USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Nahant > Some annals of Nahant, Massachusetts > Part 10
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35
103
PROCESSION OF EVENTS
personal deliveries, and in a peculiar manner. He had a long bag into which he put his orders, one after another, with a string tied around the bag above each order. They were in geographical sequence, so that at each house in regular order he untied the top remaining string and delivered his goods. Filled and over his shoulder the bag looked like a huge sausage. Kirke Johnson died in 1891 at the age of sixty-nine, and one of the interesting men of the town was gone.
The outbreak of the Civil War found Nahant jumping into the fray with early enthusiasm. A meeting was held in the vestry of the Village Church on April 23, 1861, and a company called the "Home Guard" was formed. Luther Dame, the schoolmaster in the wooden schoolhouse on Pleasant Street just above the old Town Hall, was captain and drill master, and the company drilled mostly in the evening in the school- house yard, still town property. Nearly every one fit for military drill enlisted. Arms were bought by subscription, and uniforms were purchased by the company members. Their first public parade was as a part of the Home Guard Battalion of Lynn on August 1, 1861. This was the group that was nicknamed the "Piper Guards," as related elsewhere. A flag- staff was raised on Bass Beach Hill, and when the Stars and Stripes were first hoisted on it, old Captain Henry Dunham, a veteran of the Mexican War, fired the cannon that assisted in the ceremonies.
Meetings were held in the schoolhouse, where subscriptions were raised and aid guaranteed to the families of men who should enlist for war service. On July 19, 1862, a town meeting was held "to see what action the town will take in relation to raising the town's quota of volunteers in response to the call of the Governor of this Commonwealth." Non-residents were invited to take a part in the discussion, and John E. Lodge, father of the late Senator Lodge, offered twenty-five dollars to each of the seven recruits desired from Nahant. James W. Paige offered the same sum to each of the first four who should enlist. Paige lived across the street from the Public Library, on what is now the Lawrence place, and was the father-in-law
104
SOME ANNALS OF NAHANT
of Abbott Lawrence. Nathaniel Walker offered the same sum to the other three, and Frederic Tudor came up with the same amount to the whole quota. On August 30, 1862, another town meeting was held to "see what action the town would take" on raising the second quota for nine months' service. It was voted that the town should pay $200 to each resident enlisting to fill this call for men. The annual town meeting on March 14, 1863, appropriated $300 for aid to families of volunteers. The town records for this year give a list of twenty-nine men in United States service. In 1864 the town voted to remit all taxes for its volunteers, and on April 13 it voted to pay $125 for each recruit on a new quota. E. J. Johnson, in his story of Nahant, lists thirty-nine men as en- listed from Nahant, as follows:
