USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Gloucester > In the heart of cape ann, or, the story of dogtown, 1906 > Part 5
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
"Your assured friend and faithful pastor, "John White."
This letter was addressed to " Elder Na- thaniel Coit and Joseph Allen Esqr & the rest of ye north part of the first parish in Gloucester."
The Mr. Parsons referred to in Mr. White's lettet was Rev. Moses Parsons, father of Massachusetts' eminent jurist, Theophilus Parsons, who at this time was keeping a pri- vate school at the harbor and who was en- gaged as an assistant to the venerated pastor
16
BEGINNINGS OF DOGTOWN.
in the hope that the choice would heal the dissensions, a hope that proved to be vain, so that soon Mr. Parsons accepted a call to By- field, where he spent the rest of his life. His wife was Susanna, daughter of Ebenezer Da- vis, a native of the Dogtown section, her home being on Reynard street.
But the pacific note is itself pretty good evidence the Mr. White and his supporters at the Harbor realized that whatever was done by way of maintaining preaching at the two churches must be simply preliminary to a division of the parish. If the General Court was to insist on this it were as well to form a new parish and let those attending the meetings in the old church be responsi- ble for their support. The tone of the dis- cussion, therefore, soon changes, and the questions begin to arise as to the drawing of the new parish line. One list of names ap- pears of residents along what we now know as the "Old Rockport road," who were like- ly to be included, though not petitioners, and on October 9, 1742, a petition appeared at the General Court, where for the first time on the records mention is made of the "Town Parish," a term which has, with its twin term "Up in Town," been in familiar use since for over one hundred and fifty years. The petition follows :
" We whose names are underwritten do hereby request that neither we nor our es- tates be set off to the Town Parish and to at- tend public worship at the Old Meeting House if it be granted to them that petition for it, but desire that we may belong to the Harbor Parish."
This petition bore 18 names, and was head- ed by John Pool and Samuel Davis. Dec. 2 of the same year nine others petitioned to be
17
BEGINNINGS OF DOGTOWN.
left alone, the two petitions containing the names of nearly all those referred to as living on the Rockport road and "at the Cape," excepting Henry Witham, whose cellar still remains on the old road near by the " Part- ing path," this point being made one of the bounds of the new parish.
Six days later, December 8, 1742, Epes Sargent, John Carney and Daniel Witham, two of these having been the leaders of the opposition to division from the first, peti- tioned for a new parish as had been agreed upon, the bounds taking in the homes in the vicinity of the Green, all of Riverdale and as far as the 'Squam Willows, Wheeler's Point, Thurston's Point and Dogtown.
Mr. Babson's history states that the separa- tion was agreed to in parish meeting by a vote of fifty yeas to thirty-five nays. The seceders, though occupying the location of the first settlers, were compelled to be known thereafter as the Fourth Parish. Rev. John Rogers was the first and only pastor, he being ordained February 1, 1744, and serving the parish for 38 years. In 1752 the old meeting house was abandoned for a new one, built a few rods away, on the southeast corner of the Green. In 1751 Joseph Allen and wife gave the church a communion service which is now used by the Riverdale Methodist society, its pastor tells me. The inscription on this service is as follows, "The Gift of Josh Allen esqr and wife for the 4th church in Gloucester 1751." The church building stood until 1840 and in its later days proved very useful as a preaching place for the itin- erating Methodist preachers, who eventually planted the faith firmly on Cape Ann.
CHAPTER III.
The "platt" of the embryo Fourth Parish shows that in 1741-2 there were 25 houses standing within the limits of what we now call Dogtown. The cellars which remain show that in its palmiest days-if it ever liad palmy days-there were about twice that number. The original plan, which I have copied, indicated the houses by numbers. I have put the names directly on the plan.
The town records of Gloucester contain two references to roads in the direction of Dog- town. One of these, in 1646, lays out a "highway out of the woods on Est side Mill River through Hugh Calkins marsh for haul- ing wood timber planks or such like down to said river." In 1707 three important roads were laid out from Gristmill and Sawmill standing on Sawmill river up into the woods along by the now dwelling house of Lieut. James Davis. The inhabitants having great necessity for sd way for transporting their fodder, timber and wood, which way is laid out where it hath been used and improved 50 years commencing at stake 5 rods easterly of east corner of gravel pit. That is at the east- erly side of said grist mill dam and so on past Lieut. James Davis dwelling house till it cometh to a bridge going over the brook where the way now goeth and hath gone a long time towards the house of Ezekiel Day 4 rods wide up to the now dwelling house of Joseph Ingersoll excepting only where ye 2nd Ezekiel Day's barn now standeth where the way to be only so wide as is between Ezekiel Day's land by his dwelling house and barne."
