USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Falmouth > Suckanesset; wherein may be read a history of Falmouth, Massachusetts > Part 14
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Oxen early became a favorite beast of burden on the Cape, and even today an occasional yoke may be seen hauling a 'stone-boat.' It is related traditionally that when Elijah Swift completed his 50-ton schooner Status Ante Bellum in the yard of his house on Main Street where the Town Hall now stands, that 50 yoke of oxen were brought together from the farms of the surrounding countryside, to draw the vessel in its cradle to the shore west of the present-day summer home of M. H. Gulesian at the foot of Shore Street for its launching, and a brave sight it must have been.
The gradual southward extension of the Old Colony Railroad, in the second quarter of the nineteenth century gave an impetus to the establishment of stage lines to
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carry passengers and mails. Prior to the coming of the railroad, the most common mode of travel away from the Cape was by packet lines running from West Falmouth and Woods Hole to New Bedford and the Islands, and from Barnstable Boston-wards.
Edward H. Jenkins of New Haven, a descendant of the famous Jenkins family of Falmouth of whom we have earlier said much recalls that in 1865 the only routes from Falmouth to the outside world were a stage line to Monument Beach which connected with the railroad there, and a small paddle-wheel steamer which churned her way from the Vineyard to New Bedford and touched at Woods Hole 'somewhat regularly.' Chiefly used for transportation was the good sloop "Bride", Captain Phin- ney in command, which plied between Shore Street wharf and New Bedford when wind, tide and the Captain's con- venience all favored. On one occasion, Mr. Jenkins humorously relates, Captain Phinney had as helper a man who was quite deaf and no seaman. On this fellow's first trip, as the Bride neared the wharf the Captain called "Let go your jib halyards." "Hey?" queried the crew. "Let go your jib halyards!" roared the Captain. "I haint got none o' them" replied the seaman indignantly.
The stage line from Falmouth to Monument Beach to which Mr. Edward H. Jenkins referred, was conducted by William Hewins, father of William H. Hewins, who for forty years has been Town Clerk and Treasurer of Fal- mouth. William Hewins moved to Falmouth from Sand- wich to conduct this stage route. Originally it ran from Falmouth up the North Shore Road to Pocasset and thence to Sandwich, but with the coming of the railroad to Monument Beach its terminus was made there.
In speaking of early transportation we must not neglect to mention a type of vehicle which is rapidly disappearing-the wide span 'buggy' peculiar to Cape Cod. Sometimes these buggies had a hood, at other times an uncovered seat, but their distinguishing characteristic was the extrawide axles, front and rear which are said to have been necessitated by the sandy nature of the old roads. Sleighs, too, were used in winter. In the old days men took more pleasure in the possession of a good horse than today in owning the latest model of automobile, and in the '90's a Gentleman's Trotting Park Association flourished on what is still sometimes referred to as 'the old trotting park road', and the best society of the town
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turned out in leg-o'-mutton sleeves and luxuriant mus- taches for the races.
The railroad was late in coming to Falmouth, citizens of the town actually holding a charter for 20 years before the capital and enthusiasm necessary to build were se- cured. As a matter of fact the railroad might well adopt a design of sea birds and fish as emblematical of its coming to Falmouth, for it was the combination of the abundance of menhaden (small fish resembling a her- ring) off the coasts of Woods Hole with the myriads of sea fowl frequenting an uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean, Howard's-which eventually overcame the inertia and started the railroad down the west side of the Cape from Monument Beach to Woods Hole.
The Pacific Guano Company was organized in 1859 by shipping merchants of Boston and New York and in 1863 the chemical laboratories and manufacturing plant were located at Woods Hole in the section known as Pen- zance Point, long since redeemed from its malodorous destiny to become the site of the finest summer estates. Crude guano was shipped to Woods Hole from distant deserted islands, breeding places of seafowl where the deposits of the valuable fertiliser had accumulated through centuries. Howard's Island in the Pacific, the Great Swan Islands in the Caribbean Sea, were owned or leased by the company and furnished millions of tons of the guano. At the works in Woods Hole the guano was combined with oil pressed from the menhaden, animal fibre and bone to produce a fertilizer of superior quality.
