Cape Cod

by F. Mitchell

One of the most curious buildings of Cape Cod stands in East Sandwich. It is a block-house, built in 1644. It is now the parlor of a dwelling-house, and its neat and peaceful interior, cheered by a cabinet organ, is in strange contrast with the thought of Pilgrims, in peaked hats, standing guard against possible forays of Indians.

Next below Sandwich dies the scattered village of West Barnstable, anciently called “Great Marshes,” from the vast sweep of salt-marsh, rich in suggestive beauty, which makes far out to Barnstable Bay. From the road that rises to the southward to cross the Cape, you look on woods and farms, on bits of swamp, green in the hottest summer, on the great marshes and the bay. The meeting-house, high up the hill, is nearly one hundred and seventy years old, being one of the oldest in the State. It takes the place of an earlier structure, and the church which worships in it has a history. In the early part of the seventeenth century, Henry Jacob, a clergyman of the Church of England, wrote against the English Congregationalists then in exile. Shortly after, he went to Leyden, where he met with John Robinson, and, influenced probably by him, changed his views. On his return to England he took the lead in the establishment, in 1616, of an Independent Church, of which, for eight years, he was the pastor. He was succeeded by John Lathrop. Another eight years the congregation worshiped in secret in London, but it was finally discovered, by the bishop’s pursuivant, at the house of one Humphrey Barnet, in Blackfriars. Forty-two persons were apprehended, and the prisoners were held for some two years. Mr. Lathrop, the pastor, was detained longest, and it was only after the death of his wife, on the intercession of his children, that he was released, on condition of leaving the kingdom. He came to New England with thirty of his people, and settled at Scituate; but in 1639, with a majority of the members of the church, he emigrated to Great Marshes, and so began the settlement of Barnstable. “This circumstance,” says Palfrey, the historian of New England, himself a native of the town, “makes the first church in Barnstable the representative of the first Congregational church established in England, unless, which perhaps was the fact, the church of John Robinson, now surviving in that of Plymouth, was organized on Congregational principles before he left the mother country for Holland.” “Another interesting fact,” he adds, “connected with that primitive English Congregational church which still survives in our church at Great Marshes, is that from its bosom also proceeded the first English Baptist church: so that it is further entitled to the eminent rank of parent of the now very numerous churches of that denomination both England and America.”

MARSHES (EVENING).

Among those who came with Lathrop from Scituate to Barnstable were the famous James Cudworth and Isaac Robinson, a son of the great Leyden pastor. Robinson was deputed by the General Court to attend, with others, the meetings of the Quakers, and to endeavor to convince them of their errors. He went, and in the end became convinced that there should be no persecution of them, and for his open defense of their right to religious freedom was disfranchised. He subsequently settled in Falmouth, and built the first house in that town. Descendants through him of the famous Leyden pastor live there to this day.

Half way down the hill, between the church and the railway, stands a large square house (formerly the parsonage), the birthplace of Chief-Justice Shaw, whose father was the minister of the parish. A quarter of a mile from there, on the road to Barnstable, is the site of the Otis mansion, where Colonel James Otis lived, and his son, the patriot Otis,—“the soul of the Revolution,” the elder Adams calls him,—was born.

This unnoticed hamlet is, therefore, the seat of a church which is the representative of the earliest or the second of the English Congregational churches, and the parent of another great denomination; it has also given the country one of its loftiest statesmen and one of its greatest judges. Other men of mark have sprung from the town of Barnstable: Governor Hinckley, Nymphas Marston, and Samuel A. Otis, member of Congress from this district and the father of Harrison Gray Otis; Solicitor-General Davis, and Mr. Palfrey, the historian, among others.

One of the most interesting relics of Pilgrim days upon Cape Cod is a cradle which has descended in a prominent family in Yarmouth, and is now in possession of Mr. Henry C. Thacher. Anthony Thacher came to New England in 1635, with a wife and several children, and with a young nephew, who became the ancestor of the judges George and Peter Oxenbridge Thacher. He landed at Newbury, and, to continue his journey, took passage by sea; but the nephew, having a presentiment of danger, could not be persuaded to go by water, and made his way by land. The vessel was wrecked off Cape Ann on what is known as Thacher’s Island, and Mr. Thacher and his wife alone were saved, their children being drowned before their eyes. This cradle, which had held the youngest, was washed ashore, with a worked broadcloth covering, which has also been preserved.

THE THACHER CRADLE.