USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Marion > Lands of Sippican on Buzzards Bay > Part 25
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And "the beautiful lady" goes to a dramatic entertain- ment in Hadley's Hall, a benefit for St. Gabriel's, and the new Marion Social Club House (now the Cozy Theatre).
"Second Thoughts" and "Love to Music" were given, and Mrs. A. W. Nickerson of "Great Hill" sang.
The "first lady" wore "a creamy white dress trimmed with red velvet and the jaunty sailor hat which is so becoming to her."
Again in Hadley's Hall she attended the lecture given by Bradford, the artist on his Arctic experiences, for the benefit of St. Gabriel's chapel.
"The rain was falling heavily" so one reporter wrote, "but the distinguished company, Mrs. Cleveland, Mr. and Mrs. Saint Gaudens and General and Mrs. Greely arrived at Hadley's Hall in good season, Mrs. Cleveland wore a long white wrap in raglan shape, a pretty little grey bonnet trimmed with pink flowers - a pair of grey gloves to match. But in taking her place, she slipped off the wrap and revealed a very pretty gown of summer silk in a small grey check. The
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front of the corsage, cuffs, etc. was filled in with a vest of very pale silk laid in fine folds arranged in herring bone fashion."
Gen. Greely spoke after the lecture on Arctic scenery.
Mrs. Cleveland's gowns were of great interest. As they were pictured by the Boston Globe, Herald, Transcript, Record, and the other papers copied, dressmakers all over the country with their mouths full of pins shook their heads about "bustles", and then explained to their patrons, "This is as Mrs. Cleveland wears it!"
Mrs. Cleveland attends a luncheon in "a thin gown of white point d'esprit or dotted lace, made over a white silk slip. The skirt had long perfectly plain draperies in the back, while the front was covered almost to the waist with narrow ruffles each edged with a row of the narrowest red satin ribbon. The basque was made quite plainly, the silk being cut away in a V shape in the neck, both front and back. This was filled in with a fulness of the lace through which the narrow ribbon was drawn, so as to outline it with the thread of its vivid color. The same narrow ribbon held the ruffle at the throat in place and made a little knot at throat and breast, and on the sleeves which were short. A jaunty white straw hat in sailor shape was trimmed high in front with loops of ribbon and daisies smothered in lace. Long white gloves covered her hands, and when she raised a white lace covered sunshade, and poised it daintily over her left shoulder, it certainly framed in as sweet and beautiful face as it does not often fall to the lot of parasols to protect." So America read of its President's wife, and what she wore, and how she looked in 1887.
Summer days went by. Some quiet mornings were spent in the Studio in the pine trees, while Augustus Saint Gaudens made a model of the "beautiful lady."
Aug. 15, 1887 was a great day for the town!
A "Red letter day for Marion", said the headlines!
"General and Mrs. Greely announce that they will re- ceive the people of Marion and vicinity at their residence, the house of Captain Hadley, between 4 and 5 P. M., Monday, Aug. 15, 1887". How the crowd gathered!
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By 3-30 the line had reached the street, and the house was opened, for "vicinity" was stretched for the occasion to Phila- delphia, Chicago, Toronto, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon. Everybody who could get to Marion from the surrounding towns came. Buggies, carryalls, Bar Harbor wagons, bang- tailed horses, school children dressed in their best, babies, old ladies with little silk parasols, with coachmen driving care- fully the barouches and phaetons, and A. W. Nickerson of "Great Hill" with his four-in-hand, two dappled greys and two dark bays with gold mounted harness and driver and foot- men in livery.
The selectmen W. H. H. Ryder, (a survivor from the wreck of the Graduate) James Allen, (many times Marion's representative to the General Court) and Capt. Obed Delano, and their families came at 3:45.
Capt. Emerson Hadley was captain of the ship. He al- lowed carriages to enter the South entrance, and the people entered by the South Veranda went through the hall to the front room where Mrs. Cleveland was receiving and left by the North door and veranda and so out by the North gate.
The introductions were made by Capt. Emerson's brother, Capt. Stephen Hadley, who lived across the road.
Capt. Obed Delano, later, was busy keeping the lines in order and everything ship-shape.
"Mrs. Cleveland wore a pale blue surah silk cut square in the neck, and trimmed with handsome lace combined with draperies of sheer, creamy white muslin embroidered with tiny figures in pale blue and edged with lace."