The Pacific Guano Company for 30 years was the major industry of the town, organized by Prince S. Cro- well with the aid of Boston and New York capital. Hetty Green is said to have been interested in it. Capital stock was a million dollars, and from 150 to 200 workmen were regularly employed from 1862 on. The first manager was Captain Levi Howes, succeeded in 1863 by Asa Shiverick, whose son, A. F. Shiverick, followed him in 1886. Azariah F. Crowell was chief chemist for many years and Lewis C. Swift, superintendent of the acid works, manufacturing sulphuric acid to reduce the phosphate rock. His chief assistant was Martin Broderick and William Ring, Robert Goffin and William Studley were other old-timers of the industry. John M. Glidden of Boston was treasurer and had a summer estate at Woods Hole.
Variegated shipping lay in Woods Hole harbor in
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those old days :- Italian barks from Sicily, laden with brimstone; vesels from Chile with nitrate of soda; Ger- man ships with potash salts; American schooners from 200 to 1,500 tons with phosphate rock, guano or coal; fishing smacks redolent of their 'catch.'
Captain Prince S. Crowell of East Dennis, who as master of coasting vessels had become acquainted with the excellence of Woods Hole harbor, was influential in locating the works of the Pacific Guano Company at Woods Hole and settled here as superintendent of the company. He early saw the necessity of a railroad to the development of the town and urged a line with alternative layouts, to connect either with the Old Colony Road to Plymouth or the Cape Cod railroad at Monument Beach. Citizens of Falmouth for twenty years had held a charter for a railroad under the name of Vineyard Sound Rail- road.
Captain Crowell persuaded the directors of this 'pa- per railroad' to elect him president; at the same time, by coming to the rescue financially of the Yarmouth- Provincetown Railway, he was in a position to go before the directors with the proposition that they build a branch to Woods Hole and by taking over the Cape Cod Central, have all three roads under one management. When the directors hesitated, Captain Crowell played his trump card of an alternative alliance with the Old Colony at Plymouth. The report of Engineer E. N. Winslow's survey for the 'Vineyard Sound Railroad' between Monu- ment Beach and Woods Hole is dated March 27, 1867 and addressed to Hon. Oliver C. Swift as president, and the railroad was opened to travel in 1872.
The advent of motor cars in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century gave an impetus in Falmouth, as in other parts of the country, to the improvement of the roads. In 1930 there is no section of the town which can- not be reached at any time of year by at least one hard- ened highway and there are many miles of beautiful shore drives as well. In 1926 the Surveyor of Highways' depart- ment expended $102,539 in the maintenance and im- provement of the town roads and bridges.
The latest development in the history of transporta- tion in Falmouth is the movement for making an airport in the town which was first agitated in 1927, both the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, of which Hon. W. O. Luscombe of Woods Hole is president, and the Falmouth
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Rotary Club, Paul Dillingham, president, holding meet- ings to advocate such a move. In 1925 W. H. Oviatt, a summer resident at Maravista, had two sea planes, under the name 'Cape Cod Airways' which carried passengers between the Cape and New York, and since that time a number of private planes have come to town, using either the Woods Hole Golf course, Coonemessett Ranch, or the land by Falmouth Inner Harbor which is marked on government air maps as an 'emergency landing field.'
In 1929 the town made a three-year lease of 80 acres at Coonemessett Ranch, and in 1930 the original aviation committee, Milton C. Fish, H. V. Lawrence and Joseph B. Miskell was augumented by Frederick K. Leatherbee and W. G. Caldwell to carry on investigation of sites for a permanent Falmouth airport.
There has never been a street railway line in Fal- mouth, although some twenty years ago the question was on the carpet and became the burning issue in the town. At town meeting by a heavy majority one party favored having the Middleboro, New Bedford and Onset line ex- tended through to Falmouth, but a franchise was actually granted to another group, incorporated as the Cape Cod Street Railway which purchased equipment, rolling stock and rails, made a survey, and actually had the rails piled along their proposed right of way down Main Street.
However financial difficulties and continued opposi- tion combined to prevent the franchise being exercised and ultimately the equipment was disposed of to a Worcester railway and the project abandoned.
Throughout the course of the town, one point has emerged with especial clarity, that Falmouth has never wished to be an industrial community. The woolen mills that were'started in East Falmouth in the first quarter of the nineteenth century never attained the proportions of a permanent industry, and while New Bedford chose to become a city of mills and spindles, in Falmouth the only trace today of the beginnings of a century ago is the name of our high school, "Lawrence High School", so called to comply with the terms of the bequest of $10,000 made by the will of Shubael Lawrence in 1840, Shubael Lawrence having made much of his money from the East Falmouth mills.
