Talk given by Cecil B. Atwater, Nov. 20, 1967

I must first establish my qualifications for describing Duxbury during the first decade of the present century, 1900-1910. Our family spent the summer of 1899 in Mrs. Banister’s Boarding House at the corner of Washington Street and what is now called Shipyard Lane. This building was burned down many years ago. It was a pleasant place, really a resort hotel, with good food and cogenial guests. The following summer, we rented a cottage from Herbert Wadsworth at the end of Josselyn Avenue with a fine view of the Bay. It is now the home of Asa Hammond. In 1901, my father purchased a lot of land between Josselyn Avenue and Shipyard Lane and built a five bedroom house. It is ow the home of Harry Bigelow. The Atwater family was happily taken care of during the summer months for many years thereafter.

I must tell you at once that this presentation does not deal with significant historical events and places nor is it fortified with dates and exhaustive research. Rather it is an attempt to describe Duxbury as I knew it in the period I have indicated. Hopefully, I may be able to convey to you the flavor of living in those days in this seaside village. Please be a bit indulgent because I am relying on an octogenarian memory and if I make mistakes I hope they will be inconsequential.

Duxbury has changed markedly in appearance. Standing today on the top of Captain’s Hill and looking towards the Bay, you see a built-up community with streets and houses and large ornamental trees. From the same spot in 1900 you would have seen a large open area of fields with a few scattered cottages on the bay shore dominated by a large resort hotel called Myles Standish Spring Hotel. The interior of Powder Point was one big open field. A regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Militia encamped there every summer and had ample room for their tents and large drill field. On the north end of the Bay along the Powder POint shore were some large homes occupied during the summer months by so-called “city folks.” Beyond Tremont Street to the west was an extensive forest. Washington Street, then as now, was the principal throughfare but it has undergone many changes. It has always been a beautiful street but it is fair to say that it is much more attractive now than in 1900. The houses are in better repair and the trees are taller and yeild more shade. The road itself was muddy in wet weather but in those days there were no whiz kids behaving like Barney Oldfield and the horses didn’t seem to mind the mud. The advent of summer people in considerable numbers who acquired some of the fine old houses resulted in rehabilitation and improvement of grounds but the houses still retained their architectural integrity. It has been said that Duxbury was blessed with a depression. When the shipbuilding era was over, jobs were scarce and the population declined and there were actually more houses than were needed. This was during a time when those awful mid-Victorian houses with ginger-bread decorations were the vogue. Duxbury, with surplus housing, had no reason for building those horrors and so today we have uniformly attractive homes and one of America’s most beautiful streets.

I propose that we made a detailed survey of Washington Street as it was in 1900. Let’s start wtih the area near the flagpole and the Cable Office. This was known as “Town Square” and “the Village.” There were numerous small businesses; Henry Briggs’ livery stable, Charles Peterson’s plumbing and tin shop, Thomas Hutchinson’s boat shop, E. C. Chandler house painter, the Evans boot and shoe repair shop, Bailey’s blacksmith shop, Tony Lucas’s barber shop and an early garage operated by Jack Washburn. This Society’s former building was known as the Union Store, selling groceries, etc. In the rear of these buildings was an abandoned bowling alley. Across Blue Fish River still stands Fire House No. 1. Across the street was the Joshua Swift harness shop. The Cable Office, now and attractive home, operated as the terminal of a cable from France. An early First National store supplanted the tin shop. This was not a very attractive business center as many of the buildings were in poor repair, and it is just as well that it has been replaced by a charming residential intersection.

After crossing Blue Fish River and reaching the top of the hill, we come to the village drugstore, originally opened by Nelson Stetson and succeeded in 1907 by Paul Peterson. Across the street from it was the Duxbury post office, now a private home.

What we call Snug Harbor (the name has a rather recent origin) was in large part occupied by extensive yards, sheds and wharves of the Duxbury Coal & Lumber Co. A few stores were located there including Sweetser & Arnold (now called Sweetser’s) and the Josselyn Periodical store, now out of business. I also recall a blacksmith shop.

