Historical Timeline

Provincetown, Massachusetts History

Legend has it, and some evidence may suggest, that Leif Ericsson, son of Eric the Red, may have visited these shores in 1003, and that in the following year his brother Thorwald hauled his long boat on the beach here to repair the keel, naming the spot "kjalarness" or "Cape of the Keel." (Shay 2). Narrative of the Visiting Vikings. The legend is appealing, but the evidence is weak.

Evidence exists convincing some historians that intrepid fishermen from the Basque region between Spain and France, and also possibly from Portugal and Britany, being excluded from European fishing grounds, sailed west, discovered the abundant cod fishing grounds of the Grand Banks and possibly these waters, returned to Europe with their valuable catches, and kept their secrets to themselves. (See Kurlanski, Mark, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, Penguin Books, 1997)

There is ample evidence that very soon after Columbus "discovered" America, if not before, European fishing fleets exploited these waters, and there is "anecdotal evidence" of temporary fishing camps at what is now Provincetown in the decades before the arrival of the Mayflower. (Schneider 10)

The Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, sailing in the service of King Francis I of France, rounded what he described as an "eminente promontorio," which must have been Cape Cod and which he named Cap Pallavisino in honor of his friend, one of the King's Italian mercenary generals. (Morison 308).

The Portuguese explorer, Estevan Gomes, (veteran of a portion of Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe in 1520 - actually Gomes mutinied and turned back before entering the Straits of Magellan), sailing for King Charles V of Spain, mapped the coast of Maine and as far south as Cape Cod, which he named Cap de las Arenas (Cape of the Sand Dunes). (Morison 331).

English Explorers Strangely Absent

The Legends Begin to Grow

Prior to 1602, the English seem to have neglected the exploration of this coast. Conjecture is that they were fully occupied searching for a "Northwest Passage" to the Indies (John and Sebastian Cabot between 1497 and 1509) or else merrily plundering Spanish treasure in the Caribbean (e.g. Sir Francis Drake between 1572 and 1595). The English did try to establish a colony at Roanoke in Virginia (1585) under Sir Walter Raleigh's auspices, and actually succeeded in establishing one at Jamestown in 1607.

"Landlords of Fisherman's Taverns anywhere along the Coast of Brittany or the Bay of Biscay had heard all about Provincetown, from the picturesque villains who dropped in to drink brandy and sour wine on an evening between one fishing season and the next..."miscellaneous smugglers, 'Portege' whalemen, French privateers, and colonial fishermen who camped for the summer, all plied their trades with as much freedom as if Provincetown had been a remote island of the Spanish Main."

From this period on through the time of Prohibition in the early 20th century, Provincetowners have been slandered for many things, including being "mooncussers." On parts of England's rugged coasts this meant folk who went along the beach in foul weather swinging lanterns to lure ships ashore to be wrecked. There is no evidence of such detestable activity here, and much evidence of heroic exploits to rescue the victims of shipwrecks. This is not to say that wrecks were not picked clean of their cargoes and anything else worth salvaging before authorities could ever think of intervening.

English seafarer Bartholomew Gosnold explored and mapped the Cape and Islands in his ship, the Concord, accompanied by would-be colonists searching for a place to settle and by James Brereton, who chronicled the expedition and their contacts with the Wampanoags. No settlement was made, but Gosnold returned to England with a precious cargo of sassafras, quickening English interest in this region. Gosnold was the first to name this Cape Cod.

Martin Pring, an adventurer from Bristol, England, visited the Cape and Islands in search of sassafras, highly valued for its supposed pharmaceutical properties, and reported finding no native people at the tip of Cape Cod.

Frenchman Samuel de Champlain, founder of the first French settlement in Canada (located on the St. Croix River), sailed south to explore for a better place to relocate. Rounding the Cape, he named it Cape Mallabare, on account of the perilous shoals on the outer shore, a name also used by Dutch mariners in these waters. (Bradford 95)

The Pilgrims (as they have been referred to only since the mid-19th century) were Separatists who had seceded altogether from the Church of England and then had lived unhappily as exiles in Holland since 1607.

