Weymouth, Massachusetts

“ Among the Puritans who settled in Wessaguscus, now Weymouth, Massachusetts, was a brash young fellow, of remarkable size and strength, who, roaming the woods one day, came on a store of corn concealed in the ground, in the fashion of the Indians. As anybody might have done, he filled his hat from the granary and went his way. When the red man who had dug the pit came back to it he saw that his cache had been levied on, and as the footprints showed the marauder to be an Englishman he went to the colonists and demanded justice. ”

“ Fortunately the long trial now drew near its close. The towns of Massachusetts were thoroughly exhausted and neither men nor money could be procured. In spite of the large sums offered, recruits were no longer forthcoming, and finally Weymouth as one of many delinquent towns, became liable to a heavy fine. The wonder, however, was not that the towns were delinquent, but rather where they found so many able-bodied men as they then supplied. Weymouth, at that time, could not well have mustered over two hundred men of the age of military service. ”

“ Mr. Adams endeavors to establish as a fixed fact in Massachusetts history that Weymouth as a permanent European settlement antedated Boston by at least six years; and, moreover, that this fact has singular historical interest. That it was a struggle for possession between two forms of civilization and of religious faith; one being ecclesiastical and feudal, the other theological and democratic; the fate of the two settlements during the earlier and crucial period depending not on events in Massachusetts, but upon a struggle for supremacy going on in England. ”

“ In the township there are several villages, including Weymouth, North Weymouth, East Weymouth and South Weymouth, and the smaller villages of Weymouth Centre, Weymouth Heights, Lovell's Corner, Nash's Corner and Old Spain, and there are also four islands, Round, Grape, Slate and Sheep. The mainland itself is largely a peninsula lying between the Weymouth Fore river and the Weymouth Back river, to the west and east respectively. The surface of the country is rough: Great Hill (at one of the narrowest parts of the peninsula) is about 140 ft. ”

“ In one other aspect the temporary lodgment of Thomas Weston’s “rude fellows” here in Weymouth from June, 1622, to April, 1623, has an interest in the Massachusetts annals. It is characteristic of a distinct phase in the first attempts at the European occupation of New England. I used the word “occupation” designedly, for those sporadic trading stations cannot be referred to correctly as settlements; they contained in themselves no power of self-perpetuation, being composed wholly of men engaged for wages in an effort [Pg 125] at the trade exploitation of a region. ”

“ None the less Old Spain well deserved a portion at least of that familiar title, for, next to the town of Plymouth, it is the oldest settlement in Massachusetts. And when we speak of the oldest settlements in Massachusetts, we speak of communities which may fairly lay claim to a very respectable degree of antiquity; not of the greatest, it is true, for all antiquity is relative, and that of America scarcely deserves the name by the side of what England has to show ”

“ They resorted to every expedient and makeshift, but they could not bring themselves to the one single expedient by which only can war be made decisive. In September, 1777, a draft was suggested, [97] but the idea met with no favor: again recourse was had to bounties, which were now £100 in lawful money, or forty shillings a month in produce at prices which ruled before the war.
The year 1779 must, however, have been much the gloomiest year of all to Weymouth, for it was in this year that the State of Massachusetts undertook the unfortunate Penobscot expedition. ”

“ Instead, bodily carried away, it has literally been cast into the sea; and the tide now daily ebbs and flows over the spot where, two hundred and eighty-two years ago last April, Thomas Weston’s “stout knaves” established themselves; and where, on April 6, 1623, that hand-to-hand death grapple took place between Miles Standish and the fierce Pecksuot, the result of which struck terror to the hearts of the Massachusetts savages, and gave immediate safety, and years of subsequent peace, to the infant Plymouth plantation. ”

