- THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC. 333 



Dr 



To the town of Hingham for French and Jay's labor 



42 days at 4 shiHings I28.00 



To 72 lbs of beef at 7c pr pound 5.04 



To one shovel — broke — .92 



53396 



The result of this dam was more than to reclaim the old 

 marshes of seventy acres. At least twenty more acres 

 were gained, making a total of more than ninety-one acres. 

 The company, by taxing themselves about thirty dollars 

 an acre, met the expenses and then waited for the meadows 

 to bear for them enough grass to reimburse their funds. 

 Year by year this land yielded a steady increase, and the 

 bright green carpet was seen there gleaming in the sun 

 every spring. It was nearly a half-century before the 

 ocean was able to leap over the dam and to destroy the 

 meadows. This was done in the terrible storm of 185 i, 

 when the old iron lighthouse was carried away. 



When the salt sea filled Little Harbor at that time, the 

 canal was choked up so that no water could get out. It 

 was a most furious flood that had leaped over the dam, and 

 it covered the flats so deeply that a rowboat could 

 pass over the fences by the side of Jerusalem Road 

 where that road crosses the flats north of Steep Rocks. 

 It was a bothersome situation, and the town voted an 

 appropriation of $500 to have the dam opened. Through 

 the cut in the dam the water flowed out with such a rush 

 as to clear away its former passage to the sea, and never 

 since that time has the ocean been forbidden its old course.* 



* The following is a list of owners in Cuba Dam meadows for the year 1812 : — 



Names. Acres. Names. Acres. 



Fearing & Stephenson 1.50 John Burbanks 1.58 



Jacob Leavitt 3.09 Captain Levi Tower 7.82 



Gen'l Theoph. Gushing 1.61 Thomas Willcutt 1.37 



Benjamin Barnes .80 Joel Willcutt .57 



Heirs of Spencer Binney 3.50 Hezekiah I.^incoln 3.00 



Elisha Doane 2.58 Captain Abraham Tower 8.75 



