Perhaps no single work of man enhances the beauty of a Cape village
so much as the sparkling white churches whose spires point unerringly
toward the blue heavens and serve as landmarks to Cape Codders at sea
and ashore. One can find them conspicuously at the center of each of
the old villages, and, indeed, it was from their presence that the
villages grew. For the early Meeting Houses were not only centers of
worship but of government and of all community activity. Distances
between villages were computed as between Meeting Houses and until
very recently there were many road signs directing travellers to one
or another of them, a testimony to the importance of the church to the
life of the town.
The early colonists of the Cape were a plain but very pious people and
in view of the hardships they endured in the building of a new land
it was little wonder that they turned to their God for help, and in
Thanksgiving for His bounty in the new surroundings. In many cases they
built their churches before they had built their homes and they used
them. Someone who visited the Cape remarked that “there are too many
churches for any of them to prosper”, but, at one time or another each
of them was filled to the rafters. The settlers came to church out of
choice and necessity and as the land prospered the farmers and the
tradesmen and the Captains came in humility and thanksgiving, giving
generously to the support of the beautiful, white edifices that were
the symbol of their devotion to Christianity. They have survived waves
of free thought, of come-outers, Quakers, and bad times and good and
they still stand, a monument sculptured in wood to man’s best dreams,
their plain, dignified and honest lines a living testimony to the
character of the Cape men who built them. Thankfully, after the custom
of the forefathers, Cape people still gather at the churches on Sunday
and there are none here that stand empty and abandoned.
In the early times on the Cape the activities of the whole week were
directed toward the Sabbath, and its observance took much longer
than the hour or two now devoted to it. Sunday in all the villages
really commenced on Saturday night when the diversions and duties of a
workaday week were finally and quite definitely put aside. On Saturday
afternoons Cape kitchens were warm and fragrant with the aroma of a
week’s baking, part of which would first be savoured at Saturday night
supper when the succulent baked beans and brown bread would make its
traditional appearance on the kitchen table. And Sunday breakfast was
almost as traditional with the warmed-over beans frequently accompanied
by fish cakes of local cod which had been taken from a cool Cape cellar
or buttery where it had been put down in native salt. Breakfast done,
Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes came out from their week’s retirement,
usually to the utter distress of the younger members of the household
who, from the stiff postures and unhappy looks and squirmings could
have been in fetters, rather than in starched-bosom shirts, black store
clothes, and--most repulsive of all--highly polished, imprisoning
boots. So restrained did the young feel without the casual freedom of
their weekday clothes that they would have had neither taste nor heart
for play, even had it been allowed. So they sat stiffly with the other
members of the family, as if awaiting the judgment, until, at quarter
to eleven, the commanding tones of the great church bell were heard.
Then the great movement commenced along the narrow, twisting lanes,
with each house emptying its very sedate and formal members into the
streets which led to their common destination, the Meeting House. There
they would find their more distant neighbors assembling outside with
the horses and wagons that brought them secured in the rambling sheds
nearby and within sound of the fine old hymns that would soon be
rolling out through the opened windows.
The motorist of today on Cape Cod will, in time, begin to look for
familiar landmarks. A white spire soaring above the pines indicates
the presence of a village and each has identifying characteristics of
its own. To the traveller coming home to the Cape there is no other
landmark as welcome a sight as the old, gilded weather cock which
perches above the West Parish Meeting House at West Barnstable. When,
from the new Mid-Cape Highway, you first catch sight of this grand bird
shining, golden and bright and triumphant above the trees you know that
you are really on the Cape and that an old friend is keeping the same
watchful eye over land and sea of today as in the days of the American
Revolution and before. For the weather-cock crowns the steeple of the
oldest Congregational church building in all America. It is a beautiful
structure which served the Town of Barnstable as Meeting House during
the most fateful days of American history and, through the foresight of
some Cape Codders, it is now being restored to its full, and original
magnificence. Already the exterior of the church has been restored
until it is now the very same one that was familiar to Commodore John
Percival, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, James Otis, and a host of other
great men and women of the County in the days when greatness seemed
to touch all those within sight of the dunes and the salt marshes of
Barnstable. The site for the Meeting House could not have been better
chosen and today, more than ever, the old church, on a slight elevation
where tree-lined Cape roads meet, is an edifice of great beauty and
dignity, commanding attention.
As beautiful as the newly-restored church appears from the outside, it
is, nevertheless, the unfinished interior that proves the wisdom of
the restoration program. Looking upwards at the dome of the Meeting
House with its tremendous beams and unique bowed rafters is an awesome
experience. Standing there it is impossible not to feel in touch with
the historic past, with the very beginnings of America. And you marvel
at the artistry and ingeniousness of the builders who carved these huge
timbers from local forests, who weighted them down for a full year
to achieve the desired bow shape, who built a framework which is as
staunch and true today as ever it was, and that has stubbornly resisted
the encroachments of passing fashions. The workers who are in charge
of the restoration have been touched with the magic of the place.
