Part 2

Cape Cod and New England at large will hear much about the Massachusetts Maritime Academy as time goes on, for the signs point to increasing heights of achievement by the American merchant marine after peace is won.

Capt. Claude O. Bassett, U.S.N.R., is the Academy superintendent. A mild and good-humored veteran and thoroughly schooled and seasoned in the profession of the sea.

YARMOUTHPORT----

_Ichabod Paddock, Whaling Instructor--and “Wes” Baker, Guadalcanal Hero_

Tom Baker is mail carrier for the Yarmouthport, Cape Cod, postoffice. An elderly man, wiry, with quick-moving gait, he makes his appointed rounds in fair weather and foul. A younger man who held the job is in a war plant.

When Guadalcanal was taken, Tom Baker’s son--19-year-old Pvt. 1st Cl. Thomas Wesley Baker--raced up the beach in the first invading wave of Marines.

I talked with him when he came home--an invalid, with jungle malaria in his system. His Guadalcanal experience had cost him 40 pounds.

It was 3 o’clock in the morning when the Japs advanced up the beach. Wes Baker was taut and scared, because this was to be his first experience in actual combat.... “We saw them first. They came in columns of four. The highest ranking officers were right out in front. Later, we found that none of the Japs was less than corporal and in their clothing was a lot of American and English money. They were picked troops and the biggest Japs I ever saw, all of them close to six feet tall. They came through a little lagoon, waist high in water. There wasn’t any barbed wire up, so they kept coming on. They were no more than 200 yards away when we opened fire. There were 1500 of them and they were all killed. We lost 29 and 80 were wounded. We’d charge and they’d go into the water, trying to swim out of range. We picked them off like ducks. When their officers were killed, they didn’t know what they were doing.”

HOME FRONT CHARM

More advanced in years than mail carrier Tom Baker are Miss Saidee M. Swift and her sister, Mrs. Caroline Burr, of the Home Front. They are in the candy-making business.

A large and pleasant old house stands at the bend of the road just as you enter upon the beautiful vista of great elms in Yarmouthport. A weather-worn sign--Saidee Swift’s Candies--is on a tree out in front. For 20 years Saidee Swift has turned out fine candies and travellers from all parts of the nation have knocked at her door. Her chocolates have gone to China. Governor Saltonstall is one of her best customers. Her trade has included judges, society folk, artists, writers and countless prominent individuals who have visited the Cape. Each Christmas she makes about 200 pounds of candy for faithful customers in distant parts.

Saidee Swift’s technique includes a close watch on the weather and sometimes she waits four or five days for just the right temperature. She says, “In a northeast storm, I can dip splendidly.”

Whaling captains lived in the great houses facing the Yarmouthport elms. In 1691, Ichabod Paddock was engaged to go to Nantucket to instruct men “in the art of killing whales by the employment of boats from the shore.” Not far from Saidee Swift’s is the former domicile of Asa Eldredge, commander of the famous clipper Red Jacket, who made a record voyage from New York to Liverpool in 13 days.

Regular packet service to Boston contributed to the naming of Yarmouthport. There is still an old timer or two who can recall the fierce competition between the Yarmouthport and Barnstable sailing packets and the frequent races to Boston.

WOMEN MOULDED BULLETS

Yarmouthport is a part of the township of Yarmouth, which is considerably spread out, from shore to shore, across the Cape. Not so many years ago some stray bullets were found under the bricks of the hearthstone of an old house that was being demolished. The find was reminiscent of the story of Joshua Gray and his fellow soldiers of Yarmouth. Joshua Gray was captain of the early Yarmouth Militia and an officer in the Revolution, who marched with his men to help Washington defend Dorchester Heights. The night before their departure, women of the town worked in his home until sunrise moulding bullets for the soldiers.

