South of Boston: Tales from the Coastal Communities of Massachusetts Bay

By Ted Clarke

Since the days of John Smith and Squanto, the coast of Massachusetts stretching south from Boston to Plymouth has been transformed. Once an isolated Puritan colony, the region has made an indelible mark on the annals of New England history. Discover the remarkable story of the town of Marshfield, learn about the first female minister from Weymouth and experience the sweet aroma wafting from Baker Chocolate Company in Dorchester with this engaging collection of vignettes from historian and author Ted Clarke. From the rocky relations between Native Americans and the early colonists to the boom and bloom of the region, Clarke lends insight into how the past reflects on the present south of Boston.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781625842343

Ted Clarke

Ted Clarke is a historian who lives along the coast in Weymouth, Massachusetts, and serves as chair of the town's historical commission. He is the author of twenty-one books, most of them on the history of Boston and the surrounding area. He has also written and narrated five television programs on history, one of which won a statewide award. He holds three master's degrees and was a teacher for forty-five years.

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INTRODUCTION

The coast of Massachusetts, from Cape Ann in the north to Cape Cod in the south, was the place where the major settlement of New England, and of America, began. Many of the towns in that coastal crescent played major parts in that development, and others added to its later growth.

Our purpose in this book will be to explore the history and growth of the southern sector of this crescent from Boston to Plymouth. In addition to parts of Boston, this will include Quincy, Weymouth, Hingham, Hull, Cohasset, Scituate, Marshfield, Duxbury, Kingston and Plymouth.

The area had been home to Native American tribes for the past ten thousand years. These had progressed from hunting/gathering societies to ones that used agriculture and had developed primitive tools. They made items of leather and ceramics, weaved baskets, used canoes for transportation and made their homes in wigwams. They also had spiritual traditions.

By the time of first contact with Europeans, about ten thousand Native Americans lived in the coastal area of Massachusetts. However, that first contact had fatal consequences. Diseases for which the Indians had no immunity spread quickly, one of the most widespread outbreaks coming just a few years before the Pilgrims came to America. The ranks of the natives were reduced by nearly 90 percent.

The location of Plimoth Plantation, in fact, was built on a site that was formerly the home of the Pawtuxet tribe. Only one of its members remained, and he was a man without a country. His name was Squanto, and he would be a great help to the Pilgrims. Squanto was a key component in securing the first settlement, and we will highlight what we know of him.

Another man who was key to the exploration and settlement was John Smith, who deserves more attention than he gets for these deeds. The Pilgrims had read Smith’s Description of New England and had learned of its attractions from reading the words and following the maps of a man who is best known for his days in Jamestown, Virginia, but who also explored and charted this part of the coast, publicizing his findings.

Unlike many colonists who settled farther south, those who came to the coast of Massachusetts Bay between Cape Ann and Cape Cod were families who had come for religious freedom, not to make a profit. Many were from the middle classes. The Separatists of Plymouth, commonly called the Pilgrims, had come to America in order to find religious freedom.

So, too, had the Puritans, another sect who settled first on the northern shores of Massachusetts Bay. Governor Endicott had landed at Salem, and Cape Ann had been settled by the Dorchester Company, which held a charter for a Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was the charter that John Winthrop used when he and others moved from Salem to Charlestown and then to Boston in 1630. Within a decade, sixteen thousand English immigrants had made homes along this stretch of shore.

The histories of the individual towns had much overlap. Their relationships with the Native Americans were quite similar. They found ways of making a living that were in the beginning rudimentary and nearly the same from place to place. That would change as places developed over the years.

Wherever they settled, these religious people placed their meetinghouse at the center of the community. The farms were on the outskirts, and the usual pattern was to have a village green with a church at one end and houses built around it. That’s why so many New England towns still have those features.

Another feature brought by the Puritans was self-government. Until about 1660, their charter allowed them to run their own affairs. In granting it, King Charles may not have understood that the settlers were a Puritan group and thought they were just another stock company. At first, local government was run by all the freemen—Puritan males. But after a short time, they used representative government—a tradition they gave to the rest of America.

Winthrop and his followers believed that the Puritans were God’s Chosen People and that they must set an example for all who came to America. We shall be as a city on a hill… Significantly, his primary settlement was on a hill—Beacon Hill—and he built from there. That kind of thinking prevailed for a while but was less common with each incoming wave of settlers, most of whom put survival and self-interest ahead of such ideals, though their activities were infused with Christian thought.

