USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 37
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 37
USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 37
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The matter of reclamation of the land in the vicinity of Green Harbor or Cut River is referred to in the first reference made to Marshfield in the Plymouth Colony records. It is the recording of an order passed by the General Court July 1, 1633, and reads as follows :
"That unless Mr. Gilson, John Shaw, and the rest that undertooke the cutting of the passage between Green's Harbour and the bay, finish it before the first of October next ensuing, according to covernant, they be amerced in ten pounds; but if any of them will doe it, the fine may be exacted of the rest and they paid for their labour."
Why some of those men who had departed from Plymouth in search of land possessions as far away as Marshfield should have deemed it necessary to reclaim land from the sea instead of helping themselves abundantly to the vast areas which were all about and could be obtained for little or nothing from the Indians, is hard for us of the present day to understand, or just what the idea was. Nevertheless it was ordered by the General Court, January 3, 1636, that "the cut at Green's Harbour for a boat passage shall be made eighteen foot wide and six foot deep, and for the manner how the same shall be done for the bettering order- ing thereof, it is referred to the Governor and assistants, with the help of John Winslow, Jonathan Brewster, John Barnes and Christopher Wadsworth, as well to proportion every man equally to the change thereof, as also to order men that shall work thereat that ten men may work together there at once, and that the Governor, or whom he shall appoint, shall oversee the same that it may be well performed."
In the present year when it seems probable that the work is to be completed, after having engaged the attention of some men in every generation for three hundred years, it is hard to understand what special benefit would have been obtained by the colony in having the cut made, sufficient to enlist the attention of the General Court. It seems prob- able that it was believed that the land in the vicinity of Green Harbor possessed some unusual characteristics which would help supply the de-, mand for vegetables at Plymouth, and that the engineering problem was entered into to furnish the most direct route between Green Har- bor and Plymouth for transportation of the harvest. It was evidently
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not for the purpose of furnishing a harbor, as the name itself suggests that a harbor already existed sufficient for the boats which were at that time in use.
Authority was given by the General Court in 1807 for the incorpora- tion of the Green's Harbor Canal Company, with authority to erect dikes and remove obstructions, for the improvement of the marsh on Green's Harbor. Prominent men interested in the matter at the time were Isaac Winslow, Luke Wadsworth, Judah Thomas and Benjamin White. Provision was made for forming a company, making assess- ments, collecting same and selling the land of such proprietors as did not pay the assessments.
A canal was dug through the marsh but the flow of water was not sufficiently swift to keep the mouth clear from accumulations of mud and sand, and at high tide the canal backed up and the tide flowed in and made a considerable tide pond with a narrow strip of land separat- ing it from the open sea. This condition appealed to some sportsmen in 1810 who shovelled through the narrow arm of land when the tide was high, enabling it to find a new passage back to the ocean. The tide rushing through the new canal cut it deep and nature claimed it for its own.
In 1870 owners of marshes covering some 1,450 acres had been made to believe that their land could be drained and converted into rich, agri- cultural land which would yield better than any other land of the same acreage in Plymouth County. There were various theories put forth in substantiation of this claim, and permission was sought from the har- bor commissioners to erect a dike. The commissioners investigated and reported to the General Court in 1871 that whatever damage would be occasioned to the harbor would be more than compensated for by the reclaiming of the land for agriculture.
The Legislative committee on agriculture reported favorably and an act was passed by which a dike was built across Green Harbor, near Turkey Point, with sluiceways and gates, for the purpose of draining the harbor and shutting out the tide water from the sea. The dike was constructed in 1872 at a cost of about $30,000 which was assessed on the owners of the improved lands. The town of Marshfield built a high- way across the dike at an expense of $2,832. This was expected to pro- vide an easy town way to Brant Rock and to be of considerable value to fishermen and to farmers who used the road to draw kelp to their farms for fertilizer. It was before the days when summer homes on the ocean were much in vogue and house lots on the shore were not re- garded of any value, as compared with the prices paid for them in this generation.
