USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Marion > Lands of Sippican on Buzzards Bay > Part 22
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The orator of the day, Rev. N. W. Everett, called the roll of the Pilgrim sons and daughters, and distinguished soldiers of wars, and orators of congress, clergymen, doctors, lawyers, captains, and pilgrims all.
"Sons of Mother Ocean" -- Sketched by C. D. Gibson for Frank Stockton's Merry Chanter
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THE BAY VIEW &HOUSE MARION MASS ;. "ChS-LUCE, PROPRE
The Inn that to Henry James "suggested dreadfully an early bedtime"
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He traced the history of the "Lands of Sippican":
"Here, we stand today where our fathers stood 200 years ago. The same heavens are above us; the same ocean washes these shores. - Instead of the dense forest we look out upon smiling villages. Instead of the howl of the wolf and the yell of the savage, we hear the music of the church bell."
He recalls the great changes of "This inventive age" - railroads - steamboats - gas - gun-cotton, chloroform! "What would one of the old Continentals, that used to stop and pick his flint with his jack knife, in action, say of a gun that could be discharged 26 times without reloading?"
He quoted Daniel Webster, and of "how he loved to fish, and hunt in our woods and waters and that before he died he was heard to exclaim "Buzzards Bay is one of the most beau- tiful bays in the world."
He ends by quoting Lincoln "The government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
And then came the great clambake - the Indian feast of long ago.
And they sat down, the children of Old Rochester in the pine forest not far away from the road to Whitehall over which their fathers had travelled in the early days to the meeting house, to the "mil", to the "town meet".
The responses to the toasts brought many a son of old Rochester to memory.
"What a galaxy of noble and entertaining men and women gave a wide reputation to the town!" Like a roll call of "the lands" came the names of its famous children from the earliest times to the Hon. Tristam Burgess "the bald eagle of the North", who quelled "Randolph of Roanoke". In 1830 he is saying of his ancestors "Independence was their first inspiration and from that hour to this all true Americans who have understood and pursued the great interests of the country have lived and labored for independence."
To the Toast-"The Aborigines, once the rightful owners of the soil", Gen. Ebenezer W. Pierce of Freetown responded.
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Gen Pierce had extended his study of the Indians from sketches and stories, to town records and the public archives of the country, and he commented upon what the committee had done in inviting honored guests for the occasion.
Something he "had never known to have been done be- fore on an occasion of this kind, your committee have done well to invite - living representatives of the nationality and people that possessed this goodly land before our Pilgrim fathers came hither. And we are thus able to see, to look upon, question and hold converse with the lineal descendants of those who for thousands of years, for aught we know, here lived, moved, and had a being, swaying unquestioned and unobstructed, the scepter of power, true representatives of pre-historic centuries and pre-historic man."
He spoke of the two Indian Kings who ruled New Eng- land and much of New York - Ousamequin, afterwards called by the white comers "good old Massasoit" and "Sassacus" to whom they applied the appellation of the 'terrible'."
He spoke of "Massasoit's lordly domain of what is now the counties of Barnstable, Bristol, Plymouth, Duke and Nan- tucket, together with a large part of the State of Rhode Island and the islands contiguous."
He who had searched the records said "To the kindness of Massasoit more than to any other one cause, and indeed more than to all other causes combined, did the Pilgrim Fathers owe their success in the attempt to settle a European Colony in the New England portions of North America."
In responding to the Toast - "The Pilgrims", Judge Thomas Russell of Boston, the President of the Pilgrim Society, spoke of the coming of a canal across Cape Cod and referred to a prophecy made in 1627 "In a lonely spot one of the men stationed where the corn and tobacco were stored spent some leisure hours drilling into a rock the words
"The Eastern nation sink; their glory ends;
And Empire rises where the sun descends."
The great meeting of the sons and daughters of "the Lands of Sippican" in 1879, marks almost the year when their
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lands pass out of the exclusive possession of the old timers and their families. The lands are looked upon and pronounced delectable by Boston, New York. And on the word spread until the farther cities of the country hear. Of course, the children of the Pilgrims always turned towards home. As one said, at the Bi-Centennial of the Railroad to Boston: "The success of the Old Colony was due to the fact that every Ply- mouth boy, and every son and daughter of Cape Cod was de- termined, if possible, to spend every Saturday night at home". "Here are men who have sailed among the islands where perpetual summer scatters fruit and flowers over the fertile lands, where the soil and climate are all that ours are not, and yet you never envied the inhabitants of those Edens; you always turn with pride and joy to your own dear Old Colony."
