Read by Mary Nye Gifford to the Rural Society on June 16, 1952

Mary Nye Gifford (1866-1958) was the daughter of Stephen Nye Gifford and Ada J. Winsor. She grew up on Cedar Street and later lived on Standish Street. She was an early member of the Duxbury Rural Society, later the Duxbury Rural & Historical Society, and was the treasurer for many years. The Gifford Family Collection, DAL.MSS.028, includes many of her papers.

Probably the first settlement was in South Duxbury, as Plymouth could be easily reached by boat, the only other way being to walk, as there were no draft animals – Longfellow’s account of John Alden taking Priscilla to their home riding on a bull to the contrary.

The first meeting house was in the cemetery on Chestnut Street, and the second, a little to the east of it, on what was called Old Meetinghouse Lane. Some years ago, the foundation of the Second Church was uncovered by Mr. Crocker in getting sand for the road. The Town Records of 1704 said it was to be 40 x 30 feet, as I remember, and I went and measured it and those were the exact measurements. It is said some of the foundation stones are part of the fort around Myles Standish’s grave. This Society now owns this Second Meeting House lot.

The first road, or path, I think, started from the Myles Standish site, running straight north to the Elder’s lilacs, then turned west out through what is now the Boss’s land to Standish Street, then north and northwest to the old Burying Ground and on to Tremont Street, then called the Plymouth Path, to Winslow and Marshfield. The road is still passable through the woods. Myles and John Alden probably visited by a path branching from this road at Hall’s corner to Miss Coburns (South Station Ave), then across Surplus Street, across a brook and through the golf links by the Club House across Harrison Street, skirting the marsh by Wright’s Pond to the first Alden House. [she is describing the Duxborough Path]. Of course there was no road along the shore as there was no way of crossing Blue Fish River, or Blue River, as Mr. [Gershom] Bradford thinks it should be called. My mother said people had to cross by stepping stones about where Mr. White’s house is now. A road ran from the Plymouth Path to the first Alden House, through Miss Cushman’s [Anchorage Lane] coming out below the Catholic Church, that is why Miss Delano’s house (formerly a Winslow house) is back to St. George Street as it faced this road. [Miss Delano’s house is 105 St. George Street, since turned to face St. George Street, not the path described here]

The first bridge across the River was built in 1803, the present one was built in 1882. While this was being built, we of the Point had to go to Tremont Street to get to South Duxbury.

There were many old characters in town – one being Joe Delano, who was known as Joe Dumit, owing to his habit of saying, “Dumit all to damnation.” I remember seeing him going to church in yellow nankean trousers, blue swallow tail coat, a stock, and a tall beaver hat. He lived at Malachi’s Brook [West Street]. Mary Ann Alden, Major Alden’s daughter (he was on Washington’s staff during the Revolutionary War) was queer and lived alone in the Major’s house on the corner of Alden Street. In my mother’s day, the land from the police station [site of Percy Walker Pool] to Tremont Street was all Alden land and was called the Major’s Pasture. There were bars across the road where Alden Street leaves St. George Street.

Duxbury was divided into villages. Where the Historical Society now is was called the Point, from about the Library to the end of Powder Point – the the village, and the Nook (South Duxbury) at Captain’s Hill. Twas an old rhyme:

Tarkiln, Tinkertown, Millbrook
Ashdod, Weechertown and cussed Nook!

Why the last, I know not. There were also Island Creek, Crooked Lane, Chandlertown, Temperance Hall neighborhood, and High Street. The village was called Sodom for some reason. Nicknames were popular. “Old Leather” was a Cushman, “Flut” was Henry Drew who fluttered in his speech and, of course, King Caesar, because he was so autocratic. Biblical names were common: Consider Burgess, called “Sider,” Temperance Drew, Gershom and Gamaliel Bradford, Gershom Winsor, Gershom Holmes, Lot and Zeruah Soule, Lot Swift. Zeruiah was an aunt of mine, but we never acquired Shearjasub or was a Plymouthean.

On Cove Street lived Bradford Weston, who married first a Weston from Island Creek. He had a son who went to sea and they never heard from him for 18 years, when he arrived from Japan. After that, he sent Japanese goods to his sister who set up a little store with them. He married for a second wife, Lucy Ripley, who only lived a short time, and for a third wife, Mrs. Nathaniel Thomas, known to us children as Aunt Louisa. She lived in the old house across the street from the Historical Rooms. When she moved to the Weston house, she found Lucy’s sunbonnet hanging in the entry. She took it down and put it away. Bradford hunted it up and hung it up again. This happened three times, then Mrs. Weston said, “Very well, Mr. Weston, if you have Lucy’s sunbonnet, I shall hang up Mr. Thomas’ hat,” which she died, and as far as I know, they hung peaceably together. The staples are still there on which they hung, and I am at present living in that house.