Green Harbor marshes had been protected from the inroads of tide
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water but there were many owners of property in that vicinity who con- sidered the injury to the harbor more of a detriment that the reclaim- ing of the land was a benefit to the town or county. Consequently T. B. Blackman and others, in 1877, petitioned the General Court to take measures to remove the obstructions in the Harbor, the principal ob- struction being the dike.
This petition was referred to the judiciary committee, which reported that it ought not to pass, on the ground of its unconstitutional feature of impairing the obligation of contracts. A bill was enacted "that the Supreme Court, sitting as a court of equity, shall have full jurisdiction to hear and determine the rights of all parties under Chapter 303 of the Act of 1871 (the dike act) and to enforce the provisions of said act." The bill also provided for compelling to remove the shoaling or other obstructions in the channel of Green Harbor River. In 1878, the Gen- eral Court authorized an expenditure of $2000 to enforce the provisions of the dike act.
All of these sessions with the General Court and contrary opinions expressed around the stoves in the grocery stores and wherever the men of Marshfield chanced to meet for public discussions, aroused consid- erable feeling in the community. One morning it was learned that someone, during the night, had blown up the dike.
For many years there was a toll gate on the dike and the schedule of rates called for one cent from each pedestrian and three cents for each horse. A gate was swung across the way and the toll gate-keeper oc- cupied a small building, like the shanty supplied a crossing tender. A generation ago when bicycle riding was very popular, before the days of automobiles, a number of young men pedalled to the gate and started to make their arrangements with the toll gate tender before proceeding. There was a controversy between the official and the young men con- cerning the rightful fee, as the price was arranged not for a vehicle but for each horse. The ready wit of the keeper came to the rescue and he collected one cent from each cyclist providing they would walk through the gate and carry their bicycles clear of the road, making themselves pedestrians carrying a bundle. There was no fee for bundles.
When this toll gate was abolished a quarter of a century ago it was the last toll gate in Massachusetts.
Opposition by Fishermen and Politics-Concerning the Green Har- bor dike, the story is best told in the "History of Marshfield," written by Lysander S. Richards, a prominent citizen of that town, and pub- lished in 1901. He says:
Nothing has occurred in any town in Plymouth County in the past century that has probably created more contention, opposition, and bad feeling than the building and continuation of the dike across Green Harbor River in Marshfield.
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Year after year it has been a bone of contention in our town meetings. It has entered our politics, and the question was obliged to be solved whether a man up for office was a Diker or an Anti-Diker. The feeling became so intense against the dike that about a decade ago the dike was blown up and severely damaged. It finally became necessary to keep a watchman there night and day to guard it, lest it be blown up again.
The reason of such intense opposition was that the fishermen in the vicinity of Green Harbor River claimed that the diking of the river nearly ruined the fishery business, as the lack of a sufficiently strong current to carry off the sand accumula- ting there year after year resulted in the filling up of the river. Most of the resi- dents of Green Harbor and Brant Rock are Anti-Dikers. Some others, who owned a portion of the salt marsh affected by the diking of the river, claimed that they preferred their salt meadows without a dike, desiring the crop of salt hay there- from, rather than bearing their portion of the expense in the construction of the dike.
The Dikers claimed it was for the public good, that the meadows diked would produce good, fresh hay, garden and fruit crops in abundance without a particle of manure of any description.
Mr. Richards mentions in his history that Edmund Hersey of Hing- ham, for many years editor of a prominent agricultural paper in New England, a man of ample knowledge and wide experience in the science and art of agriculture, made a thorough investigation of the claims of the Dikers and Anti-dikers and he quotes from Mr. Hersey's report the findings of Dr. C. A. Goessman, State chemist at the Agricultural Col- lege at Amherst, who said :
While visiting the Marshfield meadows on April 19, 1897, I found asparagus already up, very nearly high enough to cut. I was surprised at this, because my own asparagus had but just appeared above the surface of the ground, although growing in land so warm that I am usually the first to ship native asparagus to Boston markets. I was also surprised at the size of the stalks, they being much larger than the first set of stalks which appear on my land. When I consider the fact that the land on which this asparagus was growing, has produced large crops every year for twenty years, without fertilizers of any kind, and still produces better crops than my land, which has had six hundred dollars worth of fertilizers to the acre applied to it during the last twenty years, it convinces me that this land, for garden purposes, surpasses any which I have ever examined. I noticed on the meadow, strawberry plants which had passed through the winter uninjured and were looking well; thus indicating that the strawberry will grow well on this land after the top soil becomes decomposed . ... The lower levels of this land, if not high enough to be readily drained for small fruits, grain and vegetables, I have no doubt can be profitably used for the growth of the cranberry . . ... The onions were rather above an average crop grown by market gardeners who use large quantities of fertilizer . .. The soil is in the best condition for the production of large crops of small fruits and garden vegetables The whole 1,400 acres can be utilized for various crops at a large profit.
