THE MONUMENT 
 
THE 
 
 PROVINCETOWN 
 
 BOOK 
 
 by 
 NANCY W. PAINE SMITH 
 
 Set up and printed by 
 
 TOLMAN PRINT, Inc. 
 
 Brockton, Mass. 
 
P?&6 (d 
 
 Copyright 1922 by 
 Nancy W. Paine Smith 
 
 JUN -3 IS22 
 
 ©CI.A(>61975 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Here Comes the Crier 9 
 
 The Heavenly Town 11 
 
 Over ti^e Road to Provincetown ... 15 
 
 Who First Found the Place .... 16 
 
 Our Names 18 
 
 Just a Little about the Pilgrims ... 22 
 
 The Compact 23 
 
 The Settlers 29 
 
 The Settlement on Long Point . . . 35 
 How the Streets Were Laid Out and the 
 
 Town Built 40 
 
 Salt-making 50 
 
 Cod-fishing 53 
 
 On the Grand Banks 56 
 
 Mackerel-catching 66 
 
 Whaling 68 
 
 Fresh-fishing 78 
 
 Allied Industries 83 
 
 The Coast Guard 92 
 
 The Portuguese 97 
 
 A Bit of Geography 99 
 
 Provincetown Weather 112 
 
 The Churches 118 
 
 The Benevolences 134 
 
8 THE PROVINCFTOWN BOOK 
 
 The Schools 137 
 
 The Art Colony 145 
 
 The Monument and the Hill .... 148 
 
 A Hint at the Natural History of the Shore 153 
 
 The Flowers 170 
 
 The Birds 178 
 
 Records from the Old Cemetery . . . 189 
 
 Teachers in the High School . . . 221 
 
 Roster of the Provincetown Seminary 1845-6 224 
 
 List of the Whalers Since 1820 . . . 229 
 
 List of Dates 245 
 
 List of Books 252 
 
 Seeing Provincetown and Some Interesting 
 
 Things to See 255 
 
T 
 
 Here Comes the Crier 
 
 HIS is the way the town crier cries the town. 
 He walks from one end of the sidewalk to the 
 other ringing his bell as he goes, three strokes 
 
 up and down. 
 
 Ding-dong Ding-dong Ding-dong. 
 
10 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Then in a loud voice, "Notice — To be sold at 
 public auction, this afternoon at two o'clock, at J. & 
 L. N. Paine's wharf, three-sixteenths of the schooner 
 Granada, with cables and anchors and all fittings." 
 
 If the weather is too bad for the steamer to make 
 her trip on schedule, he cries this: 
 
 (Ding-dong Ding-dong Ding-dong.) 
 
 "Notice — The Steamer George Shattuck will leave 
 for Boston to-morrow morning at nine o'clock — wea- 
 ther permitting." 
 
 On the afternoon of a show, he cries this: 
 
 (Ding-dong Ding-dong Ding-dong.) 
 
 "Notice — Fairbanks Lodge of Good Templars 
 will give a dramatic exhibition in Masonic Hall, this 
 evening at seven o'clock, presenting the four-act drama, 
 'Down by the Sea' and concluding with the laughable 
 farce, 'Done on Both Sides.' Admission 25 cents." 
 
 When we hear the crier's bell, we all go to the door 
 to listen, and thus the event is advertised in everybody's 
 ears at the cost of one dollar. 
 
 Could there be a collection of all the notices of 
 sales and sailings, of storms and shows, cried by the 
 crier for two hundred years, we should have a history 
 of the town. Let me be the town crier, and from 
 memory and tradition, from the records, and from a 
 deep love for my home, cry the town to you. 
 
The Heavenly Town 
 
 hy Alma Martin 
 
 A heavenly town is Provincetown. 
 
 Its streets go winding up and down, 
 
 Way-down-along, way-up-along. 
 
 With laughter, mirthful jest and song. 
 
 Dark Portuguese 
 
 From far-off seas 
 
 Their ships in bay 
 
 Pass time of day 
 
 With friends who wander up and down 
 
 The pleasant streets of Provincetown. 
 
 "Hello!" the friendly children call 
 
 To high and low, to great and small. 
 
 Bright blossoms gaily nod their heads. 
 
 Strong zinnias, yellow, purples, reds, 
 
 Gay marigolds and hollyhocks 
 
 Whose hues are matched by artists' smocks. 
 
 Dark laughing boys. 
 
 Dark smiling girls. 
 
 With here and there a native son. 
 
 With blue eyes full of Yankee fun. 
 
 Go up and down the village street; 
 
 Gay words for every one they meet, 
 
 And fill the summer air with song, 
 
 Way-up-along, way-down-along. 
 
12 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 The air is crisp with briny smells, 
 The time is told by chime of bells, 
 The painters sketch each little nook, 
 In colors like a children's book. 
 Yellow shutters, windows pink, 
 Purple shingles, trees of ink. 
 Front street, Back street. 
 Narrow winding lanes. 
 Many colored fishing boats, 
 Sails and nets and seines. 
 East end. West end. 
 High sandy dunes. 
 Wonderful by moonlight 
 Or in shining noons. 
 
 Oh, a heavenly town is Provincetown 
 Whose streets go winding up and down. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 13 
 
 I heard or seemed to hear the chiding sea 
 Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come? 
 Am I not always here, thy summer home? 
 Is not my voice thy music morn and eve? 
 My breath thy healthful climate in the heats? 
 My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath? 
 
 — Emerson 
 
oj:£AM 
 
 Many a man 
 who naJ sailed 
 all over the world 
 never went to 
 Soston that 
 
Over the Road to Provincetown 
 
 Go SOUTH down the Old Colony 
 by the Weymouths and Kingston to Plymouth, 
 through the Plymouth woods, 
 past the old shop where the Sandwich glass was made, 
 across the Canal, 
 
 to old "High Barnstable", the county town, 
 along those pleasant streets which Joe Lincoln loves 
 Where every man but one is "Capt'n, and he is fust 
 
 mate" 
 to the west of Highland Light, 
 (you are now going north) 
 into the stretch of road 
 with the dunes on one side and 
 the bay on the other 
 " Way-up-along-the-shore, 
 to Provincetown. 
 
Who First Found the Place 
 
 MORE than nine hundred years ago Thorwald, 
 brother of Lief Erickson, came up the Back- 
 side toward the Harbor. Old Norse records 
 tell how, as he made the end of the Point, he ran ashore 
 and was compelled to haul his ship out for repairs. He 
 called the land a goodly land, and sailed away to the 
 northwest, to a bay full of islands (probably Boston 
 Harbor). There he was hit by a poisoned arrow. 
 When he knew that he must die, he directed his men 
 to carry him back to the place where they repaired the 
 ship, and there bury him. This they did. It may be 
 that Thorwald's sepulchre is the stone structure under 
 a house on Chip Hill. Many years ago this hill was 
 lowered twenty or thirty feet for salt-works. When in 
 1853, Mr. Francis A. Paine built his house there, work- 
 men, digging the cellar, came upon a wall of red stones. 
 The wall was laid in mortar containing fragments of fish 
 bones; the stones were blackened as if by smoke. In 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 17 
 
 making repairs to the house in 1895, the wall was again 
 uncovered. There are no stones on the end of Cape 
 Cod, except those brought here as ballast in ships. 
 One glance at a model of those old Norse ships, high 
 out of water, is enough to prove that Thorwald's ship, in 
 order to cross the Atlantic Ocean, must have been well 
 ballasted. This stone wall has been called The Indian's 
 Camp, The Norsemen's Fireplace, The Norsemen's Fort. 
 But Indians never made stone-work; wild Norsemen 
 built their fires in the open; the Norseman's best fort 
 was his ship afloat or ashore. May it not be that 
 Thorwald's men made his grave on this hill a little 
 removed from the shore, in the goodly land where he 
 wished to be buried.'' 
 
 Max Bohm has on exhibition at the Art Associa- 
 tion, a canvas of the Norse explorers on this coast. 
 The title of the picture reads: "Eric, the Red, being in 
 fine spirits, discovers the Land of the Free, and, having 
 a cruel wit, dubs it Vinland (Wineland)." 
 
Our Names 
 
 MANY early explorers made our harbor, and 
 each gave it a name to please himself. Maps 
 of the first French and Italian navigators 
 mark the land The Sandy Cape. One called it Keel 
 Cape; one called it Cape of the Cross. Captain John 
 Smith called it Cape James. Champlain called it Cape 
 Blanc. In 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold christened it 
 Cape Cod. 
 
 Gosnold is said to have named Cape Cod from the 
 first fish he caught in the harbor. Benjamin Drew put 
 this story into rhyme, and read it in response to a toast 
 at the first anniversary dinner of the Cape Cod Asso- 
 ciation, Nov. 11, 1851. 
 
 There sailed an ancient mariner, 
 
 Bart Gosnold was he hight — 
 The Cape was all a wilderness 
 
 When Gosnold hove in sight. 
 
 The hills were bold and fair to view, 
 
 And covered o'er with trees. 
 Said Gosnold: "Bring a fishing line. 
 
 While lulls the evening breeze. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 19 
 
 "I'll christen that there sandy shore 
 From the first fish I take — 
 Tautog or toad-fish, cusk or cod, 
 Horse-mackerel or hake. 
 
 "Hard-head or haddock, sculpin, squid, 
 Goose-fish, pipe-fish or cunner, 
 No matter what, shall with its name 
 Yon promontory honor, " 
 
 Old Neptune heard the promise made — 
 
 Down dove the water-god. 
 He drove the meaner fish away 
 
 And hooked the mammoth cod. 
 
 Quick Gosnold hauled, "Cape — Cape — Cape Cod!" 
 "Cape Cod!" the crew cried louder. 
 "Here steward take the fish away, 
 And give the boys a chowder." 
 
 The name Cape Cod now applies to the whole of 
 Barnstable County, but in all early records and docu- 
 ments and in common usage until recent years, Cape 
 Cod was used for Provincetown alone. 
 
 We are Cape Cod, we are also Province Land. 
 Since a government has existed in Massachusetts, we 
 have been the Province's land, the property first of 
 Plymouth Colony, later of the Commonwealth. The 
 State has repeatedly recorded its ownership, and has 
 often leased and taxed the fisheries. It still appoints 
 and pays a commissioner to care for the land. No one 
 
20 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 may cut a tree or pick a cranberry without a permit. 
 Not until 1893 was it possible to give a deed of land, 
 except a quit-claim deed. At that time the Common- 
 wealth set up granite bound-stones, ceding to the people 
 the land on which the town is built, but reserving to 
 itself most of the territory. These bounds can be 
 followed along the hills just back of the town. 
 
 The Trustees of Public Reservations, State of 
 Massachusetts 1892, made the following report on the 
 State's title to the land. "The Colony of New Ply- 
 mouth was granted all the coast from Cohassett to 
 Narraganzett, by royal patent, dated January 29, 
 1629-30. The Colony in turn granted parts of its 
 domain to sub-colonies, or plantations, but never so 
 granted the extreme of Cape Cod. On the contrary, 
 the Governor, under orders of the General Court, 1650, 
 purchased the tip end of Cape Cod from an Indian 
 named Samson, 'for the said Colony's use.' There was 
 included in the purchase all the shore of Cape Cod 
 Harbor from Long Point, easterly till It came to a little 
 pond next to the Eastern Harbor, thence northerly 
 to the back sea." 
 
 We were once a part of the Constablrick of East- 
 ham. 
 
 In order that the State Land and the people on 
 it, many of them transients, might be under the imme- 
 diate eye of the law, we were made, in 1714, A Precinct 
 of the Town of Truro. This plan was not satisfactory, 
 and the next year a petition of the inhabitants of 
 Truro was presented to the General Court by Constant 
 Freeman, the representative, "praying that Cape Cod 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 21 
 
 be declared a part of Truro or not a part of Truro, that 
 the town may know how to act in regard to some 
 persons." 
 
 In 1727, we were incorporated by an act of legisla- 
 ture as a township by the name of Provincetown, though 
 in this act the State reaffirms its right to the land. 
 
 At that time, we narrowly escaped being named 
 Herrington. The original act shows the word Herring- 
 ton crossed out and Provincetown written in. The 
 stretch of water between Wood End and Race Point is 
 still called Herring Cove. 
 
 We are Provincetown in Barnstable County. 
 Sitting in the South Station in Boston, in the "Barn- 
 stable Pew" a stranger said to me: "Is it possible there 
 is a place in the world with such a name as 'Barn- 
 Stable'.^" They who should know, say that the English 
 town for which we are named was in the early days 
 Barnstaple, "Big Barns." 
 
Just a Little About the 
 Pilgrims 
 
 '"''They -planned wisely and they builded zvell.^^ 
 
 IN THESE tercentenary days, the story of the 
 Pilgrims has been told too often to be repeated 
 here. But we never forget that the May/lower 
 passengers were Non-conformists. "Forms and cere- 
 monies are inventions of men, sinful to observe, not 
 authorized by Scripture." So they said. They were 
 Separatists, for they had renounced the established 
 church of England. They were Independents and 
 Congregationalists, each parish electing its own 
 officers, and each parish independent of every other 
 and of all authority but itself. Their opponents, in 
 derision, called them Puritans as being too pure to live 
 on this planet. They were prisoners in England, for 
 conscience' sake. They were exiles in Holland, "harried 
 out of the land." They were Pilgrims on their way to 
 a new world and a new era. They were the minority; 
 the greater part were left behind with John Robinson 
 in Holland. They were the signers of the Compact 
 drawn up in the cabin of the Mayflower, in Province- 
 town Harbor, November 11, 1620, O. S. 
 
The Compact 
 
 IN THE name of God, Amen. 
 We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal 
 subjects of our dread sovereign. Lord King James, 
 by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France and 
 Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith etc., having 
 undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement of 
 the Christian faith and the honor of our King and 
 Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the 
 northern part of Virginia, do by these presents, solemnly 
 and mutually, in the presence of God, and one another, 
 covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil 
 body politic, for the better ordering and preservation 
 and furtherance of the ends aforesaid: and by virtue 
 hereof do enact, constitute and frame such just and 
 equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices 
 from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and 
 convenient for the general good of the Colony; unto 
 which we promise all due submission and obedience. 
 In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our 
 names at Cape Cod, the 11th of November, in the year 
 of the reign of our sovereign Lord King James of 
 England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of 
 Scotland, the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini 1620. 
 
24 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 SIGNERS OF THE COMPACT. 
 
 John Carver 
 William Bradford 
 
 Edward Winslow 
 William Brewster 
 Isaac Allerton 
 Miles Standish 
 John Alden 
 Samuel Fuller 
 Christopher Martin 
 William Mullins 
 William White 
 Richard Warren 
 John Howland 
 Stephen Hopkins 
 Edward Tilly 
 John Tilly 
 Francis Cooke 
 Thomas Rogers 
 Thomas Tinker 
 John Ridgdale 
 Edward Fuller 
 
 John Turner 
 Francis Eaton 
 James Chilton 
 John Craxton 
 John Billington 
 Joses Fletcher 
 John Goodman 
 Digery Priest 
 Thomas Williams 
 Gilbert Winslow 
 Edmond Margeson 
 Peter Brown 
 Richard Bitterage 
 George Soule 
 Richard Clark 
 Richard Gardiner 
 John Allerton 
 Thomas English 
 Edward Doten 
 Edward Leister 
 
 From these M ay flower passengers, and from their 
 friends who came the next year in the Fortune, and from 
 those who came a little later in the Ann, sprung the 
 natives of Cape Cod. 
 
 They were forced to make a landing by the weather 
 and by the refusal of the captain of the ship to go 
 further. They were outside any civil authority. They 
 record that some of the strangers among them had let 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 25 
 
 fall mutinous speeches,<thatwhen they came ashore they 
 would use their own libertie. They drew up this com- 
 pact saying that they would make their own laws and 
 then they would obey them. That seems a simple 
 thing to us, and doubtless to them it did not seem a 
 great event. But Hon. Francis Baylies, in his History 
 oj New Plymouth, says that this compact, adopted in the 
 cabin of the Mayflower established a most important 
 principle, which is the foundation of all democratic 
 institutions and the basis of the Republic. 
 
 Here in the "pleasant bay" at Provincetown, on 
 November 11, 1620, began the experiment of self- 
 government. Governor Bradford's History says, "Be- 
 ing thus arrived in a good harbor, and brought safe to 
 land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of 
 Heaven who had brought them over the vast and 
 furious ocean and delivered them from all the perils and 
 miseries thereof, again to set their feet upon the firm 
 and stable earth, their proper element." He adds that 
 on Monday the women went on shore to wash, as they 
 had great need. 
 
 For five weeks they lay at anchor here, while they 
 repaired the shallop and explored the coast. To iden- 
 tify "the good harbor and pleasant bay circled round 
 except in the entrance which is about four miles over 
 from land to land," is easy. The changes made along 
 the shore by wind and tide for three hundred years 
 render it very difficult to locate the exact spots where 
 the women made Monday the national wash-day, where 
 they saw the Indians who ran away and "whistled their 
 dogge after them," where dignified William Bradford 
 
26 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 was caught in a deer-trap. But the Research Club of 
 Provincetown, after most careful examination of all 
 records, has erected a tablet at the extreme west end of 
 the town, at "The Terminal of the King's Highway 
 that goeth unto Billingsgate." The inscription on the 
 tablet reads: 
 
 THE FIRST LANDING PLACE 
 OF THE PILGRIMS 
 NOV. 11, 1620 O. S. 
 THE MAP IN MOURT'S RELATIONS SHOWS 
 THAT NEAR THIS SPOT 
 THE PILGRIMS 
 FIRST TOUCHED FOOT ON AMERICAN SOIL 
 
 ERECTED BY THE RESEARCH CLUB 
 OF PROVINCETOWN 
 
 1917 
 
 "The Cape Cod Journal of the Pilgrim Fathers 
 reprinted from Mourt's Relations" is a pamphlet costing 
 twenty-five cents, done by Leon Sharman in 1920. 
 The original "Relations" was made in 1622, by Brad- 
 ford, Winslow, Morton and others, and has a title two 
 hundred words long, "A Relation or Journall of the 
 Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantations 
 settled in New England, etc., etc." 
 
 The manuscript of Bradford's History was lost 
 for many years, and was at last found in the library of 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 27 
 
 the Bishop of London, by whom it was presented, 
 through the efforts of Hon. George F. Hoar and of 
 Ambassador Bayard, to the Commonwealth of Massa- 
 chusetts. The Commonwealth sells copies of this most 
 interesting book, at the State House in Boston, for 
 31.00 
 
 The Research Club has also erected a tablet in the 
 Old Cemetery; 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 DOROTHY MAY BRADFORD (Drowned) 
 
 JAMES CHILTON JASPER MORE 
 
 EDWARD THOMPSON 
 
 The Four Mayflower Passengers Who 
 
 Died While the Mayflower Was 
 
 AT Anchor in Provincetown 
 
 Harbor, Dec. 1620. 
 
 There is the spot where, as Bradford says," We found 
 springs of fresh water, of which we were heartily glad, 
 and sat us down and drank our first New England water 
 with as much delight as ever we drunk drink in our 
 lives." This spring (in Truro) was easily identified. 
 It is now faced with cement, marked with a tablet and 
 is convenient for any one who, like the Pilgrim Fathers, 
 would delight to drink drink of it. 
 
 The place where they found the corn is also marked. 
 It still bears the name the Fathers gave it, Cornhill. 
 Indian arrow heads are abundant here. 
 
28 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 More important than the washing, or the spring, 
 or the corn, was the arrival of a little boy baby on 
 board the Mayflower. "This day" (Dec. 16), the 
 record says, "It pleased God that Mistress White was 
 brought abed of a son which was called Peregrine." 
 The little traveller lived to be eighty-four years old, 
 and has to this day a descendant bearing his name, 
 Peregrine White. 
 
The Settlers 
 
 "God sifted a whole nation, that He might send 
 choice grain into the wilderness^ 
 
 William Stoughton, 1683. 
 
 SOME towns can say of themselves: "In such a 
 year, a company came from such a place to this 
 place, bought land, organized their church, elected 
 their officers, began to make history and to keep the 
 record thereof." We can not say that. We just 
 growed. The settlers at Plymouth could look back 
 from their hills and see our shore. They remembered 
 "the whales playing hard by us, of which, if we had 
 instruments and means to take them, we might have 
 made a very rich return. Which, to our great grief, we 
 wanted." Also, J' There was the greatest store of fowl 
 that ever we saw." They returned often to Cape Cod 
 for the fishing, and probably built huts for shelter and 
 for storing the fish. Permanent settlement, however, 
 was slow and fluctuating. Could any town in the world 
 be more exposed in time of war than this town, isolated, 
 on a strip of land only a couple of miles wide, with a 
 good harbor open to the enemy.? Therefore, during 
 the Colonial Wars, then at the time of the Revolution- 
 ary War, and again during the War of 1812, most of 
 the settlers fled, returning on the declaration of peace. 
 
30 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 The War of 1812 almost ruined the fishing. The 
 admiral's ship Majestic lay off the Truro shore; Captain 
 Richard Raggett, commander of the British ship 
 Spencer, patrolled the bay. At first Captain Raggett 
 was disposed to be lenient with the defenseless little 
 towns. 
 
 Traces remain, on the premises of the late Elisha 
 Nickerson, of an old well where British sailors came 
 ashore for water. A well-authenticated family tradi- 
 tion relates the story of how little Sylvia Freeman, 
 playing on the shore, was approached by a sailor from 
 a boat, who said to her: "Little girl, there is a man on 
 board the ship who is very sick. If you will get me a 
 quart of milk, I will give you two dollars." This he 
 did, and Sylvia bought for herself two French calico 
 
 House of Seth Nickerson, built before 1800 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 31 
 
 dresses at fifty cents a yard. Later the two calico 
 dresses were made into a quilt which is still in exist- 
 ence, the calico dropping to pieces, but unfaded. 
 
 At length Captain Ragget was reprimanded from 
 London for his laxness in enforcing the blockade. 
 Some of the blockade-runners were then captured and 
 sent to Dartmore Prison, England. Usually, however, 
 their boats were taken and the men set free. Stories 
 are told of Cape Cod skippers, employed by the English 
 as pilots along the coast, with disaster to the English 
 ships. "1812," by Fitzgerald, is a good little story and 
 a true one of an English ship thus cast away by a 
 Yankee pilot. 
 
 The end of this unpopular war soon came. When 
 at last the Colonies were free from English taxes, and 
 from embargoes, when the Constitution of the United 
 States had been adopted and a stable government had 
 been established, then came an era of great prosperity 
 on Cape Cod. 
 
 By that time, the fathers had learned that their 
 wealth was in the sea. The Pilgrims were farmers in 
 Old England, and they expected to be farmers with 
 great estates in New England, even on Cape Cod. The 
 Mayflower evidently set sail without hooks and lines or 
 a harpoon, for they record that they lacked instruments 
 for taking the whales playing about, and that they could 
 not catch many fish. They therefore ate the "great 
 mussels" which made them sick. These were probably 
 sea clams. No wonder they were sick, unless they 
 made a chowder with the clams chopped fine and cooked 
 a couple of hours; and that delicious and digestible 
 
32 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 concoction is, I suppose, an evolution. For many years 
 fishing was only an avocation to eek out their scanty 
 crops. Shrewd old Captain John Smith, however, had 
 seen the possibilities and had sent a cargo of dried fish 
 to Spain, on which he made a profit of ^7500, remarking 
 that the richest mine of the King of Spain was not as 
 valuable as the fisheries of Cape Cod. After long 
 experience by the up-cape farmers in farming up-cape 
 farms, many a man said, "I go a-fishing, I leave the 
 women and the boys to care for the cow and the hens, 
 and to tend the garden, I go to Provincetown, for there 
 the fishing is good." They came from Truro, from 
 Eastham, from Barnstable; at first for a week only, 
 returning to their homes on Saturday night. Soon they 
 built substantial houses close to the water, and brought 
 their families. Every dwelling was flanked by a fish- 
 store, a flake-yard, and salt-works. 
 
 Then, to be even nearer to the fishing, some went 
 across to Long Point and made a settlement there. 
 After forty years of the isolation of the Point, they 
 returned "T'other Side," again. The houses were put 
 on scows and rafted across the harbor, the people living 
 within and the smoke curling up from the chimney. 
 Most of the houses at the west end of the town were 
 thus moved. The department store of Mr. Duncan 
 Matherson is the Long Point Schoolhouse. Many 
 houses were moved from Truro in the same way. 
 Deacon John Dyer was justly celebrated as a mover. 
 There were also so many people living at Race Point, 
 that Race Point was made a school district, and a 
 bridge was built across the Run. 
 
Here follows a diagram of the 
 settlement at Long Point; and 
 the names of the householders. 
 
Key to Map of Long Point 
 
 1. Nunan 
 
 2. Richard Tarrant 
 
 3. Richard Tarrant store (last store left on Point. 
 
 There when barracks were occupied, dur- 
 ing the Civil War.) 
 
 4. Philip Smith, afterwards Chas. Adams 
 
 5. Philip Smith, store 
 
 6. Robert Smith 
 
 6a. Robert Smith, store 
 
 7. "Dick Flood" Smith 
 
 8. "Dick Flood" Smith, salt works 
 
 9. Eldridge Smith 
 
 10. Jonathan Smith 
 
 11. Jonathan Smith, store 
 
 12. Heman Smith 
 
 13. Heman Smith, store 
 
 14. Wm. Dill (last house left on Point) 
 
 15. Wm. Dill, store 
 
 16. Elijah Doane (house on Nickerson St.) 
 
 17. Elijah Doane, store 
 
 18. John Williams (only 2-story dwelling house on 
 
 Point) 
 
 19. Joseph Butler 
 
 20. Joseph Butler, store 
 
 21. Jonathan Sparrow 
 
 22. John Weeks, moved from 34 
 
36 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 23. John Weeks, store 
 
 24. Nathaniel Freeman 
 
 25. Nathaniel Freeman, store 
 
 26. Joseph Emery 
 
 27. Schoolhouse, removed from SO Somewhere near 
 
 28. Edward Starr here, house of 
 
 29. Prince Freeman Barnabas Atwood, 
 
 30. John Ghen, double house m. Sylvia Free- 
 
 31. John Ghen, store man. Isaac Paine 
 
 32. John Atwood, Sen., 32a. her second husband 
 
 His store on "Back of Point" 
 
 33. Joseph Farwell 
 
 34. John Weeks, afterwards moved to 22 
 
 35. John Weeks, store, afterwards moved to 23 
 
 36. John Atwood, Jr., shop, later kept by Chas. Adams 
 
 only store on Point 
 
 37. John Atwood, Jr. wharf. Only one on Point 
 
 38. John Atwood, Jr., house and woodshed at end of 
 
 bridge. 
 
 39. Nathaniel E. Atwood 
 
 40. Nathaniel E. Atwood, store 
 40a. Nathaniel E. Atwood, store 
 
 41. Chas. Freeman 
 
 42. Samuel Atwood, moved from 55 
 
 43. John Atwood, Sr., salt works 
 
 44. John Atwood, Sr., store with brother, Jeremiah 
 
 45. Eldridge Nickerson (or John) 
 
 46. John Nickerson (or Eldridge) 
 
 47. John Nickerson, windmill for salt works 
 
 48. John Nickerson, salt works 
 
 49. John Nickerson, stor§ 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 37 
 
 50. Schoolhouse, afterwards moved to 27 
 
 51. Timothy Nickerson (f) 
 
 52. Henry Cowing (Somewhere near here, house 
 
 53. Henry Cowing, store of William Mears) 
 
 54. Where tree roots of tea cedar used to be found 
 
 55. Samuel Atwood, afterward moved to 42 
 
 56. John Burt 
 
 57. Isaac Atwood 
 
 58. Stephen Atwood 
 
 59. Stephen Atwood, store 
 
 60. Francis Abbott 
 
 61. A bulkhead to keep water from wearing back. 
 
 Dotted line marks road by which most of the teams 
 came. At low tide there was no water in Lobster 
 Plain, and most of the teams came then from 
 town with coal, etc. 
 
 The Natives 
 
 The speech of Cape Cod people has preserved the 
 old English tongue in singular fashion. We still hear 
 the old plural "housen" for houses; we say, as Queen 
 Victoria did, "put by" for embarrassed; "put out" 
 for offended, "put up with" for tolerate; "falling out" 
 for quarrel, vide Shakespeare; "heave" for throw, as in 
 the days of the King James version; "clever" for good- 
 natured; and "My kitchen is all in a maum," and 
 "Fmgallied." 
 
 Shebnah Rich in his History of Truro says: 
 "In dialect, in manners, in their sturdy independence, 
 their picturesque and colored methods of speech, and 
 their love of grim humor, they are essentially Yankee. 
 
38 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 They have the breadth and generosity of language that 
 is always accredited to dwellers by the sea. There is 
 a sort of poetry in it." He illustrates this as follows: 
 "I was 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 Nailor was my mate. One morning 
 when a head wind had us, 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 prophet's nip- 
 pers, Skipper, when you see her wake out of the weather 
 hawse-hole, I call it a gallbuster.' " Could any saying 
 be more descriptive than that of a captain, now on the 
 quarter deck who "came in through the hawse-hole". 
 Could any name mean more than "Ambergris John- 
 son," a lucky whaler, and "Virgin Rock David," a 
 good Grand Banker.? 
 
 The repetition of the same family name has led 
 to a local system of naming. Since there are many 
 Mary Nickersons, they are called Mary Frank, Mary 
 Alfred, Mary Addison, Mary James, Mary Caleb, Mary 
 Seth, et al. Two aunts, both named Hannah Small, 
 are Aunt Hannah Isaac and Aunt Hannah Alfred. 
 Two grandmothers, both Paines, are Grandmother 
 Nancy and Grandmother Sylvia. By an almost uni- 
 versal custom, people are called by their first and 
 middle names. It is confusing to those not to the 
 manner born, that Billy May and Warren Baker are 
 brothers named Smith, that Kate Kelly and Billie 
 Kilborn are brother and sister, and that Nina Sweet 
 is Miss Willis. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 39 
 
 It is not strange that the speech is English, when 
 you consider the stock. In 1644, the whole Plymouth 
 Colony seriously debated moving to Eastham. The 
 record reads, "Divers of the considerablest of the 
 church and town removed." Those coming were 
 Thomas Prince, John Doane, Nicholas Snow, Josias 
 Cooke, Richard Higgins, John Smalley, Edward Bangs. 
 Thomas Prince was three times elected governor of the 
 colony, and a special dispensation was given that he 
 might continue to live In Eastham. His old pear tree 
 brought from England, was flourishing only a few years 
 ago. The door-stone of the Governor's house in 
 Eastham was given to the Pilgrim Memorial Associa- 
 tion, and is placed at the entrance to the Pilgrim 
 Monument in Provincetown, where all who enter cross 
 the stone so often pressed by the feet of those who were 
 building a new world. 
 
 To these first settlers in Eastham was added 
 another group called the second comers. They were 
 Rev. John Knowles, Joseph Collins, William Myrick, 
 John Young, Thomas Paine and others. From these 
 families the whole lower end of the Cape was populated. 
 All were of pure English stock and their descendants 
 are all related. Their speech, their manners, and 
 their very names appear in Blackmore's Lorna Doone, 
 where he paints the life of Devonshire, Eng., whence 
 many Cape Cod people came. 
 
, 1 
 
 ■:r=l ^ - -< 
 
 How the Town Was 
 Laid Out 
 
 HERE is the harbor broad and deep. At full 
 tide, boats go to high-water-mark; at low 
 water, the gently sloping shore is safe and 
 easy. Here is the level sandy beach, circling the blue 
 harbor, like the gold setting of a sapphire. 
 
 Up-along-the-shore and Down-along-the-shore the 
 fathers made their homes. Few built on the hills. 
 Who would live "Up-back?" They were squatters, 
 with no title from the Indians and none from the 
 Commonwealth. Their lots ran along the shore, and 
 extended from the harbor to the ocean. When sons 
 married, fathers gave them a place close by for building 
 the new house; so that we became a series of neighbor- 
 hoods. Way-up-along, on Gull Hill, were two brothers, 
 Joshua Paine and Nathaniel Paine from Truro. There 
 the soil was good, and "Nancy had the prettiest flower 
 bed in town," At the foot of the hill were the 
 houses of John and Arnold Small, also from Truro; 
 their wives were sisters, and cousins to the Paines. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 41 
 
 Next toward the east was Stephen Nickerson and his 
 sons, and after Abraham Small and the Sopers, connected 
 by marriage, came another Nickerson neighborhood, 
 Seth Nickerson and his sons, Jonathan Nickerson and 
 his sons, Thomas Nickerson and his sons. Stephen, 
 Jonathan, Seth and Thomas were cousins. 
 
 Then the Lancy neighborhood, and the Free- 
 mans; Nathan, Phineas, Charles, Prince and Hatsuld. 
 Then came a neighborhood where three Paine brothers 
 married three Nickerson sisters; and two Paines, 
 brothers to the first group, married two Nickerson 
 sisters, who were cousins to the other girls. And yet 
 there are persons in town who correctly trace their 
 genealogy. Then Conants, Ryders, Atkinses, Atwoods, 
 Hills, Doanes, Hatches, Smalls, Collinses, Higginses, 
 Cooks, oh, many Cooks, Riches, Bangses, Williamses, 
 Bushes, Mayos, and others. Some names once nu- 
 merous, are now gone. 
 
 Many of these old families had coats-of-arms. 
 About 1830, a man named Cole traversed the Cape and 
 furnished the aristocracy with these beautiful designs, 
 at a good price. He knew something of heraldry, and 
 what he did not know his artistic fancy supplied. Many 
 of the coats-of-ams are decorated with corn-stalks, some 
 of them display an American flag, most of them are 
 valueless, except as they have been a treasured keep- 
 sake in a family for near a hundred years. Who would 
 believe that scarcely fifty years after the Revolution, 
 these old patriots would be buying coats-of-arms.'' 
 They were the people who during that war, from a 
 village of twenty-three families, gave twenty-eight 
 
42 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 men to the American cause. But they bought the 
 coats-of-arms, and we prize 'em. Not many people in 
 town are eligible for the Revolutionary Societies. 
 Since five hundred British ships were captured by 
 American privateers, we can guess the reason why our 
 names do not appear on the records. 
 
 The Street 
 
 At first there was no street. They carried their 
 burdens in boats; they carried their dead on a bier. 
 In 1829, the Provincetown minister, Mr. Stone, wrote 
 to a friend, "Would you believe that there is a town in 
 the United States, with eighteen hundred inhabitants, 
 and only one horse, with one eye.'' Well, that town is 
 Provincetown, and I am the only man in it that owns 
 a horse, and he is an old white one with only one eye." 
 A Provincetown boy, seeing a carriage driven along, 
 wondered how she could steer so straight without any 
 rudder. Shebnah Rich, in his History of Truro, says: 
 "There was no road through the town. With no carts, 
 carriages, wagons, horses or oxen, why a road } Every 
 man had a path from his house to his boat or vessel, 
 and once launched, he was on the broad highway of 
 nations without tax or toll. There were paths to the 
 neighbors, paths to school, paths to church; tortuous 
 paths perhaps, but they were good pilots by night or 
 day, by land or water. Besides, at low water there 
 was a road such as none else could boast, washed 
 completely twice a day from year to year, wide enough, 
 and free enough, and long enough if followed, for the 
 armies of the Netherland." This street led downward 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 43 
 
 to the sea and landward to the West. 
 
 Nevertheless, early deeds speak of the"Town Rode," 
 and it seems that the present Front Street, laid out by 
 the County Commissioners ir) 1835, must have followed 
 a well-beaten track, the "Town Rode." Of course there 
 was great opposition to such an innovation as a street. 
 "We don't need it," "We can walk along shore as well 
 as ever we did." "It will cost too much." It did 
 cost 31273.04 for land damages. "We don't want any 
 street along our back door." The houses faced the 
 water then; since then some of the houses have been 
 turned around; some of them still have the front door 
 on the shore side. One man, a doctor, who had not 
 lived long in town, proposed that the street be made 
 sixty-four feet wide, but they soon voted down such 
 foolishness as that from foreigners. He tried to com- 
 promise on thirty-two feet, but twenty-two feet seemed 
 wide enough for all possible purposes, and twenty-two 
 feet wide it is. The greatest difficulty arose when the 
 County Commissioners, "supervised by a committee of 
 three representing the town," took land. When they 
 reached Lancy's Corner, Mr. Lancy came out and said: 
 "Whoever saws through my salt-works, saws through 
 my body." And Joshua Paine replied, "Where's a 
 saw?" Nevertheless, the road went round the Lancy 
 property and makes the two bad turns now so danger- 
 ous. 
 
 The Sidewalk 
 No sooner was the street laid out than extravagant 
 souls began to talk of a sidewalk. The time was 
 auspicious because the town had some easy money to 
 
44 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 spend. This was during Jackson's administration 
 when the Government had its debt paid and had in the 
 national treasury $40,000,000 surplus revenue. This 
 surplus was divided among the States, and by the 
 Commonwealth of Massachusetts was sub-divided 
 among her towns. With this money the town paid 
 its debt, and appropriated something for schools. The 
 remainder, the conservatives wanted to put out at 
 interest, and the progressives wanted to use to build a 
 plank sidewalk. Debate in town meeting lasted a 
 week. When it was apparent how close the vote would 
 be, some one challenged Mr. Abraham Chapman (a 
 sidewalk man) as not an American citizen. Full of 
 indignation, Mr. Chapman demanded to know what 
 was meant by such a word as that, and it was explained 
 to him that his folks were Tories during the Revolution- 
 ary War; that they had gone from town to Nova 
 Scotia, where he was born; that he was six months 
 old when he came to the United States, that therefore 
 he was not an American citizen and not entitled to 
 vote. But Mr. Chapman's vote was admitted and 
 when at last the votes were counted there were one 
 hundred and forty-nine ayes and one hundred and 
 forty-eight nays, and the sidewalk was built in 1838. 
 Neither the town records nor the records of the Com- 
 monwealth tell what Provincetown's share of this 
 surplus was, but tradition affirms that we received 
 36000. So incensed were some of the fathers at the 
 use of the surplus revenue, that they refused ever to walk 
 on the sidewalk and they continued all their lives to 
 plough through the sand. Those who were young then 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 45 
 
 remembered to their dying days how springing and 
 delightful was the new plank sidewalk. They do say 
 that Cape Cod girls know the trick of walking in the 
 sand without filling their shoes. Try this, ye off- 
 islanders. Lift your feet high, toe in a bit, and put 
 your feet down flat. 
 
