Part 3
A few steps from their resting-place the low wall on which the two unfortunates were found frozen is falling into ruin. The glossy green leaves of the bayberry-bushes crowd here and there about it, in odorous ranks on either side, and sweetly the warm blush of the wild-rose glows against its cool gray stones. Leaning upon it in summer afternoons, when the wind is quiet and there steals up a fragrance and fresh murmur from the incoming tide, when the slowly mellowing light lies tranquil over the placid sea, enriching everything it touches with infinite beauty,--waves and rocks that kill and destroy, blossoming roses and lonely graves,--a wistful sadness colors all one’s thoughts. Afar off the lazy waters sing and smile about that white point, shimmering in the brilliant atmosphere. How peaceful it is! How innocent and unconscious is the whole face of this awful and beautiful nature! But, listening to the blissful murmur of the tide, one can but think with what another voice that tide spoke when it ground the ship to atoms and roared with sullen thunder about those dying men.
There is no inscription on the rough boulders at the head and foot of these graves. A few more years, and all trace of them will be obliterated. Already the stones lean this way and that, and are half buried in the rank grass. Soon will they be entirely forgotten; the old, old world forgets so much! And it is sown thick with graves from pole to pole.
“These islands bore some of the first footprints of New-England Christianity and civilization. They were for a long time the abode of intelligence, refinement, and virtue, but were afterwards abandoned to a state of semi-barbarism.” The first intelligence of the place comes to us from the year 1614, when John Smith is supposed to have discovered them. The next date is of the landing of Christopher Leavitt, in 1623. In 1645, three brothers, Robert, John, and Richard Cutts, emigrated from Wales, and on their way to the continent paused at the Isles of Shoals, and, finding them so pleasant, made their settlement here. Williamson mentions particularly Richard Gibson, from Topsham, England, and various other men from England and Wales. Many people speedily joined the little colony, which grew yearly more prosperous. In 1650, the Rev. John Brock came to live among the islanders, and remained with them twelve years. All that we hear of this man is so fine, he is represented as having been so faithful, zealous, intelligent, and humane, that it is no wonder the community flourished while he sat at the helm. It was said of him, “He dwells as near Heaven as any man upon earth.” Cotton Mather thus quaintly praises him: “He was a good _grammarian_, chiefly in this, that he still _spoke the truth from his heart_. He was a good _logician_, chiefly in this, that he _presented himself unto God with a reasonable service_. He was a good _arithmetician_, chiefly in this, that he _so numbered his days as to apply his heart unto wisdom_. He was a good _astronomer_, chiefly in this, _that his conversation was in Heaven_.... So much belonged to this _good man_, that so _learned a life_ may well be judged worthy of being a _written one_.” After him came a long procession of the clergy, good, bad, and indifferent, up to the present time, when “divine service,” so-called, has seemed a mere burlesque as it has been often carried on in the little church at Star.
Last summer I was shown a quaint little book entitled “The Fisherman’s Calling. A brief essay to Serve the Great Interests of Religion among our Fishermen. By Cotton Mather, D. D. Boston in New England. Printed: Sold by T. Green. 1712,” and I found the following incident connected with Mr. Brock’s ministry at the Shoals: “To Illustrate and Demonstrate the Providence of God our Saviour over the Business of fishermen, I will entertain you with Two short Modern Histories.” Then follows an account of some Romish priests upon some isles belonging to Scotland, who endeavored to draw the poor fishermen over to popery. The other is this: “When our Mr. Brock lived on the Isles of Shoals, he brought the Fishermen into an agreement that besides the Lord’s Day they would spend one day of every month together in the worship of the Glorious Lord. A certain day which by their Agreement belonged unto the Exercises of Religion being arrived, they came to Mr. Brock, and asked him, that they might put by their meeting and go a Fishing, because they had Lost many Days by the Foulness of the weather. He, seeing that without and against his consent they resolved upon doing what they asked of him, replied, ‘If you will go away I say unto you, ‘Catch Fish if you can!’ But as for you that will tarry, and worship our Lord Jesus Christ this day, I will pray unto Him for you that you may afterwards take fish till you are weary.’ Thirty men went away from the meeting and Five tarried. The thirty that went away from the meeting with all their Craft could catch but four Fishes. The Five which tarried went forth afterwards and _they_ took _five Hundred_. The Fishermen were after this Readier to hearken unto the Voice of their Teacher.”