Present Reclamation Board-The new State reclamation board con- sists of Gordon Hutchins of Concord, representing the State Depart- ment of Health; Leslie R. Smith, representing the Department of Agri-
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culture, serving as secretary and executive of the board; and Colonel Richard K. Hale of the waterways division of the Department of Public Works. Percival M. Churchill of East Bridgewater is the consulting engineer and D. C. Curran their attorney.
The board expects that crops worth hundreds of thousands of dollars will be grown on land on which present work is nearly completed, which a few years ago was practically worthless. Nearly 5,000 acres of fer- tile land will be restored to agricultural use by straightening out the beds of streams, clearing away obstructions and in other ways properly draining these areas.
One of the important projects in Plymouth County is at Carver, where 2,500 acres of land suitable for cranberry culture is being put into shape, so that this important industry in the county will be greatly in- creased. Obstructions have been cleared from the channel of the stream and dams erected to provide for flowing the bogs at times to protect the growing berries from frosts.
A flood gate has been constructed at Green Harbor in Marshfield, allowing tide water to flow out but not run back onto 1,400 acres of good land. There is a drainage project at Whitman which will bring back into cultivation some of the soggy land near the railroad running to Plymouth. Other important drainage work is being carried on in other parts of the State, but the most important work thus far has been done in this county. The channel of the Assabet River at Westboro has been straightened and cleaned out, making possible the agricultural use of 400 acres of land. Work on Cherry brook in Greenfield reclaimed 600 acres of fertile land, heretofore almost a total loss. Similar work is un- der way at Arlington and Milford.
The reclamation board was organized in accordance with a law passed by the General Court in 1926. Before that time the work was in general charge of a board of two men, one representing the Depart- ment of Agriculture and the other representing the State Department of Health. The property owners who are benefited by the work of re- clamation have fifteen years in which to pay for the benefits received. They organize a drainage district and petition the State Board to make a survey and do the work. There are several ways in which the proj- ect can be financed. Drainage district bonds are usually issued, with a provision that the improvements will be apportioned out in increased taxes spread over a period of fifteen years. It is expected that the value of crops which reclaiming the land will make possible will be sufficient to pay the taxes many times over. By arrangement with the towns, the taxes thus collected are turned into a fund which will retire the bonds at the end of the fifteen-year period. Once having gone into it, the owner assumes a binding obligation and the regular city or town col-
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lector receives the money. There is a provision in the law which forces the minority of landowners into the plan when a great majority of the owners form a drainage district.
CHAPTER XXIV FROM DAYS OF '49 TO CIVIL WAR.
Ship-Minded People Became Impatient for Speedy Transportation and Even Considered Navigating the Air-Available Wealth in California : Gold Fields Led to Building Famous Clipper Ships-Fishing and Shipping Foundational Industries in Massachusetts-First Whaler to Round the Horn-Fortunes and Bravas Were Brought-"Old Iron- sides" Ends "The Terror of the Seas"-Later Movements for Free- dom-People Began to Ask With William Lloyd Garrison, "Is It Wright or Wrong?" and Stand by Their Convictions - The Labor Movement-Vision of Wendell Phillips and John Boyle O'Reilly- "Largest Ship Owner in the World"-Wreck of the "St. John" -Teeth Filled With California Gold.