The children and the children's children come home; but others are coming too and buying land.
That year of 1879 Lyman Blake of Boston had bought Charles Neck Point and was about to build a house.
The Mears of Brookline, Holmes of Bradford, Col. Mckay of Cambridge, Rev. C. Everett of Chicago were some who rented cottages; then bought land and built little summer homes near the harbour shores.
The charms of the "dear old Colony" were getting into print.
In the Boston Evening Transcript of Oct. 17, 1879, one can read, "The cottages are built as near the sea as possible, not more than a rod or two from it, and the salt air, blowing directly from the sea, comes laden with health and vigor. Life in a cottage by the sea has charms which those who have never experienced them cannot realize.
There are the magnificent sunsets every evening, to which the reflection from the water lends an added beauty. And the water too, is something of which we never tire, whether it is studied in its calm majesty lying so quietly with merely a ripple to break its otherwise perfect stillness, while the white caps sail placidly on its surface; or whether we watch it when it seems to dash itself in anger against the rocks, the waves breaking in foam and spray, as fresh billows come up to meet
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it with a like fate; or whether at sunset we watch the brilliant colours of the sky, reflected upon its surface - bright crimson and gold gradually melting into pale blue and pink and lilac blending and mingling so imperceptibly in the rippling water that we become bewildered with the lovely tints."
The captains wondered why anybody wanted to live on the water.
They built their houses along the Rochester road, and far from the sea, most of them, that when they were at home they might look at green fields, and farm lands, and trees, and gardens.
Captains' sons were beginning to think of law, and medi- cine, and railroads, but once in a while the call of strange oceans sounded in the ears of Sippican boys. One summer afternoon, four boys, Eben, Frank, Adelbert and Weston, watched a whaler go off the ways with flying colors. The cheers of the crowd, the far-a-way islands of boastful uncles, fathers, cousins, faint echoes of old, old stories, made a fever in their veins. Hearing the Gay Head wanted a crew they talked the matter over in their boyish hiding places, behind the barn and wood- shed - anywhere away from "the folks".
Many, many years afterward Weston told the story:
"We made up our minds that if the folks objected, we'd run away. Of course not like John and Fred who took a few hardtack and cheese and their guns, and stayed on Ram Island over night, and sneaked home early the next morning. No Sir Ree! We was plannin' to start right! So we went over to Mattapoisett to see Capt. Jenney. He said 'all right' and sent us to the agent - I forget his name - and he sent us to the outfitters.
We were feelin' fine goin' home, but when I got to my house somehow Eben's father had got wind of it, and he had come up dead set agin it, and my father said I couldn't go either. Whalin' was a hard life, and not much money. Del's father come up from Rocky Nook, and he said he wasn't goin' to set his foot down on Del's goin'. He, himself, had been whalin' and it was mighty good trainin' for a boy."
And Adelbert and Frank sailed.
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Frank was taken ill on board and left at one of the "Islands". When the ship called on its return from the "grounds", one more life had gone out in the great game of the sea.
Adelbert was to ship before the mast on a merchantman, and on and up to become commander of a Savannah liner.
But by 1880, 28 whalers lay idle at the New Bedford wharves, and the wharves of Sippican were growing grassy. The oil storehouse on Nye's Wharf was falling in ruins. The children climbed nimbly up the "cro's nest" on the Admiral Blake, lying at the North side of the deserted Sherman's land- ing, and called out "Thar she blows!" as they peered from their lofty perch out past Bird Island.
Whales used to come into the bay! Hear the faint chant- ing! And old Uncle Jim Mendell rambled down from the "Whaler Lookout House", and smiled at the children; who "can go anywhere a cat can" he tells anxious parents. The sail maker in the sail loft looks up from the queer needle he is pushing back and forth with a faint shadow of a smile in his eyes, as they venture in over the mirror-like floor.
Then winter comes, with the Swiss Bell Ringers, and "Comical Brown", cycloramas, and Sandwich Glass Blowers with the wonderful little glass ships, so frail, in the thin bottles.
