Tag Archives: Native Americans

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Marion Teague, Hingham History Maker

Hingham History Makers Awards Ceremony, May 14, 2021. Photo courtesy of Veronica Hodges

Marion L. Teague, Hingham History Maker

On Friday, May 14, 2021, the Hingham Historical Society awarded Marion Teague the designation “Hingham History Maker,” to honor her pioneering role in researching and preserving the history of Black and Indigenous people in Hingham.  At a necessarily small (owing to COVID restrictions) ceremony at Harbor House in Hingham, State Rep. Joan Meschino presented a citation from the Massachusetts House and Senate to 98-year old Marion and congratulated her on a “life well-lived” in the Town of Hingham.  Paula Bagger, President of the Society, spoke about Marion’s eventful life and work and presented a framed “History Maker” award.  Paula’s remarks may be read here.  Additional tributes to Marion were offered by Elizabeth Dings, on behalf of the Hingham Historical Commission; Joseph Collymore, of Harbor Media and also a longtime family friend; the Rev. Geoffrey Dana Hicks of Hingham’s First Baptist Church; and Marian’s daughter, Joyce Barber.  Katie Sutton attended as a representative of the Hingham Unity Council and Marian’s family and friends filled out the highly appreciative audience.

Tuttleville — detail from 19th c. Plymouth County Atlas

Marion is being celebrated for the pioneering role she has played in helping to preserve the history of Tuttleville, a two hundred year old Black neighborhood around Ward and High Streets in Hingham, and its families, some of whom have lived in Tuttleville throughout those two centuries. The eponymous James Tuttle (1780-1834), was the first Tuttle in Hingham, and he settled in the Ward Street/High Street area around the turn of the 19th century.  He was preceded as a landowner in the area, however, by members of a Black family named Humphrey; on November 29, 1801, James Tuttle and Rebecca Humphrey (1797-1843), a daughter of that family, were married by the Rev. Nicholas B. Whitney at Hingham’s Second Parish.

Marriage Record, James Tuttle and Rebecca Humphrey

Believed to be John Tuttle and his half-sister Betsy. Photo in collection of Hingham Historical Society

James and Rebecca’s son, John Tuttle (1810-1886), described in the federal census as a farmer, was an important member of this growing Black community, as was his half-brother, James King Tuttle (1834-1906), whose mother was James Tuttle’s second wife, Margaret Quacum Leonard (1796-1806).  James King Tuttle was a shoemaker; many of the Tuttles worked in the shoe factories then operating in Weymouth.  John and James King Tuttle were instrumental in the founding of a village church, the Free Christian Mission, in 1876.

Lewis Legare Simpson as a member of the GAR

James King Tuttle married Henrietta Simpson (1840-1921) on November 13, 1856, thus joining the Tuttle family to the large (Henrietta had 15 siblings!) Simpson family, whose heritage was Black and Native American (the Chappaquiddick tribe). Henrietta’s brother, Lewis Legare Simpson (1843-1918), enlisted in the Massachusetts 54th volunteer infantry, the first Black fighting regiment in the Civil War.

Marion’s grandfather, Walter Thomas Tuttle (1859-1931), was a son of James King Tuttle and Henrietta Simpson.  Also employed in shoe manufacturing, he married Laura Vickers (1869-1931), from Worcester County.  Laura’s heritage was also Indigenous; she was a member of the Nipmuc nation.  Their daughter Mabel, who married Herbert Lindsay, was Marion’s mother.

 

 

 

Walter Thomas Tuttle. Photo courtesy of Joyce Barber.
Laura Vickers Tuttle. Photo courtesy of Joyce Barber

So, once again, thank you, Marion Laura Lindsay Teague, and we look forward to continuing to discuss Hingham history with you for a long time!

Generations of Tuttle-Simpson women. Photo courtesy of Veronica Hodges

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“Archaeology Month” Opens Door to Hingham Archaeology Exhibit in 2019

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is immersed in celebration.  Planning is well underway for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower in 1620,  the 250th Anniversary of the occupation of Boston by the British in 1768 and eventual evacuation in 1776, and the 400th Anniversary of the arrival of the Puritans in 1630. Hingham’s next big celebration–commemorating the landing of Peter Hobart and his group of settlers in 1635–is a way off, with the Town’s 400th anniversary just over the horizon.

