THE COMMUNITY: NEARBY, AND BEYOND
In the 1790’s the total population of the town of Plymouth had grown
to 3500 people. By today’s standards this seems to be slow growth,
averaging an increase of about 200 people per year since 1620. After
the first growth of the early decades Plymouth settled into a slow
growth rate until recent times, partly because economic growth and
settlements flourished elsewhere. Much of the area then could be called
a basically rural countryside.
There was a small village for the South Ponds area near the present
small chapel, located at the beginning of the road into the South Pond
Cemetery. The early Burgess and other settlers are buried there.[17]
It may be assumed from perusal of deeds and a general acquaintance of
the area that it had acreage with enough meadow, upland and woodland to
provide a basis for a livelihood of varying quality from the land.
There was a school established in South Pond village in 1796. In this
year the town voted $850.00 to maintain all the schools of the town,
mostly primary and grammar schools for young males. Earlier, in 1793,
the town voted to establish female schooling, based on six months per
year, with one teacher and one session being held for them one hour in
the forenoon and one hour in the afternoon at the close of the regular
daily sessions. Discrimination against girls, obviously, but at least a
start was made.
The South Pond schoolhouse is now converted into a dwelling house
beside the chapel. Nearby is another schoolhouse also converted into a
dwelling house. The S. Bourne map of Plymouth in 1830 shows a school
location on the road near the junction of the watercourse and the
stream from Finney’s meadow which later becomes Eel River.
The homesteads in the area toward the end of the eighteenth century
included those of Samuel Wright-John Burgess and that of Belcher
Manter, as well as Jonathan Holmes. South of the chapel were other
Burgess dwellings and that of Nathaniel Thomas. These locations are
near the third share of the sixth great lot and near the fourth share
at Gunner’s Exchange Pond. One of the Nathaniel Thomases served in the
Revolution. The Joshua Wright homestead was in the vicinity.
The road northeast to Plymouth center was approximately five miles long
for the horse-drawn team or carriage. The Burgess Road followed along
not far from the eastern shore of South Pond. The roads were selected
for as much lack of grade as possible to avoid hills for horses and
teams. The Baptist Road continued south to College Pond and then west
to Carver. Settled land in this area was not common. There were some
farms near Bloody and Half-Way Ponds. Long Pond Road went through South
Pond village, later crossing Mast Road at the Four Corners. It went
eventually southward beyond Herring Pond to Sandwich.
Belcher Manter had a homestead built probably during the last quarter
of the eighteenth century one mile north of the Burgess homestead near
the shore of South Pond. Near his house a stream called Watercourse
began at the Pond and flowed downhill east through his property and
eventually joining a stream from Finney’s Meadow to Russell Mill Pond
and Eel River to the ocean.
The cut fieldstone sides of this stream can still be seen near the
site of the house. There was a grist mill on this stream, as mentioned
in old deeds. The Watercourse has now largely dried up except in
periods of very high water in South Pond, since the 1850’s a source of
Plymouth’s water supply.
In his history Wm. Davis states that this outlet for South Pond was not
alluded to in the early records, thus confirming the tradition that it
was an artificial brook dug under the direction of Elder Thomas Faunce
in 1701. Elder Faunce was the son of John, who came on the _Ann_,
1623, and was born in 1647. From 1685 to 1723, Thomas Faunce, the
worthy elder of the church, held the office of town clerk and kept the
town records.
In the 1780’s there was a town effort made to get alewives to come from
the ocean up into the Watercourse and into South Pond for spawning.
Some sections of the stream were dug and deepened, but I could find no
evidence that the project ultimately succeeded.[18]
The first Belcher Manter, 1736-1825, came from neighboring Wareham to
the south. By his second marriage to Rebecca Palmer he had a son, the
second Belcher, 1776-1857. This second Belcher married Sarah Wright in
1799, probably the daughter of Joshua Wright who had a homestead in the
vicinity.
Their family is close to the John and Phineas Burgess families, since
Phineas was one of the administrators of the second Belcher’s estate.