The foregoing refers to Reynard street,
19
BEGINNINGS OF DOGTOWN.
which, for some reason is only indicated on the parish plan as extending from Cherry street to the house of Lieut. Davis, the only one then upon it. The Ezekiel Day house was near the Cherry street end. Joseph In- gersoll, who evidently lived near, must have abandoned that location and built a house on the Dogtown road, or else his son Joseph, who is the one indicated in the plan, built in Dogtown after his marriage to Mary Brewer, Dec. 2, 1707.
The parish plan sheds a good deal of light upon the problem which troubled John J. Babson as to the motive for the settlement of Dogtown, as is illustrated in the case above. A very large proportion of the heads of fam- ilies had a very large number of children, and the sons, as they grew up, married and es- tablished homes for themselves as near the ancestral homestead-which, as a rule, event- ually descended to the eldest son-as was possible, this often being within the limits of Dogtown, We shall find as we study the village as it existed in 1740 that many sons of men who had large farms in what is now Riverdale and 'Squam began house- keeping in Dogtown, seeking their land in the last division of common lands in 1719. The movement of settlement can be traced quite easily through a careful examination of vital statistics. William Stevens, Gloucester's and New England's famous shipwright, lived at the Cut. His grandson, William, in- herited his place, married Abigail Sargent, and died in 1701. Ilis widow married Elder Nathaniel Coit, who lived at the mill pond, and whose daughter Mary, married Joseph Allen, Esq. ; Samuel, son of the second Wil- liam Stevens, married Anna, Joseph Allen's daughter, and had a third William, born in
20
BEGINNINGS OF DOGTOWN.
1718, who married Anna, daughter of Eben- ezer Davis at the very period the map was made, and it shows him settled down on what is now Cherry street. The next gener- ation moved into Dogtown village, where Joseph Stevens was the largest landholder 100 years ago.
Near William Stevens lived Benjamin Fos- ter, who I suppose to be the grandfather of little Dorcas Foster. of Dogtown, whose story has been already told. In the same locality lived John Bruce, and of hin I find absolutey no record, and am therefore of the opinion that the name should not be Bruce but Brew - er, as the name of John Brewer is placed with that of Stevens and Foster in the list of . petitioners. This does not help us much, however, as nothing further is known of him.
The Nathaniel Day house, at the foot of Gravel Ilill, was built by Samuel Day, a younger brother, who was killed by Indians in the troubles of 1758, and his widow dee:1- ed the property to Nathaniel, who married Susanna Stanwood in 1739. The map, how- ever, shows that they were living in the house in 1741. While dealing with the Day family, it may be well to say that the widow, Mary Day, whose name appears in the list as living near Nathaniel, was undoubtedly his mother, Mary Rowe Day, the daughter of Hugh Rowe, and widow of Ezekiel Day, her home being, as stated, near Reynard street. Two of her sisters married brothers of her husband and one of these appears in the list, Rachel, widow of Samuel. Anoth- er Day widow, Abigail, was Abigail Leach, widow of John, erroneously called " Abigail Lead " in Mr. Babson's history, and " Alice " Leach in his Notes and Additions. She had a daughter Sarah who married Dea .
21
BEGINNINGS OF DOGTOWN.
con Joseph Winslow, mentioned in the Dog- town book, and the good deacon was in 1742 the administrator of John's estate. The lat- ter's home was near the Poles, but the dis- tance from the church, as indicated on the list, and the fact that they are named to- getlier, shows that in order to be near her daughter she had moved into Dogtown vil- age.
There is no doubt in my mind that the name "Joseph Whiston" on the original plan is an error. The house is that of Joseph Winslow, as is shown by consulting the list of distances, it being only a rod from James Stanwood's, oil the opposite side of the street, . while no distance is given for the house of Joseph Whiston, named elsewhere in the list. Furthermore, the plan in the Dogtown book gives Deacon Winslow's cellar as at this point, but opposite, while in an article which 1 published in the Times in November, 1898, I stated that I had succeeded in identifying the cellar at that time marked by a painted sign as that of Dorcas Foster as the old home of Deacon Winslow. This is the very cellar marked "Joseph Whiston" on the ancient plan, which in itself is a splendid proof of the accuracy of a tradition which had ex- isted in Riverdale for five generations-a century and a half. It is clear that the name "Whiston" was copied from the plan and placed in the list, and that Mr. Babson copied it from the list and printed it in his history as that of an early settler of whom he knew nothing more.