There came a day when people not only wanted to go somewhere but wanted to get there with the least possible delay. So far as Plymouth County and Southeastern Massachusetts was concerned, many had taken part in the emigration to the Middle West, over the trail in the "covered wagon," and it was a long tedious trip, fraught with danger and promising adventure of the most thrilling kind; but the discovery of gold in California in 1849 caused thousands of people hereabouts to be seized with an intense desire to be transported immediately from one ccean to the other. The desire for rapid transit was born in the world and took a firm hold in Plymouth County.
There were no railways across the continent and no combination of them which made it practical to attempt to reach the goldfields by that means of transportation. There were rumors of strange and startling inventions, including an aerial locomotive which would go, under fa- vorable conditions, from ocean to ocean in two days, and, with head winds negotiate it in five days. These stories were given some cre- dence, as it was considered stranger still that gold had been discovered in such quantities, available for the digging, and the belief in anything else came easily.
So excited and impatient were many of the young men who had the gold fever that they easily believed all kinds of extravagant stories which were printed concerning the fortunes to be had on every hand, once the long journey across the continent or around the Horn was negotiated. One of the stories, which was printed in the "Old Colony Reporter," among other papers, in February, 1848, at a time when the wild yarns were abundant, was the following: "A runaway soldier in California
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discovered a rock of gold that weighed 899 pounds and, as he was afraid to leave it, he mounted guard upon it; and at the last account, he had sat sixty-seven days and had offered $27,000 for a plate of beans and pork; but his offers had always been indignantly refused, and the poor fellow only laughed at for the niggardliness of his offer, by parties go- ing on, where the article was said to be more abundant."
In that same month the "Old Colony Reporter" contained an item that Dr. Bennett of Plymouth had been tendered the post of surgeon in the regiment forming in New York for California at a salary of $2,000. Other physicians were endeavoring by every possible means to get to Cali- fornia and were most envious of the opportunity which had come to a physician of the county seat to go and at the same time obtain a salary which was in those days munificent.
The files of the "Old Colony Reporter," a county newspaper pub- lished in the "Days of Forty-nine," show that it contained in its issue of March 30, 1849, an item which is typical of many which appeared in newspapers of the county about that time. This item reads: "The bark 'Yeoman,' which has been up for California for several weeks past, sailed on Sunday morning of last week, and with a fine fair wind commenced her long and perilous voyage. As she swept out of the harbor several guns were fired by her crew who were principally natives of Plymouth, and all appeared in good spirits." We subjoin the names of the persons constituting the 'Yeoman's' company :
James M. Clark, captain, Rochester; George Collingwood, mate; Nathaniel C. Covington, president of the company; Francis H. Robbins, secretary; Robert Swinborn, Nathan G. Cushing, John E. Churchill, Henry Chase, William Col- lingwood, William M. Gifford, A. O. Nelson, Franklin B. Holmes, Nathan Churchill, James T. Collins, Nathaniel S. Barrows, Jr., Henry M. Hubbard, Henry B. Holmes, Alfred Doten, Ellis Rogers, Ellis B. Barnes, George P. Fowler, William Saunders, Richard B. Dunham, Henry M. Morton, Caleb C. Bradford, Silas M. Churchill, Elisha W. Kingman, Ozin Bates, Chandler Dunham, James T. Wadsworth, Win- slow B. Barnes, Thomas Rogers, Edward Morton, William J. Dunham, Augustus Robbins, all of Plymouth; Sylvanus Everson, George A. Bradford, Kingston; Seth Blankinship, John Clark, Thomas Brown, Rochester; and John Ward, Brook- lyn, New York.
There are people still living who remember when the "Yeoman" left and when many other barks and schooners were used to transport the people from the Old Colony district who had been thrilled with the stories from California, of its inexhaustible supply of gold to be had for the digging, or washing out of the rivers, or even turning up the sand with a knife.