In great grandfather’s time Yarmouthport was the trading center in this section of the Cape, and people came over from Hyannis to do their shopping. Tom Baker’s mail delivery job was first held by John Thacher, who rode horseback and made his rounds once a week. His pay was $1 a day, and some citizens considered this an extravagance. Total postoffice receipts in the town of Yarmouthport for the year 1795 amounted to $26.

The first daily newspaper on Cape Cod was founded in 1893 in Yarmouthport. George Otis operated the _Cape Cod Item_. On the same site the _Yarmouth Register_, weekly newspaper, continues to record the local life, as it did 108 years ago.

DENNIS----

_The “Smoky Gold” Craft Thrived When America Was Young_

The “smoky gold” story of Cape Cod gives a rare picture of the pioneering spirit and richness of America’s founding days.

Smoky gold was the local name for lampblack, an indispensable base for paints and printer’s ink in the olden days. The little town of Dennis, once a great clipper ship port, was known in those days as one of the world’s greatest sources of lampblack and her precious shipments were in demand in England and on the Continent.

A modern summer visitor, the Rev. Ernest G. N. Holmes of Bethlehem, Pa., brought the story of the great Cape Cod industry to light. While clearing a Dennis farm he had bought for a summer home, the clergyman discovered a stone arch two or three feet above the ground; adjoining it was a stone floor and around its edges the soil was as black as night--a very unusual color for Cape Cod earth.

AN INGENIOUS OPERATION

Subsequent investigation revealed that this was the remnant of a lampblack manufactory, known to the old timers as a Funn. Today this section of Dennis is called Funntown. The Funn was a lamp chimney on Gargantuan lines. Anyone who has used a kerosene lamp knows how annoying it was to have the lamp smoke and smudge the glass. The Funn, however, was erected for just that purpose, only there was no glass and the lampblack formed on the ceiling of the Funn thick enough to be scraped off in layers. Thus, smoky gold was produced.

The relic was found knee-high above the ground, but when the Funn was in working order it stood 18 feet above the ground and over a circular area 20 feet in diameter. It was of stone and brick construction, the top like a great inverted cone. There was an opening on each side. The winds were important to the industry. So, the Funns were always built in pairs, the hearth of one facing due east and the other due north. The prevailing wind on Cape Cod is southwest. The idea was to keep the smoke from escaping outside the Funn.

The smoke first came from fires of pine knots gathered in the surrounding woods. Next, after this supply was cut down, resin was sailed to Dennis from the Carolinas and Virginia. A fuel problem arose when, in 1860, a Civil War blockade cut off this supply. The Funn operators then looked to the coal regions of the Pennsylvania mountains; naphtha, a by-product, was shipped in and this was used up to the last days when the Funns operated.

OXEN CARTED SMOKY GOLD

After the fire was quenched, a man would enter the Funn with a 12-foot pole and a board at the end, somewhat like a hoe. For protection against the showering soot he wore a straw hat with a brim that went beyond his shoulders, and with his long scraper he would reap the heavy coatings of smoky gold. It would be poured into boxes, then taken to an adjacent packing shed, where the boxes would be sealed for shipment. Oxen then would cart the smoky gold to the East Dennis shore, where crews of the clipper ships that sailed the seven seas put in. It would go to Boston by sail, a trip of 10 to 11 hours if the wind was good. On the oldtime Boston docks Cape Cod lampblack would join the company of spices and silks from India, the teas from China, Java’s coffee and sugar from the West Indies and become a part of the adventurous world commerce of the clipper days.

“Time moves on to ever new discoveries,” wrote Edna Cornell, telling the story of smoky gold in a bulletin of The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. “The wonder of yesterday is the forgotten glory of today. The Funns were new and amazing a century ago; but industry, always in a hurry, outstripped them long ago, and they are now only a few scattered bricks, a few garden walks and a fireplace. Nevertheless, like all big and influential things, no matter of what antiquity or deep obliteration, they have left a footprint behind them that time has not yet erased nor witchgrass on a Cape Cod farm completely hidden.”

