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Old Coast Road From Boston to Plymouth

<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> <h3>DUXBURY HOMES</h3> There are certain places whose happy fortune seems to be that they are always specially loved and specially sought by the children of men. From that memorable date in 1630 when a little group of the Plymouth colonists asked permission to locate across the bay at "Duxberie" until now, when the summer colony alone has far surpassed that of the original settlers, this section of the coast—with its lovely six-mile beach, its high bluffs, and its pleasant hills and pasture lands, upon which are found quite a southern flora, unique in this northern latitude—has been thoroughly frequented and enjoyed.[Pg 143] There is no more graphic index to the caliber of a people than the houses which they build, and the first house above all others which we must associate with this spot is the Standish cottage, built at the foot of Captain's Hill by Alexander Standish, the son of Myles, partly from materials from his father's house, which was burned down, but whose cellar is still visible. This long, low, gambrel-roofed structure, with a broad chimney showing the date of 1666, was a long way ahead of the first log cabins erected by the Pilgrims—farther than most of us realize, accustomed as we are to glass instead of oiled paper in windows; to shingles, and not thatch for roofs. It is fitting that this ancient and charming dwelling should be associated with one of the most romantic, most striking, names in the Plymouth Colony. There are few more picturesque personalities in our early history than Myles Standish. Small in stature, fiery in spirit, a terror to the Indians, and a strong arm to the Pilgrims, there is no doubt that his determination to live in Duxbury—which he named for[Pg 144] Duxborough Hall, his ancestral home in Lancashire—went far in obtaining for it a separate incorporation and a separate church. This was the first definite offshoot from the Plymouth Colony, and was accompanied by the usual maternal fears. While he could not forbid them going to Duxbury to settle, yet, when they asked for a separate incorporation and church, Bradford granted it most unwillingly. He voiced the general sentiment when he wrote that such a separation presaged the ruin of the church "& will provoke y^e Lord's displeasure against them." However, such unkind predictions in no wise bothered the sturdy little group who moved over to the new location, needing room for their cattle and their gardens, and most of all a sense of freedom from the restrictions of the mother colony. The son of Elder Brewster went, and in time the Elder himself, and so did John Alden and his wife Priscilla, whose courtship has been so well told by Longfellow that it needs no further embellishing here. On the grassy knoll where John and Priscilla[Pg 145] built their home in 1631, their grandson built the cottage which now stands—the property of the Alden Kindred Association. John Alden seems to have been an attractive young fellow—it is easy to see why Priscilla Mullins preferred him to the swart, truculent widower—but from our point of view John Alden's chief claim to fame is that he was a friend of Myles Standish. Let us, as we pay our respects to Duxbury, pause for a moment and recall some of the courageous adventures, some of the brave traits and some of the tender ones, which make up our memory of this doughty military commander. In the first place, we must remember that he was never a member of the church of the Pilgrims: there is even a question if he were not—like the rest of his family in Lancashire—a Roman Catholic; and this immediately places him in a position of peculiar distinction. From the first his mission was not along ecclesiastical lines, but along military and civil ones. The early histories are full of his intrepid deeds: there was never an[Pg 146] expedition too dangerous or too difficult to daunt him. He would attack with the utmost daring the hardest or the humblest task. He was absolutely loyal to the interest of the Colony, and during that first dreadful winter when he was among the very few who were not stricken with sickness, he tended the others day and night, "unceasing in his loving care." As in many audacious characters this sweeter side of his nature does not seem to have been fully appreciated by his contemporaries, and we have the letter in which Robinson, that "most learned, polished and modest spirit," writes to Bradford, and warns him to have care about Standish. He loves him right well, and is persuaded that God has given him to them in mercy and for much good, if he is used aright; but he fears that there may be wanting in him "that tenderness of the life of man (made after God's image) which is meet." This warning doubtless flattered Standish, but Robinson's later criticism of his methods at Weymouth hurt the little captain cruelly. He seems to have cherished an intense affection for[Pg 