USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Barnstable > Three old timers: Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth, 1639-1939 > Part 2
USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Sandwich > Three old timers: Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth, 1639-1939 > Part 2
USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Yarmouth > Three old timers: Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth, 1639-1939 > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
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and Crocker came back with his fists, and the two pa- triots mixed it up very prettily until they were separated.
Yet the liveliest of all concern the "Patrick Henry of the North," as he has been called - James Otis, Jr., whose patriotic addresses have been collected under the title, Rights of the British Colonies, Asserted and Proved. His father was Colonel James Otis, Chief Justice of the Supe- rior Court in Barnstable; and his brother was Joseph Otis, clerk of the court. When the word went forth that hereafter the juries of the court were to be appointed by the Crown, not drawn from a list of names in a box by the selectmen, the Barnstable patriot was the first to make flames of words that burned his countrymen with the indignant knowledge that their sacred liberties were be- ing torn from them.
To obtain the flavor of the early days one should visit Barnstable's graveyards and take much time to study them carefully. Dying used to be a much more ostenta- tious matter than it is now. Funerals were very expen- sive. Waitstill Winthrop's had a bill for one hundred and ten dollars (in the currency of the time, which might be worth five times that today) for horse trappings alone.
Barnstable graveyards are not gloomy places. They are full of sunshine slanting down on old worn stones, and they spread a mixture of complacency and medita- tion and cheer which is indescribable. In the burial ground in West Barnstable, where Mad Jack Percival is rest- ing after life's fretful fevers, the Battle of Trafalgar, and a trip around the world in Old Ironsides, are countless stones worth examining closely. It is not enough, for example, to note that angels' faces are carved on the
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stones. This is true in many an old graveyard. But the angels' expressions, the fact that Barnstable can boast of angels in profile, (a very rare phenomenon), and the in- scriptions below, convey a whole culture and present a different world.
If the name of Barnstable has been heard around the world, to her seamen goes the credit. There was Captain Thomas Harris, known far and wide for his dancing, in which he amazed onlookers by his intricate steps. He went to California during the gold rush in the Pico and left her on the beach there, where she still lies buried.
Captain David Lawrence was the first American mer- chant skipper to enter Bristol harbor, and with him as mate was Joseph Hawes of Yarmouth. It was 1783, the year peace was signed after the Revolution.
No account of Barnstable's seamen could be complete without mention of the famous Captain William Sturgis. To connect him with the present one should visit the li- brary which bears his name; and in front of it will be seen the most beautiful mulberry tree known to the Cape. The tree shows its perfect intricacies in the leafless season, but in the summer its deep shade adds contrast to the bright whites and greens around the old building.
The Captain himself personified all the virtues of the best and ablest commanders and presents a figure of which Yankees can boast with reason. The story of his being attacked by sixteen pirate ships under the infamous Ap- potesi while he was anchored in Macao Roads in a calm about seventy miles south of Canton is rather well known. During the attack he stood by the powder barrel smok- ing a cigar, for his own sinister reasons: the pirates
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would never have taken the Atahualpa - they might have had fragments. He was then only twenty-eight. .
Josiah Richardson came from Centerville, and certainly even a partly adequate treatment of his exploits would take a book. He died at sea in a storm when his ship sank with him crippled in his bunk, twelve days out from Liverpool, 1853.
Incidently, the first known professional shipbuilder was of this town : Thomas Agrey, about 1750. After him were Richard Lewis, who built schooners at Hyannis; Crocker Marchant, who had a yard at Hyannis Port; C. Worthington and Horace Crosby, 1830, at Osterville.
Since the settlements in the three old timers were on the north shore, let those who love the south shore not feel neglected in this brief sketch: there was nothing to make history in the younger sections of the towns for a good many years after 1639. Even so the south shore has its "firsts." The first fulling mill in Barnstable, for example, was on Mill Pond in Marstons Mills- 1689; and by 1648 Cotuit had its first settlers.
Barnstable is a town of notable old buildings. The Congregational Church, dating from 1717 (although, as previously stated, the organization goes back to the year of Shakespeare's death, 1616), is found by turning right, at the corner by the West Barnstable graveyard. This was John Lothrop's church; and in its possession to this day is some of the original silver owned three hundred years ago by the organization.