If virtue were often its own reward after a fashion like this, in what a well-conducted world we should live! Doubtless the reckless islanders needed the force of all the moral suasion good Mr. Brock could bring to bear upon them; too much law and order they could not have; but I like better this story of the stout old fisherman who in church so unexpectedly answered his pastor’s thrilling exhortation, “Supposing, my brethren, that any of you should be overtaken in the bay by a northeast storm, your hearts trembling with fear, and nothing but death before, whither would your thoughts turn? what would you do?”--with the instant inspiration of common-sense, “I’d hoist the foresail and scud away for Squam!”
The first church on Star was built principally of timbers from the wrecks of Spanish ships, but it has been partially burned and rebuilt twice. Various rough characters, given over to hard drinking, and consequently lawless living, have joined the colony within the last ten years, and made the place the scene of continually recurring fires. On going down to Appledore one spring I was surprised at the daily and nightly jangling of the dull bell at Star,--a dissonant sound borne wildly on the stormy wind to our dwelling. “What is Star Island ringing for?” I kept asking, and was as often answered, “O, it’s only Sam Blake setting his house on fire!”--the object being to obtain the insurance thereupon.
On the Massachusetts records there is a paragraph to the effect that, in the year 1653, Philip Babb, of Hog Island, was appointed constable for all the islands of Shoals, Star Island excepted. To Philip Babb we shall have occasion to refer again. “In May, 1661,” says Williamson, “being places of note and great resort, the General Court incorporated the islands into a town called Appledore, and invested it with the powers and privileges of other towns.” There were then about forty families on Hog Island, but between that time and the year 1670 these removed to Star Island and joined the settlement there. This they were induced to do partly through fear of the Indians, who frequented Duck Island, and thence made plundering excursions upon them, carrying off their women while they were absent fishing, and doing a variety of harm; but, as it is expressly stated that people living on the mainland sent their children to school at Appledore that they might be safe from the Indians, the statement of their depredations at the Shoals is perplexing. Probably the savages camped on Duck to carry on their craft of porpoise-fishing, which to this day they still pursue among the islands on the eastern coast of Maine. Star Island seemed a place of greater safety; and probably the greater advantages of landing and the convenience of a wide cove at the entrance of the village, with a little harbor wherein the fishing-craft might anchor with some security, were also inducements. William Pepperell, a native of Cornwall, England, emigrated to the place in the year 1676, and lived there upwards of twenty years, and carried on a large fishery. “He was the father of Sir William Pepperell, the most famous man Maine ever produced.” For more than a century previous to the Revolutionary War there were at the Shoals from three to six hundred inhabitants, and the little settlement flourished steadily. They had their church and school-house, and a court-house; and the usual municipal officers were annually chosen, and the town records regularly kept. From three to four thousand quintals of fish were yearly caught and cured by the islanders; and, beside their trade with Spain, large quantities of fish were also carried to Portsmouth, for the West India market. In 1671 the islands belonged to John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges. This man always greatly interested me. He must have been a person of great force of character, strong, clear-headed, full of fire and energy. He was appointed governor-general of New England in 1637. Williamson has much to say of him: “He and Sir Walter Raleigh, whose acquaintance was familiar, possessing minds equally elastic and adventurous, turned their thoughts at an early period of life towards the American hemisphere.” And the historian thus goes on lamenting over him: “Fame and wealth, so often the idols of superior intellects, were the prominent objects of this aspiring man. Constant and sincere in his friendships, he might have had extensively the estimation of others, had not selfishness been the centre of all his efforts. His life and name, though by no means free from blemishes, have just claims to the grateful recollections of the Eastern Americans and their posterity.”
From 1640 to 1775, says a report to the “Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others in North America,” the church at the Shoals was in a flourishing condition, and had a succession of ministers,--Messrs. Hull, Brock, Belcher, Moody, Tucke, and Shaw, all of whom were good and faithful men; two, Brock and Tucke, being men of learning and ability, with peculiarities of talent and character admirably fitting them for their work on these islands. Tucke was the only one who closed his life and ministry at the Shoals. He was a graduate of Harvard College of the class of 1723, was ordained at the Shoals July 20, 1732, and died there August 12, 1773,--his ministry thus covering more than forty years. His salary in 1771 was paid in merchantable fish, a quintal to a man, when there were on the Shoals from ninety to one hundred men, and a quintal of fish was worth a guinea. His grave was accidentally discovered in 1800, and the Hon. Dudley Atkins Tyng, who interested himself most charitably and indefatigably for the good of these islands, placed over it a slab of stone, with an inscription which still remains to tell of the fine qualities of the man whose dust it covers; but year by year the raindrops with delicate touches wear away the deeply cut letters, for the stone lies horizontal; even now they are scarcely legible, and soon the words of praise and appreciation will exist only in the memory of a few of the older inhabitants.
