A living reminder of Elijah Swift’s works are the beautiful, tall trees
surrounding the Village Green. He was permitted by the town, in 1832,
to plant, at his own expense, the saplings that developed into these
giants. The first summer after the planting was unusually dry. Elijah
Swift hired a man to carry water daily from Shiverick’s Pond to keep
life in the saplings, and this loving care he gave at the outset makes
this scene today “a glory to the community.”
Falmouth has had, and still has, many people who have done distinctive
work in their lifetime. Katherine Lee Bates, who wrote “America, the
Beautiful,” was Falmouth-born. Edward Herbert Thompson, great American
archaeologist, who did some of the most important work of bringing to
light the facts of ancient American life and culture, was a Falmouth
native.
Coonamessett Ranch, in the township of Falmouth, is said to be the
largest ranch east of the Mississippi. Charles R. Crane of Chicago
started cultivating it in 1915, to demonstrate the agricultural
possibilities of Cape Cod. But he had an idealistic aim that was
thwarted by the outbreak of the last war. The great acres were to have
been settled by carefully selected families of the Russian peasantry,
and the owner was intent upon carrying through his ideas for developing
the possibilities of the less fortunate Russian folk.