147] the Leyden pastor, such as valorous natures often feel for meditative ones, and that Robinson died before he—Standish—could justify himself was a deep grief to the soldier to whom mere physical hardships were as nothing. We do not know a great deal about this relationship between the two men: in this as in so many cases the intimate stories of these men and women, "also their love, and their hatred, and their envy is now perished." But we do know that thirty years later when the gallant captain lay dying he wrote in his will: "I give three pounds to Mercy Robinson, whom I tenderly love for her grandfather's sake." Surely one feels the touching eloquence of this brief sentence the fitting close of a life not only heroic in action, but deeply sensitive in sentiment. He died on his farm in Duxbury in 1656 when he was seventy-three, and the Myles Standish Monument on Captain's Hill, three hundred and ten feet above the bay, is no more conspicuous than his knightly and tender life among the people he elected to serve. His two wives, and also Priscilla and John[Pg 148] Alden, for whom he entertained such lively love and equally lively fury, all are buried here—the Captain's last home fittingly marked by four cannon and a sturdy boulder. Not only for Standish and Alden is Duxbury famous. The beloved William Brewster himself moved to this new settlement, and up to a few years ago the traces of the whitewood trees which gave the name of "Eagle's Nest" to his house could be distinguished. One son—Love—lived with the venerable elder, who was a widower, and his other son Jonathan owned the neighboring farm. In the sight of the Plymouth Colony—their first home in the new land—the three men often worked together, cutting trees and planting. Others of the original Mayflower company came too, leaving traces of themselves in such names as Blackfriars Brook, Billingsgate, and Houndsditch—names which they brought from Old England. The homes which these pioneers so laboriously and so lovingly wrought—what were they? How did they compare with the modern[Pg 149] home and household? In Mr. Sheldon's "History of Deerfield" we find such a charming and vivid picture of home life in the early days—and one that applies with equal accuracy to Duxbury—that we cannot do better than copy it here: "The ample kitchen was the center of the family life, social and industrial. Here around the rough table, seated on rude stools or benches, all partook of the plain and sometimes stinted fare. A glance at the family gathered here after nightfall on a winter's day may prove of interest. "After a supper of bean porridge or hasty pudding and milk of which all partake in common from a great pewter basin, or wooden bowl, with spoons of wood, horn or pewter; after a reverent reading of the Bible, and fervent supplications to the Most High for prayer and guidance; after the watch was set on the tall mount, and the vigilant sentinel began pacing his lonely beat, the shutters were closed and barred, and with a sense of security the occupations of the long winter[Pg 150] evening began. Here was a picture of industry enjoined alike by the law of the land and the stern necessities of the settlers. All were busy. Idleness was a crime. On the settle, or a low armchair, in the most sheltered nook, sat the revered grandam—as a term of endearment called granny—in red woolen gown, and white linen cap, her gray hair and wrinkled face reflecting the bright firelight, the long stocking growing under her busy needles, while she watched the youngling of the flock in the cradle by her side. The good wife, in linsey-woolsey short-gown and red petticoat steps lightly back and forth in calf pumps beside the great wheel, or poising gracefully on the right foot, the left hand extended with the roll or bat, while with a wheel finger in the other, she gives the wheel a few swift turns for a final twist to the long-drawn thread of wool or tow. The continuous buzz of the flax wheels, harmonizing with the spasmodic hum of the big wheel, shows that the girls are preparing a stock of linen against their wedding day. Less active and more fitful rattled the[Pg 151] quill wheel, where the younger children are filling quills for the morrow's weaving. "Craftsmen are still scarce, and the yeoman must depend largely on his own skill and resources. The grandsire, and the goodman, his son, in blue woolen frocks, buckskin breeches, long stockings, and clouted brogans with pewter buckles, and the older boys in shirts of brown tow, waistcoat and breeches of butternut-colored woolen homespun, surrounded by piles of white hickory shavings, are whittling out with keen Barlow jack-knives implements for home use: ox-bows and bow-pins, axe-helves, rakestales, forkstales, handles for spades and billhooks, wooden shovels, flail staff and swingle, swingling knives, or pokes and hog yokes for unruly cattle and swine. The more ingenious, perhaps, are fashioning buckets or powdering tubs, or weaving skeps, baskets or snowshoes. Some, it may be, sit astride the wooden shovel, shelling corn on its iron-shod edge, while others are pounding it into samp or hoiminy in the great wooden mortar.