4 DISAPPEARANCE OF FAMILY NAMES. 



trees, sometimes two, sometimes more of them, standing, 

 not in clumps holding accidental relations with each other 

 as though they were seedlings planted in the flight of birds, 

 but in regular lines showing evidence of design in the 

 planting, and proving clearly that here in the mazes of this 

 tangled wildwood he had come upon the ruins of an orchard. 

 Not long ago, if not indeed now, he would have had little 

 pains to unearth some gray block of stone which had done 

 duty as part of the rude masonry of well-curb or cellar wall 

 or chimney corner, and would have convinced himself with 

 ease before leaving this forsaken, solitary and elf-haunted 

 spot that it had been, since the white man's day, a place of 

 human habitation. And so it was. The place is known by 

 the oldest residents as "Aunt Coker's orchard," but who 

 the Cokers were or Avhere they went or whence they came, 

 no memory remains. Cokers there were at the mouth of 

 the Merrimac in 1651, and Coker Hundred is the name of 

 one of the hamlets in Somersetshire whence came the names 

 of Balch, Patch, Dodge and many another sturdy old colo- 

 nial patronymic, but no Coker of this tribe can be traced 

 to-day far or near, those bearing the name hereabouts at 

 present in existence being later importations. Thus family 

 names die out, even in this new country, through failure 

 of issue male, from migration and from other causes. 



Returning to the Montserrat station one finds another new 

 drive-Avay facing southerly and veering off by Snake Hill 

 through what was once " Cat swamp " and establishing a 

 delightful communication with Mackerel Cove, a district 

 settled as early as any part of Beverly and known by that 

 name in Colonial Records as early as 1645. Between 

 Mackerel Cove and River Head or Bass River side, the 

 two earliest settlements of the present town, a homesick 

 heifer is said to have laid out the first trail. Interesting 

 traces of old disused ways, nut much better than abandoned 



