USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Falmouth > Suckanesset; wherein may be read a history of Falmouth, Massachusetts > Part 8
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All day Captain Weston Jenkins and his company stood by their cannon in their entrenchments. At sunset, with the coming of darkness, the bombardment ceased, and the men returned to be stayed with a meal that intre- pid women had been cooking in the kitchens exposed to fire all day. Captain Jenkins' own wife, Mistress Betsy (Elizabeth Robinson Jenkins) despatching her younger children to a neighbor for safe-keeping, and bidding her eldest son John to harness the black mare to the chaise and leave her hitched to the fence near the kitchen door for escape in case the British effected a landing, had worked all day to prepare food for the fasting company of three hundred men in the trenches, although her son afterward used to thrill his children by describing how the balls from the Nimrod's thirty-two pounders fell so near that he could watch them rebound on the frozen ground.
Watch was kept all that night, but at dawn the next morning, the Nimrod, discouraged by the steadfast front of the militia on shore, weighed anchor and sailed away.
Our gallant red-headed Captain Weston Jenkins and his associates of the Falmouth Battalion of Artillery did not rest upon their laurels after successfully defending their two brass field-pieces from the British Frigate Nim- rod in January, 1814.
Although the Nimrod had been forced to retire ignominiously with no more satisfaction than having ripped up some feather beds and shattered Elijah Swift's decanters by the bombardment from her thirty-two
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pounders, the British privateer Retaliation, familiarly called "the Liverpool packet" by the Cape folks who wit- nessed her coming and goings in the Sound, continued to harass shipping.
On the afternoon of October 28th, she was seen beat- ing up the Sound towards Tarpaulin Cove where she was wont to anchor. It was cloudy weather, and there was to be no moon that night, the opportunity seemed too good to Captain Weston Jenkins to be let slip. Drum and fife with lively tune soon called thirty-one other volun- teers, and they set out in Jenkins' sloop "The Two Friends." Off Woods Hole, the wind died, and they rowed down towards Tarpaulin Cove. About three-quarters of a mile from the Retaliation, they were apprised that their approach was observed by having a gun fired over them. Feigning meek obedience, the Two Friends lay to, and Captain Jenkins ordered all but two of the crew to conceal themselves in silence beneath the bulwarks. A boat, containing Captain Porter of the Retaliation and five armed men, put off and ranged alongside the Two Friends, thinking her an easy prize, until Captain Jenkins, by a stamp of his foot, summoned a bristling array of musketmen along his counter. The British captain drew his pistol and leveled it at Jenkins, but thought better of his impulse when Jenkins curtly informed him "One more move and I'll send you all to the bottom!" The British captain and crew being taken on board, the Two Friends was then very quietly rowed down to the Retaliation which was taken completely by surprise and carried with- out resistance.
The wind had sprung up again, and the tide turned, so that the Two Friends and her prize the privateer were easily worked down the Sound, rounding Nobska Point and making in for the wharf at the foot of Shore Street, where a crowd of relatives of the Falmouth volunteers and townspeople was anxiously keeping vigil. According to pre-arranged signals, one of the starboard guns of the Retaliation was fired in sign that the men of the Two Friends were victorious with the loss of no lives, and there was great rejoicing when the privateer was brought to the wharf and her valuable cargo, mostly plunder taken from American vessels, was unloaded. These goods were distributed among the people of Falmouth, and although no record has come down, it is to be presumed that the
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Retaliation was sold and the prize money divided among the crew of the Two Friends.
Captain Porter and his crew were marched up to Bos- ton and turned over to the authorities as prisoners of war and it is reported that a number of years later the captain of the Retaliation chanced to meet a Falmouth man and discussed with him the capture, saying "That Yankee captain played me a damned sharp trick, but he treated me like a gentleman."
After seeing active service in such thrilling naval en- gagements as that of the Nimrod and the Retaliation in 1814, besides the constant sentry duty, guarding the coast during the war, we should not be surprised to find the men of the Falmouth Artillery Battalion a bit 'blase' when it came to turning out for a field day in peace times at Sandwich. They were ready enough, in 1814, to haul a brass cannon down to Shore Street and go into action against a British frigate; but they probably thought it a good deal of a bore to be expected to drag them all the way to Sandwich for a dress parade in times of peace, which perhaps accounts for the court-martials referred to in a previous chapter.
