South Wellfleet, Massachusetts

Exploring the family connections of the two Isaiah Hatchs caused me to sort-out other Hatchs who lived in South Wellfleet.  A clipping in the South Wellfleet folder at the Wellfleet Historical Society reported the unfortunate demise of Lewis Hatch, who lived near the South Wellfleet Cemetery just past and a bit to the north of the house on Cemetery Road that served as the Parsonage to the South Wellfleet Congregational Church. I wondered who he was, and where he fit into the Hatch family. I also wondered if Clifford Hatch, the owner of Hatch’s Fish store in downtown Wellfleet, was a member of this family. A little genealogical research tied it all together.

Bethia Arey, daughter of the first Reuben Arey of South Wellfleet, married Thomas Hatch, whose family line stretched back to the Scituate Hatchs, as like the Isaiah Hatchs did.  Bethia and Thomas had eleven children. When Thomas and Bethia died, they were buried in Duck Creek Cemetery. Their ninth child, William Horton Hatch, was born in 1820. He married Hannah Snow, stayed in Wellfleet, and had numerous children.

One of William’s daughters, Eunice, married Seth Foster, son of Scotto Foster and Elizabeth Doane, a family I’ve written about.  Another Hatch son was William Junior, who never married, and lived in Wellfleet with his parents. Another son, Solomon Hatch, moved to Provincetown, and was the grandfather of Clifford Hatch. Yet another son, Lewis, married and moved to Boston.

By the time of the 1920 Federal census, Eunice and William –brother and widowed sister — are living in South Wellfleet and both are in their seventies. In the next few years, both of them died. By the 1930 Federal census, their brother Lewis (also spelled Louis in some accounts) was living there alone. In the 1930 Federal census, he is a widower.

The 1939 clipping I found at the Historical Society told of the sad death of “Louis” Hatch when his house and barn was burned and destroyed. This was just one of many fires in South Wellfleet that destroyed old homes. Mr. Hatch was 85 years old, and drove a horse and wagon that supplied vegetables to his neighbors.  There’s a wonderful photo of Mr. Hatch in Daniel Lombardo’s book “Wellfleet Then and Now.”

The fire at Mr. Hatch’s was on December 27, 1939. The temperature was down to fifteen degrees, with the wind blowing at twenty miles per hour. A Mr. Murphy was driving by on his way to Orleans at around 7 pm when he noticed the flames, and quickly went back to Mr. Davis’ South Wellfleet store to summon the Wellfleet Fire Department. Mr. Murphy returned to the fire, broke windows, and opened the barn door; only three piglets survived. Later, Mr. Hatch’s charred body was removed, not identifiable by the county coroner, but presumed to be the elderly man.

The news report says that the firemen laid hose to “Duck Creek” – they meant Blackfish Creek – but did not have sufficient hose to put out the fire. They summoned the Truro Fire Department through the radio system; Lawrence Gardiner had a radio in his car. The size of the fire attracted numerous onlookers. Smaller brush fires were ignited, but the proximity of the cedar swamp helped to contain their spread.

The fire was declared accidental. According to the news report, Mr. Hatch lived in only one room of the 150 year old house. There may have been a defective chimney, or it was supposed that Mr. Hatch may have tripped while holding a kerosene lamp.

Sources

Family History records at www.familysearch.org

U.S. Federal Census collection at www.ancestry.com

David Kew’s Cape Cod History site: www.capecodhistory.us

Barnstable Patriot (various) online archive: www.sturgislibrary.org

Newspaper account online at www.genealogybank.com.

The father plays a key role in solving the wreck of the ‘Franklin’; the son becomes ‘The Little Man of South Wellfleet’

In 1823, Isaiah Holbrook Hatch purchased half of the Lombard family’s holdings north of Blackfish Creek — today, thanks to Charles Cole’s memoir of his childhood in South Wellfleet, we know that the area was today’s Cannon Hill. Born in 1798, Isaiah H. Hatch was the son of George Hatch of Truro; in 1820 Isaiah married Elizabeth Smith Young of Wellfleet. Peel back a few generations — as with other Wellfleet families — and you can find Mr. Hatch’s ancestor, Thomas Hatch, an early arrival in New England, settling in Scituate, in the 1600s.

Isaiah H. Hatch pursued the usual career of a Wellfleet man of that era. Charles Cole notes that he owned the ship Aurora anchored at the South Wharf, and his brother Stephen Hatch owned the Fanny.  Captain Isaiah Hatch also owned pew number 43 in the South Wellfleet Congregational Church.

By the time of the 1850 Federal census, Mr. Hatch’s occupation is “farmer”, although he was referred to as ‘Captain’ throughout his life. Mr. Cole notes that Mr. Hatch grew alternating crops of corn and rye, the latter used to make brown bread and hasty pudding, New England staples.  In the 1850 Federal agricultural census, Mr. Hatch owns 50 acres, but only four acres are under cultivation.

Mr. and Mrs. Hatch’s first child was Rebecca, born in 1821; she died at age 7 in 1828. Their second child, Elisa Arey Hatch, was born in 1823 and married in 1844 to Nathan Y. Paine, another of South Wellfleet’s distinguished citizens. Mr. Paine became one of the South Wharf owners in the 1840s, after Richard Arey moved away. A third daughter, Minerva, was born in 1828; she later married Joshua Paine. Their fourth child, a son, was named Isaiah Adams Hatch. Born a dwarf, he lived at home throughout his life, and achieved some fame later in life, as I’ll write about later. The Hatchs had another child in 1834, Harriet, but there is no record of her in the 1850 census, so presumably she died in childhood.

Mr. Hatch’s moment of fame came in 1849 when the Franklin ran aground in Wellfleet. Donald Trayser, a Cape Cod historian, puts the wreck near Newcomb’s Hollow.  The Franklin was en route from Deal, England, to Boston, with passengers and cargo — wool and linseed oil, nutmegs, books, dry goods, and what the news called “a choice selection of nursery stock” that a Boston man had ordered to establish his horticultural business.

The news reports and later testimony of the crew described the situation on March 3, 1849, as one in which the wind increased to gale force, and drove the ship onto the bars early on that morning. The Captain, Charles Smith, packed a valise (some reports said he had gold coins and jewelry), summoned the passengers into a lifeboat, and left the crew to deal with the wreck. While leaving, a young woman was told to jump onto the lifeboat; when she did, the surf lurched the boat, and she fell into the sea. A few minutes later, the lifeboat capsized, and all the people in it were drowned.

Much later in the day, a group of Wellfleet citizens were able to launch a boat and rescue those remaining on board, although before the rescue others were washed off the deck and drowned. By the time of the rescue, the ship was in two pieces, with the sailors and passengers clinging to one of them. The Wellfleet men in the rescue boat were Mulford Rich, Joseph Swett, Benjamin S. Rice, Nehemiah C. Newcomb, Joseph Harding, Thomas Newcomb, and James A. James. Later, nine of the fifteen Franklin passengers who drowned were found: six in Truro, two in Provincetown, and one in Wellfleet.  A new report on March 12 described the sighting of a body in the surf off Provincetown, a body that was “successfully grappled for and proved to be a woman, about 25 years old, dark complexion, black hair, black dress, with two rings on her left hand. Said to be one of the two lady passengers from the Franklin, she was taken up to town and buried.”

The story has it that the nursery stock from the Franklin was rescued by the Wellfleet citizens who turned out for the wreck; thereafter many fruit trees brought years of fresh fruit to the town. Nevertheless, the most important item salvaged from the ship was a valise – the Captain’s, marked C. Smith — taken by Isaiah Hatch.

Mr. Hatch carried the valise home and extracted and dried the letters he found in it; after reading them, he invited Ebenezer Davis, the underwriters’ agent, to visit his home so that he could share what he’d found.

The letters, signed by the two owners — Mr. John W. Crafts, a tallow chandler of South Boston, and Mr. James W. Wilson, a Boston businessman — implied that the Captain should destroy the ship so that they would benefit from the insurance payment and settle their financial problems. When the content of the rescued letters became known, the “Commissioner’s Court” in Boston summoned Mr. Crafts to appear. As later testimony showed, Mr. Wilson hid out for a few days, and finally turned himself in.

By April, both men had been indicted, and Mr. Crafts went to trial in Federal court in Boston, charged with “barratry,” which in maritime law is misconduct that results in damaging a ship, including scuttling it. In the case of the Franklin, the crime was to defraud the insurers. The penalty for the two men in this case, if convicted, would have been a $10,000 fine and ten years in prison.

This case is the only known one of barratry regarding the wrecks on the Cape Cod coast. Mr. Hatch’s crucial role played an important part in the drama reported by the press. One article in a New Bedford paper gave credit to “a wise and superintending Providence” who put Mr. Hatch on the beach with his hook, and sent him home to dry and read the letters in the Captain’s valise, and to bring “these purposes of fraud and villainy to light.”

