Excerpts from

Preface

After falling in love with Cape Cod and eventually retiring to Yarmouth Port, I became involved with the history that brought this land to what it is today. I am not the only one to fall in love with the Cape and become involved with its evolution. People do not need to be here long before questions regarding whaling, leaders in local towns, and economic growth become more than mere curiosity. As with all research, one question leads to another. Eventually I found that I was telling the story of Cape Cod’s history to groups who were also interested in this fascinating land. Before long, the stories of Cape Cod’s people, towns and times grew into this work. It became clear to me that we are indeed a reflection of this remarkable land and that it takes a certain kind of person to live here.

This book is my gift to all who fall in love with Cape Cod and want to know more about how such an ever changing land attracted and held people who are as changing as the land on which they live.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this book is to share the history of Cape Cod. It is a story of people and their land. It is a story of struggle, survival and growth. But most important, it is a story of how free people living in a democratic, capitalistic society are able to change the way they live in response to external and internal changes. The people who chose to live here have had the character, strength and freedom to adapt to changes and to make alterations to improve the society in which they lived. This is a story of people improving their lives, independent of government direction, and as such is illustrative of how our country has prospered.

The economy of the Cape is impacted by events occurring in the world. These events also emotionally impact Cape Cod residents. From the late 1600s, as whaling became a major industry, to the present day when tourism leads the economy, Cape Cod and its people have dealt with changing tides of world events. Storms, wars, changing industry and even changes in the land itself have carved the character of Cape Codders and have given them the world in which they find themselves today.

While this history draws on examples from Yarmouth and the mid-Cape region, its real emphasis is on how people adapted to changes. As such, it is a history of all of Cape Cod and its people.

CHAPTER 1:
MAKING A LIVING

Whaling

Nature is the main force that marks Cape Cod as unique, both in the ever changing land and in the way those who choose to live on this land cope with changes. When the newcomers arrived in the 1600s, they set about making their living through agriculture, stock-raising and fishing. Just getting by was hard work but there were occasional luxuries, as when a whale washed up onto shore. The tale of the whale is fascinating, as whaling progressed from harvesting beached whales, to hunting them from small boats, to worldwide, multi-year hunting trips and eventually to observing whales swimming about a sight-seeing boat.

Cape Cod was made famous by the whaling skill of its people. In early times, whales abounded in Cape Cod waters and often became stranded on the Cape’s shores. Sometimes a whole pod stranded, and farmers left their fields and rushed to the beach to tend to the profits that could be made from this gift from the sea. These early whalers never embarked on boats. The bounty came to them. They simply went to the beach where the whales stranded, stripped the blubber and rendered it into oil which was used primarily for lighting.

A noted historian wrote:

Drift whales, or stranded whales, were shared among the people, with the minister, the church and the school of the town in which the whales had stranded. Shore whaling brought such profits that men set up outer beach houses as watch sites. It took a lot of wood to keep these houses warm and the wood burned contributed to the stripping of the Cape’s forests.

Soon there were disagreements over which town owned a beached whale. Lively discussions developed over where a large whale, or pod of smaller pilot whales, called blackfish, had beached and which town had claim. Before the town of Sandwich was twenty years old it had already promulgated rules and regulations concerning drift whales.

Profits from shore whaling were substantial. In 1687, two hundred tons of whale oil were exported to England. Boiled and refined, it lubricated delicate machinery. Whale blubber was rendered and the resulting oil used in the tanning process and for lighting.

CHAPTER 2:
RIGS, RAILS AND ROADS

Clipper Ships and Captains

The early to mid-1800s were wonderful times. Business was thriving. There were social activities, church activities and town affairs to attend to. These were times of diversification within industry, political views and religious expression.

The most romantic era of Cape Cod was the days of the sea captains. Captain Asa Eldridge set his long-held record for a North Atlantic crossing aboard the clipper ship Red Jacket, going from New York to Liverpool in only thirteen days and one hour. By the 1800s, maritime trade was the Cape’s leading industry.

Navigation on the open sea without landmarks as guides was critically important and difficult. Indeed, good navigation was an art in itself. Mary Matthews Bray described her experiences traveling to India from Cape Cod via London aboard her father’s ship National Eagle.

It was not always calm on the seas and a captain had to know the waters well and how to handle the sails to maintain course. There are frightening tales of storms and of cargo catching fire as ships and sailors made long, perilous journeys. On one such journey, Captain Bangs Hallet’s cargo of cotton caught fire when the mast of his ship was struck by lightning during a storm.