In 1819 Captain Weston Jenkins resigned the Cap- taincy of the company, receiving an honorable discharge and Nathaniel Shiverick took his place, but two years later, in 1821 was promoted to command of the battalion formed of the Falmouth and Brewster artillery com- panies, as Major which post he held until 1831.
Samuel Shiverick, Jr., was adjutant of the battalion under Major Shiverick from 1823 till 1831.
Jesse Noble was the third company Captain of Fal- mouth, serving from 1822 till 1825 when he was honorably discharged and Silvanus Hatch held office from 1826-7 till he was promoted to brigade major of the Third Bri- gade, 5th Division Massachusetts militia. The third bri- gade included Barnstable County and was comprised of three regiments of infantry and one artillery battalion.
On May 13, 1831 by a general order from headquar- ters, the Artillery battalion to which the Falmouth com- pany belonged was disbanded, the country having entered on an era of peace in which no need of its further services appeared.
The two brass cannon and the tumbrel were returned to the authorities in Boston. A few years ago application was made at the State house to see whether they could
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be found and returned to Falmouth as souvenirs of a fine chapter in her history, but it was learned that long be- fore, being obsolete in style, they had been melted for scrap.
The old blue coats and pantaloons with their facings of faded red were eaten by moths or turned to rags long ago, but that the valiant spirit of the Falmouth men of 1812 in the artillery company was of the fibre that cannot perish was proved when another Weston Jenkins, great- grandson of Captain Weston Jenkins of Falmouth, was decorated in the World War for bravery in action on the Argonne.
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CHAPTER X
LIVE OAK AND ELM TREES
I N the two hundred and fifty years of Falmouth's history no single character has exerted a greater influence, nor left more lasting marks on the course of events in the township than Elijah Swift, whose portrait, since it hangs in the Library and in the Falmouth National Bank, is probably familiar to many.
Elijah Swift was born in 1774, the son of William Swift. He was born, says one correspondent "on the banks of the Coonemesset River."
The original William Swift had his homestead at the western end of Jenkins Pond in Hatchville, and for sev- eral generations William was a family name. The Swift house was, at a date unknown to us, moved to East Fal- mouth near the location of the old Pacific Mills, and Elijah was born there August 16, 1774, the oldest son of William and Martha Swift. His father, William was born in 1747, and is, we think, a child of William Swift and Darkis Hatch who were married in 1744.
Elijah had no other education than that obtained in the district school, and learned the trade of house car- pentry in which he became a master mechanic. In Sep- tember, 1798, when Elijah was twenty-four years of age, occurs the first mention of his name in the records of the town, when he is noted as a subscriber of two shares in the new school-house and Masonic lodge building de- scribed in a previous chapter, and a little later is noted as the contractor for the construction of this building. That he was a good carpenter is certified by the fact that the building is still in use (1930), on Main Street.
On November 3, 1795, at the age of twenty-one, Elijah married Chloe Price. Their eldest son, Oliver C. Swift was born May 7, 1797 and a daughter Adeline on June 7, 1799, so that Elijah had two little candidates for the school already at the time he subscribed for the two
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shares in the new building. He was not a charter member of Marine Lodge, A. F. & A. M. in 1798, but he probably joined the order soon after, as we know that in 1807 he was "advanced to the degree of Royal Arch Mason."
We presume, since he was a subscriber to the village school, that Elijah after his marriage, made his home in Falmouth proper, but we have no definite evidence of this until 1812 when it is a matter of record that he dwelt on Main Street in the house that was last tenanted by Stephen G. Cahoon and was bought by the town about 1900 as a site for the present Library and World War Memorial.
Chloe Swift bore Elijah four children, Oliver, Adeline, Harriet and Dean (died in infancy) ; and on April 19, 1803, Chloe Swift died.
It was not lack of sentiment that led so frequently in the old days to early re-marriage, but the stark neces- sity of caring for little motherless children. The widower Elijah Swift, not yet thirty years old himself, had three small children, the oldest barely six years of age and it is not surprising, therefore, to find that five months later, on September 13, 1803, he married again.
