Marstons Mills Historical Society ~ Recollections

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" height=45 BGCOLOR="#0099FF" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <I>Marstons Mills Historical Society ~ Recollections</I></div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=415 BGCOLOR="#0099FF" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <I>Transcripts Of Life In Days Gone By</I></div> <div> _________________________________________________________________________________</div> <bR> <div> <B>Recollections Of Residents Of Marstons Mills</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Mary Rogers Hamblin</B></div> <div> Cary [Caroline Hamblin] had an accordion. I don't know where she got it. Her father didn't like music. When he'd go out to do the milking we'd slip into the parlor. In those days we only used the parlor for weddings and funerals. She'd play and I would sing. I loved to sing. Now I have no voice. I'd stand by a crack in the door, and when I saw her father coming with the milk pail, we'd stop. This is how I got to know the Hamblins.</div> <bR> <div> My two brothers and I walked the three miles to school in Santuit. We used to have severe snowstorms and violent thunderstorms in those days. Ever since they built the canal the storms follow the water and we don't get so much snow or the thunder. If the teacher knew a storm was coming she'd send us home. We didn't have boots. We only had shoes that were handmade by the cobblers in the Azores. Sometimes my older brother would carry my little brother home on his shoulders, as the child was too tired to walk.</div> <bR> <div> Mr. Jimmy Crocker told us we could get transportation from the Town of Barnstable. If we drove the barge, they would pay us and furnish us with a wagon. They got us an old milk wagon with side curtains. My papa built two long seats in it. In the winter we heated bricks to put our feet on. My brother drove the barge until he married at twenty-one. Then I drove it for quite a while. I used to keep the horse and barge in Elmer Lapham's barn. Elmer had the only store in Santuit. Those buildings are still there. My niece, Mary Hall Hamblin, bought the whole thing. </div> <bR> <div> I carried eleven children to school. There were four from our family. I'd unharness the horse and in the afternoon I'd get out early from school to harness up again. Sometimes Mr. Lapham would help me. Later, Mr. Ephraim Jones took over the barge. After him came Ernest Cameron. He had a motor bus. My children were school age by then, and they rode with Mr. Cameron. My son Roger was born in 1920, and my son Paul was born in 1924.</div> <bR> <div> <B>George Thomas Gifford</B></div> <div> When a Holstein cow would go farrow, we'd slaughter it. People in the village would pay 10¢ a pound for the beef. We'd feed those old cows, fatten them up, and dress them. I remember we went to slaughter a pig for a Mr. Jones in Barnstable. He had an old cow that was nothing but a bag of bones. You might say it looked 90 years old. Well, we bought it and took it home, fed it plenty of grain, and fattened up before we slaughtered it. It was mighty tender eating.</div> <bR> <div> I started working on the farm at eight years, thinning onions; and then I began making hay. I worked on the farm until the mid-eighties.</div> <bR> <div> My dad [Lorenzo Gifford] learned his trade as a cooper. He was paid once a year. He wasn't paid by the week or the month; it was piece work. You were paid for each barrel you made. All year we bought our groceries on tick. At the end of the year, when Dad was paid, the bill was settled. </div> <bR> <div> He saved enough money to buy the farm. With eleven children it wasn't easy.</div> <bR> <div> My dad used chewing tobacco. He used to spit in one corner of the truck cab. That tobacco juice rusted that corner right out, so he could spit to the outside. My mother used to sputter a bit about that chewing, but it never did any good. For her it was like letting pressure out of a steam boiler.</div> <bR> <div> I remember as a little shaver watching Adie Makepeace's mules pulling the wagons with cranberries up the dirt road before our home to West Barnstable. The cranberries were screened up there in a building across from the village store. They separated the good berries from the bad. The berries went down over different levels of paddles with air blowing on them to winnow off the chaff. Good berries bounce like rubber. The bad berries just fall down. There was a warehouse for the berries where the stove shop is now, The berries were stored there awaiting rail shipment.</div> <bR> <div> Adie Makepeace is still in business. He's on the stock exchange. He started Ocean Spray as a separate corporation.</div> <bR> <div> My father had a bog. He bought it from Willie Weeks, Robinson Weeks' son. Willie was a gentleman. He walked with a great air and carried a cane. He was well educated, but he didn't do anything in particular, just was a gentleman.