At the time of Mr. Tucke’s death the prosperity of the Shoals was at its height. But in less than thirty years after his death a most woful condition of things was inaugurated.
The settlement flourished till the breaking out of the war, when it was found to be entirely at the mercy of the English, and obliged to furnish them with recruits and supplies. The inhabitants were therefore ordered by the government to quit the islands; and as their trade was probably broken up and their property exposed, most of them complied with the order, and settled in the neighboring seaport towns, where their descendants may be found to this day. Some of the people settled in Salem, and the Mr. White so mysteriously murdered there many years ago was born at Appledore. Those who remained, with a few exceptions, were among the most ignorant and degraded of the people, and they went rapidly down into untold depths of misery. “They burned the meeting-house, and gave themselves up to quarrelling, profanity, and drunkenness, till they became almost barbarians”; or, as Mr. Morse expresses it, “were given up to work all manner of wickedness with greediness.” In no place of the size has there been a greater absorption of “rum” since the world was made. Mr. Reuben Moody, a theological student, lived at the Shoals for a few months in the year 1822, and his description of the condition of things at that time is frightful. He had no place to open a school; one of the islanders provided him with a room, fire, etc., giving as a reason for his enthusiastic furtherance of Mr. Moody’s plans, that his children made such a disturbance at home that he couldn’t sleep in the daytime. An extract from Mr. Moody’s journal affords an idea of the morals of the inhabitants at this period:--
“May 1^{st}. I yet continue to witness the Heaven-daring impieties of this people. Yesterday my heart was shocked at seeing a man about seventy years of age, as devoid of reason as a maniac, giving way to his passions; striving to express himself in more blasphemous language than he had the ability to utter; and, being unable to express the malice of his heart in words, he would _run at_ every one he saw. All was tumult and confusion,--men and women with tar-brushes, clenched fists, and stones; one female who had an infant but eight days old, with a stone in her hand and an oath on her tongue, threatened to dash out the brains of her antagonists.... After I arrived among them some of them dispersed, some led their wives into the house, others drove them off, and a calm succeeded.”
In another part of the journal is an account of an old man who lived alone and drank forty gallons of rum in twelve months,--some horrible old Caliban, no doubt. This hideous madness of drunkenness was the great trouble at the Shoals; and though time has modified, it has not eliminated the apparently hereditary bane whose antidote is not yet discovered. The misuse of strong drink still proves a whirlpool more awful than the worst terrors of the pitiless ocean that hems the islanders in.
As may be seen from Mr. Moody’s journal, the clergy had a hard time of it among the heathen at the Isles of Shoals; but they persevered, and many brave women at different times have gone among the people to teach the school and reclaim the little children from wretchedness and ignorance. Miss Peabody, of Newburyport, who came to live with them in 1823, did wonders for them during the three years of her stay. She taught the school, visited the families, and on Sundays read to such audiences as she could collect, took seven of the poorer female children to live with her at the parsonage, instructed all who would learn in the arts of carding, spinning, weaving, knitting, sewing, braiding mats, etc. Truly she remembered what “Satan finds for idle hands to do,” and kept all her charges busy and consequently happy. All honor to her memory! she was a wise and faithful servant. There is still an affectionate remembrance of her among the present inhabitants, whose mothers she helped out of their degradation into a better life. I saw in one of the houses, not long ago, a sampler blackened by age, but carefully preserved in a frame; and was told that the dead grandmother of the family had made it when a little girl, under Miss Peabody’s supervision. In 1835 the Rev. Origen Smith went to live at Star, and remained perhaps ten years, doing much good among the people. He nearly succeeded in banishing the great demoralizer, liquor, and restored law and order. He is reverently remembered by the islanders. In 1855 an excellent man by the name of Mason occupied the post of minister for the islanders, and from his report to the “Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others in North America” I make a few extracts. He says: “The kind of business which the people pursue, and by which they subsist, affects unfavorably their habits, physical, social, and religious. Family discipline is neglected, domestic arrangements very imperfect, much time, apparently wasted, is spent in watching for favorable indications to pursue their calling.... A bad moral influence is excited by a portion of the transient visitors to the Shoals during the summer months.” This is very true. He speaks of the people’s appreciation of the efforts made in their behalf; and says that they raised subscriptions among themselves for lighting the parsonage, and for fuel for the singing-school (which, by the way, was a most excellent institution), and mentions their surprising him by putting into the back kitchen of the parsonage a barrel of fine flour, a bucket of sugar, a leg of bacon, etc. “Their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality,” he says; and this little act shows that they were far from being indifferent or ungrateful. They were really attached to Mr. Mason, and it is a pity he could not have remained with them.