A great day for Old Landing, with the Southwest wind blowing, rain clouds flying away, and through all, Captains' voices directing.
Another great day in that wonderful year was the "Alice in Wonderland" day at the "Studio" with Miss Bessy Harwood directing.
Groups of laughing, chattering people in light dresses, white flannels, "blazers"; authors, artists, performers, a college professor or two, a Russian countess - gathered under the "Cathedral Pines". Suddenly the sound of the tally-ho bugle
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and the Nickerson four-in-hand drew up with a flourish, with the "first lady of the land" sitting high by the driver, and the play began in the "Studio", the "Exclamation point of Marion!"
From the different reports of the day we read that Elsie DeKay as Alice "was very charming in her pale blue dress and white apron with her long hair which fell over her shoulders turned to gold when the slanting rays of the afternoon sun struck it."
Joe Jefferson had arranged the production, and he sat at the rear of the stage at one side, intent on the acting of the children.
"The last scene ended with the Invitation to the Dance in which the whole company joined, and which was so laughable as to set everybody in a roar."
Again and again they were called out and finally "Miss Bessy" came with the Cheshire cat on her shoulder and the stones fairly rang with the applause and laughter as the whole band of children danced about her.
A reporter writes, "The play bill designed by Mrs. Gilder was auctioned off and knocked down to Gen. Greely for Mrs. Cleveland for $2.20". From the top of the coach she waves a good bye, and the Alice-in-Wonderland day is over.
Fall is in the air, and the summer visitors pack their trunks. Chaos in the country and small minds intent on per- sonal gain in the grey capitol building.
A real American President is thinking of the trust of his people, and saying later in Milwaukee "the Presidency of the U. S. is a high office because it represents the sovereignty of a free and mighty people. It is full of solemn responsibility and duty because it embodies in a greater degree than any other office on earth, the suffrage and trust of such a people."
Not mere words, but the outpouring of the honest opinion of the 22nd President, who was harassed and blocked in his mighty purpose to deal fairly with all classes by little men from the sea board cities, suntanned politicians from all over the big country,-many who had stepped up over the heads of better men in their communities, on wide smiles, promises, picnics, barbecues, and booming voices that carried bombs of
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Saint-Gaudens and Mrs. Cleveland - "Against the grey walls of the Studio"
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words to the edges of thin groves on hot summer afternoons, rising periods that made the prairie dogs on the baked prairie, pop into their holes.
The Sippican villages close slowly to this outside world.
The boys finish picking cranberries for their winter suits, and when the children disappear behind the school doors, the roads look swept clean of anything living. But there is always somebody digging clams as the tide goes out, and the Argo comes around Charles Neck swashing along for a load of boxboards at the wharf. Capt. Bill Hathaway looks up from his bucket of clams, and "Plummer", getting a mess of bait to go after the big tautog that are coming in, waves his hoe to his friends on board.
The little schooners Thomas Potter, Julia Nelson, and the Admiral Blake are all there are to expect now.
One or two captains are buying "potatoes, pumpkins, pigs" and "other vegetables" according to their logs, at the Islands. But very few Sippican boys are on the whalers. There are darkskinned boys from the Islands, dropping off at New Bed- ford; and so there come strangers to pick cranberries, and do much that the Pilgrim mothers as well as the fathers did in the long ago years. Sippican boys go to Tabor Academy, and rise early and pore late over Latin and Greek verbs to go inland as doctors, lawyers, teachers, ministers.
The life of the Lands of Sippican is turning from the sea.
The girls go to school with "a beautiful lady" in their lives. They make little bonnets to tie under the chin like the ones Mrs. Cleveland wore. They practice on the piano, and make "crazy" silk patch work quilts, and sofa-pillows, even paint a little on velvet, sticky looking queer cat-o-nine-tails and roses for "lambrequins" and piano covers. They sing "The Blue Alsatian Mountains" and "Wait till the clouds roll by, Jennie." And Captain Stephen Hadley, keeps on riding down from "the landing" to do his shopping at the store, in his silk hat and other going ashore togs".
Scallop shanties appear on the wharfs in the Rochester villages.
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The men, like all prospectors, out dragging, hoping to bring $50,000 into the village in a few weeks. Ever since a bold fisherman had experimented and found that the white propelling muscle of the scallop was good to eat, the market and price had been steadily increasing, until suddenly there was a new expensive delicacy on the tables of the American sea board even appearing on the Chicago bill-of-fare, but tasting like "balls of fried, dried cotton" said an old Sippicaner who had ventured into the interior that far.
