USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 9
USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 9
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 9
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).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59
James Morgan, writing on "The Puritans and the Great Migration" in the Boston "Globe," November 1, 1927, recalled: "When President Roosevelt dedicated the tower that commemorates at Provincetown the first anchorage of the 'Mayflower,' he loosely spoke of the Pilgrims as Puritans, and a multitude arose in the land to correct him. Yet some students of history contend that it is a distinction without a difference. It may be in theology, but not in a story of the birth of the American people."
As a matter of fact President Roosevelt's speech was at the laying of the cornerstone, not the dedication of the monument.
President William Howard Taft, in his speech at the dedication of the same monument, said :
The differences between the Pilgrims and Puritans emphasize the heroism of the Plymouth colony. The Puritans had been a very powerful political party in England. They represented wealth and substance and social prominence and in- fluence. When they came, they sailed in comparative comfort and freedom from
728
PLYMOUTH, NORFOLK AND BARNSTABLE
danger, and they came in thousands. Not so with the Pilgrims. They were the humble husbandmen whose religious faith was extreme in its simplicity, and stern. The spirit which prompted them to brave the seas in a cockleshell like the "May- flower," to land on this forbidding coast in winter, and to live here has made the history of this country what it is.
It prompted and fought the Revolutionary War. It welcomed and fought the Civil War, and it has furnished to the United States the highest ideals of moral life and political citizenship. We need not defend the lack of liberality which in their early history the Pilgrims may have shown to those differing with them in religious belief and creed. Out of the logic of their intellectual processes there came ultimately religious freedom, while in the energy and intensity of their relig- ious faith they uncomplainingly met the sufferings and the hardships that were inevitable in their search for liberty.
The colonists were impelled to come to these shores because they held opinions at variance with their neighbors in the old country, and having arrived here, they were much inclined to hold fast to their opinions and prejudices, as though they had a divine right to do so. They did not practice religious toleration in their new home, although the Pilgrims were not so severe upon those who disagreed with them as were the Puritans. The latter wanted to establish a Puritan state and exclude all others from it. When Roger Williams taught that "all men should have liberty to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences" and that the only rightful way the settlers could get the land was by purchase from the Indians, the Puritans banished Williams as a dangerous influence. One of the leading Puritan minis- ters averred that "He that is willing to tolerate any religion besides his own either doubts his own or is not sincere in it."
The attitude of the English in their transactions for land with the Indians was that the sovereignity and fee simple of the soil was vested in the English crown; but yet they acknowledged the possessory rights of the Indians. So they made presents to or purchases from the abo- rigines, in order to conciliate the local chiefs. -
Remarkable Group of Survivors-Of the twenty-one men and six boys who had survived the first winter on Cape Cod and at Plymouth and were on hand when the "Fortune" arrived in November, 1621, were William Bradford, destined to be governor more than thirty years; Elder Brewster, the spiritual leader; Captain Myles Standish, the military .commander; Winslow, the diplomat; Samuel Fuller, the be- loved physician ; John Alden, equally skillful as a cooper or secretary, and fortunate in love; John Howland, dependable and vigorous; and other leaders.
There were thirty-five passengers on the "Fortune" and they were made welcome, but they had eaten so heartily on the voyage over that
LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS
729
CHARACTERS IN THE DRAMA OF FREEDOM
"not so much as a bisket-cake or any other victuals for them" remained. The "Mayflower" survivors not only had to feed the lusty young men who largely constituted the "Fortune" company, but revictualled the ship for its return trip and also sent hogsheads of skins of beaver and other animals, a large consignment of barrel staves, in all five hundred pounds worth of goods. These things were captured by a French privateer, and no profit came to the Plymouth company which spent practically its all on the venture.
The men were men of grit and industry. Plymouth was barren of soil and Cape Cod was sandy, as it is today.
Rocks, Minerals, Climate, Animals and Birds-To go into details concerning the geology and mineralogy of Plymouth, Norfolk, Barn- stable and the island counties of Massachusetts would not be especially interesting to the average reader, although the details would be the delight of the student attuned to these revelations and specializing in their study. According to Professor C. H. Hitchcock, the sienite and porphyry, gneiss, granite and hornblende schists of the eastern section of Massachusetts belongs to the eozoic age, the period in which the dawn of animal life appears. Sienite underlies large sections of Norfolk and Plymouth counties. There is a strip of granite from Duxbury to Fall River, and the granite quarries in Quincy have a world-wide fame. In a rock at Braintree was discovered a large fossil trilobite, called the Paradoxides Harlani. Professor Hitchcock called this "one of the oldest inhabitants of the State" and believed it should be regarded with veneration as having participated in an interesting period of the country's past, even though it were unable to communicate much about it, to our understanding.
