History of Barnstable County, Massachusetts, 1620-1890, Part 106

Author: Deyo, Simeon L., ed
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: New York : Blake
Number of Pages: 1292

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Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

John G. Thompson, born in 1837, is the only surviving child of Alexander and Bethiah (Grozier) Thompson. He followed the sea from 1855 until 1866, and has since been a merchant at North Truro. He married Sally C., daughter of James Hughes. They have two children living-Albert H. and Mary A .- and lost one-Emma H.

Edwin P. Worthen, son of Jacob Worthen, was born in 1837 in Charlestown, Mass. He came to Truro at the age of seven and fol- lowed the sea from that time until 1872, seven years as master. He has been keeper of the Highland life saving station since December, 1872. He married Julia E., daughter of John Francis.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

TOWN OF PROVINCETOWN.

BY JAMES H. HOPKINS.

Early Explorations .- The Pilgrims .- Location and Characteristics .- First Settlement .- Incorporation .- Civil History .- Resources of the Town .- Banks .- Insurance Com- panies .- Public Library .- Societies .- Churches .- Schools .- Biographical Sketches.

W ITHIN the harbor of Provincetown was signed the compact, " perhaps the only instance in human history of that posi- tive, original social compact which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only legitimate source of government," which gives to Provincetown a just claim to be the birthplace of free and equal government in America. At Provincetown was born Peregrine White, the first English child born in New England, and beneath the waters of the harbor rests Dorothy May Bradford, wife of William Bradford, the leader of the Pilgrims. The history of Provincetown, however, does not begin with the arrival of the Mayflower at Cape Cod, but includes the details of the memorable discoveries of the early navi- gators and explorers who began to visit its shores nearly a hundred years before the landing of the Pilgrims.

In 1624, John Verrazano, the great French navigator, visited the shores of the New World, and in the famous Verrazano map of 1529, prepared by James Verrazano, tracing the discoveries of John Verra- zano, appears for the first time upon any chart of the New World an outline of the coast of the present Cape Cod, sufficiently distinct for identification. These discoveries gave to the European world its first knowledge of the existence across the sea of that wonderful land which the great navigator named Verrasana Sive Nova Gallia. The claim of John Verrazano as the first discoverer of Cape Cod is estab- lished by the Verrazano chart, and fifty years ago or more would, perhaps, have been undisputed. The investigations of Henry Wheaton and the lifelong studies of Carl Christian Rafn of Copenhagen, have gone far, however, toward fixing New England as the legendary Vinland of the sagas, and the map of Vinland, published by Rafn in 1564, locates upon the New England coast, the places visited by

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the early Norse navigators and applies to the extremity of Cape Cod the name Kjalarness, while to the shores of the Cape at Chatham is applied the name Furdustrandir.

That the Norsemen once visited these shores and sailed along the coast is maintained with great force by Carl Christian Rafn and the eminent historians who have accepted his theories. But a report accepted by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1887, expresses the belief that there is no more reason for regarding as true the details related about Leif Ericson's discoveries than there is for accept- ing as historic truth the narratives contained in the Homeric Poems. The shadowy traces of Norse voyages to the New World, as noticed at page 20, however, have not yet deprived Verrazana of the honor of being the first navigator whose voyages along the Sandy cape are authenticated by historic records.

The transitions in nomenclature that appear upon the charts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries afford an idea of the history of Cape Cod during the years that intervened between the voyage of Verrazano and the landing of the Pilgrims. Upon a chart of Ribero published in 1529 Cape Cod appears as C. de Arenas or Sandy cape, a name that recurs upon the map of Rotz in 1542; Mercator, 1569; Judeis, 1580; and Quadus, 1600, indicating, perhaps, that the soil of the Cape has not changed materially with the lapse of time. Another Rotz chart of 1542 gives to the Cape the title Arecifes, while a chart of Jean Allefonsce, who visited Massachusetts in 1557, uses the name Francescan cape to designate the Cabo de los Arenas of the earlier maps. Of the details of these voyages, the record of which the early charts alone preserve, nothing is now known. The early navigators, however, uniformly applied the name Cape to that portion of Cape Cod lying northerly of High Head in Truro, and doubtless seldom sailed along the eastern coast of the United States without passing in sight of the headland, the glittering sands of which so early acquired the name of Sandy cape.

