USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > The story of Essex County, Volume II > Part 40
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In the mild winter of 1664-65, another comet appeared. "The great and dreadful comet," as Josselyn called it, was first seen on the 8th of November. Night after night, the whole winter through, "the great blazing starre" took its position in the southern sky as soon as the stars began to glint in the evening constellations. Its size and extreme brilliancy greatly alarmed the people. Morton said that it was "no fiery meteor caused by exhalation, but it appeared to be sent immediately by God to awake the secure world." Among the events which were believed to have been portended by this comet, according to a writer of the times, were "the great and dreadful plague in England the next summer, the dreadful war by sea with the Dutch, and the burning of London the second year following."
Probably the largest comet ever seen in New England by the English-speaking race was the Newtonian comet of 1680. It was first seen at Boston at five o'clock on the morning of November 14, 1680, appearing in the southeastern sky. The sky being clear, it appeared at first plainly, but in a few moments vanished as day was beginning to dawn. It appeared earlier and earlier in the morning until about Decem-
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ber 8, when it could be seen in the evening. It continued to be visible till February 10, when it was beyond the reach of the naked eye. Five hundred and forty years being required to complete its circuit, it will not be seen again here until the year 2220. Increase Mather gave a lecture on this comet, saying in his introduction that "As for this blazing star, which hath occasioned this discourse, it was a terrible sight indeed, especially about the middle of December last, the stream of such a stupendous magnitude as that few men now living ever beheld the like." The Governor and Council of the Massachusetts Bay Colony appointed a general fast, one reason assigned for it in the proclamation being "that awful, portentous, blazing star, usually foreboding some calamity to the beholder thereof," and the greatest strictness was observed by the people in keeping it.
DARK DAYS-There are at least three days in the period of Essex county that are denominated dark days, if we include the "yellow day" of September 6, 1881.2
September 6, the yellow day, so-called. Early in the after- noon the air assumed a dim, brassy hue. The obscuration was so great that common newspaper print could not be easily read without artificial light; the faces of people were of a light saffron hue, and the grass and foliage had a marked golden tinge. The day was close and warm and the smell of smoke was perceptible. The first was October 21, 1716, and the second May 19, 1780.
On each of these days the smell of smoke pervaded the air, indi- cating large fires. This was, without doubt, the cause of the thick clouds that enveloped this region at those times. At the time of these several occurrences the ground was bare and forest fires were raging. The most notable of the dark days, that of 1780, occurred at a time when the settlement of northern and northeastern New England was being pushed with vigor. The smoke no doubt came from the great fires made by the settlers in clearing their land for cultivation. They selected the ground to be cleared, and in the win- ter cut the trees half way through the trunks, breast high. When all had been so cut, one tree was felled at some adjacent point against the trees standing near, causing them also to fall. By this means the
2. Hurd: "History of Essex County," Vol. I, p. 390. (Philadelphia, 1888.)
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whole tract of great primeval trees, with a grand and terrific crash, became in a few minutes a huge pile of combustibles forty feet in height and covering acres of ground. The snow melted and the resinous boughs became dry early in May. Then fire was placed under the immense pile, and for a week or more the great bonfire continued to consume the logs and stumps amid which, in the soil mixed with the ashes, the corn and other crops were subsequently planted.
The dark day of October 21, 1716, occurred on Sunday, between eleven and twelve o'clock in the forenoon, when most of the people were attending religious services. At about eleven the outlines of objects could not be seen distinctly, and no one could see to read a word in the psalm book. Some ministers sent to the houses of the people that lived near for candles, others sat down and waited for the sky to clear, or the coming of the Lord to be announced. After a half hour of anxious suspense, light slowly returned, and the cus- tomary life went on.
Friday, May 19, 1780, will go down in history as "the dark day." In the morning the sun rose clear, but was soon overcast. The clouds became lowery, and from them, black and ominous as they soon appeared, lightning flashed, thunder rolled, and a little rain fell. Towards nine o'clock the clouds became thinner, and assumed a brassy or coppery appearance, and earth, rocks, trees, buildings, water, and persons were changed by this strange, unearthly light. A few minutes later a heavy black cloud spread over the entire sky except a narrow rim at the horizon, and it was as dark as it usually is at nine o'clock on a summer evening. Some ladies in Ipswich were busy weaving that morning, and at this stage of the darkness were compelled to relinquish their labor.