Always something exciting going on! The Town Hall burned with all the Grammar school books and "Scholar's companions"! The boys and girls went up to Tabor Academy, and Mrs. Taber began to plan a new town hall.
In 1880 the town had two bands, too!
The "Marion Brass Band" and the "American Band", and there was much fiery conversation, and rival concerts and suppers.
The American Band writes to the newspapers, "We have been organized about 15 months, and without one dollar being contributed by the people of town except by way of enter- tainment (not but what we think we have friends enough to have assisted us had we asked for aid) we have purchased and paid for our instruments. Second, from the report of our
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treasurer at our last business meeting we have.$160 in the Treasury, enough to run us at least seven months without making an assessment on our members!"
The answer came "The American Brass Band of Marion, or rather some one connected with that fine and flourishing or- ganization, is unnecessarily sensitive." The Words flew back and forth! Husbands and fathers, sons belonged to the bands, and the women talked, too!
Statements were called "absolutely false" in regard to entertainments.
"The reputation of the American Band stands untarnished in this transaction."
"The accounts of the committee are open for inspection at the Band Room."
"Entertainment in Rochester last week by the Marion Band and Dramatic Club was a grand success."
"The American Band had a mammoth clam bake in Handy's Grove."
The Marion Brass Band went over to Wareham and gave a concert, "Wareham appreciates good music especially when coming from the mouths of so fine a lot of gentlemen as those that visited us on Thursday evening last."
"As a word of advice is acceptable at all times, I would say to a few of their members of the American Brass Band that they had better talk less and play more if they wish to keep the good will of the public."
Members withdraw, places are filled with alacrity. They import instruments from Manchester, England.
And the winter comes and the snow falls softly and "Daniel Hall, constable", rides down from Happy Alley with sleigh bells jingling, the great buffalo robe tucked about him, his fur backed glove holding the reins tightly as he draws up to the Post Office to the awe of small boys watching.
Everybody goes to the Band Fairs with four nights' festivities, supper at 25c each night, and a big ball on the last night. Wonderful plays! "Old Folks", "Who's who or All in a Fog", "Comrades", "My Brother's Keeper", "Temptations of
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the Irish Emigrant", and the wonderful sum of $300. was netted at one fair; and at the fair of the Marion Cornet Band "the hall was beautifully trimmed with evergreen and flags, with 'Welcome', and other appropriate mottoes neatly ar- ranged".
These were the years when there were grand celebrations of the "glorious fourth", with "horribles" in the grey dawn of the morning, and noise and music all day.
In 1880 there was a banner time with burning of tar barrels, illumination of the residences and public buildings, with the Schooner Admiral Blake strung with lanterns in mid- stream, and fireworks. The two bands played, and "Supper was provided for the American Band at the residence of Capt. Stephen Hadley, at the upper village. The Marion Cornet Band took supper at Hadley's Hall at the Lower village, and the remarks of Dr. H. C. Vose and C. P. Howland were very good and heartily applauded."
A cantata took up the spare evenings during the winter of 1881.
Good Doctor Henry Luce, a champion chess player, was the manager and Miss Maria Cobb, daughter of the old minister, was the organist.
"Every part was well sung, and the audience catching the inspiration are carried back more than twenty centuries ago, and quite unawares find themselves seated so to speak amid the thrilling and exciting scenes of the Persian Court in the days of the beautiful queen."
They had "grand musical and dramatic entertainments" and "Singing school under the instruction of Prof. Eldridge is progressing finely. It now numbers about 50 scholars". "The temperance social held last week at the residence of Miss Sarah Hadley was an enjoyable occasion. The socials are to be held once in two weeks."
And a company playing "Uncle Tom's Cabin" comes to town.
Sometimes the "Uncle Tom" troupe has a "blood hound", or two; sometimes something barks off stage. Once in a while
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a circus comes to Wareham, and an elephant with his great flaps of ears pads along the sandy road through the Old Landing.
Fishing is good and "the Great Hill House is being rapidly filled up with boarders."
"Our bands are getting to be quite popular and their sweet music is making smiling faces by their weekly concerts."
"A grand excursion to Cottage City from here and Matta- poisett will take place sometime next month. A big time is expected, for two bands will accompany the excursion."
No hard feelings, for both bands are engaged!