In 1850 Dr. Aaron Cornish, John Jenkins and others founded the Falmouth Glass Factory at the foot of Shore Street. A few examples of the work of this plant in the
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Falmouth library, in the collection of the Historical So- ciety serve to remind us that while our neighboring town of Sandwich developed this industry to such a pitch that its name is practically synonymous with glass, in Fal- mouth the industrial frame of mind again failed to find congenial surroundings. The buildings of the glass works were moved to West Falmouth and used as an oil-cloth factory by Stephen Dillingham, but burned in 1856 and were not rebuilt.
Three years later a tag factory was opened in West Falmouth by Mrs. Gilbert R. Boyce and tag-tying became an employment which flourished until late in the '90's. The tag-tying was largely done as piecework in the homes by girls and women, for the well-known manufacturing plant of Dennison & Company whose main works are at Framingham, Massachusetts. The "Falmouth Local" for Feb. 3, 1887, contains an item to the effect that a young lady of Davisville is credited with tying 6000 tags in one day. Deyo states that about this time, when the West Falmouth office was handling all the work as far south as Martha's Vineyard and north as far as Wareham that the pay roll averaged $12,000 yearly.
In 1930 the only native manufacture is the cement block plant at Teaticket, owned by A. L. Bowman and A. R. Wood where hollow concrete building blocks are turned out by machinery at the rate of a thousand a day, using a glacial sand deposit of exceptional purity.
Salt-making has passed; 'live-oaking' no longer calls the young men of the town South in the winters; the whaling industry is superseded; ships are no longer built at Waquoit or Quissett.
In 1930, speaking broadly, there are but two main economic sources of employment in Falmouth, agriculture and the summer resort business.
To the Portuguese chiefly goes the credit for the flourishing state of agriculture in the township today. Even where farms are still owned by American-born men, the main source of labor is from the Portuguese who have settled in East Falmouth, North Falmouth, Hatchville, Teaticket. It is the Portuguese who clear the scrub oak and jack pine to make strawberry beds; who dig the tur- nips and gather the cranberries.
Falmouth men were quick to see the possibilities of cultivating this wild fruit intensively, for although it was
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not until 1847 that at Harwich, Cyrus Cahoon first made a success of a cranberry bog, in 1855 the State census shows that Falmouth already had 26 acres under cultiva- tion, and in 1930 cranberries are still an important crop in the township, as evidenced by the fact that on Nov. 5, 1927, four parents were brought into court charged with keeping their minor children out of school and adduced as defense permits from the Superintendent of Schools to allow their children to labor as cranberry pickers.
Of late years strawberries have become one of the most important crops of Falmouth, due chiefly to the genius for market-gardening of the Portuguese. It is said that the Portuguese were first introduced to the neighbor- hood of New Bedford and Cape Cod by the old whaling captains, who, through their custom of making St. Helena and the Azores a base for re-fitting became acquainted with the seamanlike abilities of the Portuguese who were favorites with many captains as boat-steerers and har- pooners, and were induced to accompany the vessels to America.
John Emerald (Amaral) of East Falmouth is general- ly credited with being the first of his race to settle in Falmouth, but in the quarter of a century since he ar- rived, his countrymen have flocked here until in 1930 they are estimated to number more than 2000 of the total 5000 of the town's population. Their principal settle- ments are in Teaticket and East Falmouth, where they have a fine parish with St. Anthony's church, and own much property.
The Portuguese have been apt at taking up scrub oak and pine woodland, clearing it and setting out the run- ners in August, covering them with pine needles in the fall, and picking the first crop the next Spring. In 1916, Wilfrid Wheeler, State Commissioner of Agriculture, organized the independent growers into the Cape Cod Strawberry Growers Association, of which John De- Mello of Davisville, is president, which operates on a co- operative basis, shipping its berries in refrigerator cars, and producing annually about two million quarts, with a market value of half a million dollars.
In 1930, the industry had grown till there were more than 200 individual growers in the town, and a second association was formed, the Falmouth Farmers' Co-op- erative Association, John R. Augusta, president, which includes the marketing of turnips in its scope.
