8 NORTH SHORE BREEZE and Reminder 
June 4, 1915 
The North Shore in Colonial Days 
How Nahant, Swampscott, Beverly, Etc., Obtained Their Names 
By HELENE SHERMAN 
HE North Shore of Massachusetts Bay may be said to 
begin at the two high rock-engirdled elevations called 
Great Nahant and Little Nahant, a highly picturesque spot 
and one which has aroused the admiration and the desire 
of the white man from times immemorial. Truly, that in- 
veterate explorer, Captain John Smith may well have call- 
ed the impressve cliffs of Nahant, “The Pieramides of 
Egypt,’ away back in 1614 during his visit to “North 
Virginia” as the colonists of those days had named New 
England. They may well have seemed a piece from an- 
other land, more verdant, more luxurious than our stern 
coast with their wooded hills, majestic rocks and sandy 
beaches. That John Smith was not the only man of that 
remote period, who appreciated the possibilities of 
Nahant, as well as its beauties, seems to be proved by the 
far-famed purchase of one Thomas Dexter, who bought 
the place from Manatahqua, better known as Black Wil- 
liam, for a suit of clothes, costing Lynn an expensive law- 
suit later in the city’s history. Captain Smith in his rec- 
ords mentions the place as Mattahunt Isles, but in the 
other Colonial records of about the time of Governor 
Winthrop, it is called by its present name, Nahant. 
Authorities differ as to the derivation of the word, some 
declaring that it is taken from an Indian chief, Nahanton, 
and others holding it to be the original Indian word signi- 
fying island. 
However that may be, there is a pretty legend of a 
much earlier period which many writers think settles 
about Nahant. The story has it that in the year, 1004, 
an intrepid Norseman, Thorwald, son of Eric the Red, 
landed upon the North Shore near the bit of land which 
we know as Nahant. He, too, was enchanted with the 
picturesque cliffs and he said to his followers, “Here it 
is beautiful! And here I should like to fix my dwelling.” 
The impetuous wish was fulfilled in a manner little 
dreamed of by the Norseman, for a few hours after he 
had chosen the wonderful spot for his home, he was 
wounded by a hostile arrow in an encounter with a band 
of Indians. When Thorwald realized that his wound 
was fatal, he called his men about him and breathed his 
last command, “I now advise your to prepare for your 
departure as soon as possible; but me ye shall bring to 
the promontory where | thought it good to dwell. It 
may be that it was a prophetic word which fell from my 
mouth about my abiding there a season. There ye shail 
bury me, and plant a cross at my head and call the place 
Krossanes (the Cape of the Cross) in all time coming.” 
In obedience to his wish his followers buried the fearless 
old Norseman in the most beautiful spot his eyes had 
rested on this side of Paradise. We may imagine that 
the sadness of their home-sailing was lightened somewhat 
by the thought that their chief had indeed “made his 
dwelling” in the place he loved so well. 
The Scandinavian records of that early period are 
vague and, at best, unsatisfactory, to the practical re- 
searcher, but the lover of romances likes to believe that 
beautiful Nahant was, indeed, Thorwald’s Krossanes. 
Historians such as Lewis of Lynn support this theory, 
too, giving some authority for the belief. 
Swampscott, the name, has changed from the original 
Indian only in the addition of a final t, but Swampscott, 
the town, has undergone a complete metamorphosis since 
its primitive days as a humble fishing village. It was 
then part of Saugus, now called Lynn, a thriving fishing 
community, but otherwise unimportant in the annals of 
the old colony days. The beautiful harbor of Swamp- 
scott, which has been compared to the Bay of Naples in 
point of beauty and general outline, did not long allow 
the little town to remain undiscovered as a spot ideal for — 
summer homes. There are still a few old fisherman, who — 
go down to the sea in—dories, but for the most part the 
blue waters of Swampscott Bay are dotted with the trig- 
gest and the newest of pleasure craft. . 
Swampscott’s neighbor, Marblehead, has been the — 
darling of the Gods in the matter of beauty and tradition, — 
Nowhere is the indefinable charm of the North Shore to — 
be felt more strongly than at quaint, little, crooked old 
Marblehead. It, too, was originally a fishing village of 
no mean repute for actual records show its fishing indus- 
try to have been considerable and poetry and history have 
made it immortal. Poetry has also made the old dialect — 
of Marblehead immortal, but that is a fact much less 
pleasing to the inhabitants of the dear old place, who 
still resent any implication that the women of Marble-— 
head gave Skipper Ireson the well-deserved, if somewhat 
unwelcome, ride “for his horrd hearrt.” The village is 
a place of delightful surprises in unexpectedly crooked 
streets and funny, little ‘““doughtnut” houses. From earli- 
est colonial times this old town has figured in the history 
of the white settlers. Under the jurisdiction of the 
Squaw Sachem of Saugus, widow of Nanepashemet, the 
place was called, with the rest of the district, Naumkeag, 
but as early as 1629, it bore in the records of Rev. Francis 
Higginson a name quite similar to the one it has today. 
The Rev. Mr. Higginson speaks of the variegated por- 
phyry-colored stones as ‘marble stone, that we have great 
rocks of it, and a harbor hard by. Our plantation is 
from thence called Marble Harbor.” At about the same 
time it was referred to by Wood and Josselyn as Marvil 
Head. 
Mr. Lewis, in his “The History of Lynn” is the only 
authority as far as we know to give to this particular 
section of Naumkeag, the Indian name, Massabequash, 
which means Forest River. The anglicized version of the 
name has come down to us, however, in the stream which 
flows near the Salem boundary and which is still called 
Forest River. 
The name, Marblehead, is first mentioned in the ~ 
colonial records under most unflattering circumstances in 
1633 on the second of July when, they say, “James White 
is fined for drunkeness by him comitted att Marblehead 
on the Sabbath Day.’ While the names of better men 
have been lost in the shuffle of the years, this one of 
James White comes down to us in black and white, but 
it is only fair to give the sturdy old village the benefit of 
the doubt and to hope that he was, perhaps, one of the 
roving fishermen, who “blew in” to Marblehead, being 
in no sense identified with the life of the village. 
Beverly is another of the representative old New 
England towns and has played besides an important part 
in the history of the North Shore. Its unsurpassed 
beauty has won for it fame from the great sea at its 
doors to the other sea across the continent, and the title 
of The Garden City. Conjectures about the origin of the 
name, Beverly, are made the more -interesting because of 
the doubt that hangs about it. This we know, that on 
May 26, 1668, a petition was received at the session of 
‘the General Court at Salem from “the inhabitants of ye 