“ The Mount Wollaston settlement was, indeed, the first recorded instance of what in later Massachusetts history is technically known as “a liquor nuisance,” and the neighbors determined that considerations of public safety required that it should be abated. Those were primitive times. They enjoyed few of the advantages of our more developed civilization, and while there were no ladies of the vicinage to wait upon the then lord of Merry Mount in a spirit of prayerful remonstrance, there was also no State constabulary before whom the “rumseller” trembled and fled. ”

“ For, with inquirers into the events of a remote past, it is much as it is with persons looking for things in dark places. The intellectual perceptions, like the eyes, by degrees become accustomed to a murky environment; and when so accustomed, things quite invisible to others are by long-time investigators distinctly seen.
When that work of mine to which I have already referred,—the “Three Episodes of Massachusetts History,”—appeared, now ten years ago, the introductory part was entitled “The First Settlement of Boston Bay.” ”

“ Weston's people removed to Wessagusset (modern Weymouth) , on Massachusetts Bay, where they conducted themselves in so reckless a manner that they ran the double risk of starvation and destruction from savages. ”

“ His confidence in the success of a trading post on Massachusetts [Pg 11] Bay was not shaken, but he shared in the general belief of the day that families were an incumbrance in a well organized plantation, and that a settlement made up of able-bodied men only could do more in New England in seven years than in Old England in twenty. [5] On this principle he organized his expedition, which, towards the close of April, 1622, set sail in two vessels, the Charity of one hundred tons and the Swan of thirty. ”

“ Effect of his arrival at Weymouth, 110, 138. Claims a Weymouth pulpit, 110. Deputy to Gen’l Court from Hingham, 110. Farewell sermon, at Weymouth, 110. Perhaps an Episcopal clergyman, 139. Humphrey, James, 61, 63, 71, 72, 77, 98, 115, 116. Jonas, 98. Hunt’s hill, 62. Hutchinson, Mrs. Anne, 67, 105, 140-142. Indian depredations, 17. Influence of Weymouth settlement on Massachusetts, 132. Isle of Shoals, 43, 101. Jeffers, John, 44. Jeffery, 44. Jeffrey, Thomas, 43. Jeffries [Jeffreys] , William, 34-37, 43, 44, 93, 138. Residence in Wessagusset, 35, 130, 138. Jenner, Rev. ”

“ The criticism I then made, and now make again, applies to all of our Massachusetts, I may say our New England, towns. Their records tell me the same story. Turn, for instance, to your own town books covering those heroic periods, whether Revolutionary or of the Civil war. Should you do so, you will find in them a wearisome repetition. In the first flush of excitement, volunteers, in each case, enrolled themselves in crowds, they were eager to get to the front; then came the cold reaction, and the consequent haggling. Call follows call for men—and yet more men ”

“ Eastward the green islands studded the bay, round which the sea sparkled with waters rarely vexed by the keel and never beaten by the paddle,—to the north the town of Boston was hidden from sight as it nestled at the feet of its hills,—to the west the Blue Hills loomed up in their soft, misty beauty even as they do to-day, they alone unchanged,—to the south stretched away the more level forest land in which the beautiful Weymouth ponds lay quietly imbedded in their native framework of virgin green, while around their shores the wolf still lurked and the swift deer bounded. ”

“ No nation has any right to enter upon a war, domestic or foreign, unless it is ready promptly to meet the cost thereof in flesh and blood, as well as in money. It should not be a question of voluntary enlistment, or of mercenary service; but, if a community elects to fight, it should put its fighting force at the absolute disposal of its government. Conscription and the draft should be the order of the day,—the unmarried first, the married next; and, for the able-bodied, no exemption. Never, in the whole history of Massachusetts, was the ordeal of a war thus systematically met. ”

“ Weymouth is a town of red-bricked respectability, and about fourteen thousand inhabitants. It lives on convicts, Portland stone, and the Channel Islands, and lies upon the curving shores of a beautiful bay. Even as George IV. is the patron king of Brighton, so was his father the respected cause of Weymouth’s prosperity. ”