His second wife was Hannah Lawrence, a sister of Thomas Lawrence, who was the grandfather of Selectman Frederick T. Lawrence, Miss Amelia Lawrence and Mrs. Fanny D. Robinson. This second marriage, through its connections, was to be the turning point in Elijah Swift's career, as it brought him into contact with Thomas Law- rence whose business was supplying houses to the Caro- linas. The lumber was cut and shaped in Falmouth, ship- ped by coasting schooners to the South and there set up.
Soon after his second marriage, Elijah seems to have embarked on these Southern ventures. At that time, the Falmouth vessels went South in the early fall, carrying lumber and, as passengers, young carpenters and me- chanics who found ready employment in the Carolinas and Georgia during the winter, while the vessels picked up charters freighting cotton, molasses, rice and sugar among the sea islands of that coast, and returning with cargoes for the North in the Spring, brought back the Cape men in time to work on their farms or at the fishing.
Elijah spent a number of seasons in this manner, and for a time conducted a store in Charleston, S. C., laying the nucleus of his fortune and making observations in which lay the germ of his great future prosperity. The
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first child of his second marriage was not born until 1808, and the proof that his re-marriage was dictated more by expediency than any lack of grief for his first wife, is that he named this first child of the second marriage for his first wife, Chloe Swift.
The interruptions of shipping which led to the War of 1812, disrupted the trade with the South, and evident- ly seriously affected Elijah's business, for he was very bitter about it. When the British, from Tarpaulin Cove, pursued the little fleet of Falmouth owned vessels that lay in Quissett Harbour, and finding them in their hiding place at Wareham burnt some ten or twelve craft, Elijah's indignation sought vent in practical action.
The British, he swore, should never keep him from the high seas, and he promptly laid the keel of a 50-ton vessel in his own yard beside his house on Main Street. This schooner, built where the Town Hall now stands, was christened Status Ante Bellum, and drawn by oxen, when completed, to the shore at the foot of King Street, where she was launched, fitted and loaded, perhaps with salt, or possibly with lumber.
Elijah had had certain experiences as a seaman, and he now set out as master of his own vessel to run the gauntlet of the British men of war and privateers. He reached Philadelphia successfully, and then shaped his course for Charleston.
Off Cape Hatteras he was overhauled by a British ship, whose captain boarded the Status Ante Bellum and asked for her papers.
On the theory that all's fair in love or war, Elijah, who had already drilled his crew in the story they were to tell, allowed the Englishman to believe that they were bound for Halifax. The papers, he stated, were properly in order with a British permit and Halifax manifest, but, unfortunately, he had stowed them in a secret hiding place beneath the cargo so that the Yankee should not find them and take him as a prize. Elijah winked and the Englishman winked back. . commending it cordially as a smart trick; would not Elijah, however, go down and get the papers that the captain might see them.
Elijah promptly pointed out the impossibility of shifting the cargo to get at them while at sea, and pro- posed that he and the British vessel sail in company to Halifax where the Britisher might refit and also see the papers when the cargo was unloaded. The Englishman
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agreed to this readily and was rowed back to his own vessel to give the needful orders.
That night, in the darkness, Elijah contrived to give him the slip, and, abandoning the Charleston project, ran for safety back to Falmouth.
The close of the War of 1812, in the year 1815 brought about two separate circumstances in whose correlation by the quick-witted and far-sighted Elijah Swift lay the germ at once of his own fortune and an era of prosperity for Falmouth.
There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune; that tide had now begun its flow for Elijah Swift and, appropriately enough, to con- tinue the metaphor, he launched upon it, not a figurative bark, but a literal fleet of ships.
With the end of the war with England, the sea was once more open to American vessels without let or hind- rance, while at the same time, enthusiastic over the vic- tories of the American Navy in the late war, the country lent support to an extensive program of naval appropria- tions.
We have seen that Elijah Swift before the war, had spent much time in the South and had a lively grasp of its potentialities. He now combining his experience in shipping, in Southern conditions and in business con- ceived the idea of furnishing Southern timber to the U. S. Government for their naval construction program.
In 1816 Elijah Swift went to Washington, returning with a contract to furnish live oak for a naval vessel, in which undertaking his brother Thomas was a partner.