The first discovery of Cape Cod by an Englishman was made by Bartholomew Gosnold, who, with Bartholomew Gilbert, attempted in 1602 a more exact discovery of the whole coast of Virginia. Setting sail from Dartmouth, England, March 26, 1602, in the Concord, Gosnold pursued the route followed by Verrazano, directly across the Atlantic, instead of sailing southward to the Azores, as the former navigators had usually done, and "possible more by the guidance of providence than by any special art of man, on the 14th of May following, made land in the latitude of 43°." Standing to the south Gosnold, on the 15th, as Archer says, found himself "embayed with a mighty head- land," like an island, by reason of the large sound that lay between it and the mainland. To the sound he gave the name Shoal Hope.

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TOWN OF PROVINCETOWN.

The shore he described as " a low, sandy shore but without dangers in the latitude of 43º." Near the Cape, " within a league of the land, he came to auchor in fifteen fathoms," and named the land Cape Cod from the quantity of codfish caught by his crew. "The shore was bold and the sand very deep."

Provincetown contains within its limits the first spot in New Eng- land ever trod by Englishmen. For many years after the discoveries of Gosnold the term Cape Cod was applied to that part which extends northerly from the mainland of the Cape at Highhead, Truro. In 1603 Martin Pring, an adventurer from Bristol, set sail in the Speed- well, and coasting southerly " bore into that great gulf which Captain Gosnold overshot the year before," as his journal says. Pring found, however. " no people on the north thereof " at Provincetown. In 1605 De Mont's, with Samuel Champlain as pilot, visited Cape Cod bay. In 1614 the celebrated John Smith explored the coast from Maine to Cape Cod. The following description, taken from Smith's " New England," is most interesting: "Cape Cod is the next presents itself, which is only a headland of high hills of sand overgrown with shrubby pines, hurts and such trash, but an excellent harbor for all weathers. . The Cape is made by the main sea on the one side and a great bay on the other, in form of a sickle; on it doth inhabit the people of Paw- met; and in the bottom of the Bay the people of Chawrum. Towards the south of this Cape is found a long and dangerous shoal of sands and rocks. But so far as I encircled it, I found thirty fathoms of water aboard the shore and a strong current, which makes me think there is a channel about this shoal, where is the best and greatest fish to be had. Winter and Summer, in all that Countrie. But the salvages say there is no channel, but that the shoals begin from the Main at Pawmet to the Isle of Nauset, and so extends beyond their knowledge into the sea."

Upon Captain Smith's chart of New England, published in 1614, Cape Cod appears as Cape James and Cape Cod harbor as Mil- ford haven, while Cape Cod bay is called Stuart's bay. On his de- parture from England, Smith left behind Captain Hunt to get a cargo of dry fish to take to Spain. In doing this Captain Hunt went to Cape Cod bay, and there seizing twenty-seven of the natives for slaves, carried them away to Spain-an act still remembered in 1620 when the Pilgrims landed and found the natives not kindly dis- posed to Englishmen. Cape Cod was also visited by Captain Edward Brawnde in 1616 and by Thomas Dermer in 1619. Dermer in 1619 likened the land of Eastham and Brewster to the best tobacco land of Virginia.

The foregoing narrative of voyages to Cape Cod does not include a description of every expedition made to New England during

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HISTORY OF BARNSTABLE COUNTY.

the fifty years preceding 1620, but contains an allusion to every expedition which tradition or the early records prove to have visited the shores of the Cape in the neighborhood of Provincetown. Note- worthy as were these early explorations, they have received less atten- tion from the local historian because of the far more famous and epoch making adventure to Plymouth in 1620, the details of which must ever recall to the sons of Provincetown the historic associations that are inseparably connected with the place of their birth."

September 16, 1620 [N. S.], the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth and crossed the Atlantic " shrewdly shaken " by many storms, yet for- tunately preserved from serious disasters. Upon the voyage an Eng- lish sailor and the passenger, William Button, died, and a child, Oceanus, was born to Stephen and Elizabeth Hopkins.