Then there is the 1790 Crocker House; and the 1775 Amos Otis House, of which the front room was once part of the jail; and the 1684 Dimmock House; and the famous
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Blue Blinds House, the pigments of whose blinds were brought home from China by a sea captain; and the 1690 John Gorham House, with its carved timbers in the best rooms and its rough-hewn timbers in the others.
Of one building in particular nothing is said as a rule by most chroniclers of Barnstable; and this is a shame, because now that the little building is removed, its story may well be forgotten: and the story is too good to for- get. Prior to 1937 it was attached to the property of William A. Jones. Here was the shop of the first watch and clock maker on Cape Cod, John Munroe. He was on his way to Virginia for his health when the ship was forced to take refuge from a storm at Hyannis. While he was waiting, young John went about to see the coun- try; and he saw also Nancy Phinney; so he settled here and married her. In 1831 he started in the shop the first savings bank on the Cape with twelve men who formed a corporation, The Barnstable Institute for Savings. For- ty years later the deposits were $1,500,000.
And so as we reluctantly detour many a colorful tale, we present our "must" list for the town:
1. Sturgis Library, Barnstable
2. Old Crocker Tavern, Barnstable
3. Old Allyn house, Barnstable
4. County Courthouse, Barnstable
5. Birthplace of James Otis, West Barnstable
6. Oldest Congregational Church, West Barnstable
7. Grave of Iyanough, Cummaquid
8. Hyannis Public Library
9. Railroad Wharf, Hyannis
10. Cahoon house, Osterville
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ALLYN HOUSE, BARNSTABLE
There is a witch story about this house. Lizzy Towerhill's daughter worked for James Allyn; and Lizzy, in a pique about some real or fancied offense given the girl, took a witch's ven- geance. Everything in the house was turned upside down by in- visible hands; a strange cat made its appearance, howling and and mewing continuously; half a dozen new chairs were broken to pieces; at night the family couldn't sleep for the devilish and inexplicable noises around and within the house. It was dreadful.
A notable family were the Allyns. The founder in this country, Thomas Allyn, was one of the wealthiest of the first settlers: in 1654 he owned six of the original house lots. The old man had a suit of armor used when he was a soldier; later there were two lawyers and two other soldiers, a minister, and that irreplacea- ble character, Doctor Abner Hersey, with his great coat of leather and his seven blankets.
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HYANNIS PUBLIC LIBRARY
"As a Cape Cod house, as the home of a sea captain," says Mrs. Ora A. Hinckley, librarian, "and for thirty years a public library, this building has historical prominence."
Not to be missed by the adventurer is the "Ship's Cabin" on the upper story, with its chest of charts, wall maps, instruments, ship's lantern, nautical books, curios, and about a million varied shells from all corners of the globe.
Exhibits at the library are customarily attended by old-time seafarers. At a recent one, John Nickerson told a prize story about himself. Aged ten, he was sent by his mother on an errand, happened to go to Hyannis Wharf, and there signed up with a Norfolk-bound schooner. He came back from the errand three months later.
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CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, CENTERVILLE
Not generally known, perhaps, is the connection between the Centerville Church and the Cape Cinema at Dennis. The relation- ship is purely architectural. Says Raymond Moore, "The basic outlines of the Centerville Church and the Cinema are identical. I had a clay model of the Cinema made, suggested by the church, whose lines are outstandingly satisfactory, and then I cut off the steeple and substituted the cupola." We present this church not because it is the oldest in the three towns, not because it has the best story, but because it is so entirely typical of Cape churches, its purity of line unbroken from ground to the sky to which it aspires. As a type it will be seen all over Cape Cod.
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CAHOON HOUSE, OSTERVILLE
That the feather-edged paneling and the gunstock corner posts, as well as the inimitable mellow shade of the ancient wood it- self, date this house at about 1725 has been attested by a muse- um expert. And the old kitchen looks like a museum piece di- rectly from the Early American section: it is in all details perfect of the 1725 type.
When Ralph Cahoon, Jr., its present owner, bought the house in 1933, he found a chest full of mementoes. Among them were two deeds and a bullet. The deeds show that the house was once owned by two people, and was "divided by a line running through the center of the chimney and the front door, East and West." The bullet was wrapped in varnished paper bearing this inscription: "This Bullet was in Comrade Sargt. Wm. H. Ben- nett's hip 6 months and 4 days. Extracted March 5, 1865, by Surgon F. A. Ropes, Readville Gen. Hospital, Mass." Bennett was with P. H. Sheridan at Shenandoah, and fought in the Louisiana lowlands.
