Chapter I: Preface

Some years ago, being idly present at a tiny harbor--a mere nook in the coast of the Cape (for _the_ Cape it is to all good Americans)--I scraped acquaintance with an ancient and solitary fisherman who had just landed and was lunching in the shade. He was so quietly at home in the landscape that I felt a scrupulous and uneasy impulse to authenticate myself as the real thing and not a naturalized colonist or a floating element in the population. I told him, accordingly, that I claimed all the rights and privileges of a native (which, be it remembered, are many and important), because, though I was born in Boston, my mother came from Barnstable and was a direct descendant of the first settlers of 1639. ‘And so,’ I concluded with modest triumph, ‘I may claim to go back pretty far as a Cape man.’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, with a slow smile, ‘you have a good claim; and as for me, I go back pretty far too.’ ‘How far?’ I asked. ‘Oh, my great-grandmother was descended from the Hockanom Indians of Yarmouth.’ As Artemus Ward puts it, ‘He _had_ me there!’

The author of this book, it may be inferred from this anecdote, has grown up in propitious nurture and admonition. He, too, in his daily walk, claims with pride the privileges of a native, and he writes with that intimacy and understanding which befit the chronicler of so distinguished a region as Cape Cod. It is ‘a piece of prudence, as well as good manners,’ Swift tells us, ‘to put men upon talking on subjects they are best versed in.’ And so I leave him with confidence to the friendly reader.

GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to Alfred Crocker, Esq., of Centerville, for detailed information about salt-making in the salt works of his father, Loring Crocker, of Barnstable. Mr. Alfred Crocker spent several years in this business and is one of the few persons alive who is qualified to give first-hand information on it. Thanks are due to Mr. Thomas F. Hall, of Omaha, Nebraska, for facts about the Shiverick clipper, Belle of the West, in which he sailed for over four years, part of the time as mate. I wish to thank Mr. Gilbert Coleman, one of the leading oyster dealers of Cotuit, for information about the shellfisheries in that village for the last seventy years; and Mr. Elmer Rich, chairman of the Board of Selectmen of Wellfleet, and Mr. Frank A. Williams, town clerk, for information about the oyster and quahaug industries in their town. Both these men have long been engaged in the business there. Particular thanks are due to Mr. Elmer Mayo, of Chatham, for permission to copy a letter to him from L. M. Shaw, Secretary of the United States Treasury, recounting the facts of Mr. Mayo’s rescue of surfman Ellis off Monomoy. This letter accompanied the medal which the Department presented to Mr. Mayo on that occasion. I am also indebted to Ezra H. Baker, Esq., of Boston, for information about anchor-dragging off the south side of the Cape in the eighties, when he used to watch the boats thus employed. I have especially to thank Mr. John H. Edmonds, State Archivist, for the map showing locations of wrecks and for his perfectly authenticated narrative of the Whidaw episode.

Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Crowell, of East Dennis, have shown me every courtesy and assistance in obtaining the photograph of the Wild Hunter, which is taken from the original painting in the possession of Mr. Crowell’s mother, Mrs. Louisa M. Crowell. I wish also to thank Miss Edith M. White, of Yarmouthport, for her great kindness in lending me pictures of Captains Asa, John, and Oliver Eldridge, reproductions of which appear in this volume. The portrait of James Otis is copyright by A. W. Elson, of Belmont, to whom thanks are due for permission to use it. The same acknowledgment is due Mr. Fred Small, of Buzzards Bay, for his photographs of marsh and beach. The picture of the Dillingham house in Brewster is reproduced with the kind permission of Mr. Isaac Dillingham, of Newton Center, and that of the old Sears house in Dennis with the permission of Mrs. Margaret Richardson, its present owner, to whom I am also indebted for the date of its construction. The present volume would never have been undertaken without the advice and assistance of my father, George L. Kittredge, whose collection of documents pertaining to the Cape has always been at my disposal, whose knowledge of the bibliography of Cape history has saved me months of searching, and whose suggestions for the arrangement of material have been as happy as they were welcome.

CONTENTS

I. GEOLOGY AND EARLY APPEARANCE 3

II. THE EXPLORERS 13

III. THE INDIANS 27

IV. THE FIRST SETTLERS 52

V. HOW THEY LIVED IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 71

VI. CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY TO 1775 88

VII. THE REVOLUTION 112

VIII. FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE CIVIL WAR ASHORE 134

IX. WHALING 164

X. FISHERIES 182

XI. STORMS, WRECKS, AND WRECKERS 208

XII. THE MERCHANT MARINE 232

XIII. THE CIVIL WAR 257

XIV. THE CHURCH 265

XV. THE CANAL 292