 The King's Highway 
 
 The present main street through the town is "the 
 Terminal of the King's Highway," laid out in 1717-20 
 "to connect to and through the Province Lands." 
 From Eastham it passed around the ponds in the 
 Wellfleet woods, came down through Truro woods 
 near the ocean to the vicinity of the head of 
 Pamet River by the present Coast Guard Station, 
 continuing northward still through the woods along 
 by the Lodge at the Highlands, on by Ocean Farm, 
 passing about two hundred yards west of the Highland 
 Coast Guard Station, along to the head of Eastern 
 Harbor meadows, across the sand dunes to the harbor, 
 (probably over Snail Road,) "to and through the Prov- 
 ince Lands," whose eastern boundary is the Eastern 
 schoolhouse. The present highway over Beach Point 
 was laid out at a later date, about 1850. 
 
 The bridge across East Harbor was built in 1854. 
 It was destroyed by the ice a couple of years later, and 
 rebuilt. Before the building of the bridge, all travel 
 up the Cape went across those drifting sand hills to the 
 north and east of the dyke; hills which whaling cap- 
 tains say look exactly like the Desert of Sahara. They 
 remind others of the snow-clad hills of Labrador. 
 Bradford street was laid out in 1873. 
 
46 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 The Town Landings 
 
 The streets running off Commercial Street are 
 continuations of the town landings. These public 
 landings are all along the shore, open for any one to 
 moor his boat or unload his fish. One is at the foot of 
 West Vine Street; one at the foot of Franklin Street; 
 one at the end of Good Templar Street, which is the 
 continuation of an alley running into Pleasant Street. 
 One is across the front street from Atlantic Avenue. 
 One is at the west side of the Excelsior engine house; 
 one west of the Post Office; one at Hilliard's wharf 
 opposite Freeman Street; one at the foot of Pearl 
 Street. The streets opposite the landings are the old 
 paths that led to the fish-flakes, to the salt-works, to 
 the"Backside. All these streets converge into four 
 well-marked old roads. They are sandy roads and 
 hard to travel (except the State Highway), but they 
 skirt the beautiful ponds, cross the dunes and lead to 
 the ocean. One is the Race Road, at the west end; 
 one is the Atkins Mayo Road, laid out in 1803, not far 
 from the Eastern schoolhouse; one is Snail Road, west 
 of Mayflower Heights; one is the Nigger Head Road, 
 now the State Highway, running out just east of John- 
 son Street, smooth and easy for walking or for auto- 
 mobiles. 
 
 It was hard to protect those old roads from the 
 sinking sand beneath them and the shifting sand beside 
 them. They were hardened with turf cut from the 
 hills, and covered with clay, with brush, with shells, 
 with chips, with old nets, with coal ashes and cinders, 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 47 
 
 but nothing was sufficient to make a permanent and 
 hard road till the modern macadam was used. One 
 would suppose that even this would be cut by the 
 heavy auto-trucks, but on the contrary, the roads down 
 the Cape are considered among the best in the State. 
 
 Indefinite Bounds 
 
 When the town was set off as a Precinct, the bounds 
 between Truro and the Province Lands were deter- 
 mined by representatives from the General Court. 
 These bounds were fixed by marked trees, "running 
 from the jaw-bone of a whale set in the ground near a 
 red oak stump and running to a red cedar post set in a 
 sand hill, to the North Sea." The directions are fixed 
 by compass, but no distances are given. Many old 
 deeds describe land as running from somebody's flake- 
 yard to the salt-works of somebody else. Here is an 
 instance of a careless bound. George Adams kept a 
 shop which stood and still stands on the shore. Trade 
 was good as long as travel was along shore, but when 
 the street was laid out and people walked on the side- 
 walk, his trade suffered. He asked the town to lay out 
 a road from the street to his shop. This the town 
 refused to do. Then he applied to the county to lay 
 out a county road for his use and that of his customers. 
 The county did this, and the work of the county 
 commissioners is recorded in the Barnstable Records, 
 Book 2, page 129, as follows: "Commencing at a point 
 on the county road running through Provincetown, 
 five and a half feet westward of the dwelling house 
 
48 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 occupied by Nathan Freeman, at a Notch cut in a 
 board fence, and thence running south forty-eight 
 degrees and thirty minutes east by compass about one 
 hundred and thirty-three and a half feet to the west 
 corner of an outbuilding or necessary belonging to the 
 said George M, Adams, and sitting on the northwest 
 corner of his land. The foregoing described line con- 
 stitutes the north-easterly side of the way now laid out, 
 and the south-westerly side is to be nine feet from this 
 line in all places." 
 
 The Wharves 
 
 About the time the street and sidewalk were built, 
 wharves began to appear along the shore. The first 
 wharf was built opposite Masonic Hall by Mr. Thomas 
 Lothrop. His neighbors predicted that the tide would 
 cut away the sand from the piles, and the wharf would 
 fall. They might have recalled how hopeless is a 
 vessel caught on a bar. The sea rots the piles, some- 
 times the ice breaks them, but the sand holds them. 
 The Union Wharf was built in 1831, by Jonathan, 
 Stephen and Thomas Nickerson and Samuel Soper. 
 Then followed thirty wharves in twenty years. The 
 schoolhouses were built soon after, and the churches. 
 
 Prosperous Times 
 
 Business of all kinds flourished, till Provincetown 
 was reckoned the richest town per capita in Massa- 
 chusetts. Judge Henry D. Scudder in his oration at 
 the first anniversary of the Cape Cod Association in 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 49 
 
 1851, said: "Provincetown, the Sahara of Cape Cod, 
 where all the freehold property which nature ever gave 
 her, if bid oif at public sale, would hardly satisfy the 
 auctioneer. Provincetown, in proportion to her popu- 
 lation, is not only the wealthiest town upon the Cape, 
 but in personal estate is, I think, the richest town in 
 all the Commonwealth." 
 
 Most of the houses were story-and-a-half-houses, 
 an architecture characteristic of Cape Cod and har- 
 monius with the setting. They were set twenty feet 
 back from the sidewalk, with a little lawn in front. 
 They have been razed for more pretentious dwellings; 
 they have been modernized; they have been extended 
 to the sidewalk, but these changes have rarely been 
 improvements. 
 
Salt-Making 
 
 THEY prospered on the water. And on the land? 
 Back of the houses were the Salt-works. 
 A mill at the foot of the rising pumped sea-water 
 into vats, through hollow logs made tight at the joints 
 with white lead. The vats were about twenty feet 
 square and eighteen inches deep. They were arranged 
 in groups of three or four, the water-room, the bitter- 
 water-room, the salt-room. The sea-water in the vats 
 exposed to the sun, rapidly evaporated, leaving the 
 salt. Three hundred and fifty gallons of water pro- 
 duced one bushel of salt. As the clear salt was shov- 
 elled from the last vat and spread out to dry, the 
 partly evaporated water in the bitter-water-room was 
 allowed to run into the salt-room, and new water was 
 pumped into the water-room. These vats had covers 
 on rollers, which were pushed over the vats at night 
 or at signs of a shower. These rollers were ten inches 
 in diameter; occasionally one of them, now used as a 
 foot-stool, can be found. A man and a boy could 
 manage the covers. As the boys of the family grew up 
 and went off to sea, boys from Boston were adopted to 
 help with the salt-works. They were seldom legally 
 adopted, but they were in all respects members of the 
 family. Some of these boys grew to be among our 
 best citizens. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 51 
 
 Salt-making was exceedingly profitable. The cost 
 of building the salt-works was small. Uncle Jonathan 
 took his Grand Banker, when she got home in the fall, 
 and with his boys as crew, went to Maine and bought 
 cedar posts, pine planks and joists, brought them home 
 in the vessel, and threw them overboard at high tide. 
 Men carried the lumber on their backs up from the 
 shore to a level place not far from the dwelling house, 
 and there they built a "string of salt-works," sixty or 
 eighty vats. The work of tending salt-works was done 
 by elderly men and boys, with sometimes, when black 
 clouds rolled up in the west, the help of the women. 
 The noise of many covers rolling over the vats, when a 
 shower threatened, rivalled the thunder itself. Before 
 the days of salt-works, when salt was manufactured in 
 a kettle over the fire in the fire-place, its cost was eight 
 dollars a bushel. In 1837, Provincetown had seventy- 
 eight salt-works, producing 48,960 bushels of salt, and 
 the price was one dollar a bushel. That would give an 
 income of more than six hundred dollars for the old 
 man and the boys, during the summer, while the 
 Bankers were away. The brine left in the bitter water 
 room, evaporating slowly during the winter, yielded a 
 little pin-money in the form of Epsom or Glauber's 
 salts. Reduction of the duty on salt, the repeal of th^ 
 bounty, the discovery of salt in New York State,!^ 
 ruined the salt making here. The salt-works were 
 dismantled, and houses and stores were built of the 
 lumber. The two-story fish-stores, common along the 
 shore, unpainted, but well proportioned, with double 
 doors large enough to take in a boat, below and above, 
 
52 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 were made of salt-works boards. They are now used 
 as studios by the artists. The beams and the inside 
 boards, so long saturated with salt, are silvery; they 
 will last, I suppose, to the end of time. This shining 
 background carries the draperies and the pictures of 
 the artists. The building that looks to the chance 
 passer-by like a bare barn, is all beautiful within. The 
 house with rust around every nail-hole, though well 
 painted, that house was built of salt-works. 
 
 Provincetown in 1839 
 
Cod-Fishing- 
 
 IN THE State House in Boston hangs the "sacred 
 cod-fish," emblem of the prosperity of Massachu- 
 setts. The following is from the Official Guide- 
 book of the State House. "Wednesday, March 17, 
 1784, Mr. John Rowe moved the House that leave 
 might be given to hang up the representation of a 
 cod-fish in the room where the house sit, as a memorial 
 of the importance of the Cod Fishery to the welfare of 
 this Commonwealth, as has been usual formerly. 
 Possibly an emblem hung in the old State or Town 
 House, but as this structure was burned Dec. 9, 1747, 
 The cod-fish doubtless was destroyed. The State 
 House in State street was erected in 1748, and although 
 it is not known when the cod-fish was restored, in a 
 bill of 1783, presented by Thomas Crafts Jr., to the 
 
54 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Province of Massachusetts Bay, the following item 
 appears: 'To painting cod-fish — 15 shillings.' As 
 moved by Mr. Rowe, the emblem was suspended in 
 the House, remaining there until transferred to the new 
 State House, with the archives in 1789, and suspended 
 in the House of Representatives. Just before its trans- 
 fer it received a fresh coat of paint, as shown by a bill 
 of Dec. 6, 1797, from Samuel Gore, 'Painting cod-fish 
 — 12 shillings.' On March 7, 1895, it was ordered that 
 the Sergeant-at-Arms be and is hereby directed to 
 cause the immediate removal of an ancient representa- 
 tion of a Cod-fish from its present position in the 
 chamber recently vacated by the House, and to cause 
 it to be suspended in a suitable place over the Speaker's 
 chair in the new chamber. A committee of fifteen, 
 under the escort of John G. B. Adams, Sergeant-at- 
 Arms, proceeded to the old chamber when the emblem 
 was lowered, wrapped in an American flag, and borne 
 to the House of Representatives, by four messengers. 
 It was repaired and painted by Walter M. Brackett, 
 at an expense of 3100, and on April 29, 1895 was ordered 
 to be hung opposite the Speaker's chair. The codfish 
 is made of pine; measures four feet eleven in cheslong, 
 and ten inches through the largest part of the body." 
 
 Thus Mr. John Rowe put into the form of a motion 
 before the General Court, the sentiment of Captain 
 John Smith two hundred years before, that the fisheries 
 of Cape Cod are better than a gold mine. Perhaps 
 Mr. Rowe prefaced his motion with a speech, telling 
 how the schools had been supported by a tax on fish, 
 the minister in the same way, and how pensions for 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 55 
 
 old soldiers had come out of the State's fish money. 
 Perhaps he went on to SLy, after the manner of political 
 orators: "The fishing towns of the Commonwealth, 
 ruined by the Revolutionary War, have perked up 
 again, now that the Yankees in the treaty of peace 
 have forced the Britishers to allow us to fish on the 
 Grand Banks, without reciprocal rights of fishing on 
 our coast." Mr. Rowe could readily make much of 
 this, for governments find it easy to manipulate the 
 fisheries. A man owns and controls his farm, but who 
 owns the fish in the sea.'' The fishing business is a 
 most uncertain business. There is always the uncer- 
 tainty of what the Government may do. Changes of 
 tariff or of bounties may make or break a fleet of 
 vessels in a single year. 
 
 Fish come and fish disappear and nobody knows 
 why they go or where. Methods of fishing change also. 
 In 1885 there was invested in fishing in this town 
 3964,573, in wharves, in vessels, in oufittter's firms, and 
 all the related industries, as sail-lofts, block-maker's 
 shops, rigger's lofts, iron-worker's places, marine rail- 
 ways^ etc. Now scarcely a vestige of all this is left. 
 Seines, weirs, motor-boats, refrigerating plants have 
 entirely supplanted the Grand Bankers, the mackerel 
 catchers and the whalers. The whole story of fishing 
 iSvOne of big voyages and broken voyages, of flush 
 times and lean times, of vessels coming in scuppers 
 down, and vessels coming in light as a bladder. Noth- 
 ing is better property than a vessel with lucky wood 
 in^er, and nothing deterioriates so fast as a vessel 
 hauled up. 
 
On the Grand Banks 
 
 Dr. Johnson said that going to sea was going 
 to prison with a chance of being drowned, besides. 
 
 THIS is the way the Bankers looked, as they 
 sailed away for the Grand Banks in April. In 
 early days they fished over the rail, half the 
 men fishing, and half dressing down, turn by turn. 
 The cook was usually a boy ten years old; the only 
 qualification necessary for the berth of cook was the 
 strength to lift the 'great pot." In those days they 
 made three trips a year to the Banks and they had 
 good reason to hope for thirty per cent on the money 
 invested, each trip. Captain John Paine Havender 
 made fifty-seven successful voyages, and never made 
 a broken one. On one voyage in the Raritan he was 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 57 
 
 gone from home seven weeks and cleared as his share 
 32200. He relates the perils of fishing on the Banks, 
 as set forth by Jennings in his Httle book, thus: "We 
 were at anchor to the windward of the Main Shoal, a 
 big fleet there with us. A heavy gale came up, but 
 the fleet thought they could ride it out. As the gale 
 increased and the shoal water to the le'ward was 
 breaking mast-head high, all at once the vessel gave a 
 lurch, and I knew we were adrift. Grabbing an ax, I 
 ran for'ard and cut the cable at the windless, hoisted 
 the jib, and went aft and put up the helm. As I did 
 so, a tremendous sea rushed down on us and I thought 
 our last voyage was over. But the jib and the helm 
 brought her stern to the sea, and rising on it we were 
 driven ahead ten knot. I expected every second that 
 she would go end over end, but quicker than I can tell 
 it, we were over the shoal and in smoother water, where 
 we reefed the fores'l, and hove her to and rode out the 
 gale. When the wind moderated, we went back to the 
 fishing grounds and finished up our trip. The rest of 
 the fleet thought we had gone to the bottom; that no 
 vessel could go over the Main Shoal and through the 
 breakers and come out alive." 
 
 Now, they fish with trawls from dories, two men 
 in a dory. If you ask what a trawl is, there is a 
 classic answer from one who knows: "A trawl is what 
 you go trawling with." A trawl line is often a mile 
 long and carries a thousand hooks. 
 
 When the bankers left home, they carried sixty to 
 a hundred and fifty hogsheads of dry salt. Day by 
 day, as the fish were caught and dressed, the supply of 
 
58 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 salt was wet, that is, was used, until the voyage was 
 done. When we natives desire to say with emphasis 
 that an undertaking is completed, we say, "I have wet 
 my salt!" Having said that, further expostulation or 
 entreaty is futile. We are done. The men go out 
 from the vessel in dories and draw the trawls, and 
 bring the fish aboard the vessel, where they are dressed. 
 ■'The throater, the gutter, the splitter are skillful with 
 the knife; the fish are carefully washed, salted and 
 stored in the kench in the hold; the tongues and sounds 
 are salted in barrels; the livers cared for; the decks 
 swabbed down, and the men who had their breakfast 
 at three in the morning are ready for the bunk. 
 
 All this is in the day's work. Sometimes fog 
 hangs thick and heavy and the men in the dories can 
 not find their way back to the vessel. Sometimes an 
 ocean liner, a thousand times as large as the stout 
 little banker, looms above them out of the fog, and 
 the men shiver to see her rush by, thankful that she 
 did not ride them down. A good story and an accurate 
 description of life on the Banks is given in Kipling's 
 Captains Courageous. 
 
 Home again in September! While the vessel was 
 yet a great way off, before she made Wood End, men 
 on the hills with glasses saw her and knew her name 
 and ran and told whether she was coming in deep or 
 light. The fish were pitched into dories, boated ashore, 
 and thrown into the water, there to be washed. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 59 
 
 Washing Fish 
 
 This is the way they wheeled up the fish from the 
 water. The banker's crew and every man along shore 
 washed the fish. To all these men, the owners of the 
 vessel were expected to give a dinner. Slang of to-day 
 speaks of a "whale of a job." That is exactly what 
 Cape Cod women mean when they say, "I would as 
 soon get up a fishermen's dinner." 
 
 Drying Fish 
 
60 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 This Is how they dried the fish on flakes. They 
 were spread every morning and piled and covered every 
 night. If sometimes the girls said: "O father, you 
 smell fishy!" father replied, "Smells money, girls." 
 
 The Stock Company 
 
 The vessel and the voyage were a stock company, 
 with the stock divided into sixteenths. When a new 
 vessel was to be built, the outfitters took one eighth, 
 the Capt'n an eighth, the sail-maker, the block-maker, 
 the spar-maker, the rigger, each took a sixteenth; the 
 remainder was taken by the neighbors and the outfitter. 
 Somebody would take a share for the privilege of 
 naming the vessel; this privilege carried with it the 
 gift to the vessel of the colors. 
 
 The Store of the Outfitter 
 
 The crew went on shares or hired as they chose. 
 While a man was away at sea, his family lived from the 
 store of the outfitter. These stores kept everything, 
 and the goods were always arranged in the same order, 
 beginning with dogfish chain hanging in the corner, 
 with hooks and lines next, the raisins and crackers and 
 cheese In a convenient place, a very limited stock of 
 candy in glass jars near by, dry goods, crockery, 
 hardware, around the store to the spy-glass on a rack 
 at the rear door. Down cellar were flour, molasses, 
 potatoes, kerosene and the corn-crib. In the attic 
 were oil-clothes, nests of boxes, coils of rope, etc., etc., 
 etc. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 61 
 
 The Sailor's Wife 
 
 A woman at home took pride in keeping down the 
 bills at the store while her man was away at sea. 
 Her standing in the community was partly determined 
 by the amount due him when the voyage was settled. If 
 she could leave his voyage untouched, she was a smart 
 one. Some poor fellows, however, always came home 
 to find their voyage eaten up. 
 
 The Bank 
 
 The outfitters did also the work of a bank; receiv- 
 ing, investing and lending money. The Union Wharf 
 Company was really a bank, a branch of Freeman's 
 Bank in Boston till the organization of the Province- 
 town National Bank, in 1854, One night, the little 
 old safe in the Union Wharf Store was broken open 
 and the cash, about ^15,000, was stolen. A few days 
 later, the company received word that if they would 
 say no more about it, they would find the money under 
 the steps of the South Truro Meeting House. And 
 there they found it. 
 
 Insurance 
 
 The thrifty Cape Codders hated to pay out money 
 to "them Boston Insurance Fellers," so they organized 
 a local, mutual, marine, insurance company, which 
 charged low rates and was able to pay good dividends. 
 
 Some outfitters went so far as to be their own 
 insurance company. This was prudent, but nerve- 
 
62 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 racking in bad weather. The story is told of an owner 
 who dreamed of seeing one of his captains on the 
 Banks with his throat cut. Next morning he placed 
 heavy insurance in Boston. Before Saturday night 
 the captain was in with the biggest voyage he ever 
 made. 
 
 Settling the Voyage 
 
 There was an accepted system of settling the 
 voyage. First the great generals were taken out of the 
 total. The great generals were bait, salt, gear, ice, 
 towing, and canal charges if any. Then an eighth of 
 the remainder was allowed for shrinking, and a four- 
 teenth for curing the fish. Then the difference between 
 an eighth and a fourteenth was given the owners. 
 Nobody seems to know why this little dividend went 
 to the owners here, except that custom decreed it. 
 Then the vessel's part was taken out, and that was a 
 third or a quarter as agreed upon in advance, then 
 the small generals which were the food. The 
 balance went to the sharesmen, who paid the wages of 
 the men who were hired, (out of their share). A voyage 
 to the Grand Banks lasted about five months. Each 
 of the crew earned approximately three hundred dollars 
 besides his food. Profits of owners varied. To quote 
 one who had been at it many years: "You think you 
 will get rich, but you don't; you think you will go to 
 the poor-house, but you do not get there." 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 63 
 
 After the Voyage 
 
 The heyday of the year came after the voyage was 
 settled and before it was time to fit out again. Those 
 who think that Provincetown must be dull after the 
 summer boarders go, forget that then many men are 
 at home with money in their pockets, who feel that 
 after a voyage at sea they are entitled to a good time 
 ashore. They had a part in everything from the 
 revival meetings in the Methodist Church to the 
 Masonic Ball in Town Hall. The Minstrel Show and 
 the Dramatic Exhibition packed the hall; the Old 
 Folks Concert, with Cale Cook, who "caluped it" on 
 the bass viol, filled the church. The beauty of Prof. 
 Penniman's Cantata, Florals Festival, given sixty years 
 ago, has never been forgotten. Still persists the effect 
 on the health of the town, of a series of lectures on 
 sanitation and hygiene given by Dr. Miller. He used 
 a skeleton and a manikin and many charts, and gave 
 most sensible and instructive lectures. Everybody 
 in town paid the price of admission and went to hear 
 him. The worst storm of the winter did not diminish 
 his audience. Men and women donned rubber boots 
 and went to Dr. Miller's lecture. 
 
 The old Capt'ns had a debating club where they 
 thrashed out topics the modern forums would not dare 
 to touch: The North Pole, Spiritualism, Prohibition, 
 Mesmerism, Endless Punishment, Free Trade, and the 
 Merits of a Ship Against a Schooner. The debate on 
 Temperance waxed personal, and one member was 
 told, "I can smell it on your robin." In the days of 
 
64 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 the Lyceum, the best speakers in the country came to 
 Provincetown. The Odd Fellows had a large library 
 for their members, and the Sunday Schools all had 
 good collections of books. 
 
 Buying a Farm 
 They dreamed and they talked of the time coming 
 when they would go to sea no more, but would buy a 
 farm in Vineland, New Jersey. They always specified, 
 however, that they would not buy a farm in Vineland, 
 New Jersey, till they could get a patent milker. 
 
 Farming, and especially a cow, is a kind of joke 
 to us. A minister from the country settled here and 
 naturally thought it a good idea to keep a cow, but 
 his usefulness was gone when he became known as the 
 Cow Minister. 
 
 Once upon a time, grandmother attempted to keep 
 a cow. The cow was a wandering cow and a nuisance 
 to grandmother and the neighbors, till grandmother's 
 son determined to sell her, and nobody would buy. 
 One of the vessels was almost ready for sea when a 
 man came anxious to ship. Son told him that they 
 did not need another man, but that if he would take 
 his pay in cow, he could go aboard. The man said he 
 would do this, if the cow could be delivered at his place 
 in Truro. Early the next morning, before light, son 
 sneaked out of town leading the cow. He met no one 
 but the post-master getting ready the early mail. The 
 cow in her new home was at her old trick of journeying 
 abroad. In about a week came a letter addressed 
 to "The Man Who Sold a Cow to Elisha Rich." This 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 65 
 
 the post-master promptly delivered to the right person, 
 and for years the laugh was on the man who sold a 
 cow to Elisha Rich. 
 
 Farm Bureau 
 
 The work of the Cape Cod Farm Bureau connected 
 with the Massachusetts Agricultural College is giving 
 dignity and instruction to phases of life on Cape Cod 
 in which there are great possibilities. 
 
 The Fleet 
 
Mackerel- Catching 
 
 MACKEREL-catching is less prosaic than Cod- 
 fishing. Schools of mackerel follow the coast 
 from North Carolina to the Bay of Fundy in 
 the spring, and back again in the fall. The mackerel- 
 catchers follow the fish. A good skipper can mark the 
 place of the schools almost to a day. The mackerel- 
 catchers are built to be swifter than the bankers, and 
 much more rakish. They are never far from the coast 
 and they make harbor often. I tell not of the dull old 
 days when men fished over the rail; when they used 
 their own hook and line and owned what they caught; 
 literally every man on his own hook; not of the days 
 when they went set-netting or dragging; but of the 
 high days of mackerel-catching with a purse-sei.ne. A 
 purse-seine is large and deep and can be drawn up to 
 form a pocket in the center. The vessel follows along 
 near the school, every man on board, some in the 
 rigging, some at the bow, watching for signs of fish. 
 Old skippers locate the fish when the evidence is so 
 slight that they themselves can hardly tell how they 
 do it, whether by a little ripple on the water, or by a 
 difference in color or by an odor. But they seldom 
 make a mistake. The crew board the seine boat and 
 surround the school, carefully, quietly, lest the fish get 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 67 
 
 wild. "Now boys, pus up!" The lower edge of the 
 seine is gathered together by ropes leading to the 
 middle, and in the purse are a hundred barrels of 
 mackerel. If it is a big school, and the seine does not 
 break, there are three hundred barrels. 
 
 Captain L. Dow Baker 
 
 Fish, however, are not as foolish as they look, and 
 after a time when a thousand sail were following them, 
 they left for parts unknown or they were extermin- 
 ated, and mackerel catching went to nothing. Some 
 of the captains used their vessels for freighting to the 
 West Indies. One man. Captain L. Dow Baker, of 
 Wellfleet, brought back from Jamaica a cargo of ban- 
 anas, bought there for little, sold here for much. Out 
 of this venture grew the United Fruit Company, owned 
 at first by Captain Baker and his friends, and managed 
 by his family and his neighbors. 
 
 Captain Si. Chase 
 
 After the mackerel had been out of knowledge for 
 ten years, Captain Josiah Chase, in a port in South 
 Africa, saw mackerel and mackerel a-plenty. He came 
 home, fitted out a schooner and went back to South 
 Africa to catch those mackerel. He died there of fever 
 before he made a voyage. The next year the mackerel 
 were again on our coast. The fleet said that the 
 mackerel said that if Si Chase was after them, they 
 might as well come and be caught first as last. There 
 is now only a small fleet of mackerel-catchers. Motor 
 boats and deep water traps are used instead. i ^ 
 
Whaling 
 
 "Whales in the sea 
 God's voice obey." 
 
 From the New England Primer, published about 
 1785. 
 
 "The mighty whale doth in these harbors lie, 
 Whose oyle the mearchant deare will buy." 
 William Morrell, in Plymouth, 1623, published in 
 London. 
 
 Richard Mather came to Massachusetts Bay 
 Colony in 1635, where he saw mighty whales "spewing 
 up water in the air like smoke from a chimney, of such 
 Incredible bigness that I will never wonder that the 
 body of Jonah could be in the belly of a whale." 
 
 "In 1725, Paul Dudley of Massachusetts commun- 
 icated to the Royal Society of London an essay upon 
 the Natural History of Whales. Since that day the 
 literature of whales has multiplied to an appalling 
 degree. Much has been written, little is accurately 
 known, for whales can not be observed and compared 
 at will, without much labor." — Glover M. Allen, Secre- 
 tary and Librarian of the Boston Society of Natural 
 History. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 69 
 
 "The Whaleman's Joys" 
 {From Walt Whitman's Songs of Joy) 
 
 Othe whaleman's joys. O, I cruise my old 
 cruise again. 
 I feel the ship's motion under me — I feel the 
 Atlantic breezes fanning me. 
 I hear the cry sent down again from the mast-head 
 
 "There she blows" 
 Again I spring into the rigging to look with the rest. 
 
 We see. We descend wild with excitement. 
 I leap into the lowered boat. We row toward our 
 
 prize — where he lies — 
 We approach stealthily and silent — I see the mountain- 
 ous mass, lethargic, basking 
 I see the harpooner standing up — I see the weapon 
 dart from his vigorous arm. 
 
 swift again. Now far out in the ocean, I see the 
 
 wounded whale settling, running to windward, 
 tows me. 
 Again I see him rise to breathe — we row close again — 
 
 1 see a lance driven through his side, pressed deep, 
 
 turned in the wound. 
 Again we back off — I see him settle again — the life is 
 
 leaving him fast. 
 As he rises he spouts blood — I see him swim in circles 
 
 narrower and narrower, swiftly cutting the 
 
 water, I see him die. 
 He gives one convulsive leap in the center of the circle 
 
 and then falls flat and still in the bloody foam 
 
70 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 A Long Story- 
 Two men passed by my window. One said 
 "Whale out in the Bay." The other replied: "Any 
 herring in the Harbor.'"' This word "Whale hard by" 
 is that spoken by the Pilgrims the first day here. 
 Since that time the story of whaling has been a roman- 
 tic adventure, all of which we understand, a part of 
 which we are. Beginning with whales hard by and 
 herring for their appetite, with dead whales washed 
 up on the shore so many that the Fathers were willing 
 to give one eighth part to the Indians, of voting the 
 drift whales for support of the schools and the minister, 
 the story of whaling runs out into Massachusetts Bay, 
 to the Hatteras Grounds, to the Bay of Mexico, to 
 Central America, to the West Coast of Africa, to the 
 Pacific Ocean and to the Arctic. 
 
 A Tablet 
 
 A movement is now afoot to erect a tablet to all 
 Provincetown whalemen and their Captains. If this 
 is done, the tablet will record vessels and men who have 
 sailed in all these waters. One hundred and seventy- 
 five whalers have registered in Provincetown since 1820. 
 
 For many years before 1620, English, Dutch and 
 Norwegians had whaled around Greenland and the 
 Arctic. Our men knew this, and, as soon as whales grew 
 wary of the shore, they were ready to follow them into 
 deep water. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 71 
 
 From the Boston News Letter in 1727 
 
 "We hear from the towns on the Cape that the 
 whale-fishing has failed much among them this winter, 
 as it has for several winters past, but having found out 
 the way of going to sea upon that business, and having 
 had much success in it, they are now fitting out several 
 vessels to sail in the spring." 
 
 From the Boston News Letter in 1737 
 
 "A dozen vessels from Cape Cod, some of them of 
 a hundred tons burden, are fitting out for Davis Straits 
 whaling, so that not more than twelve or fourteen men 
 are left at home." 
 
 There cleared from Provincetown in 1820, six 
 whalers; in 1869, fifty-four; now not one. 
 
 Price of Oil 
 
 During the Civil War, the price of sperm oil was 
 as high as ^2.50 a gallon. Now that petroleum can 
 be refined for every purpose, whaling is not profitable. 
 However, in 1917, the brig Viola owned by Captain 
 John Atkins Cook, brought in 1250 barrels of sperm oil, 
 and 121 pounds of ambergris, all valued at ^75,000. 
 
 Life on a Whaler 
 Life on a whaler was hard, but when the captain 
 and crew were friends and neighbors, as ours were, it 
 was not cruel and degrading, as some have pictured it. 
 A few old captains are still living, quiet low-spoken men, 
 who do not tell all they might tell of whaling. The 
 
72 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 captain of a whaler must be unafraid. He steers his 
 boat within ten feet of the whale for the man with the 
 harpoon to strike, and the man with the harpoon must 
 never be able to say: "He did not put me near enough 
 to the whale." He must be undismayed, whether the 
 whale runs or dives or fights, or whether the line around 
 the roller blazes up aflame. He must never cut loose 
 till the boat is pulled under. He must be a good 
 marksman, or he would not have become captain. 
 "He missed a whale!" is said as one speaks of a general 
 who lost a battle. He must be something of a doctor, 
 a dentist, a surgeon; for men get sick with the scurvy 
 in the long cruising before they go into port for lemons, 
 onions, potatoes, yams, cocoanuts; men are often hurt 
 in killing a whale; a broken leg, a bad cut, a shoulder 
 out of joint is for the captain's care. 
 
 He must be judge and father to the homesick boys. 
 He must be a man of business if he goes into a foreign 
 port and ships his oil home. 
 
 The mates have the rough work to do. They must 
 keep order aboard ship. If the weeks lengthen into 
 months and the men never once hear: "There she 
 blows!" from the watch in the cross-trees, they get 
 restless and hard to manage. They play high-low- 
 jack-and-the-game, till they quarrel over the cards 
 and the mate throws overboard every card in sight. 
 They read books of all kinds; the Bible, Josephus, 
 Latin Grammar, Bowditch's Navigator, and STORIES, 
 STORIES, STORIES. In early days every man was 
 tattooed and some had their ears pierced for earrings. 
 They gossiped about every man, woman and child in 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 73 
 
 town. They told over again all their old yarns. If 
 another whaler hove in sight, they went aboard for 
 a gam. Perhaps then they got papers and letters from 
 home. On fourth of July, they brought out the frosted 
 cakes, "sea-cakes," made by the girls at home and 
 kept for special occasions. 
 
 Scrimshawing 
 
 With a mahogany log, whale-bone, a lathe and a 
 knife they made trinkets of all kinds, elaborately deco- 
 rated. They made a tiny ship with masts and all the 
 ropes so attached to a thread, that the model could be 
 inserted into a small-necked bottle, and the masts and 
 the rigging then raised to their places, by pulling the 
 thread. They made beautiful spoolers. But those not 
 skillful with the knife and the lathe could do scrim- 
 shawing. Everybody attempted scrimshawing. Now 
 scrimshawing was decorating the whale-bone in colors. 
 Using a paper pattern, they traced with a knife, a 
 design, and then retraced it with a point dipped in 
 India ink, indigo or a dye made from logwood. Whale's 
 teeth thus decorated, were simply an ornament for 
 the whatnot, but the busks were used as stays for a 
 lady's waist. When busks went by for this purpose 
 mothers utilized them in disciplining children. ''If 
 you are not a good child, I'll busk you." 
 
 The Captain's Wife 
 
 The wife of the captain often went along, and 
 many a Cape Cod child was born in mid-ocean, an 
 
74 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 American, if born under the American flag. Albatross, 
 "Trossy," is the beautiful name borne by one woman 
 born off Cape of Good Hope, the name given by the 
 older children to interpret the story of the stork. The 
 captain's wife was a good navigator, with occasion 
 sometimes to test her skill. Once upon a time, there 
 was a woman who always went to sea with her husband 
 (on foreign voyages, not whaling) because the owners 
 refused the ship unless she was aboard. On the voyage 
 she was the navigator; in port she was the financier. 
 When the captain died, she asked the owners for the 
 ship, for just one more voyage, with the same mates 
 who had been her faithful friends for many voyages. 
 The owners declined to send a ship to sea with a woman 
 captain, and she, who for years had been the real 
 captain of a ship, was compelled thereafter to go out 
 sewing for a living. 
 
 Ambergris 
 
 The tedium of whaling would be intolerable, were 
 it not for the chance of a fortune which every morning 
 brings. Perhaps a whale to-day and before night we 
 may be dipping from his head bucketsful of the clear 
 case oil. Perhaps to-morrow we shall be cutting in and 
 trying out a hundred barrels. Perhaps ambergris. 
 Ambergris is found in the intestines of a diseased whale. 
 It is a gray, hard, waxy lump as big as your fist, as big 
 as a bucket, having about the density of water, for 
 sometimes it floats, and sometimes, alas, it sinks. It 
 forms a base which retains the fragrant oils used in 
 perfumery. It is worth more than its weight in gold. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 75 
 
 In the Arctic 
 
 Whaling for bone in the Arctic is the latest phase 
 of whaling. A captain goes across the continent to 
 join his ship in San Francisco, sails for the far North 
 in the spring, whales during six weeks of the summer, 
 returns to the mouth of an Alaskan river in September, 
 roofs over the ship and is frozen in till June, whales 
 again the second summer, and unless he has poor luck 
 and must stay another year, he returns to San Francisco 
 in the fall. He probably receives letters and papers by 
 Esquimau sled once each year. During the long dark 
 winter the crew hunt and trade with the Esquimaux 
 and find them friendly. 
 
 McMillen 
 
 Few of our men now go whaling, but our Jotty 
 Small is with our Donald McMillen exploring Baffin's 
 Land, and the incipient merchant marine is being 
 recruited by our boys, both Yankee and Portuguese. 
 