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OLD GOODSPEED HOMESTEAD, MARSTONS MILLS
In keeping with a Cape tradition, the house pictured here was in the Goodspeed family from the date of its erection by Roger Goodspeed in 1653 until seventy-five years ago. The house can claim two firsts: it was the first house built in Marstons Mills; it was the first home in Barnstable to have wall paper.
One of the Goodspeeds some years ago decided to try to pre- serve a piece of the old wallpaper. He took off fourteen layers of paper before reaching the foundation. By way of saving it for posterity, he pasted it on the back of an old mirror, also dated 1653 and still in the family.
Originally all the land around the old homestead was Indian territory: Goodspeed built in the middle of a tribe of Shawmuts. The building and land are now part of the E. K. Davis estate.
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YARMOUTH
P OR Yarmouth the claim has been made that it is the prettiest town on Cape Cod and perhaps in the coun- try; but that there is no final criterion of pulchritude probably need not be attested by sustained argument: Joseph Jefferson upheld Sandwich, and other Cape enthu- siasts doubtless have their favorites. The beauty of Yar- mouth, at any event, is striking and manifest; much more so than it was in the early days, when the trees had been cleared for cattle, and there were only the or- chards in back fields; and when Amos Otis in 1840 start- ed planting the magnificent elms that now form one of the most famous avenues anywhere, he certainly did his share to give Yarmouth much of its charmn.
In Yarmouth, too, is a possibly larger single group of old Cape Cod dwellings than others can boast. Within the town limits during the Cape's heyday of sailing and prosperity, living in houses along the main road, there were half a hundred sea captains - so that, like Barn- stable, Yarmouth can tell endless tales of its seamen.
The town's story began when in 1639 Anthony Tha- cher, John Crow, and Thomas Howes obtained grants and settled here; but Yarmouth men had no single mo- tive and followed no single star, and almost as soon as incorporation took place disputes about land began. Un- fortunately the keeping of important records in fireproof
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boxes had not become an accepted custom, and the rec- ords to 1674 burned when the town clerk's house went up in flames. The records of the Plymouth Court remain, however, and it is clear enough that the Court, as was its custom, ordered the land divided according to the wealth of the persons to own it. That busy soldier, Miles Standish, was sent down, finally, with dictatorial pow- ers, and managed to leave everyone perfectly dissatisfied.
The Indians of the Cape were Wampanoags, but each small tribe was independent - a tradition not unfamiliar on the peninsula today. At Yarmouth and Barnstable they were Mattakees and Cummaquids, and of course in · the strictest sense the land here belonged to them and not to the Court at Plymouth at all. However, the Whites were usually willing to make a show of paying for land they took. Thus the Sachem Yanno received six coats, six pair of small breeches, ten hatchets and a like num- ber of hoes, besides two brass kettles in good working order, for a goodly portion of the land now Yarmouth.
Here, as in other portions of the Cape, the Indians were friendly, either through fear or because they want- ed to be; and Richard Bourne had a number of praying Indians south of Sandwich, among them Yarmouth's famous Deacon Elisha Nauhaught - the brave whose faith was so sublime that legend relates the story of his being surrounded by blacksnakes in the woods and al- lowing them to climb all over him, secure in his belief that God's will would be done. But, the tale continues, when one of the black brethren expressed a desire to put his head into the Deacon's mouth, Nauhaught obedient- ly opened and said, "Ah." Then, while the snake's head
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was within, he suddenly clamped shut. The resulting flow of blood scared the rest of the assembly away.
But the Indian population dwindled rapidly, until 1767 there were only six wigwams, situated near the mouth of Bass River. Ten years later smallpox carried most of them off, and shorly after the Revolution, the land was sold.
The question occurs in many minds why such a small handful of whites could survive in the new lands. Pos- sibly an answer is to be found in the fact that only the sturdiest families occupied Yarmouth at the outset, and after they had become established they were careful whom they allowed to join them. Property owners had to be approved for admission into the town before they were allowed to build.
It is easy to show that Yarmouth was much carlier an attractive place for adventurers; no living proof exists, for example, that Thorwald Eriksson is not buried where he was killed by Indians at Hockanom, or that his wife, Gudrid, did not bear a son here; but that goes for many another place on the eastern seaboard as well, and that the Erikssons christened the Cape "Vinland" cannot be established beyond the reasonable doubt which has been sung in tale and story.