Within the last few years they have been trying bravely to help themselves, and they persevere with their annual fair to obtain money to pay the teacher who saves their little children from utter ignorance; and many of them show a growing ambition in fitting up their houses and making their families more comfortable. Of late, the fires before referred to, kindled in drunken madness by the islanders themselves, or by the reckless few who have joined the settlement, have swept away nearly all the old houses, which have been replaced by smart new buildings, painted white, with green blinds, and with modern improvements, so that yearly the village grows less picturesque,--which is a charm one can afford to lose, when the external smartness is indicative of better living among the people. Twenty years ago Star Island Cove was charming, with its tumble-down fish-houses, and ancient cottages with low, shelving roofs, and porches covered with the golden lichen that so loves to embroider old weather-worn wood. Now there is not a vestige of those dilapidated buildings to be seen; almost everything is white and square and new; and they have even cleaned out the cove, and removed the great accumulation of fish-bones which made the beach so curious.
The old town records are quaint and interesting, and the spelling and modes of expression so peculiar that I have copied a few. Mr. John Muchamore was the moderator of a meeting called “March ye 7th day, 1748. By a Legall town meeting of ye Free holders and Inhabitence of gosport, dewly quallefide to vote for Tiding men Collers of fish, Corders of wood. Addition to ye minister’s sallery Mr John Tucke, 100 lbs old tenor.”
In 1755, it was “Agred in town meating that if any person shall spelth [split] any fish above hie water marck and leave their heads and son bones [sound-bones] their, shall pay ten lbs new tenor to the town, and any that is above now their, they that have them their, shall have them below hie warter in fortinets time or pay the same.” In another place “it is agreed at ton meating evry person that is are kow [has a cow] shall carry them of at 15 day of may, keep them their til the 15 day of October or pay 20 shillings lawful money.” And “if any person that have any hogs, If they do any damg, hom [whom] they do the damg to shall keep the hog for sattisfaxeon.”
The cows seem to have given a great deal of trouble. Here is one more extract on the subject:--
“This is a Leagel vot by the ton meeting, that if any presson or pressons shall leave their Cowks out after the fifteenth day of May and they do any Dameg, they shall be taken up and the owner of the kow shall pay teen shillings old tenor to the kow constabel and one half he shall have and the other shall give to the pour of the place.
“MR DAINEL RANDEL “_Kow Constabel_.”
“On March 11^{th} 1762. A genarel free Voot past amongst the inhabents that every fall of the year when Mr Rev^{d.} John Tucke has his wood to Carry home evary men will not com that is abel to com shall pay forty shillings ould tenor.”
But the most delightfully preposterous entry is this:--
“March 12^{th} 1769. A genarel free voot past amongst the inhabents to cus [cause] tow men to go to the Rev^d Mr John Tucke to hear wether he was willing to take one Quental of fish each man, or to take the price of Quental in ould tenor which he answered this that he thought it was easer to pay the fish than the money which he consented to taik the fish for the year insuing.”
“On March ye 25 1771. ”then their was a meating called and it was _gurned_ until the 23^{rd} day of apirel.
“MR DEEKEN WILLAM MUCHMORE “_Moderator_.”
Among the “offorsers” of “Gospored” were, besides “Moderator” and “Town Clarke,” “Seelekt meen,” “Counstauble,” “Tidon meen” (Tithing-men), “Coulears of fish,”--“Coulear” meaning, I suppose, culler, or person appointed to select fish,--and “Sealers of Whood,” oftener expressed corders of wood.
In 1845 we read that Asa Caswell was chosen highway “sovair.”
Very ancient tradition says that the method of courtship at the Isles of Shoals was after this fashion: If a youth fell in love with a maid, he lay in wait till she passed by, and then pelted her with stones, after the manner of our friends of Marblehead; so that if a fair Shoaler found herself the centre of a volley of missiles, she might be sure that an ardent admirer was expressing himself with decision certainly, if not with tact! If she turned, and exhibited any curiosity as to the point of the compass whence the bombardment proceeded, her doubts were dispelled by another shower; but if she went on her way in maiden meditation, then was her swain in despair, and life, as is usual in such cases, became a burden to him.
Within my remembrance an occasional cabbage-party made an agreeable variety in the life of the villagers. I never saw one, but have heard them described. Instead of regaling the guests with wine and ices, pork and cabbage were the principal refreshments offered them; and if the cabbage came out of the garden of a neighbor, the spice of wickedness lent zest to the entertainment,--stolen fruit being always the sweetest.