 Alabama Claims 
 
 Any story of whaling in Provincetown must include 
 the Alabama Claims. During the Civil war. Confeder- 
 ate cruisers, among them the Alabama, fitted out in 
 English ports, made prizes of Provincetown whalers. 
 The crew of the whaler were landed in the West Indies, 
 and given as compensation for their loss, a Confederate 
 bond. Some of these bonds are still in existence. In 
 1872, a joint commission, chosen to settle the claims of 
 
1G THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 the United States against England, made an award of 
 315,000,000 to this Government. This money was 
 paid by the Government to those who had suffered 
 loss. It is wonderful how such losses breed. The 
 vessel and fittings, her cargo and the voyage she would 
 have made had she not been captured, the wages of 
 officers and crew and compound interest on all these 
 items for ten years, made those who had escaped 
 the Alabama wish that they also had been captured. 
 
 French Claims 
 
 Payment of the Alabama Claims revived the talk 
 of the French Spoliation Claims, and the hope that now 
 they might change from dreams into money. 
 
 "35,000,000 for unlawful seizures, captures and 
 destructions of vessels and cargoes, old General Jack- 
 son had forced the French to pay! Compound 
 interest for forty years!" But nothing ever came of it. 
 
 The Mason and Slidell Gale 
 
 In the early days of the Civil War, Mason and 
 Slidell, special envoys from the Southern Confederacy 
 to Great Britain and France, were on their way to 
 England in the Treyit, an English mail steamer. Cap- 
 tain Charles Wilkes of the United States Sloop-of-war, 
 San Jacinto, overhauled the Trent and demanded the 
 envoys, who were delivered up to him. He took the 
 prisoners into Fortress Monroe and sent word to Wash- 
 ington of his exploit. President Lincoln knew, and the 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 11 
 
 people of Cape Cod knew, that the war of 1812 had been 
 fought for just this reason, the overhauling of neutral 
 ships on the high seas. We knew this and we saw that 
 the President was right in ordering the release of the 
 prisoners. However, when a United States ship on 
 her way to Fort Warren, in Boston Harbor, with the 
 prisoners on board, made Provincetown Harbor during 
 a fearful storm, the people of the town sought to 
 vindicate the President and at the same time make 
 way with Mason and Slidell by praying to the Lord 
 to sink the ship. That storm is the Mason and Slidell 
 Gale. 
 
Fresh-Fishing 
 
 THE wind is seldom so high, and the cold is rarely 
 so intense but the Boston market is served with 
 fresh fish. The fresh-fishing vessels are built for 
 speed. They make trips of a few days or a few weeks, 
 going wherever there are fish, sometimes only a mile 
 or two from shore, sometimes a hundred miles southeast 
 to George's Bank. A fleet of power-boats and motor- 
 dories also comes and goes about the shore. Fresh- 
 fishermen are at sea in the pleasant days of summer 
 and in the awful days of winter, when they come into 
 port, floating icebergs. 
 
 Thus a fisherman described his day's work. 
 "Yes we got into trouble in that breeze Sunday. He 
 jibed her over and then he jibed her back again too 
 quick, and snapped her foremast short off. There was 
 the fores'l all in rags, new fores'l too, and the rigging 
 going back and forth across the deck, over the dories 
 and under the dories, and a block swinging from aloft 
 just above the men's heads, (kill'em if it hit 'em) and 
 a hell of a sea going. So cold a man could stand watch 
 but fifteen minutes. We had twelve thousand of fish 
 and lost six of them, and got into Boston all iced up." 
 
 The Clipper 
 The story of the evolution of the clipper from the 
 clumsy old traps of the early days is a story as wonder- 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 79 
 
 ful as that of the locomotive from the wheelbarrow. 
 When we look at the model of the Mayflower^ high out 
 of water, bow, stern and amidship, we are not sur- 
 prised that she was sixty-seven days crossing the 
 Atlantic. The wonder is that she crossed at all. 
 
 The first vessels and small boats made by the 
 Pilgrims for use along the shore, seem to have been 
 built on the lines of these old caravels, unmanageable 
 in bad weather, and hard to steer against the wind. 
 Their first attempts at fishing, also, were not successful, 
 though they tried it at Plymouth, at Weymouth, at 
 Cape Ann and elsewhere. Edward Winslow wrote: 
 "Though our bays and creeks are full of bass and other 
 fish, yet for want of fit and strong seines and other 
 netting, they for the most part break through and 
 carry all before them." 
 
 They quickly saw, however, the advantage of the 
 light canoes of the Indians, and they began to experi- 
 meirh — They made a boat with masts without stays, 
 and with square sails that must be lowered in order to 
 tack. They made the pinkie, the lugger, the dog-body, 
 the ketch, the cod-head-and-mackerel-tail, the heel- 
 tapper, the jigger and the schooner, till there has been 
 developed a type, safe, swift and beautiful, a craft 
 that spreads twelve hundred yards of duck and that 
 sails within three points of the wind in all weathers. 
 
 We no longer hear dreadful stories of a vessel 
 on her beam ends and the crew in the rigging frozen 
 with horror while they wait for her to right, or of a 
 vessel bottom up with the remnant of the crew clinging 
 to the bottom, drifting, starving, dropping into the sea. 
 
80 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Seldom now a vessel sails and is not heard of 
 till the men along the shore begin to say, "She 
 is overdue," and later, "The owners are getting anx- 
 ious," and at last, "The Lloyds have given her up." 
 Then a funeral sermon Is preached for the men on 
 board the vessel never reported. Once a minister with 
 such a service, said: "Their bodies are in the deep 
 and their souls are doubtless in hell." The widow of 
 the captain and mother of the two sons who were 
 the captain's mates, sat in the front pew and listened 
 to the funeral sermon for her husband and her sons. 
 Her head under her black crepe veil sank lower and 
 lower as she listened. The neighbors helped her walk 
 from the meeting-house, home. The women took off 
 her black crepe veil and her black dress and put her 
 to bed, from which she never again raised her head. 
 
 The minister said that he had done his duty. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 The Lipton Cup 
 
 We are proud of the trophy displayed hi Town 
 Hall, won in the Fishermen's race, 1907. 
 
 The Inscription on the Cup: 
 
 Won by Sch. 
 
 Rose Dorothea 
 
 Capt. Marion Perry 
 
 Aug. 1, 1907 
 
 Presented by 
 
 Sir Thomas Lipton, K. C. V. O. 
 
 Boston Old Home Week 
 
 1907. 
 
Allied Industries 
 
 Boat Building 
 
 WHEN white oak grew on the hills, large vessels 
 wefe-bml^t-orrThe^hore, small boats also, a 
 hundred and fifty of them in 1845. A boat- 
 shop is an attractive place. The piles of clean lumber, 
 the wide doors open to the harbor, the neighbors with 
 the news make it a good place to loaf in. If, however, 
 one does not belong to the clan, it is difficult for him 
 to find conversation in the shop, or even to discover 
 the shop itself, tucked away behind other buildings on 
 the shore. For the initiated there are shrewd judg- 
 ments of people and events. A pretty and stylish 
 young girl of a petered-out family passed by. One 
 man, scanning the horizon, said: "Rigged like a yacht." 
 Another, studying an imaginary Arithmetic, "Naught 
 from naught and naught remains." 
 
 Life Boats 
 
 In these boat-shops are built the Government 
 life-boats. When the Life Saving Service was first 
 established, the Government furnished all the stations 
 with flat-bottomed boats, such as were used on the 
 New Jersey coast. These our men could not use on 
 
84 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 this shore. At the wreck of the Annie J. Fort the 
 life-crew at Peaked Hill Bars tried in vain, all day 
 long, to launch the Government life-boat. When they 
 were exhausted, Captain Isaac Mayo, a spectator on 
 the shore, sent into town for a whale-boat, and called 
 for a volunteer crew. The boat was carted across the 
 beach and manned by a fresh crew. They knew a 
 whale-boat. They knew that a boat, with a keel, 
 narrow, sharp at both ends, and deep, could be launched 
 through the breakers and could be safely beached on 
 its return. They watched their chance, they ran her 
 off beyond the breakers, they saved the men on the 
 wreck. A picture of this crew launching their boat 
 hangs in the Public Library. Afterthis-experience the 
 GovernmeiiF had the boats for the Cape Cod service 
 built on Cape Cod, by Cape Cod men. They are a 
 little smaller than a whale-boat, and they have air-tight 
 compartments. For a long time they were built by 
 William W. Smith, who prided himself that boats put 
 on the stocks Monday morning were finished Saturday 
 night. 
 
 Sail-lofts 
 Where there are vessels there must be sail-lofts. 
 A sail-loft is also an attractive place, with a wide, clean 
 floor, and rolls of white duck, and coils of new rope. 
 He is a skilled draftsman who cuts a suit of sails that 
 fit perfectly, and he is clever with a palm who sews 
 them. The vessel going out of the harbor with new 
 sails that "draw" is the butt of the watching connois- 
 seurs on the shore. To say of any person: "I don't 
 like the cut of his jib," is to express suspicion. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 85 
 
 Spar-yards 
 
 There must be a spar-yard with its odorous floor 
 of pine chips. Long before Bell and the telephone, 
 Cape Cod children knew that the scratching of a pin 
 at one end of a sixty-foot stick could be heard by an 
 ear held close to the other end of the spar. Where 
 there are vessels there must be block-makers, with 
 a log of lingum vitae at the door; there must be 
 calkers with their ringing mallets; and riggers with 
 knives in their belts; and painters, for no self-respecting 
 crew would ship in a dinghy, and no high-liner of a 
 capt'n would put to sea in a vessel that did not look 
 shipshape. 
 
 Uncle Disher 
 
 Where there are vessels there must be a black- 
 smith's forge, not often busy with horses to be shod, 
 but always red with iron-work for the vessels. This is 
 the story they tell in the Blacksmith's Shop: 
 
 Once upon a time, Uncle Disher thought he would 
 make an anchor. Now Uncle Disher was not very 
 bright, but he put the iron in the fire and he heated it 
 red-hot and he put it on the anvil and he pounded and 
 he pounded and he pounded, but when he got it done, 
 it was too small for an anchor. So Uncle Disher 
 thought he would make a horse-shoe. He put the 
 iron in the fire and he heated it red-hot and he put it 
 on the anvil and he pounded and he pounded and he 
 pounded and when he got it done, it was too small for 
 
86 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 a horse-shoe. So Uncle Disher thought he would make 
 a nail. He put the iron in the fire and he heated it 
 red-hot and he put it on the anvil and he pounded and 
 he pounded and he pounded, and when he got it done, 
 it was too small for a nail. So Uncle Disher said he 
 would put it into the water and make a tiss. This is 
 the story told to the ambitious with the warning, 
 "Look out now that you don't make a tiss." 
 
 Up the Railway 
 
 Where there are vessels there must be marine 
 railways where vessels are hauled out for repairs. At 
 high water the cradle was slid under the waiting vessel; 
 a pair of stout horses walked rou-nd and round the 
 capstan in the railway house (with a notch cut in the 
 roof for the vessel's boom), and they pulled the vessel 
 up the ways. There the calkers calked her, and if 
 she was going to southern waters, they coppered her, 
 and the painters painted her and they made her tight. 
 Children always loved to watch a vessel come up and 
 to see Lion and Tiger walk round and round the 
 capstan, waiting for the time when Lion and Tiger 
 should get dizzy and fall down, as the big boys said 
 they would some day. But Lion and Tiger never did 
 fall down. The best place to go old-junking was under 
 the railway, after a vessel had been coppered. 
 
 Cod Liver Oil 
 
 On every wharf in town were try-works, an iron 
 kettle containing three barrels, on a brick foundation, 
 where fish livers were tried out for oil. Dog-fish livers 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 87 
 
 yielded a crude oil for tanning and making rope. 
 Fresh cod livers, ovei a slow fire, stirred constantly 
 lest they burn, yielded the medicinal Cod Liver Oil. 
 In 1848, Mr. Joseph Burnett, an apothecary of Boston, 
 induced Mr. Nathaniel Atwood to fit his vessel with 
 the necessary equipment and go to Labrador and there 
 catch the cod and try out the livers on board. Later, 
 perhaps encouraged by his friend and teacher Prof. 
 Agassiz, Mr. Atwood did an extensive business in his 
 shop here, both manufacturing and bottling the oil. 
 This work is still done in little kettles along the shore, 
 but the emulsions on the market have lessened the 
 demand for pure oil. Time was when a barrel of oil 
 made four hundred bottles, and a bottle sold for half 
 a dollar. 
 
 Blackfish Oil 
 
 The finest lubricating oil, used on certain bearings 
 of United States battleships and lighthouses, used on 
 expensive watches and clocks, is refined from black- 
 fish head oil. This fine oil is extracted from a quantity 
 
88 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 which has been subjected to intense cold and has 
 congealed to look like lard. From this frozen mass is 
 pressed a small amount of oil that will not chill. This 
 process takes two years. 
 
 The blackfish are small whales, five to thirty feet 
 long, which swim in schools of hundreds. Following 
 the herring or the squid, they come close in, and some- 
 times run ashore on the beach. If they remain 
 sporting about in the bay, a noisy crew in a boat can 
 drive them to their destruction. In the head is the 
 melon, I suppose the brains, from which this finest oil 
 is made. Schools of five hundred, of two thousand, have 
 been taken along the Cape Shore. Marshal Foch, on 
 his tour of the United States, was presented with a 
 watch by the Boston Post. With the watch was a tiny 
 bottle of oil made by Mr. David StuU of our town, the 
 same David Stull who is the "Ambergris King." 
 
 Besides the fishing, large enough to be dignified 
 by the name of business, there are incidental dollars 
 to be gathered from the sea. Any bo)'' can make a 
 lobster-pot, and with care he can catch a few lobsters; 
 men, women and children go clamming at fifty cents 
 a bucket. Flounders, once fed to the pigs, are the 
 delicious flatfish, and they are salable; pollock, despised 
 pollock, are the famous Boston blues; whiting, which 
 the town used to bury on the shore, are the delicate 
 silver perch; when squid strike they can be almost 
 dipped up at ten cents a bucket; and the Picketts 
 buy small mackerel for canning. In the old days when 
 in order to get the bounty, a man must go fishing 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 89 
 
 forty weeks in the year, whether there were fish or 
 not, he could always go bounty catching. 
 
 Knitting Net 
 
 At the kitchen window of every home and in 
 every back-shop hung a net. All members of the 
 family and all loafers in the back-shop were expected 
 to knit on the net, so that it grew continually. Chil- 
 dren too young to knit (and a child was too young 
 till he could knit without making a slip-knot) filled 
 needles. The size of the lease, around which the 
 twine was thrown, determined the size of the mesh, 
 and whether the net was to be for spurling, for herring, 
 for mackerel or for bluefish. Four or five cents a yard 
 was the standard price for knitting; a fast knitter 
 could do a yard an hour; some knitters could knit and 
 read. The nets were seventy-five yards long and 
 eighty meshes deep. That, with the corks on one side 
 and the leads on the other, made a net worth about 
 fifteen dollars. Hundreds of nets were made every 
 winter. In due time a machine was invented for 
 knitting nets. Everybody in town took stock in the 
 new knitting company in Boston, and it proved very 
 profitable. One condition of the stock was that the 
 company should have first chance to buy any stock 
 sold, and that when a stock-holder should die, his 
 stock could be bought in by the company. Thus the 
 whole of this valuable property has gone into the 
 possession of the company, now the American Net and 
 Twine Company, and of the Linen Thread Company of 
 
90 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 England. Many people in town know how to knit 
 net, and in many an attic are needles and a lease. 
 
 Oil Clothes 
 
 In the days before sewing machines, the fishermen's 
 oil clothes were made by the outfitters. They bought 
 the cloth, cut the pants, the jacket and the barvel, and 
 put them out for women to sew in their homes. When 
 the clothes were sewed, they were covered with linseed 
 oil, two or three coats, put on with a paint brush. 
 Rows of these stiff figures hung singly and with arms 
 extended from fear of combustion, swinging gently 
 in the dim store-loft, were a harrowing sight to a little 
 girl. 
 
 The Whale Show 
 
 Far more forceful than the hard-worked word 
 efficiency is the English gumption. It was real gumption 
 that prompted two captains to take a whale to New 
 York on exhibition. Anyone with a mathematical 
 turn of mind, knowing how much odor arises from one 
 pound of decaying meat, could calculate how great an 
 odor would arise from a seventy-ton whale, how much 
 disinfectant would be a daily necessity, and how long 
 a board of health would tolerate a dead whale in the 
 dock. How many people would pay half a dollar to 
 see a whale, must be, for the wisest, a guess. The 
 canny captains had taken all these things into consider- 
 ation, and they calculated rightly that a whale on 
 exhibition in New York would be a good thing — how 
 good nobody but them ever knew. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 91 
 
 Afterward a whale was put on a specially construct- 
 ed flat car by a Chicago syndicate and was exhibited 
 in western cities. A lecturer went with this show, and 
 the lecturer says that he told a good story and that he 
 had a good time. 
 
 No one has yet invented a successful tide-mill, 
 though many have tried. 
 
 The Cold Storage Plants 
 
 At times in the summer, the harbor is alive with 
 squid, excellent for bait. At other times there are no 
 squid. Then the fishermen are clamoring for fresh 
 bait. So many whiting swim the harbor that the 
 dead fish thrown overboard by the fishing boats become 
 a nuisance on the shore. These delicate silver perch, 
 unlike larger and firmer fish, can not be sent to market 
 simply packed in ice. With these facts in mind, Mr. 
 D. F. Small, in 1892, built a "freezer." Experience has 
 proved that fish bite eagerly at the freezer's bait and 
 that food fish, if put fresh into the freezer, can not be 
 distinguished from fish newly caught. Since Mr. 
 Small's venture, five other freezers have been built at 
 the average cost of 3100,000. These plants are served 
 by traps in the harbor. They take fish when fish are 
 plenty in the summer and sell, mostly in the West, 
 when fish in the winter are scarce. A circulation of 
 ammonia and brine reduces the temperature to zero 
 and keeps it there day and night for months. The 
 fish are shipped in refrigerator cars and reach market 
 in excellent condition. 
 
The Coast Guard 
 
 THE Coast Guard was organized by the United 
 States Government in 1872. It was called at 
 first the Life-Saving Service. No shore more 
 dangerous than the shore of Cape Cod faces the Atlantic 
 Ocean. It has been well called the "Graveyard of 
 Ships." Hundreds of wrecks are scattered on the bottom 
 from Long Point to Monomoy. From 1907 to 1917 
 there were a hundred and fifty-six wrecks on the 
 Backside. Few early charts were reliable. The shift" 
 ing bars compel yearly a new survey and a new chart. 
 The first lighthouse, that at the Highland, 
 was built in 1797, Race Point in 1816, Long 
 Point in 1826, Wood End in 1873. Each year now 
 sees fewer disasters. Improvements in the charts and 
 in the lights, in the fog-bells and horns, better 
 appliances for rescue, entrance examinations, and regu" 
 lar drill for the men, and a pension for the men retiring, 
 better models in building vessels, use of power against 
 the wind, the Canal, all combine to defeat the hungry 
 sea and the treacherous sand. 
 
 Wrecks 
 Nevertheless, every winter has its wreck. The 
 horror of those who stand and see it marks the date 
 more sharply than do the figures of the calendar. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 93 
 
 "My son was born the day the Caledonia came ashore, 
 the first day of Janurry, 1863." The Caledonia was 
 an English ship with broadcloth, linen, cotton cloth 
 and thread, which next morning were washing in the 
 tide. The last of that cargo is scarcely used up now. 
 The Italian bark Giovanni with wine, white grapes, 
 nuts and raisins will be recalled when 1872 has little 
 significance. 
 
 Men on the shore stand helpless as they see a 
 ship break in pieces on the bar, and dead men washed 
 up with the flotsam and jetsam. They see the men on 
 the wreck launch a boat and they shudder as it over- 
 turns in the breakers, just beyond their reach. They 
 see men drop one by one from the rigging. They 
 calculate the chances of a man swimming on a plank. 
 They find the frozen body of one who reached the 
 shore in the darkness and then wandered about till 
 he died. Scenes like this fix the years for the life- 
 savers. 
 
 Wreckers 
 
 In the early days, wrecking companies were or- 
 ganized to save ship, cargo and men. They had ready 
 boats, oars and sails, cables and anchors, ropes, 
 barrels, tackles, crowbars and axes, life-preservers, 
 bandages, medicines, stimulants, dry clothes, dry wood 
 and matches, everything needed. At news of a wreck 
 they were early on the scene, prepared to help and 
 not afraid to try. The story is told of how a company 
 of wreckers floated a vessel at high tide and at dark 
 in a howling southeast snowstorm. What then.'' 
 
94 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 She would ground again on the ebb, the wind was 
 ahead to take her into the harbor but fair for Boston. 
 Therefore, "To Boston we go. It will not take long 
 to get there in this breeze. Nobody else will be out 
 to-night, so we shall have a clear road. She will 
 likely keep afloat till morning." Two men took the 
 leaking old craft to Boston and she was beside the 
 wharf before daylight. Word was sent to the waiting 
 wife in town, "Don't you worry about Joshua. He 
 has gone to Boston on the wreck. We think it will 
 moderate, bye-and-bye." Gone to Boston on a wreck! 
 
 The Humane Society 
 
 More than a hundred years ago, the Humane 
 Society built on the beach huts for shelter. In 1802, 
 Rev. James Freeman wrote a pamphlet on the work of 
 the Humane Society and located the huts. He de- 
 scribes them as a rude charity house with fireplace, 
 wood and matches and a signal pole. Which things, 
 public-spirited citizens promised to keep supplied. 
 
 The Seamen's Aid Society 
 
 The Seamen's Aid Society for the care of ship- 
 wrecked sailors was organized in 1882, with a dollar 
 a year membership and an annual public meeting. At 
 one of these public meetings, Mr. James Gifford read 
 a detailed account of the wreck on the Backside of 
 three East India ships from Salem, owned by the 
 Crowninshields, the Volusia, the Ulysses, the Brutus, 
 February 22, 1802. The Commonwealth has now 
 made provision that the towns shall furnish money 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 95 
 
 to shipwrecked persons and be reimbursed by the 
 State. Therefore the treasury of the Seamen's Aid 
 Society, about two thousand dollars, has been given 
 to the Helping Hand, and the Seamen's Aid is dis- 
 banded. 
 
 Mooncussing 
 
 Since the Lloyds now have representatives in every 
 town, the romantic days of "mooncussing" are done. 
 How much was snatched from the maw of the sea and 
 made useful will never be known, because only the 
 audacious and the funny stories are told. To get 
 ahead of Eben Smith, the underwriters' agent, was a 
 laudable ambition, and to outwit another beach- 
 comber was worth while. Once upon a time a man stood 
 in the evening on the beach where during the day a 
 vessel had gone to pieces. A rope washed up at his 
 feet and he hauled it in and threw it behind him as he 
 hauled. When he came to the end of the rope and 
 turned to coil it, there was in his hand a piece only 
 ten feet long. Somebody behind him in the darkness 
 had coiled the rope as he hauled, and had cut it and 
 disappeared. 
 
 The Life-saving Service on Cape Cod 
 
 This was established in 1874. Positions in the 
 service are eagerly sought, for the men feel that life- 
 saving is as much better than going to sea, as the 
 life-savers in a storm are better off than the men on 
 the wreck. Patrol along the beach in a northeast gale 
 would be impossible for most people. Sometimes the 
 
96 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 cutting wind and sand compel men to crawl on their 
 hands and knees. But these men are young and 
 strong, they are dressed for the weather, they know 
 the beach, and they leave the station dry and warm. 
 A vessel ashore in a bad time, however, taxes even 
 their vitality. But there are many days of leisure 
 and of comfort. One of their number goes into town 
 every day to market and for the mail. More books 
 than they can read are sent them. More visitors than 
 they can entertain come to see them. They take 
 turns at cooking, they keep hens and set lobster-pots, 
 they build boats and braid rugs and have a pension 
 bye-and-bye. 
 
 This is true of the lighthouse keepers also. A 
 man is in luck when he is appointed keeper of the light. 
 
 The Wreck of the Somerset 
 
The Portuguese 
 
 Our Neighbors 
 
 ALF the town is Portuguese. There is no race 
 prejudice, but only friendly co-operation 
 between Portuguese people and others. They 
 themselves make distinctions according to the island 
 from which they come. Others judge them as they 
 judge all, by their worth. Some of the brightest 
 pupils in the schools, some of the most esteemed 
 citizens are Portuguese. This attitude of democratic 
 good will was illustrated in the tercentenary parade, 
 1920. The signing of the Compact, the Mayflower, 
 John Alden, Priscilla and the spinning-wheel, and all 
 the Pilgrim band were portrayed by their descendants. 
 The artists supplied the Indians, the pirates, and other 
 picturesque adjuncts. There was no more significant 
 group than the Portuguese with their fishing gear and 
 the motto — 
 
 "Our Saviour fed the Multitude 
 Two thousand years ago. 
 We are Fishermen." 
 
 At their head marched a man descended by seven 
 lines from Mayflower passengers. 
 
98 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 The First Portuguese 
 
 Most of the Portuguese came on the whalers from 
 Cape de Verde Islands. The first Portuguese, however, 
 was Manuel Caton from Lisbon. When a boy he ran 
 away from home to sea. The ship was captured by 
 pirates and every man compelled to walk the plank. 
 The boy was saved as a useful slavey. For a long 
 time they cruised the Atlantic Ocean, and took many 
 prizes. 
 
 At last the captain of the pirate ship fell sick' and 
 was near to death. Then the crew put the captain and 
 young Caton into a boat and set them ashore on the 
 Backside, and said to Caton: "Go into the town and 
 tell the people that there is a man out here very sick." 
 This he did. The captain was carried into town and 
 nursed back to health. When he was well again, he 
 said to Manuel: "The next time the packet goes to 
 Boston we will go in her. I know where to pick the 
 ship." But the young man said "no," that he liked 
 the people and he liked the town and he did not like 
 a pirate ship. Though the captain threatened ven- 
 geance if he stayed and if he told, he remained, married 
 and lived to be an old man, always gentle, courteous 
 and respected. 
 
A Bit of Geography 
 
 Washing Up 
 
 GEOLOGISTS agree that High Head m Truro 
 marks the original end of the Cape, and that 
 all the land north of that point is a series of 
 sand beaches built by the winds and the tides, each 
 farther north than the last. At first they were narrow 
 spits of sand just above the water. They increased 
 year by year till they became wide enough and high 
 enough to support vegetation. This process of building 
 can be roughly traced even now. Off Peaked Hill, 
 a vessel taking a familiar course may be caught on a 
 bar newly made-off. Long ago Race Run was tide 
 water from Race Point to Nigger Head, seventy-five 
 years ago a bridge spanned the Run, fifty years ago 
 the Run could be crossed afoot only at low tide, the 
 State Road now lies where the tide once ebbed and 
 flowed. Mill Creek at the West End is filling rapidly 
 now that the breakwater shuts it off from the harbor. 
 No longer boys and girls row "up crick" on the flood 
 and drift back again on the ebb tide. Fresh Water 
 Mill Pond and Salt Water Mill Pond fed by the Mill 
 Creek have entirely disappeared, and Johnny Smith's 
 Pond near the west end of the sidewalk is gone. Shank 
 Painter Pond extended a mile west of the Meeting 
 
100 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 House, and the Meeting House was near the old 
 cemetery. Strout's creek is constantly mentioned in 
 old records. It probably ran up into the hills from 
 East Harbor, but there has been no trace of it for a 
 hundred years. Lobster Plain on Long Point was 
 almost an inland sea. Now it is difficult to find the 
 Lobster Plain. 
 
 Washing Out 
 
 On the other hand, some land is disappearing. 
 House Point, an island at the west end of the harbor 
 has been washed away in our day, and an island called 
 Hog Island at the east end of the harbor was once 
 used for pasturing sheep. There are coverlets in town 
 made of wool raised by the young brides who also 
 spun and wove the cloth. Strangers approaching the 
 low-lying shore for the first time exclaim: "How does 
 anybody dare to live there!" People unaccustomed 
 to a tide, inquire if it surely will stop at the high-water 
 mark and go back again. Statistical friends calculate 
 how long it will be before the whole end of the Cape 
 will be washed away. We still live, although in 1851, 
 during the storm that destroyed Minot's Ledge Light, 
 the ocean really did break through at East Harbor. 
 That fact probably hastened the building by the 
 Commonwealth of the dyke at the East End, in 1869, 
 and of the breakwater at the West End by the Federal 
 Government in 1911. 
 
 Thus we live, as we always have lived, flung up 
 by the sea, fighting the sea, fed by the sea. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 101 
 
 The Harbor 
 
 All who see it are impressed with the extent of the 
 harbor "wherein a thousand ships might ride"; with 
 the safety of this land-locked haven, without a rock, a 
 shoal or a current; with its ever-changing beauty, the 
 dispair of the artists. 
 
 The harbor is the background of our whole life. 
 The first duty of the morning is to learn which way 
 the wind is, from the best weather-vane in the world, 
 a vessel at anchor. On the way of the wind, and on 
 the indispensable knowledge of the time of high tide, 
 on these two hang all the work and play of the day. 
 
 Our Playground 
 
 It is a playground. Our boys can not remember 
 when they learned to swim and to handle a boat. 
 They scorn amateur seamanship, especially if they see 
 it in Uncle Sam's sailors. Town and gown. Many of 
 these sailors are western boys attracted to the navy 
 by the romance of the sea, who never saw salt water 
 until they enlisted. One of these youths in uniform 
 was trying to put a boat alongside the wharf, while 
 his critics stood grinning above him. One boy voiced 
 the thought of the gang: "Straddle your legs apart, 
 mister, or you will be overboard." This to a lieuten- 
 ant! Boys stand up in a boat and scull rather than 
 row, and they row, not with the long sweep of the 
 racer, but with the short stroke of the man who rows 
 in all weathers. Somebody, on a summer morning, home 
 again, home again, after a year, loosed a man's dory, 
 
102 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 found the oars hidden according to custom under the 
 fish-house, and was almost out of sight when she was 
 discovered by the owner, who said "That woman is 
 no summer visitor. She learned to row in this dock. 
 She is one of three girls, and I bet I know which one." 
 
 Our School 
 
 Uncle Sam's Ships, the incarnation of power, lie 
 off there and beckon to the boys. "Aboard the 
 Ranger," is said by some of them with the same air 
 with which Bostonians say, "At the University." Thus, 
 one young man tells what the harbor and the lifelong 
 use of boats did for him. "'Board the transport was a 
 lot of them Annapolis fellers. They was all right in 
 good weather, but come a bad time and I see 'em 
 faint away and fall down dead, with seasick, lot of 
 'em. We had one old he of a storm about half way 
 across, and them fellers kept her agoing just as if 
 'twas fair weather. Never eased her up a bit. They 
 got her down in the trough of the sea and I think she 
 roll over sure. I take my cap in my hand and I go 
 to the Capt'n (I don't know but he heave me over- 
 board) and I say, 'Capt'n, I know how to steer a 
 ship.* 
 
 'Who are you.^' he say. 
 
 'Portugee from Provincetown.' 
 
 'Any more of you ?' 
 
 'Five fellers.' 
 
 'Go get them and come here.' 
 When we get across, I get my promote." 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 103 
 Our Resource 
 
 Our harbor Is the road over which young men set 
 out to make their way. In it is our livelihood. A 
 little boy starts with a lobster-pot or a bucket of 
 clams. The old man who can still pull a dory feels 
 that he can make his living. If a young man thinks 
 he will be a farmer, and goes West to try farming, 
 within a year he is a surveyor, a land agent, an employee 
 in the bank. He wanders to the ends of the earth, but 
 is always at some work that appeals to a rover, a trader, 
 a captain. 
 
 The harbor is not often the scene of a tragedy; 
 few people are drowned, few vessels are wrecked. 
 
 To those bred on these shores and transplanted to 
 the country, the fields seem monotonous, and the 
 mountains oppressive. Forever they miss the con- 
 tinual changes of the tide and the wide horizon of the 
 sky, even until — 
 
 "That which drew from out the vasty deep 
 Turns again home." 
 
 Mr. Myrick C. Atwood, deputy collector for the 
 port, estimates that in 1890 the number of vessels 
 seeking this port was 4,000, and the value of their 
 merchandise was 340,000,000. 
 
 The Hills 
 
 Two ranges of hills in parallel lines sweep round 
 the circle of the harbor. The hills near the harbor 
 side are Zion's, Gull, Telegraph, Chip, Lothrop's, High 
 
104 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Pole, Miller's, Mount GUboa and Mount Ararat. The 
 significance of these names is apparent, except that of 
 Chip Hill, which was hardened v/ith chips from Mr. 
 Nathaniel Hopkins' spar-yard. Miller's was perhaps, 
 long ago, the hill of the miller. The hill was owned, so 
 Mr. Heman Cook says, by several families of Cook, 
 who, like the kings of England in the days of the early 
 explorations, owned America because they had driven 
 down stakes. Mr. Cook's father bought the hill for 
 two quintals of pollock and had the deed thus recorded. 
 It was Miller's Hill then, but nobody knows now why. 
 These hills are covered by vegetation. As Captain 
 John Smith said, with hurts and such trash. The 
 trustees of the Public Reservations of the State of 
 Massachusetts, 1892, say of them that a surprisingly 
 beautiful vegetation adorns them and that they support 
 a charming growth of tupelo, sweet azalia, clethra and 
 the like; that in the shelter of their ridges and even 
 upon their crests grow oaks, maples, beeches and 
 pitch pines. 
 
 Cranberries 
 
 In the valleys between the hills are small cultivated 
 cranberry bogs; sanded, as all cranberry bogs must be, 
 here by the action of the wind; watered, as all cran- 
 berry bogs are, here by the high-couse tides pressing 
 up from beneath. These little bogs are not picked, as 
 are the big corporation bogs up the Cape, by hired and 
 often imported pickers. Cranberry picking here is a 
 pleasant picnic in the October days after the beach 
 plums are gone. Nothing carries more sentiment for 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 105 
 
 Cape Cod people than the cranberry. A young woman 
 in the streets of New York, battered and old, looked 
 into the window of a shop and saw cranberries. Cran- 
 berries meant to her Thanksgiving Day, father and 
 mother, and home on Cape Cod, and they wrought in 
 her what admonition and experience could not do. 
 
 Swamp Gardens 
 Between the hills are also swamp gardens which 
 yield delicious vegetables. The Indians taught the 
 forefathers to put a fish in every hill of corn; the 
 Portuguese showed us that sea-weed makes plants 
 grow, though perhaps they did not explain that sea- 
 weed supplies the nitrates. Near the houses in the 
 town, little gardens of flowers and vegetables prosper, 
 if one waters his garden every day. But water every 
 day he must, for the sandy soil is like a sieve and the 
 water runs off and the soil is dry in half an hour after 
 a shower. Every vessel which comes in ballast has 
 a chance to sell the ballast to some one hardening his 
 lot. Sods are cut from the hills for the same purpose, 
 And so, with fish and sea-weed, a little soil and plenty 
 of water, flowers and vegetables and small fruits 
 flourish beyond belief. 
 
 Prince Peter Kropotkin, in his Fields, Factories and 
 Workshops, points out the end of Cape Cod as an illus- 
 tration of what can be done on sandy soil. How did 
 he ever hear of us, I wonder. 
 
 The Moving Hills 
 The hills covered with growing things near the 
 town are probably older than the bare hills beyond 
 
106 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 them — hills the artists call dunes and the natives think 
 of as the second sand hills. The changes wrought on 
 the shore by the wind and tide we view with accustomed 
 eyes, but who could look without wonder and see a 
 hill as it obeys the command of the wind: "Go hence 
 and stand in another place." Here a single winter's 
 gales remove a hill and pile it elsewhere, and the 
 whirling sand covers well-grown trees, and, years after, 
 uncovers them. 
 
 The Artists, Wind and Sand 
 
 The tales told of clear glass converted into ground 
 glass by the sand are true. One of the crew at Peaked 
 Hill wanted a panel with a conventionalized figure for 
 his front door in town. He cut a paper pattern, pasted 
 it on the pane of glass, and put it out of doors during 
 a northeast wind. The next day the stencilling was 
 perfectly done by artists Wind and Sand. Wind and 
 Sand have acted also as curators of a museum. On 
 November 3, 1778, the British frigate Somerset, Cap- 
 tain Bellamy, chased by a French cruiser, went ashore 
 on Peaked Hill Bars. This was the same Somerset 
 told of in Paul Revere^ s Ride, which covered the advance 
 of the British up Bunker Hill. She caught on the 
 outer bar. When they cut away her masts and threw 
 overboard her guns, she came over the bar and up on 
 the beach. Everybody for miles around rejoiced to 
 see the Somerset cast away, and everybody hastened 
 to strip her. But her oak and her iron defied even 
 the fire. The sand, after a while, covered the wreck 
 and the place where she lay was forgotten. In 1886, 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 107 
 
 after a succession of northeast gales and spring tides, 
 the old hulk appeared. She was easily identified by 
 her model, her port-holes, her six-inch oak plank. As 
 they did a hundred years before, so again people used 
 fire and gunpowder against her. But each flood tide 
 undid the work done on the ebb, and after a few months 
 the sand covered her once more, and there she lies, 
 under twenty feet of sand, and well above the high- 
 water mark. 
 
 The Ponds 
 
 The whole length of Cape Cod and Plymouth 
 County also is dotted with ponds. There are more 
 than three hundred in Barnstable County. Beginning 
 with Shank Painter Pond nearest the tip end, they 
 nestle unseen among the hills all along the Cape, 
 suggesting in their beauty the Lake District of Eng- 
 land. They are sparkling, and bright to taste, rem- 
 iniscent of the time when they too were a part of old 
 ocean, but they retain not enough salts to be brackish. 
 Pickerel swim and pond lilies bloom there, though the 
 swampy margins render it difficult to get either the 
 fish or the flowers. 
 
