USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Truro > Truro-Cape Cod; or, Land marks and sea marks > Part 29
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HOW THEY LIVED.
" I used to be as happy as the day is long and envied not Queen Victoria on her throne," said a lady of eighty, who had raised nine sons, caring for all the wants of the family in her husband's absence, and raising them to manhood and re- spectability. Two of these sons are ministers of churches, one a graduate from Yale ; all are graduates from Fishermen's Col- lege, and the six now living are filling places of trust. What higher honor, what sweeter satisfaction for a woman as she approaches the grave, than to know that she has nourished and brought up sons and daughters to call her blessed and to bless the world ?
Happy he With such a mother ! faith in womanhood Beats with his blood. - Tennyson.
Said another old lady, "I worship every room most in this house. My mother came here a bride at twenty, ninety years ago. In that bedroom she slept till over eighty, and made that coverlid (white as snow) with her own hands. In that chair and by that window mother used to sit and talk in her old age. Here is where I live in summer; this floor now covered with a carpet, my mother used to scrub every week with sand till white as milk." Opening another door, " Here I live in winter, and the sunshine lays so beautifully ; there is my grapevine - all the grapes we want - there is my flower garden ; my good brother now eighty, never comes into the house without a smile, and is the best man in the world, and kind as he can be. What more do I want in this world ?"
A few years since, while the writer was sawing a black-oak greatly disfigured by monstrous excrescences, known as " warts," an elderly woman who stood by remarked : " Those things on that log always makes me think of my brother Joe." I sawed through my log and sat down on the horse to cool, and said, " Tell me the story."
" Well, cousin Mary Newcomb lived about half a mile from our house, mostly through the woods, but clean nice paths all the way. We thought we must see each other every day, and had made a rule at whichever house we met, to walk with
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each other half-way home, which we had agreed was by a large black-oak, covered with just such warts as that. At the tree we always used to stop a while to talk, as we had so much to tell each other. After a while, brother Joe and John Daniels, both great scamps, found out our parting-place, and were always sure to be going by just as we sat down to talk. They had occasionally remarked about our tree, and one time Joe said, I know what is the matter with it; every wart on that old tree - and there are millions - is a lie you girls have told about us innocent boys."
As she finished the story, I looked at that face of almost ninety years ; the light of other days was there, and I fancied that before her dim eyes, like Job's, a vision had passed. That the intervening seventy-five years had never been ; that cousin Mary Newcomb, brother Joe, and John Daniels, had once more been with her under the old oak-tree. As she turned her bowed form and slowly walked down the green grassy slope, I saw these companions three, with youth and strength in their step, love and beauty in their eyes and glad- ness in their voice, join in the beautiful procession.
No spring nor summer's beauty hath such grace As I have seen in one Autumnal face. - Donne.
CHAPTER XX.
WAR OF THE EMBARGO.
Prosperity. Turn of the Tide. Rotting Vessels. Petitions. An obstinate President. New Intercourse Act. Home Manufactures. Right of Search. Declaration of War. Letters of Marque. Privateering. Captain Reuben Rich. Yankee Navy. Songs of Victory. The Majestic. The Target. Mill Hill. Pranks. British Officers Socially. Dazzling Guineas. Provincetown Fortunes. Trading to New York.
In their own Coin. The Boy Pilot. The Newcastle. Peace. How it reached Provincetown. Old Dartmoor Prison. Truro Prisoners. Damp Weather. The Scapc-Gallows. A polite Yankee.
F ROM the close of the Revolutionary War till the Embargo declared by Congress in 1807, the Cape towns enjoyed a season of almost uninterrupted prosperity, gaining largely in material substance.
Freeman in his History of Cape Cod, says: "The war between France and Great Britain was of great advantage to the United States, maintaining strict neutrality, and the peaceable enjoyment of commerce with the belligerents."
The Embargo, such a calamity, and so much refered to by the old people of our younger days, was alleged as a necessary measure to protect our tonnage from British seizure. By the North, it was regarded a Southern measure, and was especially unpopular. It was another time of trial in New England, par- ticularly in the coast towns. Upon the Cape it fell with most disastrous effect, causing much embarrassment and distress. The ocean fisheries were abandoned, the dismantled vessels rotted at the grassy wharves. Gloomy, indeed, was the pros- pect. The men cultivated their little farms, taxing the light soil to the utmost, and fished in boats from the shore when
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possible. The women toiled hard at the wheel and loom ; every house was a little factory. By joint labors and strict economy, the wolf was kept from the door. Our vessels were worse than captured when the Embargo went into effect. Cartloads of petitions bearing the names of all the active peo- ple of the North, poured in upon President Jefferson, but he stubbornly persisted in his destructive policy.
