_“Sleepy John” Sears’
$2,000,000 Idea_
Some remembrances of an old Cape Codder:
“Salt works! Yes, I have seen many of them. There were rows and rows
of them on my grandfather’s farm. And my grandmother! Well, she wore
herself out taking care of them. She had only 14 children. Generally
three of them were in arms. Many a time when grandfather and the boys
were at the flats (the shore) and a rainstorm came up, grandmother
would walk half a mile, carrying one child, leading another, and the
three-year-old toddling behind--to the salt works to cover them before
the rain came on. Rain freshened the salt, you know.”
Salt-making by the solar evaporation process was developed into a
$2,000,000 business on Cape Cod in the early 1800’s, according to
one estimate. Today, in an age when the Cape lives on the summer
vacationist trade and Camp Edwards revenue, you rarely hear a mention
of this once great, now extinct, industry. The originator was a
retired skipper who had ideas and ever a weather eye for an extra
dollar--Capt. John (“Sleepy John”) Sears of Dennis.