Wanting a place of their own to live and worship in their own way, they obtained financial backing from London and a royal patent to establish a plantation, intended to be near the mouth of the Hudson River, where they intended to farm, fish and trade.

Delayed by business complications until late September, they embarked in the ship Mayflower and endured an extremely rough voyage of more than two months. Of the 101 passengers, half were members of their religious community, referring to themselves as "Saints", and half were their indentured servants and others recruited for the venture, whom they referred to, charmingly, as "Strangers", and there was a ship's crew of 25.

An accompanying ship, the Speedwell, which carried the fishermen and their gear intended to be part of the enterprise, sustained storm damage and turned back to England, with near disastrous consequences for the struggling colony in its first year.

During the voyage, one of the company, young William Button, died, and one child, fittingly christened "Oceanus" Hopkins, was born.

At last, land was sighted - Cape Cod as the Mayflower's captain knew it to be from his copy of John Smith's 1614 map. Howling adverse winter winds and the terrifying shoals of the outer Cape caused the Mayflower to abandon the attempt to proceed southward, and on November 11 (old style), or November 22 (new style), she rounded Long Point and came to anchor in the shelter of our harbor.

Signing of the "Mayflower Compact"

The men set about to explore their new surroundings, and the women to wash the foul clothing and bedding they brought ashore after all those weeks cooped up together in the tiny Mayflower upon the storm tossed sea. It being Monday, legend has it that this is the origin of Monday being "washday" in America.

In their explorations, the men made their way down Cape, found fresh water (Pilgrim Spring) in what is now North Truro - Provincetown's water is brackish to this day; they found a stash of the Indian's corn (at "Corn Hill"), which they appropriated, and reaching Eastham, they had their first encounter with the Indians (at "First Encounter Beach"), a relatively harmless skirmish in which arrows and blunderbuss shots were exchanged without serious effect.

The Transfer to Plymouth

At last, in late December, the Mayflower and her company departed this harbor and sailed over to Plymouth, where they may or may not have noticed a certain inconsequential geological object known ever after as "Plymouth Rock." (See Seelye, John, Memory's Nation:The Place of Plymouth Rock, the University of North Carolina Press, 1998, PP 6-8) Half of them died of hunger and disease before that first winter finally gave way to spring.

Beginning in 1623

Wampanog Confederation Formed

The Native Americans first encountered by the "Mayflower" Pilgrims on the Cape were the Pamets. (Philbrick 49) Those encountered at Plymouth, Pokanokets, led by their sachem, Massasoit, who beginning in 1623, established dominance over the neighboring tribes and created a confederation that came to be known as the Wampanogs. (Philbrick 155)

Meanwhile, at the Tip of the Cape there were neither families, nor school, nor a hint of civilization. It belonged to roving Indians, fisherman and sea dogs. Plymouth Colony's faint attempt to collect revenues from bass fisherman to help support its emerging schools is skillfully thwarted. These renegade fisherman also traded in contraband with European smugglers.

"This community of rogue fisherman banded together not only with the European smugglers but also with the Indian braves who, during hunting and fishing season, set up a nearby camp of circular bent-sapling-and-straw houses. The fisherman traded glass buttons and rum for Indian venison, tobacco, and corn.

"It was indeed an outlaw society. All flotsam and jetsam that washed upon the shore was fair game, be it drift whale, wrecked cargo, or bejeweled corpse."

"Life was much freer for those Colonial bachelors in the bacchanalian fishing station than in the theocratic confines of the Pilgrim community."

"Race Run was the site of Provincetown's bachelor fishing station. It is an inlet outside Provincetown Harbor, at the roiling junction of Cape Cod Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. To this day it is a rich fishing ground because of the abundant nutrients in the sea. This locale is no doubt the source of the modern-day legend of "Helltown," a rendezvous for those with unlicensed appetites. Provincetown has never shed the notoriety of this fishing camp. Historians invariably equated all of Provincetown with this legendary station." (Egan 38-40, citing Rich, Dow and Freeman.)

