USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Truro > Truro-Cape Cod; or, Land marks and sea marks > Part 34
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In 1832, Elisha Newcomb, a man of enterprise, built a dwelling-house, flake-yard and packing-sheds on the beach known as Newcomb's Point, where he commenced business. Several other dwellings were built on this Point ; it seemed quite a promising locality. All of the houses have been re- moved, some of them to East Boston. About this time several houses were built on Beach Point ; the children attended school
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at High Head. Thomas Fields Small told the writer that he had seen upwards of forty scholars gathered in his large kitchen where the school was held. The town was considering build- ing a schoolhouse there. The low sandy points, with a bunch of beach-grass here and there, were in demand, and considerable speculation therein, as many thought they would become the principal settlements of the town. The Bay mackerel fishing which continued many years, and could be followed success- fully in boats, if the fishermen lived on the tide, was the real cause of these seashore settlers. Long Point and Wood End were large settlements with schoolhouses, a church, salt works and stores. Different causes have been assigned for the de- parture of the mackerel that used to abound in the Bay during the summer season. In an old Nantucket record is the fol- lowing : " From the first coming of the English to Nantucket, a large fat fish called bluefish, thirty of which would fill a barrel, were caught in abundance, all around the Island, from the first of the sixth month to the middle of the ninth. But it is remarkable that in the year 1764, the year in which the sickness ended, all disappeared, and nonc have been taken since." These vandals of the ocean did not again make their appearance for more than seventy-five years. For several years they were scattering, and were found mostly in the old haunts of their pre-Revolutionary ancestors around Nan- tucket. Later they doubled Cape Cod, found their way into the Bay and drove out the mackerel, since which time the mackerel are only found early and late in the season.
In 1835, John Smith, a leading citizen, built the first out- fitting store in Truro. It stood near the northeasterly corner of the South Wharf, where the Old Colony railroad now crosses. The same year David Lombard commenced packing mackerel on the South Wharf. The North Wharf, on Snow's Point, directly opposite, was built about this time. Captain Michael Snow, and Deacon Daniel Paine, both active and capable men, opened an outfitting store and packing establishment on this wharf in 1836. The same season Elkanah Paine 2d, a popu- lar young skipper, built a large store on the south side. Busi- ness was now well underway, and most all branches of trade
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that belong to vessels and supplies soon gathered. Captain Eben N. Hinckley, associated with John N. Devereaux, of Boston, opened a sail loft. The skippers of that day were as particular about the cut and fit of their sails as a fashionable woman of her sails. Devereaux's sails fitted without a wrinkle, and balanced to a hair. No handsomer sails were seen than those worn by the Truro fleet. Captain Hinckley afterwards carried on the business, and sustained the reputa- tion.
The Truro Marine Insurance Company was incorporated in the winter of 1840-41. The stockholders were mostly men of small means, who gave their notes for nearly the amount of their subscriptions. The great October gale of the same year ruined the company. The stockholders were obliged to pay the face of their notes without receiving a single divi- dend. After a second year of baffled fortune, the company was wound up with a full loss of the capital stock, all of which belonged in town. Since that time several companies have been formed in the neighboring towns on the same basis, which proved little mints to the lucky stockholders. This year (1840) cart-bridges were built across Great and Little Pamet Rivers. These were the result of years of discussion and much eloquence in the annual townmeetings.
When the surplus revenue was received in 1838, the town being then free from debt, it was voted to loan the same. Though all due diligence and discrimination was intended, both principals and endorsers slipped out, and those faithful guardians of the town's trust, the selectmen, had occasion to exclaim with Byron, " Where are those martyred saints the five per cents .? " The "Truro Benevolent Society " was incorporated in 1835. By the constitution, membership is conditioned by a small annual payment. In case of sickness or death a certain amount is paid to the family. This society has been well administered, has accomplished much good, and is still in a flourishing condition, having twelve hundred dollars in the treasury.
A late Boston journal correspondent writing from Truro and Provincetown, says of the people : --
1
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In dialect, in manner, in their sturdy independence, their picturesque and colored methods of speech, and their love of grim humor, they are essentially Yankee. They have the breadth and generosity of language which is always accredited to the dwellers by the sea. There is a sort of poetry in it.
