USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Marion > Lands of Sippican on Buzzards Bay > Part 21
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It was a dull, solemn time in the villages of old Sippican. One day the great lady came home and looked about her. Very rich for her time, her husband, her infant children dead, very much alone and growing old, she thought much of her native town.
Ever since Dr. Ellis, her brothers, and the other sea cap- tains had interested her in the little collection of books called a library given out from Dr. Ellis's home, her mind had turned more and more to childhood scenes.
She gave Union Hall, a building next to the old Seminary, to the Congregational church for the benefit of the Ladies Ben- evolent Society, and other church work.
She began to make many trips over the dusty road from New Bedford. The customs of Captain Elisha Luce's days still ruled the village. Not so many wives and families of captains going to New York. Much going to meeting with sermons of hell fire and brimstone. The Methodists who had been sup- porting two meeting houses, were listening for the high sharp blast of the angel Gabriel. The children up "Happy Ally" way had just given up walking barefooted to the services, putting on their shoes and stockings within sight of the building; but they still had hours of listening in uneasy fear to the minister calling out for sinners to repent, waving his arms, jumping over the pulpit, striking terror to the hearts of his hearers with shouts and warnings of the "last day", causing them to walk home solemnly under the stars. When a comet flared in the sky, the children would creep into their beds and pull the patch- work quilts over their heads at the thoughts of white robed people and a trumpet, when somehow "the sheep and the goats" would be driven up a wide, wide path.
Little hearts scarcely beat until the sun descended below the horizon on those terrible "last days!"
Everybody made much of funerals. In some ways it was quite an entertainment to enter the spic and span house, and sit with the rooms full of chairs from the chambers above; and know that all the relatives were there, gathered from far and
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near whether they were on speaking terms or not; and see whether "the departed" "looked natural"; weep at the wailing hymn, "We shall meet on that beautiful shore," sung by a quartet upstairs or in a distant room; and comment on the way home on how the property was to be divided, whether the widow would get her share "seein' as she hadn't spoke a livin' word to him for five years".
The funeral sermons were perhaps not as long as Lieut. John Hammond's, but long enough to tell every detail in the closed life and harrow up the feelings of friends and neighbors; and a real good funeral was one where there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Everybody always "saw to it" that there was an extra pocket handkerchief concealed about the person some- where.
It was the custom to toll the bell when the funeral pro- cession of a prominent person left the church until about the time it entered the graveyard gate.
Sometimes the age was tolled out solemnly when an old person died.
The women in the village stop working, sewing or baking and exclaim "So old Betsy is gone. I knew she was sinkin'."
The church bell rang for fires, for military calls.
Mourners weren't supposed to appear in public places except at meeting for a year anyway. Most families went into mourning for two years.
The Old Landing was a little more lively. Some of the captains and their wives still went on voyages to Europe and came home, and dressed up in fine clothes from New York, and made calls and invited relatives to tea, and drove down and occupied the front family pews in the meeting house, wearing stiff silks and beautiful shawls and earrings, and much other jewelry, to the envy of the Sippican people who sat in the back seats and munched caraway seeds and ginger.
When with a great rustling they all turned at the last hymn to face the choir in the gallery, many a Sippican girl went red to the ears to think that Philura and Abbie and Mary Sanford and Alice Bert, captain's daughters all, and Mrs. Capt'n New- ton, and Cap'n Stephen, and Cap'n John, and all the other Old
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Landing people, could examine the backs of their bonnets and their make-shift flowers colored by cranberry juice.
The Old Landing had a real Russian Countess living there. The powerful waves of the surge of war did strange things to many lives.
Over in the gorgeous glittering court life of Russia, in the snows of St. Petersburg, lived a brilliant girl, Aline Petrovna Kuzmishchova, the daughter of a great Admiral, former Gov- ernor General of Archangelsk, and niece of Prince Odoyevsky who was a poet and composer of music, with his own orchestra for private concerts for the family and guests. The young countess Aline was a talented musician whose piano playing had been praised by Rubenstein himself. She spoke English, Italian and French.
'From the stilted magnificent life of the Russian court she came to the Old Landing a bride of the young Ensign James Delano, son of Capt. Obed. He was an officer on the U. S. S. Augusta.
