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From: Bobbie Hall <>
Subject: [MABARNST] Cape Cod Pilot, Ch. 10, part 2
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2002 23:49:18 -0600
References: <200112191104.fBJB48Q10270@lists2.rootsweb.com>


======================================================================
Cape Cod Pilot, by Jeremiah Diggs, American Guide Series, published by
Modern Pilgrim Press, Provincetown, MA, 1937. This was a work
underwritten by the Federal Writers Project, Works Project
Administration (WPA) for the State of Massachusetts.
======================================================================

Chapter X - TRURO [part 2]

The tragic "October gale" of 1841 hit the little village of Truro
hardest of all the Cape towns. Seven of her fishing vessels went out
before the storm struck. Six were never seen again; and the seventh,
the "Pomona," was found bottom-up in Nauset Harbor, her crew drowned
in the cabin. In this cemetery, the marble shaft "sacred to the memory
of fifty-seven citizens of Truro," tersely tells the story. The names
of the "citizens" - most of them in their twenties, nine under fifteen
and one only eleven years old - are inscribed. A writer who recalled
the storm had this to say in the Provincetown "Advocate":
"We saw a father who had two sons among the missing, for days and
weeks go morning and evening to the hill-top which overlooked the
ocean, and there seating himself, would watch for hours, scanning the
distant horizon with his glass."
The shaft, placed here the year after the gale, bears as its last line
a poignant quotation:

"Man Goeth To His Long Home, And The
Mourners Go About The Streets "

Another old church stood by the Bell Meeting House on this hill. A few
years ago, a Truro artist, one of the growing community of artists and
writers in the town, bought it and moved it into the valley. There he
has converted it into a studio, installing skylights and posing his
models on a platform where the pulpit once rocked with denunciations
of the flesh.

On the "Hill of Storms," which the highway traverses a little further
north, are the town's oldest graves, but they are hidden among more
recent ones. Within that cemetery stood the first meeting-house, where
for 120 years Truro came to worship and to accomplish a number of
other things. For, close at hand were at that time the "parade
ground," the stocks and whipping post, and the "Lyar's Bench." A
Sabbath going-to-meeting was an all-day piece of business, with plenty
of variety to fill the hours.

They came from many miles around, some on the family horse, "loaded
like a dromedary, and badly sprung amidships," and some afoot, the
girls wearing their old shoes and stockings and carrying their new
ones in their hands until they arrived at the meeting-house.

When the meeting-house was completed in 1709, the first thing the town
fathers did was to vote the purchase of a cushion for the pulpit and
an hour-glass. The cushion was for the protection of the minister, and
the hour-glass, timing his sermon, for the protection of the flock.

Here the Reverend Jude DAMON, "cautious in all his statements, always
allowing for a margin on the safe side," pondered and solved the
age-long problem of how to ask God for a wind. During the summer,
Banks fishing vessels were sailing and arriving at the same time in
Pamet Harbor. A west wind was fair wind for those departing for the
Banks, an east wind fair for those returning. To pray for either east
or west was to put a breeze dead ahead for half the fleet. "Mr. Damon
soon understood this, and his benevolent heart thus shaped his prayers:
"'We pray, 0 Lord, that thou wilt watch over our mariners that go down
to do business upon the mighty deep, keep them in the hollow of thy
hand; and we pray thee that thou wilt send a side-wind.' "

In the long "noonings" - periods between the morning and afternoon
services - the Lyar's Bench was held down by Uncle Hut DYER, "Prince
of Yarners," who would light his pipe and hold the youth of Truro
spellbound as the pastor never had. Hut could spin 'em so tall their
mastheads scraped the under-side of the golden streets and made the
angels set out rat-traps. He could sing, too - on a weekday - and he
knew the songs the Grand Bankers sang:
Up jumped the mackerel
With his striped back -
Says he, reef in the mains'l and haul on the tack,
For it's windy weather,
It's stormy weather,
And when the wind blows, pipe all hands together -
For upon my word, it's windy weather.

That one only had twenty verses*, but Hut knew some long ones too.