The trial of Mr. Crafts stretched out through April and May. The Hatch family — Isaiah, his wife Eliza, and daughter Minerva — all appeared in court in Boston to tell their story of drying out the letters. Mr. Wilson, testifying for the prosecution, gave many days of testimony regarding the complicated ownership of the ship, trying to deny his actual role, although admitting his role in making the arrangements to destroy her. One writer called his testimony a “mass of chaos.” Mr. Crafts’ defense team worked hard to portray Mr. Crafts as a somewhat naïve businessman, and Mr. Wilson “an irresponsible adventurer having no permanent location.”  Another reporter said that Mr. Wilson’s “aim seems to be to amuse the Court with characteristic Irish repartee.”

Early in June Mr. Crafts was found not guilty.  I could not find any later legal action against Mr. Wilson, so perhaps he was granted immunity. Mr. Crafts’ attorneys made a strong case that Mr. Wilson was indeed a villainous man who had tricked Crafts; when the jury gave their verdict, the many spectators in the courtroom burst into applause.

All of the Franklin proceedings were reported in detail in numerous newspapers in Boston and the surrounding area. In October 1849, Henry David Thoreau took his first walk on the outer beach of the Cape with his friend Ellery Channing. Upon meeting a man who was still looking for salvage from the Franklin, he commented on the unfortunate events earlier in the year. He also discusses the Franklin wreck when writing about his visit with the Wellfleet Oysterman.

Captain Hatch’s life seemed to settle back to normal after his ’fifteen minutes of fame.’ He is mentioned in the Charles Cole memory piece as loaning his wagon to the South Wellfleet boys who stole back the cannon fired on the Fourth of July, and buried it for many years on Cannon Hill. He was listed as one of Wellfleet’s “Commissioners of Wrecks” in 1867. His pear tree was mentioned in a Barnstable Patriot article in 1871. The tree was claimed to be 130 years old; perhaps the remarkable age of the tree was given to head off any connection to the Franklin wreck. In another Patriot story, Mrs. Hatch broke her leg in 1874, an occurrence garnering mention in the local news column of the paper.  Mrs. Hatch died in 1877 at 79 years of age.

Starting in 1862, Captain Hatch’s son, Isaiah Adams Hatch, began to get some attention. In September that year The Barnstable Patriot reported that “Col. Isaiah Hatch” proposed to raise a company for active service in the U.S. Army wherein every applicant must be only four feet high or shorter. The report goes on to mention that “the Colonel is well known in the lower Cape towns as an active, intelligent man. His business has been that of a “Travelling Merchant”, supplying the Provincetown Market with the productions of his father’s farm, and always ready to convey passengers by day or night to any town in the county. Col. Hatch is 30 years of age, four feet high and weighs 80 pounds. Little folks from Cape towns are urged to fill up this Company immediately.” If anything happened as a result of this recruitment, I have not found any such report. Nor have I found any mention of how Isaiah Adams Hatch came to be designated “Colonel.”  A later piece refers to him as a General. Perhaps he was held in the same regard as General Tom Thumb, a popular little man of Middleboro, Massachusetts, who lived at the same time.

In 1873, a Patriot Letter to the Editor notes “our friend Isaiah Hatch of South Wellfleet” is most agreeable to his customers – especially the ladies – with his dependable and safe conveyance to and from the railroad station.

Isaiah’s life took another public turn in the late 1880s, as Olivia C. Harriman penned a long Victorian elegy about him called “The Little Man”. Olivia and her family lived in Wellfleet where she was born; she wrote the poem when she was eleven or twelve. The verses note the sadness of The Little Man, as his five sisters have all died, followed a few years later by his mother. I only found records for four sisters, two of whom died young and the older ones, Elisa and Minerva, died of typhoid fever within days of each other in August 1865.

The poem could be purchased as a “broadside” for five cents. Mr. Hatch himself kept them available during his travels. Brown University has a copy in its archive.

Either the poem or his “traveling merchant” work seems to have given Hatch, the Little Man of South Wellfleet, a reputation, as there are a number of Barnstable Patriot articles

Isaiah Adams Hatch, the Little Man of South Wellfleet

noting his stopping by to visit people in one town or another. In 1878, a six-week trip he made to Boston and Cambridge was reported on in detail, noting the many sights he took in, and the friends he visited. Another ‘little man,’ E. Parker Lombard, became a companion on visits, and the two were noted as well-known on the Cape.

In 1879, perhaps looking ahead as to how he would handle his property, Isaiah H. Hatch sold it to George and Susan Rogers of Orleans. Susan Rogers grew up in Orleans. The next year, as shown in the Federal census, the two families are living together in the same dwelling. Isaiah H. Hatch may not have known how long he would live – he died in 1893 at age 94, a remarkably long life in the 19^th century. Perhaps he made the arrangement with the Rogers family so that they would watch out for his son after his death. However, Isaiah Adams Hatch died shortly after his father, in 1894, at age 63.

The Rogers family continued to live in the Hatch home; Mr. Rogers died in 1897. Perhaps then, Mrs. Rogers took advantage of the developing Wellfleet tourism and established her home as a guest house named the “Willows.” The Barnstable Patriot noted her visitors in their “South Wellfleet” column. Mrs. Rogers also took advantage of the real estate development Mr. Howard began in the 1890s, selling much of “Cannon Hill” to him. Mr. Howard’s Cape Cod Bay Land Company had a plan developed for Cannon Hill by 1897, just as there were plans for the Old Wharf, Lieutenant’s Island, and elsewhere. Mrs. Rogers died in 1905; her obituary noted that her funeral was in Captain Hatch’s home.

Soon after her death, her son sold the property to Ida Hicks of Cambridge. Five years later, Clarence Hicks and his wife, Asenath Pierce of Wellfleet, occupied the house and had two daughters, Ida and Myra, who grew up there. Since Clarence named one of his daughters Ida, there seems to be a relationship between the Ida Hicks who bought the house and land in 1906.

Many years later, it was Myra Hicks who gave up the secret of the buried South Wellfleet cannon on the Hatch/Hicks property.  It must have been important enough that the story of its capture by the South Wellfleet boys was passed along from the Hatch to the Rogers to the Hicks family.

Sources

“The Notes of Charles F. Cole” manuscript from the Wellfleet Public Library

Family History records at www.familysearch.org

Provincetown Advocate available on line at http://advocate.provincetown-ma.gov

U.S. Federal Census collection at www.ancestry.com

David Kew’s Cape Cod History site: www.capecodhistory.us

Barnstable Patriot (various) online archive: www.sturgislibrary.org

Barnstable County Deeds available at www.barnstablecountydeeds.org

Newspaper account online at www.genealogybank.com.

Just a bit north of South Wellfleet, past the Fire Tower, is a section of Wellfleet known as Dogtown — no definitive reason why — perhaps the reason is long since forgotten. I don’t think anyone uses the term today.  In his Wellfleet history, Deyo notes that the older residents call this part of the town “Dogtown.”  In an 1885 gazeteer, Dogtown is listed as a specific area of Wellfleet, on the same list as Fresh Brook Village, South Wellfleet and “Painsville” (Paine Hollow).

Dogtown, typically a term that refers to a town overrun by dogs, or as a section of town where the residents did not amount to much. Other writers say the term refers to the folk art of divination based on canine behavior where a dog can foretell death.  Perhaps the art of cynomancy was practiced in Wellfleet’s Dogtown; or perhaps it was the same as the Dogtown at Cape Ann, where the sailors’ widows kept dogs for protection.

Dr. Stone, the town’s doctor and poet, included “Dogtown” as he wrote his poem about the railroad’s arrival in Wellfleet: “the little dogs in Dogtown will wag their little tails; they’ll think something’s coming a riding on the rails.”

Now that I’ve told you all I could find on Dogtown, today the area has a road, Big Chief Hill, near the former Oliver’s tennis courts.

Ruth Rickmers had a page on the Big Chief Dance Hall in her 1983 book. The deed to the land where it stood was transferred from E. P. Cook to Albert and George Avery in 1924. According to the 1910 census, Mr. George Avery was a musician in an orchestra which seems to be the reason he pursued building a dance hall in Wellfleet.  In the 1920 census he is a house painter, in Wellfleet, a widower with two daughters, living with his father, Albert, a cobbler. The Averys appear to have only owned the dance hall for a short time; in 1925 they sold it to Lester G. Horton.

Horton was from the Horton family of North Eastham, and settled in Wellfleet to run a grocery business on Commercial Street. ‘Horton and Gill’s Grocery’ was in the building that was the Olde Helpee Selfee Laundry, then the Lobster Hutt, and now Mac’s Shack.