Clipper ships were built for speed and they were the state of the art in ocean transport through the greater part of the 19^th century. Indeed, the Clipper ship is said not to be a design but rather a state of mind. Many were constructed in Yarmouth and Dennis as well as elsewhere on Cape Cod. Large clipper ships sailed the Atlantic and to California via Cape Horn, a place of violent storms, high winds and treacherous waters. Rounding Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America was a dangerous journey, but the alternative totally overland route across North America to California and its gold or the combination sea and land route via Panama were equally perilous and far more arduous. It is worth noting that the iron, rolling stock and locomotives needed to build the Central Pacific portion of the transcontinental railroad after the Civil War came from the east coast on ships rounding Cape Horn.

In the 1840s, the American economy was booming. Foreign trade increased as demand for oriental goods including tea, silk and porcelain increased. With improved trade came inflation as shipping rates increased from ten dollars to sixty dollars a ton, an increase of 500 percent. At these rates, speed counted and it paid to design and build ships that delivered large cargoes in minimum time.

Clipper ships with Yankee sailors delivered the goods. Speeds from sixteen to eighteen knots, nautical miles per hour, were common and speeds up to twenty knots (23 miles per hour) were recorded.

Cape Cod Towns

Let’s go back to the beginning. In the year 1620, Plymouth was settled as a plantation by Pilgrims and Strangers after a perilous Atlantic crossing on the Mayflower. Pilgrim Separatists sought religious freedom from the Church of England while Strangers, although they did not adhere to the same religious beliefs as the Pilgrim Separatists, had skills needed by the community. Ten years later, in 1630, the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the north was settled by Puritans. While contention between the two settlements existed, Plymouth Plantation and Massachusetts Bay Colony generally cooperated with one another and when the Bay Colony needed additional land for farming and livestock, it was sold to the Bay Colony by Plymouth Plantation. People also moved from Massachusetts Bay to Plymouth Plantation in search of economic opportunity and religious tolerance. By 1635, the population of Plymouth Plantation had considerably grown. Still, with the influx of Puritans who arrived with the Winthrop Fleet in the 1630s, the Massachusetts Bay Colony grew far faster than the Plymouth Colony and, in 1692, absorbed the smaller colony.

By 1636, Plymouth Plantation had grown sufficiently with the addition of Duxbury and Scituate to become a colony rather than a plantation. Expansion to the southeast continued and by 1639 Plymouth had grown to include seven towns and settlements: Duxbury, Scituate, Plymouth, Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth and Nauset which later became Eastham.

Sandwich, Barnstable and Yarmouth, three of the seven towns of Plymouth Colony, were established on Cape Cod with many of the residents having come from Massachusetts Bay Colony. Growth and diversification brought problems during the late 1630s as the Cape was still a part of Plymouth Colony and was bound to Plymouth’s political and economic system. Sandwich was the first community settled and by 1638 it had a fairly large population. Next came Barnstable and Yarmouth. Migration to these towns was not only due to population growth but also was in response to religious conflict. Even though people moved to the Cape to avoid religious conflict, issues of religious practice frequently followed them.

In 1639, John Crow, Thomas Howes and Anthony Thacher established homes in Mattacheese. Only a year later, 28 families called this community home, a population sufficient to establish the community as a town, and the name was changed to Yarmouth. During these times a town could not be formed without a church and a minister. Yarmouth’s first minister of the First Congregational Church was Marmaduke Matthews. The last town founded on the Cape as part of Plymouth Colony was Eastham, where Pilgrims had first encountered Native People in 1620. When formed as a town in 1646, it was named Nauset and remained Nauset until 1651 when the court, the legislature of the time, declared that it would be called Eastham.

Two major problems existed in Yarmouth’s early days; land ownership and religious issues. One troublesome factor was that members of the Congregational Church had the right to state their opinions regarding the affairs of the church. This caused many conflicts within the congregation and presented uncomfortable situations for the minister.

Land ownership disputes were finally resolved when the court of Plymouth Colony assigned Myles Standish the task of supervising land distributions in Yarmouth. Standish did his work well and by 1648 most land issues had been resolved.

Cemeteries: Windows Of The Past

It may seem strange to look at cemeteries as history books, but cemeteries can tell us a great deal about earlier generations and the world they lived in. The perception of death has changed through time and with these changes the rituals of death and how we express grief have also changed. 

