Personal Reflection: Weaving Threads into the Tapestry
What an adventure this has been following the journey of Isaac Sawyer and others whose personal histories began in Gloucester and ended in Falmouth (Portland). I have learned more about the city of my birth, and now, the city I adopted as home forty years ago, than I ever knew.
Much of the early history of both Gloucester and Falmouth have similarities. Both are coastal towns which later, would become dependent on the ocean and water-ways for shipping lumber and goods, and build sailing vessels, important to their prosperity; not, at the beginning. Both towns, in their pre-history would have been home to native groupt who visited the coast to fisht during the summer months, but later, would become 'enemies' to the European settlers, and would be dessimated by contracting European diseases.
Both towns, would be dependent on their 'planters', yeoman who would establish farms for their sustainance and would clear heavily forested areas to build their homes, gather marsh grasses for bedding their cattle and sheep, and thatch for their roofs, and hunt and fish along the rivers to suppliment their diets and feed their large families. Both towns, would suffer loss during the European conflicts between England and France and would suffer destruction during the Revolutionary War.
The early pioneers of Gloucester and Falmouth were independent and self-reliant individuals determined to create and maintain a life for themselves and their families, qualities which they shared with their fellows throughhout New England.
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| Early Map of New England, dated 1703 |
In New England the community and social idea, controlled and directed by provincial authority, was present from the beginning. Groups of like-minded families organized themselves into "church and town," acquired a tract of land about six miles square, settled thereon according to definite rules, and proceeded to work out for themselves and orderly agricultural community. The New England town was a carefully planned society." The system, as originally conceieved and administered by the Massachusetts General Court prevailed throughout the province of Massachusetts Bay, in its offshoots, Connecticut and New Hampshire, and in its colony of Maine.
Since church and town were coeval and coextensive, the community formed around meeting house and village green. Land was divided by lot into village plots fronting on the green, and outlying portions for farming, grazing and wood lots. Other tracts were set aside for the common use of all. and still others, held for future needs.
Taken from: "The New England Town: A Way of Life"
by Carl Bridenbaugh
This was true for the first permanent sttlement of the Town of Gloucester when in 1642, the Massachusetts Bay Colony laid out the rocky land adjacent to the Annisquam River, and named it Gloucester, which received the name Cape Ann, was divided between three areas: Jeffryes Creeke (Manchester), Gloucester (included Rockport; than called Sandy Bay, and Ipswich (including Essex).
The new permanet settlement focused on the Town Green area, an inlet in the marshes at a bend in the Annisquam River, The area is now the site of Grant Circle, a large traffic rotary at which Massachusetts Route 128 joins the major city street,Washington Street (Route 127). The settlers built a Meeting House and focused the nexus of their settlement on the 'island' for nearly 100 years.
"The new settlers homesteaded and fished, but the area was so thickly wooded, so in the beginning, lumber, not fish, was Gloucester's primary export. :It was so important, that in 1667, the settlement area that was to become Rockport, over a century later, was forbidden in order to protect the forest." History of the Regionhttps.://capeannchamber.com/history-of-the-region/
One of the early pioneers of Gloucester was Thomas Skillen who is significant to the story of Isaac Sawyer and his farm at Back Cove. It's apparent from early Gloucester records, and from his mention in the Babson book, that he was in Gloucester before 1643. This written into the Gloucester Archives regarding the 'Old Yard Bridge Street.'
Upon the 8th of the 12th mo. 1643
It is ordered that at the end of Lotts, Viz, Mr. Blynmans, Thos. Jones, Thos. Kents, and Thos. Skillings, betwixt, and old meeting house place, shall be half an acre, laid out for a common burial place, & that the town's men, from 16 years, and upwards, shall turn out, and build a stone wall, around it.
