USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Falmouth > Suckanesset; wherein may be read a history of Falmouth, Massachusetts > Part 3
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In witness whereof I, the said Job Notuntico haue herevnto sett my hand and seale this thirtieth day of Decb Dom one thousand six hundred and seaventy nine.
May Name JOB ATTUKKOO L. S.
Signed, sealed and delivered
with a word dashed out in ye sev-
enth line before ensealing
hereof and a whole line interlined
between ye 7th and 8th
line before ensealing
beginning wth ye
words (together wth
ye right &c) In presence of
Shearjashub Bourne the mrke
Ba.B.
Bathshua Bourn
The 'bove said Job Notantecoo, alias Attochkoos appeared 15 Janua, 1679, and acknowledged these presents to be his act and deed. Before me
Thos. Hinckley Assistt.
Freeman, vol. II, 67, says: Old John, alias Mopes, Indian (or "Old Hope")
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QUISSETT HARBOR
OLD HOUSES AT QUISSETT
F
THE RUNAWAY 'PRENTICE
1679, his testimony was taken by the court at Ply- mouth "in reference to the little island called Nanomes- sett lying near to Saconeesit (Falmouth) and also "in re- gard to a little neck of land or little island called Uckatin -· cet originally a neck" belonging to a great island called. Katomuck (now Naushon) and "another little island lying between the sd great island and Nanomessett, which he testified "belonged to Job Antiko, his grandfather Com- uck and to Job's father Tom Antiko." and "the said Mope or Hope further saith that the sd. great island called Katomuck and another little island called Peskehameesit belonged to Webacowet." "Will Numack, Indian" also testified that he had often heard his father say the same concerning the islands commonly called Nashanow." Webacowet and Numack were Indians of Saconesset.
Having sketched out these recorded incidents of Jonathan Hatch's life before he settled at Succannessett, we have a picture of a bold, fearless, independent soul, who had good reason to care little for the narrow life in the settled communities, and had found freedom and friendship among the Indians. It is most probable that hunting with the Indians he had often passed through what is now the township of Falmouth and seen its recommendations as a location for a farm. At any rate, on May 27, 1661, Goodman Hatch sold his farm at Sepuis- set to Thomas Shaw who resold to John Thompson. Oyster pickling and making of lime from the oyster shells was the business at Sepuisset in those days.
Goodman Hatch and his family removed to Succan- nessett in 1661, which effectually disposes of the myth that Deacon Moses Hatch was born in the bulrushes, for Moses was not born until March 4, 1663. There is no reason, however, to doubt the tradition that Moses Hatch was the first white child born in Falmouth.
In this connection we wish we had further light on a remark made by Amos Otis in the Otis Papers, published at Yarmouth in 1861, in which he says "Deacon Moses Hatch, first white child born in Falmouth, gave to the town the land on which the first church was built, now a public square." Otis does not give his authority.
In 1685 Jonathan Hatch was granted a license to keep "a victualling house, retailing liquor for the enter- tainment of strangers, passengers and others." He had in all eleven children, four of them born in Falmouth. He seems to have been active, or perhaps, instrumental in
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SUCKANESSET
the various transactions between the early settlers and the Indians, the purchase of Woods Hole, for instance, in 1679, being made by him for the other proprietors, due to his excellent relations with the Indians which made him naturally an ideal go-between. Jonathan Hatch died in 1710, aged 86 years.
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CHAPTER IV
IN QUAKER DRAB
W HEN the lands of Succanessett were first 'laid out' in November, 1661, it is recorded that "Jonathan Hatch and Isaac Robinson, because they have built their houses shall have the lots by their houses."
Permission from the Court was granted first in 1659 to Thomas Hinckley, Henry Cobb, Samuel Hinckley, John Jenkins, and Nathaniel Bacon of Barnstable in this form "Liberty to view and purchase a tract at Saconesset." Thomas Hinckley and Richard Bourne of Sandwich were empowered to arrange with the Indians for the same. Two years later another group is given the same permission, so doubtless negotiations fell through. This second group who were granted 'liberty to purchase lands at Sucones- set and adjacent' were John Howland, Anthony Annable, ISAAC ROBINSON, Nathaniel Thomas, Samuel Fuller, Abraham Pierce and Peter Blossom as of the date March 5, 1661, while on June 4 were added Samuel Hinckley, Matthew Fuller, John Cooper, Henry Cobb, John Dunham and John Jenkins of Barnstable and William Nelson and Thomas Burman (Bowerman) of Sandwich, while a little later the names of John Finney (Phinney?) Thomas Bur- man and John Dunham, Jr., are seen.