The experiences of the voyagers who were to plant at Plymouth, in New England, the colony the eventful history of which has so often been written, are related with a quaintness and frankness of speech that is delightful in Mourt's Relation, a journal or relation of the pro- ceedings of the plantation settled at Plymouth in New England, which was first printed at London in 1622, the authors of which are believed to have been Robert Cushman, George Morton, John Robinson, Wil- liam Bradford and Edward Winslow, although the following quota- tion and the one at foot of page 22 are usually ascribed to the accom- plished pen of William Bradford:

" Wednesday the 6th of Sept. [16th N. S.] the wind coming east northeast a fine small gale we loosed from Plymouth having been kindly entertained by divers friends there dwelling and after many difficulties in boistrous storms at length by Gods Providence upon the ninth of November [19th N. S.] following, by break of the day we espied land which we deemed to be Cape Cod and so after- ward it proved. And the appearance of it much comforted us, espe- cially, seeing so goodly a land, and wooded to the brink of the sea, it caused us to rejoice together, and praise God that had given us once again to see land. And thus we made our course South South West, purposing to go to a river ten leagues to the South of the Cape, but at night the wind being contrary we put round again for the Bay of Cape Cod and on the 11 of November [21st N. S.] we came to anchor in the Bay, which is a good harbor and pleasant bay, circled around, except in the entrance, which is four miles over from land to land, compassed about to the very sea with oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras, and other sweet wood. It is a harbor wherein one thousand sail of ships may safely ride. There we relieved ourselves with wood and water, and refreshed our people, while our shallop was fitted to coast the bay to search for an habitation. There was the greatest store of

*See Chapter III. for sketch of the Pilgrims' European adventure.

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fowl that ever we saw. And every day we saw whales playing hard by us, of which in that place if we had instruments and means to take them we might have made a very rich return, which to our great grief we wanted. Our master (Jones) and his mate, and others expe- rienced in fishing, professed we might have made three or four thou- sand pounds worth of oil. They preferred it before Greenland whale fishing and purpose the next winter to fish for whale here. For cod we essayed but found none. There is good store no doubt in their season. Neither got we any fish all the time we lay there, but some few little ones on the shore. We found great mussles, and very fat and full of sea pearl, but we could not eat them for they made us all sick that did eat, as well sailors as passengers, they caused to cast and scour, but they were soon well again. The Bay is so round and cir- cling that before we could come to anchor we went around all the points of the compass. We could not come near the shore by three quarters of an English mile, because of shallow water which was a great prejudice to us, for our people going on shore were forced to wade a bow shoot or two in going a land which caused many to get colds and coughs, for it was many times freezing cold weather. * * * The same day [21st N. S.] so soon as we could we set ashore fifteen or six- teen men, well armed, with some to fetch wood, for we had none left; as also to see what the land was and what inhabitants they could meet with. They found it to be a small neck of land; on this side the where we lay is the Bay, and the further side the sea; the ground or earth, sand hills, much like the Downes in Holland, but much better; the crust of the earth a spits depth, excellent black earth; all wooded with oaks, pines, sassafras, juniper, birch, holly vines, some ash, wal- nut; the wood for the most part open and without underwood, fit either to go or ride in. At night our people returned, but found not any person, nor habitation and laded the boat with juniper (red cedar) which smelled very sweet and strong and of which we burned the most part of the time we lay there."

Monday, the 13th of November [23d N. S.], the shallop was landed for repairs, which occupied the carpenter for sixteen or seventeen days. Meantime " our people went on shore to refresh themselves and our women to wash as they had great need." Sixteen men, " under the conduct of Captain Miles Standish, unto whom was joined for counsel and advise, William Bradford, Stephen Hopkins and Ed- ward Tilley," were set ashore Wednesday, November 15th [25th N. S.], and " when they had ordered themselves in the order of single file and marched about the space of a mile, by the sea they espied five or six people with a dog coming towards them, who were savages who when they saw them ran into the wood and whistled the dog after them. * * * After they knew them to be Indians, they marched after them into

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the woods, lest other of the Indians should lie in ambush; but when the Indians saw our men following them they ran away with might and main, and our men turned out of the wood after them; for it was the way they intended to go but they could not come near them. They followed them that night about ten miles by the trace of their footings and saw how they had come the same way they went, and at a turning perceived how they ran up a hill to see whether they followed them. At length night came upon them, and they were con- strained to take up their lodging, so they set forth three sentinels and the rest, some kindled a fire, and others fetched wood, and there held our rendezvous that night."