In the “My Pamet” column in a 1983 Cape Codder Helen Purcell, Wellfleet’s historian, supplies the writer with a faded photo of the Big Chief Dance Hall (sometimes called The Pavillion) inclusing a description — an imaginary one  –of a building the size of a hanger with a polished hardwood floor and warmly lit, with an elevated stage. But no, the writer goes on, it wasn’t like that at all. The real Big Chief was “meagre in proportions” with a few tangled beachplum bushes nearby. The rough walls, the garish lights, and a rickety platform for the band are recalled, while the dance floor and the spectators’ gallery are separated by merely a rough two by four railing, somewhat dangerous when over-active dancers got into a spirited rendition of Tiger Rag.

After the summer visitors left, and the circuit bands no longer moved around the Cape’s dance halls, the Big Chief served as the location for Wellfleet High School basketball games, sometimes followed by a dance. The pot-bellied stoves were hardly able to dispel the freezing cold air.  Later, in the springtime, the Junior Class would decorate the hall and hold their prom, raising money for their senior trip to Washington, DC, a Wellfleet tradition. Sometimes a graduation, held at the Congregational Church, would be followed by a reception at the Big Chief Dance Hall.

Rickers reports in her notes on the Hall that on April 13, 1933, the Big Chief Dance Pavillion burned down as a result of suspected arson. Mr. Horton sold the property in 1934 to the Connellys, and they sold it in 1947 to Charles Frazier Jr., while much later the property it belonged to the McGinns, who had an excavating company there in the early 1980s.

Big Chief Dance Hall as the site of a Klan speech

Another Barnstable Patriot article from 1927 mentioned the Big Chief Dance Hall as the site of a speech by a man named Guy Willis Holmes with a reference to his association with the Ku Klux Klan. Further research showed him to be a defrocked Methodist minister who had been kicked out of his church in New Bedford because of his strong support of the Klan and an effort to organize the women of the church into an auxiliary of the Klan organization. Later, he was brought to trial on charges that he had had an illicit affair with a young waitress, meeting her in a Boston hotel where they signed in under assumed names, one of the criminal charges. His trial ended in a hung jury, and he was free to come to Wellfleet where he apparently continued his work on behalf of the Klan.

The Klan enjoyed their hey-day in the 1920s, some say started by the film Birth of A Nation in 1915. Mr. Holmes had spoken the year before at the Wellfleet Congregational Church at a “public KKK meeting” according to the Barnstable Patriot reporter. My research shows that the Cape had three KKK chapters in Chatham, in Hyannis and in Provincetown wherein they burned a cross in front of the Catholic Church.

Sources

Deyo, Simon. History of Barnstable County, New York, 1898.   Wellfleet chapter on line at www.capecodhistory.net

Barnstable Patriot (various) online  archive: www.sturgislibrary.org

The Cape Codder digital files available online at www.snowlibrary.org

Barnstable County Deeds available at http://www.barnstablecountydeeds.org

The New York Times archive

R.E. Rickmers, Wellfleet Remembered Volume 2, Blue Butterfly Publications, Wellfleet, Mass.

“Federal Census Collection” database. Ancestry.com http://www.ancestry.com.

South of the Barker/Arey homestead in South Wellfleet, the David Wileys established their home.  Some current Barker family members have knowledge of this area, and there are a number of deeds that describe the land that the Wiley family assembled during the nineteenth century.

The original David Wiley who settled there was born in 1777. Unfortunately, the genealogical records for Wellfleet do not note his parents – at least, those I have found so far. Someone else was looking for this same information when he or she posted an inquiry in the Cape Cod Genealogical Society’s publication in the 1970s. I wonder if they found out.

There were Wileys in Wellfleet from its earliest days. In 1724, Moses Wiley was one of a group of Wellfleet citizens who objected to the local minister when Wellfleet was having its ecclesiastical difficulties. Another Moses Wiley served on the Wellfleet Committee of Correspondence in 1777.

On January 19, 1797, David Wiley married Ruth Arey, daughter of the “first” Reuben Arey. Ruth was born in 1780. There is no known record that determines if her father gave the young Wiley couple the land they settled on – as her father had for his son, Reuben, and as the second Reuben did for his son Asa Packard Arey, which became the Barker homestead. I’ve already written about Ruth Arey– her second husband was Major John Witherell who lived just to the north. Ruth and David Wiley’s children were:

• Samuel Arey Wiley (1798)
• Temperance Lewis Wiley (1799) who married Lemuel Newcomb
• Lydia Wiley (1800) who married Ezra Goodspeed and settled on what became “Old Wharf Road”
• David Wiley (1804) whose life is discussed below
• Ruth Wiley (1807) who married Elisha Ward Smith whose mother was a Stubbs
• Phebe Wiley (1809) who married Richard Stubbs and lived in South Wellfleet.

There is a document in the Barnstable County deeds database detailing a legal suit David Wiley’s neighbor, Whitfield Witherell, brought against him in 1811. Whitfield Witherell was John Witherell’s brother. Mr. Wiley owed Mr. Witherell $70.32. A committee was appointed to determine the value of Mr. Wiley’s property, and then the debt was satisfied. Wellfleet residents Benjamin Brown, Moses Wiley and Isaac Smith served on the committee. Reuben Arey signed a separate part of the document to indicate he has no claim on this property – which led me to believe he once did have an interest, and may have transferred it when the Wileys married.

David Wiley (Senior) died sometime before 1822, just as his son David was reaching maturity. We do not have a specific date for his death, but we do have a record of Ruth Arey Wiley‘s marriage to Major John WItherell in 1822. David Wiley, Jr. married Thankful Ward Young in 1826, and lived a long life in South Wellfleet as one of its leading citizens.

The younger David Wiley was one of the founders of the Second Congregational Church, and was still living when the church celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1883. In 1861, he served on a Wellfleet Committee that surveyed for the coming of the Cape Cod Railroad. In 1870 he served on another committee that determined how Wellfleet would implement a new state regulation on truancy.

David Wiley and Thankful Young had eight children:

• Henrietta (1829) — married Jesse Higgins Wiley
• Harriet (1831) – married and settled in Vermont
• Lorietta (1833) – married Dean Bangs Nickerson
• Warren Franklin — whom I write about further
• Levi (1838) – died in New Orleans in 1863
• Daniel (1841) – married Abigail Higgins
• Russell Davis (1843) – lived until 1920
• Phebe (1845) – never married; lived until 1936.

David Wiley lived his entire life in South Wellfleet at the family homestead, just south of the Barker’s. I found him listed in the 1860 Federal Agricultural census with details about his farm’s production, a topic I will write about separately. He expanded his land holdings in the 1830s when he purchased land from John Witherell and from Ruth Witherell, David’s mother, as she settled Major John Witherell’s estate. The Barker family called a small point of land pushing out into Loagy Bay “Wiley Point.”

In 1862, David Wiley and Ephraim Stubbs purchased from Robert Y. Paine one half of Mill-Hill – the small island in Loagy Bay which had a water mill at one point. Remnants of the cartway bridge, made of stone, are still there. This was located adjacent to Mr. Wiley’s farm.

Thankful Wiley died in 1867. In 1868, when he was 64, David Wiley remarried to Mary Foster Newcomb.

In 1879, David Wiley was one of four Wellfleet men who were supposed to decide where the South Wellfleet school would be located in the south district. The group could not agree; one account mentions that Wiley could not decide to close the local school and upset his neighbors. As a result, the Pond Hill School was closed for some time. Eventually, a second committee decided to move the schoolhouse to the north side of Blackfish Creek. Of course, all of this disruption was the result of the mackerel fishing diminishing, and of South Wellfleet’s population moving away.

One of David Wiley’s sons, Daniel, was a veteran of the Civil War and well-known as a tug boat commander. He participated in the effort to raise the Battleship Maine. His obituary mentions his “towering physique” and that he went off to sea at age 17, as his father had before him.

Warren Wiley was also a sea captain, commanding steamers that brought tropical fruit to Boston. One Barnstable Patriot article mentions “the new steamer Lorenzo D. Baker” and Captain Wiley who brought the then largest cargo of tropical fruit to Boston: 88 boxes of oranges and 14,000 bunches of bananas.

Warren Wiley married Elizabeth (Lizzie) Paine on January 1, 1861. She was the daughter of Isaac Paine and Catherine Rider, and a sister to Alvin Paine, who became the proprietor of the South Wellfleet General Store, handing it down to his son, Isaac Paine (see my blog posting of August 2012).

Warren and Lizzie’s daughter, Lillian (Lily) Grey Wiley, later married Charles F. Cole, whose memory piece has been so useful to me in working on South Wellfleet history. In that document, I learned about the movement of the Wiley house to the other side of Blackfish Creek. Much to my delight, when I joined a walking tour of Paine Hollow Houses in June 2013, there was the Wiley house! I’m posting a photo here — see below.