Fear, anxiety, and awe gradually filled the minds of the people. Women stood at the door looking out upon the dark landscape; men returned from their labor in the fields; the carpenter left his tools, the blacksmith his forge, the tradesman his counter. Schools were dis- missed, and tremblingly the children fled homeward. Travelers put up at the nearest farmhouse. "What is coming?" queried every lip and heart. It seemed as if a hurricane was about to dash across the land, or as if it was the day of the consummation of all things.
Candles were used, and hearth-fires shone as brightly as on a moonless evening in autumn. At Haverhill a person twenty rods
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away could not be seen, and one person could not be distinguished from another in a room having three large windows.
Fowls retired to their roosts and went to sleep, cattle gathered at the pasture bars and lowed, frogs peeped, birds sang their evening songs and bats flew about. But the human knew that the night had not come.
In some places excited persons ran about the streets shouting, "The day of judgment is at hand!" People asked forgiveness of each other for wrongs done to them. Others prayed, for the first and last time. A number of sailors, with bravado, went noisily along the streets in Salem crying out to the ladies they met, "Now you may off your rolls and high caps."
Dr. Nathaniel Whittaker, pastor of the Tabernacle Church in Salem, held religious services in the meetinghouse and preached a sermon in which he maintained that the darkness was supernatural. Congregations came together in many other places. The texts for the extemporaneous sermons were invariably those that seemed to indicate that the darkness was consonant with scriptural prophecy. Devout fathers gathered their families around them in their homes and conducted religious services ; and for a few hours Christians were stirred to activity, and non-professors earnestly sought for salvation.
The darkness was most intense shortly after eleven o'clock. The afternoon was somewhat lighter, the brassy appearance of the morn- ing returning just before sunset. The clouds then returned, and the evening was the darkest probably that the people of New England have ever experienced, though the moon was full and rose at nine. With the night the gloom and fear passed, and the sunlight of another day was never more welcomed.
Though the darkness extended over the central portions of New England, it was most dense in Essex County, this being the center, probably, of the mass of clouds that retained the smoke in so uncom- mon a manner.
THE AURORA BOREALIS-"December 11th, 1719. Be- tween seven and eight o'clock at night, the moon being near the full, it might want two days, there appeared in ye north above like a rainbow, but it was white. It seemed to reach from northwest to northeast, and it was more strait in the middle than a rainbow. It seemed to be eight foot wide.
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It looked like a cloud. There appeared in the north clouds which looked very red and seemed to flie up allmost over- head, as if they had been driven with a farse wind and then parted to the east and so vanished away. The white cloud or bow remained an hour or two. Between ten and eleven there appeared a cloud which came from the northwest like a mist. We could see the stars through it. It was as red as blood or crimson, but not a thick red. My eies saw it."
Thus wrote Stephen Jaques, of Newbury, in his diary. Except in March, 1718, and May 15, 1719, this was the first time, as far as known, that the northern lights were seen by the New England peo- ple; and, it is said, that in England they were noticed for the first time in 1716. There was a general fear in both countries that calamity would follow such an appearance, and probably because of its color, that such disaster would be the loss of human life, perhaps the final destruction of all things. As the people became accustomed to such exhibitions, most of them became less fearful of direful con- sequences following.
Dr. Edward A. Holyoke, of Salem, wrote in his diary, December 29, 1736: "The first aurora borealis I ever saw. The northern sky seemed suffused with a dark blood-red colored vapor, without any variety of different-colored rays. I have never seen the like." The appearance was supposed to have reference to the awful plague, called the throat distemper, which took away the lives of many hun- dreds of children throughout this section from 1735 to 1737. Just before our war with Mexico occurred, the red aurora appeared in its deepest color, and many persons that saw it have believed that it was a forerunner of that bloody conflict.