There are "coal measures" in Norfolk and Plymouth counties, in which ferns and fruits have been found, souvenirs of the paleozoic group. In 1927 considerable interest was taken in gathering informa- tion concerning the possibilities of again unearthing some of these treasures and possibly finding some coal deposits at home to use, and not be dependent upon Pennsylvania anthracite. Cape Cod, Nantucket and the western part of Marthas Vineyard are composed of drift, or alluvium, sand and gravel, which belong to the cenozoic period. With the boulders deposited in the glacial period, Southeastern Massachusetts can show contributions from distances of time and mileage which show it is one with many times and many places.
The temperature of Barnstable County, Marthas Vineyard and Nan- tucket is noticeably modified by the Gulf Stream, and is ten degrees higher in winter than in the central part of the State. In summer
730
PLYMOUTH, NORFOLK AND BARNSTABLE
the water on the south shore of Cape Cod and in Buzzards Bay is so warm that bathing can be continued for long periods without danger of chills, a quality which helps make this vicinity the popular play- ground for many thousands of people, some of whom come from the Middle West and beyond.
In the early days there were black and brown bears and wolves in all parts of the State, but not as frequently encountered on Cape Cod, as the forests were not as dense as in other parts of the State. The catamount and wildcat were were formidable enemies, and moose, deer and beaver were numerous. There are now a few deer on Cape Cod and one day a year is allowed to shoot them. There are some red foxes in the woods and the muskrat are common on the margin of the streams. The woodchuck and skunk are numerous in the fields and take their toll of poultry from the farmers. Red and gray squirrels and rabbit are frequently seen, but the woodchuck give the farmers the most trouble.
Crows and blackbirds have always had a fondness for Cape Cod and the early inhabitants paid a bounty to those who killed them or had town regulations which compelled each citizen to kill a certain number or pay a fine. The Indians had a belief that the crows brought the first seed corn and so were reluctant to kill them, recognizing in them a messenger from the Great Spirit. There are numerous song birds on the Cape and birds which assist the farmers greatly by consuming an immense number of destructive insects.
In the early days wild turkey and the heath hen were plentiful but the latter have disappeared, except on Marthas Vineyard where great pains have been taken for more than sixty years to save them from ex- tinction. There are ducks, coots, sandpipers, plovers, curlews, occasional herons and sea gulls on the beaches and overhead, and numerous other water birds in the ponds, streams and salt water bays.
Wild turkeys abounded on Cape Cod in the early days, and probably wild turkeys constituted the principal course at the first Thanksgiving when Massasoit and members of his court were so joyously entertained.
There must have been something about Cape Cod which was alluring to the Pilgrims. Reference has already been made to the effect that it was proposed in 1645 to make Nauset, now Eastham, the capital. In 1620 the Pilgrims in Provincetown Harbor numbered one hundred and two. Within a year the number had been diminished by death to eighty-six. According to Captain John Smith there were thirty-two houses in 1624 and the number of inhabitants was one hundred and eighty. In 1630 the town of Plymouth is supposed to have had about three hundred inhabitants and of this number about one hundred and
731
CHARACTERS IN THE DRAMA OF FREEDOM
fifty, or half, later migrated to Eastham. Concerning this migration he wrote he feared for the "poore church left. .. . Growne olde, and for- saken of her children .... and like a widow left only to trust in God."
John Lothrop, pastor of a church in London in 1616, led thirty mem- bers of his church to Scituate in 1634 and later led a part of his flock to Barnstable on the Cape.
Cape Cod was early settled, became important in colonial fisheries and in everything which pertained to the upbuilding of the nation which had its birth in one of the Cape's pleasant harbors. The forests were filled with wild game, the bay was filled with fish and at low tide a table was spread before the early settlers with a menu of clams and oysters. Schools of alewives almost crowded one another out of the brooks leading to the lakes, when they went up to spawn in the spring, then as now.