Of the details of the first exploration and of the second voyage of discovery it is unnecessary to speak, or of the expedition in the shallop to Plymouth. The Mayflower remained at anchor in Province- town harbor until December 15th (25th N. S.) "when we weighed anchor to go to the place we had discovered," at Plymouth. During the stay of the Mayflower at Provincetown a son, Peregrine White, the first English child born in New England, was born to William and Susanna White. On the 17th of December Dorothy May Bradford, wife of William Bradford, who was absent on the exploration expedi- tion, fell overboard from the Mayflower or from a boat alongside and was drowned. The next day James Chilton died and was buried at Provincetown, while Edward Thompson and Jasper More, who died on the 14th and 16th of December, respectively, were doubtless buried at Provincetown near the resting place of Chilton, victims of exposure to an inclement climate and of the necessary sufferings attending a perilous voyage.

The incidents of the stay of the Mayflower at Provincetown are most interesting, yet they are surpassed in historical importance by the steps taken at Provincetown to form a civil organization, which converted " a little unorganized group of adventurers into a Common- wealth." In the cabin of the Mayflower, as she rounded the Cape, and was about to anchor in the harbor of Provincetown, November 11 [21 N. S.], 1620, assembled the adult males of her company and signed the compact# which rendered Provincetown, as Bancroft says, " the birth- place of popular constitutional liberty."

A diversity of opinion exists as to the exact locations visited by the Pilgrims during the stay of the Mayflower at Provincetown. It is supposed, however, that the vessel anchored in deep water within a furlong of Long point and that the exploring party which set forth from her, November 25, 1620, landed near Stevens' point at the west end of the village of Provincetown, and marching in the rear of Tele- graph hill and Mill hill had advanced nearly to the crest of Town hill

* The compact is printed at page 23.

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when they met the Indians. As the party turned inland it is proba- ble that the Indians made for the woods above Duck. pond and ran around Great pond to Negro head and so toward Truro. The party of Pilgrims doubtless encamped for the night near Strout's creek, a stream flowing from the north into the mouth of Eastern harbor, long since, however, obliterated by the inroads of sand from the beach. Considerable evidence exists to show that in 1620 a pond existed at the foot of Town hill separated from the sea by a narrow beach, and in this pond the women from the Mayflower found the water for their need of washing. The inroads of the sea and other causes have ob: literated nearly all traces of the pond, yet within the memory of aged people now living a narrow creek ran in by the Town hill through Gosnold street, a remnant perhaps of the pond, and the records of the building of an early meeting house state that it was located near the " North Meadow Gut," a local designation of the creek by the hill. The quotations from Mourt's Relation are the basis of all the spec- ulations as to the localities visited by the Pilgrims and will suggest to the interested reader the uncertainty which must always exist as to the exact locations which in the lapse of time may have been more or less changed through the natural effects of the wind and sea upon a sandy shore.

Doubtless in 1620 the land was well wooded. The name " Wood End," still applied to a portion of Long point, preserves the tradition that the forest once extended to the very brink of the sea. The physical aspect of Provincetown, however, can not have changed materially since the Mayflower first anchored in Cape Cod harbor, except as the disappearance of the forest has rendered the surface of the soil even more barren.

The geological history of the extremity of the Cape shows con- clusively that all that section of land to the north of High head in Truro has arisen from the sea. Hundreds of years may have been necessary for the evolution of the projecting promontory of sand hills from the long, low, projecting spit of sand which usually marks the beginning of the sea's additions to the land, yet the geologists are united in the belief that the promontory must have risen from the sea by the slow processes which gradually change the exterior coast lines of all sandy, rockless shores.

Whatever its origin, Provincetown rises picturesquely from the ocean in latitude 42°, 3' north and longitude 70°, 9' west from Green- wich, one hundred and twenty miles from Boston by railroad, fifty- five by sea, connected with the mainland of the Cape by a long chain of sand hills extending along the eastern and northern side of East- ern harbor in Truro, its low sandy shores washed on the north by the Atlantic and on the south and west by the waters of Cape Cod bay.

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HISTORY OF BARNSTABLE COUNTY.