This was the beginning of an extensive business in which Elijah was to be engaged for the next twenty years, and which in gross figures was to total a million dollars in that same period. The interesting feature, for us, is the tenacious affection with which Elijah Swift clung to his native town despite the pull of outside interests. In those days when there was no telegraph, no railroad, it could not but have been a considerable hardship for a man living in a corner of Cape Cod to carry on a business involving a vast amount of politics in Washington in connection with securing the contracts from the Navy Department, as well as the thousand details of the actual labor of cutting, shaping and delivering the live oak timber from the South. The obvious, the simple course, one would think, would have been for Elijah to remove
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his family nearer to the scene of his most pressing busi- ness troubles; he already had a store in Charleston, South Carolina and was well acquainted there.
There can be no other explanation of his continuing to live in Falmouth than the sentimental one that he loved the town and preferred it as a residence and home for his family. As will be seen in the course of the nar- rative, to this abstract quality of one man's affection for the town, Falmouth owes many of its most valued con- crete possessions. The whole story of Elijah Swift's life in relation to the history of Falmouth is a striking illustration in parvo of the influence of "mind upon matter", and also opens again to speculation the old query as to whether "the man of the hour" shapes his destiny and that of his times or is the tool of destiny, formed willy-nilly by the influences about him. Free will or predestination; providence or mechanism; all the old philosophical controversies of the ages can be opened afresh in thinking upon Elijah Swift and the live oak trees of the South.
Was it sheer Yankee initiative and enterprise, or the leading of the mysterious workings of fate that accounts for an obscure young carpenter from Cape Cod securing the contracts that dealt in timber from the South?
In the century-past day of wooden men-of-war, the Southern live oak was the best of the American oaks for ship-building. It is an evergreen oak, with oval, entire leaves that are dark-green above and whitish beneath. Quercus vireus is the scientific name of this variety which grows along the Atlantic coasts of the Carolinas and Florida, fifty-miles inland. The wood is heavy, close- grained and extremely durable, both exposed to the air and underneath the water.
In 1927, when repairs were being made to the famous old Constitution at Charlestown Navy Yard the newspa- pers made much of the fact that a train-load of live oak was sent from Florida for the purpose, mentioning that en route every few hours the trainmen were required to wet down the timber because for some thirty years it had been seasoned under water.
Live oak, in its natural style of growth, is exceptional- ly fitted to the ship-industry, supplying stems, aprons, futtocks and ship's knees. After a contract had been let, the Navy Department furnished to the contractor pat- terns and specifications of the live oak parts required and
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these were shaped, in the rough at least, at the scene of cutting before being forwarded to the shipyard.
In those early days of the nineteenth century yellow fever and malaria were the curse of southern coasts; germs and mosquito carriers had not yet been discovered, and people noting that the fevers were more prevalent in the hot weather and near the semi-tropical swamps, be- lieved that they were bred by the miasmas arising from the water in the summer. In 1802, for instance, a small coaster from Falmouth, whose master was Captain David Wood, had had an epidemic of yellow fever break out while at Cape Francois. On August 10th, Captain Wood died and on the same day Edward Butler, aged fifteen years and Prince Fish, aged nineteen years, both suc- cumbed to the fever, while a week later Henry Green, twnty years old and little Willard Hatch, only twelve, died also.
The vessel returned to Falmouth with the rest of the crew suffering from the dreaded "yellow jack", so weak that they could barely work the vessel, with the bodies of those who had died on deck. The Rev. Henry Lincoln, he who had married Susannah Crocker, preached a funeral sermon for the victims, presumably in the old Meeting House on the Green, taking as his text "And Only I Have Escaped to Tell", and the bodies were enterred in the Old Burying Ground.
In those days all over the Cape a boy was considered ready for sea at ten years of age. They often were ship- ped as cook on fishing vessels, or cabin boy on larger craft, and on fishing vessels, in which the earnings were apportioned in shares called 'lays', two boys were con- sidered equal to a full man's share. Little Willard Hatch, who died of yellow fever at the age of twelve years, would have been a full-fledged member of the crew of that ill- fated vessel.