DENNIS----

_“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.

CAPE COD STICKTOITIVNESS

People thought him whacky when they first learned he was trying to make money from the sun and the salt water all around him. But, Sleepy John (an ill-chosen sobriquet, if there ever was one) had the last laugh and rolled up a nice fortune meanwhile when he demonstrated that it is not only a good idea to have ideas but, also, to carry them through. For, salt was a lot more important in his era; it was needed then as now to go with ones’ vittles, though the greatest value was its indispensable use in the curing of fish.

Dubbed “Sears Folly”, the first salt-making plant got off to a merry start in 1776. Skipper Sears built a vat, or “water room”, that was a crude affair, 100 feet long, 10 feet wide. There were shutters over the top so that the vat containing salt water could be covered when it rained, or exposed to the full rays of the sun. As the hot sun poured down on the water, salt began to crystallize and the Dennis idea man must have danced a ’76 jitter jig, conjuring up pictures of what he would do with all his wealth, amassed from just a simple contraption and no expense whatever. At the end of the sunny season, however, Captain Sears had produced only eight bushels of salt, and the neighbors were laughing louder.

The old sea dog wasn’t in the habit of quitting when the going got rough. Having discovered that production was held down by leaks in the vat, he persevered and found a way to make the vat tight as a drum. The second year he crystallized 30 bushels of salt. But, a labor problem was slowing his progress. The salt water had to be poured into the vat from buckets, a tedious and time-consuming handicap, for John soon learned that for every 350 gallons of water he poured only one bushel of salt formed. He kept plugging and, meanwhile, he was doing some tall scheming. The neighbors were still laughing.

FINALE OF A GREAT INDUSTRY

On the fourth year Sears Folly was improved with a pump worked by hand. Production was stepped up. The pump continued in use until 1785, then, at a suggestion of Capt. Nathaniel Freeman, John Sears, with the help of others, contrived a pump worked by wind. This really turned the trick and set the skipper off full sail to become the local Croesus.

Salt sold at $8 a bushel ($8 was $8 in those times) and the bushels piled higher and higher at the Sears works. By this time the neighbors had gotten sober and interested and other salt-making windmills were erected and their creaking and whirring were familiar sounds throughout the village. The men who assisted John Sears with his windmill improvement eventually reassigned to him their right and title and finally the founder of the salt industry obtained a Government patent.

The production of salt spread in other parts of the Cape, notably Provincetown, a great fishing port and, earlier, a whaler’s haven. Salt-making began there in 1800; in 1837 the tip of the Cape had 78 salt works, each employing two men and producing a total of 48,960 bushels of salt. The manufacturing developed even to a higher plan when Glauber Salts, made from boiling brine, was valued by physicians and came into brisk demand.

Development of the salt springs of New York, and manufacturing improvements and cheaper operating costs elsewhere, marked the beginning of the end of Cape Cod’s great salt industry.

BREWSTER----

_Thanks to Pioneering Here, Millions of American Soldiers Wear Good Shoes_

Quiet little Brewster, Cape Cod, offers a rich tapestry of Americana.

Many a U. S. soldier slogging over the world battlefronts is wearing brogans turned out by patented machines of the great United Shoe Machinery--which started from a one-man cobbling business in oldtime Brewster.

West Brewster, dubbed “Factory Village” by the old timers, was a bustling scene, with spinning, fulling and grist mills, tannery and iron works, and the still-present Flax Pond, where flax gathered in surrounding fields was put to soak in the water-retting process of making linen.

The sheep growers would trek here, over the fields and ragged roads, with their bags of wool. The going was hard on their footwear, it was noted by the Winslow brothers, one of whom operated a fulling mill and the other, a grist mill. So, to maintain good will, the fulling mill Winslow verged into a sideline of cobbling the shoes of his wool producers.