They speak with great respect of those long-ago builders of the Cape
and they point with enthusiasm to the many ways in which the historic
structure is coming back to life.
Just down the road a piece, and toward the great marshes and the
picturesque dunes that stretch out towards Sandy Neck, the King’s
Highway continues its rambling way from West Barnstable down Cape. It
is a street of green lawns and historic houses, of flowering shrubs and
well-kept gardens that flourish in the good, black earth of the North
Side. There is so much to see there that even the most observing may
pass by, unseeing, the peaceful, old, white church at the corner of
Rendezvous Lane at Barnstable. Amid the shadows from ancient trees the
church dreams serenely in the summer sunlight and it is difficult to
imagine that this is the very spot where, in the year 1774, there took
place one of the most unusual and daring blows for liberty in all our
history.
The Third Baptist Church of Barnstable was formed in 1842, after it
had purchased, for $77.00, the second Barnstable Court House which had
been built in 1774. The old, wooden building had been abandoned by
the County upon the erection of the new granite Court House and the
Baptists found it well suited to their needs. The building was turned
around from the Highway to face Rendezvous Lane and some alterations
were made to make it more suitable for a Meeting House. Today, a bronze
tablet within the church proclaims that “this building was the Court
House where the Kings Court was forced to end its sessions by a band of
patriots in September 1774.”
The march of a “Body of the People” to Barnstable on September 27,
1774 took place as the result of an Act of Parliament which, in those
hectic days, seemed to be enacting everything possible to alienate its
colonials. The new act proclaimed that jurors, heretofore drawn by the
selectmen, should now be chosen by the Crown’s own representative,
the Sheriff. Under such a system it was obvious that the Crown would
control the whole local system of justice, and those who came before
the courts, and were known to be unsympathetic with the Crown, would
receive very short shrift. The patriots decided that, to effectively
show protest to such an act, they must close the lower courts, in order
that no appeals would reach the “packed”, higher courts. To carry out
this purpose a large body of men assembled at Sandwich on the night of
September 26, 1774. There they planned for the morrow what must have
been the Cape’s first picket line.
On the morning of September 27, the newly-formed Body of the People
moved towards the old Court House at Barnstable. They were afoot and
on horseback, with the horsemen in the lead, and through every village
they passed their number was swelled. When they passed the home of
Chief Justice Otis they respectfully raised their hats in salute
and preceded him to the Court where, 1500 strong, they awaited the
opening of Court. The air at Rendezvous Lane must have been charged
with suspense and expectancy when, at last, the Chief Justice and his
aides, led by the Sheriff, complete with drawn sword and staff of
office, approached the unprecedented group who blocked their passage to
the Court House door. Justice Otis, upon ascertaining the business of
the group, ordered them to disperse. Through their leader, Nathaniel
Freeman of Sandwich, they replied, “We thank your honor for having
done your duty; we shall continue to perform ours.” And continue they
did, until the Justice left the scene and it was established that
there would be no session. Before the day was over the patriot band
had furthermore obtained written agreement from the Justices that
they would not carry out the objectionable Act of Parliament that had
inspired the march.
If the Body of the People became the Cape’s first picket line, it was
also the most orderly one anywhere at any time. In their preparations
for the march on Barnstable they had ruled against the use of profanity
and alcohol. They were well-disciplined, and entirely under the control
of their democratically-chosen leaders. The group at Rendezvous Lane
on the September morning was no “rabble in arms”; it consisted of
some of the truly great men of the Colony, making an effective, but
respectful, protest against an injustice which threatened the freedoms
for which they had crossed the broad Atlantic. It was like the men of
the Cape to settle their own problems in their own way. Two years later
the Colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence. Cape Codders had
chosen their way at the little white church in Barnstable.
From the window of my old house at West Dennis I look out over the
blue Cove of Bass River to where the white Captain’s Church rises on
the hill at South Dennis. It is bright and peaceful and meaningful.
In summer it is framed by the lacy branches of elm trees on the near
shore; in winter it is a beacon of light in a gray landscape. I have
watched the purple shadows of night slide softly from its sides in the
spring sunrise; and I have watched an autumn sunset gild its steeple
with burnished gold. It is good to have it there, where it has stood
and looked across the Cove for over a century.
It was felt that Dennis had come of age when, in 1795, the Southside of
town were granted a Meeting House of their own, to be erected at South
Dennis. At first the new Meeting House was supplied by ministers from
other churches but by 1817 the Reverend John Sanford was called as its
own pastor to administer to a church membership of twenty-nine persons.
Eighteen years later the church had become too small to accommodate
the growing parish. Then, too, there was already stirring within men
the inspirations of a country come of age, when the hurried, rather
crude buildings of another era must be replaced by an architecture
that was more expressively American. So, in 1835, it was decided to
tear down the old edifice and build a fine, new church on the same
site. It was hoped that the auctioning off of the pews, combined with
the voluntary labor of men of the village, would be enough to get the
building started, at least. Fortunately for all of us there was also
the matter of the beans.