After the war when the attempt was made to assassinate Czar Alexander II, the Assistant Sec'y of the Navy was sent to convey the congratulations of the United States Government to the Emperor on his escape from death.
The Augusta convoyed the United States Monitor, Mian- tenomah, the first war vessel of her type to cross the Atlantic. The party was entertained royally at the ports of Spain, France, and Sweden.
The Countess Aline and the handsome young officer met during the stay of the Augusta in St. Petersburg, and later the American officer went back to Russia and brought the young countess home to the Old Landing.
She touched the life of the village for many years and showed her love for the town in many ways, at one time . planning to leave her fortune to the library.
So the Old Landing was more haughty than ever.
To this day the exclusive dipper of the Old Landing girls at the "Red Rock School" rankles in the hearts of old Sippican
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and Happy Alley. "Think of it! Their own dipper!" exclaim the old ladies.
Sippican lower village was shabby. Houses needed re- pairs. People moved away. Captain Ben's family had gone to California.
A rambling sandy road, with a little cluster of houses around the meeting house and down at the wharf. There were many vacant fields where Cottage and South Street are now; and around Silver Shell and Nye's wharf were cranberry bogs and cow pastures.
The ship yards were silent; the saltworks long since gone.
No houses showing across the harbor except Henry Dow Allen's farm house through the trees.
Coasting schooners still came in, but the merchant men and steam boat captains voyaged from Boston and New York.
The old woods roads grew up to tall forest trees, with only names to call once travelled roads to mind.
"Old Solomon's Place", the "Will Place", only stunted apple trees, a clump of yellow lilies or a group of lilacs.
"Lilacs watching a deserted house
Settling sideways into the grass of an old road
A lop sided shock of bloom
Above a cellar dug into a hill."
A dismal little village, with the aristocratic Old Landing running town affairs from the "Old Landing Store" where sat a group of "square riggers", self appointed dictators of the little town that hailed as "Marion".
Henry James described it a little later in "The Bostonians".
"The little straggling loosely clustered town. It lay along the edge of a blue inlet. The houses looked at each other across the grass-low, rusty, crooked distended houses with dry, cracked faces and the dim rays of small paned stiffly sliding windows. Their little dooryards bristled with rank old-fashioned flowers mostly yellow and on the quarter that stood back from the sea the fields sloped upward and the woods in which they presently lost themselves looked down over the roofs".
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"The old ship masters lingering in their dim doorways as if conscious of a lack of encouragement to sit up, and yet remembered the nights when they wouldn't have thought of turning in at all."
"The shipyards were silent; the whalers were almost gone from the sea. Many widows of sailors wrecked in distant parts of the oceans were living in the old houses. Many widows and mothers of boys lost near Fredericksburg and in Southern Prisons sat in the church pews on Sundays".
So Betsy Taber found her village.
Many things saddened her. She had always been interest- ed in books and schools.
The closed Seminary, and the shabby little collection of books belonging to the Library Association that she had helped, issued semi-occasionally from an upper room, irritated her.
She made many trips to Sippican. She kept them "guessing" in the stores, on the wharves, wondering, wonder- ing what she was "up to".
The "Captain's ring" in the Old Landing moved their chairs uneasily in "Charlie Henry's store", and blinked when she bought a great tract of land on a lane that led from Main St. up through the "Bight", the Sunday School picnic grounds, and where Capt. Henry Allen had his stone oil factory.
She consulted her banker, architect, builder, and sud- denly there stood in the lane, now Spring Street, a stately two story building with Corinthian pillars, and with a real whaler's lookout cupola on top.
It was "snap" (her own word), that she wanted to put into her home village.
To rouse it, to fill it full of the energy of her young days. Over and over again she used the expression "to put some snap" into Sippican.
There had been no record of any meeting of the Library Association since 1867 then like a tocsin call to sleeping sentries came a snappy letter !
She knew what she wanted and said so! She stated her conditions in regard to the new building for the Library.
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On July 21, 1872 a meeting of the Library Association was called to see what to do about Mrs. Taber's requests to the Association.
Capt. Peleg Blankinship explained what Mrs. Taber wished and it was voted to accept her plans for her new building "with all the conditions there in". Capt. Henry Allen and Capt. Benjamin Briggs were there. S. W. Hall, Postmaster, son-in- law of Dr. Ellis, was clerk.
And another letter came!