After two years of Embargo came the Non-intercourse Act, interdicting all trade with Great Britain and France.
EVERY HOUSE WAS A LITTLE FACTORY.
This, however, like many other acts of the Mother Country intended to force obedience by crushing our enterprise, proved a blessing in disguise. Domestic manufactory sprung into vigorous life, and out of ruin leaped marvellous prosperity.
The next turn of Great Britain was her " assumed Right of Search" and impressment of American seamen, whereby her
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ships were manned with thousands of our brave seamen who were forced on board by press gangs at the point of the sword.
These heaped-up and overbearing demands led to a formal declaration of war, June 19, 1812. It was also charged in the declaration that England had interfered with our rights as a neutral nation, or in derogation of our rights as a neutral nation, made claims upon the United States. The Declara- tion of War opened lively privateering under Letters of Marque. Under the severity of the preceding years, our men had become restive and ready for any changes and hot for retal- iation. The fishermen crowded the privateers and volunteered in the naval service. Our young navy achieved high honors, and acquired wide renown in this war that gave to our history such names as Decatur, and Hull, and Perry.
For a generation, the songs commemorating these naval vic- tories were sung in the forecastle of every American ship on the ocean. If open to criticism, they stirred the old patriotic fire and were regarded a tribute of honor to the brave sailor.
We quote a verse from one or two of the most popular : -
You thought our frigates were but few, And Yankees could not fight, Until bold Hull the Guerriere took, And banished her from sight.
Then next your Macedonian, No finer ship could swim, Decatur took her gilt-work off, And then he took her in.
Ye Parliaments of England, ye Lords and Commons too, Consider well what you're about and what you mean to do ; You are now at war with Yankee boys, and soon you'll rue the day, You roused the sons of Liberty in North America.
The exposed condition of the town to the enemy was early apparent, and we find early in the beginning, a committee of safety appointed, consisting of the following persons : Israel Lombard, Esq., Zaccheus Rich, Captain Freeman Atkins, Captain Jaazaniah Gross, Stephen Mills, Jonah Stevens.
The Yankee privateers fully maintained the reputation
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acquired during the Revolutionary War, that nearly stripped English ships from the ocean and vexed English commerce from sea to sea. Considerable money was made privateering. The most noticeable instances in our community was of Cap- tain Reuben Rich, who with two others fitted out a vessel under Letters of Marque. The first day out they took an English East Indiaman, brought her to Boston, and Captain Rich sold out his interest for $17,000 and had his money in his pocket all within twenty-four hours.
The English men-of-war were as thick around the Cape as flies in summer, making Provincetown headquarters. The Majestic was the Admiral's ship. She used to lie at anchor between Truro and Provincetown, and used the old mill that then stood on Mill Hill, as a target during artillery practise. While this was going on, the people preferred the eastern side of the hill. This mill was among the first of the three windmills built in Truro, as mentioned by Doctor Free- man. It was kept at this time by Zaccheus Knowles. Some of the stones may be seen to-day on top of Mill Hill.
Many years before the war, on a cold, calm, winter night, some frolicsome fellows bent on fun at any cost, launched one of these mill-stones. It tore over the frozen ground, crushing trees, fences and everything in its way like a thunderbolt, and roaring like an earthquake. The people rushed from their beds declaring the Day of Doom had come. Luckily it missed a house near its path, which it would have gone through like stubble. The young blades were probably the most frightened, and as a reward was offered for their arrest, were glad not to advertise their prank.
In this connection I am reminded of another prank by the Pilgrim boys in the long ago. An old lady who lived alone, had a fat pig killed and hung up in a shed joining her house. Soon after, she went away for a few days, leaving her pig hanging up, as is the custom in cold weather. In those days, houses were rarely locked. There was not a lock or bolt on our house for forty years. Some boys entered the old lady's house, gave the pig a second dressing, this time in nightgown and cap, and lay it nicely in her bed, covered snug and warm,
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with his head resting on the pillow. She came home in the evening alone, and was terrified to find her bed occupied by a stranger.