“ They have been years of great development and of healthy growth,—not such development nor such growth as is often seen in this country,—nothing, indeed, [Pg 84] which in our age may be called remarkable, for almost any active and bustling railroad centre in the Western States can boast of greater census figures; but the growth of Weymouth has been that of a thrifty, industrious New England town, and when, after the long lapse of ages, the final account is rendered, who shall say that the former growth will be found better than the latter? ”

“ The king looks down the street with a fishy glance, and his gaze to-day rests upon that other jubilee memorial, the Clock-tower, erected in 1887—useful, but scarcely a thing of beauty—a merely meretricious iron and gilt affair, without even the quaint ugliness of the Georgian effigy to recommend it.
Beside these claims to notice, Weymouth has nothing to advance. Its harbour is merely commonplace, and its streets featureless. ”

“ There is really no reason why Weymouth, instead of seeking some fanciful resemblance based solely, it may be supposed on the configuration of its widely curving bay, should not stand or fall by the sufficing attractions of its own charming self. ”

“ But the bay is the reason for holiday Weymouth, not only for the beauty of its wide sweep and the remarkable colouring of the water, but for the firm sands with occasional patches of shingle that lie between shore and sea from the harbour mouth almost to Redcliff Point.
The chief excursion from Weymouth is to Portland, and of course every one must take it, but there are other and finer ways out of the town, most of which show the "island" at its best—as an imposing mass of rock in the middle distance. ”

“ But, not since Miles Standish grappled with the savage Pecksuot in the wooden block-house at Old Spain on the 6th of April, 1623, has an armed conflict between hostile men occurred on Weymouth soil. Yet in every narrative of the town, accounts and details of its part in war, and of its contributions thereto, occupy the place of prominence. In point of fact, no war or its operations, its successes or reverses, since the death of the Wampanoag, King Philip, in 1676, has exercised any direct influence on Weymouth history, or affected to any appreciable extent the town’s development. ”

“ The religious element which led to the settlement of New England still strongly asserted itself in the life and customs of the colony. Wealth had hardly yet begun to exercise its subtle influence upon it. Indeed, though almost all were prosperous there was little of what can properly be called wealth in the community, but there was equally little poverty. The people lived in rude abundance, and I do not believe that during the first hundred years of the history of Weymouth as many persons received public aid of the town. ”

“ The first charter was that granted by the prior and convent in 1252, by which Weymouth was made a free borough and port for all merchants, the burgesses holding their burgages by the same customs as those of Portsmouth and Southampton. The demand of six ships from the town by the king in 1324 shows its importance in the 14th century, but there is no mention of a mayor until 1467. It is probable that the town suffered considerably at the hands of the French at the beginning of the 15th century, though in 1404 the men of Weymouth were victorious over a party which landed in the Isle of Portland. ”

“ Thus through eleven years, from 1624 to 1635, the early settlers of Weymouth only occasionally emerge from the oblivion of the past and are dimly shadowed on the mirror of New England history. But now, at last, in the year 1635, Wessagusset was by the order of the General Court made a plantation under the name of Weymouth, and the Rev. Mr. Hull, with twenty-one families from England, were allowed to establish themselves here. ”

“ Of old Weymouth, the objective in the past of pirates and freebooters, there nowadays remains very little. The modern town, which has sprung up gradually, spread landward and northwards, and has, in the process, slowly though surely obliterated the more ancient of its features. From its wide esplanade, running almost half the length and round the whole of the most acute curve of the bay, is a prospect of rugged coast and breezy highlands, scarcely excelled in picturesqueness and charm by any other on the Dorset seaboard. ”

“ These settlers, of good English stock and with the earnest ideals of pioneers, soon brought the community into good repute, and its subsequent life was as respectable and uneventful as that of a reformed roué. In fact there is practically no more history for Weymouth. There are certainly no more raids upon merry-makers; no more calls from the cricket colony which had sung all summer on the banks of the river to the ant colony which had providently toiled on the shore of the bay; no more experimental governments ”