Attitudes toward death and burial today are quite different from those in earlier centuries. In fact, the word cemetery was not in common use until after the rural-cemetery movement gained influence in the 1830s. The rural-cemetery movement, a new way of thinking of disposition of the dead, came about in 1831 with the founding of Mount Auburn Cemetery. Located in a bucolic rural setting in Cambridge, Massachusetts just outside of Boston, Mount Auburn offered actual lot ownership in a beautiful planned and supervised setting. Prior to this, New England’s burial places were known as burial grounds or graveyards.

When death occurred away from home, the deceased was buried in a convenient place near where he or she had died. A marker placed in remembrance at home is known as a cenotaph, meaning that the body was not buried beneath the marker. Because only shovels were used to dig graves, graves were often shallow, sometimes only three feet deep. To protect a new grave site from animals, a large flat stone known as a wolf stone was sometimes temporarily placed over the grave.

Cape Cod Weather

The land itself, ever changing, seems to be a metaphor for the changing economy and life on Cape Cod. The storms of Cape Cod are impressive, carving not only the landscape of the shores but also memories in the minds of those who have seen them.

When the Pilgrims arrived in November, 1620, it was weather that kept them from landing on Nauset Beach. Fifteen years later they experienced a storm the likes of which they had never seen. This was the hurricane of August 15, 1635. Trees were twisted and thrown to the ground and the original Aptucxet trading post was destroyed.

Another storm hit the Cape on September 23, 1815, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. destroying and carrying away the saltworks on Buzzards Bay. Saltworks from Mashnee Island were later found in Wareham. During this storm the tide rose eight feet higher than normal with the Bay being several feet higher than this. The Great September Gale, as it was called, was made famous by a poem written by Oliver Wendell Holmes. (See Appendix D for Holmes’ poem.)

There are storms and then there are hurricanes. A brochure written to relieve anxiety among tourists coming to Cape Cod jokingly states: Hurricane? We call them nor’easters … been having them for 300 years. If you ask a person who has lived on the Cape which storm was the worst one, they are most likely to say that it was the storm of 1938. This hurricane struck on September 21^st with winds of 75 to 90 miles per hour. Wind was not as much of a problem as was danger from storm surge, especially in Buzzards Bay where high tide and storm surge coincided.

When the storm of 1938 hit New York and New England, it sent a tidal wave along the east coast. The Register reported that on Cape Cod the south side was hit the hardest with the middle and lower Cape suffering

People who live here do all that is possible to rescue those stranded by weather. In the winter of 1873, a total of 75 fishing vessels rounding the Cape were hit by freezing weather. Fifty of the ships were frozen in the ice and blown into Barnstable Bay, now known as Cape Cod Bay, where they remained stranded from February 3^rd to March 6^th. An article in the Cape Cod Standard-Times reported:

The story of Captain Driscoll, then a crew member of one of the ships, tells of the effort.

Saviors Of The Sea

Shipwrecks and Cape Cod have been together since Europeans first began sailing along the Cape’s shores. The Cape’s shallow sand bars present ships their greatest danger, as it is here that ships are grounded during storms. Once grounded, pounding surf and wind break ships apart as though they were toy models.

Because many storms on Cape Cod come up suddenly, because the shoreline is so treacherous and because the arm of the Cape stretches twenty-five miles into the ocean, this changing land can be heaven or demon to mariners. For shipping, the Cape’s location and protected bays are wonderful, but its location combined with nor’easters raises havoc. The Cape has been the location of more than 3,000 shipwrecks in 300 years. One thousand of these occurred between Truro and Wellfleet. During winters of the early 1800s, there was an average of two wrecks every month.

From the time Cape Cod was first settled by Europeans, there has been some type of rescue service for the captains and crews of stranded ships. Until 1872, rescue service was given by volunteers on an informal basis and was not available full time. Full time, federally organized life savers were called Guardians of the Ocean Graveyard and were in service on Cape Cod as part of the U.S. Life-Saving Service from 1872 until 1915, when the service was incorporated into the newly formed U.S. Coast Guard. Life-saving was and remains a dangerous business as is made clear by the life saver’s motto: You have to go, but you don’t have to come back.