The hunt for Indian belongings has been kept up more or less steadily
on Cape Cod ever since the Pilgrims set the precedent on Corn Hill in
1620. From the finds that are being made to this day, it appears that
the whole lower Cape, down to High Head in North Truro, is dotted with
Indian burying grounds, only a fraction of which have been unearthed
and only one or two of which have been examined scientifically.

The Pilgrims were not wholly unscientific when they dug into the
Indian graves and caches in Truro. But they were after food rather
than material for a doctor's thesis, and if they had not "gott seed to
plant them corne ye next year," they probably would have starved. The
Corn Hill Road in Truro leads to the crest "wher latly a house had
been, wher some planks and a great ketle was remaining, and heaps of
sand newly padled with their hands, which they, digging up, found in
them diverce faire Indean baskets filled with corne, and some in
eares, faire and good, of diverce collours, which seemed to them a
very, goodly sight." They took all the ears and filled the kettle with
loose corn, which two men carried on a staff. "Besides, they that
could put any into their pockets, filled the same." Doughty Miles
STANDISH, he who later was to rise in such wrath against the Indians
over the theft of a few trinkets, was a leader of the party, as the
tablet at Corn Hill will inform you. An exciting discovery was made by
a second Mayflower party on a hill further inland, but there is no
marker there, because nobody has solved the mystery of the
yellow-haired man. These people came upon "a place like a grave," and
digging it up, they found two skeletons, one a man and the other a
little child. "The [man's] skull had fine yellow hair still on it."
Strings of fine white beads and bracelets were on the child's legs and
arms, and "there was also by it a little bow, about three-quarters
long, and some other old knacks."

Where the yellow-haired man came from has been a mystery ever since.
Believers in the Norsemen's presence on Cape Cod would have to ex-
plain how, after six hundred years, there remained "some of the flesh
unconsumed." They have grappled with this problem, and have made their
Norsemen very tough indeed in an effort to get around it.

In 1935, experts of the Peabody Museum of Harvard undertook some
digging in Eastham and brought out several Indian skeletons, and some
burial paraphernalia; but since then the activity has shifted back to
Truro, and on a farm which you can see from the highway, to your left
just beyond the juncture of Long Nook Road, many unusual items have
been uncovered.

A "kitchen midden" or community kitchen, is indicated by the
discoveries here. Unfortunately, all efforts to have a real
archaeologist supervise the digging have thus far fallen through.

A field dug up by the home-grown archaeologist is really less
enlightening than no field at all; for he not only contributes his bit
of misinformation on the subject, but he is sealing for all time the
source of possible knowledge. Private collections of arrowheads,
knives, pottery and the like have been jealously guarded in Cape Cod
houses for years - until some heir comes along who neither knows nor
cares anything about them and clears them out along with Uncle
Isaiah's pipe collection. The archaeologists seem to be waking up a
bit now, however. They are eager to get at such finds before they are
spoiled or lost. Recently a ten-year-old girl of Chatham went into the
backyard to bury her pet hen. Digging in the yard, she uncovered a
human leg bone. She brought it into the house, and later a skull and
other bones were found there. Phillips Andover Academy promptly got in
touch with the family, and acquired the discovery for its studies.

A favorite spot along the Back Shore for swimming and beach-picnicking
can be reached over the Long Nook Road, which branches from the
highway to the ocean shore. There are many old houses along this road,
some built as early as 1710. They are now owned for the most part by
wealthy "summer families," and only a few are occupied through the
year. The rugged old houses are being coddled as they never have
before; the neighborhood has become conscientious about such matters
as the preservation of ancient garbage pails; and the width of the old
floor planks is something of a measure of social status.

* Of this song, Rich says that it was an old one which he had
"supposed local," but which is quoted complete in Thomas Hood's works.
"It is related in his (Hood's) life that during one of his visits to
Brighton, his favorite resort, he became acquainted with an old
lieutenant of the Coast Guards, from whom he learned this odd song, in
which he delighted, and which was the only one he was ever known to
sing."

[more to come]
transcribed by and all errors attributed to
Bobbie Hall





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