A few steps further up the street lived Widow Jane Day, very plainly the "Granny Day," who was the village schoolmistress and gave her name to the swamp at that point. I have tried very hard to identify
22
BEGINNINGS OF DOGTOWN.
her. Mr. Fred N. Day thinks she was the Jane Boyd who married JJoseph Day, and to whom Mr. Babson gives the name "Patience." Francis "Bloyd" was an early settler. As collateral evidence that Mr. Day's theory is right I may say that Joseph Day had a daughter Jane (doubtless named for her mother) who married John Carter. Widow Jane Carter died in January, 1814, at the age of ninety-four. I am quite disposed to think that the belief of the late Eli Morgan that "Easter" and William Carter came from England was founded on the fact that their father, John Carter, came over either in 1741 or 1742, and that he married the daughter of "Granny" Day. When we call her by that loving title, therefore, we but echo the language of the little Easter and William, when they waded in their grand- mother's swamp, a century or more ago.
But having taken this excursion through the village street with the Day family and connections, it may be well to return to the foot of Gravel hill for a few minutes. Nathaniel Day's nearest neighbors in 1740 were Abraham and Jeremiah Millet. It is difficult to get away from the Day family in dealing with Dogtown. They were cousins of Nathaniel, sons of Andrew Millet and Bethiah Day. The map in the Dogtown book locates Molly Millet in the house which the ancient map shows was built by Abra- ham Millet. I am unable to say how the house of Jeremiah Millet, at the top of Gravel hill, passed into the possession of William Pulcifer.
Who Benjamin (K)newcomb, whose house stood near the present location of the Vivian barn, may have been, we are left to conjec- ture. So far as I know, his membership in
23
BEGINNINGS OF DOGTOWN.
the town parish, as shown in the plan and petitions, is all that remains to identify hin. He would seem to be one of those, who, in the division of the common lands, in 1719, came into the possession of a quarter lot.
The first cellar marked upon the plan in the Dogtown book is that of a Clark. In the 1741 plan the name is Joseph Clark, Jr. The second house beyond was that of his father, Joseph Clark, and is the one whose eloquent door-stone inspired the muse of Hiram Rich, and arrests the attention of every visitor to the deserted village. The senior Joseph mar- ried Rachel Pickworth, one of a numerous Manchester family which intermarried with the Woodburys in at least two generations, and had sons Joseph and John. Joseph mar- ried Mary Ridgel and built the first house re- ferred to, while the house with the door-stone descended to John, whose son John was born in 1740, his mother's maiden name having been Rebecca Brown. He must have been nearly eighty years old at his death in the old house, which was torn down soon after, in 1820. These facts dispose of the tradition that the house with the door-stone belonged to Arthur Wharf, who. evidently lived in the house adjoining. The latter house was evi- dently built after 1740, as it does not appear on the ancient plan.
On the right of the village street stood in 1740 the house of James Stanwood. He ap- pears to have been the son of John and the grandson of Philip, the founder of the fami- ly on Cape Ann and in America. James Stanwood married Mary, the daughter of Lieut. James Davis, in 1712, and had two sons, James and William. In 1728 James Stanwood was admitted a resident of Fal- mouth, now Portland, Maine, but evidently
24
BEGINNINGS OF DOGTOWN.
did not settle there, unless the James whose name is marked on the plan is the son.
I find nowhere any reference to James De- inerit, who is credited with a house standing in the vicinity of the Easter Carter place. lle is a petitioner for the new parish, and there we must leave him.
Apparently the house Molly Jacobs lived in in more recent years was in 1741 the home of Joseph Ingersoll. George Inger- soll, the first settler of the name, had a son Joseph and a grandson of the same name, who married Mary Brewer in 1707. Their son JJoseph was living in the town parish in 1740, and with his father signed the petition. Ilis brother John lived in another part of the parish.
Near Granny Day, a century and a half ago lived Stephen Robinson, Jr. The senior Stephen was the youngest son of the patri - arch, Abraham, who is credited by the gene- alogists with being the son of Rev. John, pastor of the Pilgrim church at Leyden. The son Stephen married Mary Clark, a cousin I should judge, though perhaps an older sis- ter of Joseph and John Clark, referred to above, Feb. 27, 1730. Babson says, " He may have removed to Marblehead, as admin- istration of the estate of a Stephen, late of that place, was granted to his widow, Jan. 23, 1740." The plan shows that Stephen was living in Dogtown at that date. He had a little Stephen, doubtless a pupil of Granny Day's school at this period, and he married a daughter of Peter Lurvey, as I suppose, Rachel, June 29, 1756.