The officers often landed, visited the houses, were always very civil, and became well acquainted with a good many families. They purchased butter, milk, eggs, chickens, and other supplies, and secured small repairs as needed, paying for them quite liberally in British gold. The officers made no efforts to conceal their well-filled purses of dazzling guineas, which in those hard times quite dazzled the eyes of the poor people.
But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that honor feels
If reports are true, the officers were sometimes equally dazzled by eyes bright as their guineas, and coy glances, withal. Provincetown received no small benefit from the English vessels, and some of the fortunes since acquired, had their beginning from this source. Some timid people kept their cattle in the woods, for fear they would be carried off by the bargemen ; but as dastardly as some of the Britishers' doings were reported on the water, I have heard of nothing dishonorable among the people.
The landing of the barges was watched with much interest; an old lady told me they (the girls) thought it good fun to see them land. Another lady said, that returning from school with her young companions, and meeting a party of Britishers on the road, they turned a little up the hill. The jaunty lieutenant said pleasantly, touching his gold-banded cap, " Don't turn out of the road, young ladies, we won't harm you."
As it was impossible to carry fish to Boston market, it became a custom with the fishermen to load their boats, and, keeping well under the shore, and under cover of night or fog, avoid the barges, work their way to Sandwich, where boat and cargo were carted over to Buzzard's Bay, and so sail on to New York, and steal back the same way.
The boats were sometimes overhauled by the barges and searched. I have heard of only one or two cases where they were stripped of their stores; but what were the provo-
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cations, if any, in these exceptional cases, I cannot tell. It is quite possible the fishermen smarting under the sense of injustice, and with the old hatred toward the English, inherited from their fathers, often aggravated them, and it is quite probable that the young officers in charge of the barges often transcended the orders of their superiors. It is said that the boys after one or two trips to New York were ready to embark on a privateer as their only way of revenge.
Commander Ragget, of H. B. M. ship Spencer, made a demand upon Brewster for £250, which was paid. A demand was also made upon Orleans, which was refused, and the valiant captain paid in his own coin. In a few instances they seized boats and held their crews prisoners till the demand was paid.
One day the great barge of the Majestic was out on a forag- ing expedition to Wellfleet. Being in need of a pilot, and finding two boys in a whaleboat catching mackerel off Truro, the lieutenant demanded that the oldest, a lad of fifteen, should go as their pilot ; the boy said he was not a pilot, and could not leave his brother, a little fellow of nine years, alone in the boat. At the lieutenant's glittering sword held over his head, and a threat to cut his head off, he concluded to go, and let his brother get home as best he could. The boy rigged a Spanish windlass and weighed his anchor and managed to get ashore. The barge set the pilot boy ashore at Wellfleet, and he walked home without jacket, shoes or hat. The eldest boy was the late Captain John Elliott Knowles of Truro, the younger Captain Isaiah Knowles, a retired shipmaster now living on Forest street, Boston Highlands.
They sometimes felt the need of pilots, as especially illus- trated at the close of the war, when the fine ship-of-war New- castle, from Boston to Provincetown ran ashore on the shoal ground abreast South Truro. Help was immediately sent from Provincetown. Guns and other ordnance were thrown over- board, and a shot of cable slipped with sheet anchor, when she was got off. But the big cable and anchor, with everything else possible, was soon seized by the Truro and Wellfleet boats, and found a good market.
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In all the vicissitudes, losses and discomforts growing out of all these years of the Embargo and war, Truro shared fully, and furnished more than an average number of men for all emergencies. The welcome news of peace was at last pro- claimed. How it reached the Cape is related by a Prov- incetown man to his neighbor in the following story : "They say peace has got down as far as Truro, but it's hard telling, Bill D-'s boys lie so like fury."
The English war ships were as sharply watching our privateers as they were sharply watching to escape their clutches. Not unfrequently, however, one was gobbled up, and the crew carried to Dartmoor for a taste of prison life. Among these from Truro were Samuel H. Smith, William White, Ephraim Lombard, Sylvanus Collins, Ephraim Paine, David Snow, Abraham Chapman, John Grozier, Francis Wells, and Joseph S. Dyer ; possibly others. Mr. Grozier, the last survivor, died November, 1878, aged ninety. Sylva- nus Collins, aged twenty-four, died at Liverpool, March 16, 1814.