THE SHOWER OF METEORS IN 1833-On November 13, 1833, an extraordinary shower of meteors occurred early in the morning, and continued several hours. As computed by Arago, not less than 240,000, some of great brilliancy, were at one time visible above the horizon of Boston. They radiated from a point near the zenith and shot forth with great velocity, bending their course towards the hori- zon, and were of various sizes, with well-defined trains. Their bodies were not very dense, and though some explosions were heard, most of them rushed noiselessly onward. The "shower," if so it should
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be called, extended all over the United States; indeed, over the whole of North America, if not over the whole world, invisible in some places on account of sunlight or clouds. No entirely satisfactory explanation has yet been given. It has, however, been ascertained that similar occurrences take place periodically, though there is no record of any that approached this in brilliancy.
"THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT"-Whittier's witty account in his "Prose Works" of the "Great Ipswich Fright" in 1775 has pre- served for us one of the lighter sides of the many disasters and strange phenomena in the history of Essex County. As Whittier pointed out, "It was certainly lucky for the good people of Essex County that no wicked wag of a Tory undertook to immortalize in rhyme their ridiculous hegira, as Judge Hopkinson did the famous Battle of the Kegs in Philadelphia." One should picture Whittier with tongue in cheek as he wrote these words, for certainly the fame of the "Great Ipswich Fright," save for Whittier's intervention, could scarcely have survived to this day.
The tale itself, as we get it from Whittier, runs about as follows : On the 21st of April, 1775, a rumor of unaccountable origin sud- denly flew about the quiet village of Ipswich that the British Regu- lars, craving vengeance for their defeat at Lexington two days before, had landed on the coast and were at that very moment marching to attack the town. Every able-bodied man, woman and child in Ips- wich rushed to the village green in front of the meetinghouse. Resist- ance to the British was out of the question, for every man in town, and in all the region about, capable of bearing arms, had previously marched off to Cambridge and Lexington. In fact, the news of the Lexington fight had but just reached Ipswich, and many were the fearful accounts in circulation of atrocities committed by the British. It was even believed that the latter now contemplated nothing less than complete extermination of the inhabitants.
Almost simultaneously, the same dreadful rumor struck Beverly, a few miles distant, and in that place a similar terror gripped the people. In Beverly, furthermore, it was understood that the British had already attacked Ipswich and had relentlessly massacred the entire populace.
On this same day, so the story goes, the people of Newbury, ten miles to the north, were assembled in their town hall to hear the
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latest news of the Lexington fight, when they were suddenly inter- rupted by the breathless arrival of a mounted courier with the news of the sack of Ipswich and the imminent arrival in Newbury of the British vanguard. Panic seized the town, and with one accord all the inhabitants crossed the Merrimac and fled along the road to Salisbury. There they spent the night in houses newly abandoned by their owners who, it seems, stricken by the same strange terror, had sought safety further north.
All through the night the fearful rumors spread, no one could tell how. At midnight, Whittier's grandfather, residing in Haver- hill, twenty miles up the river from Newbury, was awakened by a distracted horseman who besought him to arm and defend himself, declaring that large numbers of British invaders had landed on Plum Island. Haverhill was soon in an uproar, and until dawn boatmen worked like mad to convey the inhabitants across the river to the New Hampshire line and safety.
Among the few-the lame, the halt, and the more courageous- who meanwhile had remained in Ipswich, resolved to face the army of invaders, was one young man from Exeter, New Hampshire, by the name of Eliphalet Hale.3 His suspicions had been early aroused by the continued failure of the British advance guard to materialize. At last becoming convinced that the fears of his fellow-townsmen had been inexplicably and most cruelly played upon, he set out on horse- back to convey that intelligence. Riding into Newbury at midnight, he spread the glad tidings to the few who had lingered there, then posted on to Salisbury and Haverhill, where his words of good cheer -as no doubt he intended-were received as it were with mixed feelings. Something loath, the doughty patriots returned to their waiting homes. And it was many a year before even the most casual of allusions to the "Great Ipswich Fright" could be made and received in Essex County with anything like equanimity.
THE SEA SERPENT-(From Lewis & Newhall : "History of Lynn." Boston, 1865, Vol. I, p. 382f.)