There are two references to the Wiley homestead area as “Monkey Neck” in South Wellfleet. One is in the Cole memory piece; Charles Cole refers to the South Wellfleet school location as Monkey Neck. On the walking tour, the guide referred to the area from which the Wiley house was moved as Monkey Neck. As late as 1939, when the South Wellfleet Neighborhood Association prepared their descriptive booklet of South Wellfleet, the area was designated as Monkey Neck on their map.

The family notes that the house was moved in 1866 when Lily was three years old. We don’t know how it was moved across the Creek — on the mudflats? Or would they have used the road? Today’s Barker family members have identified the site, since there are one or two cellar holes, and lilacs growing nearby, a sure sign of an old house.

It’s interesting that the Barkers note that there may be two cellar-holes.  David Wiley died in 1887. In 1888, Warren F. Wiley, who was the executor of his father’s estate, ran an advertisement in the Barnstable Patriot for “the estate of Captain David Wiley, comprising Garden, Meadow, Pasturage, Cranberry Land, House, Barn, Carriage house, etc.”  With one house moved, there must have been another one remaining that David Wiley and his second wife lived in.

The Wiley house that was moved across Blackfish Creek

While the Wiley home may be confusing, the Wiley land disposition is much clearer. In 1890, David Wiley’s youngest children, Russell D. Wiley and Phebe Wiley, sold all of his land holdings – the farm, the one half of Mill Hill, a piece of the cedar swamp, and more – to George Baker who was accumulating Wellfleet property during this time. Shortly thereafter, in 1891, Mr. Baker sold the land now called “the estate of David Wiley” – about eleven acres – to Miles Merrill, who had a cottage lots plan drawn up, adding this” Old Wharf area” to the other two cottage-lots plans on the Old Wharf Point and Prospect Hill.

Sources

U.S. Federal Census collection at www.ancestry.com

David Kew’s Cape Cod History site: www.capecodhistory.us

Barnstable Patriot (various) online  archive: www.sturgislibrary.org

Barnstable County Deeds available at www.barnstablecountydeeds.org

Barker Family interview.

One of the useful things about blogging is the ability to add more information when I find it. Here are further notes on five topics:

South Wellfleet Schools

Valerie Scheel was kind enough to send me a copy of notes called “Reminisces” by Lyndell Higgins Baldwin Coumans – age 96. This is Lynnie Higgins, daughter of Harold and Eva Higgins. I mentioned Eva in my post about Marconi’s operations in South Wellfleet — when she was the cook and housekeeper at the Marconi Station. Lynnie and her family lived in the Parsonage in South Wellfleet, the home that once housed the minister of the South Wellfleet Second Congregational Church.  The house still stands on Cemetery Road.

Lynnie lived in the Parsonage from 1912 when she was six years old, until she was twelve. In her memory notes, Lynnie remembers going to a four-room school house. Since the Pond Hill School closed in 1880, this must have been the elementary school that was in town on Main Street, where Main Street, Holbrook Avenue and Briar Lane merge. She tells of getting there on a vehicle they called “the barge.” This was a bus-shaped vehicle, a “box with windows” drawn by a horse. There were benches down each side, and in winter there was hay in the aisle to keep your feet warm. She remembers how the big boys used to kick the smaller kids, and she “still has scars from those big boots.”

Her uncle drove the barge, so in the morning she and her brother knew they could be a few minutes late because he would never leave them behind. Also, since the barge was at the school in the afternoons by 3 PM sharp, they could not be kept after school. At their hour-long lunch period, they joined their uncle – who apparently parked for the day, waiting for the afternoon return trip.

South Wellfleet Cemetery and the unknown sailors

When writing about shipwrecks, I mentioned the unknown sailors in their South Wellfleet

South Wellfleet Cemetery
Unknown Sailors marker

Cemetery grave. I read an article from a 1948 Cape Codder about Pauline Crowell, who spent considerable time and energy caring for the cemetery. She had taken up the chore after her husband, Luther F. Crowell, died in 1941.

Mrs. Crowell told the reporter about the three unknown sailors who had been buried long before she was involved. She said “they washed up on the beach.” But she did know that Herbert Nickerson, the Orleans funeral director, had come to the cemetery and used a rod to determine their burial place. Then Mrs. Crowell had the site fenced, and made the sign we find there today: “Unknown Sailors.”

Mrs. Crowell raised the money she needed for the cemetery care through whist parties. She also mentioned in this article that she had attended the South Wellfleet elementary school was was located near the Cemetery.

Camp Wellfleet’s Guns Fix a Problem

This note touches upon posts I wrote last summer about Camp Wellfleet, about electricity coming to Wellfleet, and about Prospect Hill.  I found a clipping slipped into a folder at the Wellfleet Historical Society. The title of the Cape Cod Standard Times newspaper report was “Guns Revive Broken-down Cape Ice Box.” The date is July 1943. Mr. and Mrs. George Barker’s electric refrigerator in their year-round home on Prospect Hill stopped working, and due to the scarcity of repairmen on the “lower Cape” they’d had to revert to the use of an “old-style ice box.” However, when a new company equipped with big guns moved into Camp Wellfleet the first salvo jolted the Barkers’ electric refrigerator into working condition again.

Marconi Marker at Cape Cod National Seashore

When I was in Wellfleet in June, I went to the Marconi site to check on the marker

Marconi Marker at the site in South Wellfleet

pictured here. This is the marker that used to be on LeCount Hollow Road. It’s still near the interpretive site, as I’d written in the winter, but of course the Marconi Towers model in the shelter structure had to be removed — just after I was there, in July – because of the severe erosion of the 2013 winter. Bill Burke, the Park Historian, reports that the edge of dune is now where the rear position of the Marconi towers was in 1903.

Nicknames for Roads

When I wrote about the Old Wharf area late last summer, I mentioned a local man with a Ford truck and a forty-foot boat who was probably a rum runner — although people are still very careful about that appellation. Recently, I read a 1964 Cape Codder article describing the back roads in South Wellfleet into Eastham as an alternative to Route 6 driving. The writer called these “the old rum runners road” or “whiskey road” – local names for the back roads used by rum runners evading Federal pursuit during Prohibition.

There was no “Prospect Hill” until George Washington Barker had the land surveyed and cottage lots drawn in 1892. He entitled his plan, shown here, “Plan of Prospect Hill.” Mr. Barker and his father, Isaiah Barker, purchased the land in 1866, just after the Civil War, from John Stubbs, paying $62.00.

John Stubbs, son of John Stubbs and Bethiah Ward, was the grandson of Richard Stubbs and Eunice Knowles, she of the prominent Eastham family. This was the branch of the Stubbs family that remained in South Wellfleet. In an earlier blog post, I described the branching off of the Stubbs family, with one branch departing for Maine, and then returning to South Wellfleet generations later. That part of the family includes Joseph A. Stubbs, with his successful shellfish company that operated on Blackfish Creek.

The Richard Stubbs family produced sons John (mentioned above), Simeon, Ephraim, Richard, and Elkanah. As I study deeds for the South Wellfleet area, their names are frequently noted. Ephraim married two Arey daughters, first Nancy, and then Rebecca, after Nancy died. He may have secured some land through those marriages. Ephraim purchased half of Mill Hill along with David Wiley. He served as Lydia Arey Taylor’s attorney when her land holdings were dissolved. (She was married to the first Reuben Arey, and, secondly, to John Taylor, Revolutionary War soldier – I’ve also covered them in a previous blog post.)

Richard Stubbs grew up in South Wellfleet to become “Deacon Stubbs,” playing a leading role in the Temperance Movement of the nineteenth century. Richard married Phoebe Arey Wiley, daughter of David Wiley and Ruth Arey, who also lived in the area, south of the Barker/Arey farm.  It was Richard’s house and land that Joseph A. Stubbs purchased, and then moved to the head of Blackfish Creek and established it with surrounding outbuildings — becoming known as “Stubbs Landing.”

The deed from John Stubbs to the father and son Barkers did not mention any buildings.

Like Robert Howard, who was actively engaged in buying land in Wellfleet and laying out cottage lots, George W. Barker also hired the Brewster surveyor and attorney, Tully

Prospect Hill Development, Tully Map

Crosby, to survey and lay out a plan for Prospect Hill. Isaiah Barker died in 1885, and his

wife, Betsy Higgins Arey Barker, in 1887. The Barker land, much of it surrounding their farmhouse, as well as the Prospect Hill property, was held jointly by their children, Isaiah Jr., George Washington, and Lewis Cheever Barker. Isaiah Jr. had become a mariner, owning a schooner for a while. He eventually settled in Norfolk, Virginia, where he became engaged in the shellfish trade. Lewis Cheever Barker had a rather sad life, losing a young wife, who left him with a small child, and leaving the Cape to remarry. He moved around, and, on one deed, is listed as living in Australia. I wrote about the family in several blog posts last year.

