Historic Towns of New England

The site of their first or “Common-House” is now marked, and near the lot assigned to Elder Brewster still we may stop to drink from the Pilgrim Spring: the “delicate water” is fresh and sweet now as when our thirsty forefathers delighted in it.

Crossing Main Street, once the King’s highway, we find ourselves in Town Square, under the shade of beautiful old elm-trees, planted more than a hundred years ago. To the north was William Bradford’s homestead. Here came all those who sought advice and help in their sore need, and here in 1630 were begun those “scribbled writings” which, “peeced up at times of leasure afterward,” are now printed, in letters of gold in many a faithful memory! Here, perhaps, or in the vicinity of the Common House, was concluded their first treaty with a foreign power for mutual aid and protection, when the noble chief Massasoit, with his sixty Indian braves, was led thither by Samoset, the friendly sachem, whose English welcome had surprised the anxious colonists. Through Samoset they learned that some four years before a pest had devastated that region, called by them Patuxet. With him came Tisquantum, who became a valued friend and interpreter, teaching them to plant their corn when the oak-leaves were the size of a mouse’s ear, and to place three herring in each hill with the seed-corn, which novel practice awakened serious doubts in English minds.

In the autumn of 1621, this was the scene of the first Thanksgiving held in New England, when, their houses built, their crops garnered from some thirty fertile acres, their furs and lumber safely stored, they made merry for three days, with Massasoit and ninety Indians as guests. Even with fish, wild-fowl and deer in plenty, the good housewives must have spent a lively week of preparation for such a feast!

Farther up the slope was built, in 1637, their first meeting-house, and at the head of the Square now stands the lately completed stone church of the first parish. In the belfry hangs the old town bell, cast by Paul Revere, which for nearly a century has had a voice in the affairs of the town.

Following the now steep incline, we stop to take breath on the brow of the hill, the spot so wisely chosen by Captain Myles Standish for the building of the solid timber fort, whereon he promptly placed his cannon.

“Unable to speak for himself was he,But his guns spoke for him right valiantly!”

And most persuasive did their voices prove, inspiring awe in the hearts of the “salvages” for many miles around!

Here in the shelter of the fort they met for worship; here their hymns of praise and prayers for guidance arose in the still air of the wilderness. In four short months one half of these brave souls had been laid to rest on Cole’s Hill by the waterside. And yet, when one April morning those who were left to mourn them stood here watching the Mayflower weigh anchor, to flit with her white sails over the blue sea which parted them from Old England, not one soul faltered, not one went back!

The sad loss of their good Governor Carver, whose responsible place was taken by William Bradford, and the daily trials and hardships of that first long year, shook not their sturdy faith. Each day brought its absorbing task, and when, one morning in November, the sentry at the fort shouted, “Sail, ho!” and the Fortune came sailing in by the Gurnet Nose, bringing the first news from the other side, they were ready with a return load of lumber, furs and sassafras for the Merchant Adventurers. Of this load, valued at £500, Edward Winslow modestly writes in his letter to England: “Though it be not much, yet it will witness for us that we have not been idle, considering the smallness of our numbers this summer.”

Two years later, after a trying season of drought and famine, when, their corn exhausted, “ground-nuts, clams and eels” were their only food, they still gave thanks to God that He had given them of “the abundance of the seas, and of the treasures hid in the sand.” When even the strongest men among them had grown weak for want of food, and their eyes were wearied with watching for a friendly sail, the good ship Anne was sighted in the offing. Dear relatives and friends brought them timely succor and new courage; a season of rejoicing followed, and many happy weddings were celebrated.

In the Anne, perhaps, came the Old Colony record-book, in which was made the early registration of births, marriages and deaths. The first of the laws therein enacted, dating from December 27, 1623, established trial by jury, as may still be seen in the quaint handwriting of these hard-working heroes. This book, together with the Charter of 1629, curious old papers concerning the division of cattle brought over in the Charity in 1624, ancient deeds signed by the Indians, the original owners of this our goodly heritage, and many another time-stained treasure, is now carefully preserved and gladly shown in the Registry of Deeds in the Court House.