On Sept. 10, 1872 it was read at the old Seminary build- ing at 71/2 o'clock with Joe Snow Luce Esq., the hotel keeper, presiding.
It was dated "New Bedford, September:
To the members of the Marion Library Asso. and the members of the natural History Society-
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Herewith you will receive a deed of a building recently erected by me at Marion - together with a policy of insur- ance on the same - which I ask you to accept, as a testimonial of my esteem and kind regards for the above named institutions -and of the inhabitants of Marion, generally.
For some years past, I have felt a desire for the promotion of education and knowledge in my native village and especially among the rising generation.
As the time had come when it was needful to enlarge your borders, I thought I could do nothing better at present than to erect this building that the deposits in each department, as well as all that should be added in years to come, might have a per- manent resting place. ·
A good library, and museum of Natural History well pat- ronized I consider legitimate sources of intelligence and re- finement, and it has been my wish to place these associations on a firm foundation.
My object is accomplished - so far, at least, as a home for the books and specimens are concerned.
I make the bequest to you, hoping you will guard all the interests with watchful care and in view of the success which
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has attended your efforts in the past - that you will not be discouraged though you meet with obstacles in the way of its advancement.
Much has been accomplished since the first formation, much remains to be done to make them effective to the end in view.
Therefore I hope you will not rest on present achievements - but press onward to higher and higher attainments, till they become unitedly a praise and a power in the community. I am, Ladies and Gentlemen very respectfully your friend
Elisabeth Taber".
It was voted to give Mrs. Taber a vote of thanks for the generous deed of gift of building and two insurance policies of $4000.00 each, and that the association relinquish its rights to use the upper room in the new building to the Natural His- tory Society.
And the inaugural ceremonies of the new building "to take place some day week after next, the day to be named by Mr. D. C. Smith of Rockland, Me.," the son-in-law of Old Deacon Thompson who had bought the Handy Tavern.
For the next few years Mrs. Taber was often in Sippican.
Capt. John Pitcher had died and left his home to the Church. The Pitcher farm land was being cut into lots and sold. The Pitchers were dying out-Catherine Pitcher died in 1871-Anna C. in 1873 and Capt. James S. H. who lived on the Rochester Road (the Capt. Justice Briggs house now) died in 1874-nobody left to whom to leave her fortune.
And so the plans for Sippican grew.
Another great building rose on the corner of the Main road and the lane.
A new Academy building! A school for aristocrats for those who could pay tuition, as were all of the private schools in the days of the captains.
Mrs. Taber agreed with the aristocrats of New Bedford, when in 1823 it was "the wish of the lower with some of the middling class of the inhabitants of the Town" to quote the Anthony Diary "to have all the children of the Town to be edu-
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cated together at the public expense in Town schools," "they found the town too aristocratic to carry a thing of this kind into operation."
A half a century later her feeling was the same.
New life came into "Sippican Lower Village".
The Library Association held its adjourned annual meet- ing at "Taber Institute," and voted in regard to its shares, and what should happen on the death of an owner of shares, and what sort of a certificate should be given share holders.
Everything seemed to move faster because of the advent of a strong personality in the village, for "Elisabeth Taber" had come home!
She moved over one day and took up her residence in Sippican in an upper room of the new Academy, while another building was being erected just beyond the Library.
The Secretary of Yale University was a distant relative, and she wrote to him that she wanted a man to act as head of a new school she was establishing. He recommended Clark P. Howland, a Yale graduate, who was then teaching in a Military School in New Haven.
She named the school Tabor Academy, spelling her name with an "o" for Mt. Tabor in Palestine!
On Friday, Sept. 14, with the new principal and an assistant and a few pupils, the school opened.
Mrs. Taber sat on the platform while the 19th Psalm was read, and a prayer was said, and so Tabor Academy began.
"Rose Cottage" was deserted. Capt. Nathan, Capt. Oliver and Capt. Benjamin came back from the ocean lanes no more, and the "Cottage" was opened for the new principal of Tabor Academy.
When Tabor Hall was finished as the house for the head of the school, Mrs. Taber occupied two rooms on the south side second floor, and the assistant to the Principal had the rooms in the Academy Building Mrs. Taber vacated.
There were no good high schools in the surrounding towns, and Wareham, Mattapoisett, Rochester, and Fairhaven sent many boys and girls to Tabor.