It may be recalled that just two weeks before peace was declared and Mexico surrendered California to the United States, gold was dis- covered, whole mountain sides and river beds of the precious metal. Cali-
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fornia became the richest part of the Union and everyone who possessed the daring and spirit of adventure wanted to take a chance. A man named Marshall saw some glittering specks in the mill race when he was working as a carpenter for an old Swiss named Sutter, who had started a sawmill on the American River. Marshall hammered out the yellow specks, found they were bright and heavy and he shouted to a fellow-workman that he had discovered gold. The other carpenter said: "You are off your head" and went on with his work, but Mar- shall leaped on a horse and rode to Sutter's ranch, where he and his employer took down an old encyclopedia and read what it said about gold. They decided the sample was gold and they and the other men stopped work on the sawmill and began to wash gold out of the river. Soon everyone in California began to wash gold and their former lines of employment were abandoned. The fever spread all the way from ocean to ocean, from Golden Gate to Plymouth Rock.
So far as the people on the Atlantic seaboard were concerned, they could not get to California quickly enough. There were no railroads and no roads worthy the name; only Indian trails or beaten paths across thousands of miles of plains, and mountains and deserts. Water holes were few, Indians were murderous and crafty, but all the dangers had been braved before by those who founded homes in the West, and again the "prairie schooners" started on their long journeys, with slow-going locomotion. Most of the people hereabouts, however, were ship-mind- ed, as it is said Massachusetts has always been, and took the journey 'round Cape Horn, as did the "Yoeman" and its little company.
Even going by sailing vessel took a long time and the voyage was perilous. One can conceive of the excitement which was caused in March, 1849, when, according to the "Boston Signal" there appeared a large handbill on State Street, Boston, announcing in large and bold letters that the aerial locomotive would leave New York on the fifteenth of April for a flight to California. "The price of passage, including board, is fixed at $50, and the trip from that city to some point in Cali- fornia is expected to be made in two days, against head winds five days is allowed. Messrs. Porter and Robjohn of New York are the pro- prietors of the enterprise, and we understand they propose stopping by the way for companies of not less than twenty."
The "Old Colony Reporter" reprinted this item from the "Boston Sig- nal," commented on the story as worthy of investigation, and added, "Captain J. Taggart is building a 'flying machine' in Charlestown, which will 'take flight' from Bunker Hill early next June." In the wis- dom of more up-to-date knowledge about airplanes, the self-satisfied person of today may indulge in a smile about the credulity of the people in this county and vicinity in 1849, but the incredible was already
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a fact, in the quantities of gold which had already been found in California, and generous quantities of it or its equivalent. Necessity, we are told, is the mother of invention, and a strong desire to get to California quickly was taken almost as a necessity. People worked seriously to perfect the airship which would do the work and, of course, no one thought of going anywhere else in it but to California, the land of sudden wealth for all who could get there in time!
The county papers printed stories which had come back from those who had negotiated the distance and announced that the amount of gold obtained was astonishing. One item stated: "Every article of food and necessity is of course very high at the mines. Flour has been sold at $2.50 a pound, boots at $75 a pair, wages of carpenters are $10 per day, a cook $60 to $100 per month. Pork is $250 a barrel. Lumber is worth $150 per thousand."
Undoubtedly the people of Plymouth County of those days regarded the possibility of the aerial locomotive carrying people to California as announced much more probable than that the time would come that car- penters in Plymouth County would be getting larger wages than they were getting in California, the same for cooks, and that Massachusetts builders would be paying $150 for lumber, produced in New England or California, as is the case today.
By October of 1849, the number of people from this county in Cali- fornia or on the way there, amounted to a considerable percentage of the population. The "Old Colony Reporter," under date of October 26, 1849, said : "Plymouth has been very effectually drained, some seventy or eighty having left in all. Late letters from the 'Attila' (which car- ried the first company from Plymouth) announce the death of Lewis Finney and S. T. Lanman of Plymouth, and bring discouraging news from some of the remainder, but as a general result, the prospect looks cheering . . . . Our little town has, until within a few weeks, been very slightly affected (North Bridgewater) but now many are preparing to go, and among those already on their way, or at the promised land, are several of our enterprising citizens. We recollect at this moment the names of Albert Carr, W. H. H. Hebard, Bradford Stetson, S. C. Stet- son, John P. Shepard, James Bennett, James Magoun, Richard Rounds and Welcome Howard."
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