 Drinking Water 
 
 At first the town was supplied with water by the 
 rain caught in cisterns. Then tubular driven wells 
 were used. The sand is so light and the water is so 
 near the surface that the wells can be driven in any 
 place and almost by hand. The water comes up abun- 
 dant, clear and pure. Even when wells are sunk just 
 
108 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 above the high-water mark, where the tide often covers 
 them, the water is fresh and good. The town water 
 now piped into the houses comes from Truro. The 
 State's analysis shows it to be almost absolutely pure. 
 Provincetown, crowded as it is, has no epidemics from 
 contaminated water, for the sand is a perfect filter. 
 
 Anchoring the Hills 
 
 Just as some have feared that the ocean might 
 engulf the town, so there have been apprehensions 
 lest the drifting sand bury it, and destroy the harbor. 
 The Commonwealth has, from time to time, done 
 something to prevent such a disaster. Since 1892, the 
 boundary between the town and the province lands 
 has been distinctly marked by the State, and the work 
 of staying the hills has been systematically and in- 
 telligently done. Mr. Frank Chase, Resident Com- 
 missioner of the Province Lands for the Commonwealth 
 of Massachusetts, from his valuable experience and 
 experiments of twenty years, supplies the following 
 facts. Beach grass was first transplanted. Its tough 
 roots, yards long and near the surface formed a close 
 net. Much of this grass lived only four or five years, 
 though beach grass, springing up from seed, lives 
 forever. Scotch broom was suggested and tried. Its 
 stiff foliage with spikes of yellow flowers adorns many 
 spots along the roads. Buckwheat was also attempted 
 but without perfectly satisfactory results. The next 
 experiment was with the native pine, a stunted and 
 slow growth. Soft pines from other parts of Massa- 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 109 
 
 chusetts, instead of growing to be tall and stately 
 trees, simply sprawled out, so that we could not be 
 proud of them. The Austrian pines, the seeds of 
 which were sent from Austria, are now growing so 
 well that the Commonwealth anticipates a revenue, 
 before many years, from thinning and cutting these 
 Austrian pines. Swedish and Norway pines are grow- 
 ing vigorous and shapely. Bayberries are easily 
 transplanted and are useful in holding the sand. The 
 most effective method, however, is the one most akin 
 to Nature's. Green boughs cut from the pines and 
 spread on the ground keep the sand from moving, and 
 catch the seeds of beach grass blowing about. In 
 two years a bare hill thus protected becomes green 
 and in five years the sand is completely hidden. In 
 1921, the Commonwealth planted 65,000 pines, trans- 
 planted seven acres of bayberries, and "brushed" forty 
 acres of sand hills. A million more Austrian pines, 
 started in the State Nursery, will be set out on the 
 hills. These methods and results have been inspected 
 and approved by authorities in Washington. Rep- 
 resentatives of the Pennsylvania Railroad and gentle- 
 men from Wisconsin have investigated the work and 
 they all report that what they find here is most helpful 
 in their problems with sand. 
 
 An extension of the State Road is projected. The 
 road would run from its present terminus near the 
 Race Point Coast Guard Station, two or three miles 
 along the old Race Run, and in the hollow of the 
 hills to connect with the Creek Road and so with the 
 Front Street at the West End. 
 
110 
 
 SAND DUNES. 
 
 by John R. Moreland. 
 
 What is your age, O Dunes, 
 
 And what ancient secrets 
 
 Are thrust deep in your yellow bosom? 
 
 The wind knows — 
 
 I have seen him 
 
 Whisper to you 
 
 And caress you. 
 
 And in his great anger 
 
 Smite you. 
 
 At noon your breath 
 Is hot as amber blaze, 
 And your topaz glow 
 Is brighter than the flash 
 Of a golden scimeter. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 111 
 
 But at night 
 
 When the moon 
 
 Pours upon you 
 
 A sea of light 
 
 You are luminous, alluring 
 
 And beautiful. 
 
 A Cleopatra in gold and black 
 Drawing me to your 
 Rounded breasts. 
 
Provincetown Weather 
 
 WHEN September comes, "it begins to thin 
 out." Excursionists, writers-up, people of 
 whom one old skipper with a big family of 
 non-resident grandchildren, said: "Summer boarders 
 and some're not," promenaders looking for natives, 
 bathers on the shore, ships and sailors, auto-busses 
 and motor-boats, antiques and curios, tea-rooms, art 
 students — all thin out and the real town appears — a 
 town which looks at residences, cars, the style, the 
 crowd, and is not astonished nor anxious — a town 
 where the schools, the churches, the lodges, the clubs 
 prosper, because the town gives thought to their 
 prosperity — a town where the sick, the poor, the 
 outcasts are cared for, because the town cares — an 
 intelligent and a friendly town. 
 
 They go who have made the summer delightful 
 by incidents like this. One of the natives, a D.D., a 
 thirty-third degree Mason, Grand Chaplain of the 
 State, with his daughter, a teacher of Mathematics in 
 college, went quahauging. Now the quahauging trip 
 is one hitch harder than clamming. There is no doubt 
 that as they rested on the breakwater, in clothes 
 suitable to the occasion, with the bucket of quahaugs 
 and the rake, they looked as if they had been washed 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 113 
 
 up by the tide. They had enjoyed the morning on 
 the flats, but the real joy of the day came in the con- 
 versation with a summer visitor. 
 
 "Have you been gathering shell-fish, my good 
 people.'"' 
 
 "Yes, ma'am." 
 
 "They will make you a nice dinner." 
 
 "Yes, ma'am." 
 
 That same day a moving-picture man asked them 
 to pose, that he might get a little local color. So now 
 we are in the movies. 
 
 The summer visitor waves a blithe good-bye to 
 the proprietor of a little store, "You folks are all right, 
 but you need to get out and see the world. Come to 
 New York this winter and let me show you around." 
 The proprietor of the little store thanks him, but does 
 not mention that New York has been his home port 
 for twenty-five years, from which he sailed to every 
 port from Hong Kong to Liverpool. 
 
 These go and then comes the most delightful 
 time of the year. The spring is chilly with fog and 
 east wind, but the fall often keeps mild and bright 
 up to Christmas. This is the time for tramping the 
 hills, red in oak, ivy, cranberry, and woodbine, with 
 a band of yellow sand all about them, and a rim of 
 blue water always beyond. 
 
 Thoreau enjoyed our hills in autumn and says 
 that he never saw an autumnal landscape so beauti- 
 fully painted, that it looked like a rich rug over an 
 uneven surface, with the sand-slides on the sides of the 
 hills like rents in the rug. "No damask nor velvet 
 
114 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 nor Tyrian dye nor stuffs nor the work of any loom 
 could ever match it." Even Thoreau's pen fell short 
 of the full round of beauty. Did he watch in a gray 
 day the exquisite harmony of the sky, the sea, the 
 sand, like a Japanese print? Did he see the tupelo 
 tree near the ponds .^ In the late spring, its bright 
 green leaves are aglow among the soberer trees; in the 
 autumn, the leaves on the top branches are fire-red, 
 those in the shadow beneath are yellow, and the lowest 
 branches, bare and gray, are turned to purple by the 
 sun shining through the splendor above them; in a 
 winter afternoon the horizontal boughs make straight 
 bars against a crimson sky. 
 
 Beach Plums 
 
 The fall brings the beach plums. On the head of 
 the one who picks huckleberries, the sun beats down 
 unmercifully; briers and brambles are synonymous 
 with blackberries; but beach plums on the low bushes 
 in the clean sand, the spicy bayberries under feet, the 
 salt wind blowing free across the hills, — beach plums, 
 purple beauties, a quart in a minute, ah, that is God's 
 own invitation to a good time. 
 
 Flowers 
 
 I know a garden on the south side of a house, 
 sunken a little as it slopes toward the shore, and pro- 
 tected by a tight board fence. Flowers bloom in that 
 garden every month in the year, except in January. 
 Marigolds, nasturtiums and sweet alyssum are under 
 the sheltering leaves; pansies are tucked away in a 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 115 
 
 warm corner; gilly flowers persist, and chrysanthe- 
 mums flourish into December: before the end of 
 February crocuses push up. In January, along the 
 edges of the swamps, pussywillows are telling that the 
 sun is higher, and the mayflowers in Myrick's Pines 
 peek out in March. 
 
 Storms 
 
 Oh yes, .there is usually skating for some days. 
 Ice six inches thick is as much as the icemen expect 
 to cut. More than that is eleemosynary. Yes, there 
 is coasting nearly every winter, and there are sleighs 
 in town that have been used. The Wind, chilling to 
 the bone, makes our winter. Northeast snowstorms 
 come screaming in across the Cape and drive the 
 vessels ashore on the Backside. With a southerly 
 wind, ice crowds in from the bay, and unless the wind 
 changes and carries the ice out again, it crushes the 
 wharves. 
 
116 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 During the winter of 1874—5, with persistent south- 
 easterly wind, ice from the bay drifted in, crowded the 
 harbor, and piled up on the shore. Then came a rain 
 and a hard freeze. For weeks, from the shore to Long 
 Point, there was good skating. This sheet of ice did 
 no damage, but broke up under a thaw and drifted 
 out to sea again. 
 
 The Portland Gale 
 
 The snow, the wind and the tide, one fearful night 
 in 1898, wrecked half the wharves in town. That was 
 the night the steamer Portland went down. The next 
 morning, the shore was strewn with wreckage. For 
 weeks, grief-stricken strangers paced up and down the 
 beach, hoping that a dear dead body might wash 
 ashore. They did not know how quickly a body in 
 the sea disintegrates. Such storms are the awful days 
 that come once in a generation. Every winter, how- 
 ever, brings howling gales that soon blow out as the 
 wind whips in to the north and makes the harbor clear 
 and bright and hard as glass. When the norther 
 moderates, then the artists say that Cape Cod is like 
 the south of France. 
 
 Blue and Gold 
 
 In summer the hills are a purple line separating 
 the blue water from the yellow sand, and the town is 
 a purple shadow under the hills. For a day in winter, 
 the snow changes all to silver, but the silver soon 
 tarnishes and again the town is a purple shadow between 
 the blue and the yellow. Someone should write a 
 jingle— 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 117 
 
 Provincetown the silver hook 
 
 Provincetown the sickle 
 
 Provincetown the shining blue and gold. 
 
 Such sights are not, however, for the summer 
 transient sauntering along by the boat-landing and the 
 restaurants. These visitors will very likely call it a 
 hot and dusty old place. Like Yankee Doodle, they 
 are troubled by the many houses. He who looks from 
 the hills, from the monument, from the heights in 
 Truro sees a picture, and he who lingers, loves it. 
 
 Here's to Your Health 
 
 Health lives on our dunes, long ago washed up 
 from the sea and never contaminated by human habi- 
 tation. Health breathes in the wind blowing across 
 three thousand miles of salt water. Health glows in 
 the sunshine pouring down on the hills unimpeded. 
 
 Years ago the artists discovered Provincetown the 
 Picture-book, now invalids are enjoying Provincetown 
 the Healer. 
 
The Churches 
 
 The Old Parish 
 
 ''''The Lord has more truth yet to break forth of 
 his Holy Wordr 
 
 John Robinson, 1620. 
 
 AFTER the petition of Truro to the General 
 Court, in 1715, that the Precinct of Cape Cod 
 be declared a part of Truro or not a part of 
 Truro, that the town might know how to deal with 
 some persons, the General Court served notice on the 
 people here to show cause why they did not entertain 
 a learned orthodox minister of the Gospel to dispense 
 the word of God to them as required by law. Two 
 years later, the General Court granted £150 toward 
 the expense of a meeting-house on Cape Cod, "the 
 money to be expended under the direction of Thomas 
 Paine, Ebenezer Doane, and John Snow of Truro, 
 the edifice to be thirty-two feet by twenty- 
 eight feet, with a gallery on three sides, the inhabitants 
 to sustain the balance of the expense and keep the 
 premises in order." This house was built on the 
 plain, "Meeting House Plain" southwest of the Old 
 Cemetery on Winthrop street, and not far from the 
 place where later they built the jail. Shank Painter 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 119 
 
 pond then extended to a point near the meeting-house. 
 The whole plain was doubtless once a part of the pond. 
 Fifty years later, they built a second meeting-house 
 on the same site, and in 1793, they built the Old White 
 Oak from timber cut on the hills. 
 
 {Acknowledgmeyit should here be viade to the careful 
 study of the late Judge James Hughes Hopkins, who put 
 in order many confused records and traditions.) 
 
 The Old White Oak 
 
 Writing in 1870, he says: "The Old White Oak is 
 still remembered by the elder natives of the town with 
 sentiments of veneration. It is remembered, too, that 
 the seats of the large square pews, hung upon hinges, 
 were turned up during prayer and turned down at its 
 close; that it was the delight of the boys in the galleries, 
 despite the menace of tything-men armed with long 
 poles, to throw the seats down with a bang that startled 
 the congregation; an annoyance finally ended by 
 enforcing the vote of the town to nail down the seats." 
 
 The first minister of the town was the Reverend 
 Jeremiah Gushing. The birth of his son, Ezekiel 
 Gushing, April 28, 1698, is one of the earliest items in 
 the town records. 
 
 It was in November that they voted in town 
 meeting to build the new meeting-house, the Old 
 White Oak, and to set it near the North Meadow Gut, 
 now Gosnold Street. In January, they voted to put 
 the meeting-house near the residence of the Reverend 
 
120 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Samuel Parker which stood where the CathoHc Church 
 is now built. They put the meeting-house just east 
 of Mr. Parker's house. They sold the stock in the 
 new meeting-house in forty shares. A full share cost 
 £7, 10s., and a half share cost £3, 15s. The pews 
 were sold at public vendue to the highest bidder, and 
 the highest bidder was Elijah Nickerson, who paid 
 3186 for pew No. 20. 
 
 In 1807 the meeting-house was remodeled and 
 four new pews added, at considerable expense to the 
 town. At that time the highest bidder was Solomon 
 Cook, who paid ^342 for pew No. 39. Thus remodeled 
 the old town meeting-house was dignified and hand- 
 some, and an expression of all that was excellent and 
 permanent in the life of that day. 
 
 Reverend Samuel Parker 
 
 Jeremiah Cushing, the first minister (evidently 
 not regularly "settled") and Hannah, his wife, and 
 little Ezekiel are only names to us now, but the Rever- 
 end Samuel Parker seems a real person. His descend- 
 ants are still living in the town. He was born in 
 Barnstable, was graduated from Harvard University, 
 came to Provincetown when he was thirty-two years 
 old and lived here till he was an old man, and lies 
 buried in the Old Cemetery. The town gave him the 
 frame of his house and half the building of it. It was 
 not a very large house, thirty by twenty-seven and 
 eight feet in the walls. Perhaps it was planned like 
 this: with two rooms in the attic and a barn for the 
 cows: 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 121 
 
 1. The Fore-room 
 
 2. The Entry 
 
 3. The Study 
 
 4. The Chimney 
 
 5. The Kitchen 
 
 6. The Buttery 
 
 7. The Bedroom 
 
 w 
 
 I . H ^ I 
 
 i 1 
 
 They gave him also his firewood, meadow for two 
 cows, and £66, 13s., 7d., lawful money. The General 
 Court guaranteed also £45 annually for twelve years. 
 
 Mr. Parker had two hard experiences. The first 
 during the Revolutionary War, when the British held 
 the town and the inhabitants fled; the minister proba- 
 bly with the others. We know they had not gone far, 
 however, when the Somerset came ashore, and that 
 they returned soon after the war. The real tragedy 
 came when his last days were saddened by the rise of 
 Methodism in the town. A vote was passed in town 
 meeting placing the Methodist minister in control of 
 Mr. Parker's pulpit unless he was able to officiate. A 
 Methodist selectman and "keeper of the meeting-house 
 key" refused to open the door of the meeting-house 
 for a regularly-warned town meeting, and the town 
 adjourned to the store of Thomas Ryder to transact 
 its business. He saw his people divided and many 
 leaving the old parish for the "New Lights." Thus 
 his pulpit, his people, his prestige slipped away from 
 him. Through it all he remained kindly and tolerant. 
 When he died he was greatly lamented. 
 
122 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Reverend Nathaniel Stone 
 
 His successor, Reverend Nathaniel Stone, attacked 
 with vigor the problems under which Mr. Parker had 
 suffered. A new element and complication was the 
 refusal of people everywhere to pay the minister's tax, 
 assessed by the towns. After the Revolutionary War, 
 taxation without representation in the church, became 
 as hateful as it had been in the state. 
 
 People revolted from the old Calvinistic theology, 
 and from the authority of the ministers, and from the 
 taxes for support of a parish in which they no longer 
 had a part. This led to a long conflict, in which the 
 best legal talent of the country was engaged, and which 
 was largely led and financed by the Independent 
 Christian Society (Universalist) of Gloucester. 
 
 Mr. Stone was an able man, but irascible and 
 ''sot," and anxious to fight the Methodists. Expos- 
 tulations from his people could not prevent him, nor 
 hints to resign move him. The sad end of it all was 
 that in 1830 all his hearers had deserted him, the 
 meeting-house was closed and the historic identity of 
 town and parish was ended forever. Mr. Stone 
 remained in town seven years after his parish was gone. 
 His home was the present residence of Mrs. Grace 
 F. Hall on Lothrop's Hill. From this pleasant height, 
 he could see his old meeting-house closed, at the foot 
 of the hill the new Methodist meeting house, and to 
 the west the new building of the Universalists. A 
 bitter cup for the valiant old minister who remembered, 
 having done all, to stand. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 123 
 
 When at last he went away from town and when 
 the heat of the conflict had cooled, the faithful of the 
 old order were again gathered, a new meeting-house 
 was framed from the Old White Oak and set in a new 
 place, and another parish organized. This was in 1843, 
 and the house they built is the present structure near 
 Town Hall. 
 
 Reverend Osborn Myrick 
 
 Here they prospered under the care of Reverend 
 Osborn Myrick, whose kind heart and gracious man- 
 ners endeared him to the whole town. Mr. Myrick 
 left in Truro, where he first preached, a living and 
 permanent memorial to his fine nature and public 
 spirit. His early home was in Vermont, barren Cape 
 Cod depressed him, he longed for green trees growing. 
 He therefore ran furrows up and down the Truro hills 
 and scattered therein seeds of pine. His trees have 
 never grown to be like the stately pines of Vermont 
 and they never will, but the brave stunted branches 
 under which the mayflowers bloom bear the fragrant 
 name of Myrick's Pines. 
 
 The Methodists 
 
 Methodism from its beginning has been strong on 
 Cape Cod, and from the time when the first Methodist 
 meeting was held in the fore-room of Thomas Ryder's 
 house, it has been strong in Provlncetown. It began 
 in the days when the distinction between Christian 
 living and orthodox opinion, long obscured, was being 
 
124 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 asserted, and its rallying cry was "Salvation is free." 
 It encountered furious opposition. The town voted in 
 town meeting that no Methodist meeting-house should 
 be built. When, notwithstanding this vote, the Meth- 
 odists sent to Maine and bought lumber for a meeting- 
 house, a mob gathered on the beach where the lumber 
 lay, cut it into small pieces and carried it to the top of 
 High Pole Hill where they set fire to it. They crowned 
 the bonfire with an effigy of Jesse Lee, a Methodist 
 minister. That was but a slight thing to the ardor of 
 new converts. They got another vessel-load of lumber 
 from Maine and built the meeting-house. While the 
 building was in process of construction, Samuel Atwood 
 and others kept guard, but they were unmolested. 
 The house was, after the fashion of the early Method- 
 ists, small and bare of paint or plaster. About this 
 time, John Kenny and twenty-eight others of the most 
 respected citizens presented a statement in town 
 meeting that they were attendants at and supporters 
 of the Methodist meeting. There was no further 
 opposition to the Methodists. They soon built a 
 church, large and handsome, with a spire and a bell. 
 Now children smile at what was to the fathers so 
 serious. 
 
 According to the early Methodist policy of chang- 
 ing ministers every two years, a long succession of 
 names is recorded and the men who bore them are 
 forgotten. One name, however, that of Epaphras 
 Kibby, a favorite minister, has been perpetuated in 
 the Cook family. 
 
 The work of Reverend Edgar F. Clark is distinct- 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 125 
 
 ive and important. At the time when the Bible and 
 science were supposed by some to be contradictory, 
 Mr. Clark gave a series of Sunday evening lectures on 
 Genesis, illustrated by charts on Geology and other 
 natural sciences, to the edification of the faith of the 
 community. 
 
 When Mr. Clark was questioned on the perennial 
 issue of Sunday whaling, "If you had been out six 
 months and had not seen a whale, and then on Sunday 
 you sighted one, what would you do.^" Mr. Clark 
 replied, "I think I should call all hands together and 
 ask the Lord to bless us, and then I would go and get 
 the whale." 
 
 Obadiah Snow 
 
 Methodists are always a singing people. The 
 singing of the Methodists of Provincetown has long 
 been so excellent that it should be spoken of. For 
 sixty years, Obadiah Snow was a chorister of remark- 
 able ability. With a sweet and true tenor voice, 
 assisted by a leader on each part, and by his son Olin 
 at the piano, when he lifted the baton and said "Now 
 Olin," he made the vestry rock with singing. 
 
126 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 The Centenary Church 
 During a revival, led by a Mr. Dunbar, came a 
 split in the Methodist church. Mr. Dunbar was a 
 mystic and a man without the saving knowledge of 
 when to speak. What a pity that some one had not 
 sent him a note asking him to preach on Psalms CVI, 
 32-33. Meditation on what happened to Moses might 
 have restrained even Mr. Dunbar. 
 
 Anyway, ninety persons at the west end of the 
 town seceded, bought the building vacated by the 
 Universalists, named it Wesley Chapel and formed a 
 new organization. In the fat years after the Civil 
 War, they built a very large and handsome church. 
 They were determined to have, and they did have, a 
 steeple one foot higher than that of the mother church. 
 Their ambition was their undoing, for this lofty point, 
 above the stream of the fire engines, was one night 
 struck by lightning. It burned so slowly and so 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 127 
 
 fitfully that many watching it thought it might be a 
 corposant which plays harmlessly about the masts of 
 vessels. There was no sign of fire within the building, 
 and none without, except that lofty point, when 
 suddenly the whole structure burst into flame. Blaz- 
 ing to the sky, the beautiful church and the splendid 
 organ was in an hour a heap of ashes and charred 
 timbers. This disaster happened in the lean years 
 when fishing was dead and when young men were 
 leaving town for Boston and the West. Many friends 
 of Centenary, together with the presiding elder and the 
 bishop felt that to rebuild was folly. However, there 
 was the land, the insurance, and the parsonage. Those 
 who had given the money represented by these re- 
 sources had given it for Centenary Church, and some 
 felt that no disposition, except for Centenary's use was 
 permissible. With many problems to solve and with 
 some opposition. Miss Phoebe E. Freeman held to- 
 gether the Sunday School, and. with Mrs. Lizzie 
 Foster and other friends, canvassed the community 
 for gifts. Thus was built by the devotion of a few, 
 when it would have been easy to sit still, the convenient 
 and beautiful chapel which stands to bless the whole 
 west end of the town. 
 
 Reverend George H. Bates 
 
 Reverend George H. Bates, a relative of the 
 Governor of Massachusetts, did a good piece of 
 constructive work while he was pastor of Centenary 
 Church. Mr. Bates was a quiet gentleman who 
 patiently taught the excitable members of his flock 
 
128 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 that hysteria and religion are not necessarily connected, 
 and sometimes are far apart. Since his day, and partly 
 because of his influence, there have been no more 
 "high meetings." Methodism has no place for a 
 parish, but Provincetown Methodist Churches retain 
 the old parish organization in addition to that outlined 
 by the discipline. Young ministers to whorn a 
 parish seems incongruous or unnecessary have tried 
 in vain to ignore it — even to combat it. The 
 minister is not supposed to attend the parish meeting. 
 When one earnest and persistent brother appeared at 
 the annual parish meeting, though the ways of parishes 
 had been explained to him, Mr. Benjamin Dyer arose 
 and spoke. "Mr. Moderator, I move that this meet- 
 ing be adjourned to such time as it can be held without 
 the presence of the minister." The vote was unani- 
 mous in favor of the motion, the minister departed, 
 and the parish held its annual meeting according to 
 custom. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 X 
 
 129 
 
 THE UNIVERSALISTS. 
 
 Church of the Redeemer, Universalist 
 
 Following the picturesque custom of the Pilgrims 
 whose children bore such names as Oceanus Hopkins, 
 Peregrine White, Wrestling Brewster, and Hate-evil 
 Hall, the Universalist church might well be called 
 
130 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Seaborn, Not only the local church but also the 
 message of John Murray, the first great apostle of 
 Universalism in America, was seaborn. John Murray 
 was a friend of John Wesley in England and an itiner- 
 ant preacher with him. Wesley denied the Calvinists 
 who affirm that the elect alone are saved. Wesley 
 preached always one sermon. With many texts and 
 with varying phrase, his message was, "Christ died for 
 all and salvation is free." John Murray outran his 
 friend. Starting with Wesley's premise, "Christ died 
 for all", Murray preached, "If Christ died for all, 
 then are all men saved." John Wesley managed to 
 hold his place in the established church, though with 
 many discomforts, but John Murray was utterly cast 
 out. Bereaved of his wife and child, imprisoned, in 
 debt, he set sail for America to hide himself in the 
 wilderness and never preach again. When the vessel 
 was fog-bound off Barnegat, John Murray went ashore 
 at Good Luck, N. J. for fish and milk. There he met 
 a man who said to him, "You are the preacher for 
 whom I built my meeting-house." When John Murray 
 said that he was supercargo of the brig Hand-in-Hand 
 and not a preacher, Thomas Potter replied, "You can 
 not say that you have never preached, and preached 
 the doctrine, *If Christ died for all, then are all men 
 saved.' " Pressed till he was ashamed, John Murray 
 promised that he would preach in Potter's meeting- 
 house, if the fog did not lift before Sunday. "The 
 fog will never lift," said Thomas Potter, "till you have 
 preached in my meeting-house." It did not lift, and 
 John Murray preached on Sunday. Potter, who could 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 131 
 
 neither read nor write, had thought his way out of the 
 darkness of the old theology into the light of, "God is 
 love and all men are His children." Persuaded of his 
 truth, he had built a meeting-house and was waiting 
 for a minister to proclaim it. He said that when he 
 saw the brig in the offing, and when he met John 
 Murray on the shore, he was sure that his preacher had 
 come. A romantic career followed this beginning at 
 Good Luck, and at length, John Murray, his adven- 
 tures, and his doctrines, were published in a book. 
 Cast into the water by an unknown hand, the book 
 floated in the tide to Long Point, even to the feet of 
 Sylvia and Elizabeth Freeman, daughters of Prince 
 Freeman. The name Prince Freeman is found often 
 on the Cape. It is a heritage from Mercy Prince, 
 daughter of Governor Prince and descendant of Elder 
 Brewster. Freemans, wherever found, love to read. 
 Little enough Sylvia and Elizabeth had to read, when 
 the mail was brought once a week by a man on horse- 
 back. But they had a schoolhouse and a good school 
 and they loved to read. It was the daily task of 
 Sylvia and Elizabeth to gather driftwood. You would 
 never believe how many things and what strange 
 things drift in from sea and wash up with the tide. We 
 who live on the shore are always watching for what 
 may come in on the flood. Sylvia and Elizabeth saw 
 in the water, just beyond their reach, a book. Eliza- 
 beth waded off and with a barrel hoop hooked the book 
 ashore. It was the life of John Murray, leather-bound 
 and water-soaked, but legible. The girls did not tell 
 of their prize, but they dried the book, read it, believed 
 
132 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 its teachings and became the first Unlversalists in the 
 community. The secret could not long be kept. They 
 showed the book to their father and mother, to cousins 
 and neighbors on the Point and to friends on T'other 
 Side. Out of the discussion and agitation which 
 followed, grew the Christian Union Society. The 
 record book of this society, evidently not the earliest 
 book, begins with the entry of a meeting in 1829 at 
 Enos Nickerson's schoolhouse when they voted to 
 build a meeting-house. This they did, setting the 
 building on the eastern corner of Central and Commer- 
 cial Streets. In process of time this building was sold 
 to the up-along Methodists who refurnished it and 
 named it Wesley Chapel. Then the Universalists 
 built their present church. They spared no expense in 
 their endeavor for the finest meeting-house south of 
 Boston, and they succeeded in building a handsome 
 colonial church, with a spire famous for its beauty. 
 
 Again across the sea came the man who decorated 
 the interior. He was the father of the Reverend 
 Charles W. Wendte, D.D., a German who had studied 
 art in Italy. He came to America to introduce the 
 frescoing of buildings, when most New England 
 meeting-houses were bare. Unfaded in the passing 
 years, the walls of this church repeat the designs the 
 young man studied in Siena, Italy; and the ceiling 
 reflects that of the Temple of Neptune in the Acropolis. 
 The organ was bought by the subscriptions of the 
 young men of the town, a long and valiant list. Sabin 
 Smith was chorister and played the bass viol, Elijah 
 Smith played the violin and William W. Smith played 
 the cello. Isaiah Gifford and Captain Russell Elliot 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 133 
 
 played clarinets. These, with the organ and the choir 
 of men-singers and women-singers made music to vie 
 with the Methodists. 
 
 The daughters of Sylvia Freeman came every 
 Sunday from the Point in the five-handed boat for the 
 meeting in the new meeting-house. When the minister 
 gave out the hymn, and the people in the pews turned 
 round and faced the choir, and saw thirty-six 
 young ladies, each with a beautiful bonnet tied under 
 her chin by a broad and fluttering ribbon, and when the 
 little girls heard that music, delight for them could 
 go no farther. On Sunday afternoon, the two little 
 girls played meeting. There were two essentials for 
 the play. One was the broad ribbon bonnet strings, 
 and the other was a mysterious word which the angelic 
 singers seemed to utter. "Ssspersse, oh sssperssse," 
 they seemed to sing. And now in Sylvia's family if 
 anyone behaves in a very elegant and genteel manner, 
 we say of her, "She is ssspersssing." 
 
 The minister who did distinctive work for this 
 church was Reverend John Bovie Dods, one of the 
 earliest. He was an eloquent preacher and a scholar. 
 He was a teacher and proprietor of an academy. He 
 was also what would be called now a mental healer 
 and he conducted a successful clinic. He was the 
 minister who declined an increase in salary — an increase 
 that would have brought his pay up to six hundred 
 dollars — saying that he had no use for so much money 
 although at that time he had a wife and five children. 
 
 The story of the Catholic Church runs with that 
 of the Portuguese people. The movement by the 
 Episcopalians is supported largely by summer residents. 
 
Benevolences 
 
 The Well-wishing for the Town ' 
 
 THE largest fund is that of the Helping Hand, 
 a gift of 350,000 for the worthy poor by Mr. 
 Edwin A. Grozier. The income is administered 
 by six trustees. One of the conditions is that the 
 names of the beneficiaries shall not be made public. 
 
 Rev. William Henry Ryder, D.D., gave a fund of 
 35,000, the income to be used for the poor of the town 
 without regard to nationality or sect. This charity 
 also is enjoined to make no public report. It is en- 
 trusted to three members of the Universalist Parish. 
 
 Dr. Ryder gave the site of the Town Hall. It 
 was the old Godfrey Ryder homestead. Mr. Joseph 
 P. Johnson gave the clock, and Mr. John F. Nickerson 
 gave the bell. 
 
 The Public Library, both land and building, was 
 presented to the town by Mr. Nathan Freeman. 31,000 
 for books was subscribed by friends of the town to 
 meet the provisional vote of the town of 32,000, for 
 books, when the library was first opened. The Sons 
 of Temperance had before that time put at interest 
 3300 toward books for a library. Mr. Augustus 
 Mitchell selected and catalogued the first purchase of 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 135 
 
 books. Mr. Benjamin Small made a gift of 35,000 to 
 the library, the income for books. 
 
 There is the Cemetery Fund, for the care of indi- 
 vidual lots, one hundred and thirty-two gifts, amount- 
 ing to about 335,000. 
 
 325,000 were collected by the Boston Post for those 
 made widows and orphans by the loss of three fishing 
 schooners in 1917. 
 
 The Seamen's Aid Society Fund of 32,000, for 
 shipwrecked sailors, is now absorbed in the Helping 
 Hand. 
 
 We have benefitted by the Shaw Fund for Marin- 
 ers' Children, a gift from Robert Gould Shaw for 
 Massachusetts, in which needy children of Province- 
 town have had a share. 
 
 The Centenary Church has had a gift of 31,000 
 from Rev. Samuel McBurney, a former pastor, of 3500 
 from Miss Rebecca L. Nickerson, and of 3500 from 
 Mrs. Nancy Hanley. 
 
 The Congregationalist Church, the Church of the 
 Pilgrims, has been given legacies of 31,000 by Mr. 
 Stephen T. Nickerson, of 31,000 by Miss Eunice and 
 Miss Miranda Nickerson, of 31,200 by Mr. Lauren 
 Young, of 31,000 by Miss Delia Mills, of 3500 by Mrs. 
 Esther W. Hutchins, of 3500 by Mrs. Susan A. Mann, 
 of 3300 by Mrs. Joanna C. Myrick. Mrs. Mann and Mrs. 
 Hutchins were daughters of Dr. Jeremiah Stone, for 
 many years the physician of the town. Roughest 
 with shams, tenderest with suffering, he knew us all. 
 
 The Universalist Church has been remembered in 
 wills by a legacy of 3100 for the Sunday School from 
 
136 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Mrs. Rebecca Noyes, of 3300 for care of the church 
 building from Mr. Atkins Nickerson, of 31,000 from 
 Mrs. Ann Simmons Freeman, of 3100 from Mr. Walter 
 I. Nickerson, of 3300 from Mr. Jabez Atwood. A 
 memorial fund has been recently established, with a 
 tablet in the church bearing the names of those in 
 whose memory the money is given. Gifts of 350 are 
 received. Half the income of the fund is at the dis- 
 posal of the trustees of the parish, and half is annually 
 added to the principal. 
 
The Schoola 
 
 '^The Providence of God hath made Cape Cod convenient to us for 
 fishing with seines — All such profit as may and shall accrue annually 
 to the Colony from fishing with nets or seines, for mackerel, bass or 
 herring, to he improved for and toward a free school, in some town of 
 this jurisdiction for the training up of youth in literature, for the good 
 and benefit of posterity — They shall be duly taught to read the Scriptures, 
 a knowledge of the Capital Laws, and the main principles of Religion 
 necessary to Salvation^ 
 
 From the records of the General Court, 1671, 
 
 THUS, fifty years after our harbor floated the 
 Compact of Government, our fish furnished 
 money for the beginnings of the free public 
 school system of America. This free school was not 
 then established on Cape Cod, but in some town 
 nearer Plymouth, probably in several towns. No 
 sooner were we a real town, however, than the town 
 record sets forth, "An account with Mr. Samuel 
 Winter for keeping school one half year, £22, 10." 
 And then, thus early, the fathers established the 
 precedent of being generous with the schools, for the 
 
138 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 next half year Mr. Winter's salary was £22, 15. Where 
 did Mr. Winter keep the school.^ In the meeting- 
 house, perhaps, for school in the meeting-house was 
 not uncommon in those days, and often since, in case 
 of need, we have used the meeting-house for a school. 
 These early schoolmasters often boarded around, and 
 the school followed them. Perhaps the school was 
 kept part of the year in one section, and part in another, 
 'a moving school.' 
 
 Schoolhouses 
 A separate and fixed abode was not long delayed, 
 for in 1795, the Masons' House was built for King 
 Hiram's Lodge, the upper story a handsome hall, and 
 the lower story divided into two schoolrooms. This 
 building, now a dwelling, stands at 119 Bradford Street. 
 It seems evident that in those years there were three 
 little schoolhouses in the town. In 1828, the town 
 did itself proud by creating six school districts, and 
 erecting six district schoolhouses. Each district elected 
 its own supervisor. One of these district schools was 
 near West Vine Street, the Enos Nickerson schoolhouse 
 was near Atlantic Avenue; one is still standing not 
 far from the present Eastern schoolhouse. These 
 ungraded district schools served until 18-14, when the 
 town built the Western, the Center, the Eastern school- 
 houses, each for three grades, the Primary, the Inter- 
 mediate, the Grammar. Five years after, the High 
 School was established. These schools were furnished 
 with blackboards, maps, globes, and all the latest 
 appliances for education in that day, and were con- 
 sidered models. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 139 
 
 The Books 
 
 What did they study in those early years? 
 The Catechism and the Ten Commandments. 
 The New England Primer, from 
 "In Adam's fall 
 We sinned all." 
 down to 
 
 "Zacheus he 
 Did climb a tree 
 His Lord to see." 
 
 The American First Class Book, with selections 
 from the classics. 
 
 The Young Reader, with — 
 
 "Devotion is a tender plant," and, 
 "The storm is o'er, how dense and bright 
 Yon pearly clouds embowered lie, 
 Cloud upon cloud, a goodly sight, 
 Contrasted with the dark blue sky." 
 
 At a reception given Mrs. Ruth Holsbury of 
 Truro, on her one hundredth birthday, in 1915, Mrs. 
 Holsbury was able to repeat the entire Gospel of 
 Matthew, learned in school when she was a little girl. 
 What a background for the vicissitudes of ninety years! 
 
 Winter Boys' School 
 
 It was found that graded schools shut out sixty 
 or seventy young men, home from sea in the winter, 
 who wanted more education, but who refused to "sit 
 
140 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 on the bench with the little boys, with legs sticking 
 out across the aisle, and study Grammar. Rather go 
 whaling." Out of the need thus expressed grew the 
 Winter Boys' School, often taught by a Dartmouth 
 College student. If he made a success of his school, 
 he must be a young giant, not afraid to use his fists, 
 and able to teach Navigation. 
 
 Mr. Nathaniel Dill of Wellfleet was Winter Boys' 
 teacher, for many terms. 
 
