The second of three walking tours planned for each of the Tri-Towns stepped off from the Mattapoisett Historical Museum (MHM) on June 23 under splendid summer skies. The Healthy Tri-Town Coalition, along with the historical societies in Rochester, Marion, and Mattapoisett, planned the walks as a way to connect people with the history of the communities and with one another.
Mattapoisett’s tour guide was none other than Jennifer McIntire, president of the MHM and longtime local resident. Assisting McIntire was Carole Clifford, a real local, whose wealth of antidotal information gave the tour a deeper connection to the town’s history.
Starting at the museum, McIntire told a group of about 25 people that Mattapoisett and Marion were once part of Rochester, making it a much larger settlement throughout the 1600’s until the split occurred in 1857. First Marion’s townspeople choose independence, which was followed by Mattapoisett’s. Mattapoisett was a thriving economic hub in the region with vital shipbuilding and saltworks industries along its shore. Clifford said that Rochester’s town fathers were “loathed to let Mattapoisett go” because of the commerce it generated.
McIntire said that the museum had once been a Baptist Church and that today, while still an active church holding one service each year, it is now a gallery space for the historical museum. The museum was inspired by a collection of local materials from the Dexter family. Around 1958, a trust was established by Minerva Sparrow, Francis Rowlands, and Charles Mendell, thus setting up the church and the collection into a museum that has grown substantially over the decades. The museum is now recognized as a significant source of local and regional history. Its database holds tens of thousands of pieces of information and its collection is being studied by those interested in early American history.
Pointing towards the Town Hall situated at the corner of Main and Church Street, a half block to the south, McIntire said that the building had once housed the police and the fire department. At one point, town meetings were held in the second story community room and that today the center of the town is located in its coastal village.
But that was not always the case. Clifford said that the original center of the town was north of where Route 6 currently cuts through the community. She said that at the intersection of River Road and Acushnet Road, again imagining this before the state highway, was where the center had been located. Farmlands flourished, saw mills and grist mills supported many local businesses, woodlands provided raw materials; yet, the harbor became, over time, the center of life.
But first the lands had to be obtained from the original inhabitants the indigenous people, the Wampanoags. King Philip’s War, which took place in the 17th century, was also known as Metacom’s War. It was a conflict between English colonists and the Native Americans in their last major effort to keep the Colonists from taking over completely. The end of that story is well known. Less known may be that the Colonists were offered free land once the Native American’s had been vanquished. McIntire said only three families took that opportunity to own land. They were the Hammonds, Dexters, and Boyles.
Meandering along Main Street towards the wharves, McIntire stopped in front of 14 Main Street where the walking group learned that the building had been the second location of the Anchorage By the Sea – a tea room. The first such business had been located where Shipyard Park is today. But the hurricane of 1938 destroyed it along with many other structures. Clifford said that during those days mass communication did not exist; therefore, no one knew a massive hurricane had the southeast in its crosshairs. “My mother was out pushing a baby carriage around,” she said.
Continuing on, McIntire directed everyone’s attention to several residences noting that the first floor had doors that opened directly out to the street and porches on the second story, “These were taverns back then,” she explained.
A large home on the corner of Main and Pearl Street was the home of the Willis family during the Revolutionary War. McIntire told the story that one evening they were wakened by gunfire. Mr. Willis joined other locals to head toward the shoreline where British troops might try to land their small boats. Mrs. Willis had to leave her sleeping children and hurry to the schoolhouse on Pearl Street to ring the bell that would warn the entire town. In her journals which are part of the museum’s collection, Mrs. Willis commented on being dressed only “in my nightshirt and cap.” Certainly an unspeakable condition for a woman outside her bedchamber back in the day.
Mrs. Munro was another owner of this property. She bequeathed the parcel located across the street from the residence to Mattapoisett. It is now a Mattapoisett Land Trust property open to the public with spectacular views of the harbor.
McIntire described the scope of shipbuilding along Main and Water Street that abut the harbor. She said that the deep harbor allowed for the construction of larger whaling vessels needed for the longer journeys in order to supply the demand for whale oil. In total 500 boats were built here, she said.
One of the more famous ships built in Mattapoisett was The Acushnet. It was the inspiration for Melville’s Moby Dick. The first shipyard was owned by Charles Stetson in 1752 McIntire said. The last ship built here was The Wanderer. Part of its mast now rests within the walls of the museum.
On the wharves, the group gazed back up to Water Street where today the Inn at Shipyard Park continues to operate and lays claim as the oldest continuously operated inn anywhere in the country. Other homes were used as boarding house, or suppliers to the shipbuilders such as caulking and cordage.
Clifford said that in the early 1900’s a group of wealthy people, mostly women, joined together to create an improvement society that was responsible for municipal trash collection, the preservation of Shipyard Park, health clinics for children, and the planting of trees. A prime mover in those efforts was one Huybertie Hamlin, a friend of the Roosevelts. Her summer home is located at Ned’s Point.
On the northern corner of Cannon and Water Street stands a home that bears a plaque. That plaque was erected in memory of Francis Millet who was in his day a famous painter, writer, and sculptor. The true renaissance man was also a doctor. At his marriage to Elizabeth Merrel, Samuel Clemens was his best man McIntire stated. His would be a short life, however, as he went down with the Titanic in 1912.
As the tour slowly walked past homes that could have been built in those bygone days, McIntire said that two bearing bow roofs were reproductions, but that doesn’t take away the charm of the narrow roadway. It was once called clamshell alley and most assuredly would have smelled the part.
The historic plaques on many homes in town were placed there by the Mattapoisett Historical Commission after extensive research into the origins of the structures McIntire shared.
McIntire also invited everyone to return on Thursday, June 27 at 5:30 pm for the opening of the museum’s art exhibit titled “Inspiration, Time and Texture” featuring local artists from the Tri-Town area.
The Mattapoisett Historical Museum opens for the season in July. Museum hours are Fridays from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm and more information can be found at www.mattapoisettmuseum.org.
The last Healthy Tri-Town walking tour will take place in Rochester on Saturday, June 29 at 10:00 am in the Plumb Corner parking lot.
Healthy Tri-Town Coalition
By Marilou Newell