Further along Washington Street, shortly before reaching Surplus Street, was the Peterson Grocery store, later converted by Walter Prince into his present residence. Hall’s Corner was almost wholly residential in those days. A grocery store was operated first by George Stetson and about 1900 by a Mr. and Mrs. White. It also houses the South Duxbury post office. The Cushing Boarding and Livery Stable later became the Cushing Garage. Around the corner on Washington Street was a blacksmith shop. Scattered around town were a number of family stores. And then of considerable importance was the old Ford Store on Tremont Street, said to be the first department store in America. It burned down many years ago. We youngsters had fun wandering through its many rooms and seeing merchandise imported from many lands. Grocery stores conducted their business differently than they do today. We now walk through aisles taking articles from shelves and assembling them in carts. In the old stores, we read from a list or handed it to the grocer and he assembled our purchases on the counter. In those days, many horse-drawn wagons visited the residential streets selling meats, fish, vegetables, etc. These were the days before electric refrigerators. The iceman delivered right into the icebox. Many of you will remember the ice house and the pond on which ice was cut near Island Creek. There was no question but what Duxbury merchants padded their prices when selling to summer people. My father once asked Mr. White what he did in the winter time when he could no longer soak the summer folks. He replied, “in the winte, we try to soak each other but its tarnation hard goin.”

At the turn of the century, there were few automobiles. The important means of transportation to Boston and neighboring towns was the Old Colony Railroad. The Duxbury Station was at Milbrook and the South Duxbury Station at the intersection of Depot Street and South Station Street. The prime morning commuter train to Boston started at Plymouth and practically filled up at the Duxbury and South Duxbury stations. It made a single stop at Egypt where Thomas Lawson had built his big estate called Dreamwold. Its destination was South Station, Boston. The evening express train left Boston at 5:03. The smoker was equipped with card tables and a very chummy atmosphere prevailed. It was a very pleasant walk from out home on Josselyn Avenue to the South Duxbury Station. The path began close to where Partridge Road is now located and wound through a beautiful meadow, skirting a hill and came out in a heavily wooded area on South Station Street. In spring and summer, the meadow was alive with bird life. One summer, I recorded over a hundred different kinds of birds in Duxbury many of which I recognized in that meadow. At Josselyn Avenue, we could hear the evening train stop and start at the Duxbury Station, then stop at the South Duxbury station and the next sound we heard was the engine of a one cylinder Oldsmobile, the kind with the dash like a buggy. Its owner lived on our street and its one lung motor made as much noise as the locomotive.

The Duxbury schools were adequate for the times but they seemed primitive when compared with our large school buildings. There was no bus system then. Strangely, children had legs in those days. Grade schools were scattered around the town and the high school was called Partridge Academy. It was on Tremont Street. The present Girl Scout building on Washington Street was a grade school. Duxbury suffered a great loss aesthetically when Patridge Academy burned down. With the First Parish Church and the old Town Hall, it was one of the three beautiful buildings that stood together in a distinguished array for many, many years. The Old Sailors Home at Powder Point was originally the Powder Point School, a private school for boys. It operated as a hotel during the summer months. The present building has succeeded a former large and distinguished building which was burned down. At the turn of the century, Duxbury had a large resort hotel on Standish Shore called the Myles Standish Spring Hotel. It was later separated into two private homes. In front of the hotel was a spring of clear, cold water which the hotel organization bottled and shipped to Boston and other cities.

Duxbury homes for a long time used well water which was pumped by hand or by windmill. The windmills were very noisy, especially when the wind blew hard and they sometimes played havoc with sleep. A man made a business of making weekly calls on homes that had windmills applying oil and grease.

