The magazine of history with notes and queries, Vol. II, No. 4, October 1905

by Various

BOOK NOTICES

WEYMOUTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY. Wessagusset and Weymouth, an historical address by Charles Francis Adams, Jr., delivered at Weymouth, July 4, 1874, on the occasion of the celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Permanent Settlement of the Town. Weymouth in its First Twenty Years, a paper read before the Society by Gilbert Nash, November 1, 1882. Weymouth Thirty Years Later, a paper read by Charles Francis Adams, before the Weymouth Historical Society, September 23, 1904. Published by the Weymouth Historical Society, 1905. 8vo, pp. 164.

In the beginning of his second paper in this volume, Mr. Adams tells how it came about that he delivered his first address at Weymouth thirty years before, never having given thought to independent historical investigations before he was invited by the town to deliver the historical address on the occasion of the 250th anniversary. He confesses that at that time he hardly knew where the town was, much less anything of its history. The acceptance of that invitation, he states, marked a turning point in his life which had previously been devoted to civil and military affairs, and he expresses gratitude to Weymouth because the path into historical research, thus unexpectedly opened to him, has led him for thirty years through pastures green and pleasant places. Besides affording him pleasure, it has brought him honors in new fields of usefulness, and his labors have been profitable to students of Massachusetts history. The mature outcome of the earlier address was presented in print a dozen years ago in a two-volume work called, “Three Episodes of Massachusetts History.”

In the later address Mr. Adams is merciless in his destruction of the myth known as “The March of Miles Standish.” The familiar poem is shown to be without any historical support, the “march” having taken place by boat!

Speaking of this incident in Weymouth history, he says, “It smacks of the savage; it is racy of the soil; it smells of the sea. It begins with the flight of Phineas Pratt from Wessagusset to Plymouth, his loss of the way, his fear lest his foot-prints in the late-lingering snow banks should betray him, his nights in the woods, his pursuit by the Indians, his guidance by the stars and sky, his fording the icy river, and his arrival in Plymouth just as Miles Standish was embarking for Wessagusset. Nothing then can be more picturesque, more epic in outline, than Standish’s voyage, with his little company of grim, silent men in that open boat. Sternly bent on action, they skirted, under a gloomy eastern sky, along the surf-beaten shore, the mist driving in their faces as the swelling seas broke roughly in white surge over the rocks and ledges which still obstruct the course they took. From the distance came the dull, monotonous roar of the breakers, indicating the line of the coast. At last they cast anchor before the desolate and apparently deserted block-house here in your Fore river, and presently some woe-begone stragglers answered their call. Next came the meeting with the savages, the fencing talk, and the episode of what Holmes, in still another poem, refers to as

‘Wituwamet’s pictured knife

And Pecksuot’s whooping shout;’

all closing with the fierce hand-to-hand death grapple on the blood-soaked, slippery floor of the rude stockade. Last of all the return to Plymouth, with the gory head of Wattawamat, ‘that bloody and bold villain,’ a ghastly freight, stowed in the rummage of their boat.... That Longfellow wrote very sweet verse none will deny; but, assuredly, he was not Homeric. At his hands your Weymouth history failed to have justice done it. The case is, I fear, irremediable.”

Notwithstanding its many variations from the historical facts, the poet’s version of this affair, because of its poetical setting, is probably destined to be the only version to be widely known outside of the limited circle of historical students.

Mr. Adams endeavors to establish as a fixed fact in Massachusetts history that Weymouth as a permanent European settlement antedated Boston by at least six years; and, moreover, that this fact has singular historical interest. That it was a struggle for possession between two forms of civilization and of religious faith; one being ecclesiastical and feudal, the other theological and democratic; the fate of the two settlements during the earlier and crucial period depending not on events in Massachusetts, but upon a struggle for supremacy going on in England. “Gorges represented Charles I; Winthrop, the Parliament. If the fortune of war had turned otherwise than it did turn, and Charles I. had emerged from the conflict victorious, there can be little question Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and not John Winthrop, would have shaped the destiny of Massachusetts. Its history would then have been wholly other than New England will find much of interest in it was.”

Students will find much of interest in the three papers printed in this volume.

THE FRANKLIN BOOK SHOP

S. N. RHOADS, Proprietor.

1105 Walnut Street. Philadelphia, Pa.

Old and Rare items in Nature Study and Americana.

Publisher of Rhoads’ Reprint of Ord’s North American Zoology and the Mammals of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In preparation, illustrated work on Peale’s MSS. Journals of the Long’s and Wilkes’ Exploring Expeditions, 1819, 1841. Send for Prospectus. Special discounts on last catalogue Geology, Ethnology, Etc. Send for it.