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In the meantime, Mrs. Taber had been persuaded to give the youth of Marion free tuition.
The morning trains in at the little Railroad Station, brought a group of laughing, chattering boys and girls who walked down in the crisp air coming in like a breeze to their recitations. The school steadily increased until there were over a hundred pupils enrolled, with boys boarding in the village.
For 12 years it was Mrs. Taber's own school, with the young people under her influence.
She was autocratic, dictatorial, but when persuaded a course was right, did not hesitate to change her plan.
The excitement of the feud between Mrs. Taber and the Old Landing Captains!
The rulers of the town! The old mariners who put in and put out selectmen, road surveyors, constables, from their "office" the "Old Landing Store!"
Mrs. Taber opposed the "Captain's Ring", and to her delight and the bewilderment of the dazed "square riggers", defeated their candidates and the control was broken.
And then the schools were graded! And her Principal was the superintendent! And old school houses condemned!
Down by the wharves the life died slowly. Only once in a year now was a big whaler's sail brought into the sail loft.
The Julia Nelson, B. A. Warford, Narragansett, Abby J., Thomas Potter, docked with lumber, coal, oak plank, flour, and grain to take away box boards, slabs, and edging.
The schooner Argo comes in for 40 cords of wood per- haps, and the William Wilson pays for "Winter Dockage".
There had been "wharfage charges" printed in 1874, with a long list of figures for barrels and casks, and boxes of copper, sugar, chests of tea, anchors and chains, grain and salt, Rus- sian and American duck; clap boards and lathes; hemp, cord- age and fish; ballast and cabooses; coal and iron. On all vessels "over 60 tons burthen per day, .0216; on all vessels hauled up at the Island Dock, one half the above fee."
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"Wood moved by teams, per cord, .15. Wood that has to be carted, .10". "On all wood lying over 3 months an additional wharfage shall be paid for each 3 months except from the 1st of December to the 1st of April."
Captain George Luce is at home dabbling a little in politics, spreading codfish over "the Island" property and collecting "Wharfage".
For the years 1875-76 the wharf brought in only $74.94.
The charm of the sea and wood land, and especially the good fishing had begun to draw people to the little hotel that Joe Snow Luce had made from the Hiller farm house.
Just after the Civil War several families had come down from Boston, from Providence, from New York - the Abbots, the Barrows, the Pomeroys.
By the time Mrs. Taber had built the Academy, the town was repairing a road to the big, square wooden structure on Great Hill called the "Marion House".
A great lady was improving the little village by putting up beautiful buildings on its vacant lots, and fishermen from Boston and New York were getting a "mess of tautog" on Capt. Geo's and Capt. Bill's fishing ground, "Bobel Bouy".
In the stores when the men folks gathered in the light of a kerosene lamp on the fall evenings in their cape coats, sou'. westers, and pea jackets; sat in wooden arm chairs, or on nail kegs and cracker boxes around the bulging red hot stove and spat at the wooden box of saw dust in which the stove stood; they settled not only the affairs of the village, how the oyster grants were paying, who was going in as selectman, how Joe Snow Luce could make such a big hotel pay as the "Bay View", whether the "Marion House" wasn't putting him out of business, Mrs. Taber's next move, but they also speculated on a new subject the letting and selling of houses for the fishing season.
Good fishing! The men came, and the families looked at land. Houses near the waterfront were taken. New names were appearing on the Marion tax lists.
An old Admiral had bought the Sherman house!
On July 22, 1879 old Rochester-Towne-in-New England turned out for a celebration. Quarrels forgotten, with flags
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flying and bands playing, with processions, with speeches and toasts and compliments and hand shakings, all the villages came home.
There were special trains with 30 carloads of people be- sides many, many carriages.
All the stores were closed in Wareham, Agawam, Tre- mont, South Tremont and South Wareham, as well as in Roches- ter Center, Marion and Mattapoisett.
Everybody had a holiday! The Franconia and the South Wareham Iron works were closed down. It was the 200th birthday of Rochester-Towne, and her children of the "Lands of Sippican" came home.
There was not room to hold the celebration on Little Neck, around Minister's Rock, where they came riding in to take up the lots on that far away day.
A great pine grove, near where the water pumping station is now, on the road from the Old Landing to the Center, was chosen.
