope that result does follow, some source materials on Eastham will be found helpful. Here is a brief bibliography:
Eastham history-Enoch Pratt, A Comprehensive History, Ecclesiasti- cal and Civil, of Eastham, Wellfleet and Orleans; from 1644 to 1844 (Yarmouth, 1844). Frederick Freeman, History of Cape Cod (Boston, 1869) Chapter on Eastham in Volume II. Simeon L. Deyo (editor ) His- tory of Barnstable County (New York, 1890). Josiah Paine, Early Settlers of Eastham (Library of Cape Cod History and Genealogy, Yar- mouth ) Nos. 32 and 33, two pamphlets; and same author, Eastham and Orleans Historical Papers (LHG No. 55).
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