There were tragedies in this quiet seaport town. Ellen Church Weston’s father and husband were lost at sea and never heard from. My grandfather died at sea and was buried off Cape Hatteras. He had not been home for two years. In those days, they would sail for Russia or Venice, load there for New Orleans and perhaps sail from there to Liverpool before going home. A sea captain set a sailor, a neighbor of his in Duxbury, adrift in the Pacific Ocean, with bread and water. The boat was later picked up on the Peruvian coast with a skeleton in it. He was identified by his tools in the boat) [this story may refer to Capt. Henry Otis Winsor setting a sailor adrift and later being accused of murder when he entered port in San Francisco – no body in a boat was ever found in that instance]. My great-uncle, Henry Winsor, sailed around Cape Horn to California, on the search for gold with this 49ers. He made his pile and on his way home, went ashore with an Englishman in St. Thomas and was never heard from again.

There were romances, too. A vessel was wrecked on Duxbury Beach in the 1840s, I think it was – and rescued were a Capt. Malbone, and Englishman and his wife. They lost everything and the Duxbury people befriended them. They lived in a house on the Marshfield marshes, and later had a large family. One day, 15 or 20 years later, Theodore Glover of Milton and Clifton Bremer were gunning and went to the Malbone house for water. One of the daughters, a beautiful girl, brought it to them. The men promptly fell in love with two of the girls and married them. Mrs. Glover went to England on her wedding trip and found the Captain’s sister was Lady Eleanor. He had eloped with the governess (or organist) and his family had disowned him.

A young girl promised her mother as she was dying that she would never marry a Mr. Brook of Kingston, because he drank. I think he drove the Boston stage coach. He reformed and was afterward sent as a Representative to the General Court. She would never marry him on account of her promise to her mother, but he was ever faithful, and every Sunday afternoon, we saw them riding the horse and buggy and say, “there goes Mandy and Mr. Brooks.” He was on his way to her one Sunday afternoon when he died suddenly of a heart attack. Some details of these stories may be a little different, but it is the way I heard them as a child.

Mary Rice taught school here. She said whenever there was a launching [of a ship], school had to be dismissed. She found her husband here, the Universalist minister, Mr. Libermore. My mother said there was a great excitement when he came to call on teacher. She was afterward well known as Mary Livermore, the woman-suffragist. She said the women of Duxbury were the most able and efficient she ever knew for they had to run their families and their financial affairs, as their sea-captain husbands were away so much.

Jennie Alden was engaged for 27 years to George Fowle, because his mother would never allow him to go into business, and he and money of his own, and then after all that time, it was broken!

Capt. Alexander Wadsworth was captain of many ships, and took his wife with him. She died in the China Sea [Bay of Bombay], I think it was, leaving a small child. The crew brought him up on goat’s milk for a while – then the goat died and they had to feed him on pilot bread and water. When he arrived here he was puny and thin and very much afraid of women as he had never seen any. He was named Seaborn and lived here for many years. His mother’s diary is extant and in it she said, “Terrible storm, very much frightened, glad to be with Alexander.”

My great-great grandfather used to stride up the church aisle in high boots carrying a riding whip and behind him came his wife, bowing right and left with her ostrich plumes tilting. For that reason she was known as “Marm Tilt.” She was very fond of dress and she and Mrs. King Caesar were rivals in fashion. She had little black boy to carry the umbrella over here when she walked abroad.

There was an odd character who lived about on the corner of Alden Street named Sarah MacFarlin. She spoke in rhyme. A little girl called out:

“There goes Sarah Mack
With a bag of corn on her back.”

Sarah retorted:

“Little girl, you’ve told a lie,
One half’s wheat; tother half’s rye.”

There was a law passed forbidding picking on cranberry meadows. Sarah said:

“Men make laws but I won’t mind ’em
I’ll pick cranberries wherever I find them.”

Her stone in the churchyard says:”

“This stone is gratitude erected
by two of her pupils
who her goodness respected.”

In the old days, sea captains took out “ventures,” perhaps a box of salt codfish. These they sold and brought home the results. One was a pair of long white gloves and a fan. The lady was so pleased that she had her husband, Dr. Hathaway, paint her portrait in them and it now hangs here in the Hathaway house.

The house opposite the Congregational Church was built by Martin Winsor, and when I was a school girl, it was painted two colors – pinkish from the front door to the left and yellow from the front door to the right, because the heirs couldn’t agree on the color. [Nathaniel Winsor Sr. House, now owned by ICO].

These things couldn’t happen in the present Duxbury. People are standardized and individualism is certainly out.