The daughter of Phineas Burgess, Ruth Anna, married Benjamin B. Manter.
She was the girl who planted the maple tree now thriving in front of
the barn here and lived for 105 years, until 1956.
The Belcher Manter house also provided the north ell on the front of
the Burgess dwelling. This ell had been moved here and attached at
an early date. Its foundation stones at its original site match the
dimensions of the ell here. This account was given me by Susan Burgess.
The event we consider so important, the American Revolution, has little
concerning it recorded about the South Pond community except for some
names of members of families we are familiar with and their relation
to it. Henry Richmond was the owner of the homestead during that time
until 1783 when the crisis had passed. Perhaps the proximity of the
events that aroused the Boston area were, in the geography of the time,
a little remote for close involvement by the rural area of Plymouth.
There are the names of a few men associated with the South Pond
community who served in the war of the American Revolution recorded in
the Veterans Administration files in the Plymouth Town Office Building.
Nathaniel Carver, who bought a piece of land on the west shore of the
pond from Samuel Wright enlisted on June 6, 1776 and served until
August 26, 1779. He served in both the army and navy and was on the
sloop _Reprisal_ as well as in the Plymouth Fifth Company Regiment.
John Churchill, 1745-1779, was lost at sea. He enlisted on May 28, 1776.
Col. Theophilus Cotton, 1716-1782, was a colonel of the First Plymouth
Company. He enlisted on June 5, 1775, and was discharged March 31,
1781. Joshua Cotton, son of the third John, 1753-1829, enlisted in the
colonel’s regiment and served for three and one half months.
Nathaniel Thomas, 1756-1838, of a family with a homestead in this
region was a member of Captain Peleg Wadsworth’s company.
Wadsworth, Harvard class of 1769, the year Henry Richmond built the
homestead, was a teacher in a private school in Plymouth in 1769,
served in the Revolution and was captured by the British during the
period. He is the grandfather of the poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Mr. Lewis Wadsworth, Jr., a Boot Pond resident, is in the same
Wadsworth family.
The surrounding community also had a wider community beyond, economic
and other forces of which had an impact on the lives of the people of
the South Pond region.
To increase our understanding of some of the influences of the people
in this chronicle I have found a reading of Wm. T. Davis’s _Plymouth
Memories of an Octogenarian_ to be a source of illumination. His
dates are 1822-1907. Accurate and charmingly written by an aware mind
it has many delightful and human passages as well. I am indebted to his
granddaughter, Ruth Gardner Steinway, for lending me her copy. I have
chosen various subjects that he had taken up, showing influences on the
Plymouth community during most of the nineteenth century. We can follow
such matters as fishing, shipping, transportation, stage coaches,
postal service, railroads, and finally the anti-slavery movement. A way
of life was followed then very different from our present technological
society.
We may look back upon whaling with some romantic nostalgia. Plymouth
did have some whale fishery in the first half of the century, providing
employment and adventure for some of the townspeople.[19] Whales were
in Massachusetts Bay, but no serious efforts were made to engage in
their capture. In 1821, however, a company was formed to prosecute
this fishery. In this year the ship _Mayflower_ of 345 59-95 tons
sailed for the Pacific, was absent for three years and landed between
two and three thousand barrels of oil. She made two more Pacific
voyages, landing about five thousand barrels.
In 1822 another company was formed, built the bark _Fortune_ of
278 47-95 tons. She returned from the Pacific in 1825 with two thousand
barrels. She made five voyages through 1840, the year of her last
voyage.
Other ships sailing in the whale fishery were the _Arabella_,
of 404 26-95 tons, 1830; the _Levant_ of 332 34-95 tons, 1831;
the _Triton_ of 314 49-95 tons, 1833, and the bark _Mary and
Martha_ of 316 56-95 tons, 1838. All these sailed the Pacific.