Looking to the north, beyond the town of Kingston, lying, with its sweet rose-gardens, on the pretty winding river named for that arch betrayer, Captain Jones, of the Mayflower, we see Duxbury and the green slopes of Captain’s Hill, so named in honor of Myles Standish, who from the top of his gray stone monument still guards us in effigy. Lingering near the fort and the guns he loved so well, he must often have looked this way, and admired the fine position this hill offered for a homestead. And as with years the colony grew larger, as children came to him and Barbara, and when his first Company of Standish Guards were in perfect training and could be relied upon to defend the colony at need, he bought out Winslow’s share in the famous red cow, and led the way to the new fields he longed to conquer. There he was soon followed by John Alden and Priscilla, the Brewsters and other families, and at Marshfield, near by, the Winslows became their neighbors. So some eleven years after the landing came the first separation, which though not a wide one was a sore grief to their tender-hearted governor.

Among the now rare gravestones of the seventeenth century on Burial Hill, we look in vain for the most familiar names: Elder Brewster died in 1644, lamented by all the colony; Edward Winslow died at sea in 1655, and in the two years following this sad loss Myles Standish and Governor Bradford ended their labors. So closed the lives of these leaders of men. Descendants, brave, wise and strong like themselves, continued worthily the work they had nobly begun.

From 1630, Plymouth held friendly intercourse with the Boston Bay Colony. The terrors of the war with Philip, treacherous son of the friendly Massasoit, had united her with the neighboring colonies against a common foe, and at length, after seventy-one years of nearly independent existence, we find her, in 1692, absorbed, with some regret, into the royal province of Massachusetts, but still ready to take her part in public affairs.

That the rôle played by her was a worthy one, the tablets about us testify. Heroes of the expedition against Louisbourg, in 1745, lie here; more than a score of Plymouth patriots who served in the Revolution, and many a brave soldier who won his laurels in the War of 1861. Under this stone, with its quaint urn and willow-branch, rests the famous naval hero of the Revolutionary war, Captain Simeon Sampson, whose cousin Deborah spun, dyed, and wove the cloth for the suit in which she left home to serve as a soldier. Their story, and that of many another hero and heroine now lying here, have been well told by Mrs. Jane Goodwin Austin.

Beneath his symbolic scallop-shell we read the name of Elder Faunce, who knew the Pilgrims, and, living for ninety-nine years, formed an important link between two centuries. The stone consecrated to the memory of the Rev. Chandler Robbins, who for nearly twoscore years toward the close of the last century gave his faithful services to the first parish, reminds us that at one time the town fathers found it advisable to request him “not to have more horses grazing on Burial Hill than shall be really necessary!”

Here, in old times, could be had a grand view of the shipping, come from the West Indies and all parts of the world; from here the news of many fatal shipwrecks had been spread through the town, to rouse willing help for suffering sailors; here, too, no doubt, men’s souls were often tempted to incur the fine of twenty shillings, the cost of “telling a lie about seeing a whale,” in those strict days when a plain lie, if “pernicious,” was taxed at half that price!

Old Father Time with his scythe and hour-glass – symbols of his power – rules here over seven generations; but lingering while the setting sun illumines the harbor and the surrounding hills with the same radiance that rejoiced the first comers, while Manomet glows with a deeper purple, and the twin lights of the Gurnet shine out, we may still feel in very deed that

“The Pilgrim spirit has not fled.”

Turning from the story of Plymouth, as written on the lichen-covered headstones on Burial Hill, let us wend our way under the shady elms of Court Street to Pilgrim Hall, built in 1824 by the Pilgrim Society, instituted four years earlier. Here we may trace, in the many treasured reminders of their daily lives, the annals of those brave souls in whom

“ …persuasion and beliefHad ripened into faith, and faith becomeA passionate intuition.”

On broad canvases are portrayed the tearful embarkation from Delfthaven, the landing on this cheerless, frozen shore. Here are hung charming pencil sketches of Scrooby and Austerfield, and many interesting portraits: Dr. Thatcher, the venerable secretary of the Pilgrim Society, and author of a charming history of Plymouth; the Rev. James Kendall, for nearly threescore years the beloved minister of the First Church; Gov. Edward Winslow and his son Josiah; Gen. John Winslow, who by royal command in 1755 helped to drive from their homes the French Acadians; Deacon Ephraim Spooner, whose “lining out” of the old hymns formed an impressive part of “Anniversary Day”; Daniel Webster, who lived in Marshfield, and whose glowing oration of 1820, in honor of the two hundredth anniversary9 of the landing of the Pilgrims, was epoch-making in Plymouth annals.