George Washington Barker married Clara Bell in 1864, and became a mariner — until the diminished fishing caused him to leave the Cape and settle in New Hampshire. From census records and deeds, one can see George becoming the family’s land manager, using this opportunity to sell the family’s South Wellfleet holdings as interest in Cape Cod as a tourist destination began to take hold. George and Clara’s children were Scotto, George Jr., Clara, Ralph, Walter, Edward, and Beulah. There are numerous mentions of these family members visiting their grandparents at the Barker farm and, later, their parents, who eventually returned to South Wellfleet. However, it is George Washington Barker, Jr. who came to take over from his father as the family’s property manager. George Washington Barker died in 1917, and Clara Bell Barker died in 1933.

George Washington Barker developed a Prospect Hill Prospectus in 1893 describing

Prospect Hill Prospectus

theland, the locale, and the transportation. He particularly mentions the hill — as grass covered – and lending itself to the growth of trees. Even later photographs do not show much grass nor many trees. Barker describes the ten-minute walk to Church and the School, and the close proximity of the General Store and Depot. He mentions plans for a hotel to be built by “Nashua parties.” Indeed, there were property purchasers from Nashua – they bought land on Old Wharf Point as well – but no commercial property was ever developed. Perhaps the economic recession of 1893 — quite a severe one — ended those plans.

John Edward Irvine, a cabinet maker and my great grandfather, purchased his first lot in the Prospect Hill development in 1892. We do not have a diary or even family tale as to how he came to find Wellfleet and purchase a lot of land there. We do know that he and his family rented the Robinson cottage out on Old Wharf Point in 1893 – and we can only imagine that he must have walked over to Prospect Hill to plan his own cottage. Eventually

Prospect Cottage

he purchased three more lots and built two cottages, one in 1910 and one in 1915. Both are still standing.

A recent Barker family interview revealed that George W. Barker, Jr. invented a device related to the sewing machine and was thus able to retire from full-time employment. Perhaps this free time gave him the chance to focus on the family’s property. Not many sales of lots in the Prospect Hill Development occurred in the 1920s. In the 1930s two important land transfers took place. Mr. and Mrs. Sexton purchased land on the “bluff” overlooking Blackfish Creek and built a large house. My family sold their second cottage in 1920 to a couple named Mackernan. Mrs. Mackernan was Mr.

Sexton House

Sexton’s sister, so our long-time family friendship started here.

George Barker’s first marriage ended at some point in the 1920s — either Mrs. Barker died, or they divorced. The Mackernans rented their cottage to a Mrs. Nobles and her sister, Harriet Werts. Miss Werts was an older woman who had remained single and pursued a career as a legal secretary at a law firm in New York. Her father served as Governor and Supreme Court Justice of New Jersey. Our family tales include the supposition that she had money, and built the Barker home.  Those same family tales note Mr. Irvine’s interest in Miss Werts also.

In 1932, the Barker family created a spacious lot and transferred its ownership to George and Harriet Barker; they were both still single in 1930 (Federal census), so their marriage must have occurred around the time of the land transfer and house building. The house is a Sears catalogue home, and the assembly instructions on the beams are still visible. Besides the house, they built a small cottage on the property.

George W. Barker Jr. died in 1947, and in his will left around twenty five acres on Prospect Hill — all the land that had not been sold in the past fifty years — to his widow, Harriet W. Barker. The family had transferred ownership to him while retaining the land and buildings that made up the “Barker homestead.” Mrs. Barker, who the adults called ‘Skippy,’ died in 1952 after a long illness resulting from a stroke. I remember her from my childhood as the pretty white-haired woman with two dogs living in the “the big house.” She was cared for by a local woman, Sarah Francis, from a large Azorian family living in Truro. We called her a nurse, but I think she was more of a caretaker, as she was for another Wellfleet woman listed in the 1930 federal census.

When Mrs. Barker died, she left all of her property to Sarah Francis, setting off a court battle with Mrs. Barker’s nephew, Elon Nobles. Eventually, he gained control over the land, and Sarah Francis kept the home and the cottage. At this point, another phase in the development of Prospect Hill began.

On the top of the hill, my mother and her sister purchased more property, built a second cottage, and divided their interest. We kept the old cottage, and, later, bought back the second one that John Edward Irvine had built. Two of my father’s brothers bought lots from Elon Nobles and put up cottages; another brother had built a small cottage in the late 1940s.

In 1957, Elon Nobles sold several lots to Charles Zehnder, an architect who established himself in Wellfleet, and became one of the key figures in what is now called the “modernist house” movement. Mr. Zehnder built such a house for himself first, tucked away at the edge of the Prospect Hill landscape, near Old Wharf Road. Later, Mr. Zehnder owned one of the original houses out on Old Wharf Point. Mr. Zehnder owned enough land in the original Prospect Hill development to create his own “Zehnder Plan” in 1964, and developed a number of home sites. Mr. Zehnder unfortunately was killed in an automobile accident in Wellfleet in 1985.

Another purchaser of a significant amount of land in the late 1950s was Frank Beckerer, who also bought property out on Old Wharf Point. One of his sales within the Prospect Hill development was to Lincoln Almond who served as the Governor of Rhode Island in the 1980s.

The original Prospect Hill homes passed along to other families. The Barker house was owned for a number of years by Charles Philbrick, the poet, who created a number of poems that were set in Wellfleet, including “At The Wellfleet Historical Society, During A Moderate Tempest.”

The Sexton house changed ownership only a couple of times. The family had acquired extra land in the late 1930s, bought the old South Wellfleet depot and moved it over to

South Wellfleet Railroad Depot moved to Sexton property and made into a garage

become a garage. Today it is a home. The next generation of the Sexton family purchased more land and still own another home on Prospect Hill.

This 1946 photograph of the Prospect Hill families enjoying the beach at high tide on Blackfish Creek represents the ambiance of the Hill — several families, meeting during the summer season and enjoying afternoons together at the shore.

Prospect Hill Families at high tide on Blackfish Creek 1946

Sources

U.S. Federal Census collection at www.ancestry.com

David Kew’s Cape Cod History site: www.capecodhistory.us

Barnstable Patriot (various) online archive: www.sturgislibrary.org

Barnstable County Deeds available at www.barnstablecountydeeds.org

Barker Family interview.

My family had tales of Prohibition-era rum-running in Wellfleet; my mother and aunt spoke of “watching the lights over at the Old Wharf from the attic window” during the 1920s and 1930s. Another person recently interviewed laughingly spoke of the “pirate” living at the Old Wharf who not only brought in the liquor, but also had a strong Ford truck to drive it off-Cape. “He’d be gone all night.” Yet another account, this one a bit more sinister, was the memory of someone living south of Loagy Bay remembering hearing gunshots on a dark night coming from the Old Wharf area.

So it was with these accounts in mind that I pursued my research on how the Old Wharf Point developed into today’s South Wellfleet neighborhood.  (For this posting, I am referring to the same lots 1-19, Block A, of the Old Wharf Plan as I did in the previous post. These were the lots that lined the bluff on Old Wharf Point.)

No single fact I have discovered points to the Old Wharf life in the Prohibition era, but, taken together, and considered in light of the “tales” of others, something unusual was surely going on! Now, of course, it’s an amusing South Wellfleet story, part of the other Wellfleet tales of the time. And not just Wellfleet tales, since Donald Sparrow writes about the same issues in his work on Eastham.

In the early 1950s the Cape Codder published a series of stories about rum-running on the Outer Cape, collecting reminiscences of Cape Codders barely twenty years after Prohibition ended. The writer used a pseudonym, and no name or place is named directly, but the stories put these Cape folks directly into the picture. The writer says,

The leaders of the smuggling craft came from outside the Cape – but they had many Cape Cod recruits and many a tidy sum was netted by the local men who were familiar with the remote inlets, the best roads for getaway and were sensible enough to be guarded in their talk. The local men were relied upon to handle the drops – whiskey carefully packed into burlap sacks – and load them in fast cars or trucks. The truckers were especially valued. A number were “all set” when the Prohibition era came to an end.

Much of the illegal liquor landed in North America on the French island of St. Pierre et Miquelon off Newfoundland, and was “delivered” on fairly large ships  positioned on “Rum Row” three miles off the U.S. coast, and supplied the smaller boats venturing out there while trying to avoid the U.S. Coast Guard. Daniel Okrent’s book, Last Call, The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, describes this history in great detail.

My Old Wharf research was greatly helped by A.F. Joy’s book on spending his summers with Aunt Leah and Uncle Mel in the Old Wharf cottages. That’s where I learned that Uncle Mel had owned a liquor distribution business until Prohibition, when the revenue agents destroyed his stock, and he had to load what was left of his supply into the two Cadillacs he owned. He was no supporter of Prohibition, and he was angry at the U.S. Government for their actions. Uncle Mel also had a forty-foot boat and a Ford truck.