The only other resident on the Dogtown village street at that early date was Joseph Riggs. He was the son of Andrew, youngest son of the early schoolmaster,
25
BEGINNINGS OF DOGTOWN.
Thomas Riggs. He married Priscilla Allen, in 1738, she dying in the year 1750, and later he married Sarah Demerit, doubtless a daugh- ter of the unidentified James. I suppose Priscilla Allen was a daughter of the Benja- min Allen who was Joseph Riggs' nearest neighbor, living on the upper road, and I judge, also, that it was in the former home of Benjamin Allen that Abraham Wharf lived at the time he rashly determined to take his own life. A comparison of the plan in the Dogtown book with the [parish plan seems to prove this. A few years ago I stated that this house was not the homestead of Abra- ham Wharf, and the parish plan, showing the Arthur Wharf house a distance away, proves the correctness of that statement.
Benjamin Allen was apparently, thoughi not certainly, one of the 17 children of the first Joseph, and a brother to Joseph, Esq., and Thomas. Mr. Babson does not follow up the history of this Benjamin, who was born in 1687, but he prints a reference to the Dogtown Benjamin in his Notes and Ad- ditions, which practically proves my theory that the cellar surrounded by the foundations of outbuildings, where he says Abraham Wharf lived, was the home of Benjamin Al- len.
Abraham Wharf married Mary Allen, and in 1765 Catherine Richardson, Mary "Wharf" and Susanna Allen petitioned for a division of their deceased father's estate. Benjamin Allen married Mary Riggs Oct. 1, 1729, and a son, Andrew, was born Aug. 5, 1756.
CHAPTER IV.
The study now brings us to one of the most illuminating points in the history of Dogtown. Back in Beech pasture, on the parish plan, is shown the house of Nehemi- ah Stanwood. It is the house marked in the Dogtown book as that occupied at different times by Peter Lurvey, Black Neil and Sammy Stanley, and which was the early home of John Morgan Stanwood and his wife, l'eter Lurvey's daughter. This is the house which was taken down and rebuilt by James Thurston, and which now stands near the corner of Reynard street on Wash- ington street in Riverdale.
The first cccupant I was formerly able to trace was Peter Lurvey, the Revolutionary martyr. But the plan, together with Mrs. Ethel Stanwood Bolton's excellent and accu- rate " History of the Stanwood Family," makes its entire history clear. The Nehemi- ah Stanwood who built this house was the grandfather of John Morgan Stanwood, or " Johnny Morgan," as Dogtowners called him, and was born Nov. 15, 1704, the son of the Jonathan Stanwood whose house is shown on the plan as on Wheeler's point. His mother was Mary Nichols of West Ames- bury. He was a weaver by trade, and was married Jan. 14, 1731, to Bethiah Elwell, whose parentage I will not attempt to state, amid a multiplicity of Bethiahs. Later he married Patience Harraden, and lastly, in 1759, Sarah Tucker. She was probably the widow Sarah Adams who married John Tucker a few years previous. At the time of the death of Nehemiah Stanwood in 1784, his
27
BEGINNINGS OF DOGTOWN.
son Nehemiah was made administrator of his estate, and a year later Hon. Benj. Green- leaf, judge of probate for Essex county, ap- pointed James Day, Issac Dennison and Zeb- ulon Lufkin, all freeholders of Gloucester, a committee to give the widow her third of the estate. Their report was as follows :
Gloucester, June 21, 1785.
"Hon Sir Agreeable to a warrant to us directed, we have set off to the widow Sarah Stanwood, one full third part of the real es- tate of her husband, Nehemiah Stanwood, late of Gloucester, deceased, viz,-one Lower Room in the western end of the said deceased dwelling House with a privilege to bake in the Oven in the Eastern Room of Said Ilouse, also the privilege of one Quarter part of the cellar ; also one Cow Right in the Pas- ture adjoining Said Dwelling House and Village Land and a Priviledge to the Well the whole amounting to 20 pounds."
This would indicate that the old house in Beech pasture was valued at about 60 pounds in 1785. Nehemiah Stanwood, the builder of the house, was a weaver. He had nine children. His oldest son, Joshua, married Mary Riggs, and had a long career in the Revolutionary war, his entire service being in the coast guard, in Gloucester. Nehemiah, the second son, and the father of John Mor- gan Stanwood, was a fisherman, born June 26, 1733, who married Ruth Morgan Jan. 31, 1756. (The latter evidently got her name . from her mother, Ruth Lane, daughter of James, born Dec. 27, 1718, who married a Morgan. ) Evidently Peter Lurvey, who married a sister of Abrahanı Wharf, went to housekeeping in one side of this house, and I am more convinced than ever that the young- er Nehemiah, after his marriage to Ruth
28
BEGINNINGS OF DOGTOWN.