Among the many priceless books and documents here we find the lately acquired Speculum Europæ (1605) by Sir Edwin Sandys, the active friend of our Separatists in England;

two autographs of John Robinson render this volume of special interest. A facsimile of the Bradford manuscript also is here, and a Confutation of the Rhemists Translation, printed by Brewster in Leyden, in 1618. Among the old Bibles worn by hands seeking for guidance and comfort is one belonging to John Alden, dated 1620. Here also are a copy of Robert Cushman’s memorable sermon on “The Danger of Self-love,” delivered by him in Plymouth in 1621; one of the seven precious original copies of Mourt’s Relation the journal written by Bradford and Winslow in 1620-21, and so promptly printed in London in 1622; one of the four copies of Eliot’s Indian Bible (1685); the Patent of 1621, granted our colonists by the New England Company, and the oldest state paper in the United States.

A large copy of the seal of the colony, in handsomely carved oak, reminds us that the original seal was stolen in the days of Andros. Its appropriate motto, “Patrum pietate ortum, filiorum virtute servandum,” may be found used as a heading of the first Plymouth Journal, published by Nathaniel Coverly in 1785, of which one file is preserved in the library of rare old books. Here are the Original Records of the Old Colony Club, founded in 1769, but dissolved four years later when party feeling ran high between the Whigs and Tories. Its worthy members first instituted the celebration of “Forefathers’ Day,” and here we may read the bill of fare of their first dinner, “dressed in the plainest manner,” beginning with “a large baked Indian whortleberry pudding,” “a dish of Succotash,” “Clamms,” etc. The Indian dishes, succotash and nokake, and the five parched corns which recall the time when their last pint of corn was divided among them, still form part of the “twenty-second” dinner of every faithful descendant!

Here the sword of the truculent Myles Standish lies at rest, and beside it, in lighter vein, a bit of the quilt that belonged to his wife Rose, and a sampler skilfully embroidered by his daughter Lora. Between the ample armchairs in which Governor Carver and Elder Brewster must have pondered over many a weighty problem of government for the people and by the people, is the closely woven little Dutch cradle in which Peregrine White, that most youthful of voyagers, was rocked to sleep. The large hole worn in the foot of the cradle suggests pleasantly that the rosy toes of the sturdy baby colonists made early for freedom! Perhaps the tiny leathern ankle-ties, hardly four inches in length, which belonged to Josiah Winslow – this was long before they thought of making him governor – had a hand, or rather a foot, in that bombardment! Near the shoes is a dainty salt-cellar of blue and white enamel, delicately painted with pink and yellow roses, suggestive of fine linen and pleasant hospitality. Here too are

“The wheels where they spunIn the pleasant light of the sun,”

those anxious, lonely housewives, waiting for their good men to return from dangerous expeditions in the forest or on the sea. Thus varied was the freight of the Mayflower.

As we walk through the lively main street of the town, we must stop to admire the fine gambrel roof of the old house where lived James Warren, that active patriot, who became president of the Provincial Congress, and whose wife, Mercy Otis Warren, wrote the “rousing word” which kindled many a heart in Revolutionary days. The line of fine lindens just beyond, as they rustle in the cool sea-breeze, could whisper many a charming tale of lovely dames and stately men, of scarlet cloaks and powdered wigs they have watched pass by under their shading branches, of treasures of old china and old silver, of blue tiles and claw-footed furniture, of Copley portraits now packed off to the great city, and of many changes come about since they came here as young trees from Nova Scotia, in a raisin-box.

Overlooking the blue water stands the old Winslow house, the solid frame of which came from England in 1754. Under its spreading lindens, through the fine colonial doorway so beautifully carved, many distinguished guests have passed, and here Ralph Waldo Emerson was married to Lydia Jackson, who was born in the picturesque house just beyond, almost hidden in trees and vines.

A drive toward the south will take us by some of the oldest houses. From the one with a dyke in front, Adoniram Judson, the famous Baptist missionary, took his departure for Burmah. His devoted sister then vowed that no one should cross the threshold until his return, and the door-step was taken away. Grass grew over the pathway, and the front door remained closed, for he died at sea, in 1850.