That singular marine animal, called the sea serpent, first made his appearance in the waters of Lynn in 1819. It was alleged that it had been seen in August, 1817, and 1818, in Gloucester harbor.
3. According to the account in Coffin's "History of Newbury" (Boston, 1845), p. 246.
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On the 13th and 14th days of August, 1819, many hundred per- sons were collected on Lynn beach by a report that it was to be seen.4 Many depositions have subsequently been taken of its appearance. It was represented to have been from fifty to seventy feet in length, as large as a barrel, moving swiftly, sometimes with its head several feet above the tide. I have not seen such an animal, but perhaps it exists; and it may be one of the mighty existing relics of a buried world. In 1638, Dr. John Josselyn tells us of "A Sea Serpent or Snake that lay coiled up, like a cable, upon a Rock at Cape Ann. A boat passing by, with English aboard, and two Indians, they would have shot the serpent, but the Indians dissuaded them, saying that if he were not killed outright, they would be in danger of their lives."
The learned Agassiz says, in a lecture delivered at Philadelphia on March 20, 1849, "I have asked myself in connection with this sub- ject, whether there is not such an animal as the sea serpent. There are many who will doubt the existence of such a creature until it can be brought under the dissecting knife; but it has been seen by so many on whom we may rely, that it is wrong to doubt any longer. The truth is, however, that if a naturalist had to sketch the outlines of an Ichthyosaurus or Plesiosaurus from the remains we have of them, he would make a drawing very similar to the sea serpent as it has been described. There is reason to think that the parts are soft and perishable, but I still consider it probable that it will be the good for- tune of some person on the coast of Norway or North America to find a living representative of this type of reptile, which is thought to have died out."
The late prominent Boston merchant and worthy gentleman, Amos Lawrence, under date of April 26, 1849, writes : "I have never had any doubt of the existence of the sea serpent since the morning he was seen off Nahant by old Marshal Prince, through his famous mast- head spy-glass. For, within the next two hours I conversed with Mr. Samuel Cabot, and Mr. Daniel P. Parker, I think, and one or more persons besides, who had spent a part of that morning in wit- nessing its movements. In addition, Col. Harris, the commander at
4. It happened to be the year in which the notable Nahant Hotel was built, the fame of which went rapidly abroad, attracting great numbers of genteel guests; but whether the serpent was emulous of being reckoned in with such company, or was merely summoned as an outside attraction, it is not the purpose here to inquire, no matter what the envious keepers of other establishments and their friends surmised. Hurd: "History of Essex County," II, 1482.
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Fort Independence, told me that the creature had been seen by a number of his soldiers while standing sentry in the early dawn, some time before this show at Nahant; and Col. Harris believed it as firmly as though the creature were drawn up before us in State street, where we then were. I again say, I have never, from that day to this, had a doubt of the sea serpent's existence."
James Prince, Esq., marshal of the district, to whom Mr. Law- rence refers above, wrote as follows to Hon. Judge Davis, under date of August 16, 1819 :
"MY DEAR SIR :- I presume I may have seen what is gen- erally thought to be the sea serpent. I have also seen my name inserted in the evening newspaper printed at Boston on Saturday, in a communication on this subject. For your grati- fication, and from a desire that my name may not sanction any- thing beyond what was actually presented and passed in review before me, I will now state that which, in the presence of more than two hundred other witnesses, took place near the Long Beach of Nahant, on Saturday morning last.
"Intending to pass two or three days with my family at Nahant we left Boston early on Saturday morning. On pass- ing the Half-way House on the Salem turnpike, Mr. Smith informed us the sea serpent had been seen the evening before at Nahant beach, and that a vast number of people from Lynn had gone to the beach that morning in hopes of being grati- fied with a sight of him; this was confirmed at the Hotel. I was glad to find I had brought my famous mast-head spy-glass with me, as it would enable me, from its form and size, to view him to advantage, if I might be so fortunate as to see him. On our arrival on the beach we associated with a consider- able collection of persons on foot and in chaises, and very soon an animal of the fish kind made his appearance. . .
