USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Falmouth > Suckanesset; wherein may be read a history of Falmouth, Massachusetts > Part 15
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The finest hotel on Cape Cod in 1930 is Terrace Gables at Falmouth Heights, evolved by Webster L. Draper from the beginnings made by his father in the '90's. Farther down the waterfront is the most delightful of small hostelries, the Gladstone Inn, owned by Mrs. Mary B. Stone. On the crown of the hill is the large Oak former pastor of the white church on the Green.
former pastor of the White Church on the Green.
In the 1880's, besides the Tower House, one of the well-known and popular hostelries at the Heights was the Pickwick House, owned by C. L. Hopson. It stood on the location of the present Vineyard Sound House, with beau-
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tiful oak woods all about it, and only one other house on the plain. The kitchen ell of the Vineyard Sound House is the main building of the old Pickwick House.
The old wharf, used for excursion boats and pleasure vessels was on the shore about in front of the Tower House, but did not accommodate large steamers. The lumber for the Tower House was brought down by schooner from Maine, thrown overside and rafted ashore.
The first, and for some time, the only well on the Heights, was driven by George Davis near the Randall Cottage, at a cost of $150. Each cottage had its own cistern, and was furnished drinking water from the well at $5 per season per cottage. As the colony grew another pump was installed near the present Anderson's garage, and various men, equipped with wooden shoulder yokes carrying two buckets of water, supplied the cottagers. One John Mascroft who carted water, and tended the little store in the observatory building, eventually won a $20,000 prize in the Louisiana lottery and thenceforth ceased to be a 'hewer of wood and drawer of water.'
Poetical names were plentiful in the early days. Passing through Jericho, one came to the Elysian Fields where later the tennis courts were laid out, and thus to the shores of "Lake Leman", now called Little Pond. Skunks were so plentiful in the oak woods that a bounty was offered for killing them.
Much of the community life revolved. about the ob- servatory in the early days. Emerson Hatch kept a fruit store, with a varied stock of other useful commodities, and the custom was for someone going to Falmouth to bring back the Heights mail which was placed in a salt box on the piazza of a Mr. Lillie's house. Sometimes it was kept at the observatory and Mr. Haddon would mount the counter to read out the names to the waiting crowd. The old observatory was taken by eminent domain, for $1,000 in 1929 by the town and laid out to highway purposes to relieve congestion of traffic.
The Falmouth Land & Wharf Company failed and the assets were divided. G. Edward Smith, former presi- dent, took the land along the shore as far as the present Bristol property. Captain Thomas Lawrence had the land around Lake Leman and the two wharfs.
In 1886, G. B. Hartwell of Wilkinsville obtained $2,000 by subscription from residents which was given "a free and voluntary gift" to the New Bedford, Martha's Vine-
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yard and Nantucket Steamboat Company who were bound by contract to build a good and substantial wharf not less than fifteen feet wide, to be accessible to craft drawing not less than 11 feet of water, at low tide, and to maintain same and keep in good repair for fifteen years from July 1,1887.
With the coming of a steamboat line to the Heights began a new era of prosperity in the early nineties. Prices increased, many houses were put up, hotels began to flourish.
Behind the Tower House stood a large building used as a bowling alley, skating rink and hall for William F. Stone's famous barn dances. This is the building now known as the Electric Light Station, it having been moved across the harbor on the ice in 1903.
The Falmouth Band was another institution of the old days and old-timers still remember how when Mr. Tom Grew's store burned, the firemen, who were members of the band and playing at the time, came in their uniforms to fight the blaze.
In 1901, when the Casino building was completed, built by C.L. Hopson, Mrs. Hopson became postmistress and had the first Falmouth Heights post office in the Casino. The Hopsons also had an apartment upstairs where they lived.
On April 12, 1914, the Casino burned, and a race against time was begun to get the new building finished before the contract called for the opening of the post office in its quarters. It was accomplished, successfully.
In 1914 the Cottage Club took over the Casino as a trust, and many are the good times that have been held in it since.
Deacon's Pond was cut through in 1907 to form Fal- mouth Inner Harbor. As early as 1842 there had been talk of making an adequate harbor at Falmouth and Oliver C. Swift, Henry C. Bunker, Charles W. Jenkins and James M. Swift had employed an engineer from Boston, R. H. Eddy to draft plans for an eighteen-foot channel from Vineyard Sound to Fresh Pond, at an estimated cost of $350,000.