Newcomers to Duxbury are sometimes curious as to how Surplus Street got its name. It was originally a poorly constructed road that ran from Washington Street to Depot Street and was called Poverty Lane. Near the end of the lane on Depot Street was the town poorhouse. Before the turn of the century, the Federal Government distributed a large sum of money to the states and the states in turn distributed their share to the cities and towns. Duxbury used its allotment to rebuild Poverty Lane, and because the money was in excess of anticipated revenue, they gave the road a new name and called it Surplus Street. I would like to tell you a little story involving the poor house. There was a well to do family living on Washington Street that included in their household an elderly uncle or grand uncle. One day, the old man disappeared and stayed away overnight. A search was made and he was eventually found at the poorhouse. When his family called to take him home, he protested vigorously saying that all his friends were living at the poorhouse and he wanted to be with them. This was shocking to his affluent family who didn’t want it said that a relative of theirs was in the poorhouse. The old man, I must sadly report, had to bow to family pride.

Duxbury, as you know, is building a fine modern fire station on Tremont Street. The new station takes the place of the present Station No. 1 at Blue Fish River and Station No. 2 at Hall’s Corner which have served us for about three-quarters of a century. Station No. 3 in North Duxbury was added in 1906. These stations were equipped with hand pumpers each drawn by a single horse. A separate forest fire department was organized in 1900 largely through the influence of F. B. Knapp, owner of the Powder Point School. It was not combined with the Duxbury Fire Department until 1961. Under the intelligent and dedicated leadership of Chief Butler, we now have a modern, efficient fire fighting department wtih powerful up-to-date equipment, and ambulance service for which many citizens of our town are profoundly grateful, and an underwater rescue team.

In 1900, the Police Department could hardly be called a department. There were three constables elected by the voters and reporting individually to the selectmen. As automobiles increased in numbers, the need for more and more police grew rapidly. Retired Chief James O’Neil tells me that they early police, using a stop-watch, set a trap for cars on Tremont Street. Thirty miles per hour was the speed limit for the open road. Today, we have an efficient, well trained police department with a fleet of modern automobiles and housed in an excellent new station on Route 14.

Back in those days, we had our Fourth of July parades, the same as now. The first one I witnessed was in 1899. Most of the Civil War veterans, about fifteen or twenty, were on foot with some riding in surreys and other horse drawn vehicles. A few years later, Spanish War veterans predominated and the GAR men were all in carriages. One of the last to ride was my treasured friend James Kendall Burgess of whom I will have something to say later. We weren’t very sophisticated in those days so we had no so-called “Duxbury Days.”

Some individuals become so important to a town that they can almost be called institutions. In my opinion, Duxbury had two such men who lived in the ear of which I speak. I have in mind Dr. N. K. Noyes and Percy Walker. For many years, Dr. Noyes was the chief protector of the health of our community. He was a dedicated country doctor and was well loved for his devotion to his profession and his patients. He answered calls day or night and in the foulest of weather. A telephone call for help once came from the Gurnet. It was during the night in the middle of winter. A northeaster was blowing. With his team of horses and buggy he crossed the big bridge and followed the road that went behind the dunes to the Gurnet. It was so cold that the Bay was partially frozen over. Arriving at his destination, he took care of his patient and started back. He was very tired and he fell asleep. When he awoke, he found that he was on the bay ice off the north end of Clark’s Island. Ahead was open water. Turning the horses, he regained the road and eventually reached home.

Concerning Percy Walker; I feel secure in saying that he did more to safeguard and make possible the kind of town we have today than any other person. He wanted Duxbury to remain a rural community and not become merely a suburb of Boston. He fought for protective zoning laws and was a pioneer in the preservation of open spaces, some of which are now owned by this Society. I can recall that under his leadership as President, some of the meetings of the Society were rather dull, but he had a saving sense of humor that often relieved any monotony. I was present at one annual meeting when he called for the Treasurer’s report which was followed by and Auditor’s report. The Auditor stated simply that he had found the Treasurer’s accounts in good order. President Walker then made the comment, ‘Well its nice to know that Miss Gifford hasn’t stolen any money from the Society this year.”

The social life of the town revolved around Mattakeesett Hall and the clubhouse of the Duxbury Yacht Club. Mattakeeset Hall still stands on Washington Street. The Duxbury Yacht Club was organized in 1894. Its first clubhouse was on Standish Shore but very shortly after another clubhouse was more centrally located at the foot of Freeman Place off Washington Street. When it was succeeded by the present clubhouse, it was moved to the property of Mr. Cattell on Freeman PLace and is now used as a garage. One of Duxbury’s big events was the annual play of the Yacht Club held at Mattakeeset Hall. Most of the town attended, and there were several performances. One year a minstrel show was staged.

