November 25, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



561 



Francis Adams in 1885. It has not been improved very much, 

 as one of the conditions of the gift was that the city should not 

 expend more than $1,000 a year on the park for the first ten 

 years. After this term expires more will be done for its im- 

 provement. Faxon Park, about twenty-six acres of woodland, 

 in the region formerly called the South Common, not on the 

 shore, was given to the city by Hon. Henry H. Faxon in 1885. 

 It is not improved much. Before 1885 Quincy had no park or 

 common. The people went to the beaches, and do now, but 

 there are no public holdings on the shore outside of Merry- 

 mount Park. The city was incorporated in 1888, and has now 

 17,000 people. The Village Improvement Society has recently 

 put up a fine granite fountain, costing about $6,000, on land 

 belonging to the Street Department, formerly a part of the old 

 Training-field. 



Weymouth is fortunate in the possession of Webb Park, 

 which has recently been presented to the inhabitants of the 

 town by Mrs. Margaret T. W. Merrill, of Portland, and Mrs. 

 Nancy B. Jackson, of Boston. The donors are descendants of 

 the late Christopher Webb, a prominent lawyer of Weymouth, 

 who represented the town in the General Court for thirty years 

 or more. This park-land was formerly a part of the estate of 

 Major John White, who owned a large farm here a hundred 

 years ago. Christopher Webb married his daughter, Miss 

 Susan White, and this is a portion of her inheritance from her 

 father's estate. Its area is eight acres. It lies high, overlook- 

 ing all the Weymouth Fore River country and the numerous 

 islands offshore. In the deed of gift the donors say the land 

 is given to the town "in consideration of our regard for our 

 birthplace and as a memorial of our honored parents." It 

 was an act of far-sighted beneficence, an admirable and en- 

 during example to the people of other Massachusetts towns. 



There is a small common at Hingham Centre, perhaps two 

 or three acres. Fountain Square, near Hingham Station, is 

 little more than a slight expansion of the streets which cross 

 each other diagonally there. There are five large Elms here, 

 planted about seventy years ago. There are no other public 

 holdings. The town formerly owned a considerable area 

 along the town brook, but sold it at low rates long ago. Much 

 of this land is now built upon, and the town has repurchased 

 some of it in later times, paying a good price. Melville's Gar- 

 den, at Downer's Landing, a noted resort on the shore, had 

 275,000 visitors during the season of 1891. It is a private hold- 

 ing, with restaurant, etc., and brings a great revenue to its pro- 

 prietor. Such resorts are sure to be multiplied in the shore 

 towns, and to attract an increasing number of visitors from 

 the cities and from the interior of the country. In Hingham I 

 saw the Old Place which has been made historic by the story 

 of its renewal, which Mrs. Robbins has told with such extraor- 

 dinary vivaciousness and interest in Garden and Forest. 

 The Agricultural Society has large grounds at Hingham, but 

 they are not used as a place of public resort. The town ought 

 to have a park or reservation on the shore. There are many 

 things of historic interest here, and there should be an increase 

 of popular interest and knowledge regarding them. 



There are no public holdings in the town of Hull. The 

 great beach at Nantasket is all private property. Some of the 

 hill-tops and great reaches of shore lands should belong to the 

 town, or to the state, for the use of the myriads of people from 

 the cities who throng the island every summer. 



Cohasset has one of the prettiest commons I have seen in any 

 village : about four acres, fine trees and grass, enclosed with 

 a fence of posts with two chains. A church, built in 1743, stands 

 within, about the middle of one side. There is an enchanting 

 view of the water and meadow shores. The common is obvi- 

 ously incomplete at this end, and I was told that the town owns 

 an area outside at that point, and that a man living near had 

 obtained permission to enclose a part of this valuable public 

 holding for his own private use. Even if this were included 

 the common would be small for the public need. By permit- 

 ting such occupancy several of the shore towns have lost title 

 to land which would now be an important public possession. 

 There is a comparatively roomy playground around the new 

 Osgood school, and the building has more architectural char- 

 acter and beauty than I have seen anywhere else in a school- 

 house. 