In any event, this locality immediately after its origi- nal incorporation became a very popular place among those who sought new lands. Possibly one of the most imaginative landgrabbers, and one of those who had most trouble getting legal possession of his land, was young William Nickerson. He bought one thousand acres of land at Monomoyick, now Chatham, but then Yar-
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mouth, in 1656, for a boat, but ran into legal troubles with the Plymouth Court. His fine was so large that there wasn't enough money in the Colony to pay it, so that nothing was done about it until- 1673, when, at long last, he got a deed to the land - at a price. His territory became part of Eastham, and finally part of the present town of Chatham in 1712.
Dennis, too, as is well known, was once part of Yar- mouth; but by a unanimous vote Yarmouth's eastern section was incorporated as Dennis in 1793. The East Parish pastor, the Reverend Josiah Dennis, gave the place its name. One of those "did-you-know" cartoonists recently published the fact that Dennis and Dennisport and West Dennis and all the rest of them were named for a single man - Josiah Dennis.
And speaking of the Revolution, it is no secret that Yarmouth, fourteen days before the signing of Thomas Jefferson's famous document beginning "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary," (which is all most of us remember of it), was signed, declared a state of independence of the King of Great Britain. The same independent way of life was again illustrated in the war of 1812, when the town unanimously voted not to support the war. Yarmouth had suffered enough from wars. Enough of the town's ships lay rotting at empty docks, and a sufficient number of families had been ruin- ed by this and that embargo, to arouse a pretty definite feeling about these matters. Five years later, although there may not be any connection, there were no less than seventeen grog shops on the bay side of Yarmouth, and a temperance society had started.
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Once the traveler through Yarmouth might have seen several windmills. A few years ago, he could have seen two: the one in West Yarmouth which claimed in large print to be the Cape's oldest, and which now adorns Henry Ford's historic reproduction of a village; and the one behind Charles Henry Davis's estate on the edge of Bass River. Now the only one in town is the one behind Davis's-and that was built in South Dennis by the grandfather of a woman now still merrily turning out pies and cakes at the youthful age of eighty-eight.
Windmills were hard to build. They were usually moved from one spot to another. The Baxter boys, how- ever, (Thomas Baxter and his two sons), knew how to go about it. They put up a couple near Parker's River, and a song was made about them in the form of a quat- rain which announced: "The Baxter boys they built a mill; Sometimes it went, sometimes stood still -But when it went it made no noise, Because it was built by the Baxter boys." The truth of this alleged noiselessness is questionable, as anyone who has heard a mill at work will be quick to tell you. In a forty-mile gale, they say, one got about twelve horsepower from them, and run- ning them required nautical skill. The Cape had about forty mills at the end of the eighteenth century.
Of seamen, as it has been suggested, Yarmouth had her share in the golden days of the Cape's sailing. Yet lest we grow too romantic about the sea and the men who went down to the great green mother in ships, one might well recall the prose of the Yarmouth skipper: "Any man who would go to sea for pleasure would go to hell for pastime." It was a rough life, and no one
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knew what the end would be or in what rude aspect it would appear.
Of the clippers, there is the story of Captain Frederick Howes of Yarmouth in the Climax and Captain Moses Howes of Dennis in the Competitor, and how it took them both exactly one hundred and fifteen days from Boston to San Francisco, with large bets placed on both, to the point where some journalistic wit exploded, with Mercutio, "A plague on both your Howses."
Yarmouth's Ebenezer Sears was the first American skip- per to take a ship around the Cape of Good Hope; there were Captains Allen H. Knowles, Franklin Hallet, and the famous brothers John, Asa, and Oliver Eldridge, of the Liverpool packets; and there was the celebrated Icha- bod Paddock, who in 1690 went to Nantucket to teach whaling to the islanders there, and his not entirely printable adventures inside a whale with a red-headed mermaid; and Captain Levi Baker, who had his troubles in the runaway slave days; and there were men caught in the Napoleonic Wars; but there is really no end to the story of Yarmouth and the Sea.