The Yacht Club’s first commodore was William M. MacDowell, husband of Fanny Davenport, a famous actress of the period. Duxbury’s two largest estates were the Wright mansion on St. George Street, recently torn down to make room for a new schoolhouse, and what was known as the Fanny Davenport estate, off Washington Street just south of Shipyard Lane. The house still stands but it has been reduced somewhat in size and new homes have been erected on part of the grounds.

The popular racing craft in 1900 was the “knockabout.” They had beautiful lines, had centerboards, and were sloop-rigged. They were ideal for racing in our Bay. The eighteen-footers were nearly thirty feet overall, and the fifteen-footers were about twenty-four feet overall. I recall some of the yachts and their owners. Burt Goodspeed had a series of black boats called “Again.” Arthur Train’s boats were called “Osprey” and were green. Frank Maxwell had a white boat called “Kittiwake V.” Henry Hunt also raced, but I do not recall the name of his boat. I raced my fifteen-footer called “Bub.” One of the Goodspeeds had a fifteen-footer named “Sis.” I think Hervey King’s boat was called “Curlew.” I started racing in a catboat owned by Walter Amesbury and I was his crew. When I got my knockabout, Walter Amesbury became my crew. In 1905, we won the season’s cup for our class and received it from Arthur Train who was the commodore. Train Field was named for him. Walter Amesbury and I have maintained our friendship over these many years. He has a summer home at the foot of Longview Road. Most of the yachts I have referred to were built by Shiverick of Kingston. We raced in all kinds of weather. I remember one race when a northeaster was blowing. We shortened the mainsail to the last reef and carried a tiny storm jib. Races were held well into the fall. Parenthetically, may I say that I say that I greatly admire our present day Duxbury sailors who comprise the Frostbite Fleet. A most delightful experience was pulling up to the yacht club float after racing on a cold wet day and sitting down to a big bowl of fish chowder served by the good ladies of the yacht club. Some of you may remember the weekly dances at the old clubhouse. It so happens that I was chairman of the Dance Committee for a year or two. The lively spiel was current at that time and a hazard was a post in the center of the room. More than one couple bumped into it and found themselves sprawled on the floor.

Vivid in my memory is the old boat shop owned by James Kendall Burgess at the foot of Shipyard Lane. Incidentally, this street was originally called Somerville Avenue. The name as so distasteful to the residents that my father got up a petition to have it called Shipyard Lane. The Selectmen gave their approval. As a young man, Jim Burgess had been to sea on merchant ships. In his boat shop, he built sailboats and dories, made repairs, painted them, hauled them out in the fall, stored them over the winter, and put them in the water in the spring. He was the official handicapper of the Yacht Club. He lived with Mrs. Burgess in the white cottage on Washington Street at the corner of Josselyn Avenue. After his death, the house was moved to a location on what is now called Partridge Road. Inasmuch as sailing and things having to do with the sea was my consuming interest in those days, I spent much of my time, especially when the tide was out, at the boat shop. Jim Burgess was a friendly man and he generously assigned one end of his long work bench for use by my father and me. We kept our tools there and made articles of no real importance but it gave us an excuse for being there with some wonderful old timers whose lives related closely to the sea. Among them was Bill Facey who lived on Surplus Street and sometimes worked at the Cable Office. Also George Freeman who lived in a cabin in the rear of his very respectable sister’s house on Washington Street. The only room his sister would allow him to enter was the kitchen. There was another regular employee whose name I think was Sam Winsor but I am not sure. Others filled in when additional help was needed. All these men had had sea experience and they enjoyed talking about it. Their language at times was rough but I was entranced by their tales.