The men of the parish met on a bitter, cold day in January to consider
ways and means of financing the new church. It was the kind of day to
discourage any kind of action, and the offers of financial help were
desultory and infrequent. Thoroughly discouraged, one of their number
slipped out of the meeting and returned to the warmth of his own
fireside to think the matter over. Finally, he had an inspiration and,
calling his wife he asked her if she could provide dinner for as many
as were attending the meeting. “For,” he said, “if those men go home
for dinner they will never come back and that will be an end to it.”
Upon hearing the problem the good wife set to work. Luckily, the weeks
baking was almost intact in the buttery, and, by the standards of the
Cape in 1835, it was not at all unusual that there were twenty-five
pies stored there. But that was not all--there was Indian Pudding, and
baked beans galore, yearning for the company of the huge loaves of
brown bread that soon came steaming from the oven. All that was needed
to complete, a dinner, the very smell of which might fill any man with
a sense of well-being--and generosity--was coffee. And soon she had
made coffee, scalding hot, and brimming over from the biggest container
in her house. In no time at all the full dinner had been delivered
to the meeting where its effect was such that the men of the parish
took on a whole new lease on life and began to outbid one another in
generosity. The huge sum of $6000 was raised, enough to build the new
church, and some of the men became so enthusiastic that they could not
wait to get to the bank to withdraw their money.
So the white church was built, there upon the hill, and it was not then
very different from the building a visitor would enter today. The same
tower clock, and the same auditorium clock would, when not seized by
the temporary fits of temperament that are the privilege of age, be
telling the same old time, while the same chandelier with its lovely
etched globes would be sending forth the same warm glow over the white
walls and straight-posture-demanding pew. And the light would glint as
ever from the sides of old silver, the original Communion Set. Now,
from the front of the church, instead of from a balcony as before,
would come the strains of organ music from an instrument that has been
doing its Sunday duty for nearly one hundred years at the same church,
and had done duty elsewhere for a hundred years before that. This is
very likely the oldest organ still in regular use in America, and it
is not just by coincidence that it is frequently used to play hymns
which have in them the fresh, salted breath of the sea. Tablets offer
long lists of names of the South Dennis Captains who were members of
the church. Now, as then, among the congregation to whom “He gives
the keeping of the lights along the shore”, there are Nickersons and
Thachers and Crowells and Bakers and Kelleys, and there are newer faces
and newer names. Many have followed the advice of their first pastor to
“read and understand the history of your pious forefathers, than whom
no people under heaven are entitled to higher honors.” And all have
helped, and gladly, to keep this splendid symbol of the forefathers
faith a living and a meaningful one. So it is too all across the Cape
and up and down it, wherever a white church looms by a village street,
and its noble spire points to the blue heavens.
_When you have finished with it you have only begun. You speak of
a number of things that are yours, and it is the smallest fragment
of the picture. Have you seen the Cape at Christmas? Then the nights
are black and the Christmas lights shine brighter and in the crisp
night air the stars shine brightly too. The villages are evenly-spaced
islands of lights along the highways, cheerful islands and brave ones,
and you feel that there would have been room at the Inn here, or in any
of the small homes which look through unshaded windows and greenery
toward the streets. Do you know the Cape in summer? Then there is a
sudden hustle-bustle along Main Street and you count the number plates
from every state in the Union. It is a time of sunshine, tanning and
gilding, and the soft, dreamy haze of August. It is roses tumbling
over fences and the merry tinkle of ice in frosted glasses. It is blue
skies and white clouds, and blue waters and white sails, and the drone
of outboards on the River.... It is extra clerks in the stores and the
cheerful jingle of bulging cash registers, and better still, the shouts
and laughter of children as they splash in the warm waters of the Cape
while the fizzing spray breaks over them, and the sun toasts them, and
they are free. Have you seen the sunrise over Chatham Bars? Or seen it
set from St. Andrews or Sunset Hill? What of the woodsy road that winds
along Shawme Hill where you can watch the old town of Sandwich dreaming
through a summer’s afternoon, where you look over the quiet mill pond
and its white church spires to the blue Bay and the cliffs of Manomet.
Have you watched one of nature’s miracles at the Herring Run in Brewster
of an April day; or stood beside a quiet inland pond at Harwich of a
fall evening and watched plumes of mist rise from the water to do a
graceful ballet while the Cape begins to sleep? Have you followed any
of a hundred beckoning roads to whatever treasures they may reveal?
When you have done all these things you will begin to know a part of
it. One day, as you cross the Canal bridge, your heart will begin to
lighten, and the tensions of the Mainland will slide away. The land
will take on a wonderful familiarity, and you will know that you are
home, and that is all there is to it._
[Illustration]
The paper in this book was manufactured
by the Strathmore Paper Company of West
Springfield, Mass.
The type is Devinne and Caslon.
Cover was executed by Louis Marini of the
Colmar Press, Wollaston, Mass.