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CHAPTER XV
SUMMER'S TRANQUIL SPELL
A S a summer resort, Falmouth has come to be pre- eminent on the Cape. The beautiful location, de- lightful climate and tranquil charm of it have attracted the highest type of persons prominent in many lines who have built fine residences, developed their prop- erty with good taste and dignity and done much to aid the growth of the town. For instance, three beautiful churches represent benefactions from summer residents whose long identification as property owners links them to the community; the Church of the Messiah at Woods Hole owes its fine buildings to the generosity of Joseph Story Fay; the Church of St. Barnabas, built in Falmouth on the site of the old homes of Deacon Timothy Crocker and Elijah Swift, is a memorial built and maintained by the Beebe family; and recently the old church at North Falmouth has been most charmingly restored and beautified by donations from James H. Rand who has also restored the old Nye house at the four corners. Good Will Park, surrounding Long Pond, the chief town water supply, was a gift to the town from the Fay family who have several beautiful estates at Woods Hole. The granite bell tower with Angelus peal on Millfield Street, Woods Hole, opposite St. Joseph's Church was built in 1929 by Mrs. Frank R. Lillie of Chicago, wife of the director of the Marine Biological Laboratory.
Even before the coming of the railroad there had been 'summer residents' here, driving down over the road, or coming by steamboat; but the opening of the railroad in 1872 gave the necessary impetus to the movement which determined the economic destiny of the town.
The same year saw Spencer F. Baird conducting re- searches in ichthyology at Woods Hole, where the buoy yard now stands, which were the opening wedge for scien- tific institutions that today are the pride of Woods Hole-
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the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, whose buildings date back to 1884, and the Marine Biological Laboratory, opened in 1889, whose latest addition is the dormitories built in 1927 at a cost of a quarter of a million dollars donated by the General Education Board of the Rockerfeller Foundation. These two institutions attract to the town each summer famed scientists from all over the world who carry on re- search of outstanding value.
Since Falmouth Heights was the first "development", its history is given in detail, and may be taken as typical of the summer colonies which range from Penzance Point and Quissett at Woods Hole, through Racing Beach, Sip- pewissett, Chappaquoit, Silver Beach, Wild Harbor, Me- gansett, Acapesket, Davisville, Menauhant and Waquoit Bay.
In the old days, the easterly section of the township, bordering on Vineyard Sound, defined to east and west by Falmouth Inner Harbor and Little Pond, and bounded on the north by the wooded property known as Jericho, was called Great Hill.
Traditionally it was here that Queen Awashonks, ruler of Indian tribes from Narragansett, R. I., to Suc- canessett, used to encamp on her journeys to and from the Gay Head tribes.
We may picture Queen Awashonks as having her tepees pitched beneath the oak trees that covered the high hill whose steep bluffs had been a landmark by which the paddlers steered their canoes across the Sound; and while she rested here, or received delegations from the local tribes, her henchmen would be pursuing a deer in the woods, while patient squaws waded in Oyster Pond dragging up bivalves or, if a south west wind were blow- ing, rejoiced in the ease with which they might gather a meal of scallops along the Sound shore.
Several centuries later, Great Hill was still a favorite spot for clam bakes and picnics, although by this time the Indians had vanished and it was white men who fre- quented the spot. Daniel Webster is said to have often enjoyed a picnic whose chief feature was a fish chowder on Great Hill.
In those days what is now Falmouth Inner Harbor was a pond, and Falmouth Heights was reached by two roads from town; the main road, running from Shore
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Street through Belvidere Plains and crossing the outlet of the pond with a wooden bridge; and a 'back road' which wandered from the Teaticket Corner along the shore of the pond through Jericho, dipping into hollows, climbing over inclines.
The late Robinson Crocker Bodfish (born 1818) re- collected a heavy snowfall occurring when he was a lad of ten or eleven in which the land belonging to Nymphas Davis, where the Dutchland Farms Station now stands was drifted so deep that a fence was taken down so that sleighs could drive from the east side of the Alms House across the fields behind the barn of Nymphas Davis until they reached the Teaticket Road again near the home of Reuben Handy. To clear the regular road a tunnel was cut through the drifts at the corner and Mr. Bodfish re- membered vividly passing through this snow-tunnel.
The local names applied to this vicinity had very definite associations originally. Jericho, for instance, is said to have received its title from an early owner who christened it in jest over what he considered a good round price paid for it. "Why Jericho?" he was asked, to which he answered, "Was it not Jericho to which the man in the Good book was travelling when he fell among thieves?"