Many of these early purchasers of land at Falmouth never became settlers here. Examination of the old records readily convinces one that the 'real estate boom' of 1926 on the Cape had its first predecessor upwards of two centuries ago, and that the early Pilgrims were true Yankees in perceiving the investment possibilities of the wild land about their little settlements. With ships ever bringing new emigrants, and sturdy sons ever growing to maturity, a man was sure to find a purchaser sooner or later for desirable plots to which he held title. As in those early times the procedure of scouting out good lo- cations, obtaining the requisite permission from the Court
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SUCKANESSET
to take them up, and haggling with the Indian tribes was a lengthy one, the average farmer could not handle the details himself, and it was the custom to form 'companies' who employed agents to carry out the business for them. The man who could act as such an agent necessarily had to have a rudimentary knowledge of surveying, an excel- lent knowledge of the country, familiarity with the prin- ciples of law and acquaintance with the influential men at the Court, as well as a smattering of the Indian langu- age. It amounted to a profession; Bernard Lombard of Barnstable apparently chose such a profession, as in 1641 he was appointed a "measurer of land" and his name appears frequently in that capacity until 1677 when we find him called in at Suconcsset to lay out new lands there.
It is plain therefore that in thinking of the founding of Falmouth we must disabuse our minds of naive pic- tures of a little company of pilgrims embarking blindly for a sail down the Sound and stumbling upon a camping spot by Fresh Pond. The truth of the matter is that "Saconesset" was a regular real estate development, par- ticipated in by many men who had no intention of settling there. Isaac Robinson and Jonathan Hatch seem to have 'been in on the ground floor'; Robinson, doubtless through the regular channels, as back in Barnstable he had been often associated in negotiations with the In- dians for other purchases; and Hatch, we should guess, through native shrewdness. The name of Hatch does not appear in the preliminary list of purchasers, yet when the company arrives Hatch has already sold his farm at Sepuisset and built him a house at Saconesset. It may not be too great a stretch of the imagination to figure that Jonathan Hatch, from his good friends the Indians of the South Seas, heard rumors about the Barnstable men viewing the lands at Saconesset and treating with the sachems for their purchase and betook himself and his family thither 'on speculation', much as a canny in- dividual of 1926 took up 'options' which his judgment told him would be valuable later.
Isaac Robinson, as a type, is an interesting contrast to the solitary, independent, 'self-made' man that was Jonathan Hatch. He represents, by birth, the cream of education and breeding among the Pilgrim company. His father was the well-known and well-beloved pastor of Leyden, John Robinson, whose reputation for fine, tol-
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IN QUAKER DRAB
erant, religious thinking has come down by tradition through three centuries.
Isaac Robinson, born 1610, came to Plymouth in 1630 and to Barnstable in 1636. He was ever a man of in- fluence and dignity, by the force of his character and mentality, and in advance of his times in the breadth of his vision. In 1659 he was appointed by the Plymouth Court, with certain others, "to frequent the Quaker meetings to endeavor to seduce them from the error of their ways."
Thus, in a brief dozen words, was begun the train of events that inside of 20 years brought the honored citizen Isaac Robinson to contemporary disgrace, deprived him of his franchise, and induced the mood of disgust with his narrow townsmen which drove him to settle our town of Falmouth.
To sum up briefly, among the main causes of the founding of Falmouth we may advance the brutality of Lieutenant Richard Davenport to his apprentice Jona- than Hatch and the persecution of the Quakers in the colony which enlisted the sympathies of Isaac Robinson.
The history of the persecution of the Quakers in the colony is too well-known to repeat here except as we nar- row it down to two individuals who were in Succanesset in 1658, four years before it was settled.
Christopher Holder and John Copeland first came to Boston in 1656, were forthwith imprisoned for eleven weeks on account of their religious views, and then ship- ped back to London. However they came out again the next year in the "Woodhouse", going to Newport, since Rhode Island was a refuge for victims of religious perse- cution, and there they met the aged Quaker Nicholas Up- shal who had been banished from Boston in 1656 for aid- ing Quakers, had spent the winter in Sandwich and then journeyed on to Newport, where, it is written, an Indian chief, hearing of his trials, made the comment, "What a God have the English who deal so with one another about their God!" Holder and Copeland had determined to go to Martha's Vineyard as missionaries, preaching their gospel, but on arriving there, the authorities at once sent them away, having an Indian take them across the Sound in his canoe, landing them at Succanessett, from whence they made their way through the forest to Sand- wich, doubtless having received information from Nicho- las Upshal of sympathetic persons whom they conid find. there.