[Pg 152] "There are no lamps or candles, but the red light from the burning pine knots on the hearth glows over all, repeating, in fantastic pantomime on the brown walls and closed shutters, the varied activities around it. These are occasionally brought into higher relief by the white flashes, as the boys throw handfuls of hickory shavings onto the forestick, or punch the back log with the long iron peel, while wishing they had as 'many shillings as sparks go up the chimney.' Then, the smoke-stained joists and boards of the ceiling with the twisted rings of pumpkin strings or crimson peppers and festoons of apple, drying on poles hung beneath; the men's hats, the crook-necked squashes, the skeins of thread and yarn hanging in bunches on the wainscot; the sheen of the pewter plates and basins, standing in rows on the shelves of the dresser; the trusty firelock with powder horn, bandolier, and bullet pouch, hanging on the summertree, and the bright brass warming-pan behind the bedroom door—all stand revealed more clearly for an instant, showing the provident[Pg 153] care for the comfort and safety of the household. Dimly seen in the corners of the room are baskets in which are packed hands of flax from the barn, where, under the flaxbrake, the swingling knives and the coarse hackle, the shives and swingling tow have been removed by the men; to-morrow the more deft manipulations of the women will prepare these bunches of fiber for the little wheel, and granny will card the tow into bats, to be spun into tow yarn on the big wheel. All quaff the sparkling cider or foaming beer from the briskly circulating pewter mug, which the last out of bed in the morning must replenish from the barrel in the cellar." <hr style='width: 45%;' /> One notices the frequent reference to beer in these old chronicles. The tea, over which the colonists were to take such a dramatic stand in a hundred years, had not yet been introduced into England, and neither had coffee. Forks had not yet made their appearance. In this admirable picture Mr. Sheldon does not mention one of the evening industries which[Pg 154] was peculiarly characteristic of the Plymouth Colony. This was the making of clapboards, which with sassafras and beaver skins, constituted for many years the principal cargo sent back to England from the Colony. Another point—the size of the families. The mother of Governor William Phips had twenty-one sons and five daughters, and the Reverend John Sherman had six children by his first wife and twenty by his second. These were not uncommon figures in the early life of New England; and with so many numbers within itself the home life was a center for a very complete and variegated industrial life. Surely it is a long cry from these kitchen fireplaces—so large that often a horse had to be driven into the kitchen dragging the huge back log—these immense families, to the kitchenette and one-child family of to-day! This, then, was the old Duxbury: the Duxbury of long, cold winters, privations, and austerity. Down by the shore to-day is the new Duxbury—a Duxbury of automobiles, of business men's trains, of gay society at[Pg 155] Powder Point, where in the winter is the well-known boys' school—a Duxbury of summer cottages, white and green along the shore, green and brown under the pines. Of these summer homes many are new: the Wright estate is one of the finest on the South Shore, and the pleasant, spacious dwelling distinguished by its handsome hedge of English privet formerly belonged to Fanny Davenport, the actress. Others are old houses, very tastefully, almost affectionately remodeled by those for whom the things of the past have a special lure. These remodeled cottages are, perhaps, the prettiest of all. Those very ancient landmarks, sagging into pathetic disrepair, present a sorrowful, albeit an artistic, silhouette against the sky. But these "new-old" cottages, with ruffled muslin curtains at the small-paned, antique windows, brave with a shining knocker on the green-painted front door, and gay with old-fashioned gardens to the side or in the rear—these are a delight to all, and an honor to both past and present. Surely the fair town of Duxbury, which so[Pg 156] smilingly enticed the Pilgrims across the bay to enjoy her sunny beach and rolling pasture lands, must be happy to-day as she was then to feel her ground so deeply tilled, and still to be so daintily adorned with homes and gardens and with laughing life. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/image194.jpg" width-obs="250" height-obs="109" alt="" title="" /></div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> [Pg 157] <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/image195.jpg" width-obs="350" height-obs="168" alt="" title="" /></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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