Deacon's Pond, now known as Falmouth Inner Har- bor, acquired its name through the purchase of land in that neighborhood in 1804 by Deacon Joseph Davis. He bought the tract from Abram Bowerman and Lois, his wife, and previous to that time the place was called Bow- erman's Pond or Bowman's Pond.
In 1805 Weston Jenkins, Joseph Mayhew, Stephen Davis, Consider Hatch and Joseph Davis, Jr., all acquired various lots on the plain around Deacon's Pond for the purpose of erecting salt works. The last salt works to stand there was that of Joseph Davis, Jr., which was only taken down to permit the erection of the Tower House in 1870 on its site.
G. Edward Smith, Oscar F. Rawson and Dr. J. E. Esta- brook were the three Worcester men who first carried into effect the idea of making Great Hill a summer resort. They had thought of a development on Martha's Vine- yard, but found conditions more to their liking at Fal- mouth. The first plan of the sub-division, on file.at Barn- stable, was dated 1870, and the first lots sold ranged in price from $150 to $250 on the hill. In 1926 one of the
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last vacant lots left on the hill, facing Allen Park brought $1,600. About 1876 there was a decided 'slump' in the market value of these lots. Quite a few were sold for taxes, and others bought up by far-sighted individuals as cheap as $35 a lot.
It is interesting to note that the promoters of Fal- mouth Heights foreshadowed the idea of a Zoning Plan which the town was not to adopt until 1926. On the original layout of the Heights in 1870, Worcester Park, Allen Park and Central Park were provided for. These parks, taken over by the town since have become beauty spots of note, largely owing to the interest and labors of the late Alonzo R. Wells who first coming to the Heights as a summer resident finally on his retirement from busi- ness made his home here the year round, and was un- flagging in his efforts to beautify the parks of the town.
In the original layout streets were indicated com- pletely surrounding both Allen and Central Parks, but later, at the request and with the consent of the abutters, these streets were closed, extending the area of Allen Park and of the ball field on Central Park.
The restrictions of 1870 provided a ten foot set back from the avenues and five feet on either side from the next lot for all buildings and stipulated that only dwell- ings be erected 'with the necessary out-buildings.' Stables were only permitted on the lots on the shore of Deacon's Pond, where for many years Eugene Swift maintained large stables, later continued by his son, T. L. Swift, and with the progress of the times finally metamorphosed by the latter into a garage on the corner now occupied by Turner & Breivogel.
The original deeds also included restrictions to the effect that 'neither spirituous, intoxicating nor malt liquors shall be made, sold, or kept for sale on the granted premises, that no game of chance shall be played for money, or any other consideration; that no mechanical trade, manufacturing or public trading shall be carried on on the granted premises.'
The Falmouth Heights Land and Wharf Company was incorporated to handle the development of Falmouth Heights.
The first structure erected was the old Tower House, which was built in 1869 by Samuel M. Davis, brother of George W. Davis for G. Edward Smith. Mr. Davis also contracted for the building of the observatory (later to
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become the chapel) and the first fourteen cottages built on the hill. Near the shore of Deacon's Pond, south of Arlington Avenue, he put up a building as restaurant for the men employed in his building. The cooking was done by Rosannah Jonah, a Mashpee Indian woman who is re- membered by old-timers as having a glorious soprano voice and nineteen children. Her motherhood was ill- fated, for two of these children were drowned on the same day in the pond near the Mashpee meeting house; and it is said that only one grew to manhood, of the nine- teen. After the workmen's restaurant was discontinued, Rosannah was given the house to live in. After her death, it was sold to Simeon Hamlin who made it into a garage, the oldest building on the Heights having thus come to a most modern use.
The east wing and front of the Tower House were completed in 1869, and it was opened for business in 1870 under the management of George Tower of Worcester, who had previously managed the Lincoln House in Wor- cester, and who had learned his business in the famous old Ocean House at Newport. The next year the west wing was built and Mr. Tower bought the property from G. Edward Smith. Joseph Jefferson was one of the many distinguished guests at the Tower House in the old days and its register showed names of wealth and fashion not only from all over the country but from Europe and South America. In 1897 Mr. Charles Hadley went to the hotel as assistant and bought the property in 1907, conducting it under his own hospitable management until 1924 when he retired, selling the property to George B. Moran of Cambridge. Mr. Hadley went to live on his farm in Davis- ville and in 1928 became one of the board of Water Com- missioners of the town.
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