The boats came in full, night after night, sometimes 80 bushels to a boat as there was no limit to the catch.
The fresh Sou'Wester blowing, a grey sky with grey clouds driven hither and thither by the evening wind, the grey waves tipped with white caps, then the sun peeps through and the water glitters like silver and there is the scallop fleet coming up from Bird Island. Like a flock of sea gulls flying low with their wings almost dipping into the brine, the sails now grey now white as the sun shines out from the passing clouds.
The flock nears Nye's wharf, and one by one pass Little Island, the men busy getting ready for a quick landing.
The great heaps of brown shell fish are piled high almost filling the small craft.
The sails rattle down, and the boats drift in bare masted to their places by the wharves.
Quick! Quick! the men in hip high rubber boots are up on the wharf, and shoveling up the day's haul into great baskets to hurry into the little shanties where the boys of the village wait to cut deftly from the dark mass, with a quick turn of the knife, the white "eye" which is worth $3.00 a gallon today. It may be less tomorrow, so hurry! hurry! wet, tired busy workers!
The boats unloaded, there is still the task of cleaning the craft so all may be ready for a start at day break next morning. With bucket and broom they clean the deck, and sides of the cockpit, coralling every star-fish, the deadly enemy of the scallop: with great care coil every rope and put it in place, peer at the mast and boom, scan the nets of the drags, for most of these first scallop fishermen of the villages are
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deep sea sailors, all with a sense of making everything "ship shape".
The schooner Thomas Potter comes in like a great auk among them, and ties up at the "long wharf" for $5 wharfage for the winter. The Julia Nelson arrives for a last load of box boards that are piled high in long rows so that one walked as though in a lumber yard with no view of the harbor.
The old wharf brings in $164.44 that year.
And in Washington, for these fishermen, sailors and such as these all over the rich land of America, "The President", wading in a sea of the financial troubles of the country, thought and worked.
"I have done those things which, in the light of the under- standing God has given me, seemed most condusive to the wel- fare of my countrymen, and the promoting of good govern- ment."
These, the people! They work hard!
And on Dec. 6, 1887, he writes
"To the Congress of the United States,
You are confronted at the threshold of your legislative duties with a condition of the national finances which impera- tively demands immediate and careful consideration."
"It is a condition which confronts us, not a theory."
The ship of state so near the rocks. "If disaster results from the continued inaction of congress, the responsibility must rest where it belongs."
The Captain of the ship spoke:
Touch on the tariff? It was the tariff!
The first Democratic president since the war battling with a stiff Republican Senate!
The mate on board the Falcon, Capt. Handy, writes famil- iar words. Dec. 19, 1887
"Blowing a moderate gale from the N. W. lowered three boats and the L. B. struck, turned the whale up and he sunk, parted the line, came on board, blowing, lost two lines and two darting guns on the whale, when he sunk, blowing a gale with heavy rain squalls."
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Men deserted at the Islands, but they sent home 8 casks of oil, 487 of sperm, and 1479 whale oil by the Lottie Beard.
A restless, dissatisfied growing country! The prairies and mountains divided by invisible lines; territories clamoring to become states; and the Pacific kingdom crying out against the slant-eyed hordes who were scrambling up the hills making gardens that hung in the air, or in gullies and pockets of the earth, living as no American could and slowly taking up the fertile valleys.
If Cleveland had like Massasoit trusted the new comers an Oriental country might lie against America's Western plains, and short coated little scuttling men with hands in their sleeves, and almond eyed women and children would swarm on the brown hills of California.
The schooner Lottie Beard touches at St. Helena Mar. 17, and the Rochester villages plant and fish, and the captain in the White house sets a straight course.
"Public office is a public trust."
When Mrs. Cleveland with her mother arrived at the Gilders on July 29, 1888, "She arrived without a single re- porter being any the wiser for it" writes an astonished corres- pondent.
She came to be a familiar figure in the village - a tall girl in a wide leghorn hat trimmed with waterlillies, talking gaily with Mr. Gilder, stopping to speak to a child, or coming into a school girl's study and talking of many things, becoming the model of the maidens and the object of adoration afar of the freckle faced tanned urchins who swam or fished or clammed all summer long, and causing the old captains to lose their Re- publican moorings and swing off into the Democratic current.