Arch_Month_Poster_18Meanwhile, as we celebrate Massachusetts Archeology Month this October, the Hingham Historical Society is happy to announce that it plans to stretch the frame of celebration in the Commonwealth beyond centuries to eons, or at least to a myrieteris (a period of 10,000 years).  An exciting new exhibit, based on archeological discoveries found along the right-of-way during the construction of the MBTA Greenbush rail line in Hingham, will open at the Hingham Heritage Museum in the Fall of 2019.  Ancient artifacts representing the earliest recorded life and culture in what we now call Hingham, some dating back 7000 years, will offer visitors a very different understanding of who first lived here, and how they lived. Educational materials will play a prominent role as well.

Thousands of artifacts were uncovered and inventoried by Public Archeological Laboratory (PAL) and UMass/Amherst Archeology during several years of excavation by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and are now stored in Rhode Island and Amherst. The archeological work was required as a condition of gaining permits to proceed with construction of the commuter rail line.

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From “Roads, Rails, and Trails: Transportation-Related Archaeology in Massachusetts,” by Eric S. Johnson, Massachusetts Historical Commission, 2012.

What are the finds?  One discovery near Foundry Pond was an anvil stone which provided a surface used to chip and create spearheads and arrowheads for millenia. Found adjacent to the rock in a pile of chips was a Neville projectile point, a type of point known to date to the Middle Archaic period 8000 to 6000 years before the present era (BP).

Native American fire circles and post holes found near the corner of Central and South
Street, remnants of a tannery, including pieces of shoe leather and the sole of a shoe, information about which roads in town were originally native trails, a shiny belt buckle from the 1800s, clay pipe pieces, early redware and colonial pottery pieces–each of these has a story to tell, and all are part of the Town’s rich history.

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Archaeologists at work in Hingham Square.  Photo courtesy of Public Archaeology Laboratory.

Review and selection of artifacts and story lines are among steps underway in preparation for this new exhibit.  Michael Achille of the Hingham Historical Society has formed an Advisory Committee which includes Jim Peters, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs; Kathryn Ness, Curator of Collections at Plimoth Plantation; Suanna Crowley, President of the Massachusetts Archeological Society; Andrea Young, Administrator of the Hingham Historical Commission; and Andy Hoey and Katie Roberts, representing the Social Studies and Science Departments of the Hingham Public Schools. Historical Society staff and volunteers and representatives of the MBTA, UMass, and PAL will also be key participants in the development of the exhibition and educational program.  A generous grant from the Greenbush Historic Preservation Trust is underwriting initial planning and development efforts.  The Society will invite individuals and companies to participate  in matching this grant.

So keep an eye on this space. Formal announcements and details will appear over the next several months.

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Glimpses of Huit’s Cove

Courtesy of George and Linda Luther Watt, the Society recently acquired a pair of watercolor drawings of Huit’s (or Hewitt’s) Cove—the site of the Hingham Shipyard—in early 1942.

Huit's Cove, in watercolor and pencil, by Beatrice Ruyl, January 23, 1942. Hingham Historical Society

Huit’s Cove, in watercolor and pencil, by Louis Ruyl, January 23, 1942. (Hingham Historical Society)

The earlier drawing, dating from January 1942, shows part of the area prior to construction of the Bethlehem Shipyard. Hingham artist Louis Ruyl slipped into the area only weeks before construction began and captured a weedy winter landscape where only a few months later would stand an enormous industrial complex on almost all of the site’s 150 acres.

“Slipways” Watercolor and pencil picture by Louis Ruyl of the start of construction of the Bethlehem-Hingham Shipyard. May 2, 1942.

The second picture dates from May 1942, when construction of the shipyard was well underway. The artist titled it “Slipways.” There are cranes, tugboats, and, In the distance across the Cove, the Bradley Fertilizer Works.  Within a very short period, the shipyard was up and running.

Launch of a destroyer Escort, Bethlehem-Hingham Shiphard, 1944 or 1945. (Hingham Historical Society)

Launch of a destroyer escort from Bethlehem Hingham Shipyard, 1944 or 1945. (Hingham Historical Society)

Fewer than 10 years earlier, Huit’s Cove had been the site of an enormous costume pageant to celebrate Hingham’s 300th anniversary. Nearly 1,000 residents participated.