In consequence of the unhealthy climate of the live oak swamps on the Southern seaboard, a definite pro- cedure was followed by Elijah Swift and other contractors in this industry.
In the early fall a great company of skilled workmen was enlisted and together with supplies was taken South on coasting vessels, and a camp constructed as head- quarters for the winter's work. During the winter the schooners were used for short freighting voyages along the coast, and in the Spring the live oak gotten out
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through the winter was sent to various specified navy yards and the workmen brought back to their northern homes.
We are permitted through the courtesy of Mrs. Kath- ryn Swift Greene to reproduce the following interesting document from her ancestor's papers:
"Memorandum of an Agreement made and concluded between E. & T. Swift on the one part and Ephraim Hathaway on the other part:
Whereas the said Ephraim Hathaway doth agree with the said E. & T. Swift to go with them to Caro- lina or Georgia to work for them at getting live oak Ship Timber for Twenty Six dollars per month and find himself in necessary tools and bedding and to work for them until the last of May if they wish and the said E. & T. Swift agree to pay the said Ephraim Hathaway Twenty Six dollars per month and find him in wholesome provisions from the time the said Ephraim sails from Falmouth for the southward and until he is discharged there (sickness excepted) and provide him a passage off and pay him his wages that may be due when he is discharged in Carolina or Georgia and likewise to put him on wages when he arrives on the spot where the timber is to be got and his tools landed.
The parties bind each other in the penal sum of Two Hundred dollars to perform the above contract.
N. B. The said Ephraim Hathaway agrees to be ready to sail from Falmouth on or about the 20th day of October next.
In witness whereof We Set our hands and seals at Berkley this 22nd day of September 1818.
signed Ephraim Hathaway
signed and sealed in the presence of
Samuel Tobey, 2nd.
The Stone Dock at the foot of Shore Street had been built in 1817, and we may presume that on. or about the 20th day of October there were busy doings in Falmouth, with workmen arriving from all parts of the countryside surrounding, laden down with their baggage, bedding and tools. Some took their families with them, increasingly so as the years went by, the business flourished and the winter live-oaking camps became an institution.
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Some idea of the magnitude of the business may be gained from the fact that in the year 1818, when Ephraim Hathaway signed up to go live-oaking for the Swift bro- thers, Elijah Swift's contract with the Navy Department for material for a ship of the line and a frigate amounted to $81,157.40, which was a very large sum in those times.
The camp was generally pitched, presumably for healthfulness, on one of the many small wooded islands that cluster along the Southern coast.
In 1833 a romance issued from the live-oaking. Har- riet Chase, of a Vermont family that had moved to War- ren, R. I., spent a winter in the South with the family of a Rev. Mr. Taylor. Returning in the Spring, on the same boat was a young man named Thomas Lawrence Swift, the son of Elijah and Hannah (Lawrence) Swift, who had been born in 1810 and now, aged 22, having grown up with the live-oaking industry, was trusted by his fa- ther with the oversight of the winter's work in the South. August 1, 1833, Harriet Chase and young Thomas Law- rence Swift were married in New Bedford.
In October of that same year, Thomas L. Swift had again to go South with the crew of workmen for live-oak- ing, and he decided to take his bride with him. As com- pany for her, her sister Frances was invited and came by boat to Woods Hole .. For some reason Harriet was not able to meet her sister and Thomas' young brother, George Washington Swift was sent with the carriage to meet the guest, and drive her to the family home in Fal- mouth. The day of the flapper had not dawned, and the two sisters from Saxon Falls, Vt., were thoroughly drilled in the etiquette of the day. "I was not introduced to Mr. Swift until I reached my sister" wrote Frances Chase. What a charming picture it all makes-the white sailed vessel making into Woods Hole harbor, the young lad waiting on the wharf, the pretty young lady, fairy-like in her tiny figure, tripping down the gangplank. He must have asked if she were Miss Chase, she must have mur- mured an affirmative answer; her trunk was slung up from the deck to the wharf, perhaps loaded into the back of the carriage, and then through the four-mile drive up over the Quissett hills, through the winding wooded curves, the young lady sits primly beside the youthful driver until she reaches sister Harriet and can be de- corously introduced to her brother-in-law. It is a family tradition that it was a case of love at first sight on that
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