Considerable opposition was voiced in 1907 to making this "Harbor of Refuge for Catboats" as it was styled, even in the face of encouragement from the U. S. Board of Engineers and Major Goethals of Panama Canal fame. One indignant citizen remarked that it would be
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"a source of convenience to three or four parties owning small yachts nearby. Why should we not on the same basis furnish the above parties with spring lamb and mint sauce and strawberries and cream in their season?" At this time the road from Shore Street was neces- sarily discontinued and the old 'back road' through Jeri- cho became the only means of reaching the Heights.
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CHAPTER XVI
THE FORTUNES OF THE YEARS
A LTHOUGH Falmouth was settled in 1661, and pre- sumably some of the families had young children even then, nothing seems to have been done about schools by the community for a generation. The first mention of the matter was in 1701 at town meeting when voters resolved to 'look abroad for a fit person to preach the word of God and to keep school for the good of our children.' In 1713 the town was 'presented' to the Gen- eral Court for want of a schoolmaster, and Lt. Moses Hatch, first white child born in Falmouth (1663) was appointed to make the town's excuses. At the same time Daniel Legg was elected town schoolmaster, serving two years.
At that period the voters in town meeting made choice of the school teachers and settled their salary, al- though in 1718 the selectmen were appointed agents to contract (with Hannah Sargent, schoolmistress that year) and to locate the school "at ye four quarters of ye town as they may agree." For many years the school was held peripatetically, the schoolmarm boarding in one or an- other section, conducting a school for three months and then moving to the next quarter. The other three-quar- ters of the time, the children probably conned their horn books in the family kitchen or figured sums on a flat shingle whose surface could be shaven clean when neces- sary. The school teacher received "twelve pounds and diet, also the use of a horse twice in the year, that she might visit her friends."
In 1745 a change was made, the voters no longer electing the teacher in town meeting but appointing an agent to provide the school. This system remained in effect practically until 1867 when the first superintendent of schools was named, though in the meantime the pop- ulation had grown so that the township came eventually
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to be divided in 18 districts, with a schoolhouse and agent for each district. The first step towards the modern system may be said to have been taken in 1809 when the first School Committee was appointed to inspect all the schools and make suggestions for their conduct. Robinson Crocker, William Gifford and Samuel Dewey composed this first committee, and have left an interesting report of their inspection.
Just prior to the Revolution the town was again in difficulties with the General Court through not maintain- ing a 'grammar school', and in 1767 it was voted to have . two schools, a man and a woman for the schools'; the woman teacher having charge of the smaller pupils. In 1788 the town raised 140 pounds for a grammar school, in spite of the hard times following the Revolution; and in 1800 it was built by private subscription in company with the Masonic Society, by Elijah Swift, and still stands on Main Street, the rear portion of the Masonic Hall.
In 1833 public-spirited citizens again subscribed to build a Falmouth Academy, which in 1840 changed its name to Lawrence Academy, complying with the terms of a bequest of $10,000 made by Shubael Lawrence. This is the building in the rear of the Elizabeth Theatre which for many years was known as the G. A. R. Hall, and today is gaining the familiar title of Legion Hall, being main- tained by the American Legion, heirs of the Grand Army of the Republic.
In 1866 the town abolished the eighteen old districts, purchased the schoolhouses, which had been erected for the most part by subscription from the inhabitants of each district; and new schools were built by the town at Woods Hole, Quissett, Falmouth, West Falmouth, North Falmouth, Hatchville, Waquoit, Davisville, East Falmouth and Teaticket. Gradually the tendency has swung of late years to centralization, so that in 1930 only Woods Hole, Falmouth, Teaticket and East Falmouth had schools in operation, the children from outlying sections being transported by motor-bus at the expense of the town.
Two educational centers seem to be developing in the town at present. In Falmouth village proper are the Village Grammar School, housing all grades up through the sixth, an old building erected in 1893, of wooden con- struction, over-crowded and antiquated, on Main Street opposite the Weeks Block; the Lawrence High School, built in 1895, also of wooden construction, next to the
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Library and Town Hall with a handsome sweep of lawn in front and athletic field behind, on the shore of Shiv- erick's Pond; and the Junior High School, built in 1925, of the most modern approved architecture, with brick exterior, fire-proofing, an auditorium, gymnasium and special equipment for household arts and manual train- ing. At the eastern end of the township is rising the second educational center, with a good schoolhouse built, 1923, at East Falmouth, two old school houses in Teaticket used for special classes; and a new $100,000 model school, similar to the Junior High School in equipment and de- sign, built in 1927.