1. Mortimer L. Johnson.
2. Charles Warren Johnson.
3. George F. Newhall.
23. Charles T. Lawless.
4. William J. Johnson.
24. Lorenzo P. Whitney.
5. Patrick Riley.
25. Charles N. Babb.
6. Elbridge G. Hood (Captain).
26. Arthur J. Bulfinch.
7. Wilbur Hanson.
27. William H. Perry, Jr.
8. Alexander Webber.
28. George C. Neal.
9. John E. Wheeler.
29. John Williams.
10. Luther S. Johnson.
30. George P. Stone.
11. Edmund B. Johnson.
31. Marcellus Kidder.
12. Edward J. Johnson.
32. Daniel L. Seavey.
13. Sidney C. Johnson.
33. James Campbell.
14. Edwin W. Johnson.
34. John Henry Hood.
15. Shepard H. Johnson.
16. Welcome J. Johnson,
17. John Simpson.
18. James Hogan.
19. Michael Mitchell.
20. Charles H. Palmer.
21. Otto Bush.
22. William L. Rand.
35. Nelson Tarbox.
36. George Tarbox.
37. Hervey H. Murdock.
38. Alfred Tarbox.
39. Theodore M. Johnson.
The list is not in order of enlistment, although Mortimer L. Johnson was the first to enter the service. The first two are the only ones who entered the navy, apparently, though the connections of the last ten are not given by Johnson. The last six enlisted in regiments outside of Massachusetts. About all of the old Johnson family returned to Nahant after the war, and lived and died on Nahant, but few of the others seem to
Nahant Road easterly from Summer Street
Jonathan Johnson house in center, on present site of post office block
SABLING TALLETS
Nahant Road easterly from Ocean Street Signs for Maolis Gardens and "Ninepin" Alleys
105
PROCESSION OF EVENTS
have stayed in town for long. Captain Hood made his home here, and John Simpson, whom people will remember limping about with a cane on account of a war injury. Mortimer L. Johnson was an Annapolis man and remained in the navy and died a rear admiral. He was a frequent visitor to Nahant, where his father, Walter Johnson, always lived. Johnson says Nahant furnished forty-two men, though he names only thirty-nine, and the sum of all quotas was thirty-seven. The total expenditure by the town, exclusive of state aid, was over $6,500. The home activities for war service were much the same as people remember for the more recent World War, - sewing, boxes with food and small needs, and much worries. One of the summer residents wrote at the time:
Nahant is very solitary and deserted this year. I stood looking down at the steamboat landing opposite - not a fishing boat, not a human being in sight; then the ghostly little steamer comes in, and the phantoms go over the hill towards the ruins of the burned hotel, and all is still and lonely again.
Many years later, in 1894, Luther S. Johnson, a shoe manu- facturer and resident of Lynn, one of the Nahant Johnsons and Nahant Civil War veterans, presented a flag to his Nahant fellow soldiers. This flag is kept in the Nahant Public Library, but for years was taken out and used on Memorial Day and occasionally in other processions. A document accompanying the gift was signed by all but two or three G. A. R. men then living on Nahant. The group then included many who had moved here since the war, and of the thirty-nine names listed by Johnson, only nine appear on this paper, in a list of fourteen. For several years the few survivors of the G. A. R. in town were not men who enlisted from Nahant. Robert L. Cochran, Thomas J. Cusick and Patrick Linehan, though to be reckoned old Nahanters, came to town after the war. Linehan is the survivor, hale and hearty in this year of 1928, and a resident for over fifty years. Cochran was the long-time officer of the Board of Health and superintendent of sewers and water system, beginning service for the town in the 80's and ending with his death in 1922, at the age of seventy-six.
CHAPTER VIII SUMMER RESIDENTS AND BOATING
J. L. HOMER, writing in 1848, says that so far as he can remember them the summer residents owning cottages at Nahant were T. H. Perkins, T. G. Cary, F. Tudor, heirs of Mrs. S. G. Perkins, Mrs. Phillips, E. D. Phillips, F. H. Gray, Charles Amory, Mrs. Gardiner Greene, heirs of John Hubbard, heirs of S. Hammond, David Sears, E. H. Robbins, William Amory, Mrs. Prescott Crowninshield, T. B. Curtis, the Misses Inches, T. Whetmore, B. C. Clark, Mr. Lodge, heirs of N. P. Russell, Mrs. Rice, and heirs of Joseph Peabody. Then we have a list of founders of the "Nahant Church," which is the correct title of the first church in town, whose building was erected in 1832 on Cliff Street. In September, 1831, a meeting of some of the subscribers was held in Boston. Colonel Thomas H. Perkins, Hon. William Prescott and Hon. David Sears were chosen a committee to secure a site for the church, and the proceedings of that day were signed by fourteen men: William Prescott, Jonathan Phillips, Nathaniel P. Russell, David Sears, Charles Bradbury, Frederic Tudor, William Appleton, Thomas H. Perkins, Samuel A. Eliot, Samuel Ham- mond, Peter C. Brooks, Cornelius Coolidge, William H. Pres- cott and Edward H. Robbins. William H. Eliot was secre- tary of the meeting. In 1834 a bell was provided, and the list of subscribers shows other old Nahant names: Abbott Lawrence, Thomas G. Cary, Stephen Codman, William Amory, John A. Lowell, Henry G. Rice, Benjamin C. Clark, John Hubbard, Stephen G. Perkins and David Eckley. Here in these lists are most of the summer residents of that time. Their houses were mostly at the eastern end of the town at or beyond Bass Beach or Cliff Street. A few were near the
107
SUMMER RESIDENTS AND BOATING
village, then clustered around the vicinity of Whitney's Hotel, and a few others farther north, notably the house built by Perkins, now known as the Cary House. George William Curtis in his article already mentioned writes pleasantly and descriptively as follows:
Nahant is a shower of little brown cottages fallen upon the rocky promontory that terminates Lynn Beach. There is a hotel upon its finest, farthest point, which was a fashionable resort a score of years since. But the beaux and belles have long since retreated into the pretty cottages whence they can contemplate the hotel, which has the air of a quaint, broad piazzaed, seaside hostelry, with the naked ugliness of a cotton factory added to it, and fancy it the monument of merry but dead old days.