In 1833 the brig _Yeoman_, afterwards changed to a bark, was
built in Plymouth. It made several voyages to the South Atlantic. The
schooner _Marcaibo_, 93 53-95 tons, built in Plymouth, engaged
in Atlantic fishery and was lost off Bermuda in 1846. The schooner
_Exchange_ of 99 91-95 tons, made four voyages and was wrecked in
West Indian waters. Two other vessels engaged in whale fishery were the
schooner _Mercury_ of 74 34-95 tons and the schooner _Vesper_
of 95 53-95 tons.
“In 1803 the foreign trade of Plymouth was at the height of its
prosperity. In that year it was carried on by seventeen ships,
sixteen brigs and forty schooners, and the duties paid into the
Plymouth Custom House amounted to nearly one hundred thousand
dollars.”[20]
The embargo act of 1807 and the war of 1812 brought this activity to a
permanent decline.
Of the captains commanding such vessels, Davis mentions some with the
name of Burgess: Chandler, John, Lewis, William W. and Winslow.
Cod fishery was active and successful.[21] From 1765 to 1775 an average
of 65 vessels per year were employed. In 1802 there were 37 vessels
engaged, employing 265 men, landing 26,175 quintals (hundred weight) of
codfish. All but six of these vessels made two trips yearly. Among the
skippers he lists there is Nathaniel Clark, possibly a one time owner
of the homestead. He was of the _Benjamin Church_ of 70 tons which
produced 350 quintals of codfish.
All those of us who love to eat lobster and regret their present and
future scarcity and high cost will enjoy this account telling of Sam
and Joseph Burgess:[22]
“In the angle where the T joined the main wharf, there was a flight
of substantial steps, where boats at all times could land, drawing
not over two feet of water. This was a great convenience, enabling
Sam Burgess, with his fish for the market, lobster boats from the
Gurnet, and the Island and Saquish boats, to land without regard
to the stage of the tide. Many a householder with his mouth made
up for a fish dinner has sat by the hour together at the head of
those steps, waiting for Sam. In those days, too, the purveyor
of lobsters was Joseph Burgess, the keeper of the light, and as
regular as the day he would appear with his lobsters and wearing
his red thrum cap, would wheel his barrow full about the town.
There was no talk then of short lobsters, nor of extravagant
prices, for nine pence, or twelve and a half cents in the currency
of the time, would buy a three or four pound lobster.”
During his lifetime, of thirteen packets in service Davis remembers
the last eight very well.[23] These ships carried merchandise and
some passengers on runs to Boston, using sail. The last packet with
passenger service was the schooner _Russell_. She survived the
advent of the railroad in 1845. Her fate was a sad one. On March
17, 1854, on a return from Boston, she drifted off course and went
ashore at Billingsgate Light on Cape Cod, southeast from the Gurnet.
The schooner was a total wreck and all on board were lost. She had
a captain and three crew members and five passengers. The bodies
came ashore at Wellfleet and Truro. Davis, as administrator of Capt.
Simmons’ estate, had to identify them and arrange for their removal to
Plymouth.
A steamboat line was established with the advent of the _General
Lafayette_,[24] in 1828. She left Plymouth when the tide served, and
left Boston at hours which on her arrival would enable her to reach her
dock. The fuel was wood and she made the passage in five hours, making
about eight and one half statute miles per hour. In 1830 the steamboat
_Rushlight_ came to Plymouth and advertised to carry passengers to
Boston for a dollar and a quarter, the fare by stage being two dollars.
In 1840, the _Hope_ left Boston at two, reaching Plymouth at six.
Wm. Davis tells of an incident that year. He took a stage which left
the same time as the ship. The driver, Samuel Gardner, told Davis that
he would beat the steamboat that day. Gardner did not leave the box,
horses were ready at the three places where changes were made and, “as
I dismounted at my mother’s house on Cole’s Hill the boat passengers
were coming up the wharf.” That day the stage did thirty six miles in
four hours.