In conversation with a gentleman now in the sere and yellow leaf as regards age, but flourishing like a green bay- tree in youthful memories, he said, " I was once coasting in a vessel that would sail well free of the wind, but on a close haul I was ashamed to be seen on deck. Uncle Naylor was my mate; I always called him Mr. Hatch. One morning when a head wind had us at full disadvantage, and common sailing vessels were passing us like steamboats, I ventured out of the gangway and said, ' Mr. Hatch, how does she go along ?' He promptly replied, 'By the Prophets' nippers, Skipper, when you can see her wake out of the weather hawse-hole, I call it a gallbuster !'"
I quote this as an illustration of the "picturesque and colored methods of speech." A few years since a young man from Boston, of good family and education, was visiting Truro for the first time. He was delighted with all he saw and heard, particularly with certain shades of expression which excited his curiosity. When he asked the meaning thereof, his friends referred him to Ambrose's Dictionary. After musing a moment, the young man replied, " I have heard of Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, of whom James Russell Lowell wrote, -
Never surely was holier man Than Ambrose, since the world began ; With diet spare and raiment thin, He shielded himself from the father of sin,
but I didn't know he was a lexicographer." Our story concerns not St. Ambrose who built a perfect faith, but Mr. Ambrose Snow, who with remarkable versatility of accomplish- ments, made no pretentions to saintship. Mr. Snow was born in 1788 ; was son and grandson of the Davids, father and son, who were carried prisoners to England, as narrated in these pages. Ambrose was a buoyant, wide awake, daring young
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man, hopeful, and of great expectations full. During the cold storm in January, 1806, known in New England as the "Cold Friday," the vessel on which Mr. Snow was one of the crew, was blown out of Harpswell Harbor, and all hands were severely frost-bitten. It was the coldest day then ever known on the Cape, six degrees below zero. Just fifty years after, in January, 1856, it was nine degrees below. Mr. Snow was sent to the hospital, and after months of suffering, he came forth at the age of nineteen, a cripple for life, but hopeful and reliant. At this time he was engaged to Miss Pratt of Co- hasset. Realizing his changed condition and prospects, he wrote to the lady, releasing her from the engagement. Friends and neighbors said, " As Mr. Snow has lost his legs, you will now give him up." She replied, " Legs or no legs, I will not give him up." The result of this maidenly decision was a thriving family of seven daughters and five sons. One of these, Captain Ambrose Snow of Wellfleet, has been more than fifty years an energetic and successful skipper. He has, or has had at one time, six sons masters of first-class fishing craft, without exhausting the stock of boys. Their vessels are called the " Snow-Birds."
Mr. Snow of our sketch had a handsome, almost pure Gre- cian-cut face. He was neat in person, engaging in manners, mellifluous in voice, fluent in speech, and vivid in imagination. Though like Gray's shepherd, " He ne'er the paths of learn- ing tried," he possessed a wonderful felicity of expression, I might say a genius, for coining and adopting rhythmatic words and popular phrases, and rendering them into graceful idiom. His phraseology fairly glittered with happy and orig- inal comparisons. Like the old Flemish masters who often chose simple domestic scenes to recreate in rare tint and shade, so his exuberant fancy clothed every-day events with pomp of ornament and Oriental splendor surpassing the pages of Rasselas. Possibly his grammar sometimes violated Lind- ley Murray. I cannot say that his logic would stand the strain of Locke, or that his rhetoric was in the perfect diction of Macaulay or Motley. An old dialogue makes Lord Bacon say, " He that can make the multitude laugh and weep as you
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do, Mr. Shakespeare, need not fear scholars." So while old and young laughed and cried and quoted his sprightly raph- sodies, he cared little for critics and scholars. He drove four- in-hand among the figures of speech, cracking his whip where clustered the fairest flowers, scattering homely apo- thegm and classic antithesis, of which he never heard, like the leaves of autumn. In an age of pure tradition without books, Mr. Snow's contributions undoubtedly would have been hand- ed down as the sayings of a creative mind; but for this he came too late into the world ; and as he wrote nothing, and was scarcely known beyond his little native town, little will survive his generation.
Somebody has said, " Had Abraham Lincoln ruled in a period of less facility of printing, he would have become my- thologized in a very few years." But had Abraham Lincoln lived and died without education in his native Kentucky vil- lage, his name would have been known only at the village resorts and perhaps the Four Corners.