A "big Marigold Day" is held for the benefit of the Marion Social Club, and there are more theatricals in Hadley's Hall. Dancing bears come to town, and bagpipers.
Mr. Gilder is writing on Aug. 16 to Mr. Cleveland about going over to Joe Jefferson's. "Edwin Booth arrived when I was there and we all drove off to see an old, old house where to my intense surprise, I bought a wooden wagon of curious pattern built in 1824."
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The season ended with a flourish on Aug. 26 with a "grand leap year Ball", with four pieces of music and 200 guests at the supper at the Sippican Hotel.
But there is sadness in the village this year of 1888 be- cause Capt. Stephen Hadley and Capt. Henry Delano, set out on their last voyages, and on Oct. 3, Mrs. Elizabeth Taber at the age of 97 relinquished the reins of control on Tabor Academy.
All that year the boys and girls were trying to make her last days happy. They amused her as they came in costume from the Tabor "Carmen Club", where little entertainments were given for audiences of friends-shadow pantomimes, tab- leaux, readings, scenes from Shakespeare in which sheets, shawls and lace curtains figured prominently for costumes.
Some evenings the girls were in velvet caps and glistening costumes from "Miss Bessey's" and "Mrs. Jarley's" ward- robe trunks, posing in "Living Pictures" with the help of the immense gilt frame from the "Studio." They flit along the path, back of the Library building, and up the stairs of Tabor Hall, to kneel before the grand old lady, who places her hands on their cheeks and smiles into their eyes.
They sing for her on her dreary days; tell of their plans. Sometimes she is a little scandalized at the "goings on". A Bug minstrel show in the chapel! "Now, young ladies, I am about to build a hall for such entertainments."
The "Hall" (Music) was given in her will, for the great lady's time was short in Sippican, and she felt the weight of years.
Very human was Elizabeth Taber: she frowned a little on dancing, as did all the staid Orthodox congregation, but in- dulged in a little smoke after her noon-day meal, as many old ladies did.
Elizabeth Taber passes from her beloved Sippican, and the boys and girls of Tabor go marching, marching to the chapel in honor of a great lady and a great lover of the village.
A month later Nov. 7, 1888, a prophetic letter is sent to the President by Mr. Gilder: "Well, perhaps a four years rest before coming back to the White House for four years more
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is better after all; you both need a long vacation, and as eight years only is allowed, a four years vacation is not a bad idea."
Another summer came, and the great Democrat began his four years vacation in Marion.
A small boy climbed the slope of Bartlett's Hill, where ran the imaginary line that had been suggested as the boundary between the two towns of Mattapoisett and Rochester-Towne Center.
A long brown house designed by Richardson (who tried to buy Little Island in those days) built near the great split rock where the Indian chieftain lay, was the President's home for a part of that summer.
Here he was interviewed by a grandson of Capt. Nathan Briggs, who thought of course "96,000 people plurality" meant that "the President" was still the President of the United States. The small urchin was welcomed gravely. "Mr. Presi- dent", he began. Mr. Cleveland smiled, "Oh, I am not the President now, my boy!"
"Oh, I had not heard of that, sir", said the lad.
But there sat perhaps the greatest leader of the people, since Lincoln, and they proceeded to talk of many things - a great chieftain of America and a great captain's grand-son!
At a Chamber of Commerce Banquet, Nov. 19, 1889 in regard to Presidents finishing their jobs, "the President" in commenting on a Kentucky newspaper editor's suggestion, "to take us out and shoot us" said "Prior to last March I did not appreciate as well as I do now the objection to the proceeding but I have had time to reflect upon the subject since and I find excellent reasons for opposing the plan."
He solved the problem! He worked at his profession, and went a-fishing!
The captains understood that way of living. They came home from voyages to India and Africa and went for "a mess" of tautog, or scup on "Bobel" or "Southeast."
And here was a fisherman who said money hadn't been plentiful in his home, so he had begun with a "home grown pole". The captains rather favored "hook and line"; but here
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was a new neighbor who came in bringing a string of fish that he parcelled out just like any of the home folk, that he had caught with rod and reel.
And so he became one of them; smiling at the children, never forgetting a face of his fellow townsmen. His wide hat came off to a little school girl just as quickly as to a celebrity in the village.
