RootsWeb: MABARNST-L [MABARNST] Cape Cod Pilot, Ch. 15, part 2

MABARNST-L Archives

Archiver > MABARNST > 2002-04 > 1019535017

From: Bobbie Hall <>
Subject: [MABARNST] Cape Cod Pilot, Ch. 15, part 2
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 23:11:43 -0500
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 XV - DENNIS & YARMOUTH - SOUTH SHORE [part 2] Where the Bass River Bridge takes you into South Yarmouth, a little more than a century ago Uncle Eleazar KELLEY would have ferried you across at two cents a man, and for the price, you got a real piece of navigation. When the ferry failed to make it, you just went out to sea with Uncle Eleazar and hove to for the tide to turn. For you see, Bass River flows two ways - to the northeast on the flow tide, southwest on the ebb. To venture out cross-tide - come the ebb or come the flow - took the hand of a master, and sometimes - come the ebb - even Uncle Eleazar would find himself sliding broadside for Tuckernuck Island. "A man that hath a covetous and deceitful rotten heart," a woman told her Quaker meeting, "lying lips, which abound among them, and a smooth, fauning, flattering tongue, and short hair ... such a hypocrite is a fit man to be a member of any New-England Church." To South Yarmouth, where the "cursed sect of haereticks" had spread from Sandwich, Marshal George BARLOW came on his rounds to put down the "prodigious insolency" of these people - and to put into his pocket whatever lay along the path of righteousness. Upon the backs of Christopher HOLDER and John COPELAND the Marshal brought down his "strapado" thirty-three times for each, while from the onlooking crowd a woman's voice cried out, "How long, Lord, shall it be ere thou avenge the blood of thine elect?" The year was 1658 - not yet two-score years after the Pilgrims had come to the land, seeking "freedom to worship God." In Yarmouth of old lived Thomas HINCKLEY, the "Antiquaker" whom Governor PRENCE chose for his assistant. There was in HINCKELY'S mind no inkling that three centuries later this part of Yarmouth was to be known as "Friends Village," and that guidebooks would be directing the traveler first of all to the little Quaker Meeting House; but certainly he was aware of their obstinacy, their maddening defiance, which invited the whip and then made martyrs for other men to follow. He had seen Humphrey NORTON stand before Governor PRENCE himself and shout, "Thomas thou liest, thou art like a scolding woman, and thy clamorous tongue I regard no more than the dust under my feet!" And the Quakers, taking capital punishment and dealing out verbal punishment in return, won out. A Yarmouth town meeting in 1717 voted to end the requirement that Quakers contribute to the support of the orthodox minister. Turn right, off the highway, at the traffic signal across Bass River Bridge, and you may see the last meeting-house they built here, in 1809. The church is not used now, but the building and burial ground beside it are kept in trim. The little square stones on these graves carry only names and dates. Rather than have a minister pick me out my epitaph from a book of irrelevant rhymes, like a shoe clerk handing me down my Judgment-Day slippers without so much as a try-on to see if they fit, I believe I should like one of those plain white stones myself. But the "Praying Indians" of Yarmouth have an even simpler burial ground, with no markers at all except a bronze tablet set up by the white men on a pile of rough stones. Like the Nobscussets of Dennis, this tribe has left the cemetery gardening to Mother Nature, and there, beside the pond, she has done a fine job of it indeed. To reach this cemetery, return to the highway, and make a right turn a short distance further, and right again on "Indian Memorial Drive." What the white man left undone, in the wiping out of these Indians, the smallpox took care of; and before 1800 the last of the tribe was gone. There are no names on these graves, but "Deacon" Elisha NAUHAUGHT, champion prayer of the "Praying Indians," was a member of the tribe. Though the "Deacon" had not the wondrous volume of the Reverend TREAT of Eastham, he could have surpassed him by several hours in any test of endurance. In the beginning, the prayer of the Red Man to Kehtean, the Great Spirit of the Western Heavens, was a brief chant from some high place. When the white man came, the red man learned what marvelous exercise could be worked into a prayer - fine tricks of the throat, and words that could stretch on and on, till they made the simple old chant on the hill seem rude and uncertain of being heard. Deacon NAUHAUGHT set the pace for the tribe and then outprayed the white man too. He prayed so hard he was actually becoming a factor for the Devil to reckon with. And one day the Devil sent a hundred snakes after NAUHAUGHT, to silence him. They wound around his legs and came higher on his body, and the boldest one reared up its head to dart down NAUHAUGHT's throat. The Deacon looked him in the eye. Then he opened his mouth, and when the snake entered, with jaws grown mighty through his exercises, the Indian snapped his teeth together, severing the serpent's head. For the best glimpses of South Yarmouth, cross the highway on your way back from this spot and continue on Crosby Street and then through the other shady byways bordering the "South Sea." Many of these houses were built for sea captains about the time of the Civil War. They hired ship's carpenters, who built as if they expected a hurricane to concentrate on every beam. When a skipper chose a site a few hundred yards from the shore, he bought a three-foot right-of-way so that no one might have anything to say about how or when he was to unload his boat. Many of these narrow rights-of-way are still held. Such a house was that of Captain LORING, on Main Street, a landmark recently reconstructed by its present owners. Captain George WOOD, who spent his boyhood in the house now occupied by the library, had his own home built at the corner of Union and Pleasant Streets. Captain WOOD commanded the clipper "Fleetwing" and circled the globe three times. His grandfather Zenas and his uncle Orlando had both been lost at sea, and when young George got his chance to go cook on a fishing boat, Par and Mar had to be talked into it. He went, but the skipper said that as a cook George WOOD wasn't worth galleyspace. Next he tried going cabin-boy. Then he shipped before the mast, and after three years, he was advanced to third mate. A month before he was 21 he had come into his own command and was bringing his vessel into Boston Harbor. The harbor was not dredged then, and the ship was heavily loaded, so Captain WOOD hired a fishing vessel to lighten his load. He invited the skipper to come aboard for dinner. The older fellow came into the cabin, stared at the young deepwater captain for a moment, and then said, "Sink me for a corpse! If it ain't George WOOD! Well, Cap'n Wood, someone must have larned ye to put pork to the beans!" [End of Dennis & Yarmouth - Hyannis next] [more to come] transcribed by and all errors attributed to Bobbie Hall