Mr. Snow was also a man of courage and energy. During the war of the Embargo he purchased a five-handed boat that had been condemned, repaired and made her sails himself, and in her made trips to Boston. On a return passage, when below Minot's Ledge, he was overtaken by a furious northeast snow storm. A frail old boat, a rock-bound lee shore, a driv- ing gale, and a long winter night, were fearful odds. His " second" and only man was William White, a small man, who had seen salt water and was noted for his imperturbable deliber- ation, and by a habit of prefacing his remarks with " By gracious, sir !" It was a desperate moment when Mr. Snow said, " Mr. White, what would you do ?" " By gracious, sir, I would take in the mains'l, double reef the fores'l and give her an offing," said the little man with the calmness of Plato. As unexpected as was such advice, Mr. Snow was quick to see it was their only hope. They soon put their little craft in the snug trim advised, and rode out the dubious night in safety. Mr. Snow and Captain Rich, the blind man, with others, were once on board the Truro packet lying at the wharf in Boston, when a woman came into the cabin, and after making consid-
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erable talk, in which none of the company joined, she left. The blind man remarked, " I soon saw her drift." " Yes," said Mr. Snow as quick as lightning, "so did I; and if she had not left just as she did, I would have kicked her out of the cabin."
TWO PINE-TREES IN THE MOON.
We had reached the top of that range of high hills north- easterly of Mr. Noble's house, just as the full moon had fairly lifted herself from the dark woods to the south. With her lower disc barely clear of the trees, she hung against the hazy sky firm and fast as if nailed by the Great Builder. Two lone pine-trees in direct range on a distant ridge, were per- fectly described within the lunar circle, making a grand pict- ure. We took a few steps down the hill and looked again. There was the great red moon, its lower limb still almost touching the tree-tops ; and there were the two pine-trees, with their long, bare trunks and fronded branches just filling the full circle. Keeping a square front, we walked slowly down the long-inclined hill, so as to continue the illusion of a fixed moon, holding within her burnished rim the two pine- trees in silhouette, on a blood-red field. Within the circle, there were no detracting objects; nothing that the Great Artist would have disallowed : just the two pine-trees. The farther we walked and longer we looked, the more natural seemed the picture, till moon and pine-trees seemed the work of an old master, as indeed they were. We thought of Joshua's command at Beth-Horam, "Sun, stand thou still in Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Ajalon." Of Ossian's apostrophy, "O thou round as the shield of my fathers!" Of the uprooted tree upon the shield of the disinherited knight at the tournament at Ashby. And of John's angel, standing in the sun. Then came trooping the bygones. How oft we had watched in childhood, when like a silver shield she danced amid the fleecy clouds. How oft in youth her cheerful lamp had been trimmed for our bois- terous sports ; and how oft at sea her broad welcome beams
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had dashed away the shadows of night, and floored the ocean with a sea of glass beautiful as apocalyptic vision. As we came down the hill, the picture vanished. The moon mount- ing on her airy journey, like a balloon cut loose from strong cords, scattered her wealth of soft light and amber clouds up and down the long valleys in royal profusion, leaving the two pine-trees bare and alone on the distant ridge.
= Foster
HER BROAD WELCOME BEAMS DASHED AWAY THE SHADOWS OF NIGHT.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE TIDE TURNED.
Prosperous Days. Cause of Decline. The Piling Failure. Truro Academy. Joshua H. Davis. Horace Mann. New Departure. His Preparation. His Work. Popu- lar Education. Tom Brown of Rugby. Result. A Traveller. Cape Cod Branch. Wharf Building. Ship Building. Prospects. Universalist Church. New Light- house. Modern Tyre. Steamer Cambria. County Commissioners. Staging over Sahara. Stage Acquaintances. Staging Englishman. An Old Stager. Venice of New England. Government Recommendations. Mails. Attended their own Fune- ral. Cape Cod Telegraph Company. Final Blow. The Packet. Captain Zoheth
Rich. The Post-boy. Going to Boston. Canterbury Tales. Passengers. Com- paring Notes. Thoreau. Captain Richard Stevens.