In trying to understand who these people were, what they were like and what allowed them to affect early American history, we need to bear in mind that they were people who braved difficulties in leaving England, making a dangerous and difficult voyage of several weeks under trying conditions and then surviving a lack of food and shelter and an unfamiliar climate to make a foothold on the rocky New England shores. They were a hardy type, highly motivated and willing to take chances. If we use the light of this understanding to look at some of the things they did, they are more readily understood.

The Mayflower II at Plymouth Harbor.

In order to follow God’s will, all these folks believed, one must read the Bible, and that meant that children must learn to read. Thus, education was important in New England, and schools were set up, including a college in Cambridge that was in time named Harvard College for John Harvard, who had willed his library to the school.

Farming and fishing were part-time things on the rocky coast of Massachusetts, and settlers learned to use their own skills—Yankee ingenuity—to make the things they needed. Then, during the Revolution and the War of 1812, when manufactured goods from abroad were hard to come by, they went into manufacturing on a large scale, using the water power provided by rivers in the area.

In addition to the Industrial Revolution, Massachusetts, and especially the coastal areas, led an Intellectual Revolution, particularly in the arts and literature, centered in Boston. Part of this was a liberalism that ran to antislavery and to the early stages of pro-women’s equality.

The seaport towns also admitted many immigrants, mostly from Europe. Many of the towns in our purview found room for them, and they helped those towns to grow.

Those were some of the major trends in American history prior to the twentieth century, but notable firsts took place in this area in the later period as well. As you read through the pages, you’ll be taking another look at our nation’s growth and the way it began here and flowered everywhere. We’ll look at highlights and trends in the history of each town, and in some cases we’ll bring this out through historical sketches on some notable people whose stories can use some filling out.

PLYMOUTH

Where Religious Freedom Found Refuge

The area where the Pilgrims settled in 1620 had been the location of a Wampanoag tribe known as the Patuxet, and there had been about two thousand of them. Native Americans could be found in various parts of New England but particularly along the coast, where they could find fish and shellfish.

Twice European explorers had visited the area. One was the French explorer Samuel de Champlain around 1605. He called it Port St. Louis. Then, in 1614, Captain John Smith had explored the area, calling the whole region New Plymouth.

Even before 1600 it had been visited by fishermen, both English and French, rather regularly, and they brought back information to their countries about the area, its resources, climate and people. They could also have told their countrymen that the land had been cleared to plant corn, vegetables and fruit trees and was used by the Indians as hunting grounds. Most likely it was these fishermen who transmitted the European diseases like smallpox and syphilis for which the natives had no immunity, diseases that wiped out most of the Wampanoags by 1617.

The people who died left behind their fields and their prepared lands for those who came next: the Pilgrim settlers. And settlers they were. Those who became known as Pilgrims through Governor William Bradford’s use of the term were really separatists who believed that the Church of England was still too much like the Catholic Church, even after the Protestant Reformation. Unlike the Puritans who wanted to improve that church, this group from around Scrooby, England, wanted to separate, and after trying for a time in Holland, they came to America in the Mayflower.

Plymouth Colony.

JOHN SMITH: READY FOR PRIME TIME

If you asked most Americans what part John Smith played in American history, they would be likely to say something about his exploits in Jamestown, Virginia. But if you could sit John himself down on a talk show right now, the fiery Smith would probably toss the history text at the camera and tell the host to ask him some real questions instead of all this Virginia stuff.

In his mind, Smith’s real role in American history was luring settlers to New England. He set out to do that after he left Jamestown for the last time in 1609.

Captain John Smith.

Smith’s life story is sinuous and mysterious and would make a good movie. We have to take his word for much of it, and he was an excellent teller of exciting stories, and perhaps a fine publicist as well. However, those parts of his story that can be documented match well with those that come exclusively from him, so he may have been as much a swashbuckling character as he would have us believe. Since his story winds back and forth and ends in New England, let’s take it from the top. As you scroll it down, use your mind’s eye as a movie screen and see how well your imagination can bring the action to mind. That way you won’t have to wait for the movie.

Smith was born in a small English village. When he was sixteen, his father died, and Smith joined English volunteer soldiers who were fighting for the Dutch in France. The Dutch were trying to gain

Reviews for South of Boston

[jbarr5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

South of Boston: Tales from the Coastal Communities of Massachusetts Bay (American Chronicles) by Ted ClarkeEnjoyed this story as it contains a lot of useful information about the area we travel to often.Love hearing of the people and their jobs where they used their hands for their trade.Learned so many new things along the way, especially the Indian time before the Pilgrims arrived. Also about lighthouses in the area.Amusement park on the coast reminds me of one here in RI that is no longer here.I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).