The hotel is no longer fashionable. Nahant is no more a thronged resort. Its own career has not been unlike that of the belles who frequented it, for although the hurry and glare and excitement of a merely fashionable watering place are past, there has succeeded a quiet, genial enjoyment and satisfaction which are far pleasanter. Some sunny morning, when your memory is busy with Willis' spark- ling stories of Nahant life a quarter of a century ago, and with all the pleasant tales you may have collected in your wanderings from those who were a part of that life, then step over with some friend whose maturity may well seem to you the flower of all that the poet cele- brated in the bud, and she will reanimate the spacious and silent piazza with the forms that have made it famous.
You step upon the steamer in the city, and in less than an hour you land at Nahant and breathe the untainted air from the "boreal pole," and gaze upon a sublime sea sweep, which refreshes the mind as the air the lungs. You find no village, no dust, no commotion. You encounter no crowds of carriages or of curious and gossiping people. No fast men in velvet coats are trotting fast horses. You meet none of the disagreeable details of a fashionable watering place, but sunny silence broods over the realm of little brown cottages. They stand apart at easy distances, each with its rustic piazza, with vines climbing and blooming about the columns, with windows and doors looking upon the sea.
In the midst of the clusters, where roads meet, stands a small temple, a church of graceful proportions, but unhappily clogged with wings. It is the only catholic church I know, for all services are held there in rotation, from the picturesque worship of the Roman faith to the severest form of Protestantism. The green land slopes away behind the temple to a row of willows in a path across the field,
108
SOME ANNALS OF NAHANT
whence you cannot see the ocean, and it is so warm and sheltered, like an inland dell, that the sound of the sea comes to it only as a pleasant fancy.
This pretty path ends in the thickest part of the settlement. But even here it has no village air. It is still, and there are no shops, and the finest trees upon the promontory shadow the road that gradu- ally climbs the hill, and then, descending, leads you across Little Nahant to Lynn Beach.
This quotation is only a part of the article, or essay, intended to give an impression of Nahant as Curtis saw it in the early 1850's. The large hotel was lapsing from its former glory, according to the writer. Steamboat service was regular and the town had become a summer resort of householders rather than hotel patrons. The place was quiet. He says there was a "feeling of its dulness on the part of the young." One reads and wonders just how many fold that feeling would be multiplied by the young of today, when quiet is no longer tolerable and contemplation a lost art; and if the pure air from the "boreal pole" will ever return on a visit. Not even Nahant's distance from buzzing cities prevents smoke, dust and odors altogether, while automobile gases are a near-at- hand vexation. Still, doubtless its air is better than any other.
Thus has been shown, in words mostly contemporary, a picture of Nahant for a generation or more prior to 1850, or to its incorporation as a separate town in 1853. Many other writings, in letters, magazines, newspapers and pamphlets, could be cited, but they perhaps would not add to the story drawn here. Nahant grew, in fifty years, from a place of three houses to a great resort with a large and wide reputation, chiefly as a hotel colony. Gradually the hotel life dwindled, and was succeeded by a summer cottage life, much of which is present today.
Other writings which are commonly mentioned are "The Home Life of H. W. Longfellow," by Blanche Rosevelt Tucker- Machetta; "Life of William Hickling Prescott," by George Ticknor; "Life Here and There," by N. P. Willis; and "Little
109
SUMMER RESIDENTS AND BOATING
Journeys to the Home of American Authors" for March, 1896, by George S. Hilliard.
S. E. Morrison, in his "Maritime History of Massachusetts," writes the following, which is not quoted in continuity, but abstracted to include remarks about Nahant. It will be noted that some of his dates do not agree with this present narrative.
Thomas Handasyd Perkins set a new fashion when, in 1817, he built a stone cottage just above the Spouting Horn at Nahant. This rugged peninsula at the north margin of Boston Bay - a miniature, even rockier Marblehead - had remained a mere sheep pasture for lack of a proper harbor. After the war several Boston families began boarding in the few native houses, and in 1818 crowds of ex- cursionists came by the steamboat "Eagle." Samuel A. Eliot erected a worthy example of the Greek revival in 1821. Frederic Tudor, the ice king, built a tasteful stone cottage in 1825, established a re- markable garden, and set out elm trees. Like almost everything else Mr. Tudor did, the setting out of elms was scoffed at - no trees would grow on Nahant. The Tudor elms now make one of the most handsome avenues of trees in New England. Other mercantile families followed the dean of their order, and by 1860 Nahant exhibited every known atrocity in cottage architecture, and had fairly earned its jocose subtitle of "Cold Roast Boston." This peaceful capture of Nahant by the merchant princes began a process that has utterly transformed the New England sea front. Swamp- scott, for example, was a poor fishing village until 1815, and mainly that for another forty years. In 1842 a merchant of Boston offered $400 an acre for a farm near the present Ocean House, and the astonished native threw down his rake and ran for a lawyer to get the deed signed before the Bostonian came to his senses.