Description of Barnstable County and Neighbors-Massachusetts Bay has a breadth of about forty miles. It is formed by Cape Ann, with its unyielding rocks and caverns, on the north, and Cape Cod, a long incurvated strip of low, sandy land upon the south. Its principal harbor is Boston, deep, capacious, well protected, with numerous is- lands, to lend enchantment to the view. South of Boston, Plymouth, Barnstable and Provincetown have good harbors, but the most beautiful and useful of them all is Provincetown. Cape Cod is the outer guard for a large share of Massachusetts and Cape Cod Bay might be called the watery back yard of the Cape. That part of Massachusetts Bay which is usually called Cape Cod Bay, is the southeast part of the larger bay, on the map below an imaginary line drawn from Plymouth to Provincetown.
Cape Cod Bay is separated from Buzzards Bay by a narrow part of Cape Cod and, since the digging of the Cape Cod Canal, the waters of the two bays mingle. Buzzards Bay is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean which extends northeasterly into Massachusetts a distance of thirty miles, with the Elizabeth Islands and Barnstable County on the east and Plymouth and Bristol counties on the west. In Buzzards Bay are the harbors of New Bedford, Fairhaven, Wareham and Rochester, all of which have contributed to industry and history.
Beginning at the Cape Cod Canal, the land forming Barnstable County projects from the mainland approximately forty miles easterly, then extends northerly about thirty miles, terminating in Provincetown, after making another sudden bend to the westward, as if its intention had been to complete a circle, but decided to remain in its splendid isolation in lieu of becoming lost to Boston. The longest distance from
732
PLYMOUTH, NORFOLK AND BARNSTABLE
the ocean side of the Cape to Cape Cod Bay is twenty miles, and the shortest distance five miles. The latter route is that traversed by the Cape Cod Canal. The ocean has taken liberties with the ocean side of Cape Cod, wearing away its shore and changing the courses of its rivers and creeks and filling in its harbors. It has been a game of give and take, however, as there was once an island of twenty acres off the eastern shore, covered with trees and giving promises of con- tinuing to stay there, but the ocean, little by little, wore it away and deposited its sand, as well as trees and other objects of pride, upon the shores of Cape Cod. This whole section has been on Nature's receiving line ever since time began. Even Plymouth Rock, geologists say, came from somewhere up north, perhaps Greenland, hopping on a glacier and hooking a ride when the opportunity came to travel south.
No one has seen Cape Cod until he has visited Monomoy, a long strip of low, sandy land, extending southerly from the outer point of the elbow of the Cape. Nantucket is only twelve miles north of Mono- moy as the crow flies. It might be more appropriate to say "as the gulls fly" but whoever saw a gull hold to any definite course? Nan- tucket has an area of about fifty square miles and the people born on the island love every inch of it. The island is an irregular crescent, level, sandy, having very few trees, with a mild, healthful climate of its own, and showing its close relationship to Cape Cod in soil, character of its people and every pleasant characteristic.
The Atlantic Ocean in its centuries of playful moods piled up a long and dangerous reef of sand south of Nantucket, which has been the despair of sailors and the graveyard of many vessels. This strip is called Nantucket Shoals.
Among other good neighbors of Cape Cod is Marthas Vineyard, with Oak Bluffs (formerly Cottage City) as its principal town. This island is about twenty miles long and ten miles broad. It is west of the Island of Nantucket and nearer the mainland. It has two good harbors and all the advantages which make it an ideal summer resort. The Indians called the island Capawock. It was a refuge for the Quakers when the Massachusetts Bay Colony drove them out and the Plymouth Colony was none too cordial toward them.
Northwest of Marthas Vineyard is Vineyard Sound, which separates that island from the Elizabeth Islands. All of these are included in the town of Gosnold, named in honor of Bartholomew Gosnold, who attempted, on Cuttyhunk, one of the sixteen in the group, the first English settlement, even antedating that at Jamestown. The story of Gosnold's attempt and how it failed of consummation, is told in the history of Plymouth County.
733
CHARACTERS IN THE DRAMA OF FREEDOM
The largest of the Elizabeth Islands is Naushon, being seven and a half miles long, and one and a quarter miles broad. In the southeast of the island is Tarpaulin Cove and in the northwest, nearer the center, is Kettle Cove. Penakese Island was formerly used as the Leper Colony for Massachusetts and since its abandonment for that purpose has been appropriated by the State for a bird sanctuary. Penakese contains about one hundred acres.