 The High School 
 
 When the state law requiring towns to support 
 a High School was passed, Provincetown promptly 
 voted to establish a High School according to law, in 
 town meeting March 22, 1849, and as promptly opened 
 the school April 26, in the vestry of the old Methodist 
 church under the Hill, for which they paid seventy-five 
 cents a week rent, with Freeman Nickerson principal 
 at a salary of four hundred dollars, and Miss C. A. 
 Rogers, assistant. The records do not tell what 
 salary Miss Rogers received. The school committee 
 at that time were Godfrey Ryder, Esq., Dr. S. A. 
 Paine and Rev. Osborn Myrick. With the building 
 of the Town Hall and the High School on the Hill, in 
 1854, we had a High School indeed. 
 
 Private Schools 
 
 While the town was thus developing its public 
 school system, private schools were not lacking. 
 There were singing-schools, one kept by Mr. B. O. Gross 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 141 
 
 (named for the minister, Bartholomew Otheman) 
 one kept by Mr. Caleb Cook (one of the many singers 
 in the Cook family). There were dancing-schools 
 (Mr. Caleb Dyer Smith was one of the dancing-masters) 
 and writing-schools (Mrs. Anna J. Hutchinson taught 
 the latest one), and without fail every winter, classes 
 in Navigation, where Gershom Cutter was the teacher. 
 Gershom was once a juryman, when the judge remarked : 
 
 "A sharp name you have, Mr. Cutter." 
 
 "Yes," said Cutter, "and my other name is 
 Gashem," following the local pronunciation, a use of 
 vowels like that of the people of Devonshire, whence 
 most of us came. 
 
 Another illustration is a man who could not speak 
 for stuttering, but who could sing, and who did sing 
 to the captain: 
 
 "Overboard is Barnabus 
 Half a mile astarn of us." 
 
 Both the Methodists and the Universalists main- 
 tained schools for young ladies and young gentlemen; 
 the doctor and the minister were always tutoring 
 ambitious boys looking toward the professions; and 
 there were private schools for children. For years 
 Aunt Sally Conant kept a school in her house. She 
 was a sister to Gamaliel Collins, a minister, and of a 
 cultured family. We now acquire, at large expense, 
 under the name of kindergarten, the methods used by 
 this lady who was apt to teach. Elderly people 
 remember with pleasure the crib where the little tots 
 were put to sleep, the hand-work, the cookies passed 
 around by the good child, the games at the open door. 
 
142 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 The Seminary 
 
 In the days when academies and seminaries 
 flourished everywhere, Provincetown's seminary was 
 not behind the best. If any desires to read a list of 
 pure English names, let him read the roster of Zoeth 
 Smith's Seminary in 1845-6, on p. 224 
 
 From the First Annual Catalogue. 
 Tuition per Quarter. 
 
 For Common English Branches $3.00 
 
 For Algebra, Geometry and Naviga- 
 tion, each 1.00 
 
 For Mental and Moral Sciences 75 
 
 For Astronomy, Chemistry, and Natur- 
 al Philosophy 1.00 
 
 For Latin and Greek 1.25 
 
 For French and Italian 1.50 
 
 For Bookkeeping, single and double 
 
 entry 1.00 
 
 For Physiology 67 
 
 For Ornamental Branches 2.00 
 
 For Music with use of piano 8.00 
 
 Board — 
 
 The price of board varies from 
 32.00 to $2.50 per week, including 
 fuel, lights, room and washing. 
 Board may be obtained for $1.00 
 per week, exclusive of fuel, etc. 
 Address "Seminary" post paid. 
 This Seminary was in the old Masons' House. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 143 
 
 Teachers 
 
 Buildings and curriculum do not make a school, 
 but "President Mark Hopkins on one end of log, and 
 a boy on the other." Many excellent teachers have 
 served the schools, and many boys and girls on the 
 other end of the log have responded to their inspiration. 
 In 1825, Mr. Joshua Atwood of Boston was the teacher. 
 It was his son Samuel who was town clerk for many 
 years, and who always signed his records, "per me 
 Sam'l Atwood." Samuel's grandson, Nathaniel, in 
 his turn, kept the school on the Point. It was he who 
 gave distinguished service to Prof. Agassiz, and who 
 delivered a course of lectures on fish, at the Lowell 
 Institute, Boston. 
 
 There are now about a thousand children in the 
 public schools, and the town gladly pays near forty 
 thousand dollars a year to support them. 
 
 Educators might fare far and fare worse for the 
 essentials of an education than the requirements of 
 our old schools, — the Bible, Navigation, and Music. 
 
y 
 
 G 
 
 
 The Art Colony 
 
 How did the largest art colony in the United States 
 grow up in Provincetown ? Mr. Marcus Waterman came 
 long ago to make studies of the sand for a picture 
 of Sahara Desert. We could supply the sand, but the 
 lion of Sahara's wastes, he found elsewhere. A por- 
 trait of Mr. Waterman hangs in the Beachcombers' 
 Club-room. Mr. Halsall, a sailor in his youth, came 
 for the marine views. Mr. Brown's father was a 
 Provincetown man. Mr. Webster married a Prov- 
 incetown girl. Mr. Hawthorn had the first art school. 
 These confirmed the word of occasional painters who 
 told us that the light here is wonderful, and the sunsets 
 rival Italy. 
 
 Behold how great a matter a little fire of enthu- 
 siasm kindleth! In 1914 Mrs. John Herring gave an 
 address before the Nautilus Club, and suggested the 
 organization of an Art Circle. This little group of 
 young women made a beginning, and now, I suppose, 
 it would be hard to find a handsomer, better-lighted, 
 and more appropriate little art museum than ours. 
 The by-laws of the Art Association tell us that its 
 object is to promote and cultivate the fine arts — to 
 establish and maintain a permanent collection — to 
 hold exhibitions — to promote the advancement of art 
 
146 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 by social intercourse between artists and others inter- 
 ested in art. Lectures on art are already ours, and a 
 library on art is not far ahead. This prosperous 
 colony of artists has grown up among us because, as 
 they themselves say, everywhere they look they see 
 a picture, and because the town's people are hospitable 
 to them. The artists are hospitable to each other. 
 The conservatives, the ultra-modern, the abstraction- 
 ists, every school is welcome, and examples of their 
 work are on exhibition. In this democratic atmosphere, 
 and in a town now cosmopolitan, but with roots deep 
 in a Puritan past, here where the sea and the land meet, 
 is being wrought, perhaps, a truly American art. 
 
 Literary people, some of them writers of first 
 rank, have also come to bide with us. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 147 
 
 THE PEACE OF OLD CAPE COD. 
 
 Anonymous 
 
 Nobody ever tried to put it into words, 
 The birds, the trees, the ponds, 
 The sudden stretches of the sea. 
 The fields wind-swept and free, 
 The hills where quiet feet have trod. 
 The Heavenly Peace of Old Cape Cod. 
 
 Nobody ever tried to make a poem of it. 
 Or painted pictures doing justice to it, 
 And yet the lives that harassed, torn 
 And bleeding, becoming less forlorn. 
 Grew healed where lies the living sod. 
 The matchless Peace of Old Cape Cod. 
 
 Heartsick of city's clamorous strife, 
 And yearning for a wiser life. 
 Found here their hopes fulfilled. 
 The goldenrod and aster grew. 
 Above the sorrows once they knew. 
 Made o'er again they learned of God 
 And walked with Him on old Cape Cod. 
 
The Monument and the Hill 
 
 THE hill on which the monument stands is the 
 center of three heights, at whose foot the town 
 lies. This one is High Pole Hill. A mill is said 
 to have stood on the hill in early days. A description 
 of the town in 1802, speaks of two mills in the town, 
 "One of which goes with fliers on the inside and appears 
 like a large and lofty tower. As it stands on a high 
 hill, it can be seen at great distance, and to seamen 
 entering the harbor it is a conspicuous object." This 
 mill was probably where the monument is now. Though 
 the mill was demolished and forgotten, the desire for 
 a tower remained. In 1854, a Town House with a 
 high tower was erected on the hill. 
 
 The land for the Town House was bought from 
 Godfrey Ryder, Jonathan Cook, Asa Bowley, Phillip 
 Cook, Seth Nickerson, 2nd, Joseph Atkins and Samuel 
 Chapman, for three hundred and fifty dollars. The hill 
 was lowered some feet, and a building to be proud of 
 arose. 
 
 Three things the town demanded in the new 
 Town House, a hall for town meetings, rooms for a 
 High School, and a tower that could be seen half way 
 to Boston Light. Because the top of the hill is wind- 
 swept and bleak, the town offices remained in their 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 149 
 
 old quarters on the front street; and because Ocean 
 Hall, now the New Central House, was convenient for 
 parties and dances it continued to be the social center; 
 therefore, the Town House was used only for town 
 meeting once or twice a year, and for the High School. 
 Winter gales straight from the Arctic sometimes swept 
 the girls off their feet, but these things were naught 
 compared with the tower. When the building burned 
 in 1877, the greatest lament was for the beacon which 
 could be seen "clear out in the Bay." 
 
 With the building went the marble tablet over 
 
 the entrance, placed there by the Cape Cod Association. 
 
 "We can get another of them things," they said. 
 
 "But oh, the tower!" The inscription on the 
 
 tablet read: 
 
 In Commemoration of the Arrival of the 
 Mayflower in Cape Cod Harbor and of 
 THE First Landing of the Pilgrims in 
 America at This Place, Nov. 11, 1620 O. S. 
 This Tablet is Presented by the Cape Cod 
 Association, Nov. 8, 1853. 
 
 An inscription on a tablet near the present Town 
 Hall, in place of the one burned, is as follows: 
 
 This Memorial Stone is Erected by the 
 Commonwealth of Massachusetts to Com- 
 memorate the Compact of Constitution 
 of Government, Signed by the Pilgrims 
 ON Board the Mayflower, Nov. 20th Old 
 Style. 
 
 On the reverse is the text of the compact with 
 the names of the signers. 
 
150 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 The following facts about the Monument are 
 from the oiBcial statement issued by the Memorial 
 Association: 
 
 "The Monument was erected by the Cape Cod 
 Pilgrim Memorial Association, members o^ which are 
 to be found in every state in the Union and in all our 
 insular possessions. 
 
 The cost of the Monument was about ninety-five 
 thousand dollars, exclusive of the site, which was 
 given by the town of Provincetown. Of this sum 
 forty thousand dollars was contributed by Congress, 
 from the National treasury; twenty-five thousand by 
 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; five thousand 
 by the town of Provincetown, and the remainder by 
 individuals in all parts of the country, in sums varying 
 from one dollar to one thousand dollars. The whole 
 number of contributors was between three and four 
 thousand. The structure is the property of the Cape 
 Cod Pilgrim Memorial Association, not of the General 
 Government, nor of the Commonwealth. 
 
 The corner stone of the Monument was laid 
 August 20, 1907, by the Grand Lodge of Masons in 
 Massachusetts, in the presence of Theodore Roosevelt, 
 President of the United States, who made an address. 
 
 The Monument was dedicated August 5, 1910, the 
 dedicatory address being given by Dr. Charles W. 
 Eliot, President-Emeritus of Harvard University. 
 William H. Taft, President of the United States, was 
 present and made an address. 
 
 The design of the Monument, after much deliber- 
 ation, was copied from the tower of Terre del Mangia 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 151 
 
 in Siena, Italy. It is of the Italian Renaissance 
 order of architecture. There are several other similar 
 towers in different parts of Italy, notably one in 
 Florence, which forms the Campanile of Palazzo 
 Vecchio. There was no special reason for choosing 
 this design save that of Its extraordinary beauty and 
 dignity. 
 
 The Monument is 252 feet, seven and one-half 
 inches in total height, from the ground to the top of 
 the utmost battlement. This is about thirty feet 
 higher than Bunker Hill Monument. The site on 
 which it stands, on Town Hill, is about one hundred 
 feet above tide water, making a total height above sea 
 level of upwards of 352 feet. Its foundation is sixty 
 feet square at its base and is composed of concrete, 
 reinforced with steel bars, placed in layers five inches 
 apart. The Monument is built wholly of Maine gran- 
 ite, and is twenty-eight feet square at the base. Every 
 stone of the structure is of the entire thickness of the 
 wall. The arches of the bell-chamber are thirty feet 
 in height. The masonry is of the most substantial 
 character. Modern skill can not erect a better building. 
 
 The ascent of the Monument is extremely easy, 
 an inclined plane, after the manner of that of the 
 famous Campanile in Venice, taking the place of the 
 usual flight of stairs. It is said that Napoleon Bona- 
 parte rode up the original Campanile San Marco on 
 horseback." 
 
 The design of the Monument was selected by a 
 non-resident committee, who chose what they chose 
 for its dignity and beauty, but seem not to have con- 
 
152 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 sidered its site, and the event it marks. The Pilgrim 
 Fathers would doubtless have called it papish and not 
 to be put up with, but we know that the Pilgrims 
 objected to much about which they had better have 
 remained silent. 
 
 More than twenty thousand visitors register, pay 
 the entrance fee, and climb to the top of the monument 
 every summer. 
 
 The analysis of Pilgrim character in Dr. Eliot's 
 address at the dedication of the Monument is especially 
 fine. 
 
 The inscription on the Monument, also by Dr. 
 Eliot, is as follows. "On Nov. 21st 1620, the May- 
 flower, carrying one hundred and two passengers, 
 men, women and children, cast anchor in this harbor, 
 sixty-seven days from Plymouth, England. The same 
 day, the forty-one adult males in the company solemnly 
 covenanted and combined together in a civil body 
 politic. This body politic established and maintained 
 on the bleak and barren edge of a vast wilderness, a 
 state without a king or a noble, a church without a 
 bishop or a priest, a democratic commonwealth, the 
 members of which were 'straightly tied to all care of 
 each other's good and of the whole by every one.' 
 With long-suffering devotion and sober resolution, they 
 illustrated for the first time in history, the principles 
 of civil and religious liberty and the practice of a 
 genuine democracy. Therefore the remembrance of 
 them shall be perpetuated in the vast republic that has 
 inherited their ideals." 
 
A Hint at the Natural History 
 of Provincetown 
 
 Contributed by Mr. J. Henry Blake. 
 
 THE beauties of Provincetown have been pro- 
 claimed and pictured on canvas by the students 
 of art and truthfully have shown to the world 
 the enticing attractions in that line. The clear atmos- 
 phere, the open sky effects, the brilliant ripples to the 
 high surf of old ocean, all have been studied by the 
 lover of art, but they are like the old sailor who said: 
 "I have been all around the world with Captain Cook, 
 and all I saw was the sky above and the water below." 
 
 A noted art critique once said: "Nature is God's 
 art, art man's." So in these few lines I wish to try to 
 show some of the interesting and wonderful works in 
 God's art, and such as can be easily seen and studied 
 by those who have the pleasure of visiting Province- 
 town, the first landing place of the Pilgrims. 
 
 The whole geographical position of the Cape is 
 such that it catches the animals of the north and those 
 of the south, and the hand with the index finger bent 
 inward holds varied faunse. The Gulf Stream brings 
 animals from the south, while the cold current from the 
 north, which bathes the Maine coast to Massachusetts 
 
154 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Bay, brings animals from that region. The Sperm 
 Whale {Physeter macrocephalus), and the Pygmy Sperm 
 {Kogia breviceps), the only two kinds of Sperm Whales 
 known, and the Bottle-nose Whale [Hyperoodon am- 
 pullatum), all of them tropical whales, have been 
 captured in Massachusetts Bay, and with the Right 
 Whale {Balaena glacialis), a representative of the North 
 Atlantic. Because of these favorable agencies Prov- 
 incetown's fauna is varied, and most interesting. 
 Shells have been found alive in Provincetown, the 
 true habitat of which is Florida and the West Indies. 
 
 The flora of Provincetown deserves consideration 
 because of the wholly sea formation of its soil. In 
 its woods and on the margins of its ponds are found 
 500 or more different plants, some of them having 
 beautiful flowers and fragrant perfume. But there is 
 no plant so useful to Provincetown as the Beach-grass 
 {Ammophila arenaria, which means "a lover of the 
 sand"), as is manifested by a trip to the sand dunes 
 where this grass is about the only plant to grow, and 
 is thus valuable in holding the otherwise drifting sands. 
 It is a native of this country, and is found along the 
 coast from New Brunswick to North Carolina, and also 
 in the saline regions of the Great Lakes in the interior. 
 Only one of the plants of Provincetown lives wholly 
 in salt water, and that is the Eelgrass {Zostera marina^ 
 Fig. 1), from the Greek meaning sea-ribbon, or belt, 
 from its resemblance to the same. This Eelgrass has 
 monoecious flowers arranged alternately in two rows 
 on the spadix, and the ribbed seeds 3^ inch long, and 
 looking much like a Chinese lantern, are found plenti- 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 155 
 
 Fig I Zostera marina 
 
 fully among the cast-up seaweeds on the shore. It 
 is a beautiful sight to see the Zostera waving its slender, 
 green, ribbon-like leaves in the water, making a home 
 for Hydroids, Bryozoa, and myriads of little creatures 
 which live among its branches. 
 
 The algae, or seaweeds, of Provincetown are not 
 numerous because of lack of rocks on the shores, but 
 are very handsome, the rich brown, green and red 
 making them objects of beauty when growing in the 
 sunny pools or floating in the sea. There are about 
 50 species, some of which are found living in the waters 
 all around the earth. They are attractive objects in 
 albums, as they can be floated upon paper, pressed 
 easily, and retain their natural colors. 
 
 The fishes consist of more than 125 species, none 
 of them without interest, from the historic Cod to the 
 little Stickleback {Apeltes quadracus) which makes its 
 nest and rears its young in a homelike manner. Among 
 
156 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 the curious fish is the Pipe-fish (Fig. 2), {Syngnathus 
 fuscus), which lives among the seaweeds, and has this 
 
 ji/;/ll!!:£,(m;!.. 
 
 Fig. a Pipe Fish 
 
 peculiarity — that it is the male fish which takes care 
 of the young by carrying them in a pouch on the 
 ventral side, like the Kangaroo. The Horse-fish (Fig. 
 'i),{Hippocavipushudsonius)\ssi near relative, and with 
 the same habits, the young swimming out and into 
 this pouch at will. The Torpedo {Tetronace occi- 
 dentalis), with its electric batteries; the Swell-fish 
 {Spheroides maculatus), which has the power to inflate 
 itself as large as a football, as a means of protection; 
 and the Sunfish (Fig. 4), (Mola mola), which is curious 
 in form, and pieces of which can be used like a rubber 
 ball, is sometimes 7 feet from tip of dorsal to tip of 
 ventral fins, are all found at Provincetown. 
 
 Fig. 3 Horse Fish 
 
 Fig. 4 Sunfish 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 157 
 
 Fig. 5 — Goose-fish 
 
 The Goose-fish, (Fig. 5), so named "because it 
 does not know as much as a goose" is often found on 
 the beach. It is known in the scientific world as 
 Lophius piscatorius, and is noted for its large mouth, 
 which is one-third as large as the fish. The gill open- 
 ings are placed behind the pectoral fins, a feature 
 possessed by no other Provincetown fish. Many- 
 instances are told of their swallowing large birds which 
 were resting on the water, fish half as large as them- 
 selves, and even floating buoys. 
 
 The Flatfish are well represented, from the Halibut, 
 weighing more than 300 lbs., to the small "Window- 
 pane" Flounder. All Flatfish have their eyes on the 
 two sides, like other fish, when very young, but as they 
 grow and swim on the side, right or left, one eye is 
 forced over, so in all adults the two eyes are on one 
 side. To compare a Flounder with an ordinary fish 
 it should be placed on its edge, when all fins will be 
 in place. The skull of the Flounder is twisted to 
 accomodate the eyes. Many other fish could be 
 enumerated, such as the gamey Pollock, Horse-mack- 
 
158 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 erel, weighing 600 lbs., and others. Provincetown has 
 sport for the fisherman, food for the epicure, and 
 abundant material for the student in natural history, 
 all for the taking. 
 
 I have mentioned the Cetacea and the fishes which 
 represent the Vertebrata as those animals which have 
 "back-bones," or vertebral columns, but let me now 
 call attention to the more numerous group of Inverte- 
 brates, such as are met with during a walk along the 
 beach. It is said that "God is great in great things, 
 but he is especially great in little things," which we 
 can find illustrated in the animal life of Provincetown. 
 In almost every handful of sand taken up from the 
 beach, in places, some evidence of animal life is seen. 
 
 Fig 6 Foraminifera 
 
 The Foraminifera, Fig. 6, (microscopic, one-celled 
 animals) exist by the thousands, and probably 50 
 different species could be found. It is computed that 
 one ounce of sand from the Antilles contains 4,000,000 
 shells of Foraminifera. It is the shelly skeletons of 
 these little creatures that largely compose the lime- 
 stones and chalk of commerce, and the rock used in 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 159 
 
 building many of the beautiful houses of Paris. Some 
 of these little shells, rot one quarter as large as the 
 head of a pin, are exquisite in architectural plan, and, 
 although the animal, one of the lowest, is but a bit 
 of protoplasm, with no eyes, mouth or stomach, yet 
 it performs all these necessary functions, and moves 
 by means of pseudopodia (false feet) composed of 
 stringy threads. 
 
 But it is not necessary to consider such small 
 things, as there is an abundance of larger and more 
 observable forms along the beach. The shores are 
 divided into zones, such as Littoral, Laminarian, 
 Coralline, etc., but we will consider the Littoral zone 
 only, or that which extends from high to low water 
 
 Fig. 7— Clam (Mya arenaria) 
 A, B, Muscles which shut the valves; C, intesine; 
 D, mantle; E, anus; F, foot; G, gills; H, heart; 
 I, contains stomach, liver, etc. 
 
 mark. The common clam, (Fig. 7) Mya arenaria, is 
 the most conspicuous shell on the beach, and, although 
 many are dug, few people know that the so-called 
 
160 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 snout or siphon of the clam is its tail, that the head 
 and mouth are in the opposite end, and that the large, 
 brown mass seen on the inside is the liver, the richest 
 part of the clam, although often thrown away by- 
 cooks. This illustrates the saying that, "We often 
 know the least about those things which are the most 
 familiar to us." 
 
 Of the 300 or more different species of shells found 
 on the shores of Provincetown there is a large number 
 which resemble clams, but are not. Therefore the 
 name is very misleading. The so-called "little-neck 
 clam," is simply the young of the quahaug {Venus 
 mercenario). The quahaug is common in Province- 
 town, and it was from the blue part on the interior 
 of the shell that the Indians made their "suckanhock," 
 or black money, which was twice the value of white 
 money or "Wampum." 
 
 The common mussel {Mytilus edulis), is perhaps 
 the next most familiar shell, and is of a beautiful blue, 
 and edible, as the scientific name implies. In England 
 it is sold for food in large quantities, but is seldom 
 seen in the markets of the United States, simply 
 because it is not fashionable to eat it. Unlike the 
 clam, its habit is to live above ground, where, soon 
 after its escape from the egg, it anchors itself by a 
 strong byssus and spends its life near the spot. It has 
 no foot that can be used to crawl with, but in the lower 
 part of this corresponding organ is a long groove in 
 which this strong anchor rope is prepared and extended 
 to carry out this hair-like byssus and attach it to a 
 stone or shell. This process repeated many times 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 161 
 
 produces a hair-like bunch of threads, and if the shell 
 dies or is bitten away by some fish, this byssus is left 
 attached to the stone or shell, and is often pulled up 
 by fishermen who believe it is "growing hair." This 
 process of the shell's anchoring itself is easily seen by 
 placing a live mussle in a white dish of sea water. 
 
 Another interesting shell seen on our walk is 
 Astarte castanea, found alive in only one place in the 
 harbor, and on the Long Point shore. It is quite 
 plentiful, one inch in diameter, chestnut color as the 
 name shows, and the animal is bright orange. The 
 shells are white when bleached in the sun, and washed 
 by the sea, looking like white buttons minus the holes, 
 and like the quahaug in shape. This shell is more 
 interesting from the fact that it is a deep water shell, 
 but with characteristics of those inhabiting island 
 shores, and Provlncetown, being almost an island, this 
 shell thrives here. 
 
 Another little shell should not pass notice because 
 of its beauty and great numbers. There is no common 
 name, but the scientific name is Gemma gemma. It 
 is shaped like the quahaug, but is seldom more than 
 ^8 inch long, and this little blue shell is found along 
 the beach, and so plentiful in places that they make 
 a blue streak as they lay upon the sand. 
 
 The "Ship-worm" (Teredo navalis), is not a worm, 
 but a bivalve shell. The two valves are on the an- 
 terior end, within the wood bored by these little shells. 
 
 The few shells mentioned above are Bivalves 
 (2 valves). I will now mention the Univalves, a 
 group which contains the larger number. The two 
 
162 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 most conspicuous univalve shells on the beach are 
 "Sweetmeats" or "Conchowinkles," local names of no 
 
 Fig. 8 
 Polinices duplicata 
 
 Fig. 9 
 Polinices heros 
 
 special meaning. The two species differ in one, (Fig. 
 8), (Polinices duplicata), having a large, purplish-red 
 callosity on the under side, while the other, (Fig. 9) 
 (Polinices heros) has none. Both are blind, and burrow 
 in the sand for food, living upon dead fish or animals 
 of shells which they bore with their radulae, or lingual 
 ribbons, which are armed with hundreds of chitinous 
 teeth, and then suck out the animals. This is largely 
 responsible for the holes seen in many shells, although 
 all univalvular shells have radulae for rasping holes. 
 None of the bivalves have radulae. 
 
 The egg-cases of these shells are often seen on the 
 flats and are called "sand-collars" (Fig. 10), because of 
 their shape. These eggs are mixed with sand as they 
 are layed around the anterior part of the shell and so 
 moulded. If the shell is placed in this collar it fits 
 perfectly, and if the collar or egg-case is held to the 
 light the egg capsules containing the young are easily 
 seen. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 163 
 
 Fig. lo Sand-collar 
 
 The most plentiful univalve shell seen at Province- 
 town is the "Periwinkle" {Littorina litorea), although 
 not known here previous to 1869. It is a black shell, 
 sometimes one inch in diameter, and was introduced 
 from England, where it is used as food, to the Provinces, 
 from which it has spread its way along the coast of 
 Maine and Massachusetts, until to-day it is plentiful 
 as far as New York. 
 
 The shell which was the most attractive and 
 abundant in Provincetown until recent years, is Thais 
 lapillus, (Fig. 11). It could be seen by the thousands 
 
 Fig. 
 
 Thais lapillus and eggs 
 
 on the piles of the wharves, where it fed on barnacles, 
 but now few are left. They were one inch long, red, 
 yellow, white and brown, also banded with colors, but 
 since the introduction of the Littorina litorea and the 
 destruction of the wharves by the "Portland Gale," 
 
164 THE PROVINCETQWN BOOK 
 
 few remain. The ^eggs of this species are shaped like 
 ten-pins standing on the little ends, are quarter of an 
 inch high, and there are 50 or more in a colony. They 
 are found attached to piles or stones during the summer 
 months. 
 
 A number of shells are found in the fresh water 
 ponds, and some in the brackish estuaries, but the 
 majority are found in the Littoral and Laminarian 
 Zones, and so on, to the deeper sea. On the ocean 
 side are found shells which are not seen in the harbor, 
 the most common being Mesodesma arctatum, a clam- 
 like bivalve with a truncated anterior end. 
 
 The Cephalopods (head-foot), are the most highly 
 developed of all shell-fish, and include the Squid, which 
 are found in Provincetown, at times, in great numbers. 
 There are two kinds. One with big fins (Loligo pealii), 
 and one with small fins {Ommastrephes illecebrosa). 
 The Squid swim by ejecting a jet of water from the 
 siphon which is under the head, and can dart through 
 the water rapidly, always going tail foremost. When 
 pursuing their prey, however, they can dart head 
 foremost by reversing their siphons, and seize little 
 fish with their two long tentacles, which have suckers 
 on their tips only, then grasp it with the eight tentacles, 
 which have suckers their whole length, thence to the 
 mouth, situated between the tentacles, which is armed 
 with beaks like a bird, except that the lower beak of 
 the Squid laps over the upper, opposite to that of 
 birds. 
 
 The shell consists of a thin, transparent "pen," 
 just under the skin the whole length of the back, and 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 165 
 
 the Squid also carries a sack of ink for clouding the 
 water, similar to the smoke screens used during the 
 war, to enable them to escape from their enemies. 
 They can also change their color at will, from a deep 
 red to a pale white, which aids them in capturing 
 their prey. Both species possess these characteristics, 
 and there is no "boneless Squid." 
 
 The Radiata, Starfish, etc., are represented by 
 several interesting forms. The common Starfish is 
 recognized in diff'erent varieties. Any one arm of the 
 star is able to reproduce its kind, and the five points, 
 if separated, will grow into five individuals, all having 
 five points and an eye at the extremity of each. 
 
 The "Basket-fish" {Astrophyton agassizii), named 
 for the great naturalist. Prof. Louis Agassiz, is a common 
 form, having the points of the star divided and sub- 
 divided until it has 81,920 terminal branches. The 
 name "Basket-star" was given by John Winthrop, 
 Governor of Connecticut, who sent one to London in 
 1670. One of its modes of feeding is to raise itself 
 and rest on the tips of its many arms, like an inverted 
 basket, whence the name "Basket-fish," and little fish 
 etc., are easily caught in this trap. The "Basket-fish" 
 is caught off Race Point on the "Spider Bottom," a 
 bank named for this starfish, where it can be found in 
 great numbers. 
 
 But I think that the "Sea-urchin" is the most 
 wonderful animal of its class — Radiata. The common 
 Sea-urchin (Strongylocentrotus drobachiensis) is very 
 plentiful in some localities and is found along the coast 
 northward, Provincetown being its southern limit. It 
 
166 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 is closely relateci to the Starfish, which is easily seen 
 by bending the five arms of the Starfish upward to the 
 dorsal center, the so-called legs corresponding to those 
 of the Sea-urchin. It has no eyes, ears, feet, stomach, 
 etc., yet has the power to substitute the functions of 
 all these organs. It is covered with spines for protec- 
 tion, and these three kinds of spines are movable on 
 little knobs which arise from calcareous plates which 
 make up the test. The five ambulacra which radiate 
 from the dorsal center have holes in the two rows of 
 plates through which some 1800 long sucker-bearing 
 tubes, used for locomotion, are protruded. The mouth, 
 which is on the ventral side, is armed with five teeth, 
 and this complicated structure (called Aristotle's lan- 
 tern) requires 60 muscles to work the five jaws in 
 masticating its seaweed food. 
 
 But the most interesting feature of the Sea-urchin 
 is the fact that its body is covered with hundreds of 
 
 Fig. 1 2 Pedicellariae 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 167 
 
 pedicellariae (Fig. 12), whose purpose is to keep the 
 body and spines clean. These little organs can easily 
 be seen attached to the test at the base of the spines, 
 and consist of a pointed stalk with a three-pointed 
 pincer at the tip which can be seen picking up particles 
 of dirt and sometimes handing them along to other 
 pincers, until carried clear of the body. The mouth 
 of the Sea-urchin is in the center of the ventral side, 
 while the anus is in the center of the dorsal side. 
 
 The common Sand-dollar {Echinarachnius parmd) 
 is closely related to the Sea-urchin, and has most of 
 its characteristics, the chief difference being that it is 
 flat instead of round, and that it has short spines 
 instead of long. 
 
 There are many forms of Crustacea (from "crusta" 
 referring to the crust-like covering), or crabs, but the 
 most familiar is the Hermit-crab which carries a bor- 
 rowed shell on its back for protection. When very 
 young it swims at the surface, after which it sinks to 
 the bottom never more to rise. As it has no hard 
 covering for its body, like other crabs, it looks about 
 for a house to live in, and, finding a common shell 
 handy, it backs in, thus protecting the soft part of 
 its body which is a tempting morsel to some fish. 
 From the Hermit-crab's early days instinct leads it 
 to choose a house, and when the animal outgrows one 
 shell it moves into a larger one without consulting a 
 landlord. 
 
 The Fiddler-crab {Gelasimus pugilator or Uca 
 puligator) lives in the marshes, in holes which they dig 
 by rolling up and bringing out the sand in pellets, 
 
168 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 carrying it some distance away from their holes. Their 
 food, of algae, they carry into their holes the same 
 way. Only the male has one small, and one large 
 claw like a fiddle, hence the name, while the female 
 has two small claws. 
 
 The common "Beach-flea" (Orchestia agilis) is 
 found in holes along the beach, even above tide. 
 
 An interesting Crustacean is the common Horse- 
 shoe Crab {Limulus polyphemus), as it is the only 
 living representative of a prehistoric race, the Trilo- 
 bites, many of which are found in a fossil state. It 
 has two sets of eyes, one compound eye on each side 
 of the head, and a pair of simple eyes in the anterior 
 middle of the head, a characteristic of the Spiders, to 
 which it is more closely related than to the Crabs. 
 As its hard, chitinous shell prevents growth, it is shed 
 and a new one formed, thus allowing growth of the 
 animal to take place. Not only is the outer covering 
 shed, but all the chitinous internal structure, also. 
 The shedding takes place by the anterior edge of the 
 shell splitting, allowing the newly-formed animal to 
 work its way out of the old shell. Many of the cast-off 
 shells are seen on the beaches. The female is four 
 times larger than the male, but at a certain molting, 
 (Fig. 13), not yet discovered, the front claws of the 
 male change to a pair adapted to holding on to the 
 shell of the female, as they go in pairs in the breeding 
 season, and lay their eggs in the sand to hatch in a 
 month. When the young are hatched from the eggs, 
 they have no tail, this terminal spine developing later. 
 
 I have mentioned only a few of the many marine 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 169 
 
 Fig. 1 3— Corresponding Claws 
 of Horse-shoe Crab 
 
 animals found on the beaches of Provincetown, but 
 I trust that enough have been mentioned to create 
 some interest in the products which Nature has be- 
 stowed so abundantly. "Nature never yet betrayed 
 the heart that loved her," and to the one seeking 
 wisdom in the line of natural history there is no better 
 place than Provincetown. For the summer visitor, 
 like Whittier's "Barefoot Boy," 
 
 "Eschewing books and tasks, 
 Nature answers all he asks." 
 
The Flowers 
 
 THE number of green things growing on the hills, 
 in the swamps, around the ponds, and along the 
 shore is greater than one would expect who 
 remembers that our native soil is pure sand rolled and 
 washed and heaped up in naked bars by the sea, for 
 Cape Cod, thrust out sixty miles into the ocean, forms 
 the natural boundary between northern and southern 
 species; stray specimens, from both north and south, 
 brought here by the wind and tide, catch in and grow. 
 Some seeds and cuttings have been brought home from 
 oversea, as the giant willows along the streets all 
 sprung from a slip from St. Helena. Some seeds, 
 hidden in the ballast of vessels, have germinated and 
 grown. Some plants once cultivated near the houses 
 have now escaped and are growing wild, as the lilacs, 
 houseleeks, spearmint and the bouncing Bets, brought 
 in 1838 from Orleans. The collector working around 
 the ponds needs patience, for the ponds have no 
 connection one with another, and a single specimen 
 may be found in one locality and nowhere else. 
 
 I suppose that the seaweeds, green, red and brown, 
 some so small as to appear like scum on the water, 
 some like a young tree, are largely unexplored. Many 
 varieties grow below the low-water mark, but after 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 171 
 
 a storm the beach is covered with these, and with 
 others brought from long distances. Mr. Frank S. 
 Collins, a native of Eastham, was an authority on 
 seaweeds. He has published in the Tufts College 
 Studies an interesting account, with pictures and 
 directions for collecting, preserving and classifying the 
 seaweeds. 
 
 Out of the swamps come a multitude of insects. 
 Nearly a thousand different kinds of Provincetown 
 insects are recorded in the Boston Society of Natural 
 History. 
 
 The Pilgrim Fathers describe the shore as wooded 
 to the water's edge. They mention oaks, pines, sassa- 
 fras, juniper, birch, holly vines, ash, walnut. These 
 are still found, with the exception of the ash and 
 walnut. I like to couple with this list by William 
 Bradford, the words of Bradford Torrey which he 
 calls, "A Pitch Pine Meditation." 
 
 "The conifera are all symmetrical except the pitch 
 pine. The Puritans of New England are mostly dead, 
 but as long as the Pinus rigida covers the sandy knolls 
 of Massachusetts, the sturdy, uncompromising, inde- 
 pendent, economical, indefatigable, all-enduring spirit 
 of Puritanism will be worthily represented in its 
 sometime thriving-place." 
 