Part tells of salt. There was an investment to break the heart of Wall Street! It paid twenty-five per cent. Until 1840 it was a roaring business. Capt. John Sears, who liv- ed in what they call Dennis today, realized what a gold mine the British blockade was for him. In 1776, with the price of salt soaring, he tried the idea of sun evapo- ration. That was the start. The peak was reached in the eighteen thirties (the Cape's most prosperous period in all activities) when there were nearly four hundred and fifty salt works giving over half a million bushels a year,
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and more than $2,000,000 of Cape money invested in it. Some families have old pictures showing great expanses of salt works in South and West Yarmouth, with wind- mills to pump the salt water into the limitless vats.
The last of the anchor-draggers lives in South Yarmoth; and one of the first cranberry cultivators was a Yarmouth man. That's just a hint of the wonderful stories we must sidetrack in this brief survey. Which brings us, with a sigh, to the "musts" of Yarmouth:
1. Lovell house, Yarmouth Port
2. The 1680 House, Yarmouth Port
3. Old Doane Tavern, Yarmouth
4. Friends' Meeting House, South Yarmouth
5. Ancient Cemetery, Yarmouth
6. Old Yarmouth Tavern, Yarmouth Port
7. House of Seven Chimneys, Bass River
8. Grist Mill, Bass River
9. Indian burial tablet, South Yarmouth
10. Bridge Street, South Yarmouth
11. Baxter water mill, West Yarmouth
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THE 1680 HOUSE, YARMOUTH PORT
Legend ascribes to Colonel John Thacher the distinction of being the first Yarmouth inan to have an inscribed gravestone: and it had to be imported. He was the son of Anthony Thacher, who in 1643 was licensed to "draw wine" in town. The house here pictured was built in 1680, and is also known as the "Colo- nel John Thacher House."
Tragic is the story of Anthony Thacher. He and his wife and four children came over from Ipswich in 1635. The ship was wrecked off Cape Ann, and of twenty-three, only two survived: Anthony and his wife. Wrote he, "Now look upon me in my distress and consider of my misery, who beheld the ship broken, the water in her .... mine own poor children so untimely drowned and dashed to pieces . ... "
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LOVELL HOMESTEAD, YARMOUTH PORT
Reputedly the second oldest dwelling in town, this house was built in 1696 by Timothy Hallet, a descendent of Andrew Hallet, one of the first, if not the very first, permanent settler. Other Hallet Houses surround it. So lacking in race suicide was the the Hallet family that the upper end of the road has always been called "Hallet Street" by local custom.
Here is the mold and type of the early Cape house. There was a tax on roofs; and the salt-box was the result. Up it went in the front; and down it came in a hurry in the back. It was named for the boxes in which our ancestors kept their salt. All over the Cape one sees the type; and it must have been as good as a playground-slide for old-time youngsters, come snow.
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OLD DOANE TAVERN, YARMOUTH
About a foot beneath the sod all around the house wherever Mr. George F. Clements, the present owner, has dug, have been found cobblestones: here stood the inn-yard in the old days. Captain Elisha Doane, owner of perhaps more whaling vessels than anyone else in this part of the country, was the host.
Relatively well known is the romantic story of the innkeeper's daughter and the minister, Reverend Coggeshall, pastor of the church which stood next door where the common now is.
An electrician broke several augurs trying to bore holes in the base-boards when the house was being wired a few years ago. He thought he had run into rock; but it was only the wood of the foundations: evidence of the perfect preservation of this flawless oldtimer.
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OLD GRIST MILL, BASS RIVER
When the packet came in from Boston, the people of the south side knew about it, because a flag was raised from the top win- dow of this mill; and when the packet was ready to go out, they put a barrel at the end of a post.
It was Judah Baker, famous in song and story, who built this mill on a rise of ground in South Dennis in 1791. Like most old Cape buildings, it has been moved, and today one finds it behind Charles Henry Davis's "House of Seven Chimneys."
Still in working order is the old mill. It has not been worked in some years, but it could be tomorrow, if they wanted to run it.
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CHASE HOMESTEAD, WEST YARMOUTH
In the Enoch E. Chase homestead is seen an example of a type of Cape Cod architecture which made its appearance about a hundred years after the original settlement of the town. With its gambrel roof, the house evidences definite Dutch influence; and as it appears here, the building is shown as it probably appeared originally and as it should appear if restored: without the dor- mer and the exterior additions.
Within are the customary paneling in wide boards, with small rooms calling appealingly for occupancy. The house was built in Marstons Mills about 1750, and nearly twenty years later was moved to West Yarmouth by Thomas Black. Anthony Chase bought it in 1781 and left it to his son.
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