The island which has the largest number of inhabitants and is the farthest from the mainland, the outpost of the chain, is Cuttyhunk. It is two and a half miles in length, with a lighthouse at one end and a life- saving station near the other end. It is hardly a mile across the island. The surface is rolling and there are very few trees. In the southwesterly part of the island is "Gosnold's Pond" and in that pond a little island. It was on this island, surrounded as it were by a moat, that Bartholomew Gosnold attempted to found the first white plantation in America, building a storehouse and otherwise laying the foundation for a colony, which was abandoned because no members of his crew were willing to remain to "hold the fort "while he and the rest of the party returned to England for additional colonists and necessities.
No one could remember how many days there are in the respective months of the year if he had not, in his school days, committed to memory the little rhyme commencing "Thirty days hath September." No one could remember the names of the principal islands of the Elizabeth group without some such assistance, so some thoughtful person put their names into rhyme:
Cuttyhunk and Penakese, Nashawena, Pasquenese, Great Naushon, Nonamesset, Uncatena, and Wepecket.
Before Penakese was used for a leper colony Professor Louis Agassiz received it as a gift from John Anderson, a wealthy tobacconist of New York, as a site for a school of natural history. Mr. Anderson gave $50,000 as an endowment, in addition to contributing the one hundred acres, and formal possession was taken by Professor Agassiz in July, 1873. The Anderson School of Natural History was opened not long afterwards.
Another neighbor is Noman's Land, about six and a half miles from Gay Head. It is a little smaller than Cuttyhunk, about a mile and three-quarters long and three-quarters of a mile broad. The surface is rolling and there are a few small swamps, containing bushes and peat. There are no trees on the island. It has been used largely by fishermen
734
PLYMOUTH, NORFOLK AND BARNSTABLE
and pilots looking out for vessels coming on the coast, but most of the time in the past hundred years at least one dwelling has been occupied. The island was used for raising sheep some years ago. Nearly one hundred years ago the population of Chilmark, of which the island is a part, considered as a township, was 6,470, measured in sheep, or 699 in number of human beings. The 1,600 Merino sheep then credited to Chilmark were largely pastured on Noman's Land and were said to produce fleece weighing considerably more than the fleece grown by Merinos pastured on the mainland.
CHAPTER XXXV WHEN THE CAPE COD CANAL WAS A DREAM
Captain Myles Standish Proposed Such A Waterway in 1625-Early Communication With New York When De Raisiers Was Greeted With Flourish of Trumpets in 1627-Six Successive Generations Talked About Piercing the Pilgrim's Suez-Barrels of Flour From New York Came by This Route for Washington's Army Stationed Near Boston-Canal Might Have Been Useful in Keeping Wild Animals out of Barnstable County, Some of Which, According to Historians, Were Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.
We of the present generation with our plans and concerns about Cape Cod Canal and the problem of having the Government assume ownership and management, with its possibilities for more direct con- nection with New York, wonder what the Pilgrims thought about and made plans about after they had their houses built and began to look into the future somewhat. It may be a shock to some to know that they were considering at least one of the same problems. Trading with New York was by no means outside the comprehension or ken of the Pilgrims and there were other people nearer at hand with whom they were obliged to trade to keep alive. So, within five years from the signing of the Compact, the beginning of government, the Cape Cod Canal possibilities were under consideration.
Massachusetts was one of the earliest States to build canals as weil as enter into engineering projects of all sorts, but few realize that some of these dreams were in the minds of the Pilgrims and that they actually took seriously under consideration their own ability to carry them through to completion, to serve purposes of transportation and industry in their own time.
It took nearly three hundred years for the idea of a canal across Cape Cod to become a reality, inasmuch as not less a personage than Captain Myles Standish proposed such a canal in 1625. We look back upon that lusty Pilgrim of the strenuous life with wonder and admira- tion in view of the enormous expenditure of money and labor, plus the employment of wonderful machinery, such as gigantic steam shovels, that he could even form an idea that such a waterway would be possible. In his day there was not as much as an iron shovel possessed by anyone in America. The captain was a man of action, rather than theory but he must have been a dreamer to have this Cape Cod Canal vision. To him to think was to act when it came to dealing with Indians under
736
PLYMOUTH, NORFOLK AND BARNSTABLE
suspicion, as witness the exploit at Weymouth, and he seldom side- stepped a call to action, unless there was some truth in the legend regarding commissioning John Alden to negotiate the proposal to Pris- cilla Mullens, in his behalf.