 The flora of the tip end of Cape Cod has never 
 been collected, except as loving friends have brought 
 home and preserved beautiful specimens. Mrs. Effie 
 L. Cook made a list which, like the work of most ama- 
 teurs, may be open to correction. Her list, with a 
 few additions, is as follows: 
 
172 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Adder's Mouth {Pogonia ophioglossoides) 
 
 Anemone 
 
 Wild Azalea {Rhododendron viscosum) 
 
 Apple of Peru {Datura stramonium) 
 
 Asters, many kinds 
 
 Balm of Gilead 
 
 Bayberry {Myrica cerifera) 
 
 Beach Pea {{Lathyrus maritimus) 
 
 Beach Plum {Prunus maritima) 
 
 Beach Grass {Ammophila arenaria) 
 
 Black Alder {Ilex verticillata) 
 
 High Bush Blackberry {Rubus) 
 
 Running Blackberry {Rubus hispidus) 
 
 Black Medick {Medicago lupulina) 
 
 Horned Bladderwort {Utricularia cornuta) 
 
 Bluets {Houstonia caerulea) 
 
 Blueberry {Faccinium), several kinds 
 
 Blue Flag, {Iris versicolor) 
 
 Blue Toad Flax {Linaria canadensis) 
 
 Blue-eyed Grass {Sisyrinchium) several 
 
 Bouncing Bet {Saponaria officinalis) 
 
 Green Brier {Smilax rotundifolia) 
 
 Bunch Berry, {Cornus canadensis) 
 
 Butter and Eggs {Linaria vulgaris) 
 
 Buttercup {Ranunculus) many species 
 
 Burdock {Arctium Lappa) 
 
 Bedstraw, rough {Galium asprellum) 
 
 Bedstraw, small {Galium trifidum) 
 
 Bedstraw, sweet-scented {Galium triflorum) 
 
 Buckwheat 
 
 Calopogon {Calopgon pulchellus) 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 173 
 
 Wild Carrot (Daucus Carotd) 
 Cat-tails (Typha latifol'd) 
 Cat-tails {Typha angustifolia) 
 Catchfly {Silene noctiflora) 
 Celendine (Chelidonium majus) 
 Chickweed, (Stellaria) several 
 Wild Cherry- 
 Chicory {Cichorium Intybus) 
 Choke Cherry (Prunus virginiana) 
 Silvery Cinquefoil {Potentilla argentea) 
 Common Cinquefoil {Potentilla canadensis) 
 Red Clover {Trifoliuni pratense) 
 Rabbit's foot Clover {Trifolium arvense) 
 White Clover {Trifolium hybridum) 
 Yellow Sweet Clover {Trifolium agrarium) 
 Yellow Low Hop Clover {Trifolium procumbens) 
 Club Rush, many species 
 Wild Columbine {Aquilegia canadensis) 
 Cow Wheat {Melampyrum lineare) 
 Cranberry {Faccinium) several kinds 
 Carex, a sedge, very many kinds 
 Daisy {Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum) 
 Daisy Fleabene {Erigeron annuus) 
 Dandelion {Taraxacum officinale) 
 Dusty Miller {Artemisia stelleriana) 
 Dwarf Dandelion {Krigia virginica) 
 Fall Dandelion {Leontodon autumnalis) 
 Spreading Dogbane {Apocynum androsaemifolium) 
 Dogwood {Rhus Vernix) 
 Elderberry {Sambucus canadensis) 
 Evening Primrose {Oenothera biennis) 
 
174 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Everlasting, Pearly {Anaphalis margaritacea) 
 Everlasting, Fragrant {Gnaphalium polycephalum) 
 False Flax {Camelina sativa) 
 Ferns, Sensitive {Onoclea sensibilis) 
 Ferns, Shield or Wood Fern {Aspidium spinulosum in- 
 termedium) 
 False Solomon's Seal {Smilacina racemosa) 
 Flowering Fern (Osmunda) three species 
 Sweet Fern (Myrica asplenijolia) 
 Fire Weed {Epilobium angustifolium) 
 False Spikenard {Smilacina racemosa) 
 Gall-of-the-earth (Prenanthes serpentaria) 
 Purple Gerardia (Gerardia purpurea) 
 Golden Club (Orontium aquaticum) 
 Golden Rod, many kinds 
 Grasses, many kinds 
 Wild Grapes 
 
 Hairy Hawkweed (Hieracium) 
 
 Herb of St. Barbara {Barbarea vulgaris) 
 
 Hog Cranberry, Bearberry {Arctostaphylos Uva-ursi) 
 
 Houseleek (Sedum acre) 
 
 Huckleberry (Gaylussacia resinosa) 
 
 Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) 
 Juniper, Red Cedar {Juniperus virginiana) 
 
 Lady's Slipper {Cypripedium acaule) 
 
 Ladies' Tobacco (Antennaria ) 
 
 Wild Lettuce (Lactuca canadensis) 
 White Water-lily (Nymphaea odorata) 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 175 
 
 Red Wood Lily {Lilium philadelphicum) 
 
 Yellow Pond Lily {Nuphar advend) 
 
 Wild Yellow Lily {Lilium Canadense) 
 
 Loosestrife (Lysimachia) two kinds 
 
 Club-moss (Lycopodium) many kinds 
 
 Wild Lily-of-the-valley {M aianthemum canadense) 
 
 Common Mallow, "Cheeses" {Malva rotundijolia) 
 
 Marsh Rosemary {Limonium Carolinianum) 
 
 Meadowroot " " 
 
 Sea Lavender " " 
 
 May-weed {Anthemis) several 
 
 Meadowsweet {Spiraa latifolia) 
 
 Common Milkweed {Asclepias syriaca) 
 
 Sand Milkweed 
 
 Common Mullein {Ferbascum Thapsus) 
 
 Moth Mullein {Ferbascum Blattaria) 
 
 Dusty Miller 
 
 Mustard {Brassica arvensis) 
 
 Mustard {Brassica nigra) 
 
 Wild Mints, Spearmint, Peppermint 
 
 Nightshade {Solanum Dulcamara) 
 
 Oaks {Quercus) several kinds 
 
 White-fringed Orchis {Habenaria hlephariglottis) 
 
 Yellow Oxalis, Yellow Wood Sorrel {Oxalis stricta) 
 
 Peppergrass {Lepidium) several species 
 
 Pipsissewa, Prince's Pine {Chimaphila umbellata) 
 
 Pickerel Weed {Ponterderia cordata) 
 
 Pine Weed {Hypericum gentianoides) 
 
 Swamp Pink, Wild Azalia {Rhododendron viscosum) 
 
 Pitcher Plant {Sarracenia purpurea) 
 
 Pussy Willow {Salix discolor) 
 
176 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Pitch Pine {Pinus rigida) 
 
 Plantain {Plantago) 
 
 Poison Ivy {Rhus toxicodendron) 
 
 "Three leaves, foe; five leaves (Woodbine) 
 
 friend." 
 Pond Lily (Castalia odorata) 
 Ragweed 
 
 Rattlesnake Weed {Hieracium venosum) 
 Wild Rose 
 
 Wild Rye {Elymus arenarius) 
 Common St. John's-wort {Hypericum perforatum) 
 Large St. John's-wort {Hypericum canadense) 
 Small St, John's-wort {Hypericum mutilum) 
 Marsh St. John's-wort {Hypericum virginicum) 
 Sand Spurrey {Spergularia marina) 
 Sand Spurrey {Spergularia rubra) 
 Broad-leaved Sandwort {Arenaria lateriflora) 
 Sassafras {Sassafras variifolium) 
 Bristly Sarsaparilla {Aralia hispida) 
 Scarlet Pimpernel {Anagallis arvensis) 
 Scotch Broom {Cytisus scoparius) 
 Self-heal {Prunella vulgaris) 
 
 Shad-bush, "Jose-pear" {Amelanchier ohlongifolia) 
 Shepherd's Purse {Capsella Bursa-pastoris) 
 Silver Oak 
 Sorrel 
 
 Yellow Wood Sorrel {Oxalis corniculata) 
 Southernwood 
 
 Seaside Spurge {Euphorbia polygonifolia) 
 Star Flower {Trientalis americana) 
 Steeple Bush, Hardhack {Spiraea tomentosa) 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 177 
 
 Long-leaf Starwort or Stitchwort {Stellaria longijolid) 
 
 Sumach, Staghorn {Rhus typhina) 
 
 Sumach, Poison "dogwood" {Rhus Vernix) 
 
 Strawberry 
 
 Round-leaved Sundew {Drosera rotundifolia) 
 
 Sundrops {Oenothera fruticosa) 
 
 Sedges, many kinds 
 
 Tansy {Tanacetum vulgare) 
 
 Tupelo {Nyssa sylvatica) 
 
 Willow 
 
 White Water Lily {Nymphaea odorata) 
 
 Woodbine {Ampelopsis quinquefolia) 
 
 Wintergreen {Gaultheria procumbens) 
 
 Spotted Wintergreen {Chimaphila maculata) 
 
 Violet, Arrow-leaved 
 
 Violet, Common Blue 
 
 "Violet, White Canada 
 
 Violet, White Meadow 
 
 Yarrow {Achillea Millefolium) 
 
 Yellow-eyed Grass {Xyris flexuosa) 
 
Birds of the Provincetown 
 Region 
 
 By Edward Howe Forbush, 
 State Ornithologist 
 
 THE list of birds given below should be regarded 
 as incomplete and provisional. This list is 
 based on two lists prepared by residents of the 
 region. 
 
 The late Mrs. Effie L. Cook, of Provincetown, 
 sent me a list of land birds mainly observed there 
 from 1880 to 1902, and Mr. Joseph G. Peters, Jr., of 
 North Truro, has sent me a larger list obtained more 
 recently, mainly in the region about his home. As 
 North Truro lies next to Provincetown on the south, 
 and as Mr. Peters is more or less familiar with Province- 
 town and Truro, the two lists together may fairly 
 represent the birds of the region. Acknowledgment 
 is due Mr. Peters for his kindness. My own contribu- 
 tion to the list is not large. 
 
 The list lacks a number of birds of prey, sparrows, 
 warblers, thrushes, etc., and some water birds and 
 shore birds, which undoubtedly occur either regularly 
 or casually in the region and eventually may be 
 observed there and recorded. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 179 
 
 The names used in this list, with the exception of 
 those of the Black Duck and the Red-legged Black 
 Duck, are those used in the third edition of the Amer- 
 ican Ornithologists Union Check-list, published in 1910. 
 No attempt has been made to bring the names up to 
 date. 
 
 Explanation of Terms Used 
 
 Resident— A species that remains in the region 
 throughout the year. 
 
 (a) Summer Resident — 
 
 A species passing the summer in the region and 
 presumably breeding, unless otherwise stated. 
 
 (b) Winter Resident — 
 
 A species passing the winter in the region. 
 
 (c) Spring or Fall Migrant, usually both. 
 
 Species that do not stay through either summer 
 or winter in the region, but migrate through it. 
 
 (d) Rare— 
 
 This includes also some very rare birds; birds not 
 listed as rare, occasional or accidental, may be 
 more or less common. 
 
 (e) Occasional Transient Visitant — 
 
 Usually a migrant seen irregularly, or a seabird 
 which rarely comes near shore. 
 (/) Accidental Visitant — 
 
 A bird out of its usual range through some accident, 
 such as a severe storm, which sometimes drives 
 birds over the sea far beyond their normal range. 
 
180 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Holboell's Grebe {Colymbus holboelli) (b) 
 
 Horned Grebe {Colymbus auritus) (e) In fall, winter 
 or spring 
 
 Pied-Billed Grebe (Podilymbus podiceps) (c) 
 
 Loon {Gavia immer) (c) Irregular, also in Winter 
 
 Red-throated Loon (Gavia stellata) (b) 
 
 Puffin {Fratercula arctica arctica) {e) Winter, off shore 
 
 Black Guillemot {Cepphus Grylle) (b) Irregular off 
 shore 
 
 Brunnich's Murre (Uria lomvia lomvia) (b) Irregular 
 off shore 
 
 Razor-billed Auk (Jlca torda) (b) Irregular off shore 
 
 Dovekie (Jlle alle) (b) Sometimes abundant off 
 shore mainly 
 
 Pomarine Jaeger (Stercorarius pomarinus) {e) Common- 
 est in autumn offshore 
 
 Parasitic Jaeger {Stercorarius parasiticus) {e) Common- 
 est in autumn offshore 
 
 Long-tailed Jaeger {Stercorarius longicaudus) (/) 
 
 Kittiwake {Rissa tridactyla tridactyla) {b) Uncertain 
 and irregular 
 
 Glaucous Gull {Larus hyperboreus) {e) Uncertain and 
 irregular, mainly in winter 
 
 Iceland Gull {Larus leucopterus) {e) Uncertain and 
 irregular, fall, winter or spring 
 
 Great Black-backed Gull {Larus Marinus) {b) Occasion- 
 al in summer 
 
 Herring Gull {Larus argentatus) {a) Not known to 
 breed. Abundant in winter 
 
 Ring-billed Gull {Larus delawarensis) {c) 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 181 
 
 Laughing Gull {Larus atricilla) {e) Mostly in summer. 
 
 Increasing 
 Bonaparte's Gull {Larus Philadelphia) (c) Also in 
 
 winter more or less 
 Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) (a) 
 Arctic Tern (Sterna paradis^sa) (c) 
 Roseate Tern (Sterna dougalli) (c) 
 Least Tern (Sterna antillarum) (a) Observed at Truro 
 
 July and August 1921 
 Greater Shearwater (Puffinus gravis) (e) Common to 
 
 abundant in summer on fishing banks 
 Sooty Shearwater (Puffi-nus griseus) (e) Uncommon in 
 
 summer on fishing banks 
 Leach's Petrel (Oceanodroma leucorhoa) (e) 
 Wilson's Petrel (Oceanites oceanicus) (c) Common at 
 
 times oflF-shore in summer 
 Gannet (Sula bassana) (c) An off-shore migrant 
 Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus auri- 
 
 tus (c) 
 Merganser (Mergus americanus) (b) 
 Red-breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator) (b) 
 Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus) (b) (d) 
 Mallard (Ayias platyrhynchos) (c) 
 Red-legged Black Duck (Anas rubripes rubripes) (b) 
 Black Duck (Anas rubripes tristis) Resident 
 Baldpate (Mareca america?ia) (c) 
 Green-winged Teal (Nettion carolinense) (b) (d) 
 Blue-winged Teal (Ouerquedula discors) (c) 
 Pintail (Dafila acuta) (c) (d) Seen irregularly in winter 
 Wood Duck (Aix sponsa) (a) (d) 
 Scaup Duck (Marila marila) (b) 
 
182 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Lesser Scaup Duck {Marila affinis) (c) 
 
 Golden-eye {Clangula clangula americana) (b) 
 
 BuflFle-head {Charitonetta albeola) (b) 
 
 Old-squaw {Harelda hyemalis) (b) 
 
 Harlequin Duck (Histrionicus histrionicus) (/) Winter 
 
 Eider (Somateria dresseri) (c) Occasional in winter 
 
 Scoter {Oidemia americana) (b) 
 
 White-winged Scoter {Oidemia deglandi) (b) 
 
 Surf Scoter (Oidemia perspicillata) (b) 
 
 Ruddy Duck (Erismatura jamaicensis) (c) Has been 
 
 known to breed 
 Snow Goose {Chen hyperboreus hyperboreus) {c) {d) 
 Canada Goose {Branta canadensis canadensis) {c) Seen 
 
 sometimes in winter 
 Brant {Branta bernicla glaucogastra) {c) 
 Whistling Swan {Olor columbianus) {c) (d) 
 Bittern {Botaurus lentiginosus) {a) 
 Least Bittern {Ixobrychus exilis) {a) 
 Great Blue Heron {Ardea herodias herodias) {c) (d) 
 
 Seen every summer month 
 Egret {Herodias egretta) {e) 
 
 Green Heron {Butorides virescens virescens) {a) {d) 
 Black-crowned Night Heron {Nycticorax Nycticorax 
 
 ncevius) (a) About forty pairs nested within the 
 
 region until 1920 
 Virginia Rail {Rallus virginianus) (a) 
 Sora {Porzana Carolina) {a) {d) 
 Coot {Fulica americana) {c) 
 
 Red Phalarope {Phalaropus fulicarius) {c) off-shore 
 Northern Phalarope {Lobipes lobatus) {c) off-shore 
 Woodcock {Philohela minor) {a) {d) Small flights pass 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 183 
 
 Wilson's Snipe {Gallinago delicata) (c) 
 Dowitcher {Macrorhamphus griseus griseus) (c) 
 Knot {Tringa canutus) (c) 
 Pectoral Sandpiper {Pisobia maculatd) (c) 
 White-rumped Sandpiper {Pisobia fuscicollis) (c) 
 Baird's Sandpiper {Pisobia bairdi) {c) {d) 
 Least Sandpiper {Pisobia mi?iutilla) {c) 
 Red-backed Sandpiper {Pelidna alpina sakhalina) {c) 
 Semipalmated Sandpiper {Ereunetes pusillus) {c) 
 Sanderling {Calidris leucophcea) {c) 
 Marbled Godwit {Limosa fedoa) {e) {d) 
 Hudsonian Godwit {Limosa hcemastica) {e) {d) former- 
 ly common 
 Greater Yellow-legs {Totanus melanoleucus) {c) 
 Yellow-legs {Totanus flavipes) {c) uncommon in spring 
 Solitary Sandpiper {Helodromas solitarius solitarius) {c) 
 Upland Plover {Bartramia longicauda) {c) {d) 
 Spotted Sandpiper {Actitis macularia) {a) 
 Hudsonian Curlew {Numenius hudsonicus) {c) 
 Black-bellied Plover {Squatarola squatarola) {c) 
 Golden Plover {Charadrius dominicus dominicus) {c) 
 
 {d) Formerly abundant 
 Killdeer {Oxyechus vociferus) {c) 
 Semipalmated Plover {yEgialitis semipalmata) {c) 
 Piping Plover {lEgialitis nielodd) {a) 
 Ruddy Turnstone {Arenaria interpres morinella) {c) 
 Bob-white {Colinus virginianus virginianus) Now Hear- 
 ing extirpation 
 Mourning Dove {Zenaidura macroura carolinensis) 
 
 Resident 
 Marsh Hawk {Circus hudsonius) {a) 
 
184 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Sharp-shinned Hawk {Accipiter velox) (a) 
 Cooper's Hawk {Accipiter cooperi) {a) (d) 
 Goshawk {Astur atricapillus atricapillus) (c) Winter 
 Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo borealis borealis) (c) 
 Red-shouldered Hawk {Buteo lineatus lineatus) {c) {d) 
 Rough-legged Hawk {Archibuteo lagopus sancti-johan- 
 
 nis) {c) Winter 
 Bald Eagle {Haliceetus leucocephalus leucocephalus) {c) {d) 
 Duck Hawk {Falco peregrinus anatum) {c) {d) 
 Pigeon Hawk {Falco columbarius columharius) {c) 
 Sparrow Hawk {Falco sparverius sparverius) {c) 
 Osprey {Pandion haliaetus carolinensis) (c) {d) 
 Short-eared Owl {Asio flammeus) {a) {b) 
 Barred Owl {Strix varia varia) {a) {b) 
 Saw-whet Owl {Cryptoglaux acadica acadica) (c) {d) 
 Screech Owl {Otus asio asio) Resident 
 Great Horned Owl {Bubo virginianus virginianus {c) {b) 
 Snowy Owl {Nyctea nyctea) {c) {d) Appears rarely in 
 
 winter 
 Yellow-billed Cuckoo {Coccyzus americanus americanus) 
 
 {a) 
 Black-billed Cuckoo {Coccyzus erythrophthalmus) {a) 
 Belted Kingfisher {Ceryle alcyon) {a) 
 Hairy Woodpecker {Dryobates villosus villosus) Resident 
 Downy Woodpecker {Dryobates pudescens medianus) 
 
 Resident 
 Yellow-bellied Sapsucker {Shyrapicus varius varius) 
 
 {c) {d) 
 Red-headed Woodpecker {Melanerpes erythrocephalus) 
 
 {e) {d) 
 Northern Flicker {Colaptes auratus luieus) Resident 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 185 
 
 Whip-poor-will {Antrostomus vociferus vociferus) (a) 
 
 Chimney Swift {Choetura pelagica) (a) 
 
 Ruby-throated Hummingbird {Archilochus colubris) (a) 
 
 {d) 
 Kingbird {Tyrannus tyrannus) (a) 
 Crested Flycatcher {Myiarchus crinitus) (e) 
 Phoebe {Sayornis phoebe) (a) 
 Wood Pewee {Myiochanes virens) (a) 
 Yellow-bellied Flycatcher {Empidonax flaviventris) (e) 
 Least Flycatcher {Empidonax minimus) (a) (d) 
 Horned Lark {Otocoris alpestris alpestris) (b) 
 Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata cristata) Resident 
 Crow {Corvus brachyrhynchos brachyrhynchos) Resident 
 Bobolink {Dolichonyx oryzivorus) {c) (d) 
 Cowbird {Molothrus ater ater) (a) 
 Red-winged Blackbird {Agelaius phoeniceus phceniceus) 
 
 {a) 
 Meadowlark {Sturnella magna magna) (a) 
 Orchard Oriole (Icterus spurius) (a) (d) 
 Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula) (a) 
 Rusty Blackbird (Euphagus carolinus) (c) (d) 
 Purple Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula quiscula) (a) 
 Bronzed Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula ceneus) (a) 
 Evening Grosbeak (Hesperiphona vespertina vespertina) 
 
 (c)Winter 
 Pine Grosbeak (Pinicola enucleator leucura) (c) Winter 
 Purple Finch (Carpodacus purpureus purpureus) (d) 
 
 Resident 
 Crossbill (Loxia curvirostra minor) (c) 
 Redpoll (Acanthis linaria linaria) (b) (d) 
 Goldfinch (Astragalinus tristis tristis) Resident 
 
186 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Snow Bunting {Plectrophenax nivalis nivalis) (b) 
 Lapland Longspur {Calcarius lapponicus lapponicus) 
 {d) {e) In early winter 
 
 Vesper Sparrow {Pooecetes gramineus gramineus) (a) 
 White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys leuco- 
 phrys) (c) {d) 
 
 White-throated Sparrow {Zonotrichia albicollis) {c) (d) 
 Tree Sparrow (Spizella monticola monticola) (b) (d) 
 Chipping Sparrow {Spizella passerina passerina) {a) 
 Field Sparrow {Spizella pusilla pusilla) {e) May breed 
 ^\a.l&-co\ovtd]\xnco {J unco hyemalishyemalis) {c) Winter 
 Song Sparrow {Melospiza melodia melodia) {a) 
 Swamp Sparrow {Melospiza georgiana) {a) {d) Fairly 
 
 common in migration 
 Fox Sparrow {Passerella iliaca iliaca) {c) 
 Towhee {Pipilo erythrophthalmus erythrophthalmus) {a) 
 Rose-breasted Grosbeak {Zamelodia ludoviciana) {a) 
 
 {d) Pair and nest seen in 1920 by Mr. Peters 
 Indigo Bunting {Passerina cyanea) {a) {d) 
 Scarlet Tanager {Piranga erythromelas) {a) {d) 
 Summer Tanager {Piranga rubra rubra) (/) Observed 
 
 once by Mrs. Cook 
 Purple Martin {Progne subis subis) {c) {d) 
 Cliff Swallow {Petrochelidon lunifrons lunifrons) {a) 
 Barn Swallow {Hirundo erythrogastra) {a) 
 Tree Swallow {Iridoprocne hicolor) {a) 
 Bank Swallow {Riparia riparia) {a) 
 Cedar Waxwing {Bombycilla cedrorum) {a) 
 Northern Shrike {Lanius borealis) {c) Winter 
 Red-eyed Vireo {Vireosylva olivacea) {a) 
 Warbling Vireo {Vireosylva gilva gilva) {a) 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 187 
 
 Yellow-throated Vireo {Lanivireo flavifrons) (a) 
 Blue-headed Vireo (Lanivireo solitarius solitarius) (c) 
 White-eyed Vireo {Fireo griseus griseus) (a) 
 Black and White Warbler {Mniotilta varia) (c) 
 Northern Parula Warbler (Compsothlypis americana 
 
 usnece) (a) (d) 
 Yellow Warbler {Dendroica cestiva csstiva) (a) 
 Black-throated Blue Warbler (Dendroica ccerulescens 
 
 ccerulescens) (c) 
 Myrtle Warbler (Dendroica coronata) (b) 
 Magnolia Warbler (Dendroica magnolia) (c) 
 Chestnut-sided Warbler (Dendroica pensylvanica) (a) 
 Bay-breasted Warbler (Dendroica castanea) (c) 
 Black-poll Warbler (Dendroica striata) (c) 
 Blackburnian Warbler (Dendroica fusca) (c) 
 Black-throated Green Warbler (Dendroica virens (d) (a) 
 Pine Warbler (Dendroica vigorsi) (a) 
 Yellow Palm Warbler (Dendroica palmarum hypcohry- 
 
 sea) (c) 
 Prairie Warbler (Dendroica discolor) (c) 
 Oven-bird (Seiurus aurocapillus) (a) 
 Northern Yellowthroat (Geothlypis trichas brachdi- 
 
 actyla) (a) 
 Redstart (Setophaga ruticilla) (a) (d) 
 Pipit (Anthus rubescens) (c) (d) 
 Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos polyglottos) (b) (d) 
 Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) (a) 
 Brown Thrasher (Toxostoma rufum) (a) 
 House Wren (Troglodytes aedon aedon) (a) (d) 
 Winter Wren (Nannus hiemalis hiemalis) (b) 
 Brown Creeper (Certhia familiaris americana) (c) 
 
188 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 White-breasted Nuthatch {Sitta carolinensis carolinen- 
 
 sis) (b) 
 Red-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta canadensis) (b) 
 Chickadee {Penthestes atricapillus atricapillus) Resident 
 Golden-crowned Kinglet (Regulus satrapa satrapa) (b) 
 Ruby-crowned Kinglet {Regulus calendula calendula) 
 
 (c) 
 Veery {Hylocichla fuscescens fuscescens) (a) (d) 
 Olive-backed Thrush {Hylocichla ustulata szvainsoni) {c) 
 
 (d) 
 Hermit Thrush {Hylocichla guttata pallasi) {c) 
 Robin {Planesticus migratorius migratorius) {a) Some 
 
 winter irregularly 
 Bluebird {Sialia sialis sialis) {a) 
 
 Introduced Species 
 
 Ringnecked Pheasant {Phasianus torquatus) {d) Resi- 
 dent 
 Starling {Sturnus vulgaris) Resident 
 English Sparrow {Passer domesticus) Resident 
 
Gravestone Record, to 1850, 
 in the old Cemetery 
 
 Made by Mr. Edward H. Wharf 
 Mr. Phillip L. Cobb 
 Mr. Stanley W. Smith 
 
 Published in the Mayflower Descendant. 
 
 (An older Cemetery, with a few stones, and evident- 
 ly unmarked graves, existed on Franklin Street, until 
 fifty years ago.) 
 
 ALLERTON 
 
 Caroline, born 7 November 1823, died 17 
 December 1844 
 
 Ruth H., born 20 August 1834, died 17 De- 
 cember 1844 
 
 William J., born 11 July 1840, died 12 No- 
 vember 1840 
 
 Mary C, born 11 July 1840, died 1 December 
 1840 
 
 William J., born 23 April 1843, died 4 January 
 1845 
 
 William J., born 27 July 1848, died 14 August 
 1849 
 
 Six children of William and Ruth C. on one 
 stone. 
 
190 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 ATKINS 
 
 Benjamin, son of Benjamin E. and Elizabeth, 
 
 drowned 29 October 1809 in his sixteenth 
 
 year 
 Benjamin E., died 29 November 1823, aged 54 
 Bethiah, wife of Silas, died 29 July 1803, in 
 
 her 36th year 
 David, drowned 7 March 1828, aged 24. 
 
 An affectionate husband and a tender 
 
 parent 
 Elizabeth, wife of Benjamin E., died 2 May 
 
 1836, aged 35 
 Elizabeth, daughter of Benjamin E. and 
 
 Elizabeth, died 20 November 1806 aged 
 
 1 year 9 months 
 Joshua, son of Silas and Bethiah, died 2 May 
 
 1803 in his ninth year 
 Louisa, daughter of Capt. Jos. and Ruth, 
 
 died 16 July 1808 aged 3 years 9 months 
 Martha, daughter of Silas and Bethiah, died 
 
 21 January 1803 in her 10th year 
 Phoebe, wife of Richard White, died 5 No- 
 vember 1803 aged 18 years 6 months 
 Polly, wife of Benjamin E., died 3 May 1816 
 
 aged 37 
 Reuben, son of Capt. Jos. and Ruth, died 8 
 
 August 1808 aged 8 
 Sally, died 20 November 1800, aged 11 months 
 
 9 days 
 ATWOOD 
 
 Barnabas, lost at sea 1834 (This should read 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 191 
 
 1838) aged 28, (on stone with Isaac 
 
 Paine) 
 Bethiah, relict of Capt. Stephen, died 27 July 
 
 1807 in her 72nd year 
 Betsey R., daughter of Richard R. and Eliza- 
 beth, died 16 April 1843 aged 10 
 Elizabeth, wife of Richard R. died 31 July 
 
 1847, aged 49 years and 10 months 
 Jeremiah, born 23 May 1820, died 3 March 
 
 1857 
 Lydia S., born 23 May, 1820 died 10 January 
 
 1827 
 
 (These two on one stone) 
 Stephen, died 29 September 1745, in his 39th 
 
 year 
 Stephen Jr., died 5 June 1794, in his 24th year 
 Capt. Stephen, died 18 December 1802 aged 69 
 BACON 
 
 Mary, wife of Isaac, died 5 August 1727 aged 
 
 27 years 10 months 
 Alary, daughter of Isaac and Mary, died 18 
 
 August 1727 aged 3 weeks 
 BAKER 
 
 Ruth, daughter of Thatcher, died 11 June 
 
 1797 aged 6 weeks 
 BEALS 
 
 Mrs. Louvisa, formerly of Edgarton, died 26 
 
 April 1841 aged 74 
 BLANCHARD 
 
 Betsey, wife of Ephraim, died 19 October 
 
 1806 in her 23d year 
 
192 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 BOWLEY 
 
 Asa Smith, died 27 December 1802, aged 30 
 Elizabeth, wife of Oliver, died Jan. 1, 1844, 
 
 aged 71 
 Freeman M., son of Sarah, wife of Eleazer 
 
 Young, died at Straits of Belle Isle, 23 
 
 July 1818, aged 17 
 
 (On the stone of his mother) 
 Hannah, wife of Oliver deceased, died 30 
 
 November 1813 in her 64th year 
 Oliver, died 30 November 1794, in his 47th 
 
 year 
 Oliver, born 27 August 1775, died 6 January 
 
 1854 
 
 BRYANT 
 
 Polly, wife of George, died 1 August 1821, 
 aged 29 
 BURCH 
 
 Huldah E., wife of James, died 20 January 
 1847, aged 32 years, 5 months, 25 days 
 BUSH 
 
 Desire, wife of William, died 11 May 1810 in 
 her 48th year 
 
 C 
 
 R (a footstone) 
 
 CATON 
 
 Emanuel, born 13 November 1829, died 23 
 
 March 1830 
 Louisa A., born 9 November 1829, died 19 
 
 July 1830 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 193 
 
 Mary A., born 11 Feb. 1825, died 18 July 1830 
 (These two last on one stone) 
 
 CHAPPELL 
 
 Jeremiah, son of Samuel and Tassey, of New 
 London, Conn., drowned in Province- 
 towji Harbor, 10 September 1815, in his 
 32d year 
 
 COLLINS 
 
 Cynthia, daughter of Reuben and Mary, died 
 
 13 May 1832, aged 18 years 10 months 
 Emina, daughter of Richard and Emina, died 
 
 August 1832, aged 26 
 Mary, wife of Reuben, born 22 June 1783, died 
 
 10 May 1861 
 Reuben, born 17 July 1779, died 27 October 
 
 1849 
 Reuben, died 1 June 1798, aged 25 
 Reuben, son of Reuben and Mary, died 5 
 
 October 1817, aged 1 year 3 months. 
 
 Also their six infant children 
 Richard, died 18 October 1849, aged 75 
 Richard, son of Richard and Emina, died 27 
 
 July 1808, aged 5 
 
 CONANT 
 
 Cordelia, daughter of John and Lucy, died 3 
 
 February 1828, aged 7 years and 2 months 
 
 John, died 4 June 1809, in his 67th year 
 
 Pattey, wife of John, died 22 May in her 62nd 
 
 year, (On the stone with her husband. 
 
 The year not given) 
 
194 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Samuel, son of John and Lucy, died 23 March 
 
 1823, aged 4 months 23 days 
 Simeon Jr., died 28 May 1843, aged 32 
 Capt. Simeon, died 26 July 1849, aged 69 
 Susan A., wife of Capt. Simeon, died 3 July 
 
 1820, in her 41st year 
 Susanna, daughter of Simeon and Susanna, 
 
 died 29 June 1848, aged 43 years 8 months 
 
 18 days 
 
 COOK 
 
 Abigail, wife of Elisha, died 18 April 1800, 
 
 aged 32 
 Barzill S., son of David and Lydia, aged 6 
 
 months (On his mother's stone) 
 Betsey, wife of Solomon, died 13 October 1808 
 
 aged 70 
 Catherine, wife of Capt. Solomon, died 14 
 
 May 1822, aged 54 
 Cornelius, son of Ephraim and Rebecca, died 
 
 19 February 1816, aged 11 months 
 David, born 30 December 1775, died 16 June 
 
 1849 
 David Jr., son of David and Lydia, lost on 
 
 passage from Boston to Port au Prince, 26 
 
 January 1838, aged 30. (On his mother's 
 
 stone) 
 Emeline, daughter of Jesse and Thankful, 
 
 died 14 March 1811, aged 11 months 22 
 
 days 
 Huldah, wife of David, died 28 December 
 
 1802, aged 24 years 7 months 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 195 
 
 Lemuel, son of Elisha and Abigail, died 25 
 
 April 1800, aged 5 months 7 days (on 
 
 his mother's stone) 
 Lydia, wife of David, died 9 April 1812, aged 
 
 32 
 Mary P., widow of David, born 16 November 
 
 1781, died 22 February 1851 
 Nancy, wife of Newcomb, died 17 February 
 
 1815, aged 28 
 Paran, died 2 November 1808, in his 19th year 
 Rebecca, wife of Solomon, died 19 August 
 
 1788, in her 74th year 
 Ruth, wife of Elisha, died 3 June 1810, aged 32 
 Solomon, died 21 November 1781, in his 73d 
 
 year 
 Solomon, died 24 July 1819, in his 82d year 
 Susanna, wife of David, born 28 September 
 
 1769, died 10 August 1839 
 COWING 
 
 Desire, wife of John, died 8 February 1723-4 
 
 in her 40th year 
 (The oldest stone) 
 CRAWLEY 
 
 Andrew, Capt., drowned 24 September 1840, 
 
 aged 273^ 
 CROSS 
 
 Jonathan K., son of Joseph and Rhodica, 
 
 died 7 February 1844, aged 4 months and 
 
 10 days 
 CROWELL 
 
 Catherine, wife of Solomon Jr., died 16 De- 
 
196 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 cember 1836, aged 62 (On the Crowell 
 
 obelisk) 
 David Francis, son of David and Lydia, died 
 
 28 March 1839, aged 10 days 
 Elisha, died 26 November 1845, aged 44 (On 
 
 the obelisk) 
 Eunice S., wife of Amaziah, died 28 August 
 
 1830, aged 19 
 Jane B., wife of Amaziah, died 14 April 1840, 
 
 aged 35 
 John Young, son of Amaziah and Jane B., 
 
 died 4 September 1840, aged 8 months 
 
 (On his mother's stone) 
 Sarah Jane, daughter of Amaziah, died 25 
 
 August 1832, aged 11 months 
 Solomon Jr., died 28 March 1815, aged 45 
 
 (On the obelisk) 
 Solomon 2nd, perished on a wreck 14 October 
 
 1825, aged 20 
 
 CUTTER 
 
 Joanna, wife of Josiah, died 13 September 1840 
 aged 26 
 
 DITSON 
 
 Lawrence A., son of James L., and Rebecca, 
 born 11 January 1842, died 2 July 1842 
 
 Rebecca, wife of James L., born 30 October 
 1819, died 27 January 1853 
 
 Rebecca A., daughter of James L. and Rebecca 
 born 12 December 1847, died 5 July 1851 
 
 (These three on one stone) 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 197 
 
 DUNHAM— DONHAM 
 
 Rebecca P., daughter of Nathan and Sally, 
 
 died 5 April 1839, aged 17 
 Nathan, died 29 September 1850, aged 61 
 Sally, wife of Nathan, died 20 January 1843, 
 
 aged 50 
 DYER 
 
 Deliverance, widow, died 28 November 1836, 
 
 in her 85th year 
 Elijah, son of Elijah and Rebecca, died 26 
 
 April 1826, aged 18 months 
 , infant son of Elijah and Rebecca, 
 
 died 1823 (On the stone with Elijah) 
 Eunice B., daughter, of Henry and Sally, died 
 
 29 April 1834, aged 2 years 9 months 14 
 
 days 
 Henry Jr., died 22 May 1821, aged 28 years 
 
 8 months 
 Joshua, died 28 November 1822, aged 37 
 Nehemiah M., son of Henry and Sally, died 
 
 6 October 1825, aged 8 months 4 days 
 Pamelia Ann, daughter of Henry and Sally, 
 
 died 28 June 1834, aged 4 years 6 months 
 Peggy S., wife of William, died 5 April 1846, 
 
 aged 78 
 Sally, wife of Henry, died 16 July 1847, aged 46 
 William, killed by lightning, 18 June 1819, 
 
 aged 52 
 EMERY 
 
 James, son of James and Mary P., died 23 
 
 May 1847, aged 4 years 
 
198 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Nathan P., son of Joseph and Almira, born 
 
 28 September 1856, died 22 October 1858 
 Sarah M., daughter of Joseph and Almira, 
 
 born 26 October 1845, died 21 September 
 
 1847 
 Also five infant children of Joseph and Almira 
 
 on one stone 
 EWELL 
 
 Tryphena, wife of Lyman Ewell, also widow 
 
 of Andrew Crawley, died 13 October 1848 
 
 aged 32 
 Mrs. Tryphena, daughter of Prince and Try- 
 
 phene Freeman, born 1816, died 1848 (On 
 
 the Scammons Hopkins obelisk) 
 (Two records of the same person) 
 FAIRBANKS 
 
 Dolly W., daughter of David and Hannah, 
 
 died 18 March 1828, aged V/i years 
 five young children of David and 
 
 Hannah buried between March 1828 and 
 
 September 1844 
 FOSTER 
 
 William H., born 8 September 1838, died 21 
 
 August 1840 
 William P., born 10 October 1843, died 17 
 
 August 1845 
 William P., died 13 January 1862, aged 50 
 
 years 15 days 
 FREEMAN 
 
 Catherine, wife of Charles, died 16 April 1827, 
 
 aged 40 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 199 
 
 Charles, died 12 February 1848, aged dl 
 Charles H., son of Elisha and Phebe, died 
 