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The cast of one scene in the Tercentenary Pageant–the “Ordination Ball”-in colonial costumes. June 1935. (Hingham Historical Society)

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Spectators in bleachers built at Huit’s Cove for the Hingham Tercentenary Pageant, June 27-29, 1935 (Hingham Historical Society)

Prior to to that, a short-lived airfield called Bayside Airport occupied the site.

Biplane in a hangar at Bayside Airport, Huit's Cove, Hingham. (John Richardson Collection, Hingham Historical Society)

Biplane in a hangar at Bayside Airport, Huit’s Cove, Hingham. (John P. Richardson Collection, Hingham Historical Commission/Hingham Historical Society)

Going further back, into the 18th century, Patience Pomatuck was said to have gathered native and naturalized plants from Huit’s Cove, which she used for medicinal, herbs, dyes and other household uses. Patience made a living selling these plants to her English neighbors in Hingham. We have no record of which plants grew in the Cove’s many acres, but among them would probably have been rushes, which could be formed into baskets and rush lamps; wild gentian, for use as an emetic; and mullein, used as cough medicine.

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Common Mullein

Fringed Gentian

Wild Gentian

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A 19th Century Thanksgiving

In 1857, eleven year-old Francis Lincoln of Hingham described his family’s Thanksgiving in a school essay.  As we would today, he writes of roast turkey, a multi-generational family gathering, and giving thanks to God:

Thanksgiving was the day set apart from work by our forefathers to worship God, after they had gathered in their harvest, and it has been celebrated ever since their time. It is the occasion when Grandmothers, Grandfathers, Uncles, Aunts, Cousins, Brothers and Sisters gather together and have a good dinner of Roast Turkey and Plum-Pudding. I have generally dined at my Grandfather’s, but since he has been unwell and rather old, I have remained at home. I will give you an account of my last Thanksgiving Day. In the morning, I attended church and heard the Rev. Calvin Lincoln preach an excellent sermon. In the afternoon my Father, two brothers and I started on a walk to World’s End, which is more than two miles from our house, but we went to the point which made the walk about one half a mile longer. Solomon then loaded his gun and fired at a target, he also let Arthur fire at an old stump. We got home at about five and a half o’clock having been gone three hours. I therefore spent a very pleasant Thanksgiving.

Yet, from our 21st century perspective, two things are missing from Lincoln’s essay: football, of course, which did not yet exist in its modern form, and any mention of the Pilgrims –because the now-universal association of Plymouth, the Pilgrims, and Thanksgiving Day is a relatively recent phenomenon. 

"The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth" (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe

“The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe

The Puritan settlers of New England had a tradition of “providential” holidays: days of fasting during difficult times for the community and days of thanksgiving to celebrate times of plenty or deliverance from strife. In the years following the American Revolution, our federal government adopted this practice and held periodic thanksgiving holidays, including one declared by newly-elected President Washington in 1789. The practice gradually became institutionalized, and in 1816 Massachusetts and New Hampshire became the first two states to establish late fall state holidays of Thanksgiving.  During the depths of the Civil War, in a bid to foster unity, Abraham Lincoln declared a national Thanksgiving holiday.  All were framed in religious terms not unlike the early settlers’ days of thanksgiving.

The Pilgrims were not ignored in 18th and 19th century New England; we just did not always think of them and turkey dinners at the same time.  Rather, in Plymouth, Boston, and other Massachusetts towns, dinners, speeches, parades, and other celebrations were held on December 22, the anniversary of the date in 1620 when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth (having already spent several months on Cape Cod).  Speeches and sermons were given, on what came to be called Forefathers’ Day, by South Shore ministers and politicians, as well as the occasional national luminary, such as John Quincy Adams (1802), Daniel Webster (1820), Edward Everett (1824), and Lyman Beecher (1827).  The focus, however, was on the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth Rock and their role as our nation’s “founding fathers.”  

