CHAPTER XIV.
LORD’S POINT
My good friend, John Lord, octogenarian and retired Foreign Service officer, spent his boyhood summers on South Pond at the place of his father, Arthur Lord, at the north end of the Pond. His father had obtained the land in 1879, Book 1464, Page 247, which had been part of the Isaac Barnes property, and was held until his death in 1925.
John Lord remembers his father pulling him, in a dory, through the connecting brook leading into Boot Pond. This brook, sometimes dry, varies in height with that of the water level of the ponds.
Lord’s Point had been known earlier as Kamesit, which was the Indian name. After his father purchased the point, he joined with a group of men to form the Kamesit Club.
The members of the club were William Hedge, Dr. Morris Richardson, William M. Bullivant, Arthur Lincoln of Hingham, Winslow Warren of Dedham, William V. Kellen, and Arthur Lord. Arthur Lord bought the property from the two surviving members, Lincoln and Warren, on Dec. 30, 1899, the last day of the century and recorded in Book 1498, Page 499.
John Lord has told me that he remembers that over the living room fireplace was a large unfinished painting by Winslow Homer of an ocean beach with a bonfire. Apparently it was sold with the house, which has been taken down and the land belongs to the Plymouth water supply system. John Lord spent pleasant summers there with his brothers and sister and family until he was fourteen.
It is said that Grover Cleveland, during his presidency and while summering at Buzzard’s Bay, would come to South Pond with friends and enjoy the fishing.
John Lord has told me that just west of the present aqueduct from Great South Pond to Little South Pond there was before 1900 property belonging to the John Darling Churchill family. It contained a two story residence and a bowling alley of wooden construction nearer the Pond. At one time, inspired by the Civil War, it was called the _Union House_ and was used as a tavern. By 1900 it had fallen apart in disuse.
Arthur Lord was an able and distinguished man. He was a resident of North Street in Plymouth, and commuted to Boston. In this family house John Lord was born. His father was a lawyer, historian, and public speaker. On his mother’s side he is descended from Rev. James Kendall, 1769-1859, pastor of the Plymouth Church for 59 years until his death, and during his ministry the new meeting house was built in 1831. He was a distinguished incumbent and much loved by all who knew him.
John Lord’s great great uncle was Nathan Lord, president of Dartmouth College in the years before the Civil War.
Arthur Lord was a bookman and collector. He was president of the Massachusetts Bar Association and the Massachusetts Historical Society. He gave in 1925 his library to Pilgrim Hall, described in a publication of the Pilgrim Society, Plymouth, 1971, entitled _The Arthur Lord Collection_, prepared by L. D. Geller, Director of the Pilgrim Society.
As Mr. Geller points out, he is “generally considered to be the most knowledgeable scholar in the area of Old Colony studies, both in academic circles and without.” Arthur Lord is characterized as a gentleman historian who valued the physical artifact and also the literary qualities of color and interest in historical writing above technical professionalism.
One of the dramatic achievements in his collecting was a copy of William Lambard’s _Eirenarcha or of the Office of the Justices of Peace in Foure Books_, London, 1592, one volume, and his identifying the volume as a copy from the library of William Cecil, Lord Burghley.[37] It originally belonged to Sir William Cecil who was created Baron Burghley by Queen Elizabeth in 1571 and made a Privy Councilor. Cecil had previously been Secretary of State under Edward VI. The book bears the Burghley coat of arms on the cover, surrounded by the Order of the Garter.
It was given to and brought over on the _Mayflower_ by William Brewster. It was the only written guide for a system of law and justice in the colony from its beginning and had a tremendous influence setting precedents for the administration of justice henceforth in the Colony.[38]
The _Eirenarcha_ had been handed down by each Justice of the Peace to his successor. As Arthur Lord was the last Justice of the Peace in Plymouth, the book was in the collection he left to Pilgrim Hall.
There is now in Pilgrim Hall a stone pestle and axehead given to Arthur Lord by the Wampanoag Indians before 1900, in appreciation for legal advice he gave them.
John Lord has told me that he remembers being with his father when, having been the last Justice of the Peace in Plymouth, he thought he should dispose of the sealing implement of that office and did so by hurling it into the deep water of South Pond. This action made a dramatic moment ending a long historical legal era, back to the days of Elizabethan Lord Burghley.