 1 October 1826, aged 10 months 
 Elisha, died 8 March 1825, aged 66 
 Eliza, daughter of Elisha and Phebe, died 
 
 6 November 1821, aged 16 months 
 Elizabeth, wife of Hatsuld, died 15 December 
 
 1839, aged 48 
 Hatsuld, died 9 February 1844, aged 56 
 Joseph, died 14 August 1844, aged 563^2 
 Josiah, son of Joseph and Phebe, died 10 
 
 November 1836, aged 10 years 6 months 
 Also two sons and two daughters of 
 
 Joseph and Phebe, died in infancy (On 
 
 stone of their brother Josiah) 
 Josiah K., son of Charles and Catherine, 
 
 lost at sea 1829, aged 21 (On his father's 
 
 stone) 
 Lydia, wife of Elisha, died 1 April 1821, aged 
 
 54 
 Mary, daughter of Warren and Mary, died 
 
 4 July 1831, aged 19 
 Nabby, wife of Joshua, died 11 July 1822, 
 
 aged 34 
 Nabby, daughter of Joshua and Nabby, died 
 
 10 October 1828, aged 1 month (Nabby 
 
 the wife and Nabby the daughter are on 
 
 one stone. Evidently one date is wrong) 
 Phebe, widow of Joseph, died 9 May 1857, 
 
 aged 67 years 6 months 
 Prince, died 12 April 1847, aged 72 
 
200 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 (Also on the Scammons Hopkins obelisk) 
 Sally, wife of Elisha, died 12 July 1824, aged 38 
 Sally E., daughter of Hatsuld and Elizabeth, 
 
 died 14 February 1825, aged 10 years 4 
 
 months 15 days 
 Tryphena, wife of Prince, 14 February 1842, 
 
 aged 59 (Also on the Scammons Hopkins 
 
 obelisk) 
 Warren, died 15 December 1827, aged 56 
 Warren Jr., died 16 April 1848, aged 31 years 
 
 10 months 10 days 
 William W., son of Nathaniel and Mercy K., 
 
 died 27 August 1849, aged 1 year 10 
 
 months 4 days 
 GALACOR 
 
 Mary, daughter of William and Mary, died 
 
 21 April 1802, aged 5 months 19 days 
 William, son of William and Mary, died 5 
 
 November 1800, aged 11 months 12 days 
 
 GHEN 
 
 GROSS 
 
 Daniel H., son of Capt. Samuel and Ann, 
 died 17 August 1835, aged 3 years 1 
 month 26 days 
 
 Samuel A., son of Capt. Samuel and Ann, 
 died 26 July 1835 (Both on one stone) 
 
 Alexander, 1757-1828 (A Revolutionary Sol- 
 dier) 
 
 Betesy, died 5 September 1831, aged 32 years 
 (On the Crowell obelisk) 
 
 Elizabeth, daughter of Micah and Elizabeth, 
 died 3 April 1786, aged 7 years 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 201 
 
 Elizabeth Creed, wife of Alexander, 1767- 
 
 1819 (On her husband's stone) 
 Joshua, son of J. & B. lost at sea in April 1849, 
 
 aged 18 years (on the Crowell obelisk) 
 Solomon C, son of J. & B,, lost at sea in May 
 
 1837, aged 19 years (On the Crowell 
 
 obelisk) 
 HANNUM 
 
 Elizabeth B., daughter of Charles A. and 
 
 Olive N., died 7 April 1845, aged 2 years 
 
 6 months 22 days 
 HARTFORD 
 
 Eliza N., daughter of Richard C. and Martha 
 
 M., died 25 October 1845, aged 4 years 
 
 4 months 16 days 
 Martha, daughter of Richard C. and Martha 
 
 M., died 20 October 1845, aged 2 years 
 
 6 months 20 days 
 HATCH 
 
 Elizabeth, wife of Rodolphus, died 10 October 
 
 1727, aged 46 years 
 
 HILL 
 
 Caleb Dyer, son of John and Susanna, died 
 29 March 1803, aged 2 years 3 months 26 days 
 John, son of John, died from home, 16 De- 
 cember 1814, aged 26 years (on his 
 father's stone) 
 John, died 10 August 1822, aged Id years 
 Rebecca N., daughter of Caleb D. and Par- 
 melia, died 30 June 1833, aged 3 years 
 9 months 9 days 
 
202 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Susanna, wife of John, died 18 July 1830, 
 aged 74 
 
 HINCKES 
 
 Tempy, wife of Elisha, died 22 April 1798, aged 
 22 years, 8 months 
 
 HINCKLEY 
 
 Joshua, died 15 August 1808, in his 32d year 
 Sarah, wife of Allen, died 7 March 1799, in 
 her 24th year 
 
 HOLMES 
 
 Saviah, wife of Capt. Elisha, died 24 Decem- 
 ber 1817, aged 30 years 
 
 HOPKINS 
 
 James A., lost at sea 1836, aged 26 years 
 
 (On the stone with Scammons Hopkins 
 who died in 1835) 
 
 Mary, wife of Deacon Jonathan, died 12 
 October 1814, in her 58th year 
 
 Mary, widow of Phineas, died 27 April 1838, 
 aged 52 years 
 
 Nabby, wife of Scammons, died 23 July 1821, 
 aged 52 years (on the stone with her 
 husband) 
 
 Phineas, died 19 January 1833, aged 51 years 
 
 Scammons, died 15 December 1822, aged 52 
 years (On the stone with Nabby) 
 
 Scammons, died 26 March 1835, aged 38 years 
 (On the stone with James A. Hopkins) 
 
 Scammons, born 1798, died 1837. First hus- 
 band of Mrs. Patty Pierce 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 203 
 
 HOWES 
 
 Abigail, wife of David, died 31 March 1804, 
 
 in her 28th year 
 Daniel, died 28 July 1802, in his 26th year 
 Daniel, son of Daniel and Polly, died 29 
 
 August 1802, aged 10 months 27 days 
 Priscilla, wife of Joshua, died 19 May 1800, in 
 
 her 22d year 
 Reuben, son of David and Abigail, died 5 
 
 March 1800, aged 2 years 5 months 10 
 
 days 
 Reuben Orcutt, son of David and Abigail, 
 
 died 30 March 1798, aged 1 year 7 
 
 months 24 days 
 
 JOSEUS 
 
 Eliza A., daughter of Joseph and Olive, born 
 30 June 1835, died 17 January 1836 
 
 KILBORN or KILBURN 
 
 Betsey, the wife of David, died 16 July 1794, 
 
 aged 28 years 
 Betty, wife of Thomas, died 13 August 1746, 
 
 in her 20th year 
 Thomas, died 4 August 1794, in his 76th year 
 William, died 6 November 1785, in his 27th 
 
 year 
 
 KINNEY 
 
 Hannah, daughter of John and Hannah, died 
 6 September 1781, aged 11 months 
 
 Nehemiah, son of John and Hannah, died 25 
 September 1780, in his 2nd year 
 
204 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 KNOWLES 
 
 Josiah, born 14 June 1782, died 25 February 
 
 1850 
 Mercy, widow of Josiah, born 13 October 
 1782, died 8 November 1850 (on her 
 husband's stone) 
 LANCY 
 
 Jane, daughter of Benjamin and Jane, died 
 16 August 1816, aged 9 years 6 months 
 LARRY 
 
 Mrs. Louis, died 14 March 1807, aged 38 years 
 MAYO 
 
 Joanna, wife of Joseph, died 9 October 1822 
 
 in her 27th year 
 Joshua A., died 25 June 1816, aged 58 years 
 Thomas, son of Joshua Atkins and Martha, 
 
 died 3 December 1807, in his 19th year 
 (Five infant children of Joshua and Martha on 
 the stone with Thomas) 
 MIERS 
 
 William, born 1 November 1798, died 25 
 September 1854 
 MILLER 
 
 Rebecca, wife of William, died 20 October 
 1795, in her 30th year 
 NEWCOMB 
 
 Mrs. Elizabeth, died 30 October 1805, aged 
 6' vears 
 NICHOLSON 
 
 Abigail, wife of George, died 11 February 
 1798, in her 21st year 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 205 
 
 Ebenezer, died 8 December 1792, in his 48th 
 year 
 
 NICKERSON 
 
 Abigail C, daughter of William and Abigail C, 
 
 died 18 August 1804, aged 14 days 
 Abigail C, wife of William, died 5 May 1818, 
 
 aged 41 years 
 Anna, daughter of Josiah and Sally, died 19 
 
 September 1793, aged 17 months 5 days 
 Apphia, wife of Reuben, died 22 July 1811, 
 
 aged 29 years 
 , son of Reuben and Apphia, died 
 
 8 August 1811, aged 2 months 8 days. 
 
 Her only issue (On his mother's stone) 
 Bethiah, widow of Capt. Isaiah, died 26 Jan- 
 uary 1806, in her 24th year (On the stone 
 
 with her husband) 
 Bethiah, widow of Jonathan, died 19 October 
 
 1834, aged 79 years 
 Betsy, daughter of Jonathan and Bethiah, 
 
 died 26 October 1805, in her 10th year 
 Betsy Eliza, daughter of Simeon C. and 
 
 Sarah, died 15 December 1837, aged 10 
 
 months 10 days 
 
 (On the stone with her brother John W.) 
 Ebenezer, died 15 February 1768, in his 71st 
 
 year 
 Elijah, son of Elijah and Jemima, died 13 
 
 August 1763, aged 13 months 
 
206 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Elijah, son of Elijah and Jemima, died 10 
 
 February 1777, aged 2 years 9 months 
 Elijah, son of Joseph and Lucy, died 6 Octo- 
 ber 1800, aged 13 months 5 days 
 Elisha, son of Elijah and Jemima, died 12 
 
 September 1780, aged 1 year 2 months 
 Eliza S., daughter of Seth and Elizabeth S., 
 
 born 19 August 1819, died 28 October 
 
 1832 
 Elizabeth, wife of Ebenezer, died 27 February 
 
 1789, in her 83d year 
 Mrs. Elizabeth, died 24 August 1828, aged 84 
 
 years 
 Hannah, daughter of Seth and Mary, died 
 
 6 February 1772, aged 12 years 
 Hannah, wife of Nehemiah,died26 September 
 
 1846, aged 69 years 3 months 13 days 
 Hannah K., daughter of William and Abigail 
 
 C, died 4 February 1800, aged 16 months 
 Isabella, wife of Seth, died 3 August 1837, aged 
 
 85 years 
 Isaiah, Capt., drowned at Bonavesta 26 May 
 
 1806, in his 29th year (On the stone of his 
 
 wife Bethiah) 
 Jemima Atkins, daughter of the late Mr. 
 
 Josiah and Ruth, died 30 September 
 
 1805, aged 1 year 
 John, died 13 October 1825, aged 25 years 
 John W., son of Simeon and Sarah, died 8 
 
 May 1839, aged 3 years 7 months (On 
 
 the stone with his sister Betsey E.) 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 207 
 
 Jonathan, son of William and Abigail C, 
 
 died 20 July 1802, aged 10 months 
 Jonathan, died 17 June 1807, in his 53d year 
 Joseph, son of Joseph and Lucy, died 10 
 
 August 1801, aged 8 days 
 Joseph, son of Joseph and Sally, died 31 July 
 
 1808, aged 15 months 18 days 
 Joshua, died 22 October 1794, in his 32d year 
 Josiah, son of Josiah and Sally, died 2 August 
 
 1794, aged 7 months 3 days 
 Linda, wife of Nathaniel, died 19 August 1819, 
 
 aged 39 (On the stone with her son 
 
 Nathaniel, Jr.) 
 Louisa, daughter of Thomas and Patty, died 
 
 14 March 1828, aged 6 months 
 Lucy, wife of Joseph, eldest daughter of 
 
 Simeon Jenkins of Barnstable, died 8th 
 
 September 1801, in her 23d year 
 Martha, widow of Seth, died 28 August 1817, 
 
 aged 82 
 Mary, wife of James, died 15 September 1789, 
 
 aged 19 years 
 , infant son of James and Mary, 
 
 (On the stone with the Mary who died 
 
 1789) 
 Mary, wife of James, died 27 April 1796, aged 
 
 23 years 
 Mary, wife of Josiah, died 24 January 1799, 
 
 aged 24 years 
 Mary L., died 7 March 1823, aged 7 years 
 
 9 months 
 
208 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 NICKERSON 
 
 Nabby Y., daughter of Nathaniel and Linda, 
 
 died 1 August 1808, aged 7 months 6 days 
 Nathaniel, died 27 July 1823, aged 48 
 Nathaniel Jr., drowned 13 May 1820, aged 
 
 17 years 8 months (On the stone with 
 
 Linda, wife of Nathaniel) 
 Deacon Nehemiah, died 31 January 1804 in 
 
 his 79th year 
 Phebe, wife of Capt. Elisha, died 22 Septem- 
 ber 1809, in her 25th year 
 , infant daughter of Capt. Elisha 
 
 and Phebe, died 26 November 1809, aged 
 
 2 months 13 days (on its mother's stone) 
 Phineas, son of Phineas and Phebe, died 23 
 
 July 1800, aged 2 years 6 months 23 
 
 days 
 Sally, wife of Josiah, died 3 March 1794, in 
 
 her 21st year 
 Sally, daughter of Seth and Isabel, died 4 
 
 March 1796, aged 7 years 
 Sally, daughter of Josiah and Mary, died 28 
 
 November 1798, aged 20 months 
 Sally, daughter of Jonathan and Bethiah, 
 
 drowned 1 October 1808, aged 2 years 
 
 8 months 
 Sally, wife of Caleb, died 30 June 1827, aged 26 
 Salome, wife of Ebenezer, died 11 June 1804, 
 
 in her 36th year 
 Sarah, wife of Simeon C, died 5 July 1839, 
 
 aged 28 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 209 
 
 (On the stone with her husband) 
 Seth, died 10 September 1789, in his 56th year 
 Seth, died 11 April 1801, aged 63 years 
 Simeon C, lost at sea, in 1837, aged 28 
 
 (On the stone of his wife Sarah) 
 Susanna, wife of Phineas, died 19 May 1802, 
 
 aged 64 years 
 , infant of Timothy and Mary H., 
 
 died 3 April 1843 
 , infant of Timothy and Mary H., 
 
 died 29 April 1844 
 
 infant of Timothy and Mary H., 
 
 died 26 October 1851 
 (These three on one stone) 
 
 Uriah, son of Elijah and Jemima, died 24 
 October 1788, aged 12 days 
 
 William, son of William and Abigail C, died 
 23 September 1796, aged 14 months 
 
 W^illiam, died 4 January 1817, aged 45 years 
 ORCOTT 
 
 Hannah, widow of Reuben, died 13 Novem- 
 ber 1825, aged 67 
 
 Reuben, died 16 September 1814, in his 60th 
 year 
 
 PAINE 
 
 Abigail, wife of Isaac, died 6 July 1834, aged 31 
 Elkanah, son of Henry and Mercy, died 10 
 October 1803, aged 4 years 9 months 
 14 days 
 Enos N., son of Lot and Olive, died 20 Novem- 
 ber 1832, aged 11 months 15 days 
 
210 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Isaac, son of Moses and Priscilla, died 10 
 
 October 1799, aged 4 years (on the stone 
 
 with his sister Priscilla) 
 Isaac, son of Isaac and Sylvia, died 7 Septem- 
 ber 1848, aged 1 month (On the stone 
 
 with his brother Isaac B.) 
 Isaac B., son of Isaac and Sylvia, died 7 
 
 August 1848, aged 2 years 6 months 
 Isaac, died 27 August 1855, aged 54 years 
 
 (On the stone with Barnabus Atwood) 
 Capt. Lot, died 11 May 1853, aged 64 years 
 Mary, wife of Henry, died 27 October 1797, 
 
 in her 31st year 
 Mercy, daughter of Henry and Mercy, died 
 
 5 November 1803, aged 2 years 4 months 
 
 15 days 
 Olive, wife of Lot, died 5 September 1847, 
 
 aged 53 years 
 Phineas, son of Isaac and Abigail, died 26 
 
 July 1824, aged 11 months 
 Phineas, son of Isaac and Abigail, died 29 
 
 June 1832, aged 7 years 
 Prissa, daughter of Moses and Priscilla, died 
 
 11 October 1799, aged 2 years (On the 
 
 stone with her brother Isaac) 
 Stephen H., died 15 November 1848, aged 
 
 21 years 2 months 
 Susan N., daughter of Isaac and Abigail, died 
 
 25 December 1834, aged 6 months 22 
 
 days 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 211 
 
 Mrs. Sylvia, died 17 May 1872, aged 65 years 
 
 9 months 17 days 
 
 PALMER 
 
 William, died 17 September 1834, aged 44 
 
 PARK 
 
 Eliza N., daughter of EHsha and Susanna, 
 died 18 June 1844, aged 7 years 8 months 
 
 Ellen N., daughter of Elijah and Susanna, 
 died 4 January 1845, aged 3 years 1 month 
 
 10 days 
 
 Susanna, wife of Elisha, died 14 April 1844, 
 aged 32 
 
 PARKER 
 
 Rev. Samuel, born in Barnstable 18 Novem- 
 ber 1740, died 11 April 1812. The first 
 settled minister in Provincetown. Was 
 ordained in Provincetown in the autumn 
 of A. D. 1769 
 
 Mary, wife of the Rev. Samuel, died 20 No- 
 vember 1785, in her 32d year. Best of 
 wives, tenderest of mothers 
 
 PARRY or PERRY 
 
 Rebecca, wife of Richard, died 29 June 1798, 
 
 in her 53d year 
 Richard Jr., died 30 April 1805, aged 31 
 Mrs. Elizabeth, died 12 January 1812, in her 
 
 40th year 
 Richard, born 6 June 1805, died 25 November 
 
 1873 
 
212 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 PARSONS 
 
 John W. B., son of Joshua and Ann, died 30 
 August 1856, aged 2 years 22 days 
 
 Martha Ellen, daughter of Joshua and Ann, 
 died 20 February 1852, aged 5 days 
 
 Mary Jane, daughter of Joshua and Ann, 
 died 27 August 1850, aged 22 months 
 (These three on one stone) 
 PECK 
 
 Bethiah, wife of Dr. Stephen, died 27 Septem- 
 ber 1810, in her 23d year 
 
 Dr. Stephen, died 1 August 1818, aged 41 years 
 
 PIERCE 
 
 Patty, widow of Scammons Hopkins, of Wil- 
 liam Miers, and of William Pierce, 
 daughter of Prince and Tryphena Free- 
 man, born 1802, died 25 December 1864 
 
 William, 3rd husband of Patty, born 1794, 
 died 1860 
 
 (Both on the Scammons Hopkins obelisk) 
 
 RICH 
 
 Betsey A., daughter of Solomon and Sally, 
 died 28 June 1833, in her 19th year 
 
 Solomon S., son of Solomon and Sally, lost 
 at sea in the summer of 1831, in his 23d 
 year (On the stone with his sister Betsey) 
 
 Deacon Solomon, died 14 January 1855, aged 
 75 years 
 
 Sarah, wife of Deacon Solomon, died 9 Aug- 
 ust 1846, in her 73d year 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 213 
 
 RIDER or RYDER 
 
 Anna, wife of David, died 1 May 1820, aged 55 
 Atkins, son of Samuel and Lydia, died 19 
 
 August 1794, aged 16 months 
 Benjamin, died 29 December 1759, in his 73d 
 
 year 
 Benjamin, son of Samuel and Lydia, died 7 
 
 March 1796, in his 5th year 
 Benjamin, son of David and Lucy, died 10 
 
 August 1827, aged 7 months 
 David, died 1 April 1760 in his 24th year 
 Deacon David, died 12 February 1841, aged 
 79 years (On the stone with Capt. Wil- 
 liam) 
 Ebenezer, died 16 March 1809, aged 74 
 Elisha, son of David and Anna, died 21 De- 
 cember 1795, aged 1 year 8 months 
 Experience, wife of Samuel, died 21 December 
 
 1745, aged 40 years 
 Rebecca, widow of Thomas, died 13 Decem- 
 ber 1793, in her 54th year 
 Samuel, died 6 January 1745-6, aged 45 years 
 Sylva, wife of Isaiah, died 8 January 1823, 
 
 aged 49 
 Thomas, died 8 October 1786, aged 49 years 
 William, Capt., drowned at sea 21 September 
 1835, aged 29 years (on the stone of 
 Deacon David) 
 
 RIDLEY 
 
 Elizabeth, wife of Thomas, died 14 April 1792, 
 aged 74 
 
214 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 ROBERTS 
 
 George N., son of Charles W. and Ruth S., 
 born 13 September 1849, died 13 Septem- 
 ber 1850 (On his mother's stone) 
 
 James, son of David and Margaret, died 10 
 November 1848, aged 14 months 7 days 
 
 Ruth S., wife of Charles W., born 18 January 
 1828, died 7 August 1850 (On the stone 
 with George N.) 
 
 ROTCH 
 
 Samuel, son of William and Mary, died 22 
 May 1736, in his 15th year 
 
 SEARS 
 
 Joseph, born 27 May 1803, died 3 October 1853 
 Olive P., daughter of Joseph and Hannah, 
 died 7 A4ay 1842, aged 1 year 9 months 
 5 days (On the stone with Joseph) 
 
 SMALL 
 
 Heman, died 24 July 1838, aged 32 years 
 Mehitable, wife of Lot, died 30 November 
 
 1842, aged 22 
 Polly, wife of Isaac, died 7 August 1826, aged 
 
 52 
 Samuel, died 28 April 1856, aged 84 years 
 Thomas, R. died 13 March 1839, aged 25 
 
 years 
 
 SMALLEY 
 
 Betsey, wife of Thomas, died 12 November 
 1803, in her 37th year 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 215 
 
 Hicks, son of Samuel and Sarah, lost at sea 
 
 30 October 1823, aged 25 
 Loiza W., daughter of Capt. Thomas and 
 
 Hannah, died 5 April 1807, aged 7 
 
 months 
 three infant daughters of Capt. 
 
 Thomas and Betsey (On the stone with 
 
 Loiza W.) 
 Mary, wife of Taylor, died 4 January 1815, 
 
 in her 52d year 
 Sarah, wife of Samuel, died 26 September 
 
 1830, aged 52 
 Taylor, died 1 May 1835, aged 71 
 Uriah, son of Samuel and Sarah, lost at sea 
 
 26 July 1824, aged 20 
 (Hicks, Sarah, and Uriah all on one stone) 
 
 SMITH 
 
 Elizabeth, wife of Seth, died 25 December 
 
 1803, in her 58th year 
 Esther, wife of Ebenezer, died 14 February 
 
 1823, aged 33 
 Hannah, daughter of Richard P., and Sally, 
 
 died 29 September 1835, aged 1 year 
 Harriet, daughter of Richard F. and Sally, 
 
 died 11 September 1828, aged 18 months 
 
 9 days 
 Heman N., son of Jonah E. and Clarissa, died 
 
 6 September 1841, aged 8 months 
 Heman N., son of Jonah E. and Clarissa, died 
 
 5 October 1843, aged 11 months 
 
216 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Josiah, son of Jonah E. and Clarissa, died 12 
 
 August 1839, aged 13 months 
 
 (These three on one stone) 
 
 James Jr., died 1 October 1807, in his 25th year 
 
 Lorilla, daughter of Richard F. and Sally, 
 
 died 29 September 1838, aged 11 months 
 
 Mary, wife of Joshua, died 21 October 1831, 
 
 aged 41 
 Mary, wife of Capt. Ebenezer, died 23 De- 
 cember 1833, aged 40 
 Ruth, wife of Seth, died 29 August 1829, aged 
 
 59 
 Seth, died 17 November 1802, in his 60th year 
 Seth, died 20 July 1835, aged 64 
 Susanna, wife of Edward, died 20 August 1848 
 aged 54 years 9 months 
 
 SOPER 
 
 Betsy, wife of Capt. Samuel, died 15 April 
 
 1826, aged 30 years 
 Eben N., son of Capt. Samuel and Eveline, 
 
 died 23 September 1836, aged 2 years 6 
 
 months 
 Elisha H., son of Capt. Samuel and Betsy, 
 
 died 10 September 1826, aged 5 months 
 
 12 days 
 Eveline N., 31 May 1804: 9 October 1900 
 
 , infant died 3 November 1818 
 
 Salome C, daughter of Capt. Samuel and 
 
 Eveline, died 17 April 1832, aged 4 years 
 
 4 months 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 217 
 
 Capt. Samuel, died 8 December 1860, aged 
 69 years 4 months (above all on the 
 Soper obelisk) 
 Isabel, daughter of Robert and Isabel, died 
 17 August 1796, aged 9 months 8 days 
 STONE 
 
 Elizabeth A., daughter of Rev. Nathaniel and 
 
 Mary, died 26 June 1816, aged 13 
 John Andrew, son of Rev. Nathaniel and 
 Mary, died 18 April 1813, aged 9 years 
 SWIFT 
 
 Josiah, son of John and Lydia, died 5 Sep- 
 tember 1816, aged 1 year 9 months 15 
 days 
 TALCOTT 
 
 Capt. John, of Glastonbury, Conn., son of 
 Deacon Benjamin. Died here on his re- 
 turn after the victory obtained at Cape 
 Breton, A. D. 1845, in his 41st year 
 
 THOMAS 
 
 Orasmus Esq., born at Brookfield, Mass. 18 
 
 March 1771, died at Provincetown 2 
 
 November 1822 
 Orasmus Jr., born at Provincetown 17 June 
 
 1808, died at Port au Prince 11 January 
 
 1841 (both on one stone) 
 
 TUBBS 
 
 Dorcas, died 11 July 1811, aged 49 
 Nathan, lost at sea, aged 33 
 Nathan Jr., lost at sea 11 July 1816 aged 19 
 (All on one stone) 
 
218 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 WALKER 
 
 Jabez, died 24 December 1798, aged 19 years 
 WATKINS 
 
 Sarah, widow of Capt. Thomas, died 27 
 
 August 1831, aged 11 
 Thomas, died 20 July 1824, aged 73 
 WEEKS 
 
 Ruth, Mrs., daughter of Prince and Tryphena 
 
 Freeman, born 1819, died 1844 (On the 
 
 Scammons Hopkins obelisk) 
 Ruth, wife of John C, died 27 August 1844, 
 
 aged 25 years. (Two records of the same 
 
 person) 
 WELLS 
 
 Sarah H., daughter of Edward and EHzabeth 
 
 A., died 27 August 1849, aged 7 months 
 
 13 days 
 WHORF 
 
 Jonathan F., died 16 November 1820, in his 
 
 20th year 
 Sarah Ann, wife of John died 9 December 
 
 1791, in her 64th year 
 WINSLOW 
 
 James, lost at sea 2 March 1846, aged 27 years 
 Mary S., died 25 October 1892, aged 72 
 YOUNG 
 
 David, born 7 March 1758, died 30 October 
 
 1832 
 Capt. David, born 15 February 1795, died 
 
 19 September 1872 
 Eleazer, son of Eleazer and Rebecca, died 24 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 219 
 
 January 1829, aged 37 years 2 months 
 
 24 days 
 Eleazer, died 1 January 1832, aged 72 (On 
 
 stone with William N.) 
 Elizabeth, widow of David, born 17 August 
 
 1764, died 10 December 1840 
 Fanny, wife of Nehemiah, died 22 December 
 
 1831, aged 30 
 Hannah, wife of David, died 13 March 1847, 
 
 aged 463^ years 
 Hannah S., daughter of Eleazer and Rebecca, 
 
 died 1 March 1837, aged 11 years 4 
 
 months 
 Isaiah, son of Elisha and Hannah, died 9 
 
 June 1803, aged 3 years 6 months 
 Isaiah, died 5 September 1815, aged 34 
 Nabby, wife of Reuben, died 15 April 1794 
 
 in her 33d year 
 Nehemiah, died 17 June 1877, aged 80 years, 
 
 9 months 24 days 
 Phebe H., daughter of Nehemiah and Fanny, 
 
 died 18 December 1822, aged 6 months, 
 Rebecca, wife of Eleazer, died 18 April 1804, 
 
 in her 47th year 
 Rebecca, wife of David, died 8 December 
 
 1849, aged 57)^ years 
 Sarah, wife of Eleazer, died 17 June 1823, 
 
 aged 53 years (on stone with her son 
 Freeman M. Bowley) 
 Mrs. Tamsin, died 23 January 1887, aged 
 88 years 22 days 
 
220 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 William N., son of Eleazer, lost at sea 1831, 
 aged 24 (On the stone of Eleazer, who 
 died 1832) 
 
List of Teachers in the 
 Provincetown High School 
 
 PRINCIPALS 
 
 1849 — Freeman Nickerson 
 
 1852 — James Crocker 
 
 1853 — James T. Allen 
 
 1854 — E. Albee, for seven weeks 
 1854— Freeman N. Blake 
 
 1855 — Eben S. Whittemore 
 
 1856 — The school was discontinued 
 
 1857 — A. L. Putnam 
 
 1858 — Alexander Rankin 
 
 1860 — Isaac Smith 
 
 1861 — Harrison Leland 
 
 1861 — Albert Stetson 
 
 1862 — Edward B. McCarty 
 
 1863 — Henry Leonard 
 
 1863 — Samuel G. Stone 
 
 1864 — Solomon H. Brackett 
 
 1865 — Ansel O. Burt 
 
 1870 — Henry F. Burt 
 
 1871 — Mr. Sheldon 
 
 1872 — Albert F. Blaisdell 
 
222 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 1875 — A. G. Fisher 
 1878 — J. B. Hingeley 
 1882 — A. M. Osgood 
 1884— Charles D. Seeley 
 1884— Frank Wiggin 
 1889 — S.H.Baker 
 1891 — W. M. McKenzie 
 1891 — W. H. Walralf 
 1891 — Ira Jenkins 
 1907 — Percy C. Giles 
 
 1909 — Charles P. Savary 
 
 1910 — A. L. Bennett 
 
 1911 — Charles A. Sprout 
 
 1911 — M. F. Holbrook 
 
 1912 — Alvin Thomas 
 1915— Albert Norris 
 1915 — Aubrey F. Hills 
 1919 — Edith L. Bush 
 1921 — William H.Winslow 
 
 ASSISTANTS 
 
 C. A. Rogers 
 Eliza A. Cook 
 Anna M. Kittridge 
 Mary Cook Johnson 
 Lucia N. Cook 
 Lizzie Chase 
 Sara A. Hamlin 
 Hattie F. Weeks 
 Nancy W. Paine 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 223 
 
 Emma Baxter 
 
 Lucinda W. Whorf 
 
 Alice Shortle 
 
 Emma Gardner 
 
 Phoebe E. Freeman 
 
 Carra Wilcox 
 
 Jennie G. Freeman 
 
 Isabelle Gilpatrick 
 
 Ruth E. Thomas 
 
 Elizabeth Moseley 
 
 Martha E. Fernald 
 
 Joyce Bisbee 
 
 Stephen Fitzgerald 
 
 Penelope Kern 
 
 Elsie G. Moreau 
 
 Porter G. Penn 
 
 Kathleen Donovan 
 
 Sarah A. Everett 
 
 Benjamin Bissell 
 
 Mrs. Osmond Cummings Jr. 
 
 Ann Featherstone 
 
 Adeline Wetmore 
 
 Phillip Skerry 
 
 and others 
 
Roster of the Provincetown 
 Seminary 1845-6 
 
 Gentlemen's Department 
 
 Benjamin D. Atkins 
 Alfred Adams 
 Peter Avery 
 Joseph Russell Atkins 
 Henry F. Baker 
 Reuben L, Bangs 
 Benjamin Brown 
 Paul L. Bangs 
 Oliver E. Bailey 
 Elisha Baker 
 William Bulger 
 Benjamin D. Crocker 
 Atkins D. Cook 
 Joseph Cook 
 Ephraim P. Cook 
 Reuben F. Cook 
 William Clark 
 John Curren 
 E. Kibbe Cook 
 Benjamin Coan 
 
 Elisha W. Cobb 
 Nathaniel Covell 
 Lamuel Cook 
 Benjamin Crosby 
 Oliver B. Conant 
 Cornelius Cook 
 James Cashman 
 David R. Cook 
 Phineas Cutter 
 William T. Collins 
 Elisha Cook 
 Daniel N. Clark 
 Henry T. Dyer 
 Atkins Dyer 
 William L. Dyer 
 Amasa Dyer 
 William T. Dutton 
 Nehemiah M. Dyer 
 James S. Dyer 
 John Evans 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 225 
 
 John L. Eldridge 
 Oren R. Dunham 
 James C. Dunham 
 Thomas Watkins Dyer 
 Nathan D. Freeman 
 Francis C. Freeman 
 Ezra Freeman 
 Augustus M. Freeman 
 Jesse Freeman 
 Asa A. Franzen 
 Nathaniel Freeman 
 Samuel H. Ghen 
 John M. Gill 
 Henry S. Ghen 
 Alexander Galer 
 E. Henry Harvender 
 N. P. Holmes 
 James M, Holmes 
 James Hopkins 
 Solomon Higgins 
 Haskell P. Higgins 
 James Kenyon 
 John W. Lovejoy 
 Phillip Lovejoy 
 Albert W. Lavender 
 John R. Lavender 
 Joseph A. Lavender 
 Edmund B. Lord 
 Henry J. Lancy 
 Phillip C. Lewis 
 Atwood Mott 
 
 Silas Mott 
 H. S. Miller 
 Francis C. Miller 
 Charles E. Morgan 
 George W. Nickerson 
 Solomon D. Nickerson 
 Joshua Nickerson 
 Charles W. Nickerson 
 Amos Nickerson 
 Stephen T. Nickerson 
 Solomon Newcomb 
 James Nickerson 
 Richard Elliot Nickerson 
 Jesse Nickerson 
 Frederic W. Proctor 
 Abner L. Pettis 
 Lysander N. Paine 
 Henry Paine 
 Michael A. Parker 
 Xenophon Rich 
 James N. Rich 
 David Ryder 
 William T. Ryder 
 Benjamin Ryder, Jr, 
 Thomas Ryder 
 Henry Ryder 
 Reuben C. Small 
 Abram Small 
 Alexander Small 
 Uriah Small 
 George O, Smith 
 
226 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Freeman A. Smith 
 James H. Small 
 Benjamin F. Small 
 Samuel C. Small 
 Ebenezer A. Shed 
 Zenas Snow- 
 Henry A. F. F. Smith 
 J. D. P. Small 
 Samuel T. Soper 
 Richard R. Small 
 Robert Soper 
 Joseph Swasey 
 Gamaliel Smith 
 B. H. Small 
 Thomas D. Smith 
 Phillip R. Smith 
 William H. Sprague 
 Jesse E. Smith 
 Samuel G. Smith 
 
 Josiah F. Small 
 Joshua P. Small 
 Taylor Small 
 John T. Small 
 George Thatcher 
 William R. Taylor 
 Michael Turben 
 Benjamin Turner 
 Andrew T. Williams 
 Richard S. White 
 Eliphat Whilding 
 Nicholas White 
 Edward Q. Weeks 
 Enos N. Young 
 Newcomb C. Young 
 Elisha T. Young 
 John W. Young 
 Charles A. Young 
 Eleazer Young 
 
 Ladies' Department 
 
 Hannah W. Atkins 
 Sarah E. Atkins 
 Clarissa A. Atwood 
 Sarah Maria Adams 
 Ruhamah H. Atkins 
 Olive Atkins 
 Nancy Avery 
 Mary N. Adams 
 Betsey K. Bowley 
 
 Euphemia Brown 
 Mary H. Baker 
 Maria O. Crocker 
 Naomi B. Cook 
 Phoebe W. Cook 
 Mercy F. Crosby 
 Martha W. Cook 
 Rebecca Cook 
 Mary A. Cayton 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 227 
 
 Ann Gross Cook 
 Martha A. Collins 
 Phoebe N. Cook 
 Elizabeth Cook 
 Rebecca Cook 
 Phoebe A. Cook 
 Sarah L. Cook 
 Sarah M. Dyer 
 Eunice B. Dyer 
 Parmelia Ann Dyer 
 Malintha Dyer 
 S. Maria Dyer 
 Betsey E. Dyer 
 Thankful Dyer 
 Susan R. Eldridge 
 Eliza A. Freeman 
 Cynthia Freeman 
 Phoebe Freeman 
 Abigail Freeman 
 Eunice Gross 
 Savina Galagher 
 Sarah H. Ghen 
 Martha A. Holmes 
 Malvina C. Higgins 
 Rebecca A. Higgins 
 Abigail H. Howes 
 Caroline Howard 
 Bethia Higgins 
 Aseneth Howe 
 Almira G. Hudson 
 Mary B. Hilliard 
 
 Adeline C. Hilliard 
 Paulina B. Hilliard 
 Deborah Harvender 
 Matilda A. Harvender 
 Hannah Hill 
 Mary C. Johnson 
 Martha A. Johnson 
 Susan M. Kelley 
 Adeline E. Lovejoy 
 Sabra C. Lewis 
 Aphia C. Nickerson 
 Rebecca F. Nickerson 
 Lucy M. Nickerson 
 Ellen Nickerson 
 Melvina F. Nickerson 
 Louisa A. Nickerson 
 Sarah Newcomb 
 Miranda J. Nickerson 
 Sarah G. Peterson 
 Belinda N. Pettingill 
 Fanny Roxanna Paine 
 Martha A. Pettis 
 Rebecca Pierce 
 Sarah Parks 
 Rebecca R. Ridley 
 Hannah W. Rich 
 Mary Rich 
 Betsey N. Ryder 
 Rebecca Ryder 
 Ruth C. Ryder 
 Mary A. Ryder 
 