The Massachusetts Bay Colony would grow and prosper, becoming very much the big brother of the Plymouth Colony. The demarcation line would run from Cohasset on the coast, southwest in a straight line to approximately the northeast corner of The Providence Plantations (present day Rhode Island). (Morison map printed on endpapers.)

By Royal decree, the old Plymouth Colony will be annexed to a newly constituted Province of the Massachusetts Bay in 1691. Thus will enter the appellation "Province Lands" to describe all of the public lands reserved at the Tip of the Cape and eventually (1727) the names Provincetown and Provincetown Harbor. (Generally previously known as Cape Cod Harbor.)

By enactment of the Plymouth Colony's General Court regarding the Cape Lands acquired in 1654 it is provided that: "noe Stranger or forraigner shall Improue our lands or woods att the Cape for making of fish without liberty from the Gourment, and that all such as shail have libertie shall attend such further orders as shalbe givien them conserning the same--and that they shall pay six pensce a kentell for all such fish as shal be made as aforesaid, to the collonies use." (Smythe 11) (A "kentell", or a quintal, was a weight of 100 Lbs.)

Perhaps they rely on the honor system for collection!

The historical record is surprisingly muddled about this. Kittredge (92) says that a group of Eastham men began negotiating with the Pamet Indians for purchase of the land that will become Truro, yet it appears that the Cape Lands were acquired by the Plymouth Colony in 1654.

Hatch (21) tells us that while there seems to be no reliable record, 1675-1680 are the best guess dates for the earliest permanent settlement of what we now know as Provincetown.

Admiral Morison (234) avers that "Wellfleet and Truro were not settled during the life of Plymouth Colony (i.e. before 1692); and, at the site where the Pilgrims first landed, no houses were built before the following century. He adds, interestingly (142): "Most of the first settlers on Cape Cod cam there directly from England or from Massachusetts Bay; and the Cape Codders have always felt different from- even superior to- the people of Plymouth County."

Political upheavals in England have had their reverberations in the colonies. In 1685, King Charles II had revoked the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. His brother, the openly Catholic King James II. , who came to the throne later in that year, was even more intent on suppressing representative government, not least among his more ardently Protestant subjects. Thus, all of New England was to be governed as a single "Dominion" under direct Royal control.

Turnabout came in 1688 with the "Glorious Revolution." James II was forced to flee to France, and the staunchly Protestant King William III and Queen Mary II, his wife became joint sovereigns. (Morison 285-287)

In 1691, after great political haggling in London, a new Royal Charter was granted incorporating the Plymouth Colony, as well as Maine, into the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

The new charter arrived in Boston in May of 1692, and, submitting, the General Court of the Plymouth Colony dissolved itself and declared a day of "sollemne fasting and humiliation." (Willison 407-408)

By this time the taking of oil from whales washed ashore was a profitable venture, and the pursuit of whales just offshore was soon to be a growing industry.

Eventually whaling ships from Provincetown as well as from Nantucket, New Bedford and other New England ports, would venture further and further in pursuit of the "lucrative leviathans", even rounding Cape Horn into the Pacific and north to Arctic waters.

The Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and the War of 1812 (1812-1815) would shut down Provincetown's Harbor and whaling activities, and in the Civil War (1861-1865) Confederate raiders would burn whaling ships from all northern ports. Each time the industry would rebound more strongly until the discovery and increasing use of petroleum would spell a steady decline. The last of the great whale ships, the "Provincetown", owned and registered to Charles W. Morgan, would clear this harbor on its final voyage in 1921. She is preserved at the Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut.

If some people fail to associate Provincetown with the great days of whaling, perhaps it is because Herman Melville in "Moby Dick" neglected to mention this town alongside Nantucket and New Bedford.

Paul Revere Associates with Local Provincetown Masons

The name of the ships were Volusia, Ulysses, and Brutus. All the crew of Brutus reached shore but froze to death. (Edwards 168)

The town petitioned the President of the United States representing that, "they have suffered severely from the operation of the laws laying and enforcing an embargo on all ships and vessels in the ports and harbors of the United States, not only in common with their fellow citizens throughout the Union but particularly from their local and peculiar situation, their interest being almost totally in fishing vessels. The perishable nature of the fish and the sale of it depending solely on a foreign market, together with the barrenness of the soil not admitting of cultivation leave them no resource but the fisheries," and concluding their petition with a request that "the embargo be suspended in whole or in part."