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SUCKANESSET
They reached Sandwich on June 20, 1658 and three days later were arrested by the notorious marshall or con- stable, George Barlow, who charged them with being "ex- travagant persons and vagabonds". The Sandwich mag- istrates refused to act in the matter, so after holding them prisoners in his own house for six days, Barlow took them to Barnstable and by his representations secured from the magistrates there an order that each Quaker should be given thirty-three lashes with "a new tormenting whip with three cords and knots at the end."
Reading the unimpeachable record of hideous perse- cution and cruelty, we can only commend Isaac Robinson for his sympathy with them, which after he had been ap- pointed in 1659 to attend Quaker meetings "in order to endeavour to seduce them from the error of their ways" led him to champion the right of the Quakers to their religious beliefs until the zealots of his own faith denounced him as "a manifest opposer of the laws" and secured his disfranchisement on June 6, 1660:
No wonder after such a sorry scene that Isaac Rob- inson was anxious to remove from Barnstable and seek peace and liberty in the wilderness thirty miles across the Cape, at Succanesset. After him quite naturally came other Quakers, John Jenkins, Thomas Ewer, Anthony Annable and his daughter Hannah who married Thomas Bourman (Bowerman). At Sandwich John Jenkins had been fined 19 pounds 10 shillings and Thomas Ewer 25 pounds, 8 shillings for their espousal of the Quaker cause.
Robert Harper, another Quaker who settled in Fal- mouth in 1668, had been imprisoned in Boston and re- ceived fifteen stripes there, his fines in Sandwich total 44 pounds which stripped him of house, land and all cattle except "one cow, which was so poor she was ready to dye."
William Gifford, another Quaker who removed from Sandwich to West Falmouth, had been mulcted of fifteen head of cattle, "half a horse" and "half a swine", totaling in value 57 pounds, 19 shillings. Other Quakers early settled at "Sipperwisset" included John and William Weeks, Thomas Johnson, Joseph Hull. Lands were laid out at Oyster Pond, Hog Island (Chappaquoit) and Great Sipperwisset in 1678, although many of these men had been living there since as early as 1668, and we can gain a little insight into the value of these properties by the record that in 1678 Joseph Hull, moving from Yarmouth to Falmouth, bought of Zach Perkins the estate which
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IN QUAKER DRAB
Zach had bought of William Weeks, sen. for 105 pounds, although there is no statement of the size of the estate.
However, light may be thrown on that point by the apportionment of land according to the record of the first proprietor's meeting Nov. 29, 1661, where 8 acres seems to be the customary size of the lot where the house was to be built, four acres more of pasture by the pond for each.
The names of the original proprietors who took up land in 1661 at Succanesset were Jonathan Hatch, John Chapman, John Jenkins, Jesse Hamlin, Anthony Anna- ble, William Nelson, Samuel Hinckley, Captain Nathaniel Thomas, Samuel Fuller, Thomas Lathrop, Peter Blossom, James Cobb and Thomas Ewer. Also Isaac Robinson who is described as having already built him a house between Fresh and Salt Ponds while Jonathan Hatch's home is mentioned "his house lying against the neck and leaving a sufficient way into the neck"-neck doubtless referring to the rising ground which includes the Moors of today and "Katy Hatch's Hill."
Tradition has it that the first settlers came by boat along the shore of the sound, and the likelihood of this is borne out indirectly by the fact that Isaac Robinson in taking his letter of dismissal from the Barnstable Church received one to the church on Martha's Vineyard, as though he had half-considered settling there, and stopped off instead at Falmouth, attracted by its natural advant- ages, not the least of which to Robinson in the bitter mood following his disfranchisement would have been its solitude.
From the old records we glean a few facts about cer- tain others which at least serve to indicate something of the type of Englishmen who settled this town, though as will be seen by the reader, several of them either never lived on the lands they took up, or possibly leased them, or worked them while maintaining their residence in Barnstable. As there were no schools, no church at Suc- canessett in the beginning, there would be decided ad- vantages to having headquarters in the larger settlement. We may imagine, though to what degree it is true no one can tell, that some of these men may have erected only 'camps' in Falmouth, coming there in the spring to work crops and returning for the winter to Barnstable.