228 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Hannah N. Small 
 Mary S. N. Small 
 Ann S. Small 
 Emily J. Shed 
 Harriet N. Small 
 Esther T. Small 
 Sarah Small 
 Salome C. Soper 
 Elizabeth T. Small 
 Mary Joan Smith 
 Jane C. Small 
 M. E. Smith 
 
 Lucinda H. Smith 
 Delia Ann Smith 
 Augusta Small 
 Betsey C. Small 
 Abigail Small 
 Hannah Thatcher 
 Harriet B. Thomas 
 Electa A. Whitney 
 Henrietta L. Whitney 
 Harriet N. White 
 Abigail F. Weeks 
 Harriet M. Young 
 Dorinda Young 
 
List of Provincetown 
 Whalers 
 
 From History of American Whale Fishing, by 
 Alexander Starbuck 
 
 Agents 
 
 Name 
 
 Captains 
 
 
 1820 
 
 Laurel 
 
 Cook 
 
 Margaret 
 
 Atwood 
 
 Minerva 
 
 Soper 
 
 Nero 
 
 Smalley 
 
 Neptune 
 
 Cook 
 
 Sophronia 
 
 Smith, Ryder 
 
 
 1821 
 
 Cora 
 
 
 Charles 
 
 Grozier 
 
 President 
 
 Soper 
 
 Unitaro 
 
 
 Vesta 
 
 Holmes 
 
 
 1822 
 
 Four Brothers 
 
 
 General Jackson 
 
 Atkins 
 
 Hannah and Eliza 
 
 Cook 
 
 Mary 
 
 Cook 
 
230 THE 
 
 PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Name 
 
 Captains Agents 
 
 Olive Branch 
 
 Cook 
 
 Seventh Son 
 
 Cook 
 
 
 1823 
 
 Ardent 
 
 Soper 
 
 
 1831 
 
 Fair Play 
 
 
 
 1834 
 
 Imogene 
 
 Smalley James Smalley 
 
 
 Atkins 
 
 
 1836 
 
 Louisa 
 
 Tilson, Cook, 
 
 
 Young, Ryder 
 
 
 1840 
 
 Fairy 
 Franklin 
 
 Phoenix 
 
 Belle Isle 
 
 Ginn, Cook, Abraham Small 
 Soper 
 
 Soper, Robert Soper 
 
 Nickerson, 
 
 O. W. AUerton 
 
 Gem 
 
 Small 
 Puffer 
 
 1841 
 Cook 
 Smith 
 Howard 
 Turner 
 Nye 
 Fluker 
 Nickerson 
 
 Leonard Small 
 
 Eben Cook 
 
 Timothy P. Johnson 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 231 
 
 Name Captains Agents 
 
 John B, Dods Prior, Ghen E. S. Smith 
 
 Winslow 
 Spartan James Small Stephen Nickerson 
 
 Cook 
 Samuel and Thomas Soper, Swift Samuel Soper 
 
 Nickerson 
 
 Swift 
 William Henry Ryder Godfrey Ryder 
 
 Cook, Chase 
 
 Amazon 
 Carter Braxton 
 Joshua Brown 
 Pacific 
 
 Louisa Handy 
 
 1842 
 
 Cook 
 
 Sparks Joseph Atkins 
 
 Small, Ghen Seth Nickerson 
 
 Cook, Tilson Stephen Cook Jr., 
 
 Perry D. Small 
 
 Cook, Handy 
 
 Ryder 
 
 Edwin 
 
 Esquimaux 
 
 Medford 
 
 Rienzin 
 
 Stranger 
 
 1844 
 
 Cook 
 
 Cook Parker Cook 
 
 Cook, Dyer 
 
 Ryder 
 
 Cook, Snow 
 
 Joseph, Caton 
 
 Miliken, Goodspeed 
 
232 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Name 
 
 Captains 
 
 Agents 
 
 
 1845 
 
 
 Cadmus 
 
 Soper 
 
 Nickerson 
 
 Samuel Soper 
 
 Counsel 
 
 Ghen 
 
 Samuel Cook, 
 
 
 Higgins 
 
 Howe & Lord 
 
 Carter Braxton 
 
 Martin 
 
 J. Adams 
 
 Grand Island 
 
 Cook 
 
 S. Cook 
 
 Jane Howes 
 
 Bowley 
 
 Nickerson 
 
 Doyle 
 
 
 John Adams 
 
 Higgins 
 
 Freeman 
 
 Burch 
 
 Doyle 
 
 Ghen 
 
 R. L. Thatcher 
 
 Outesie 
 
 Chapman 
 
 C. U. Grozier 
 
 Parker Cook 
 
 Smith, Cook 
 
 
 Tarquin 
 
 Sparks 
 1846 
 
 H. Sparks 
 
 Samuel Cook 
 
 Cook 
 Handy 
 
 1849 
 
 S. Cook 
 
 Allstrum 
 
 Ghenn 
 
 
 Chanticleer 
 
 Cook, Youn^ 
 Dyer 
 
 > 
 
 E. R. Cook 
 
 Cook 
 Higgins 
 
 Cornell 
 Nickerson 
 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Name Captains Agents 
 
 233 
 
 Robert Raikes 
 Sam Cook 
 Shylock 
 
 Swift 
 Atson, Smith 
 Hersey 
 Green 
 
 Ephraim Cook 
 
 1850 
 
 A, Nickerson 
 
 Sparks 
 Cornell 
 
 J. H. Hilliard 
 
 C. Allstrum 
 
 Snow 
 
 J. Adams 
 
 E. Nickerson 
 
 Nickerson 
 Ryder 
 Soper 
 Pettingill 
 
 Enoch Nickerson 
 
 Harriet Neal 
 
 Bush, Rydei 
 
 • R. L. Thatcher 
 
 H. N. Williams 
 
 Fisher 
 Joseph 
 Young 
 
 Phillip Cook 
 
 Jane Howes 
 
 Young 
 
 J. E. Bowley 
 
 John Adams 
 
 Freeman 
 
 John Adams 
 
 Lewis Bruce 
 
 Young 
 
 B. Allstrum 
 
 Medford 
 
 Dyer 
 
 Ephraim Cook 
 
 R. E. Cook 
 
 Cook 
 
 Nickerson 
 Tilson 
 
 John Dunlap 
 
 Rienzi 
 
 Iverson 
 
 J. E. Bowley 
 
 Shylock 
 
 Hersey 
 
 Nathaniel Holmes 
 
 Union 
 
 Smith 
 
 Jonathan Nickerson 
 
234 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Name 
 
 Captains 
 
 Agents 
 
 Vesta 
 
 Rich 
 
 Phillip Rich 
 
 Virginia 
 
 Morton 
 
 Winsor Snow 
 
 Walter Irving 
 
 Nickerson 
 Small, Paine 
 Holmes 
 Atkins, Law 
 
 Atkins Nickerson 
 
 Walter K. 
 
 Tillson 
 Heath 
 Ghen 
 
 Henry Cook 
 
 Willis Putnam 
 
 Foster 
 1851 
 
 E. S. Smith 
 
 Alexander 
 
 Young 
 
 B. Allstrum, John- 
 
 
 Cook 
 
 son & Cook 
 
 
 Nickerson 
 
 
 
 Dunham 
 
 
 
 Rich 
 
 
 
 Carlo w 
 
 
 
 Hopkins 
 
 
 Antartic 
 
 Howard 
 Snow, Costa 
 Young, Hill 
 Bell, West 
 Johnson 
 
 J. E. Bowley 
 
 Hanover 
 
 Holmes 
 
 T. Hilliard 
 
 Preston 
 
 Handy- 
 Smith 
 
 Samuel Cook 
 
 Sea Shell 
 
 Cook 
 
 E. Cook 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 235 
 
 Name 
 Eschol (Truro 
 
 Alleghany 
 
 Captains Agents 
 
 F. Bunchina 
 Germ (Truro) 
 
 S. R. Soper 
 
 Montezuma 
 
 Mountain Spring 
 Richard 
 Seychelle 
 Waldron Holmes 
 
 Smith 
 
 Nickerson 
 
 Miller 
 
 Richard Stevens 
 Hannum & Co. 
 Robert M. Miller 
 
 Enoch Nickerson 
 Daniel C. Cook 
 
 1852 
 
 Cook 
 
 Young 
 
 Nickerson 
 
 Dyer 
 
 Graham 
 
 Fisher, Snow 
 
 Francis B. 
 
 Tuck 
 Rich Richard Stevens 
 
 Goodspeed 
 Ryan 
 
 Soper, Cook S. Soper 
 Abbott 
 Needham 
 Eldridge 
 
 1853 
 
 Freeman T. Hilliard 
 
 Chapman 
 
 Curren, Nye 
 
 Young J. E. Bowley 
 
 Young 
 
 Young 
 Holmes 
 
 Allstrum and 
 Holmes 
 
236 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Name 
 
 Captains Agents 
 
 M. King 
 
 Pettingill Thatcher, Cook & Co, 
 
 
 1856 
 
 Acorn 
 
 Puffer Nickerson & Tuck 
 
 J. H. Duvall 
 
 Young J. E. & G. Bowley 
 
 Olive Clark 
 
 Tribble S. Soper 
 
 
 Martyne 
 
 
 Tucks, Sparks 
 
 
 Dyer, Atkins 
 
 V. Doane 
 
 Cook, Dyer H. & S. Cook & Co. 
 
 
 1857 
 
 Emporium 
 
 Cook D. C. Cook 
 
 
 Curren 
 
 
 Caton, Leach 
 
 
 Dyer 
 
 
 Chandler 
 
 
 Young 
 
 
 Downer 
 
 E. Nickerson 
 
 John Samuel Soper 
 
 
 Pettingill 
 
 Estella 
 
 Chapman J. E. & G. Bowley 
 
 
 Snow, Higgins 
 
 Montezuma 
 
 Chapman T. & S. Milliard 
 
 N. J. Knights 
 
 Sparks D. Conwell 
 
 
 Dyer 
 
 
 Foster 
 
 Oriad 
 
 Bannister E. S. Smith & Co. 
 
 Panama 
 
 Rich John Adams 
 
 
 George Powe 
 
 Thriver 
 
 Leonard S. Small 
 
 
 Small 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 237 
 
 Name 
 
 Captains 
 
 Agents 
 
 V. H. Hill 
 
 Freeman 
 
 Cornell 
 
 Small 
 
 1858 
 
 E. & G. Bowley 
 
 Metropolis 
 
 Graham 
 
 
 Oneco 
 
 Herrick 
 
 
 Oread 
 
 Farwell 
 Young 
 
 1860 
 
 E. S. Smith & Co. 
 
 Civilian 
 
 Burch 
 
 
 Mermaid 
 
 Robert 
 Soper, Jr. 
 
 S. R. Soper 
 
 Weather Gage 
 
 S. C. Small 
 1861 
 
 H. & S. Cook & Co. 
 
 Arizona 
 
 Cook 
 
 Goodspeed 
 John Bell 
 Higgins 
 White 
 
 Stephen Cook 
 
 Courser 
 
 Young 
 
 H. & S. Cook & Co, 
 
 E. H. Hatfield 
 
 Cook, Small 
 
 E. & E. K. Cook 
 
 
 Rich, Keith 
 
 &Co. 
 
 
 Burch 
 
 
 
 Freeman 
 
 
 
 Kirkconnell 
 
 
 E. Gerry 
 
 Small 
 
 Remington 
 
 Dunham 
 
 Taylor 
 
238 THE 
 
 PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Name 
 
 Captains Agents 
 
 
 Smith, Emery 
 
 
 Fisher 
 
 G. W. Lewis 
 
 Holmes E. & E. K. Cook 
 
 
 & Co. 
 
 Quickstep 
 
 Cook, E. & E. K. Cook 
 
 
 Ryder & Co. 
 
 
 Thompson 
 
 
 Burch, Manley 
 
 
 Chas. Marston 
 
 William Martin 
 
 Martin Heman Smith 
 
 Abbie H. Brown 
 C. L. Sparks 
 
 Courser 
 Ellen Rizpah 
 
 Rising Sun 
 
 1862 
 Higgins 
 Ewell 
 Sparks 
 Roberts 
 Atwood 
 Silas S. 
 
 Young 
 Smith 
 Taylor 
 Dunham 
 Young 
 Taylor 
 Clark 
 Freeman 
 Stevenson 
 Gonsaloes 
 Sparks 
 
 (Orleans) 
 E. & E. K. Cook 
 
 D. Conwell 
 
 H. & S. Cook & Co. 
 Stephen Cook & Co. 
 
 E. S. Smith & Co. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 239 
 
 Name 
 
 Captains 
 
 Agents 
 
 Watchman 
 
 Tillson, 
 
 Stidd 
 
 J. E. Cook 
 
 1863 
 
 Jesse Cook 
 
 E. B. Conwell 
 
 Kilborn 
 Marshall 
 Cannon 
 Cook 
 
 D. Conwell 
 
 Sassacus 
 
 Ryde- 
 
 Freeman 
 
 Leach 
 
 Nickerson 
 Nickerson 
 
 1865 
 
 E. & E. K. Cook 
 
 Mary Curren 
 
 Curren 
 Farwell 
 Fisher 
 
 Nye, Taylor 
 Nye, Taylor 
 
 Freeman & Hilliard 
 
 M. E. Simmons 
 
 Cook 
 Parsons 
 
 1866 
 
 E. & E. K. Cook 
 
 A. L. Putnam 
 
 Handy 
 
 H. & S. Cook & Co, 
 
 Alcyone 
 
 Dyer, Smith 
 
 E. & E. K. Cook & 
 
 
 Hudson 
 
 Co. 
 
 A. Clifford 
 
 Brown 
 
 Baldwin 
 
 Dyer 
 
 H. & S. Cook & Co. 
 
240 THE 
 
 Name 
 
 Allegro 
 
 Ada M. Dyer 
 
 B. T. Crocker 
 Cetacean 
 
 C. H. Cook 
 
 E. P. Howard 
 G. W. Lewis 
 J. Taylor 
 John A. Lewis 
 W. A. Grozier 
 
 Winged Racer 
 L. P. Simmons 
 
 Albert Clarence 
 
 PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Captains 
 
 Ryder 
 Isaac Dyer 
 Chandler 
 Nathaniel 
 Atwood 
 Atkins 
 Cook 
 Gelett 
 Crowell 
 Hudson 
 
 Carlo w 
 Atkins 
 Smith 
 
 Agents 
 
 James Rich 
 Alfred Cook 
 John Atwood & Co. 
 A. T. Williams 
 
 Stephen Cook 
 
 E. & E. K. Cook & 
 
 Co. 
 C. H. Rich 
 
 John Atwood 
 
 Jr. & Co. 
 B. A. Lewis & Co. 
 
 E. S. Smith & Co. 
 
 Lewis Chap 
 
 man 
 Moses 
 Young 
 Roberts 
 John Dunham 
 Xenophon David Conwell 
 
 Rich 
 Graham 
 Cornell 
 Atkins 
 
 1867 
 Small 
 
 J. Freeman 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 241 
 
 Name 
 Alice B. Dyer 
 
 Carrie Jones 
 D. C. Smith 
 Emma F. Lewis 
 
 Etta G. Fogg 
 
 Express 
 
 Captains 
 
 J. M. Collins 
 
 Joseph Lindsey 
 Mary D. Leach 
 
 Agents 
 David Conwell 
 
 James S. 
 
 Dyer 
 Tripp 
 Connell 
 Kenny 
 George W. 
 
 Powe 
 Thompson E. & E. K. Cook & 
 Co. 
 E. & E. K. Cook & 
 Co. 
 
 J. & G. Bowley 
 
 John Atwood 
 
 B. A. Lewis & Co. 
 
 Cook 
 
 Atkins 
 
 Merithew 
 Gage Phillips Taylor S. Coko 
 
 Cook 
 
 Nickerson 
 
 Dyer 
 
 Marston 
 
 Ira B. Atkins David A. Small 
 
 Ryder 
 
 Ryder James Rich 
 
 W. A. Leach Union Wharf Co. 
 
 Atwood 
 O. M. Remington William Union Wharf Co. 
 
 Remington 
 S. A. Paine Curren Freeman & Hilliard 
 
 Willie Irving White C. H. Cook 
 
 1868 
 
 Allie B. Dyer Orlando J. 
 
 Tripp 
 
242 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Name 
 
 Captains 
 
 Agents 
 
 B. F. Sparks 
 
 Cook 
 
 Goodspeed 
 Bell, Ewell 
 
 Stephen Cook 
 
 Carrie W. Clark 
 
 William 
 
 Clark, Jr. 
 Dyer 
 
 Marshall 
 
 Atkins Nickerson 
 
 Charles A. Higgins 
 
 5 N. Y. Hig- 
 gins 
 
 Union Wharf Co. 
 
 D. A. Small 
 
 Josias Ryder 
 Curren 
 Winslow 
 Rose 
 
 David A. Small 
 
 G. W. Lewis 
 
 Stidd 
 
 Joshua Lewis 
 
 Grace Lothrop 
 
 John S. 
 Smith 
 
 Union Wharf Co. 
 
 Lizzie J. Biglow 
 
 Josias Cook 
 
 B. A. Lewis 
 
 L. P. Simmons 
 
 Dunham 
 1868 
 
 J. & G. Bowley 
 
 Mary E. Nason 
 
 H. Sparks 
 
 David Conwell 
 
 N. F. Putnam 
 
 Dyer 
 1869 
 
 H. & S. Cook 
 
 Agate 
 
 Benjamin 
 Atkins 
 Rich, Days 
 
 Winslow 
 
 William A. Atkin 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Name Captains Agents 
 
 1870 
 
 Grade M. Parker Isaac Dyer Alfred Cook 
 Chas. Mars- 
 ton 
 
 1872 
 
 Ewell 
 
 243 
 
 Alyceone 
 John Atwood 
 
 E. & E. K. Cook & 
 
 Co. 
 E. E. Small 
 
 Mello 
 
 Stevenson 
 
 Fisher 
 
 1875 
 
 Edward Lee Aseph At- Aseph Atkin 
 
 kins 
 Lottie E. Cook Benjamin W. A. Atkins 
 
 Sparks 
 Isaac Dyer 
 Charles Thompson Leach S. S. Swift 
 
 Amasa Dyer 
 
 1880 
 
 Crown Point 
 
 Bloomer 
 
 Baltic 
 
 Fisher 
 
 1881 
 Smith, Rose 
 
 1885 
 
 Fisher, Dyer 
 
 Marston 
 
 Gonsaleos 
 
244 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Name 
 
 Captains 
 
 
 1888 
 
 Carrie D. Knowles 
 
 ; Charles 
 
 
 Marston 
 
 
 Stevenson 
 
 
 Stevenson 
 
 
 Nichols 
 
 
 1889 
 
 Joseph A. Manta 
 
 Fratus 
 
 
 Manley 
 
 Rose 
 
 Agents 
 
 1893 
 
 Ellen A. Swift 
 
 Emmons Dyer 
 
 
 Gibbons 
 
 
 Mandley 
 
 
 Dunham 
 
 
 1905 
 
 John R. Manta 
 
 Smith 
 
 
 Mandley 
 
 
 Garcia 
 
 
 Garcia 
 
 
 Luis, Santos 
 
List of Dates 
 
 1000 A. D. Visit of the Norsemen. 
 
 1529 Map of the New World, with Cape Cod distinctly 
 outlined. 
 
 1602 Visit of Bartholomew Gosnold, who gave the 
 name Cape Cod. 
 
 1605 Visit of Champlain. 
 
 1614 Visit of Captain John Smith, who said that of 
 all the places he had ever visited, not in- 
 habited, he would rather live here. 
 
 1620 November 11 O. S. Arrival of the Mayflower 
 and the Signing of the Compact. 
 
 1620 December. Birth of Peregrine White, drown- 
 
 ing of Dorothy Bradford, death of Jasper 
 More, James Chilton and Edward Thomp- 
 son. 
 
 1621 Arrival of the Fortune. Indian runners carried 
 
 the news to Plymouth. 
 1651 William Bradford added to the other lessees of 
 
 the fisheries of Cape Cod. 
 I66S^ These lands were voted to be within the Con- 
 
 stablrick of Eastham. 
 1670 The General Court passed the following. 
 
 "Whereas the Providence of God hath made 
 
 Cape Cod commodious to us for fishing 
 
 with seines," therefore a duty of twelve 
 
246 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 shillings per barrel was imposed upon mack- 
 erel and bass. -^ ^^__^ 
 
 1670 Laws prevented the taking of fish at times 
 
 previous to spawning. 
 
 1671 "Prince and Bosworth petitioned the Right 
 
 Honored Massachusetts and Deputies of 
 the General Court of New Plimouth, now 
 sitting, relating to the mackerel fishery." 
 
 1671 Thomas Prince appointed Water Baliff, to have 
 charge of the fisheries of Cape Cod. 
 
 1673 The revenue of the fisheries on Cape Cod 
 granted for the support of a free public 
 school. 
 
 1680 Cornet Robert Stetson of Scituate, and Nathan- 
 iel Thomas of Marshfield hired the Cape 
 fisheries for bass and mackerel. 
 
 1684 The Cape fisheries were leased to Mr. William 
 
 Clark for seven years at £30 per annum. 
 
 1685 Barnstable County incorporated, one of the three 
 
 first counties. 
 
 1689 It was ordered that the magistrates of Barn- 
 
 stable County dispose of and manage the 
 fisheries. 
 
 1690 The General Court voted to pay Major William 
 
 Bradford the sum of £55 for the release of 
 his title to lands bought at the Cape of the 
 Indians. 
 1690 Icabod Paddock went to Nantucket to instruct 
 the whalemen there in his method of taking 
 whales. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 247 
 
 1696 April 1st. Earliest recorded birth, Ephraim 
 Doane. 
 
 1714 Cape Cod a precinct of Truro. 
 
 1717 The General Court granted £150 toward the 
 expense of a meeting-house. 
 
 1720 A road forty feet wide was laid out from East- 
 
 ^. ham to and through the Province Lands. 
 
 — The King's Highway. 
 
 1724 April 29th. The first entry in the treasurer's 
 book. "Precinct of Cape Cod to John 
 Traill Dr. Cash paid Mr. Samuel Spear 
 for his salary 10s." Mr. Spear was a 
 minister who preached here. 
 
 1724 The oldest recorded death, Desire Cowing. 
 Her grave is in the old cemetery, near the 
 entrance. 
 
 1727 We were incorporated as a township under the 
 name of Provincetown. 
 
 1731 The records of the town began to be regularly 
 kept. 
 
 1737 Provincetown fitted out twelve ships for whaling 
 in Davis Straits. This took all the men 
 in town but about a dozen. 
 
 1739 From the Boston Postboy — "We have advice 
 from Provincetown Cape Cod, lamenting 
 the small number of whales taken in the 
 harbor during the winter, not more than 
 seven or eight. Seven or eight families, 
 among whom are the principal inhabitants, 
 design to move to Casco Bay in the spring." 
 
 1774 Rev. Samuel Parker installed. 
 
248 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 1776 The town was called upon to furnish goods for 
 the Continental Army. A ship of the 
 enemy, laden with army supplies came 
 ashore on the Backside. This event was 
 called "A Providence of God." 
 
 1778 The wreck of the Somerset. Her guns were 
 used for fortifications. 
 
 Note. Not many people in Provincetown are members 
 of Revolutionary Societies. During the 
 Revolutionary War, five hundred English 
 ships were captured by Yankee privateers, 
 it is easy to see why few Provincetown 
 names appear on the records. 
 
 1789 The General Court granted a bounty of five 
 cents a quintal on dried fish or on a barrel 
 of pickled fish, exported. 
 
 1792 Congress gave a bounty of a dollar a ton, or a 
 
 little more, depending on the size, to vessels 
 going cod-fishing four months in a year, 
 three-eighths to the owners and five-eighths 
 to the crew. 
 
 1793 The White Oak meeting-house built. 
 
 1795 The first Methodist meeting-house built. 
 
 1796 King Hiram's Lodge, A. F. and A. M. instituted 
 
 with a charter signed by Paul Revere. 
 The Mason House built. 
 
 1797 Highland Light built. 
 
 1797 About the time of the death of Jesse Holbrook 
 of Wellfleet, the famous whaler who killed 
 on one voyage fifty-seven sperm whales. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 249 
 
 A London Company employed him for 
 twelve years to teach their men his art. 
 
 1801 Town schools closed on account of an epidemic 
 
 of small-pox. 
 
 1802 Feb. 22. A great storm in which three East 
 
 India ships belonging to the Crowning- 
 shields of Salem, were wrecked on the Back- 
 side. 
 
 1811 Death of Rev. Samuel Parker. 
 
 1816 Light house at Race Point built. 
 
 1822 Birth of Prince Freeman, said to be the first 
 child born on the Point. 
 
 1826 Lighthouse built on the Point. 
 
 1828 Six district schoolhouses built. 
 
 1829 The Christian Union Society (Universalist) 
 
 built a meeting-house. 
 
 1829 A fire and marine insurance company was or- 
 
 ganized. 
 
 1830 The first wharf was built. 
 
 1835 The county road was laid out through town. 
 
 1836 The first fire engine was bought. 
 1838 The sidewalk was built. 
 
 1838 2,686 barrels of mackerel were inspected. 
 1840 A thousand men were engaged in cod and 
 m^ackerel catching. 
 
 1842 The Steamer Express, the first steam packet to 
 
 Boston. 
 
 1843 The Pilgrim Church was built. 
 
 1844 The three new schoolhouses built. 
 
 1845 Nov. 21. Marine Lodge, I. O. O. F., was in- 
 
 stituted. 
 
250 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 1845 The jail was built. 
 
 1847 Universalist Church was built. 
 
 1848 The second Methodist church bought the Uni- 
 
 versalist Meeting-house and named it 
 
 Wesley Chapel. 
 1851 Seamen's Savings Bank was instituted. 
 1854 Provincetown National Bank was organized. 
 1854 Town Hall and High School building was 
 
 erected. 
 1854 Commonwealth again recorded its ownership of 
 
 the Province Lands. 
 1854 A bridge over East Harbor was built. 
 1860 Center Methodist church was built. 
 1863 The Sons of Temperance at their last meeting 
 
 give 3300 as a nucleus of a public library. 
 1866 Centenary Methodist church was built. 
 
 1869 A dyke was built across East Harbor. 
 
 1870 The present Town Home was built. 
 
 1872 Wood End Light was built. 
 
 1873 Railroad was opened for traffic. 
 
 1873 Bradford street was widened and extended. 
 
 1874 The Life Saving Service was established. 
 1874 The Catholic church was built. 
 
 1874 46,173 barrels of mackerel were packed. 
 
 1874 The Public Library was opened. 
 
 1877 The Town House and High School building was 
 
 burned. 
 1880 The new High and Grammar School building 
 
 was built. 
 1882 Seamen's Relief Association was organized. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 251 
 
 1885 The capital invested in fishing business, 3964,573. 
 
 1889 The new Town Hall was dedicated. 
 
 1898 The Portland gale. 
 
 1907 Cornerstone of the Monument was laid. 
 
 1908 Centenary church was burned. 
 
 1909 New Centenary chapel was dedicated. 
 
 1910 The Monument was dedicated. 
 1920 The Tercentenary Celebration. 
 
List of Books 
 
 Governor Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantations, 
 for sale at the State House, Boston, Price 31-00 
 Mourt's Relations — 
 
 at the Advocate Shop, price $.2S 
 Freeman's History of Cape Cod. 1858 
 
 The chapter on Provincetown was written largely 
 by Mr. Elisha Dyer, for twenty-seven years 
 town clerk. 
 For reference at the Public Library. 
 History of Barnstable County,\Deyo, 
 
 The chapter on Provincetown was written by the 
 
 late Judge James Hughes Hopkins. 
 For reference at the Public Library. 
 Shebnah Rich's History of Truro — , 
 
 Full of anecdotes, tradition, genealogy. 
 For reference at the Public Library. 
 Cape Cod, by Henry D. Thoreau. 
 Old Cape Cod — The Land, the Men, the Sea, 
 by Mary Rogers Bangs. 
 "\/Maritime History of Massachusetts — 
 by Samuel Eliot Morison. 
 The Pilgrims and Their Monument — 
 
 by Edmund J. Carpenter. Containing the address 
 of Charles W. Eliot, delivered at the Dedication 
 of the Monument. 
 
^'THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 253 
 
 Foptl^Path Ways— 
 ^ by Bradford Torrey, containing a delightful essay 
 on Long Nook. 
 
 Heroes of the Storm — The Life-Savers of Cape Cod, 
 by J. W. Dalton. 
 
 The Seabeach at Ebb Tide 
 
 by Augusta Foote Arnold. 
 Life on the Sea Shore 
 
 by J. H, Emerton. 
 Seaside Studies in Natural History 
 
 by Mrs. Agassiz. 
 Sea Shore Life 
 
 by Alfred G. Mayer. 
 Sea Shells of Land and Water 
 
 by Frank Collins Baker. 
 Sea Mosses 
 
 by A. B. Hervey. 
 The Whalebone Whales of New England 
 
 by Glover Allen, secretary and librarian of Boston 
 
 Society of Natural History. 
 A History of the American Whale Fishery 
 
 by Walter S. Tower. 
 American Merchant Ships and Sailors 
 
 by Willis J. Abbott, 
 tlistory of the New England Fisheries 
 
 by Raymond McFarland. 
 Evolution of the American Fishing Schooner 
 
 by J. W. Collins, — an article in the American 
 
 Magazine, May, 1898. 
 
254 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 Library of Cape Cod History and Genealogy — 
 A Series of small pamphlets. 
 Published by C. W. Swift, Yarmouthport. 
 
 No. 56 Richard Rich of Dover Neck and 
 
 His Descendants 
 No. 63 Stephen Hopkins 
 No. 76 Paine of Payne 
 No. 78 200th Anniversary Address of the 
 
 Town of Chatham 
 No. 65 Rider 
 
 No. 91 Children of William Nickerson 
 No. 94 ''Hoppy" Mayo, Hero of Eastham 
 No. 98 Ryder 
 No. 99 Atkins 
 No. 101 Eldred, Eldridge 
 No. 102 William Nickerson 
 Stories by Josep h^ C.JLi ncoln, especially "Capt'n Eri" 
 
 and "Mr7 Pratt." 
 Stories for Girls — 
 
 The Little Maid of Provincetown, by Alice Turner 
 
 Curtis. 
 Georgiana of the Rainbows, by Annie Fellows 
 
 Johnston. — • — 
 
 Mary Giista, by Joseph C. Lincoln. 
 The Mayflower Descendant — 
 
 A Quarterly Magazine of Ancient Records, by 
 Mr. George E. Bowman. 
 
"A 
 
 
 
 t-;-^ 
 
 
 '^■ 
 
 Seeing Provincetown 
 
 IF YOU have only an hour, a ride through the town 
 is the best you can do. Take the barge, and the 
 barge is not a boat, but a bus. For a small fare 
 the auto-busses whirl you up-along and down-a-long. 
 Do not fear a collision in the narrow streets. The 
 drivers are good navigators. Some of us like better 
 the old "accommodation," which, with a dozen passen- 
 gers, drove leisurely along, stopping at the postoffice, or 
 at the bakeshop or at any corner, and stopping long 
 enough for a passenger to do a little errand and for the 
 other passengers to enjoy the scenery. On Sunday 
 morning the accommodation took people to church 
 without charge. 
 
 If you have a day to stay, walk the length of the 
 sidewalk, three miles or more on the crowded street 
 hugging the harbor. This is the street strangers refer 
 
256 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 to when they say there is but one street in Province- 
 town. Climb to the top of the Pilgrim Monument. 
 Visit the Art Museum. 
 
 If you have a week to give, take a daily dip in the 
 sea. The tide comes slowly up the sunny flats till 
 it reaches the high-water mark delightfully warm and 
 perfectly safe. Exhilarated by your dip, go for a sail, 
 not in a prosaic motor-boat, but in a sail-boat, with an 
 old skipper. With his hand on the tiller, you are 
 happy. The wind is sure to be southwest in the 
 afternoon and a good breeze. Drive to the Highland 
 Light, seven miles along the state highway. The Light 
 and the clay pounds are worth seeing, and the story 
 of the Lighthouse- keeper is worth hearing. 
 
 Go out into the harbor in the early morning with 
 the trap-crew to draw the traps. You will see the 
 stars fade, then a copper sun above a copper sea, then 
 a golden sun walking a golden path from the horizon 
 to you. At length you are in a world of blue and silver. 
 
 The crew pulls the nets to the surface, and with 
 help of a tackle, dips the fish into the boat, twenty 
 barrels, a hundred barrels, three hundred barrels of 
 whiting and mackerel. There is also a goosefish or 
 two which they pitch back into the water, and maybe 
 a few dogfish. The gulls are fishing too, and calling, 
 "Funiculi, funicula." 
 
 By nine o'clock you are back at the wharf, with 
 fish for the freezer, unless the crew sells to a Boston 
 fish-boat, waiting in the harbor to buy. The freezer- 
 crew takes the boat-load, and before noon, fish that 
 were swimming the night before are packed and frozen. 
 
THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 257 
 
 They can now be kept indefinitely, and, shipped in 
 refrigerator cars, are in the market as fresh and good 
 as when they went into the freezer. 
 
 Climb to the top of the Pilgrim Memorial Monu- 
 ment, 252 feet from its base and near a hundred more 
 from sea level. The ascent by a series of inclined 
 planes is easy, and the effort is well repaid by the view 
 of the majestic harbor below, the glittering spiral of 
 sand surrounding it, and the bay broadening into the 
 ocean. Fix the points of the compass and place Boston 
 to the northwest. Follow the line of land to Duxbury 
 and the Standish Monument, to Barnstable, to Truro, 
 to the Jumping-off Place. 
 
 Go to Long Nook, one of a series of delightful 
 valleys running across the Cape from bay to ocean. 
 The nearest is Long Nook which a man who loves it 
 calls, "A Vale of Gentle Seclusion." 
 
 Go by the state road across the green hills, past 
 the dunes planted with beach grass and pines, into the 
 naked dunes, to the Race Point Coast Guard Station. 
 There, nothing is between you and far-off Spain, except 
 myriads of rolling billows like those breaking at your 
 feet. Gather driftwood for a fire, cook your supper on 
 the coals, watch the sun sink into the sea, and feel the 
 darkness fall from the sky above and gather from the 
 limitless horizon, till, refreshed and quiet, you turn 
 again home. 
 
 If you linger long, you may enter into the life of 
 the men and women here whose roots run back three 
 hundred years. They may tell you stories of storm 
 
258 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 and wreck, they may amuse you with funny stories, 
 of which they know many. They may invite you into 
 the unpretentious homes and show some of their treas- 
 ures. Dealers are buying the old sea-chests, the luster, 
 the scrimshawing, the daguerreotypes, though most of 
 it is still untouched. 
 
 By-and-by, the charm catches you, and, like the 
 native sons and daughters, scattered over the globe, 
 always homesick for Cape Cod, you will return year 
 after year, and hope to lay your bones at last, among 
 neighbors and friends, in the clean white sand. 
 
Things to See 
 
 TABLET marking the first landing of the Pilgrims; 
 at the West End. 
 Tablet in memory of the Pilgrims who died here; 
 
 in the Old Cemetery. 
 Tablet commemorating the Landing of the Pilgrims, 
 
 erected by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; 
 
 near Town Hall. 
 The Pilgrim Memorial Monument. 
 Governor Prince's Doorstone at the entrance of the 
 
 Monument. 
 Bas-relief "Signing of the Compact;" in the Approach 
 
 to the Monument. 
 The Pilgrim Church, with old records, etc. 
 Universalist Church, with "Christopher Wren" tower 
 
 and old frescoing. 
 Oldest house in town, built by Squire Rich; Pleasant 
 
 Street. 
 Collection of Historical Objects, made by the Research 
 
 Club; in Town Hall. 
 Cup presented the Rose Dorothea in the Fishermen's 
 
 Race; in Town Hall. 
 Paintings by Mr. Halsall; in Town Hall. 
 Old Fire Engine, made expressly for the Town (with 
 
260 THE PROVINCETOWN BOOK 
 
 very wide wheels) in 1836; in the basement of 
 
 the Town Hall. 
 Picture, "Launching the Life Boat;" in the Public 
 
 Library. 
 Lighthouse and fog bell at Long Point, (A good trip in 
 
 a row boat). 
 Lighthouse and Coast Guard Station at Wood End, (A 
 
 pleasant walk over the Breakwater). 
 
 Lighthouse, fog-horn and Coast Guard Station at Race 
 Point, near the end of the State Road. (A three- 
 mile walk, over a good road.) Coast Guard Drill 
 every Thursday morning. 
 
 Coast Guard Station at Peaked Hill Bars, "The 
 Graveyard of Ships," near the end of Snail Road, 
 (A long and hard walk). 
 
 Highland Light, conveyance daily. 
 
 The Refrigerating Plants. 
 
 The Whaling Gear, blackfish head oil and ambergris 
 at the office of Mr. David Stull, the "Ambergris 
 King." 
 
 Fishing Traps and Weirs. 
 
 Burgess Ship Designing Establishment. 
 
 Art Association Exhibition of Paintings. 
 
 Cornhill, where the Pilgrims found the first corn, (in 
 Truro). 
 
 Pilgrim Spring, where the Pilgrims drank their first 
 water (in Truro). 
 
 The Gift Shops and the Dealers in Antiques have many 
 interesting things. 
 
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