He was like Mrs. Taber and the other Rochester-Towne people, brought up in a strict manner with the Calvinistic doc- trine guiding his life, meetings three times a day on the Sab- bath and Sunday School: the life of which Cleveland said "You may not always live up to what you have learned, but the good influence always remained with you."
Neither Mrs. Taber nor Mr. Cleveland ever seemed to do anything for public show.
President Cleveland was the only President that didn't plant a tree because he "could see no sense in planting a tree for the name of the thing"; and yet when a line of elms was to be set out along the hot sunny road to the "Old Landing", his name went down on the subscription paper as a generous giver. He gave that the roadway today might be lined with great elms and be shadowy and cool in summer.
So it was with Elizabeth Taber. She gave when she could see in the giving coming utility or beauty.
Postmaster Hall, of course, had to take down the big pic- ture of the Democratic President, and had placed Harrison's portrait in a conspicuous place, but Mrs. Cleveland's picture remained on his desk where all the village could see as it came in for the mail!
And a busy little post office it was, with letters pouring in from all over the country!
But the chieftain fished!
There was much sailing especially after the bluefish came in that year.
Blue fish appear and disappear suddenly. It is said they left the bay entirely in 1764, and did not appear in number again until 1810. But in 1889 they seemed to crowd into Buzzard's Bay.
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Good blue fishing! To sail with white clouds and spray flying, the long line pulling, pulling!
The jerk as though a whale had caught at the eel skin dashing through the blue-green water, and then the struggle to pull into the boat the great fighting fish at the end of seventy- five feet of straining line, slipping through aching, wet hands!
The last old store house for oil that was standing on Nye's wharf, the roof open to the winds and rain, went up in flames as the boys' bonfire on the night before the Fourth, and Bishop Phillips Brooks sailing by said, "Good for the Boys!" with his listeners uncertain whether to laugh or scold him. The good, great, Bishop hearing that an old lady next door to Union Hall . had expressed a wish,
"Oh, that I could have Bishop Brooks consecrate my little house!" kneels in prayer in the little room, and the old lady cried for joy afterwards in telling about the scene.
Wonderful racing on the harbor and out into the bay!
"The Sippican Yacht Club will hold forth this afternoon, wind, weather and so forth permitting. It is to be hoped that the weather will not be so lugubrious as it was on that memorable occasion four weeks ago when the thunder crashed, the judges crept into the cabins, and the Puzzle tipped over. Get your spy guns out!"
The driving over the macadam roads out of the village was rather dusty, but of course in the main streets the watering cart went up and down, with some residents paying extra to have the road in front of their houses well "wet down".
Besides fishing, "the President" being in town, and land being sold for summer homes, there has been a journey to Ply- mouth in regard to Mrs. Taber's will.
When Elizabeth Taber died she left no near relatives, and as further proof of her love for her village, after having given Union Hall, the Congregational Chapel, the Town Hall, $20,- 000 for the Pitcher Memorial Fund to the church, she left in her will the bulk of her fortune to "Sippican Lower Village."
A $20,000 trust fund to the village for parks, fountains, trees, anything that would add to its beauty.
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$22,000 added to the Pitcher trust fund of the Congre- gational Church.
$15,000 to the Marion Library Association.
$5,000 to the Natural History Association.
$6,000 to the Evergreen Cemetery Association.
A hall (Music) for public meetings, a reading room, and $60,000 outright to the Academy she had established, and the rest and residue of the estate.
She left the school in charge of the installed pastors of the old Rochester villages with her church in New Bedford and Acushnet. Her intention was to put her school under the control of the churches, but the court decided for the individual pastors.
Some distant cousins put in a claim, and Sippican put on its Sunday clothes, jammed down its hat, tied its bonnet under its chin and the determined face of Sippican stared at the cousins who had appeared in Plymouth, who fled without a word, and nobody had to testify in court about Elizabeth Taber's love for her village.
By 1890 real estate valuation was $569,520; Personal $223,000. The town paid $32.00 a month to its school teachers. Its debt was $2,737.46. Its tax rate was $10. on a thousand, and they were appropriating $1,000 for roads and $2,200 for schools. Total appropriation, $8,050.
There had been a great interest in Mrs. Taber's will by the new comers to town - too much the older people think, and there is a call for a Library Association meeting and down on the records it goes.
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