Concerning strong language, our Duxbury author, Gershom Bradford, in one of his books, tells how a little band of missionaries were shocked by the language of an old sea captain. The boat shop version was slightly different but essentially the same. The missionaries had boarded a packet in Boston destined for Europe and the Far East. The captain, whose profanity was famous, was giving orders to the crew to hoist sails, bring in the gang plank, and cast off. The minister in charge of the missionaries was greatly shocked by the captain’s assortment of cuss words. When he could stand it no longer he called out, “Please, please, sir, control your language. You make my blood run cold.” To which the buy captain replied: “Blankety, blank, blank, if this bothers you, you’re all going to freeze to death before we get to Liverpool.” Cuss words flowed from the old timers as innocently as words from a child. It was part of the language of seafaring men. Many of them were deeply religious and their speech meant no disrespect to sacred things. One time Jim Burgess was painting a boat and I heard him singing softly to himself “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want, etc.” Inadvertently, he upset the paint pail. Out came a stream of oaths that I am sure adjusted the situation to his complete satisfaction.

A frequent visitor to the boatshop was Samuel Hunt who liked to talk about the old days. One day, I was in front of the boat shop, and Captain Hunt was in his dory a few yards offshore. He tripped on some gear and sustained a bad fall. I alerted the men in the shop and they hurried to the water’s edge and found that the old man had broken his leg. They quickly found a door, placed the Captain thereon and carried him to his shack a short distance away. When the doctor came he started to cut away the top of the captain’s hip boot. The old man protested with mighty oaths and said he was “goin” to use the boots again. He was over ninety at the time, but I can bear witness to the fact that he did use those boots again, but they were now knee-length. He walked bow-legged after that. He liked to sit in the sun in front of the boat shop where the marine railway entered the building. I often sat with him and listened to his yarns. I recall one drowsy noon when he was droning on with both of us half asleep. I just managed to catch this gem, “The last time I rounded the Horn there was a flat calm and what wind there was was dead ahead and blowin’ like hell.”

Mrs. Burgess was a wonderful old lady and was much admired by her neighbors. When sitting in a rocking chair, she reminded me of the picture of Whistler’s mother. She was very strict with Jim and didn’t allow him to smoke. Sometimes the boatshop crew played little pranks on each other. Now and then Jim smoked little cheroots surreptitiously. One day when he lighted up, one of the men casually remarked, “Why Jim, here comes Mrs. Burgess.” Greatly alarmed, Jim took the lighted cheroot from his mouth and thrust it into his hip pocket. He was greatly relieved to find that Mrs. Burgess was not coming but he had one devil of a time explaining to her how he had burned a hole in his trousers. These men had a good time together. They also had a considerable amount of personal dignity. One Sunday, I was in the Burgess parlor when a voice from the street called, “Jim, Jim,” accompanied by the blowing of an automobile horn. Jim peeked through the window and saw that it was one of the wealthy yacht customers. At first he paid no attention but when the summons was repeated he got up, opened the door and shouted, “Mr. X stop tootin that horn. If you want to see me, come to the door, knock proper, and I’ll open it. And another thing, I’ve got a handle to my name, I’m Mr. Burgess to you.” Much molified, Mr. X came to the door, apologized and discussed his errand. Jim bought his first car, a Ford, when he was over eighty years of age. He was very timid about driving it. On his first ride after taking delivery, he asked me to go with him. He was slow and cautious and when we came to the first intersection, he stopped the car leaving the motor running, hopped out, ran briskly to where he could see both ways, saw no vehicle in sight, dashed back to the car and drove across with a big smile. After that, when we had to cross a street, I was the one who got out and gave the signal that all was clear. When he was so odl that he was confined to his house, he told me that his greatest regret in departing this world would be his inability to see what great changes would take place in the next century. He was a wonderful old man and I loved him like a third grandfather.

