THE FIRST HOMES. l8l 



bearing silent testimony to these pests. One is back of 

 Town Hill, a half mile west of King Street, in the wood 

 lot of Samuel James, and the other is in Beechwood, west 

 of Beechwood Street, in the land of Aaron Pratt, a quarter 

 mile from his dwelling. 



These pits were dug six or eight feet deep and covered 

 with brush to conceal their treachery. Some bits of a 

 sheep's carcass were so placed above the pit as to lure a 

 hungry wolf to step where he would drop into it, where he 

 might be killed by the hunter. 



The lands in which such pits were well known became 

 called "the wolf pit" or "the wolpit," and they invite a 

 multitude of inferences about the wolves and the farmers 

 and the farms of those early days. 



Sheep as well as swine and cattle were the mainstay of 

 some settlers. The cutting of cord wood or timber to be 

 shipped away was another substantial industry. 



Any way and every way that an honorable ingenuity 

 might devise for feeding and clothing their families was 

 resorted to by the coopers and farmers and cordwainers 

 and millwrights that first came here to set up their 

 hearthstones. 



For nearly fifty years from the time the land was 

 divided the people who came here suffered a certain 

 severity of hardship because of their far separation from 

 the mother village of Hingham. Their struggles, from 

 the year 1700 until they became numerous enough to be a 

 recognized community, are reserved for the next chapter. 



