The Village Improvement Society, Part One

Halibut Point projecting into the Atlantic Ocean

at center-right of this engraving ¹

When Pigeon Cove merited its first map by aerial perspective (above) from a hot air balloon in 1886, Halibut Point was still largely the Babson Farm, one of the few rustic remnants in view. Much of Rockport's North Village was being transformed by industrial-scale granite quarrying, coastal estates, and summer boarders. These interests brought both prosperity and uneasy co-existence.

The virtues of community preservation, self-improvement, and gracious living were all on the minds of the neighbors who gathered at the home of Abbie and Henry Story on the evening of May 13, 1889. They were members of a Chautauqua Circle, a nation-wide network championing culture at the local level in the spirit of the lyceum movement a generation before. The Storys' daughter Bessie played music for the assemblage. Miss Maggie Dwyer, an actual graduate of Chautauqua College in New York State and for many ensuing years the Pigeon Cove reporter for the Gloucester Daily Times, read a tract on the French Revolution. ²

Within a few weeks of that seminal evening the Village Improvement Society (VIS) got under way with lofty purpose and a sense of fun. Shade trees were planted. Ice cream socials raised funds. Maggie Dwyer kept everyone informed, taking minutes for 44 years as secretary and reporting activities in the newspaper such as this 1894 entry. ³

           This evening the mum supper takes place at 7:30 at the home of Mrs. Henry Story for the benefit of the Village Improvement Society. An excellent supper is to be provided by the members and a small sum will be charged as a supper fee, providing the parties keep mum while eating their supper. If not, they are to pay for it. For the first offense they are to pay a fine of five cents, the next time four, and so on. An excellent entertainment will take place after the supper.

Abbie F. (Mrs. Henry) Story ⁴ 

Its first initiative for civic improvement involved hiring boys to clear rubbish from the beach in the summer of 1889. Maggie used her newspaper pulpit to remind folks that "there would have been no need of instituting this commendable movement had others in this neighborhood been filled with the spirit that animates this new society and taken a little more pains in disposing of their rubbish--not to say filth." ⁵

The VIS directed further charity to the boys that summer by constructing a beach house "for the convenience of the public, and in order to encourage the use of less primitive costume by the boys while bathing." ⁶

Among the other good works in its first decade were purchasing land for a public park, a watering truck to dampen road dust, backyard gardens for 'little Covers,' and vegetable growing contests. Boys were enlisted in April 1894 to destroy tent caterpillar nests, with five cents offered for every dozen belts of eggs gathered. 1,837 belts were turned in. A six-year-old girl named Mattie Dorman brought the most, 70 dozen belts. ⁷

By 1899 the Society sensed the strength and clarity to advocate publicly for restraint in quarry developments. ⁸

           Little by little the woods are disappearing, both on account of the lack of care and of the constant encroachments of the stone industry. With greater force each year the truth is being driven home to the lovers of nature that the places of natural beauty are disappearing and their places taken by yawning holes in the rock. While we recognize that this is to a certain extent necessary, yet we do believe that it is both desirable and advisable that something of beauty be wrested from the devastating hand of commerce.

Bessie Story, the young lady who sang in her parents' parlor at that first meeting, grew up to marry C. Harry Rogers, President of the Rockport Granite Company. The Rogers worked to strengthen both organizations and keep their civic compasses in parallel. In 1925 Bessie Story Rogers offered to the Society in the names of herself and her brothers the Pigeon Cove property known as the 'Old Castle' in memory of their mother Abbie Story.

The Old Castle, Pigeon Cove ⁹

The Old Castle has stood on a promontory over Pigeon Cove since at least 1715. The Village Improvement Society refurbished it as a civic center and to house its growing collection of artifacts.  One of the bronze bells pictured below came from a neighborhood schoolhouse, the other from a quarry train. A flintlock musket hangs over the fireplace.

Old Castle interior today

Maggie Dyer continued to report on the pulses of change in Pigeon Cove, the coming of the round-the-Cape trolley, the demise of the grand hotels and the granite industry. Roger Martin had the foresight to collect reminiscences of Village life at its full ripeness. ¹⁰ John and Betty Erkkila have published a trove of poignant photographs. ¹¹

The automobile improved society out of the village era. At the end of the last century the assets and spirit of the Village Improvement Society merged with its 'metropolitan' cousin the Sandy Bay Historical Society serving all of Rockport. Next week's essay will be devoted to VIS's legacy of preservation in open space and local history.

Sources

1. George H. Walker lithograph, 1886, courtesy of the Boston Public Library.
2. John Cooley, "Voice of a Village," 75^th anniversary brochure of the Village Improvement Society, 1964.
3. Gloucester Daily Times, March 30, 1894.
4. Photograph of Abbie Story presently on display in the Old Castle.
5. Cape Ann Breeze, July 13, 1889.
6. Ibid, August 9, 1889.
7. Gloucester Daily Times, April 16, 1894.
8. Ibid, June 9, 1899.
9. Charles Cleaves photo, Sandy Bay Historical Society.
10. Roger Martin, Rockport Remembered: An Oral History, 1997.
11. John and Betty Erkkila, Souvenirs of Pigeon Cove, 2014.

I am indebted to Leslie Bartlett and Gwen Stephenson for perspectives and resources in researching this story.