"His head appeared about three feet out of water; I counted thirteen bunches on his back; my family thought there were fifteen. He passed three times at a moderate rate across the bay, but so fleet as to occasion a foam in the water; and my family and self, who were in a carriage, judged that he was from fifty to not more than sixty feet in length. . As he swam up the bay, we and the other spectators moved on
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and kept nearly abreast of him. He occasionally drew him- self under water, and the idea occurred to me that his occa- sionally raising his head above the level of the water was to take breath, as the time he kept under was, on an average, about eight minutes. . . . .. I had seven distinct views of him from the Long Beach, so-called, and at some of them the ani- mal was not more than a hundred yards distant. After being on the Long Beach with other spectators about an hour, the ani- mal disappeared, and I proceeded on towards Nahant; but on passing the second beach I met Mr. James Magee of Bos- ton, with several ladies, in a carriage, prompted by curiosity to endeavor to see the animal; and we were again gratified beyond even what we saw in the other bay, which I concluded he had left in consequence of the number of boats in the offing in pursuit of him, the noise of whose oars must have disturbed him, as he appeared to us to be a harmless, timid animal. We had here more than a dozen different views of him, and each similar to the other; one, however, so near, that the coach- man exclaimed : 'O, see his glistening eye !' . Certain it is, he is a very strange animal."
For several years succeeding this alleged visit of the sea serpent, accounts were spread from time to time of his appearance at different points on the coast. And so many false reports were made for the transparent purpose of attracting visitors to the marine resorts, that doubts increased as to the existence of this solitary rover of the deep.
Little has been heard of him of late years. In 1849, however, John Marston, a respectable and credible resident of Swampscott, made oath that as he was walking over Nahant Beach, on the 3d of August, his attention was suddenly arrested by seeing in the water, within two or three hundred yards of the shore, a singular-looking fish, in the form of a serpent. He had a fair view of him, and at once concluded that he was the veritable sea serpent. His head was out of water to the extent of about a foot, and he remained in view from fifteen to twenty minutes, when he swam off toward King's Beach. Mr. Marston judged that the animal was from eighty to one hun- dred feet in length, at least, and says, "I saw the whole body of the serpent; not his wake, but the fish itself. It would rise in the water
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with an undulatory motion, and then all his body would sink, except his head. Then his body would rise again. His head was above water all the time. This was about eight o'clock, A. M. It was quite calm. I have been constantly engaged in fishing since my youth, and I have seen all sorts of fishes, and hundreds of horse-mackerel, but I never before saw anything like this."
In that excellent and entertaining book, "The Case for the Sea Serpent," by Lieutenant-Commander R. T. Gould of the Royal Navy (London, 1930), the author devotes as many as forty pages to "The New England Sea Serpent," excerpts of which are reproduced below. But first, his "Introduction" yields the following :
"The sea serpent has, of course, long been relegated by that infallible arbiter, public opinion, to the limbo of 'silly season' topics, in company with the giant gooseberry, while signs are not wanting that his vogue, even in such humble surroundings, is not what it was. He is paying the penalty for over-exploitation in bygone days, when there were still a few trusting folks who believed what they saw in print. Today, I doubt whether anything less than the installation of a living sea serpent at the Zoo-a contingency which I regard as extremely improbable-would carry conviction with the public as a proof of his existence. I am quite certain that the best authenticated narratives of unimpeachable eye-witnesses would, singly, be insufficient : and when I make that assertion I am on tolerably safe ground, for many such narratives are on record, and have never been satisfactorily explained away. Broadly speaking, it may be said that those who don't know the facts of the case regard the sea serpent as an exploded myth-those who do, don't."
Lieutenant-Commander Gould, after quoting the testimony of John Marston, experienced fisherman of Swampscott (q. v. supra), as to his having seen the Nahant Beach sea serpent of 1819, goes on to say :
"I cannot discover that the creature was again seen off Nahant, but the same, or a very similar one, was observed in Gloucester harbor on August 26th (a fortnight later), by a
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boat's crew of the U. S. Schooner 'Science,' then engaged in surveying the harbor. The following account is from a letter written by one of the observers, the Rev. Cheever Felch of the U. S. S. 'Independence,' to the editor of the Boston 'Centinel' :
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