 So, what led to the rise of the popular story of the “first Thanksgiving?”  To a great extent, it was the product of social and political currents in post-Civil War America.  Interest in the Pilgrims and our “founding fathers” grew with white Protestant America’s increased anxiety over immigration and the influx of newcomers with diverse backgrounds. A myth of non-violent colonialism was a balm to the conscience of a nation that had achieved its “manifest destiny” of expansion across the continent. 

First National Day of Mourning, Plymouth, Mass., 1970

In 1970, 350 years after the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth, representatives of the Wampanoag declared a National Day of Mourning on the fourth Thursday in November, to honor their ancestors and educate those celebrating a “traditional” (though no more than 100 year-old) Thanksgiving about white America’s treatment of their people. This “counter-commemoration” has its own 50th anniversary as Plymouth observes its 400th this year. Growing recognition of the checkered history that lies behind the “First Thanksgiving” is the result of the attention that has been paid to Native American history in New England and a more critical examination of the late 19th and early 20th century version of that story.  This itself is resulting in a further evolution of the holiday’s meaning, including a greater emphasis on celebrating our families and fellowship in the present day.

[First posted in Nov. 2014; edited in Nov. 2020]

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From Witch Trials to Praying Indians to Old Ship Church

“To All Christian People to whome this present instrument shall come Greeting,” this deed in our archives opens magisterially.  The date at the bottom is equally impressive:   July 4, 1690, “Anno Regni & Regina Guilielmi & Maria Secundi” (in the second year of the reign of King William and Queen Mary).  The deed is executed by William Stoughton, “of Dorchester in the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay in New England,” and conveys several parcels of land in the vicinity of Broad Cove to Thomas Thaxter “of Hingham in the Colony aforesaid, yeoman.”  Stoughton is acting on behalf of “the Governor and Company established & residing in the Kingdome of England for the propagation of the Gospel to the Indians in New England &c.”

William Stoughton

William Stoughton

In addition to his service as a judge during the Salem witch trials (see our prior post about this document, “William Stoughton’s Seal”), and later service as first Chief Justice of Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court, Stoughton was Lieutenant Governor of the Colony in the 1680’s and early 1690’s.  Among his many other public positions was Commissioner, and later Treasurer to the Commissioners, of the Company for the Propagation of the Gospel to the Indians in New England and the Parts Adjacent in America, a company chartered by Parliament in 1649 to support the conversion of New England’s native people.  The Company originally made investments in England and sent the income to the colonies, to be used to support conversion efforts, including John Eliot’s 1663 translation of the Old Testament into the Massachusett language, the creation of settlements for the so-called “Praying Indians” (including present-day Stoughton, Mass.), and other missionary activities such as the creation of a short-lived “Indian College” at Harvard College.  (These efforts may be familiar to readers of the recent historical novel Caleb’s Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks.)

Eliot_BiblePoor returns on investments in England (including losses owing to the Great Fire in London) led the New England Company to start to send capital for investment in the colonies.  The task of finding suitable investments fell to Stoughton.  Two such investments, made in 1683, were loans of £50 each to Simon and Joshua Hobart of Hingham, sons of Captain Joshua Hobart, nephews of the Rev. Peter Hobart, and both identified as “mariners.”  The loans were secured by real estate in Hingham and, according to the legal structure of the day, evidenced by deeds conveying the parcels to Stoughton, upon the condition that if the greater sum of £66 was repaid four years hence, in 1687, the sale would be null and void.

It is not clear what happened to the younger Joshua Hobart’s land but, on July 4, 1690, Stoughton sold the land he had “purchased” from Simon Hobart to Thomas Thaxter, for the inappropriately small sum of £4.  In all likelihood, this sale to Thaxter was part of some larger transaction, of which we know nothing.

N__367777355How did Stoughton come to loan the New England Company’s funds to the Hobart brothers?  Stoughton had reason to be familiar with Hingham real estate in the early 1680’s.  In 1681, Hingham needed a new church, but a dispute arose about where to locate it.  The decision where to build what would become Old Ship Church was elevated to the General Court, which appointed an oversight committee, on which Stoughton served.  The Committee determined that the Church would be located on property purchased from Captain Joshua Hobart, adjacent to the parcels involved in the New England Company financing two years later.

From the Salem witch trials to the Praying Indians and back to Old Ship Church, this one old deed shows just what a small world 17th century Massachusetts Bay was.