The ties of kinship were strongly influential in at- tracting new settlers. Thus Anthony Annable, who had
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SUCKANESSET
lands lotted to him at Succanessett but never appears to have lived there, was father-in-law of Thomas Bowerman, whose son Thomas, born in Barnstable 1648, removed to Falmouth buying of Jonathan Hatch and Robert Harper as agents land on the easterly side of Five Mile River. His son Benjamin, who died in 1723, lived at Teaticket and was part owner of two sloops, the Falmouth and the Woods Hole, an interesting fragment of information re- vealing both early ship-building in the town and the early use of the name "Woods Hole." Again, reverting to the influence of family ties, Moses Rowley, to whom lands were laid out at Quissett in 1677, was a brother-in-law of Jonathan Hatch who had married Sarah Rowley of West Barnstable.
The first public road was not laid out until 1689 "a king's highway, forty feet wide, through the land that was Thomas Johnson's to the Little Harbor, and from the land to Joseph Hatch's where the way now goes and so through to the Five-Mile River." This was, doubtless, a confirmation of the informal footpath worn by feet of Indians, of surveyors, of travellers from the Vineyard which in 1667 we saw referred to as "the highway which leads from Barnstable to Succanessett. Since the Fal- mouth church was not incorporated until 1708, when the. West Barnstable Church dismissed 19 members for that purpose, many miles of pious pilgrimage on Sundays must have gone to the making of that footpath in the early days of Falmouth. We are not to suppose, however, that there was no worship in Falmouth previous to 1708, for in 1700 the Rev. Samuel Shiverick is, on a vote of 15 pounds, April 7, quit-claiming "all dues for salary promised when he came here," and in 1703, "it was voted to pay John Robinson 2d and Thomas Bassett 4s for work about the town house", which seems to have been a building near the old burying ground, not sanctified, but used for gen- eral assembly purposes and the next year by phraseology is metamorphosed into "the meeting house".
Schools did not become a pressing problem for sev- eral years, until 1701, when the records first speak of vot- ing "to look out for a fit person to preach the word of God and to keep school", but the creature comforts were more promptly attended to, since in 1664, Isaac Robinson "was approved and allowed by the Court to keep an ordinary at Saconesset for the entertainment of strangers-in re- gard that it doth appear that there is a great recourse to
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THE OLD BOWERMAN HOUSE
TREE FROM A SPLICE FENCE
IN QUAKER DRAB
and fro by travellers to Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, etc."
Of the original band of settlers granted lands in 1661 in Sucannessett, seven surnames are still to be found on our voting list in 1930-Hatch, Bowerman, Robinson, Jenkins, Hamblin, Fuller and Hinckley.
The old Bowerman house, with its quaintly bowed roof, like the stooped shoulders of an old, old man, has stood in its hollow at West Falmouth, between the high moors and the low salt marshes almost since the settle- ment of Falmouth. From its door stepped demure Quak- er ladies to mount on massive wooden saddles on oxen to make the fifteen-mile journey through the forest to the Friend's Meeting at Sandwich, before the first Friends meeting House was built in West Falmouth.
The old house holds fast to its own. Its present mistress, born Virtue Bowerman, is married to Arnold Gifford, a descendant of the first Quaker to settle in West Falmouth, whose homestead adjoined the Bowerman property. On the wall in the old livingroom today is framed a photograph of the original deed to the land, from Job Noantico, Indian Sachem, to William Gifford in the year 1673, A. D. To match it, Mrs. Gifford brings out the original deed in which Thomas Bowerman gave to his son Benjamin the 450-odd acres and house.
· There have been additions to the house, naturally, by one or another of the nine generations of Bowermans who were born, lived and died here; but so sturdy was the frame that the original portion is still clearly trace- able. The hand-hewn joists and rafters, the two-foot wide wall paneling of pine, disclose that two hundred and fifty years ago the Bowermans, father and tall sons, built them a two-storied house around a huge chimney stack built up of flat stones of grey schist.
The chimney is unique in this part of the country where early settlers favored log cabins with chimneys of the same chinked with clay and moss; and set their hearts on having a chimney of real bricks as the mark of fashion. Other old Cape houses have brick chimneys as a rule.
The Quakers who settled at West Falmouth came there as to a wilderness where they might avoid contact with other settlers as much as possible. When the Bower- man's built, it would have meant real peril of being cast into jail at Barnstable or Plymouth to go to those
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settlements to traffic for bricks to build their chimney. So they gathered, with back-breaking labour, the great grey flat stones from the glaciated hills of their home- stead and built the chimney and the wide hearths of the five fireplaces in it.