A long chain of sand hills extends northerly from Peaked Hill bars or Strout's creek, which for a hundred years has been buried beneath the sand, to Race point, its northwesterly extremity. A second series of hills beginning at Mount Ararat and Mount Gilboa by East harbor follows the bay shore, semicircular in forin, to the termination of the range at Stevens point, including in the chain Miller's hill, Town hill. and Telegraph hill, whose summits afford a beautiful view of Cape Cod bay and the headlands of the Cape and Plymouth shores for miles around. Between the two lines of hills lies a tract of land a mile and more in width, " composed of lesser hills. downs and ponds," the hills covered in many places with pines, wild cherry trees, beach plums and bayberry bushes. Along the western shore an indentation of the sea forms the Herring cove, into which near the Race point flows the Race run, a sluggish, tidal stream that creeps from the sand hills near Negro head, a wooded summit in the line of hills extending along the Atlantic coast.

In the wide area between the hills are several ponds, shallow but occasionally of considerable size, among them Shankpainter, Clapp's, Great, Duck, Pasture, Round and Farm, their borders affording fertile soil for gardens or for the cultivation of the cranberry. Extending southerly from the Herring cove lies Long point, embracing within its sinuous course the broad harbor which affords an anchorage for three thousand vessels, completely landlocked and safe. Along the harbor at the foot of the chain of hills lies the village of Province- town, reaching for three miles along the shore, a veritable city in the sands, with church spires rising high above the hills. Two streets, Commercial and Bradford, extend from one end of the village to the other, intersected at intervals by narrower cross streets reaching back to the hills that form a shadowy background to the thickly set- tled town at their base. Commercial or Main street is the business thoroughfare of the town, its narrow plank sidewalk, begun with the town's share of the revenue distributed by the state in Jackson's . administration, extending along the northern side of the street from one end of the town to the other. The shore is lined with wharves, two of them, Railroad and Steamboat wharves, extending to the deep water of the harbor, all instruments in the prosecution of the great fishing industry in which so many of the inhabitants of Province- town are engaged.

The view of Provincetown from the Truro hills is exceedingly picturesque. Lofty church spires, rising apparently out of the sea . and towering above the sun-lit hills, are .outlined against the deep blue sky. The waters of the placid harbor rest at their base. On a · clear day, with the wind from the north, the land in the background, :tinged with the deep blue of the sky, rises like some fleecy cloud

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from the waters of the bay. The moving sand hills in the rear of the settled part of the town are often driven by the winds into strange, weird forms, fantastic and unique, fit subjects for the painter, the artist, or the poet. The Desert, as Thoreau calls the region between the two lines of hills, is often visited by artists from abroad in search of the picturesque and the beautiful.

The drifting of the eastern sand hills has gradually changed portions of this territory. Strout's creek, which for many years af- forded several acres of salt meadow, has been obliterated for a hun- dred years by the inroads of the sand. The waters of the bay, too, have changed the shore lines occasionally. In 1885 House Point island, a little island in the western part of the harbor, was completely washed away. Tradition preserves also the record of an island at the eastern end of the harbor, called Hog's island, which was large enough for the pasturage of sheep, of which no trace remains. The natural changes have been accompanied by others due to the hand of man alone. Sods and loam, brought from the woods at the eastern end of the town, have been used to cover the barren beach sand which con- stituted originally what might be called the soil; sand and gravel taken from vessels discharging superflous ballast at the wharves have also been applied to the natural soil, so that in 1890 the residences in Provincetown are surrounded by gardens artificial in origin, yet flourishing and fertile, rose gardens in a desert, blooming the more brilliantly because of the saltness of the atmosphere, which gives to flowers a brilliant coloring not elsewhere observable.

Provincetown stands alone, the one town in the old colony whose early history, rich in historical incidents of another kind, embraces few allusions to the Indians, who seem to have had no established habitations or villages within her limits. The Pamets exercised do- minion over all the territory to the north of Herring brook in Well- fleet, and doubtless visited Provincetown frequently in pursuit of game. It is very probable, too, that the Meeshawms, a branch of the Pamets, had an encampment or village near Strout's creek, for evi- dence exists to-day, in the form of shells, arrow heads and other arti- cles, of a former Indian occupation of the locality. At the east of Negro head, too, arrow heads have been found within a few years, and a clear spring still flows from the sand hills in the vicinity of Strout's creek, additional evidence, perhaps, of a probable Indian occupation.

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History of Barnstable County, Massachusetts, 1620-1890, Part 106

Author: Deyo, Simeon L., ed Publication date: 1890 Publisher: New York : Blake Number of Pages: 1292

Author: Deyo, Simeon L., ed
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: New York : Blake
Number of Pages: 1292