As we pass the handsome new building of the High School, it is good to remember, in this Plymouth of eight thousand inhabitants, paying thirty-four thousand dollars for last year’s “schooling,” that in 1672 it was decided that Plymouth’s school, supported by the rents of her southerly common-lands, was entitled to £33, the fishing excise from the Cape, offered to any town which would keep a free colonial school, classical as well as elementary. And in that free school began an early struggle of the three R’s against Latin and Greek. From Plymouth went Nathaniel Brewster, a graduate of Harvard’s first class of 1642, and the first of a long line of Plymouth students to enter Harvard.

Past the blue Eel River, flowing gently through shining green meadows to the sea, we may drive along quiet roads in Plymouth Woods, under sweet pines and sturdy oaks, by the shore of many a calm pond, sparkling in its setting of white beach sand. We cross old Indian trails, perhaps, and skirt acre after acre of level cranberry-bogs, pink and white, like a sheet of delicate sprig-muslin, when in bloom, and bright with the crimson fruit in early autumn. In these woods in their season bloom sweet mayflowers, the rare rhodora, the sabbatia, sundew and corema, and there many another treasure may be found by those who know how to seek!

When these forests were first explored, an enterprising member of the Mayflower’s crew, climbing a high tree to see how the land lay, saw shining before him a blue sheet of water which he took to be the ocean, and this was called after him “Billington’s Sea.” Following the shore of this lake, through the leafy paths of Morton’s Park, we come upon the source of the famous Town Brook, which with its honorable record of two centuries’ supply of alewives has always played an important part in the town’s annals, helping to grind the Pilgrims’ first grists in 1636, and now lending its busy aid in turning complicated machinery. In the fields on either side – the hunting-grounds of the banished race who once rejoiced in their possession – are still found the beautifully worked Indian arrow-heads and hatchets; here the smoke arose from their wigwams; here they often paddled past in their swift canoes, and here, perhaps, were shot the five deer that formed their offering in the first New England Thanksgiving.

But the manifold charms of Plymouth and Plymouth Woods must be seen and felt on the soil whence they sprung! So in the hope that the “Courteous Reader” to whom they are still unfamiliar may care to verify this truthful statement, we leave in brief and imperfect outline this story of the Old Colony, whither “they wente weeping and carried precious seeds; but they shall returne with joye and bring their sheaves.”

CAPE COD TOWNS

FROM PROVINCETOWN TO FALMOUTH

By KATHARINE LEE BATES

“CAPE COD,” wrote Thoreau, “is the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts; the shoulder is at Buzzard’s Bay; the elbow, or crazy-bone, at Cape Mallebarre; the wrist at Truro; and the sandy fist at Provincetown – behind which the State stands on her guard.”

This sandy fist curls toward the wrist in such fashion as to form a semicircular harbor, famous as the New World haven which first gave shelter to the Mayflower and her sea-worn company. On the 21st of November (by our modern reckoning), 1620, the Pilgrims, after their two bleak months of ocean, cast anchor here, rejoicing in the sight and smell of “oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras and other sweet wood.” Here they signed their memorable compact, forming themselves into a “civil body politic” and covenanting with one another, as honest Englishmen, to “submit to such government and governors as we should by common consent agree to make and choose.” Upon the adoption of this simple and significant constitution, the Pilgrim Fathers, still on board the Mayflower in Provincetown harbor, proceeded to set in motion the machinery of their little republic, for “after this,” wrote Bradford, “they chose, or rather confirmed, Mr. John Carver (a man godly and well approved amongst them) their Governor for one year.” That same day a scouting party went ashore and brought back a fragrant boatload of red cedar for firewood, with a goodly report of the place.