Most of Mr. Joy’s book concerns Aunt Leah, who seemed to have one venture after another to make money after the business was destroyed, from collecting Cape pinecones to sell to florists in Boston, and to making lots of Beach Plum jelly to sell to vacationing visitors. She had a jelly stand out on Route 6 for a while, but eventually moved her jars to a little shed beside the house and ran her shop right out on the Old Wharf Point. One of the Goss family members told me in an interview last year that he remembers “Miss Leah and her jelly.”

Mr. Joy also writes about how Uncle Mel and Mr. Barney — “another early settler on the Old Wharf” –worked to build a dike and road that made a useful access point to the homes on the bluff. The Barker family remembers their grandfather working on this project too. They did a good job and we still use that road today.

Mr. Joy’s information provided a basis for my further research on the Old Wharf property owners after 1910.

First, in 1912, Mr. Oberg, who owned the furthermost house (Lots 17-19) sold his cottage to Mr. Earl Barney and his wife Bertha.  When I checked the 1910 Federal census for the Barney family of Boston, I found that he was a salesman in a wholesale liquor business. Further, in his World War I draft registration, he lists “E.M. Rogers” as his employer.

E.M. Rogers is Mr. Joy’s “uncle,” and I characterize him that way because in all the property transfers, Mr. Rogers is “unmarried,” as is Leah Joy — Aunt Leah. She really was his actual aunt, but they appear to never have married.  He was originally from Orleans, and as late as 1947 when he is named as one of the executors of his sister’s will, the documents notes he is “unmarried.” In the censuses I looked at for 1910 and 1920, he is listed living in a boarding house, sometimes with a woman named Rogers. There, he is recorded as “married” by the census taker. It’s important to note, however, that one unrelated person may have provided the information on the boarding house tenants.

In 1918 Elisha Rogers purchased Lots 4 and 5 from the Davis family, and then transferred the purchase to the ownership of Leah Joy. She was a 30-year-old single woman in the 1910 census, living in her parents’ home, and working as a ”cashier in a distributing company.”  The Joys were a good-sized family: six children, older brothers and younger sisters. Mr. Joy’s memories are of many family members coming to the Cape to enjoy vacation time together. He mentions a second cottage – and, indeed, in 1920, Leah purchased the Robinson property, the house next to the Davises. Now she owned two cottages.

In 1919 Leah bought Lot 2 from Frederick Mountain. She also bought the land Mrs. Mountain had purchased on Prospect Hill, and then sold it back to George Barker in 1936. In 1923, Leah Joy sold the Robinson property on Lot 1 to Frank McCallum of Brookline, and, in 1927, she purchased a home in Auburndale, Massachusetts, possibly the family home she had grown up in. Leah Joy bought additional land on the Old Wharf in the “B” section in 1927, 1933, and 1958, and, in 1957, Lot 6 on the bluff.

In the 1930 Federal Census, Leah is still living with her parents in Newton, and, for the first time, E.M. Rogers is the household as well, listed as having an occupation in an automobile garage (but unemployed), which matches Mr. Joy’s recollection in his book. Leah is listed in 1930 as a “gift shop clerk” which matches Mr. Joy’s memory of her shop in Auburndale — the same shop that she apparently moved to South Wellfleet in the summers.

In the 1940s and 1950s life on Old Wharf Point remained pretty much the same, except one assumes that the rum-running nighttime activity of the 1920s and 1930s had ceased. This photograph shows the treeless landscape, and also the long dock protruding out into Loagy Bay – with thanks to Mr. Joy for printing this in his book. I have not found another Old Wharf photo – although I’m sure there must be some in family albums.

Old Wharf Point house with dock from A.F. Joy’s
book listed below

By the 1960s the pace of property sales and development picked up. The Stubbs house was sold to Charles Zehnder, the modernist architect. Now, Luther A. Crowell, the grandson of the inventor, started assembling his land holdings and making plans to develop them. One of his purchases was the remaining land still held in the Old Wharf area by the Cook family.

On the Old Wharf, as well as on Lieutenant Island, Crowell’s plans kicked up a conservation firestorm, as he initially proposed to fill in marshland to create a road to the very end of the Point, and proposed a similar road on Lieutenant’s Island. By this time, new development had to be approved by the Wellfleet Planning Board, and in cases when wetlands are involved, the Conservation Commission. Crowell did not get his approvals in the initial round, but eventually he got it, with a subdivision plan reflecting the lot sizes of this later time, which replaced the Howard Plan of 1890.  One of the first houses of this era was the modern structure out on Old Wharf Point, near the still-visible pilings of the South Wharf. The southernmost house, near the road that ends at today’s public landing, is a cottage along with other buildings that were described to me as the former “garage” for the first house up on the bluff. Perhaps it was also created out of the Robinson cottage on Lot 1.

Mr. Crowell, in his efforts to get his subdivision approved in 1967, found a 1927 map that showed a road along the “north shore” of the Old Wharf land. This must have been the roadway used by the 19^th Century fishermen to get their supply carts and horses out to the Wharf buildings, and their barrels of fish to the South Wellfleet Railroad Station.

Sources

A.F. Joy, Return to Cape Cod , Saturscent Publications, South Wellfleet, 1985, available in Cape libraries

U.S. Federal Census collection at www.ancestry.com

David Kew’s Cape Cod History site: www.capecodhistory.us

Barnstable Patriot (various) online  archive: www.sturgislibrary.org

Barnstable County Deeds available at www.barnstablecountydeeds.org

Barker Family interview.

Robert Howard and his partner in the Cape Cod Bay Land Company, Edward Reed, began developing new cottage neighborhoods in Wellfleet in the late 1880s. The mackerel fishing had fallen to new lows, many Wellfleetians were moving elsewhere and had property to sell, and there was a new interest in the Cape as a vacation destination, a new concept in American life.

Robert Howard was the step-son of Luther C. Crowell, the inventor, who married Mrs. Jeremiah Howard, born Margaret Atwood, from Wellfleet. After their three children were born, Mrs. Howard — widowed and running a boarding house in Cambride — somehow met Mr. Crowell, and they married in 1863. The Crowells lived in Brooklyn, New York, for a few years when Mr. Crowell was employed by Hoe & Company. The company was using his patented inventions for folding paper items and figuring out mass production — including the square bottom paper bag, the item Crowell is remembered for. In 1888, the Crowells came to Wellfleet as summer visitors, buying and moving the Eleazer Cole house. The Crowells had two sons, Luther F. and Edgar.

In an earlier blog post on the fishing industry in South Wellfleet, I wrote about the ownership of the South Wharf, starting in 1831 when Major John Witherell sold land to Richard Arey and the Battelle & Little firm of Boston. That property exchanged hands a number of times in the years that followed, and ended up in the hands of the Southern Wharf Company. In her book Eva and Henry, Irene Paine notes the final years of the company in 1888, with Blackfish Creek silting up and the mackerels’ diminishment. Indeed, in 1889, the Southern Wharf Company sold their property to Edwin P. Cook, known for his land purchases all around the town.

Mr. Cook rather quickly turned his purchase around, selling 20 acres of “Old Wharf land” to Robert Howard, who hired Tully Crosby, Jr., a Brewster attorney and surveyor, to lay out a plan of cottage lots. In various deeds, the waterfront-facing area of the land is named as “Brier’s Cliff”, and this name has been retained on one of the old roads. The whole area is, of course, an island, much like Lieutenant’s Island.  I’ve only found one reference to a name for this spot: Edmund’s Island. This is in the will of Reuben Arey, who died in 1837 and left pieces of his land holdings to children and grandchildren, including “the heirs of Asa Packard Arey.” Those children’s mother, Betsey, married Isaiah Barker, who settled into the farmhouse near Old Wharf, making barrels for the fishing operation there. A contemporary member of the Barker family recalls the family calling his land Edmund’s Island.

Mr. Cook did not sell the wetland on the southwestern edge of the “island” to Howard – in 1885, this land was being converted to a “cranberry swamp” which Cook sold to a Lewis Stone. They made a deal: Cook would grow and harvest the cranberries, and keep half the harvest. This bog is clearly shown on the Old Wharf Plan, and the dike edging the bog may have been the access point to the island, since the dike/road we use today was built much later. The Barker family also had a small bog on their property, as did the Alvin Paines, who were living in an Arey house on the County Road by this time.

The development of summer homes along Brier’s Cliff — today’s Old Wharf Point — is best understood from the layout of the cottage lots in the 1890 Plan. In a conversation this summer with an older Wellfleet resident, she recalled her father calling these “handkerchief lots” – small pieces of land for the city folks, laughable to the Wellfleet citizens whose land holdings were much larger, and divided into upland, salt meadows and woodlots.

Along the top of the cliff, from south to north, the lots are designated as “Block A,” and numbered from one to nineteen. Today, the properties there have Bay View Avenue addresses, the road that runs behind the homes.