</div> <bR> <div> When I was ten or twelve I scrounged around in the dump for pieces of a Ford and made a truck out of an old body. That truck was used around the farm for years.</div> <bR> <div> I learned welding from my brother Thatcher, who had a blacksmith's shop in his garage. You can do welding on a forge with farrier's tongs and a hammer. We made many grappling hooks during prohibition. When the Coast Guard got too close, the boatman would drop the liquor over the side in burlap bags. Later he'd go back and snag those bags.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Nora Pierce Gifford</B></div> <div> When Nora was young and lived in her grandfather [Heman Thomas] Heman's home, she remembered the noisiness of the gristmill, which only ran on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The noise used to wake her. Nathaniel Hinckley was the miller. When he operated the mill, the pond water dropped. If Nora's father didn't get his stock to the pond early enough those mornings for water, the stock would have to wade in the mud. This was most irritating to Nora's father and caused him and Nathaniel to have some altercations. The Pierces had no well at that time; only a cistern.</div> <bR> <div> The village school had two rooms, four grades in each. Nora admired the teacher's, Addie Crosby's, bustle. Nora thinks she was about ten when she thought of how to get a bustle for herself. She took and undershirt to school went into the backhouse and bunched her skirt up under her dress in the back. After all the children were seated, she pranced up the aisle, much to the delight of the pupils, who began tittering and laughing. Miss Crosby was not amused. The undershirt had to be removed.</div> <bR> <div> Grandpa William Coleman Gifford, Lorenzo's father, went off to the Civil War at eighteen. He was sent home with a jaw wound as he was expected to die. Dr. Coolidge saved him. William always wore whiskers to hide the wound. Charles Gifford, Lorenzo's brother, was a State Representative and Senator.</div> <bR> <div> Nora remembered the night in November 1890 when the steamer “Portland” sank with 125 persons drowning. She was visiting her Grandmother Thomas in Harwichport. All night, while bells pealed, her grandmother walked the floor. As the wife of a sea captain, she knew some tragedy at sea was taking place, but she didn't inform eleven year old Nora until the next morning.</div> <bR> <div> Entertainment for Nora as a child came from village activities. There were husking bees, quilting bees, and dances. Nora attended Sunday School, although her parents were not regular attendees. She played the organ in church. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Joel Davis</B></div> <div> John P. Marquand had his summer home on the Marstons Mills River. There are several coves on the river after Prince Cover. His house stood on a bluff overlooking one of these coves. After Mr. Marquand left, the family, his wife and daughter, continued to summer there. Father bought the property from the Marquands in the thirties. Halloween night, 1971, the house was burned to the ground. The fire hydrants in Osterville had been opened and there was no water pressure. David Clark had his home built on the same site.</div> <bR> <div> In 1930 he bought the Seapuit Company, which was bankrupt. The parcel contained 250 acres, a nine-hole golf course, and a hotel. My father operated the golf course until 1942. The hotel he had torn down in 1932. It had been a well-run hotel, similar in style and operation to the East Bay Lodge. A Mr. Parsons had run it well for people from Boston and New York who had come down for sailing and for golf.  P. Barnard Hinckley, who had the oyster shanty, used to serve oysters on the half shell to the golfers. The hotel closed in 1926. By 1932 it was in a dilapidated state.</div> <bR> <div>  <script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> _uacct = "UA-379555-1"; urchinTracker(); </script>  </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=20 BGCOLOR="#CCCCCC" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >Links:</FONT>  <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Welcome to Marstons Mills"><U>Home</U></A> | <A HREF="map.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="MarstonsMills.org Site Map"><U>SiteMap</U></A> | <A HREF="id361_m.htm" TARGET="TRLX_Middle" TITLE="Marstons Mills Historical Society Recol"><U>Top</U></A> | <A HREF="mmhs_home.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Marstons Mills Historical Society"><U>MMHS</U></A> | <FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >E-mail the MMHS:</FONT> <A HREF="mailto: webmaster@marstonsmills.org" TARGET="_top" TITLE="mailto: webmaster@marstonsmills.org"><U>mmhs@marstonsmills.org</U></A> | <FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >Page new: February 14, 2004</FONT></div> </td> </tr></table></body>