The first organized life-saving service, the Massachusetts Humane Society, began working in 1785 in Boston Harbor and in the 1800s shelters were established on Cape Cod where shipwreck survivors were given shelter and food. Because Humane Society life savers were unpaid volunteers, they were unable to provide constant service. In addition, equipment used by rescuers was not always adequate for the job. Congress tried to help by funding the Humane Society in 1845. In 1872, federally constructed and staffed lifesaving stations initiated the U.S. Life-Saving Service as a department of the Department of Treasury.

Located on Race Point, Highlands, Peaked Hill Bars, Pamet, Cahoon’s Hollow, Nauset, Orleans, Chatham, and Monomoy Point, Cape Cod had nine rescue stations. Each station had a crew of six surfmen and a captain, or keeper. Sometimes the work was endlessly boring and other times it was difficult, terrifying, and exhausting.

CHAPTER 5:
SOLDIERS OF CAPE COD

Wars have been a fact of life through time and the history and strategy of them have been recorded in many texts. However, it is a soldier’s story that tells us the reality of war. Soldiers’ experiences are the heart of war. Through their words we feel the soldiers’ fear, excitement and loneliness. Through their eyes we see how courage and dedication to their country have given us the lives we live today.

Another citizen of Cape Cod who influenced the course of the American Revolution was Enoch Crosby. On October 15, 1832, Enoch Crosby, 82 years old, was sworn in before the court of Oyer & Terminer in Putnam County, New York, in order to testify in support of his receiving benefits for his service to the United States. He told an interesting story.

Enoch Crosby, born in 1750 in Harwich, Massachusetts, was the great spy of the Revolutionary War. In August, 1776, Crosby was assigned to the regiment of Colonel Sworthaut. However, Colonel Sworthaut’s company had left Fredericksburgh, now Carmel in Putnam County, located in northeastern Connecticut, and was on its way to Westchester County, forcing Crosby to attempt to join his company on his own.

While traveling to join his company, Crosby came upon a stranger, named Bunker, who asked where he was going. Suspecting that Bunker thought he was going to join the British, Crosby asked him for safe directions to the British lines. Bunker told him that there was a loyalist company forming in the vicinity and encouraged him to join it. Crosby then informed Bunker that he was unwilling to wait until the company was ready to march and that he would go forward on his own. He continued walking until darkness set in and then spent the night at the home of Esquire Young who was a member of the Committee of Safety for Westchester county. While there, he told Young of his conversation with Bunker. Upon hearing what Crosby had learned, Young requested that Crosby go with him to report to the committee. Crosby did as requested and from that time on was assigned the role of secret agent. Colonel Sworthaut soon received a letter stating that Enoch Crosby would not join his regiment.

 Crosby was introduced to Captain Townsend who was apprised of Crosby’s new role. He joined Captain Townsend, posing as a prisoner. That evening, Crosby escaped and went to Mr. Bunker’s house saying that he had escaped from Townsend’s camp and was looking for protection. The next morning Bunker introduced him as a good loyalist to several men in his company. Crosby stayed with these men for a short time. Eventually he returned to Esquire Young’s home, five miles away, where he reported on the loyalist company and its location to Young and Captain Townsend. He then made his way back to Bunker’s home where he rejoined the loyalist group.

The next day, Crosby and about thirty others of the loyalist company were captured and taken to White Plains. Later they were taken to Fishkill in Dutchess County where Captain Townsend took charge of the prisoners. Crosby remained there with the others, guarded by rangers commanded by Captain Clark. After being interred for about a week, he was freed on bail in order to maintain his cover.

Enoch Crosby was then given a secret pass and an assignment to go to the house of Nicholas Brawer near the mouth of Wappingers creek. Brawer took Crosby across the Hudson river whereupon Crosby made his way to the house of John Russell, ten miles away. Under guise as an employee, Crosby gathered more loyalist information and reported to his company in Fishkill after ten days.

Eventually, Crosby joined a thirty man company commanded by an English officer named Captain Robinson. After a week’s time, the company began a march from Ulster County to Bush Carricks, resting in a barn for the night. By morning the barn was surrounded by American troops and all were taken prisoner. Once again, Crosby was a prisoner of war, held by his own forces. Robinson’s company was taken to Fishkill and confined in a stone church along with other prisoners. After one night, the Americans removed Crosby from the church as it seemed unsafe for him to remain with British prisoners. He was instructed to leave Fishkill but remain available for further duty. Within a few weeks he was sent a horse and instructed to go to a place named Maloonscack where he met a Tory named Hazard Wilcox. 