In 1801, Davis quotes the _Farmer’s Almanac_, there were
twenty-five lines of stagecoaches running out of Boston.[25] The
stage to Plymouth made three trips per week by the way of Hingham,
being ten hours on the road. The New England stage in the early part
of the nineteenth century was a long covered wagon hung on leather
thorough-braces and contained seats without backs. “After a few years
the clumsy stage gave way to the well-known English stage made with the
addition of a middle seat with an adjustable tack strap.”[26]
In 1834 a line of stages to and from Boston for mail and passengers was
established and continued until the opening of the Old Colony Railroad
in 1845. The accommodation left Plymouth at six or seven each day, and
returning left Boston by two. By way of Pembroke, Hanover, Weymouth
Landing, Quincy and Dorchester was the route up from Plymouth. The
mail stage, when separate, left Boston at five o’clock in the morning,
arriving at Plymouth at ten thirty.
The first post office and postmaster were established in 1775 in
Plymouth.[27] In this year a horseback mail route was established from
Cambridge to Falmouth through Plymouth. The two post riders made the
trip down and back once a week.
On March 18, 1844, the Old Colony Railroad was incorporated.[28] On the
8th of November, 1845, the road was opened. The next day trains ran
twice daily at 7 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. from Plymouth and 7:45 a.m. and
4:30 p.m. from Boston. Running time was an hour and three quarters. The
railroad for the next twenty years used wood for fuel. The distance was
37 miles.
The population of Plymouth in 1820 was 4384. In 1833 it was 5,000. By
1905 it had reached 11,107.
A moral and political situation, slavery and the abolitionist movement,
had an impact on the Plymouth community. Wm. T. Davis has written about
some aspects of the attitudes in Plymouth. His observations have a
special validity because he gathered them during his active public life
as lawyer, banker, historian, writer and political leader while the
storm clouds were gathering.
We know that in the family tradition Charlotte Burgess, in particular
was sympathetic to the cause of freedom for the blacks. Strong and
moving words on slavery were contained in the eloquent address by a
young Daniel Webster, 1782-1852, to the Pilgrim Society dinner in 1820,
the occasion being the commemoration of the landing two hundred years
previously.
“It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame
longer. I hear the sound of the hammer; I see the smoke of the
furnace where manacles and fetters are still forged for human
limbs. I see the visages of those who by stealth and midnight labor
in this work of hell and dark, as may become the artificers of such
instruments of misery and tortures. Let that spot be purified, or
let it cease to be of New England. Let it be purified or let it
be set aside from the Christian world; let it be put out of the
circle of human sympathies and human regards, and let civilized man
henceforth have no communion with it.”[29]
From the assessor’s records, Davis estimates there were fifty slaves
of all ages in Plymouth in 1740. He lists many of these slaves and
their owners.[30] When the Massachusetts Constitution was adopted in
1780 slavery was forbidden. In 1781 the supreme judicial court of
Massachusetts so decided in the case of Walker vs. Jennison. Davis
cites a case of a slave in which his grandfather had a part.[31]
“It is not improbable that Plymouth was associated with the first
claim made on a citizen of Massachusetts for the restoration of a
slave to his master. Information concerning it I found among my
grandfather’s papers. In 1808 the brig _Thomas_, Solomon
Davie master, at some port in Delaware, received on board a slave
who had deserted from his master, David M. McIlvaine, and until
1812 remained in my grandfather’s service, receiving wages as a
hired man. In 1812 Mr. McIlvaine found the slave on board the
brig in Baltimore, and a claim for his restoration being made, he
was given up. In the meantime the slave who called himself George
Thomson, bought a small house on the brow of Cole’s Hill, and in
a settlement of a suit to recover wages, which my grandfather had
paid to Thomson, Mr. McIlvaine, in consideration of the money paid,
conveyed to my grandfather the house, and the following articles
of personal property which were in the keeping of a colored woman,
named Violet Philips, and were the property of Thomson--a blue
cloth coat, fine; a black cloth coat, fine; one pair of ribbed
velvet pantaloons; one black bombazet waistcoat; one black silk
waistcoat; three yellow marseilles waistcoats; one pair white
stockings; two checked shirts; one new fur hat; one chest, and one
trunk in which were the title papers to his house, and one silver
watch.”