And there are performing horses in a tent where the Cozy Theatre is now, and the girls are singing "I'm called Little Buttercup" and "Farewell my own, Light of my life, Farewell". "Pinafore" is perfectly proper so many church singers are in it, at least so thought old Sippican.
And the "great lady" sits in her room at Tabor Hall, and besides planning a new town hall for the village, becomes in- terested in installing a new organ in the modern fashion in an alcove back of the pulpit in the white meeting house, so the congregation no longer turn their backs to the minister during the last hymn. Mrs. Taber and 84 others contributed towards the organ, and H. L. Crane, assistant to the Principal at the Academy, was installed organist.
The school houses of the town are miserable little crowded buildings, with the teachers and pupils sweeping and building fires.
By 1884 the principal of Tabor Academy is elected on the school committee, and they are planning new school buildings.
A new road is built between the Old Landing and Sippican and they are trying crushed shells on the roads.
The valuation of the town is $786,860. with a rate of $7.75 on a $1,000. The low tax rate is calling residents of other towns and cities to Marion.
Mr. Lyman Blake is a resident, paying a tax of $754.16. The "Great Hill House" has been sold to Albert W. Nickerson, "the Dedham millionaire", and he is paying the large sum of $1,123.12 tax into the treasury.
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The band feud was still on.
"The Marion Band gave a most excellent concert on the bandstand Thursday evening to a large audience who gathered in the vicinity. There are a number of band critics in town, who admitted that the Marion Band is a success, and as one of them remarked 'No. 13 in the old book was never played better'."
And then a remark about their rival.
"Somebody says the potato bugs are to hear the American Band of Marion for their 4th of July. Good enough!"
And then this item!
'"Regret is universal that our young men are obliged to go abroad to find employment - our retired sea captains, men of wealth - are the principal supporters of our churches, schools and everything that helps maintain good living."
A little bewildered were old Rochester's villages!
For the first time in the history of the lands of Sippican, the ships are off the sea, that brought in fortunes; and there is nothing for the young men growing up to do.
One suggestion was "to establish a factory at or near the railroad station - the town was free from debt - it might be done."
Mrs. Taber pondered, ordered Josephine to piece her cap strings, to save; and built sidewalks, and set out trees near her buildings.
The bands kept on playing - one on the band stand where the Congregational Chapel is now, with the boys holding flaring torches while the perspiring musicians blatted out the stirring tunes, and the children danced up and down in the field opposite, and their elders promenaded back and forth on the sandy roads.
The shrinking incomes of Sippican were pieced out by cranberry picking. Painful backs for the first few October days as whole families stooped scooping up the brilliant red berries.
As far back as 1750 there had been a law passed that no wild cranberries could be gathered before Oct. 1. When the sand blew in on a patch of wild berries, it showed the farmer
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how to build a real bog, and cranberries had become a source of income to the villages. Sometimes school was delayed that the boys might earn money enough for their winter suits.
About twice a year the children were taken shopping to New Bedford, either in the little stage that ran from Hadley's Store, or on the train from the "Depot" to Fairhaven, and then over the bridge to New Bedford in the horse cars that connected with the trains, or by the ferry boat that later landed one at the foot of a cobbled street that told of tarred ropes, and whalers, and sailors, and ships at sea.
It was an exciting journey, that took all day for pur- chases, and going in to Ellis's Art Gallery to see the paintings, or to Wright's Japanese Shop to catch a glimpse of China and lands across the ocean.
The remainder of the year, the shopping was done at home. The matrons and maids of the village climbed up the flight of stairs to the corridor that ran along by the Hall in Hadley's store building (George Bonum Nye's meeting house) and bought their bonnets, and the little girl's hats, of Miss Anne Wittet, the milliner. She sold silk and velvet for trimmings, and ruching and yarn, and worsted for the mottoes of perfor- ated cardboard, on which all the feminine part of the village was spending its dressed-up moments of elegant leisure.
"God Bless our Home". "What is Home without a Mother", were quite simple, but the adventurous ones, in the threading of the long worsted strands, worked "Rock of Ages, Cleft for me", with dashing water at its base and a woman with streaming hair and flowing garments clinging to it. Of course the colors were important, and Anne Eliza Hadley had "The Lord is my Shepherd" in pomegranite and "He leadeth me" in green worsted.