Perhaps my most intimate friend at the boat shop was George Freeman, called Georgie by all who knew him. I have mentioned that he lived in a cabin behind the house of his sisters on Washington Street. Georgie, as a young man, had sailed before the mast to far places of the world, and his cabin was filled with old charts, boat models, ship pictures, his sea chest, relics of wrecks that he had picked up mostly on Cape Cod, and momentoes of his voyages. It was a veritable treasure house, and I spent many happy hours there. To me, Georgie was a fascinating person. If you had met him coming down the street, you surely would not have ranked him as a person of distinction, but to me, he symbolized the sea, tall ships, adventures in strange lands – a man of the Herman Melville tradition – and I felt very fortunate in having him for a friend. So keen was I to be with Georgie that I often spent my Christmas holidays in Duxbury. During his boyhood, the men of Duxbury built ships along our shores and it was the most natural thing in the world for young bucks to sign on for long voyages. With a wood fire in our kitchen stove, I invited Georgie to visit me and spend the day. This he did several times. Soon after the winter sun came up over the Bay, I would thrill with anticipation when I saw him trudge through the snow ot our back door. His coat always bulged in front for he tried, not too successfully, to concele a gallon jug that held his rum. I do not know how full the jug was when he arrived but I know it was empty when he left. I never saw Georgie really drunk but the rum, taken in little nips every few minutes throughout the day, lubricated both his memory and his tongue. To my delight, he apparently forgot that he was talking to a teenage boy. His accounts of shore leaves in some of the more boisterous ports of the world were garnished with rather robust incidents for a youngster and spiced with such picturesque language that only an old salt would have recognized 11 of the words. His tales were sometimes hair-raising, and at times, I was a bit scared, but I soon came to understand that he was reliving his youth and using the language to which he was accustomed in the old days. The shock of finding that my gentle friend had been a ripsnorting, swashbuckling sailorman gradually wore off and I gloried in the thrill of being taken back fifty years to one of the most interesting periods in the life of our nation. One cold winter morning when he was visiting me, I asked him if he would start at the beginning and give a detailed account of one of his voyages. Completely unhurried and fortified with his jug, we spend the entire day sailing around the world. A notable port in Shanghai. With several months’ pay in his pocket, Georgie and his crew mates devoted two days and nights to exploring the seamy sections of the great city, their leave made lively by brawls, mostly with the crews of other vessels, brushes with native constabulary, and particular attention paid to wine, women, and song. Crews usually kept loyally together, and when shore leave was about to end, all those who were able to navigate led or carried their less mobile companions to the ship. When Georgie awoke the morning after his Shanghai leave, nearly half a year’s pay was gone. He said that all he had to show for his leave was a terrific hangover and a dozen skunk traps. Not being aware that a trap had been designed specifically for that animal, I queried Georgie, asking if they had some sort of deodorizing attachment, but all he could tell me was that a man from whom he bought them said they were skunk traps. Georgie had no conception of why he had bought them. That night after he had opened the door and started for home I called after him “What did you do with the skunk traps?” To which he yelled back, “When I got to Manila, I hove’m to hell.” Some of you gentle people may conclude that association with this rough old sailorman in his cups was not proper companionship for a boy of tender years. I must definitely disagree. My friendship with Georgie gave me early in life an understanding of many things that prepared me for adult living.

Some years after my last visit with Georgie, I did some adventuring of my own. I worked in lumber camps and with railroad survey crews in the Northwest, picked fruit in California, and prospected for nearly a year in Alaska. This was in 1909 when that territory, as reported in the writings of Rex Beach and Jack London, was a pretty wild land. The briefing that I had received from Georgie stood me in good stead and prepared me for the rougher aspects of life. As I look back over those years, I would not swap my memories of that year spent in the open for anything that I could have possibly have used that time for.

As I have said, Georgie was a quiet man, and he was well-liked at the boat shop. He was greatly admired by his fellow workers because he had acquired some mastery over the handicap of palsy which caused his right hand to shake constantly. Jim Burgess always called on him when a waterline was to be painted, a comparatively difficult task for anyone. The moment his brush met the boat’s hull his hand was steady and true. When the job was done everyone knocked off for a moment to admire his skill which gave Georgie untold pleasure. In spite of his palsy, Georgie used his tools like a master and hie was particularly adept in making ship models. He was sometimes offered several hundred dollars for a model but if he didn’t particularly like the man who made the offer, usually a summer resident, no amount of money would induce him to sell. It took about a year to complete a model. He was very neat and I never saw his workbench in a cluttered condition. Over his bench hung a little sign “A place for everything and everything in its plase.” Youngsters are not always kind and I know I embarrassed him when I mentioned that he had spelled the word “place” two different ways, “place” and “plase”. He shyly said he had really forgotten how the word should be spelled and decided if he spelled it both ways he couldn’t be entirely wrong!