The Old Wharf Property Plan 1890

While I have found one advertisement for the Cape Cod Bay Land Company, I do not know where the company advertised its land. However, as the lots were purchased and written in deeds, my research on the families who made the land purchases showed their connections.

In 1890, Mr. Howard sold Lot 1 on the bluff to Elizabeth and Joseph Robinson of Lowell, Massachusetts. The Robinsons were immigrants from England with four children; Mr. Robinson’s occupation is listed in the census as “overseer.” The Robinsons built a cottage; my great grandfather rented it in 1893, according to a Barnstable Patriot note, the first evidence I’ve found of my family’s interest in South Wellfleet. The Robinsons kept their cottage until 1920, when they sold it.

Also in 1890, Mr. Howard sold Lots 2 and 3 to a Frederick Mountain of Lowell. Mr. Mountain, who also bought lots in the nearby Prospect Hill development a couple of years later, was also an immigrant, from Canada. There is no evidence that he ever built a cottage, and eventually he sold his land.

Cape Cod Bay Land Company advertisement

Another 1890 sale went to Caroline Sugden of Lowell for Lots 10, 11, 12, and 13 in Block A, and additional land in Block B. The Sugdens were also English immigrants; Mr. Sugden’s occupation as a manufacturer of something related to a press, may have had a relationship to Luther Crowell’s work. (The census taker’s handwriting is not clear, so my interpretation is a guess.)  The Sugden daughter, Amy, married John W. Stubbs in 1899, and became the parents of Mary and Caroline Stubbs, who were active Wellfleet citizens throughout their lives.  Their grandfather Joseph A. Stubbs’ oyster business was at the height of its success on Blackfish Creek at this time — see my earlier blog post about the Stubbs family. The Sugdens built a house on Old Wharf Point.

In 1891, Mr. Howard sold Lots 4 and 5 to a Mary Wiley; by 1907 this land was the property of William and Annie Davis of Lowell. The Wileys built a cottage, since such a building was mentioned in the 1907 deed to the Davis family.

Meanwhile, Mr. Howard and Mr. Reed, partners in the Cape Cod Bay Land Company, were buying up property around South Wellfleet and creating similar plans.  This is how Lieutenant’s Island was developed; no one lived there until Mr. Howard came along, and I hope to discover more about its history in the future.  Interestingly, there was a plan filed to build the bridge to the Island in 1893, from the Old Wharf Point, near Mr. Robinson’s property, out over the waters of Loagy Bay.

Mr. Howard and Mr. Reed also developed plans for cottages at Paine’s landing, Cannon Hill, and a rectangular piece of land with one straight street between the Old Colony Railroad tracks and the ocean, just south of the Wireless Road.

Mr. Howard never married, and lived in Boston in boarding houses in the census records I found. Mr. Reed also lived in Boston, and I found no evidence of his wealth; in the 1880 Federal census he is working in a shoe factory and living in his father-in-law’s home, and in 1900 he has his own home and his occupation is “capitalist.”

Through mentions of him in the Barnstable Patriot, we know that Mr. Howard built a cottage on Lieutenant’s Island, purchased a sailboat, and visited his mother often. Mr. Crowell died in 1903, leaving Margaret Crowell as his widow. She died in 1911. Hannah Howard Mitchell, Margaret’s daughter, died in 1914. Mr. Howard died at age 59 in 1916, leaving his property in Wellfleet to his sister’s son, Howard Mitchell, and to the Crowell sons.

Continuing back along Old Wharf Point, in 1893 James Barnard of Nashua, New Hampshire, purchased Lots 14 and 15, and in 1893 increased his holdings by purchasing Lots 17, 18 and 19.  Howard had sold these lots in 1891 to Joseph C. Batchelder, who re-sold in 1892 to William Walker. Walker next sold to Mr.Barnard in 1895, and then Barnard sold to Lizzie Heald Buswell. All of these owners were from Nashua, New Hampshire.  Lizzie Buswell sold the property back to Mr. Howard in 1904.

In 1907, Mr. Howard sold Lots 17, 18 and 19 to Andrew Gustaf Oberg and his wife. Mr. Oberg was a Swedish immigrant, living in Boston. Someone had built a cottage there earlier, because a building is mentioned in the 1907 deed. Soon after his purchase, Andrew Oberg transferred the property to his son Percy Oberg, and in 1909 he was released from the mortgage Robert Howard had granted them.

In 1910, a map with property owners shows four houses on Old Wharf Point: Robinson, Davis, Stubbs, and Oberg. There are no homes indicated on the remainder of the Old Wharf land. We can imagine families coming to South Wellfleet on the train, buying their supplies and getting their mail at Mr. Paine’s General Store and the South Wellfleet Post Office, and walking to the ocean, and to the Marconi Towers.

1910 Map of Wellfleet with property owners

Local people, including the Barkers, had gardens and produced vegetables they sold to the summer people. Mr. Bell had a meat wagon he rolled around town, and others sold fish from wagons. The flats were open for people to dig clams, oysters and quahogs. Irene Paine writes about older sea captains taking visiting families out for a sail if they did not have a boat of their own.

This neighborhood of South Wellfleet had become a vacationer’s paradise.

Sources

U.S. Federal Census collection at www.ancestry.com

David Kew’s Cape Cod History site: www.capecodhistory.us

Barnstable Patriot (various) online  archive: www.sturgislibrary.org

Barnstable County Deeds available at www.barnstablecountydeeds.org

Barker Family interview.

The Fire Tower in South Wellfleet on Route Six near Pilgrim Spring Road was erected in 1927. Cape Cod had been regularly threatened with damaging woodland fires, some reaching many hundreds of acres. A report in the Barnstable Patriot in May 1875 described a fire of more than 100 acres burning in the vicinity of the South Wellfleet Railroad station for more than a day “in spite of the efforts of the citizens to extinguish the flames.”

Such fires became of greater concern when the early twentieth century brought new summer residents and vacationers. Some blame the Cape’s sandy soil with plants that quickly dried out without rain but fires also were clearly a result of the sparks from railroad engines. There are numerous newspaper reports of the pressures Cape residents put on the New York New Haven and Hartford Railroad to acquire more land on either side of their tracks, and to keep it clear of brush.

Wherever the fire came from, all citizens — even children — were put to work putting out the flames. On a taped “memory piece” Mary Stubbs Magenau speaks of her experience beating out flames in South Wellfleet when she was a child.

In a July 1915 article “Forest Fires on The Cape” in Cape Cod Magazine, R.H. Cahoon reports that in 1915 Massachusetts set up a man to watch for fires in Harwich, in the cupola of the Exchange Theatre. He was paid $60 per month to work every day (except rainy days). Another observatory was set up in 1910 in Barnstable on Shoot Flying Hill. Cahoon describes the job:

In the observatory, besides being equipped with a telephone, the watchman has a chart, arranged with a shifting rod, by which the observer is able to locate fires within his district, the station is equipped with books, maps and lists of fire wardens residing in the various districts. The observatory is connected by telephone with the office of the local fire warden, who is called when any smoke is sighted. The chief fire warden learns the exact location of the fire, then hastens there, calls aid and commands the work of extinguishing the blaze.

This observatory quickly became a favorite place for visitors to climb and look out over the Cape, much as we go to the top of skyscrapers today. One report notes that the Marconi Towers in Wellfleet were clearly visible against the sky.

The new Fire Tower in South Wellfleet

Reports began to appear in the Hyannis Patriot in the spring of 1927 that Wellfleet’s tower would soon be erected. In April of that year there was a serious multi-day 2,500 acre fire in Truro. There were reports that a fire tower to protect the lower Cape could not be built until 1928. However, the state workmen got busy and soon had “a cement foundation and posts for a twenty foot square steel tower to be erected after the Fourth of July, and to be done in August, which is located about fifty feet in the State Highway line in the South Wellfleet section of Wellfleet, at the crest of a hill between Spring Valley Road and so-called Hinckley’s corner, on the west side of the road.”

There were also plans to plant trees and to grade the Fire Tower site so that it would be attractive. An article later in July reports that the State fire tower was going up rapidly, with the workmen tenting at the rear, in the woods, and that Richard Baker of South Wellfleet was expected to be the watchman there. Richard Baker was the son of M. Burton Baker bought up much of the Crowell family land on Indian Neck, and ran the Indian Neck Inn (more on this topic later).

In early 1928, the paper reported the discussion, at the Wellfleet Town Meeting in February, about the Town’s expected donation to the cost of erecting the Fire Tower. The Tower’s cost was $2,000, mostly covered by the Commonwealth. Wellfleet contributed $150, and the towns of Orleans, Eastham and Truro each contributed $100. The extra $50 requested of Wellfleet must have spurred the discussion. But people understood that Wellfleet would benefit more, and have the quickest results of a fire being spotted. Richard Baker contributed to the discussion by reporting that during the months the fire tower was open in 1927, two thousand visitors had registered their visit by signing the book kept at the top. The reporter continues, “One can see what advertisement of our wonderful panoramic scenery is received from the height of the town and what it does for those away in telling of the Cape’s beauties and charm.” Richard’s father, Burton Baker, had attended a meeting at the State House in January when the contributions were proposed and — the reporter noted — the other towns were coming in line.