Fifty years ago, most every neighborhood of our coast towns had its Dartmoor prisoner, who, if he could not " shoulder his staff and tell how fields were won," repeated for the hundredth time, stories of prison life, to open-eared boys, some of whom no doubt supplemented a more bitter experience at Old Libby and Andersonville. Near the roadside of an old English inn on the borders of Dartmoor, there used to swing a weather-beaten sign, on which was rudely pictured a poor wayfaring traveller battling against a furious moor storm. Beneath were these words : -
Before the wild moor you venture to pass, Pray step within and take a glass.
This inn was directly on the road to the old prison, and it is more than probable that some of our men and boys not only read these lines of invitation, but actually ventured to try a mug of mine host's nut-brown ale. Stretching away for miles are the desolate barrens of Dartmoor, and far out
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on the coast is old Dartmoor prison, of which we used to hear so much, and sometimes see crude drawings kept as heir- looms. Dartmoor is one of the great, desolate moors, fifteen hundred feet above the sea, on the south coast of England, in Devonshire, fifteen miles from the great naval station of Plymouth, and takes its name from the river Dart, which flows through it twenty miles to the ocean. The prison was built in 1809, for French prisoners of war. It covers thirty acres, and cost £127,000. The grounds are enclosed by a double line of high walls, which enclose a military road nearly a mile long, with sentry boxes and large bells, which used to be rung during the thick fogs so often prevalent. It has fine-finished buildings three hundred feet long, with accommodations for ten thousand prisoners, which it has entertained. It is now occupied as a convict prison. Dart- moor is subject to rain as well as intense fog ; hence the old rhyme in that section : -
The south wind blows and brings wet weather, The north gives wet and cold together ; The west wind comes brimful of rain, The east wind brings it back again. Then if the sun in red should set, We know the morning must be wet ; And if the eve is clad in gray, The next is sure a rainy day.
In fine weather, and in summer, the climate is bracing and delightful, and has many tourists; but in winter the blustering winds sweeping over the craggy hills and broad moors, are dreary enough.
JOHN HILL THE SCAPE-GALLOWS.
In 1811, during the war between Spain and France, Captain Elisha Paine, of Truro, and Freeman Atkins, of Provincetown, first officer, of ---- , were bound to the Mediterranean with a load of fish. John Mayo and John Hill were seamen. When near the Spanish coast, they were boarded by a French corvette, and by some cause not now known, Mayo and Hill
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were carried off prisoners and landed in Lisbon. From thence they were transported to a French army corps of sixteen thousand men, who were marching through the enemy's country with a pay train carrying a large amount of gold. The march led through a deep and dangerous defile of three miles. When fairly in the pass, they were surprised by al murderous fire being opened on them from the overhanging cliffs and mountains that swarmed with men. Every officer, and all but sixteen hundred men, were killed. The remnant were taken prisoners and put in a Spanish prison. Among the prisoners were Mayo and Hill, who escaped without a scratch through the terrible slaughter.
The Frenchmen were inclined to offer indignities.to theil American fellow-prisoners. Mayo was like Miles Standish, small of stature, but soon red-hot. He carried a ready tongue and readier muscle. If they could not understand his tongue, there was no mistaking the eloquence of his muscle. On one occasion he whipped several and offered to fight the whole company if they would come on singly and show fair play, an invitation the polite Frenchmen declined, leaving Mayo a great hero. Hill was arrested as a spy and marched out to be shot ; just as the signal was to be given, a gallop- ing horseman was seen in the distance waving a flag. He bore a reprieve, stating the wrong man had been arrested. Hill was released, but received his title of scape-gallows. After a few months they managed to escape, and were car- ried to Flanders ; and after many hair-breadth escapes, arrived at home safe and sound after years of absence. Mr. Mayo died in good old age, in the peace of Christ, having raised a large family of enterprising boys. Like the patriarch, he saw his children's children to the fourth generation.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE MODERN CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.