One winter, I got a letter from Georgie saying that he hoped very much I would be coming down to Duxbury for the Christmas holidays. This was a bit unusual because I had never received a letter from him before. I had planned a ski trip to New Hampshire with some school friends, but, fearing that something might be amiss with my friend, I canceled the ski trip and went to Duxbury. Going to his cabin, I found him hale and hearty and his greeting was particularly warm. He climbed a little ladder to a space above his room and brought down an oblong-shaped box. Putting it on the table, he turned it around and presented me with a beautiful ship model encased in a glass front wooden box. I was overwhelmed. He said he had been working on it on and off for a year and always hid it when he saw me approaching. The model is now on top of a bookcase in our living room. When I look at it, it brings back memories of my treasured friend who long since departed for ethereal shores.

I would like to tell you a bit about the neighborhood in Duxbury with which I was most familiar – Josselyn Avenue and Shipyard Lane. Here the all year residents and summer residents mingled in complete harmony. There were the four brothers, Ernest, Herbert and Briggs Wadsworth and Tom Herrick. Tom was a Wadsworth but had changed his name because an aunt with no progeny had wanted him to carry on her name. Tom was the father of Waldo Herrick who endeared himself to our high school boys and girls and for whom they named their gymnasium. He drove one of the school buses. Ernest Wadsworth had been a ship carpenter and had spent much of his time at sea. He built the magnificent ship model now on disply in the Old Sailors’ Home. And then there was Jed Hill, a builder, who I found was somewhat aof an expert in identifying birds. Sam Burgess, not a close relative of Jim Burgess, lived directly across the street from Jim. Sam was a rugged individualist. He set his lobster pots off the Gurnet and only a hurricane would have stopped him from pulling them. He was a master at navigating the narrow bay channels at low tide. So far as I know, Same was the source of the only scandal in our neighborhood. I must whisper it “Sam lived alone with a housekeeper.” The very proper ladies of our community looked at her askance and always referred to her as “Sam Burgess’s woman.” She seldom appeared outside the house. I chanced to meet her and talked with her one day. I thought she was very gentle and soft-spoken. There were others, but I don’t want to burden this narrative with names of too many individuals.

Each summer, our neighborhood organized an outing to the Gurnet. In a half dozen or so sailboats, towing dories, we sailed across the bay and anchored off Gurnet Creek. Rowing up to the creek, we landed and had a clambake. We stayed over low tide, which gave the opportunity to visit the lighthouse. The more strenuous walked to Saquish and back. Some of the dunes were quite high and it was fun to slide down them. One of our party told of a trip to the dunes that he had made many years before with his girlfriend and another couple. You who are nautically knowledgeable will know that a wide rather flat bottomed boat is sometimes refered to a having a pumpkin seed hull. One of the girls made the slide with dispatch, but the other, who carried much more poundage, could scarcely get going. She appealed to the men asking “Why can’t I slide like Mary?” She was told “You’re pumpkin seed. Mary’s clipper bottom!”

I recall with much pleasure some cruising I did in Massachusetts Bay. A big event in those waters was the arrival of the New York Yacht Club fleet at Marblehead. My little fifteen-footer was not much of an ocean-going craft, so I had to avoid bad weather. One time, with a companion, I started for Marblehead at nine o’clock at night. We went out of the Bay with the tide, rounded Gurnet and set a compass course for Minot’s Light. From there we set our course for the Graves Light which is a considerable distance off Boston Harbor. We were off the Graves at dawn where we picked up a brisk southerly breeze and rounded Marblehead Neck at noon. Some of you yachtsmen will remember the German Sonderklass boats. I saw them race for the first time in this country the afternoon of our arrival at Marblehead. We made many more short voyages including Gloucester and Cape Cod harbors. We sailed to Provincetown Monument and had the thrilling experience of hearing President Theodore Roosevelt give the dedicatory address. I say thrilling because Teddy was one of my heroes and still is.