In April 1928, the flag began flying again at the Fire Tower, and Richard Baker was the “observer” once again. In 1929, William Wyler must have taken the position, as he is listed in the 1930 census as “fire observer” for the State. In 1929, a news report notes that Miss Dorothy Baker was substituting for Mr. Wyler who was home with a swollen ankle.
In 1927, the Howes family built “Brownie’s Cabins” – first calling it a Motor Court – near the Tower, as pictured in this old postcard. They are still there today, but having become a condominium association about ten years ago.

One other news report gives us a report of the Fire Tower visitors, this one in 1942 when 4,282 visitors from 41 states and 12 foreign nations climbed the fire observation tower.
In 1960, a new sixty-eight foot tower replaced the old iron tower. In 2001, a new cab was installed. an excellent site today for cell tower additions.
My research about the Wellfleet Fire Tower was greatly helped by the website: http://www.firelookout.or/towers/ma/wellfleet.htm
Sources
http://www.firelookout.org/lookouts/ma/welfleet.htm
http://easternlookouts.weebly.com/massachusetts.html
News reports from Hyannis Patriot online at http://www.sturgislibrary.org.

My earliest childhood days in South Wellfleet were without electricity or telephone service, so I’ve been curious about when these modern devices reached Wellfleet, and how they were assimilated into the lives of the town’s citizens.

Kerosene lamp

There were just two houses on Prospect Hill that were not summer cottages: George and Harriet Barker’s home, built in the 1920s, and the Sexton’s home, built in the early 1930s. Both had electricity and telephones. One family emergency in the 1950s made us thankful for a phone, to summon an ambulance to the hill.

Telephones
In Wellfleet as elsewhere, the telephone came along first. The Barnstable Patriot reports regularly on the development of telephone service in the 1880s and 1890s. In the 1880s, the “government line” serving the Life Saving Stations was initiated, and there are reports of how the Life Saving Service communicated between stations to handle ships floundering offshore. The men in the Nauset station would notice such a ship, and now could call Cahoon Hollow to be ready to assist. When a severe thunderstorm it the outer Cape in March 1891, the phone system at Highland Light was destroyed.

Like any new “contraption,” the telephone took time to become accepted and recognized as a useful tool. The Barnstable Patriot carried ads for non-Bell telephones that anyone could set up between two points. Early on, the instrument was recognized as a way for a businessman or a doctor to communicate between his home and his office. One news report told of a Barnstable citizen listening to music from a church in New Bedford, and the reporter marveling at this wonderful telephone instrument.

The Barnstable Patriot reported in 1882 that the Signal Service Bureau wanted to use the telephone to notify towns on the Cape of frost warnings, so that the cranberry bog owners could take action to protect them. Wellfleet was one of the towns agreeing to be forewarned.

In 1900, a Barnstable Patriot report notes telephone poles being carried along the County Road from Wellfleet to Provincetown, foreseeing that soon telephone communication will be completed all along the Cape.

In an earlier post about the night Marconi sent his first wireless message in January 1903, I wrote about the news reporters using the telegraph at the Railroad office in Wellfleet. One enterprising journalist made sure he got a key to the post office in Wellfleet so he could use the only public telephone in town. He reported taking a call from the Marconi Station, so they too must have had a telephone there.

A Barnstable Patriot article in 1900 reported on some of the locations in Wellfleet that had recently installed telephones: Dr. F.S. Cannedy, the F.A.Wiley & Co. store, the residence of Dr. E.F. Perry, Captain L.D. Baker, and Mr. M.D. Holbrook.

Early telephone, candlestick model

In 1912 the Barnstable Patriot reported that New England Telephone and Telegraph had installed 93 phones in Wellfleet. A similar story in 1918 reported 130 telephones. At that time, telephone subscribers (as they were called) needed an operator to connect them. The 1912 report noted that there were 13 “exchanges” on the Cape, each employing 2 to 13 operators.

Thanks to David Kew’s detailed site, I found a reference to the Wellfleet Exchange, in the home of Agnes Rich. Unfortunately, the story that elicited this information concerned Mrs. Rich’s murder by her husband in 1913. I think that the home was on Holbrook Avenue. In 1910, the Federal Census lists Agnes and her husband, and Agnes’ parents, James and Mary Rich, living next door to each other (but possibly in the same house) and both couples as grocers.

Agnes’ brother, Solon Rich, and his wife, Emily, were listed as the Telephone Exchange Manager and an operator. A young woman named Caroline Wert who lived in their home was also a telephone operator. By 1915, Solon Rich had moved to Orleans, but continued his employment with the telephone company.

In 1916, according to a Barnstable Patriot article, the New England Telephone & Telegraph Company’s “central office” in Wellfleet was moved to the home of Miss Lila Higgins.
In the 1920 Federal census, I found two young women with occupations as telephone operators, but I did not find any reference to the telephone exchange.

Radios with Batteries
A 1926 Barnstable Patriot article noted that Frank Dill of South Wellfleet had a new radio installed in his home. The reporter notes that many South Wellfleet citizens were visiting Mr. Dill to “hear the messages”: M. Burton Baker, Earl Atwood, Alton Atwood, W.A. Short, L.B. Paine, Clarence Hicks, Fred W. Bell, Dave Buitekan, Isaac R. Paine, Isaac (Ikey) Paine, Fred Doane and E.J. Davis. I found a 1925 ad for a console “radio telephone” loaded with heavy-duty batteries – priced at $139, pretty high for 1925.

Electricity
Electricity came to Wellfleet much later. At the February 1927 Town Meeting, Wellfleet turned over its old almshouse property to the Cape and Vineyard Company to build a substation there.

The Barnstable Patriot reported in 1925 that the Cape and Vineyard Company petitioned the Public Utilities agency to extend its service to Wellfleet and Eastham. That article also noted that Provincetown had its own power plant.

News reports of how electrification proceeded are scarce; we don’t know how fast it proceeded through town. By the time of the 1930 Federal Census, there are two electricians listed in Wellfleet: Mr. Murray and Mr. Gates.

Mary Freeman noted in her regular Wellfleet column in the Barnstable Patriot of July 17, 1930, that “Electricity has at last reached its pencil of light to Nauhaught Bluffs and the Checquesset Girls Summer School even to the top of its flagpole.”

Another 1930 article mentioned the installation of electrical lighting to light the town clock in the tower of the First Congregational Church, and thanked the donors who had contributed to its cost.

Electricity’s arrival in the town also brought on nostalgia. An article in the Springfield Republican in 1927 was headlined “Progress Robs Wellfleet of Its Cape Cod Quaintness,” and goes on to say “Little Gasoline Lamps that lighted its winding streets give way to electricity – modern life goes on under the shadow of Old Whaling Captains who look down from the walls of the homes and their days of fame.” The writer, J.C. Johnson, also notes that modernization is a necessity, as Wellfleet hoped to become a “popular summer place for the rich.” In 1929 newspaper ads, the Cape and Vineyard Company offers Cold Control Frigidaires and Hotpoint Electric Ranges for sale.

Mr. M. Burton Baker, serving as selectman during that time, is quoted in the Barnstable Patriot in 1928 about the possibility of lights coming to South Wellfleet, reporting that the Cape and Vineyard Company were looking for 65 houses to wire. Baker is concerned that the South Wellfleet wiring is a problem due to most homes there serving as summer residences, and they would not be able to produce 65 new customers.

Before electricity came to Wellfleet in the conventional way in 1927, two New Bedford engineers proposed a scheme at a special town meeting in 1921. They sought to use Drummer Pond for an experiment that involved using salt water to generate electricity. The reporter at the Barnstable Patriot noted that “similar experiments had been without success in Saugus and Marblehead.” However, the men had found two ponds, and wanted to make a third. Making electricity using salt water is a long-time DIY science project, with illustrations now on YouTube.

In 2011, a news report from Stanford University stated that Stanford researchers had developed a rechargeable battery that uses freshwater and seawater to create electricity. The report notes that the researchers were aided by nanotechnology, and that the battery employs the difference in salinity between fresh and salt water to generate a current. The report imagines power stations built wherever a river runs into the ocean. Now it looks like the men who had wanted to harness Drummer Pond were just ahead of their time!

Sources

David Kew’s Cape Cod History site: www.capecodhistory.us
Barnstable Patriot (various) online archive: www.sturgislibrary.org
Federal census documents at: www.ancestry.com
Newspaper accounts online at: www.genealogybank.com.