Be that is it may, Captain Myles Standish wanted a canal across Cape Cod, because that route was used by the Pilgrims and the Indians in car- rying on their trading one with the other. There is said to have been an "almost natural water course" which the Indians followed before the white men came, but of this we know nothing. If it was there, it constituted an important line of travel between Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards Bay for the Indian canoes.
There is a record that "in 1627 an agent from Fort Amsterdam (now New York) named De. Raisiers, and described as the 'chief merchant and the second to the governor,' was sent to establish trading relations with the people of Plymouth. Bradford tells us that De Raisiers sailed up Buzzards Bay 'accompanied by the noise of trumpets.' He was met by the Plymouth people at the head of the bay, then called Manomet. The name has since, however, become Monument, while Manomet is now the headland of South Plymouth." Direct trading with New York has come by means of steamboat transportation through the canal for steamers between New York and Boston, with a port on the canal, but Captain Myles Standish and De Raisiers would have had to live to be considerably over three hundred years of age if they had waited for its accomplishment. The canal is the same route used today as in their day in maintaining friendly relations between the Dutch at Manhattan and the people of Plymouth and Cape Cod, with a plentiful sprinkling of Jews and fifty-seven varieties of Gentiles mixed in with the Dutch and the people from the British Isles.
Goodwin's book, "The Pilgrim Republic," mentions the route as fol- lows: "As their necessities required the development of new fields of commerce the enterprising Pilgrims laid out a route across Cape Cod so that by boating up Scusset River and making a portage of two or three miles, goods could be placed in boats on Manomet River (now Monu- ment River) at a point a mile or two above Buzzards Bay."
There was a trading house erected within three hundred feet of low water mark, on the south bank of the Manomet River. The house was twenty feet wide and twice as long, and served a useful purpose. Two men were in charge of this trading house and a pinnace which was also built. The goods were brought in boats from Plymouth to the head of the Scusset River, carried over to the Manomet and then boated down to the pinnace. The Manomet at the point where the trading house was erected was two hundred and fifty feet wide. From this point
737
WHEN THE CAPE COD CANAL WAS A DREAM
the goods were taken to Narragansett Bay, Long Island Sound, and a few years later to the Connecticut River and Manhattan. When the pinnace returned it brought goods taken in exchange.
"The Pilgrim Republic" tells us :
The Cape Cod Isthmus has been happily called the Pilgrim Suez, with Buz- zards Bay for its Red Sea and Plymouth as its Apello. The traffic across it long continued, and it became so important that John Alden and George Soule, of the original company, lived several years after a route for the canal had been traced there and had become a subject of interest in the neighboring colony of Massa- chusetts Bay. But six successive generations have sailed to the unseen shore (written in 1888) and the work is still known as the "proposed Cape Cod Ship Canal." But this seventh generation sees its Pilgrim Suez pierced like its great prototype. New England cannot afford to neglect any such commercial advan- tage, for empire still follows the setting sun.
In August, 1775, while Washington was besieging the British in Boston, an agile coaster from New York with a hundred barrels of flour for his army, came along the sound and up Buzzards Bay to the old Pilgrim landing and sent the flour in carts by the ancient route to Scusset River. Colonel Cotton was then at Plymouth with a regiment recruited thereabouts largely from the ambitious ele- ment driven from the sea by the British cruisers. Among Cotton's officers we find the honored names of Bradford, Alden, Cole, Church, Sanford, Thomas and Wadsworth. Alas, there was no Winslow, for that family was stiffly Tory.
Quartermaster Davis made a detail from this force, placing it under Captain Samuel Bradford. A flotilla of twenty whale boats under Captain Sylvanus Drew. received the soldiers, who then made a five-hour passage to Scusset, relieving the rowers, as the wind served, by making sails of their blankets. They narrowly escaped destruction on Scusset bar. The next morning the boats, taking the flour, rowed cautiously along the shore for fear of the enemy's ships, and by 5 in the afternoon landed their precious cargo at Cohasset, whence it was carted to Wash- ington's camp. In the war of 1812 this route was much used. So the Cape Cod canal route has no small history.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.