The name Scituate appears to be a corruption of an Indian 

 word, Sa-tu-it, accented on the second syllable, and said to 

 mean brook, or cold brook. It is still in use. I think the 

 meaning of Indian names is mostly uncertain and a matter of 

 guess-work now, and the sound is more important, when it is 

 pleasant or musical. We still have Cotuit, and some other 

 names very similar in sound. The town had formerly exten- 

 sive holdings on the beach. Deane's History says: "The 

 beaches from the third cliff eastward to the river's mouth have 



been defended from waste by repeated acts of the town, for- 

 bidding the removing of stones, &c. Two landings at the har- 

 bor have been preserved by the town, and frequently surveyed 

 for the purpose of keeping their bounds. These came into 

 the town's possession in 1704, when the Conihassett Partners 

 surrendered their highways, etc., to the town." These impor- 

 tant shore lands have mostly beenforcibiy taken possession of 

 and appropriated to their own use by some of the owners of 

 contiguous grounds. The town has been the theatre of one of 

 the great beach controversies of the country. It has vainly 

 expended thousands of dollars in the effort to defend its rights 

 on the shore. The people have grown weary of the unavail- 

 ing struggle, and although the courts have not rendered a full 

 decision on the merits of the case, it is not likely that the town 

 will make any further effort to obtain redress. The men who 

 have seized the public property say to the people of the town, 

 " Come on this beach if you dare ! " and if any citizen drives 

 his team on the shore in the exercise of the ancient right to 

 collect seaweed or drift-stuff they meet him with weapons and 

 violence, attack his horses with pitchforks, and are thus able 

 to "hold the fort" against all efforts to maintain the public 

 right to the beach. 



In early times the town had a large Training-field. A long 

 time ago a man sat down on it and stayed there, and the town 

 could not get him off, or it did not, and some of his family are 

 living there now. A fragment of the old Training-field still 

 remains unappropriated to private use, and now forms a small 

 common. 



The records say that when this region was first settled by 

 white men the shores of the bays here were skirted with forest- 

 trees quite to the water's edge, and some of the earliest entries 

 mention the Live Oak forests in the vicinity of Coleman's Hills. 

 What tree was this ? Walnut-tree Hill was so named because 

 the Black Walnut was indigenous there. It was a wild region 

 of woods and waters. There were many beaver-dams, and 

 for nearly a hundred years the town voted every year a bounty 

 for the destruction of wolves. There is still a Town Swamp 

 on the maps here, but the last of this public holding was 

 assigned to various, citizens long ago. I copied from the Town 

 Records of 1706 the statement that eighty lots of Cedar-swamp 

 were conveyed to individuals by a committee appointed by the 

 town in February of that year. 



At Hobart's Landing, on North River, in Scituate, ships were 

 built as early as 1650. Here the ship Columbia (Captain Ken- 

 drick) was built by James Briggs in 1773. This was the first 

 ship to visit the north-west coast from this country. Captain 

 Kendrick explored the River Oregon and named it after his 

 ship, the Columbia. Many of the whale-ships employed by 

 the people of New Bedford and Nantucket during the latter 

 half of the last century and the early part of this were built 

 in Scituate. They generally rated from 300 to 350 tons. The 

 largest of which I find any record was built in 1812 by William 

 Delano, nearly 500 tons. 



In 1830 Captain Samuel Barker received a premium from 

 the Plymouth Agricultural Society for the best crop of rye in 

 the country, and two other citizens had premiums the same 

 year for general improvement of theirfarms. The year before 

 Colonel James Curtis had received a donation for general im- 

 provement of his farm, and Thatcher Tilden a premium for 

 the best crop of rye. I think that agriculture in Scituate has 

 rather declined than advanced since then. An old cemetery 

 here has been much neglected and abused. A public high- 

 way has been run through it, destroying many of the graves 

 and head-stones. The sites of some of the smaller burying- 

 places mentioned in early histories of the town are probably 

 indistinguishable now. I hope soon to learn whether this is 

 so or not. 



Queen Ann's Corner has its name from Ann Whiton, who 

 kept a tavern there in 1730 and many years afterward, where 

 the Plymouth road crosses the town line to Hingham. I 

 copied the earliest marriage notice preserved in the Town 

 Records, "Resolved White, to Judith, daughter of Mr. Will- 

 iam Vassall, November 25th, 1640." Resolved White came to 

 Plymouth in the Mayflower with the first company of pilgrims 

 in 1620, and had lands laid out to him in Scituate in 1638. 



In Scituate I saw the birthplace of Samuel Woodworth, 

 the author of the poem "The Old Oaken Bucket." He was 

 born here January 13th, 1785. He early chose to be a printer, 

 and was apprenticed to Benjamin Russell, editor of the Co- 

 lumbian Centlnel, in Boston. He became a busy journalist and 

 prolific author. He went to New York City in 1809, and in 

 1823 was associated with George P. Morris in establishing the 

 Mirror. The Old Oaken Bucket poem was written in the spring 

 or summer of 1817. Mr. Woodworth was then living in Duane 

 Street. He came home to dinner from his office, near the foot 