(Dego 968)

After the declaration of war with Britain on this date, British Men-of-war surrounded Cape Cod with H.M.S. Majestic, making her base at anchor between Provincetown and Truro. Selectmen of Provincetown, Wellfleet and Truro were forced to enter into agreement to provide stores at the market price to British frigates. Stores had to be rafted out by schooners in Provincetown Harbor due to the 12-14 foot rise in tide. The market price the British paid for beef in 1814 was $7.00 per pound and it is said that several fortunes in Provincetown had their beginnings in British gold. (Theriault 8)

Joseph Prosper Johnson, born in Essex, CT, came to town in 1827 and enhanced Provincetown's business ventures. (Theriault 18)

Voted at town meeting to establish a High School, school doors opened on April 26th in the vestry of the old Methodist church under the Hill. All grade schools were furnished with blackboards, maps, globes and all the latest appliances for education in that day. Freeman Nickerson, principal, was paid $400, with Miss C.A. Rogers as assistant. The school committee consisted of Godfrey Ryder, Esq., Dr. S.A. Paine and Rev. Osborn Myrick. (Paine Smith 140)

Charles A. Hannum, Stephen Nickerson, Alfred Nickerson and others were incorporated as the Union Marine Railway, with power to build a railway at Union Wharf. (Dego 969)

Town of Provincetown purchased High Pole Hill for $350 from Godfrey Ryder; Jonathan Cook; Asa S. Bowley; Philip Cook Seth Nickerson, 2nd; Joseph Atkins; & Samuel Chapman. Deed was recorded June 9, 1853 (Jennings 106). The original Provincetown Town Hall was to be constructed on top of High Pole Hill at the location where the Pilgrim Monument stands today. The facility would cost $15,000 to build. In addition to being the Town Hall, Provincetown's high school students would hold classes on the top floor of this structure. (Jennings 106)

A Town House, with a high tower that could be seen half way to Boston Light, was erected on High Pole Hill. The Town Hall/School was destroyed by fire on February 16, 1877

The State Bank established by an act of incorporation on March 28, 1854 was organized as the First National Bank, with an increased capital to $200,000. Elijah Smith, the first cashier of the bank, continued in that capacity until his death in January, 1867, at which point, Mr. Moses N. Gifford was chosen cashier. Mr. Nathan Freeman, President from the first organization as a State Bank, filled that position when it became National and held it until his demise in 1876.(Freeman 115).

Construction of East Harbor Dike

Town meeting on Jan 31, 1877 voted that the town comply with the order of the County Commissioners to construct a causeway across East Harbor in place of the present wooden Bridge and ... the County Road as laid down in said order.

A 1400 foot dike that created Pilgrim Lake was constructed to replace the former bridge over East Harbor. (Smith & Shay 50)

To bring the railroad to town, it was necessary for the town to subscribe for stock in the extension from Wellfleet in the amount of 5% of valuation. As Town Moderator, Joseph P. Johnson, appointed a committee of nine on February 13, 1871 to meet with railroad officials and arrange the terms of the subscription...and it was done.(FNBP9)

Another reference states the town contributed largely to the attainment of the railway by subscribing $98,300 toward the stock issued for the extension, and received in return 727 shares of the capital stock of the Old Colony Railroad Company, which were sold from time to time for $72,696.25. The railroad was opened for traffic on this date. (Dego 971)

Confederate Cruiser, Alabama, Given Award for Lost Revenue

During the Civil war, Confederate cruisers, among them the Alabama, fitted out in English ports, made prizes of Provincetown whalers. In 1872, a joint commission chosen to settle the claims of the U.S. against England made an award of $15 million to those who had suffered loss. The value of vessel and fittings, her cargo, and the voyage she would have made had she not been captured, the wages of officers and crew, and compound interest on all these items for ten years was given .(Paine Smith 75-76)