Yachting held the interest of Nahant people from the be- ginning of its history as a pleasure or summer resort. Good mooring grounds were an assistance. A man quoted by J. L. Homer in "Nahant," 1848, a little pamphlet, says the first privately owned decked boat ever moored at Nahant for the summer was the "Mermaid," of twelve tons, in 1832 or 1833. This is said to have begun yachting in Massachusetts Bay except for small undecked boats. She was owned here for two summers by Benjamin C. Clark, and was then sold to
110
SOME ANNALS OF NAHANT
William P. Winchester, who kept her until his well-known "Northern Light" was launched. The next yacht was the "Raven" of twelve tons, owned by Clark, for whom she was built. This is the Clark for whom Clark's Point was named and who lived in the house where now stands the home of Arthur Perry. "Like the splendid 'Northern Light' of Colonel Winchester, the 'Raven' has done good service for her owner, and won numerous laurels, which she bears as gracefully in her beak at the present time as she did when they were first acquired." The third yacht was the "Susan" owned by John Amory Lowell. She came soon after the "Raven" and was sold after one season to Phineas Drew of the "Nahant Hotel." The fourth yacht that had moorings for the whole season was the "Avon," of eleven tons, owned by Edward Phillips. Then came the "Brenda," of thirty tons, owned by David Sears. Next and last, up to 1848, the year of the article named, was the "Cloud," of twenty-two tons, owned by J. H. Gray, which came in 1847.
Benjamin Cutler Clark thus appears to have almost founded yachting except for small boats. He was born in Boston in 1800 and was a shipping merchant of the firm of B. C. Clark & Co. He was always interested in the sea and anything per- taining to it, and wrote and lectured on ships and ship build- ing. He was an enthusiastic yachtsman and in 1830 owned the "Mary," a small half-decked boat. In 1856 he sold the "Raven" and built the "Young Raven" which he owned until his death in 1863. He bought his Nahant property in 1832 and was a summer resident for twenty-one years. In 1864 the estate was sold to Amos A. Lawrence.
One son of B. C. Clark was Colonel Robert F. Clark, whom many Nahanters remember, and who was well known as police commissioner of Boston. Another son, Arthur Hamilton Clark, born in 1841, continued his father's love for the sea. At the age of seventeen he was apprentice on the "Black Prince," and he was captain of the yacht "Alice" on her memorable trip across the Atlantic in 1866. Captain Clark commanded many ships and steamers both in America and in China. He was
111
SUMMER RESIDENTS AND BOATING
Lloyd's New York agent for twenty-five years, and only retired in 1920, living thereafter in Newburyport, where he died in 1922. He was the author of "The History of Yachting" and the "Clipper Ship Era."
There were pretentious regattas in those days. The Nahant Public Library has two notices of this sport, held under the auspices of Thomas Rand & Son, proprietors of the Nahant Hotel, on July 22, 1859, and September 5, 1859. Possibly the hotel interest might be suspected as partly commercial, but the lists of judges shows that the regattas were yachting events of quality. The former has five judges of whom Hon. C. Levi Woodbury is named as of Nahant, while the other four are picked from Boston, Salem and Swampscott. The latter has three judges, all Nahanters: George D. Oxnard, Samuel Hammond and Charles J. Paine. The Oxnard house is now standing, little altered, at the corner of Nahant Road and Summer Street. It was later owned by William B. Archibald and is now owned by Wallace D. Williams. Samuel Hammond lived in the well-known stone house down toward East Point, back from Nahant Road, and now owned and occupied by Samuel Hammond, son of the foregoing, whom all Nahanters know. Charles J. Paine lived in the house built by Cornelius Coolidge on Swallows Cave Road, later sold to John Bryant, Paine's father-in-law, and now occupied by a son, Frank C. Paine. General Charles J. Paine afterwards became the well- known yachtsman who, with the "Puritan," "Mayflower" and "Volunteer," successfully defended the famous America Cup. Both Hammond and Paine are remembered as familiar Nahant figures by many people not now to be called aged. J. L. Homer in his pamphlet tells of what he says was the first regatta held at Nahant. The following is a large part of his account of it. The boats are not all Nahant boats, of course, but came from various places round about.