In the official Record of the Day one reads:
"Joseph S. Luce, Esq." had been directed by the town of Marion to copy the old proprietor's records, and he "called the attention of the authorities of the several towns that on the 22nd day of July, 1679, the first meeting of the proprietors was held at Plymouth and steps taken towards forming a settle- ment at Sepecan."
Committees were chosen by the several villages with a dozen captains serving on them:
Captain Alden Besse, Captain Benj. L. Gibbs of Wareham, Capt. Obed Delano, Captain R. F. Hart, Captain I. N. Hathaway, Captain I. N. Lewis of Marion.
Captain Joseph R. Taber, Captain Franklin Cross, Captain Charles Bryant, Mattapoisett.
Captain Judah Hathaway, Captain John G. Dexter, Roches- ter.
The officers of the day were: Gerald C. Tobey, of Ware- ham, President; Wilson Barstow, Mattapoisett, Vice President; George Purrington, Jr., Mattapoisett, Chief Marshall; Rev. H.
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C. Vose, Marion, Toastmaster; Rev. William Leonard of North Rochester, Chaplain.
The Standish Guards of Plymouth, Co. H. Ist Regiment Infantry, M. V. M. Capt. Herbert Morissey, gave their services, and the Middleboro Brass Band was engaged.
It sprinkled a few drops in the early morning but by the time the procession started from the Marion Railroad Station up the road to the center, the sun was shining.
Heavy arches of green, flags, festooned bunting in red, white and blue, a large white banner with "Bi-Centennial" on it in letters 2 ft. high, made of small flags, marked the entrance to the grove.
The speaker's stand had a canopy of sail cloth festooned with red, white and blue bunting.
So under the pine trees of the "lands of Sippican" the children of the lands met in honor of their forefathers. Six thousand of them under the forest trees.
Among the distinguished guests of the State were three Indians, descendants of Massasoit, the great friend of the Pil- grims, and of the Black Sachem, Tuspaquin.
Down from the Ponds had come Woolonekamuske and Tewellema, two Indian girls, conspicuous in the costumes of their forefathers of 300 years ago. With their blankets and necklaces; clothes ornamented in embroidery of sky blue and orange; deerskin with trimmings of white shells and beads and "richly wrought moccasins", they sat with their mother, who wore black, on the speaker's stand.
One wore a "cap curiously constructed of partridge feath- ers surmounted by beads, and the other a head dress of scarlet cloth, ingeniously worked with white beads surmounted with a single tall drooping white feather."
And the band played national airs, and a choir of fifty voices under the leadership of George M. Delano sang 'Auld Lang Syne.'
A prayer went up in praise of the beautiful day, and for the "vast multitude assembled to celebrate in a befitting manner the first settlement of this ancient domain by our illustrious
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ancestors"-praise for "God's wondrous dealings with the Pil- grim Fathers." Praise for piloting them "over the trackless sea in safety", and defending and guiding them.
A prayer for their sons and daughters! "Make us worthy of our sires". A prayer for those there "of those primal lords of these ancient forests, and for all the great nation of America."
Gerard C. Tobey, of the Wareham village of old Rochester- Towne, President of the Day, said "As I look upon this large concourse of people, and, from this platform, see around me so many brave men who have so often surmounted the surging ocean in its fury, who have commanded every kind of craft from a fishing boat to coaster, whale ships, merchantmen, steamships-old vikings of every sea-I feel here today, in- deed, as if I were intruding upon somebody's quarter deck. It may be a proper deference for me just now to say to strangers visiting us who may be doubtful of the address of any resident hereabout, call him "Captain", and you will not be far from right; for, if you do not find him already a master mariner, the chances are that he will be very soon."
He spoke of "the feeble strip of Christianity struggling for existence upon a hostile coast" and goes on to welcome Americans to old Rochester
" 'For Saxon, or Dane or Norman, we, Teuton, or Celt, whatever we be'-
American, heart unto heart in this historic place near the pic- turesque shores of our beautiful bay - this bay so generous, so bounteous in gifts alike for sustenance, and for enjoyment- this bay so charming in outline and coulours - the waters whereof were to our forefathers a highway of traffic between New Plymouth and New Amsterdam, and will become, upon the completion of the projected canal, the highway of a great commerce from the shores at the North of us to the whole At- lantic coast southward."
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