Wm. T. Davis recounts the role of Borne Spooner, 1790-1870, born in
Plymouth, and founder of the Plymouth Cordage Company in 1824, in the
anti-slavery movement.[32] Perhaps his younger days in New Orleans,
learning the rope trade, had influenced him. Davis goes on to list the
names of those citizens of Plymouth engaged in the movement.
“The merchants, professional men, including ministers, and the
politicians in both the whig and democratic parties, were either
too timid to join the anti-slavery ranks, or were decidedly
hostile to the anti-slavery movement. An anti-slavery meeting
held on the evening of July 4, 1835, in the Robinson church,
which was disturbed by an incipient mob which contented itself
with breaking a few windows, and afterwards smearing with tar
the dry goods sign of Deacon Ripley. Though the _Old Colony
Memorial_ contained a paid advertisement of the meeting, its
columns were silent concerning its doings and the disturbance. It
is of little consequence how or when Mr. Spooner became interested
in the movement. He became one of the most prominent men in the
state, supporting it, and undoubtedly furnished to it material
aid not exceeded in amount by the contributions of any others in
its ranks. He was a constant friend and supporter of Garrison,
Phillips, Quincy and Douglas, all of whom frequently enjoyed the
hospitalities of his home.”
“The seed of anti-slavery fell in Plymouth on sandy soil, but
watered by heavenly dew, it soon took root and broke through the
conservation crust which under the influence of the commercial
and financial interests of the town, for a time obstructed its
growth.”[33]
Wm. Davis relates a vivid account of Jonathan Walker, a fellow
townsman, and his anti-slavery experience.[34]
“I suppose that few of my readers know that Johnathan Walker, the
man with the branded hand, ever lived in Plymouth. About fifty
years ago, or perhaps a little earlier, he lived in the house now
standing in what is called the Nook at the head of the waters of
Hobb’s Hole brook. I do not remember to have ever seen him, but I
recall the time when he was complained of for shingling his house
on the Sabbath. He was born in Harvard, Mass., March 22, 1799, and
at the age of seventeen went to sea. When quite young he assisted
Benjamin Lundy in colonizing slaves in Mexico, and for a time lived
with his family in Florida. In 1844 he assisted four slaves to
escape by water, but was overtaken and captured with his companions
by a Revenue Cutter which was sent in pursuit. He was carried to
Pensacola, and after a trial for his offense was sentenced to
stand one hour in the pillory, to pay a fine of one hundred and
fifty dollars, and be branded on the hand with the letters S.S.,
signifying slave stealer. It is creditable to Southern humanity
that a blacksmith refused to heat the instrument of torture. He
remained in prison eleven months in default of payment of the
fine, and then by the aid of Northern friends released. After his
release he delivered lectures in various Northern towns and then
settled down in Plymouth.... He left behind in Plymouth a son John,
whom I knew very well, and whom it fell to me once to aid during a
pecuniary embarrassment. His father had neglected his education,
but he was a noble fellow in whose presence I always felt that I
was in the presence of a man.
“I think he was one of not more than twenty men whose personality
during my long life has impressed me. He always would call me
William and I always called him John. I would have entrusted to
him my life in any emergency, for I knew that he would have risked
his own to save the life of a fellow man.”
Among the Plymouth men killed during the Civil War was Nathaniel
Burgess, wounded at Fort Steadman, March 25, 1865, died of wounds in
July, 1865.[35]
We now go on to the Burgess family, Phineas and Charlotte, whose
lives span the nineteenth century and who spent most of their times
at the Boot Pond Place in farming and raising eight children. We have
photographs of them and information about their daily lives that is not
similarly available for Nathaniel and John of previous generations. So
time observed begins to move closer to the present. Our imaginations
are assisted by reminiscences and we see more clearly what took place
here long ago.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]