Town meetings came, and house cleaning time, and the children were dosed with "salts and senny", replacing the "sulphur and molasses". Hoops came out, and the marbles, and jack stones, and "counting out" was heard on every vacant lot,
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"One Zall, two Zall, Ziggerzall Zan
Bobtail vinegar, tickletum tan
Hairum Scarum, Virgin Myrum
Tee Taw Butt", and a little grimy finger pointing "You're it!"
The little schooners Hattie Perry, Argo, Admiral Blake, William Wilson, Thomas Potter, Julia Nelson, Wm. Burden, Nelson Hervey, Caroline C. came and went, and box boards and wood disappeared from the wharves.
The summer visitors came for about six weeks, lived in the little houses, with kerosene lamps, and wells, and drank in the sea air, admired the sunsets, and drove over the sandy road to Mattapoisett, through the stretch of dark pine forests.
Some people were speculating a little in land, and a few cottages were built.
'But the great figure in Sippican was Elizabeth Taber!
Sippican had grown up with sea captains and knew what to expect of them, but Elizabeth Taber did startling things. Just as the Old Landing gets to sniffing about Mrs. Taber's pieced cap strings, she says "Isn't the vestry a little damp for the children? What's the name of that Boston architect that has built a house across the road from Timothy Hiller's? Bay View House? Well, I knew it as Timothy Hiller's! Tell him to come up, I want to talk with him."
And the band stand came down on Main St., and a stone towered chapel rose on the "burnt cellar lot."
And in town politics, not with money but from sheer force of will sometimes, sometimes by a real politician's tact, she beat the "Captain's ring", and her ideas dominated the town.
Like some Grand Duchess she wore her old clothes, rode around her grounds in the farm wagon driven by the men working on the place, while Josephine, with her mind closed to voyages to strange coasts, mended, and mended, and mended!
The Pitcher Memorial Fund of $20,000 is given in memory of her family to the white meeting house on the corner.
Tabor Academy grounds aren't extensive enough for a good ball field.
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A two story building for a town school had been built just above the Academy building on the Main Street.
Mrs. Taber looked at the land. The town fathers said, "But there is a two story building there! The South Primary School!" "Well" said Mrs. Taber, and down the building wobbled, with the horse stepping round and round, to its present location opposite the Universalist Church.
For "Can't it be moved?" asked Elizabeth Taber.
CHAPTER XVI
HENRY JAMES AND RICHARD WATSON GILDER COME TO MARION
"Ah, did you once see Shelley plain And did he stop and speak to you And did you speak to him again, How strange it seems, and new!"
BROWNING
Into this little changing world of the captains, their ghost ships and silent sailors, with a triumphant old lady flinging her thousands here and there in the village in the shape of public buildings, there came an alien figure.
A "queer cove", said the old captains, when he first appeared on the road in his picturesque flowing blue cape and wide hat, or bare headed with his black locks tumbling over his forehead.
He was like a visitor from another planet, utterly unlike anybody who had ever appeared on the village streets. True, there had been the four great Africans that Captain Luce had picked up from their canoe blown out into the middle Atlantic, from the coast of Africa. Gigantic savages, who on a visit ashore had nearly scared Roberta Bates to death by standing solemnly in a circle, staring at her white face and long brown hair, and who had caused little Willie Luce to creep up to bed in a terror until he was reassured that the great blacks were safely guarded on board the "Herald" in the middle of the harbor.
But this visitor was slight, graceful. He might have been Poe, for whom he says his "attraction was an unending, haunt- ing one." Richard Watson Gilder, poet, editor of the Century Magazine. The Captains were used to all sorts in foreign
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ports, but not on their familiar Sippican roads, and were in- clined to give the startling new comer a wide berth, at first.
"If I had the choice among all men I would choose him as the shepherd of my soul" said Boyesen, the Swedish novelist.
Walt Whitman said, "When most every body else in their set threw me down" - "The Gilders were nobly and unhesi- tatingly hospitable - It was beautiful - beautiful. You know how at one time the church was an asylum for fugitives - the church, God's right arm fending the innocent, I was such an innocent and the Gilders took me in."
Bill Nye said Gilder "could return rejected manuscript in such a gentle and caressing way that the disappointed scrib- blers came to him from hundreds of miles away to thank him for his kindness and stay to dinner with him."
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