The original "entry" opened against the one blank wall of the chimney, with a narrow, winding flight of stairs leading to the second story. On either hand, facing the south, were small rooms, and at the rear the kitchen, heart of the household, ran the width of the house with a great fireplace that would hold a six-foot log comfort- ably on the inner wall. Each side room had a smaller fireplace set into the central chimney stack; and upstairs the two unfinished chambers beneath the roof were di- vided by the chimney, and each had a fireplace.
Thomas Bowerman was born at Barnstable in 1648 his father being also Thomas Bowerman who in 1633 had the contract for building the fort at Plymouth. In 1678 the son married Mary, daughter of Robert Harper, a well- known Quaker, who was an "Agent" in the early purchase of land from the Indians at Succanessett.
About 1700 Thomas Bowerman was a Selectman in the Town. He was also, according to town records, em- ployed "to repair the towne house," showing that he was a leading craftsman as carpenter and builder. It would seem probable that the old house, with its sturdy con- struction was built by this 'master joiner'; especially as Mrs. Virtue Bowerman Gifford has an old document, handed down in the family as the title to the property, which is a conveyance by Thomas Bowerman, dated Nov- ember 3, 1727, to his son Benjamin Bowerman of several parcels of land, together with the house thereon, whose description appears to be that of the present property: "all my Housing Lands and Meadow Ground. . all my lott of land on which his house now stands. . also my marsh and meadow with the beach lying at Hog Island .. also that part of Marsh lying on ye westerly side of the littel neck in Wm. Giffords field. . with all housing fencing standing on sd. land."
It is impossible, from the meagre records that exist, to date the old house more precisely. We can not tell whether Thomas Bowerman built it when he first came to Falmouth or whether, as his son Benjamin grew to man- hood, Thomas helped him to build it and deeded house and land to Benjamin in 1727. The old house at any rate is
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IN QUAKER DRAB
surely 200 years old, and possibly 230 years of age, and indisputably from 1727 to 1930 a Bowerman has dwelt in it.
The phrase in Thomas Bowerman's deed of 1727, "with all the fencing" has a significance peculiar to Cape Cod. Many of the old deeds of that period define boundaries of land "and so by a splice fence southeasterly, etc." A splice fence was formed from living trees as the quickest, simplest and most economical means of fencing in large tracts of uncleared woodland in which were pastured the great flocks of sheep and herds of cattle and swine that were the wealth of the early settlers. The town records are filled with such entries as "the earmark yt Joseph Gifford gives his creatures a mckrl (mackerel) Tail in Left Ear and a Cut under the Same." The beasts ran wild in the forest until shearing time when they were driven to Lond Pond for counting, washing, shearing. In the attic of the old Bowerman house today stand half a dozen spinning wheels, swifts, quaint apparatus for con- verting wool and flax into thread for weaving the home- spun garments.
The splice fences were formed by bending down young saplings, cutting them partly through, and lashing them together to form a continuous barrier about three feet high along the boundary of a man's land. It is a tradition in West Falmouth yet that on Seventh Day, after meeting, the old Quaker gentlemen, with axe over shoulder, would stroll around their property, keeping the splice fences in repair by a twist here, a lopping there, a strengthening of the lashings.
Here and there in the town still stand old trees pruned and trained in the lines of the old splice fences, and, to judge by the survivors, oaks were employed for the purpose.
The first Thomas Bowerman in Falmouth besides be- ing Selectman, served as Town Clerk from 1703 to 1707, testifying to his education and probity. He was further- more firm in his allegiance to the Society of Friends, refusing on principle to pay the town for the support of the minister of the Congregational Church. In the winter of 1705-6 he was committed to Barnstable Jail for nonpayment of this tax and on November 4, of that winter the Friends Meeting at Sandwich voted to send "a bed and bedding to Thomas Bourman 2nd he being in prison for the Priest's Rate."
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Even imprisonment could not break down Thomas Bowerman's adherence to his principles for conscience's sake. On March 19, 1709 the records show that the con- stable siezed two of his cows, worth five pounds and sold them for three pounds, 12 shillings two pence of tax. March 22, 1709 a cow worth three pounds, 10 shillings was sold for one pound, 13 shillings tax. Jan. 24, 1710 another cow was seized and sold. Jan. 11, 1715 again a cow was taken for his Priest's Rate. Sept. 9, 1715 the constable book off "one fat swine." Nov. 21, 1716 it was two calves. Oct. 10, 1728, five sheep; Oct. 30, 1728, twelve pounds of wool There seems to have been a son, Thomas Bower- man 3d, who was ermally uncompromising, for the coz- stable siezed from him, in 1728 three bushels of malt, a linen wheel and a basin, to satisfy his unpaid taxes for the minister.
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