On or about 1658, six men from Gloucester, early pioneers of the town would leave and move up the coast to the settlement at Falmouth where they would purchase land from the Cleeves and Tucker grants significantly impacting both towns and their histories. Here are the names of the six former Gloucester men who removed to Falmouth:
Matthew Coe, George Ingersoll, Phineas Rider, Thomas Skillins(g),
John Wakley, and Thomas Wakley
Three of these individuals do relate to our Isaac Sawyer. I will include these records from John James Babson's History of the Town of Gloucester.
Before heading back to the district of Maine and Back Cove, I want to share some tidbits of Gloucester History that I hope followers of this blog might find interesting and worth a visit to the old seaport town.
Prior to the first European settlement, the Pawtucket group of Indians, traveled the rivers and coastline, and established inland trails. The area in the central part of Gloucester which would later be called the Commons or Dogtown Commons, was used for seasonal hunting and fishing.
Today, researchers are attempting to chronicle whether there may have been a more permanent Indian settlement in the area.
1605/ 1606 Samuel de Champlain sailed into Gloucester Harbor which he named
Le Beauport.
1614 Captain John Smith named the area Tragabigzanda.
Upon his return to England, King Charles, renamed the cape after his mother, Anne of Denmark; thus, Cape Ann.
1623 English sailors employed by the Dorchester Company of England landed at Half Moon Beach and attempted to establish a seasonal fishing camp and settlement at the harbor. After two years, the Dorchester Company disbanded, A few of the earliest settlers who remained moved inland to Salem where they found more land beneficial to farming.
1640-1642 Resettlement was slow, but gradually, as Massachusetts Bay Colony, the area was granted a charter as a town and received the name Gloucester.
It was named for Gloucester in western England. The first parish was located near present day, Grant Circle on Route 128 (near the southwestern corner of Dogtown). Although the soil was rocky, there was plenty of room for grazing. Cape Pond Brook (which flows through the southern part of Dogtown) powered Gloucester's early mills by the 1640's. These included Ellery' s lumber mill, as well as a gristmill and fulling mill nearby.
Taken from: Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey
1719 There was a general land distribution for all males in Gloucester/Rockport. Three years later, land in the northern part of Cape Ann was divided into 136 woodlots for lumbering and cow rights for pasture land. The pasture was located just north of the Commons Road and was managed communally, rather than assigning individual lots. The common pasture was immediately to the north of the Commons Settlement, with woodlots, which were long, narrow strips, extending north and east. It was probably proximity to the pasture that prompted some residents to move from the original settlement to the Commons are slightly to the northeast.
There were about forty of these early pioneers who built homes in the heart of Cape Ann called Dogtown. Some say it is still a place of mystery and legends today with the remnant of the glacial migration, large boulders, stone enclosures and cellars where the inhabitants once lived. In the early 1700's some of Gloucester's wealthiest citizens resided in the Commons which privided safety from marauding French and English trooops and the occasional pirates who visited the coast.
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| Map of The Commons/ Dogtown |
Here is an image of an early home;one story, with one room for all household living. Most had stone walls with kitchen gardens and dug out cellars for keeping food. Amazingly, most residents in the early years of the settlement raised large families here.
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18th Century Home with barn, not typical of those in the Commons.
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| The Layout of the Commons Road |
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| Babson Musuem and Cooperage |
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This picture was taken in 1903 where it Dogtown was still used by farmers..
In this case, for keeping pigs.
All that remains of the abandoned colonial village are the numbered cellars.
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There is much more to pass on, but, I need to leave this piece unfinished with the promise of returning soon. When Isaac Sawyer received his first lot of an acre of land to build his house in 1705, and an additional six acres a year later when he married Martha Bond, was it here in the Commons?
DOGTOWN COMMON
Inland among the lonely cidar dells
Of old Cape Ann, near Gloucester by the sea,
Still live the dead--- in homes that used to be.
All day in dreary spells
They tattle low with tongues of tinkling cattle
bells,
Or spirit tappings of some hollow tree,
And there, all night----all night, out of the
dark.---
They bark ----and bark.
By Percy MacKaye