These stout-hearted Pilgrims were not the first Europeans to set foot on Cape Cod. Legends of the Vikings which drift about the low white dunes are as uncertain as the shifting sands themselves, and the French and Florentine navigators who sailed along the North American coast in the first half of the sixteenth century may have done no more than sight this sickle of land between sea and bay, but there are numerous records of English, French and Dutch visits within the last twenty years before the coming of the Mayflower. It may be that no less a mariner than Sir Francis Drake was the first of the English to tread these shores, but that distinction is generally allowed to Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, who made harbor here in 1602 and was “so pestered with codfish” that he gave the Cape the name, “which,” said Cotton Mather, “it will never lose till shoals of codfish be seen swimming upon the tops of its highest hills.” Gosnold traded with the Indians for furs and sassafras root, and was followed the next year by Martin Pring, seeking a cargo of this latter commodity, then held precious in pharmacy. Within the next four years three French explorers touched at the Cape, and a French colony was projected, but came to nothing. The visit of Henry Hudson, too, left no traces. In 1614 that rover of land and sea, Captain John Smith, took a look at Cape Cod, which impressed him only as a headland of hills of sand, overgrown with scrubby pines, hurts [huckleberries] and such trash, but an excellent harbor for all weathers.” After Smith’s departure, Hunt, his second in command, enticed a group of Nauset Indians on shipboard, carried them off, and sold them into slavery at Malaga, Spain, for twenty pounds a man. As a consequence of this crime, the Indians grew suspicious and revengeful, but nevertheless an irregular trade was maintained with them by passing vessels, until the pestilence that raged among the red men of the region from 1616 to 1619 interrupted communication.

The Pilgrims tarried in Provincetown harbor nearly a month. The compact had been signed, anchor dropped and the reconnoissance made on a Saturday. The Sunday following, the first Pilgrim Sabbath in America, was devoutly kept with prayer and praise on board the Mayflower, but the next morning secular activities began. The men carried ashore the shallop which had been brought over in sections between-decks and proceeded to put it together, while the women bundled up the soiled linen of the voyage and inaugurated the first New England Monday by a grand washing on the beach. On Wednesday, Myles Standish mustered a little army of sixteen men, each armed with musket, sword and corselet, and led them gallantly up the wooded cape, “thorou boughes and bushes,” nearly as far as the present town of Wellfleet. After two days the explorers returned with no worse injury than briar-scratched armor, bringing word of game and water-springs, ploughed land and burial-mounds. William Bradford showed the noose of the deer-trap, a “very pretie devise,” that had caught him by the leg, and two of the sturdiest Pilgrims bore, slung on a staff across their shoulders, a kettle of corn. As the few natives whom the party had met fled from them, the corn had been taken on credit from a buried hoard. The following year that debt was scrupulously paid, but a custom had been established which still prevails with certain summer residents on the Cape, who are said to make a practice of leaving their grocery bills over until the next season.

As soon as the shallop could be floated, a larger expedition was sent by water along the south coast to seek a permanent settlement. Through wind and snow the Pilgrim Fathers made their way up to Pamet River, in Truro, the limit of the earlier journey. They did not succeed in agreeing upon a fit site for the colony, but they sought out the corn deposit and, breaking the frozen ground with their swords, secured ten bushels more of priceless seed for the springtime. On the return of the second expedition there was anxious discussion about the best course to pursue. Some were for settling on the Cape and living by the fisheries, pointing out, to emphasize their arguments, the whales that sported every day about the anchored ship; but the Pilgrims were of agricultural habit and tradition and had reason enough just then to be weary of the sea. The situation was critical. “The heart of winter and unseasonable weather,” wrote Bradford, “was come upon us.” The gradual slope of the beach made it always necessary to “wade a bow-shoot or two” in going ashore from the Mayflower, and these icy foot-baths were largely responsible for the “vehement coughs” from which hardly one of the company was exempt.

Once more, on the 16th of December, the shallop started forth to find a home for the Pilgrims. Ten colonists, including Carver, Bradford and Standish, together with a few men of the ship’s crew, volunteered for this service. It was so cold that the sleety spray glazed doublet and jerkin “and made them many times like coats of iron.” The voyagers landed within the present limits of Eastham or Orleans, where, hard by the shore, a camp was roughly barricaded. One day passed safely in exploration, but at dawn of the second, when, “after prayer,” the English sat about their camp-fire at breakfast, “a great and strange cry” cut the mist, and on the instant Indian arrows, headed with deer-horn and eagles’ claws, whizzed about their heads. But little Captain Standish was not to be caught napping. “Having a snaphance ready,” he fired in direction of the war-whoop. His comrades supported him manfully, their friends in the shallop, themselves beset, shouted encouragement, and the savages, gliding back among the trees, melted into “the dark of the morning.” After this taste of Cape Cod courtesy, the Pilgrim Fathers can hardly be blamed for taking to their shallop again and plunging on, in a stiff gale, through the toppling waves, until, with broken rudder and mast split in three, they reached a refuge in the harbor of Plymouth.