T WENTY-FIVE years (1830-55) covered the active business history of Truro. In loss of life and property they were the most calamitous that ever befell a community not blotted out. The most prosperous days were in about 1836, when the mackerel fishery was carried on largely by small vessels well accommodated by the harbor to do all their business at home. As the fashion or business demanded larger vessels, and the harbor could not be deepened, they began to leave. In 1854, to retain them, another and final attempt to improve the harbor was undertaken, this time by driving piles. Several thousand dollars were subscribed by citizens and friends in Boston, which was spent to the best advantage ; but old currents refused to be coerced, and the money was lost. Could the Edes-Jetty system have been tried, better success might have followed; but it seems to be a law of nature for all sandy harbors and inlets to fill up and wash away. The breakwater system is evidently the only practical plan.
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In considering the material prosperity of Truro, I stated that education received a marked impulse. In a limited sense this was true, generally of Massachusetts at that period. But the direct cause of this new departure, which gave a new impetus to education, was the Truro Academy, built in 1840, incorporated 1841. Horace Mann, then at the head of the School System of Massachusetts, delivered the dedicatory address. Joshua H. Davis, now Superintendent of the Public Schools of Somerville, was the projector of the school, and the architect of the academy building, which was a model of symmetry and convenience. It stood on the south side of the river, about half a mile southwest of the bridge, on a pleasant knoll well up the hillside, fairly overlooking the town northerly. Mr. Davis opened his school August 31, 1840, and continued forty-seven weeks every year, till April, 1854, when his health required a change. In a note referring to the school he remarks : -
Those were years of severe but joyous labor. My school was liberally patronized from its beginning to its close. In the winter season, especially, the academy was filled to its utmost capacity. I was always treated by the young gentlemen and ladies whom I instructed, with great kindness and courtesy. The remembrance of their affectionate regard is very dear to my heart.
Mr. Davis carried to his work a valuable practical prepara- tion, but more than a valuable preparation ; more than a genius for teaching, was a noble, conscientious purpose to elevate the standard and educate in its broadest meaning, the youth of his town. No teacher ever better understood the work before him, or more zealously consecrated youth and industry to a chosen calling. He was of the people, and felt their needs. He undoubtedly saw outstretching a wide and fertile field ; he saw young men and women, capable and courageous, launching upon life, needing the discipline and directing hand of a better education. He combated the narrow biases and local prejudices to popular education, building on a foundation deep and strong, till one by one effete customs and traditional dogmas gave place to a thought- ful spirit of inquiry, and to an improved public sentiment.
He saw the possibility of these young men and women
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entering other fields ; but not the most careful observation, no turning of the horoscope, could forecast such varying expe riences as lay before the youth of his school. Tom Brown's picture of the diversified lives of the boys at Rugby, under the good, wise, and great Doctor Arnold, would find a rival in these fishermen's sons. To common observation they would mainly follow in the steps of their fathers. Never did paths lie more divergent ; never, perhaps, did the school of a small town become more scattered, or enter more unexpected callings. The town was never more populous, and particu- larly in young men. To the training and influence of this school we trace a growing spirit to better their condition ; but the time was ripe for change, and the failure of the harbor, and series of disasters that befell the town, hastened the event. When the war opened, the navy, the army, and diversified commercial pursuits by sea and land opened wide other doors. The influence of the academy greatly improved the public schools, and was recognized not only in society at home, but in many, if not all, of the Cape towns. A traveller who visited the Cape at this time, wrote of Truro: "The schools were noticeable. No haggard faces, no ragged dresses - all neat - faces beaming with health and intelligence, and the tout ensem- ble indicating happy homes."
In 1846 the Cape Cod Branch Railroad was incorporated. Drew thus describes this event as seen through Bart Gosnold's prophetic spy-glass :
Aghast he stands in sudden fright, His hair, behold it bristle ! The lens has brough the cars so near, He hears the horrid whistle !
And peering into further years - Not far from this our day - Ile sees the happy era when The Cape Cod Branch will pay.
In 1847 an act of the Legislature authorized the building of a dam across Mill Creek. The same year authority was given E. Rich and Company to build a wharf at Newcomb's Point.