Thus in two hundred years the town has progressed mightily from the early period when the voters chose the teacher in town meeting, who thereafter was 'dieted' in the homes of the pupils and moved the school about to suit the convenience of the scholars. But in those days one could hire a school teacher for twelve pounds and the use of a horse twice a year, and diet her for five shillings a week!
The first newspaper on Cape Cod, "The Nautical In- telligencer" began publication in 1824 in a building near the Old Stone Dock, then in its hey-day. Journalistic history is rather sketchy but in 1873 there was a "Seaside Press"-in 1886 flourished the Falmouth Local, Lewis E. Clarke, editor, and in 1895 Charles S. Burgess founded the Falmouth Enterprise, published (1930) by George A. Hough, Jr., with Dorothy G. Wayman as editor. Albert E. Powers, foreman of the job printing shop, has been in the plant continually since 1893.
The Falmouth Public Library, built in 1901, on the old Barachiah Bourne and Stephen G. Cahoon lots, is the successor of the Circulating Library formed in 1875 by 24 ladies with Mrs. Calvin Hall as president at a meet- ing held December 16, in Masonic Hall. In 1892 the town purchased their collection of 2,203 books for a Free Public Library, and the society disbanded. The Falmouth His- torical Society maintains an exhibit and collection at the library.
Among famous persons connected with Falmouth by birth or adoption is Katherine Lee Bates, author, poet and professor of English at Wellesley College until her death in 1929. Miss Bates was born in a house on Main Street near Locust Street, which was marked with a bronze tablet in 1930. Her parents were Rev. William
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Bates and Cornelia Bates, who came to Falmouth when Mr. Bates was called as pastor of the First Congregational Church. He died when Katharine was but a baby, but her mother brought up her family for twelve years in Falmouth, and Miss Bates retained throughout her life affection for the old town and relations with old friends here. Although "America the Beautiful", which is fast becoming the favorite American anthem, is Miss Bates' most widely known poem, she wrote many on Falmouth subjects, including the Paul Revere Bell reprinted on page 68 and a hymn "Our Church" for the 200th Anniversary of the First Congregational Church in 1908.
"Fannie Fales" was a local poet who wrote many charming lines about Falmouth. She was Mrs. George Washington Swift, daughter-in-law of Elijah Swift, for whom he built the house next to his own on Main Street, now (1930) remodelled, owned by Mrs. John E. Dwight.
Edward Herbert Thompson, archaeologist, came to Falmouth first as a boy in the 1870's, married a Falmouth sea captain's daughter, and after forty years in Yucatan, returned to make his home in West Falmouth. He is famed as discoverer of the ruins of Chi-chen-itza, Mayan lost city, which he located in the jungle and explored himself until so well identified that the Carnegie Founda- tion took over the site, which he had bought from the Mexican government, and commenced excavation of the ruins. Colonel Thompson was U. S. Consul at Merida, Yucatan for 25 years, to enable him to support his family while carrying on his researches, and learned deep sea- diving in order to penetrate to the bottom of the 90-foot Well of Sacrifices, from which he retrieved the gold, jade and balls of incense that established his discovery beyond question.
A memorial tablet in the Falmouth Public Library commemorates Joseph Jefferson Holland, godson of Joseph Jefferson and famous actor whose father, George Holland, was the actor whom no clergyman in New York would bury until Joseph Jefferson found "The Little Church Around the Corner" in New York in 1870. Joseph Holland's greatest triumph was, in an all-star cast with Joe Jefferson, in "The Rivals" in 1896. Smitten in 1904 with advancing paralysis and deafness he was forced to give up the stage and retired to Falmouth where he had previously summered at the Quissett Harbor House and
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here spent his life until his death in 1926. He loved to coach young people in acting, and from his kindly help sprang the Falmouth Dramatic Society which after his death took the name of the Joseph Holland Players. The tablet was erected by the Lambs Club and Players Club of New York and the local society.
It is a matter of regret that the fortunes of the years have not preserved to us some record of the original price paid to the Indian sachem Notantico by Jonathan Hatch and his co-purchasers for the land now included in the township of Falmouth.