Dividing Line. Act of 177 .. New Departure. The Bell Meeting-house. Honest Work. Rev. Stephen Bailey. Law Suit. John Harding. David Snow. Rev. Charles Boyter. Maximum of Prosperity. Government Bounty. Sailing for the Banks. Stewart and Bismarck. Love of the Marvellous. Spiritual Visitants. Public Senti- ment. An Oracle. Lucky Fishermen. Smart Men. Captain Godfrey Rider. Uncle Wiff. "Jonas." Sermon on Luck. Rev. C. B. Elliott. A dual Life. Rev. E. W. Noble. Installation. 1849-Quarter Centennial - 1874, Hon. Thomas N. Stone, M. D. Interesting Services. Poem. Sunday Fishing. Jeremy Taylor. Noble Christian Men. Cooging. Sunday-school. James Collins. The old Arith- metic. Character. Rev. Osborn Myrick. Union Church.
N TO more gratifying assurance of the growing enlightenment of the age can be shown than the following act of the Court, June 7, 1777, which may be regarded the dividing line between the old and the modern Congregational Church. " Provided that every denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves peaceably and as good subjects of the Common- wealth, shall be equally under the protection of the law, and no subordination of any one sect or denomination to another shall be established by law." Citizens were henceforth exempted from taxation for the support of any other than the religion which they conscientiously approved and maintained. It was probably more than a generation before the spirit of this act was practically adopted in towns like Truro, with only one church. I have therefore allowed the new depar- ture to begin with the closing of the tripartition of one hun- dred and eighteen years, ending with the death of Mr. Damon.
With the new Congregational Church, I must be content with a general outline. The present house, of which we pre-
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sent a very fine pen drawing, first known as " The Bell meet- ing-house," was built in 1827, only one year after the Meth- odists had built on the same hill. The sermon of dedication was by Rev. John Turner ; the text from Haggai, i. 4.
Cost of the house, Cost of the bell,
Cost of the stove and pipe,
$2673.64 320.00 123.00. $3116.64
The pews were sold December 18, at a premium of nine hundred dollars. Those were the days of cheap and honest work. All kinds of building material and labor were
1827 -THE NEW BELL MEETING-HOUSE- 1883.
cheap. The best of workmen were paid not over one and a quarter dollars per day, the architect and superintendent, Dea- con Solomon Davis, perhaps a quarter more. The test of their workmanship can be seen after fifty-four years. The builders of that day began with the masonry and included every department - plastering, doors, sashes, putty, glazing, blinds if used, and painting. This was regarded a model meeting- house : a credit to the builders. the society and the town. The crimson damask silk pulpit hangings, in ample festoons, and the pulpit upholstery were not behind the fashions of the day.
Rev. Stephen Bailey, a native of Greenfield, N. H., formerly a Methodist preacher, was the successor of Mr. Damon. He preached at the Old North till the new house
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at the Centre was finished, when he ministered to both socie- ties. Mr. Bailey before coming to Truro, had preached several years for the Seamen's Friend Society in Boston. As a compliment, his church in Truro made him a life mem- ber of the society. In after years he returned again to this work. In 1830, after five years of successful ministry, he received a call to Wellfleet, where he preached eight years, when he was dismissed at his own request. During this time occurred the exciting lawsuit between himself and John Harding, of Wellfleet, then a partner of the late David Snow of Boston, who was also prominent in the suit. The court was holden in Truro and commanded considerable local atten- tion, private discussion, interpretation and interpolation on the Cape. Frivolous charges from trifling causes, aggravated no doubt by sectarian jealousies of the day, were the occasion of this unchristian warfare. Nothing immoral was proven against Mr. Bailey's Christian character. Possibly it inter- fered with his usefulness and caused him to ask his dismis- sion not long after, though very popular with his people. He moved to Dorchester, where he purchased a comfortable home still in possession of his daughters. While in Dorchester, through the cooperation of Doctor Codman, he built a small church, which became so popular that the Mother Church became solicitous for her own flock. Mr. Bailey was an ear- nest, energetic man, and an eloquent preacher. He died in Dorchester, December 10, 1868. Reverend Silas Baker suc- ceeded Mr. Bailey. His installation took place March 7, 1832, upon conditions that the relations could be dissolved by a notice of six months, from church or pastor. As might have been expected, a relation so precarious, was of short continuance. He was dismissed May, 1834. Rev. Charles Boyter was the next settled minister. Mr. Boyter was born in Hull, Yorkshire, England ; was a member of the University of Pennsylvania, and graduate of Princeton College in 1825. He was installed March 16, 1836, and continued his pastorate till June 6, 1843 : expenses of installment, $15.00. Mr. Boy- ter was a sound moderate preacher, a faithful and sympathizing pastor of unquestioned piety. He was a gentleman of pleas-
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