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Large storehouses and sheds for packing mackerel were also built, and a flourishing business began. In 1848 J. A. Paine, Allen Hinckley and J. W. Magoun were severally authorized to build wharves. At this time the indications were that ere many years wharves would line all the eligible points both sides of the harbor. In 1846 the Universalists built quite a sightly church edifice on the high hill at the northeast of Captain Lewis Lombard's. The building was finished on the outside excepting the windows. During a violent northeast storm, Thanksgiving eve it was swept to the earth, and so completely wrecked as to defy reconstruction. The society was small ; had made great sacrifices, and this unforeseen calamity so discouraged them that no further effort was made. The location was well chosen, and commanding, and the new church added considerably to the picturesque view of the crowned hilltop, at the centre of the town.
Standing now upon the Old Colony Railroad bridge that crosses Pamet Harbor, over the very site of those wharves and stores, and surveying the almost desolate shores and the ever- moving tide unvexed by keel from flood to ebb, scarcely a ves- tige is left of all this busy, bustling enterprise. Here were wharves covered with stores and sheds ; crowded with vessels. Forty-nine were hauled up one winter, besides several at East Harbor and other places. Here was a shipyard, where for many years two, and sometimes three vessels, were at the same time on the stocks. Much of the timber was cut in town and drawn to the yard, all of which kept the people at work. Ship- building touches a host of industries. Three packets were em- ployed carrying fish to Boston and returning with supplies for the outfitters, or material for the new vessels, besides several traders and coasters to New York and other points, which, with the hardy crews of the fishermen going and coming, presented just such an animated picture as everybody loves to see. Salt manufactured all along the shore, and the creeks and coves, was brought down to the wharves in scows to a ready market. This was not a great business mart, surely, but a sense of activity and healthy development plainly scen and felt gave bright promise for the future. In 1849 Government
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built a lighthouse on Snow's Beach, which was discontinued after a few years. Democratic influence, it was said, was not strong enough in town to keep the lamps burning. The real occasion, probably, for the removal, was the decline of business and the light being sometimes mistaken for others in the bay. This year, in April, the steamer Cambria from Liverpool to Boston, grounded on the Back Side. Two passengers went with the mails to Boston. Tug boats were sent down; the weather proving moderate, she was pulled off without serious delay. The passengers went on shore, and the English par- ticularly, thought the prospect from the high hills and banks " the most delightsome they had seen." The Wellfleet oyster- man told Thoreau that the ladies played pranks with his scoop- net in the pond.
This year the County Commissioners were authorized to build a bridge and lay out a highway across East Harbor in Truro. Provincetown and Truro had both long felt the necessity of this connection. The old road lay around the Head of the Meadow, down by the beach-plum hummocks, and under the bank by Beach Point, making, except at high tides, a quite passable, though very tedious drive.
At this time the tide cut out the passable way under the bank, and forced all carriage-travel for miles, over sandhills more trackless than the deserts of Sahara. Passengers were compelled to work their passage not only by walking, but sometimes, like Hercules, putting their shoulders to the wheel. One hour after the stage, had passed, during high, dry winds, the deep tracks of the horses and wheels in the soft sand, would be as completely obliterated as if washed by the ocean surf beating in full sight on the beach.
Though a barren way, it was by no means barren of excitement or incident, nor always wanting in accident. Passengers were usually pleasant and jovial. A stageload of strangers at starting, would become better acquainted, and form more friendships, than the same number of first-class cabin passengers travelling together across the Atlantic.
In 1849, during one of the high tides, the mail stage while crowding the bank capsized, throwing a dozen passengers
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into the water, which, being quite deep, all were wet to the skin ; some of the women were dreadfully frightened, and one was in danger of being drowned.
An English traveller before referred to, relating his expe- rience, wrote: "Mr. Collins (Jonathan), the driver, was familiar from infancy, with every spot on the road, and most obligingly communicated all the information in his power ; this last stage of the road to Provincetown being the most curious and interesting in connection with the Pilgrims."
Mr. Collins will be remembered with much pleasure by old travellers on the Cape. He was a powerful man, of mag- nificent proportions, with a head as large as Daniel Webster's and a hand as large as George Washington's. He was well- informed, pleasant, facetious, with always a ready kind word. It probably did not occur to Mr. Collins on that morning ride, that by his affability to a stranger on his box, his name would be published in London, enter the great libraries of the world, and come back to find a place in local history. The same traveller was again astonished to notice a little girl at the tavern in Wellfleet, reading the Mysteries of Paris.
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