Morgan, lived in the vicinity of the " Boo," and that the reason John Morgan Stanwood finally went to live for a time in the Beech pasture house was, not because he had mar- ried Peter Lurvey's daughter Mary (for at the time of the marriage the latter was prob- ably living with Abraham Wharf), but be- cause the house was his by right of descent. All of Morgan Stanwood's children, I should judge, were born in the Beech pasture house.
There seems little light to shed upon the antecedents of James Marsh, Jabez Hunter and William Hilton, dwellers at the time of the preparation of the plan on the Dogtown Commons road. "Arter" Wharf was of course the father of Abraham, the suicide, and was the son of the early settler, Nathan. iel Wharf. Joshua Elwell was the father of Isaac, married Susanna Stanwood (daugh- ter, I judge, of Andrew), and became the father of Capt. Isaac Elwell, at one time postmaster of Gloucester. The Elwell house appears to be the one later made famous as the home of Judith Ryon, better known as "Judy Rhines."
-
CHAPTER V.
Dogtown seems always to have had many widows within its limits. The Widow Davis, who appears as a resident on the upper road, was Anna, widow of John, son of the first settler of the name, and the daughter of Ed- ward Haraden. Her son Joseph married Jemima Haskell, who later became the wife of Lieut. Thomas Allen. Her son William had a fine Revolutionary record, and has many descendants in Gloucester. " Widow Cannable " did not remain a widow. She was Lydia Riggs, daughter of the second Thomas Riggs, and after the death of Thom- as Canneby, she married Solomon Davis, son of Lieut. James Davis.
Abagail Bennett, whose nanie appears, was the widow of the first settler of the name, Anthony, who was a carpenter, and built and operated the mill at the outlet of Cape Pond brook, near Fox Hill and the home of Tammy Younger. The name "Anthony Bennett" which appears on the plan at this point was that of his oldest son, and Stephen and John Bennett, whose name appears near that of Abagail Bennett on the upper Dog- town road, were sons of the second Anthony. At the time of the preparation of the plan, 1741, he was non compos and ander the guardianship of his son John, while his mother, Abagail, who seems to have been evicted from the home at Fox Hill to make room for the family of the son, had been dead seven or eight years. I have tried to identify one of these Bennett houses as the "Old Castle," but find it impossible to do this without a search of Essex records, which
30
BEGINNINGS OF DOGTOWN.
would probably result in fixing the house marked "John Bennett" as the Castle.
It is but a short distance from the house of William Tucker on the main road, to the cottage on the back road, still standing, of his descendants, Dan and Dorcas, or "Dark" Tucker, the latter the brewer of tlie "dire drink," who got her name from her ancestor, Dorcas Lane, wife of the first settler of Lanesville, John Lane.
It is foreign to the purpose of this series of articles to discourse of the homes outside the limits of Dogtown which appear on the plan. From the ancient house of Thomas Riggs, the first schoolmaster, went a flock of daugh- ters and granddaughters, to become the wives of residents of Dogtown. This state- ment is also true of the houses of Lieut. James Davis and Ezekiel Day, also on the outposts of the now deserted village. I think I have made it fairly clear, by the aid of the resurrected parish plan, that the people who built and populated Dogtown had in their veins the best blood of Gloucester.
This was the position I took, but could not at the time prove, in " The Story of Dogtown." The early residents of the Town Parish had large families. The distribution of land in 1719 made it possible for every male above 21 years of age to secure a quar- ter lot, but many of these were located in what became Dogtown. At that date I do not believe a single house stood in what is now Dogtown Commons. Two decades saw twenty-five homes, all flocking with children. In a little over ten years, therefore, Dogtown
31
BEGINNINGS OF DOGTOWN.
could celebrate its two hundredth anniver- sary, if, alas! there were any but the shades of the departed to attend the celebration. In the Dogtown genealogy I endeavored to bring down, as far as feasible, the family lines of Dogtown dwellers to their grandchildren or great-grandchildren, now living. In the present chapters, I have carried the lines back to the beginning. It has been a pleasant task, made more pleasant because it has been the solution of a problem which has vexed those who have studied Gloucester's history for two generations.
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.