Because he received no information from Wilcox, Crosby went to Pawling in Dutchess County and while there learned that a British Captain named Sheldon would lead a march. He reported this to his contacts.

Crosby had been working successfully as a spy for a year when he was taken prisoner for the fourth time, again by Americans. When the order came for the prisoners to be tied together, Crosby claimed he was too lame to travel. The captain in charge, aware of Crosby’s role, took him to prison on his horse. When they reached Fishkill, Crosby was again released.

After reporting to the Committee of Safety, Enoch Crosby was released from duty as a secret agent and allowed to return to his home. He enlisted two more times for regular duty and eventually settled in New York State’s Putnam County without ever having received a formal discharge 

Enoch Crosby’s life was so remarkable that James Fenimore Cooper made him the model for his novel, The Spy, written in 1821. In 1827, Enoch Crosby attended the play based on this best-selling novel and his own life.

CHAPTER 6:
SURVIVAL

Native Cape Codders

Fishing, planting, harvesting and hunting were the way of life for each Wampanoag community. All members of a community had the right to use all land as no one person owned land to the exclusion of others. Each family used a particular piece of land designated by the Sachem (chief) and his council. In gratitude, some of the harvest was given to the Sachem. In 1620, as Plymouth Plantation was being settled, Massasoit was the highest Sachem of the Wampanoags.

Wampanoag custom was to build lodging in many areas and stay in different places according to the season. When and where food was plentiful dictated where a dwelling was built and when a family lived there.

The arrival of Europeans in the 1600s disrupted the Wampanoags’ way of life. Sometimes things went well and gifts were exchanged. Other times interactions were hostile. An early hostile exchange occurred during John Smith’s visit to Cape Cod in 1614. Smith was mapping the coast of what is now New England and as he departed for England, his lieutenant, Thomas Hunt, kidnapped twenty-seven Wampanoag men and sold them as slaves in Spain. Later, in 1616, when a French vessel was wrecked on the shores of Cape Cod, survivors were taken prisoner and forced to act as servants within Wampanoag communities.

More devastating to Wampanoags than these hostile episodes was the plague of 1618. This plague, a form of typhus that exists in unclean living conditions, was brought to the Cape by Europeans. The plague destroyed whole villages and killed in the vicinity of seventy percent of the Wampanoag population of Southeastern Massachusetts. Weakened by these losses, Massasoit was forced to submit to Canonicus, Sachem of the Narragansett, thereby making Canonicus the region’s most powerful Sachem. This was devastating to Massasoit as he and his father a generation earlier had warred with the Narragansett.

Arrival of the English presented an opportunity for Massasoit to re-establish strength and reputation among his people. In March, 1621, he signed a peace treaty with the Pilgrims which gave him both physical strength from British men and arms and the opportunity for enhanced trade. In 1623, after Edward Winslow of the Plymouth Plantation helped him recover from an illness that had blinded him and might well have taken his life, Massasoit warned the colonists of an impending attack which was then successfully prevented. Based on the treaty of 1621, Massasoit remained neutral during the Pequot war of 1636.

Wampanoag communities were crowded into ever smaller areas as more Europeans arrived on Cape Cod. Different approaches to land ownership and use created problems between settlers and Native Peoples. Wampanoags were prevented from moving to alternative living areas with seasonal changes. Animals that settlers brought, including pigs and cows, ruined crops planted by Wampanoags. And again, another illness brought by Europeans ravaged both Native People and English settlers. Small pox destroyed many indigenous communities throughout the western hemisphere.

Epilogue

Throughout Cape Cod’s history, the symbiotic relationship of people who choose to live here and the land itself is evident. Only a certain kind of person is attracted to such a place. Nothing here stays the same. This land gives and it takes away. People who call themselves Cape Codders wear the name proudly, for they are aware that change is part of that definition and to remain here means that they must always be ready to adapt to a place that will not remain the same. Even the land will not remain the same. It will change year by year, month by month, even day by day.

People who call Cape Cod home are as ever changing as the land. They become involved with town activities, research town histories and even start new careers. Change is the attraction. It is what bonds place and person. Change is challenge and Cape Codders thrive on it. As the land has weathered storms, so have the people. People of this land have evolved with the changing needs of the fishing industry, cranberry industry and tourism. As the land changes and evolves, so do the people who have chosen Cape Cod as home. We are a reflection of the land.