However, recalling the 'brass kettle of seven spans in bigness and a broad hoe' with which a large part of the town of Barnstable was purchased about the same time, we may form a fair estimate of the great change in value from 1660 to 1930 when the valuation of the town of Falmouth was set at $19,886,543.
The increase in population from the 14 families who settled on the shore of Fresh Pond in 1661 to the 2071 voters registered in Falmouth in 1929 does not truly represent the picture of the town, however. Although the permanent population is just under 5,000 souls by the last census, in the vacation season summer residents, cottage tenants and hotel guests swell the number to more nearly 20,000; and this peculiarity of the population has had a great influence on the development of the town into a rural village with a large share of the comforts and conveniences of a city.
'Non-resident property-owners', by whom are meant chiefly the owners of summer estates, contribute over eleven million dollars of the nineteen million dollar val- uation of the town in 1930. These large estates are not. only an asset to the beauty of the town, a source of in- come to the local merchants, but also by the taxes they pay ($26.40 a thousand in 1929), they enable the town to build and maintain mile upon mile of automobile high- ways, fine schools, and extensive water-system, a modern fire department, a police department, street-lighting. Public utilities such as the railroad, the telephone com- pany, telegraph company, electric light company, all maintain services of much greater extent than would ordinarily be the lot of a country village. Telephone ser- vice was first installed in 1902; electric light under the old Buzzards Bay Electric Co., H. H. Taylor, superintendent, inaugurated service September 1909, with a power
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plant on Scranton Avenue. In the Summer season, for instance, the railroad makes up a train of sleepers direct from Washington to Woods Hole on Fri- days, with return trip on Sunday. nights; and with but 1,700 voters listed, the telephone company has more than 1,900 telephones installed and 'cut over' a thoroughly modern switchboard in May, 1929.
Under these favorable circumstances the schools of the town have likewise gained materially from 1715 when the town debated over hiring Hannah Sargent as School Dame at an outlay of twelve pounds and diet a year, with special dispensation for the use of a horse twice a year to visit her friends, to 1930 when $168,863 barely sufficed to maintain the five lower schools, junior high school and Lawrence High School for the benefit of the 1,200 pupils.
It is a far cry from leathern fire buckets hanging in each front entryway to the sound of the siren as the 1,000-gallon Ahrens-Fox pumping engines race down the tarvia road to fires in town; a long road of civilization from the day of the town-crier to the radio; but the in- stitution which has changed least with the years is the town meeting.
Although today 'the rateable inhabitants' gather for deliberation in a moving-picture theatre instead of the meeting house,, and though an expert stenographer makes many-paged transcripts in place of the crabbed handwriting and uncertain orthography of the old Town Clerks of 1700, still our town meetings are opened with prayer and the reading of the warrant, still we elect a Moderator, and still each voter of the town may rise in a town meeting, 'duly warned and legally assembled' and make known his opinions. The only radical change in the constitution of town-meeting in all its 244 years since the incorporation in 1686, is the admission of women to the electorate.
The history of the Town of Falmouth has been a singularly happy one through the two and a half cen- turies. When Boston was exiling Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, when Salem was hanging witches, Fal- mouth was showing a vast and charitable tolerance to Quakers who rewarded them by bringing a rich heritage of industry and character to the town. When British troops were stabling their horses in King's Chapel in Bos- ton, Falmouth's greatest trouble was the stealing of their
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cattle by foraging men of the King. Even the bombard- ment of the town by the Nimrod in 1814 killed no one, did no damage save to leave some interesting souvenirs of cannonball to enhance the historic interest of this or that old mansion.
No sweeping conflagration has laid waste the town, no devastating pestilence poisoned its air. The Falmouth National Bank, oldest institution of its kind on Cape Cod, has never had a run nor a robbery since its incorporation in 1821 by Elijah Swift and his friends.
The son of the pastor of Leyden and the runaway orphan apprentice, Isaac Robinson and Jonathan Hatch, chose well when they selected the shores of Fresh Pond in 'Sechonessit town where the Indians inhabit' as their dwelling-place in 1660; the early proprietors and inhabit- ants laid the foundation of a community government that has permitted a tranquil and healthy growth to succeed- ing generations; and we of 1930 as we walk beneath the old elms set out around the Village Green by Elijah Swift may enjoy the prosperity of the present, look back with pride on the past, and anticipate with pleasure for our children the future History of Falmouth in the county of Barnstable and Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
(THE END)
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