But, a teen-age son--who gave the lie to common gossip of that day, that the younger generation was swiftly going to the dogs--was actually the one who transformed the humble cobbler’s tapping into a nationwide whirr and, incidentally, founded the Great Winslow fortune of today.

A CROSS-ROADS GENIUS

The lad was uncommonly ingenious and tenacious. Recruited by the fulling mill operator to assist in the cobbling work, the boy grew impatient at the tediousness of the task. He conceived a time-saving and labor-saving machine. Then he dreamed up another and another. He wrote to Washington and obtained a patent on each new invention as fast as it took shape.

These same patents are in use today in the big shoe plants of America, and the earnings from them continue to flow handsomely to the present Winslow heirs. Thus, the mighty United Shoe Machinery Company got its first breath of life on old Cape Cod.

Brewster is named for Elder William Brewster, a crusader for religious freedom, who sailed to Cape Cod on the Mayflower and acted as pastor to the church at Plymouth. He is described as having been “tender harted, and compassionate of such as were in miserie.” Further, “none did more offend him and displease him than such as would haughtily and proudly carry and lift up themselves, being rise from nothing, and haveing little els in them to comend them but a few fine cloaths, or a little riches more than others.” On his death, we are told, Elder Brewster’s complete estate consisted of 275 books, of which 64 were “in the learned languages.”

Quaint names are associated with Cape Cod lore. Fear Brewster was one of Elder Brewster’s daughters and he had sons named Love Brewster and Wrestling Brewster.

SEA ADVENTURES OF OLD

When Brewster town history is recounted there is always talk of the colorful seafaring oldsters and their great sailing craft. Outstanding is the Pitcairn Island story. Captain William Freeman of Brewster landed at the bleak hiding place of the Bounty mutineers in 1883, and brought his daughter Clara along with him. Clara cultivated the friendship with Rosa Young, daughter of Edward Young, who survived the hardships and bloody conflict among the mutineers after they found refuge on the island in 1790. Later, they corresponded. Today, in the Brewster Public Library, there is the original manuscript of Rosa Young’s letters, extending over a period of six months.

In one of these letters, Rosa tells of her meeting with the chaplain of the man-of-war Constance, who landed at Pitcairn. All descendents of the mutineers, including Rosa, were intensely religious. Thus, she described the visiting chaplain to her Brewster friend: “Whether he experienced the same feeling that I did I cannot tell, but I certainly thought that a more un-chaplain-looking man was hard to find, and if words and manner are an index to a man’s character, he certainly did not seem rightly fitted for a sacred office.” And then, as though to show how shocked she was, Rosa Young concluded, “as we were about to leave ship he said, ‘Now, we will have to sing, _The Girl I Left Behind Me._’”

The house in Brewster where Joseph C. Lincoln, writer of Cape Cod character stories, was born still bears a For Sale sign. Conrad Aiken, noted American poet, has a Summer place in a tranquil spot in the hill country. Chester Slack, an artist of reputation, lives there year-round and takes a sympathetic interest in local affairs. In recent times a Brewster craftsman, with a resourceful spirit reminiscent of the Factory Village pioneers, has been weaving fine tweeds to fill individual orders.

Brewster today reflects mostly upon her memory-book, for there is no longer any of the teeming industry of the Winslow founders. The exciting spring herring run annually draws attention to the town. Brewster has one vestige of the hallowed past that is distinctive: It is the site of the only water-power grist mill on Cape Cod where countless modern summer visitors have watched the ancient process of grinding corn--and captured a bit of stirring reality of the vigorous Founding Days of our nation.

HARWICH----

_A Liberator of Slaves, Immortalized by the Poet Whittier_

“The boys all want the town paper. It’s like getting a letter from home, they write.”

Harry Albro, friendly and kind country editor, gives particular attention to his servicemen’s mailing list. He served under MacArthur in the last war, was gassed at Argonne and came back with six battle stars. He has held the post of a State Guard commanding officer and has had other Home Front duties. His homey weekly newspapers mean a lot to people in war service now far removed from their beloved Cape Cod.