On the 19th of July, 1845, a regatta, which had been long talked of, came off at Nahant. It was free for all vessels of not more than fifty tons nor less than ten. The prizes offered were a silver cup valued at $50 and a suit of colors. An allowance of one-half a minute
112
SOME ANNALS OF NAHANT
per ton was made by the larger boats to the smaller ones on the difference of tonnage. The course run was from Nahant, round the Graves, outside of a station boat on the northwest side; thence round Egg Rock, on the north, back to the judges' boat off Joseph's Cove, Nahant. A very large number of persons from Boston and the neighboring towns were collected to witness the trial; all the eligible points for observation were thronged, and the bay in the neighborhood of the peninsula was studded with boats of every description, filled with spectators.
At half past three o'clock the contending yachts, eleven in number, all schooner-rigged, were ranged from east to west off the southwest bluff in the following order: "The Nautilus," 11 tons; "Avon," 11 tons; "Neptune," 11 tons; "Raven," 12 tons; "Pathfinder," 12 tons; "Naiad Queen," 15 tons; "Gipsey," 21 tons; "Alert," 22 tons; "Vision," 24 tons; "Odd Fellow," 30 tons; and "Cygnet," 31 tons. Their foresails and mainsails were hoisted, and each boat was held by a single line made fast to a separate mooring.
At a quarter past four the signal gun was fired, the moorings were dropped, and the jibs run up at the same instant. The start to lookers-on seemed a perfect one, and the beautiful appearance of the little vessels, as they flitted away together, elicited much admira- tion. The wind was from the southeast, consequently it was nearly a dead beat to the Graves. The boats started with their larboard tacks aboard, and headed for Broad Sound, running four and one- half to five knots. Immediately after filling away it was perceived that the "Vision," from having a slight advance at the start, had lapped the "Odd Fellow," and taken the wind out of her sails; the latter, however, soon kept off, took the wind out ahead of the former, and passed on ahead.
At about a quarter past four the "Cygnet," "Odd Fellow" and "Vision" tacked to the eastward. Strong indications of a wind more southerly probably induced this movement. The manœuvre, however, although well designed, was not completely successful, for notwithstanding the wind did haul slightly to the southward, the three large boats weathered the Graves with difficulty at a limping gate. The next boat was the "Raven." After passing half a mile beyond the wake of the others she tacked to the east- ward and passed the Graves, going a wrap full. The "Alert" fol- lowed the "Raven;" the other boats were now a long way in the rear, and it was quite apparent that the matter was settled so far as they were concerned. Still, it was a subject of regret that they did not complete the distance named in the conditions of the race, inasmuch as the prize was offered only with a view of ascertaining
CHAU
Old Stone Schoolhouse Built 1819
Grammar Schoolhouse Later the Police Station and Court Room
113
SUMMER RESIDENTS AND BOATING
how far the pretensions of the different yachts would be justified by their performance.
The "Cygnet" and the "Odd Fellow" passed the Graves nearly together; next came the "Vision " with the "Raven " close upon her. Up to this period the "Raven" was in good time for the first prize, but it was considered that in working to windward her best play had been seen, and that on the return, in running at large, her raking masts and heavy draft would cause her to drop far astern of the larger boats, whose arrangements and ability for going free were supposed to be vastly superior.
Upon squaring away, however, this opinion proved to be ill- founded, for when half the distance between the Graves and Egg Rock had been made, it was obvious that the "Raven" had not only neared the head boats considerably, but had also dropped the "Alert" still farther astern. When abreast of Egg Rock one of the crew of the "Odd Fellow" fell overboard; in rounding to pick him up she lost some minutes. The "Raven" also lost some time by jibing her foresail and standing for the exposed individual.
From the commencement of the race the wind had been gradually increasing, and when the boats hauled on a wind under the lee of Egg Rock the breeze was quite fresh. They passed the station boat off East Point, Nahant, running at least nine knots, and came to abreast of the judges boat in beautiful style in the following order : "Cygnet" at 6.12; "Vision" at 6.14; and the "Raven" at 6.16, the latter boat taking the first prize, with some minutes to spare; the second prize was awarded to the "Vision."
By some it was thought that the allowance of time was too great, but others, more skilled in nautical matters, considered that if it were so, the prizes would both have fallen to boats of the "Raven" class, whereas it appears that neither the "Avon," "Neptune," "The Nautilus," "Naiad Queen," or the "Pathfinder" were, or could have been, within four or five miles of even the second prize, which was taken by a boat of twenty-four tons, in a close contest with two yachts of thirty and thirty-one tons. The distance sailed, about twenty miles, was performed by the leading boats in about two and one-half hours, which, considering the wind at the start, was excellent time.
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.