I would like to tell you about a project to which I devoted several summers. I shipped a seventeen-foot canvas canoe to Duxbury and set myself the task of exploring all the rivers and small streams that flowed into Duxbury, Kingston, and Plymouth Bays. I had three different companions during the three summers. Towing a canoe, we sailed “Bub” to the mouth of the stream we had selected for the day. Anchoring the sailboat, we paddled the canoe up the stream until the water became so shallow we could go no further. It was really fun, and we never knew exactly where we were and where we would finish. Most of the streams flowing into Duxbury Bay, such as Blue Fish River, soon peter out. Helen Wadsworth was my companion on most of the Duxbury Bay trips. I am sure some of you will remember her. She was a beautiful girl and I was proud to squire her to dances here and in Boston where she later went to work, She was the daughter of Seaborn Wadsworth who, as the name implies, was born at sea. We paddled through the marshes to Green Harbor and Brant Rock and once followed Duck Hill River until we could go no further.

Another companion was Walter Amesbury with whom I made a trip up the Jones River, Kingston, to its source. We carried camping equipment and it took several days. The tidal part of the river was easy because we rode the incoming tide. Even the freshwater section had good depth, and it took us deep into the country. To our surprise and delight, we found the source of the river was Silver Lake. At that time there were no summer cottages there or other signs of civilization. We camped on a high bank under some stately pines. Eel River, Plymouth, was a beautiful trip. Helen Irwin, whose family was prominent in Duxbury at that time, was my companion. Some will remember her as the charming young lady who played the piano at Mattakeesett Hall in the days of silent movies. The Eel River trip took us into Standish Forest.

I once asked Percy Walker if he knew where the site of the Myles Standish house was. He said it was on the north side of Kingston Bay at the foot of Captain’s Hill. He also said that the shore was very dense with small trees, bushes and brambles and that an old record mentioned a large boulder adjacent to the cellar hole. He believed no one had been there in modern times. This was somewhat of a challenge so Helen Irwin and I set out to find it. We tackled the problem from the Bay side making probes into the dense bush. We finally located the boulder. As you know, the land has been cleared, markers placed, and a pleasant little park established.

I want to mention and old timer well known to some of you. I refer to Parker Hall who without a crew sailed a sizeable schooner along the Atlantic Coast taking cargoes from port to port. He was a remarkable sailor because a schooner as large as his would ordinarily have four or five men to work it. My father and I were fishing off the lumber yard one day and we decided to pay Captain Hall a visit. He greeted us cordially and invited us aboard. After we got acquainted, my father expressed surprise that he made his voyages alone and said, “Captain you must get awfully lonely. Why don’t you get a wife?” Captain Hall replied, “Had a wife once but she warn’t no good. She couldn’t steer, wanted butter on her bread and wouldn’t eat beans. No she warn’t good at all.”

We are reaching towards the end of this rambling dissertation. Carrie and I were married at Trinity Church, Boston in 1912. We went directly by train to Duxbury to spend our honeymoon in my father’s summer home on Josselyn Avenue. It was the month of May. I had two weeks vacation after which, for another two weeks, I commuted by train to Boston, leaving Carrie in Duxbury during the day. When I returned from Boston the first evening she said she wasn’t sure that the liked Duxbury because nobody took her seriously. It seems that she walked to Hall’s Corner and went into White’s store. Mrs. White waited on everybody, even later arrivals, before she turned to Carrie and said, “And what would you like little girl?” Carrie was about twenty-one years old but looked younger. On the way home, she met a schoolgirl and walking along with her, Carrie asked what grade she was in, and she was told, and then the little girl asked, “And what grade are you in?”

Enough of these reminiscences. Let me close by saying “I love this wonderful old town and all you lovely people who live here. I owe it so very very much.