When the Revolutionary War clouds loomed, Ebenezer Weekes of Harwich said to his son, “Eben you are the only one that can be spared; take your gun and go; fight for religion and liberty!”

“HARRICH” IN ENGLAND, “HAR-WICH” HERE

“Harrich” is the way it is mouthed in the seaport town of Essex County, England. The Harwich of Cape Cod is pronounced Har-wich. This Harwich was founded in 1694 and it is said that one of her ardent townsmen, Patrick Butler, walked all the way to Boston, a trek of 100 miles, to obtain the incorporation.

In modern times Anthony Elmer Crowell of East Harwich achieved fame as one of America’s great craftsmen. Mr. Crowell, remote from the beaten path, admirably proved the better mousetrap adage. He carved and painted images of birds so realistically that they came into demand for museums and private collections and travelled even to Australia. At first Mr. Crowell was a gunners’ guide, commissioned to fashion some duck decoys that would be more convincing to Cape Cod ducks than the wood-butcher jobs that other decoy-makers had sold the sportsmen. Then the East Harwich genius branched into making robins, bluejays, sanderlings and the many, many other species of the feathered tribes.

Word of his skill got around fast and he profited handsomely. His quaint craft was put into Joseph C. Lincoln’s Cape Cod book, “Queer Judson”. And, “It is not unlikely that a day may come when a ‘Crowell bird’ will be as much sought as a genuine bit of Sandwich glass or a slender piece of Sheraton furniture,” prophesies Arthur Wilson Tarbell in “Cape Cod Ahoy!”

Religion was a strong point of Harwich’s early days. A variety of fifteen denominations once functioned within the town’s borders and at times emotions ran high. It is recorded, for example, that the Rev. Edward Pell of Harwich left a request for his burial to be in the North Precinct, or present-day Brewster, for, “if left among the pines of the South Precinct (Harwich) he might be overlooked at the resurrection, that the Lord would never think of looking in such an un-Godly place for a righteous man.”

MAN WITH “THE BRANDED HAND”

In 1743 came the “Great Awakening” evangelical movement and with it the all-out sects known as “New Lights” who “made the pine woods of Harwich ring with Hallelujahs and hosannas, even from babes!” Moreover, there was “a screeching and groaning all over, and it hath been very powerful ever since.” Touching on activities of the New Lights, Henry C. Kittridge, Cape Cod historian, narrates that “when under the spell of their mania, they walked along the tops of fences instead of on the sidewalks; affected a strange, springing gait, and conversed by singing instead of ordinary speech, in the distressing manner of characters in light operas.” Could it be that author Kittridge was spoofing us a bit?

A native of Harwich--recorded in history as the first liberator of slaves--is eulogized in verse by Whittier. Capt. Jonathan Walker in 1844 put out from Pensacola with seven runaway slaves aboard his vessel, having responded to their appeals to be taken to the British West Indies, where they would find freedom under the Union Jack. The Cape Cod skipper was captured, he was imprisoned in irons and thence the brand, “S.S.” (slave stealer) was seared into his right hand. Captain Walker is hailed by Whittier:

“Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our Northern air; Ho! Men of Massachusetts, for the love of God, look there! Take it henceforth for your standard, like the Bruce’s heart of yore, In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen before.”

The culture of cranberries on Cape Cod--a source of revenue that runs into the millions--was begun on a commercial scale in Harwich in 1845, though it was Henry Hall of Dennis who was the pioneer grower in 1816. Fishing was on the decline and a retired harvester of cod spoke the sentiment of his salty brethren:

“I put up my chart and glass, and took to raising cranberry sass.” Before then the cranberry was regarded as only food for the cranes. Crane-berry was the original name the pioneers gave this famous Cape Cod product.

CHATHAM----