If you happen to be driving along Route 6 toward Marion just before the crest of the hill at Prospect Road, you might have noticed a small cemetery on your left. That would be the Pine Island Cemetery. If you are riding your bike to Crescent Beach from the village, you’re likely to be on Pine Island Road.
Since neither is anywhere near an island, you might have wondered where Pine Island is. You would not be alone. Even some old townies have asked that question. Well, there is a Pine Island. It lies between Crescent Beach and Strawberry Point. (Don’t ask … I don’t know if there are strawberries on Strawberry Point.)
Some say it only shows up at low tide, but a careful perusal of some maps and Google Earth show there is clearly an island just west of Cove Street near, appropriately named, Pine Island Pond.
Old timers will tell you that many a person has ventured onto the island at low tide and was stranded when the tide came in. Why the road and the cemetery, both a good distance from the illusive island, bear its name is a mystery lost to history. You could try asking Charles H. Adams, the oldest person who was interred in the cemetery on April 3, 1817, but I doubt he’d answer.
Pine Island is not the only island of mystery within our boundaries. Anybody know where Wolf Island is? Oh sure, you’ve heard of Wolf Island Road north of the village just above Tinkhamtown, but there is no island in the vicinity.
Folklore suggests that there was an island in a bend in the middle of the Mattapoisett River. They say a family of wolves lived there. Others say an old recluse who camped on the island said there were wolves there to scare people away. Who knows? There is some speculation that Wolf Island is not an island at all but a piece of land between the river and tiny Branch Brook. Isn’t that an island?
By the way, U.S. Geological Maps indicated there is a Wolf Island Pond in the area just north of the road, but there is no evidence of such. I’m too lazy to investigate but you’re free to do so; just remember that Wolf Island Road is known to be haunted. Check it out at your own risk.
There are a couple of islands in town that are not haunted. Brandt Island Road leads to an actual island, and there is another in the village we are all familiar with … Barlow Island, by Barlow Beach, adjacent to Barlow Pond.
What do you say? You’ve never heard of it? Perhaps you know it as Goodspeed Island and the Eel Pond. Yup, the area was once owned by Moses Barlow, an early settler, who I believe currently resides in Barlow Cemetery on Barlow Lane north of Acushnet Road. Old Moses must have been pretty important to have had so many things named after him.
For a time, Goodspeed Island ceased to be one. The railroad filled in the inlet that connected the harbor to the Eel Pond. When I was a boy, I could walk the beach to Reservation Road without getting my feet wet. When the railroad left, Mother Nature gradually reclaimed access to the Eel Pond, cutting a new, wider channel that has grown to what it is today flowing under the new rail trail.
Moses Barlow is not the only one whose legacy has been lost to history. Samuel Sturtevant, a noted businessman and a descendant of the Mayflower Sturtevants, was important enough to have a street named after him. Sturtevant Street ran from Barstow Street to North Street. It is now known as the east end of Hammond Street.
At the 1883 Town Meeting, an article proposed changing the name of Pearl Street because there were no “pearls in the vicinity.” Thomas Nelson stood to suggest that, if that change was to pass, the town should also change the name of Baptist Street because “there were no Baptists left in the area.”
Maybe they were all buried in the Pine Island Cemetery.
Editor’s note: Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and retired newspaper columnist whose musings are, after some years, back in The Wanderer under the subtitle “Thoughts on ….” Morgado’s opinions have also appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.
Thoughts on…
By Dick Morgado