Recorded History and Gloucester Vessels

Pigeon Cove merchant David Wallis Babson acquired in 1820 the considerable acreage on Halibut Point that became known as Babson Farm. Up until 1840 this area was part of Squam Parish in the Town of Gloucester. Tax records of 1823 show that he continued to operate his fish market in Pigeon Cove and that he owned the boat Criterion, 8 years old, 30 tons, valued at $350.

Note on David Babson's Boat Criterion
Squam Parish Valuations, 1823
Gloucester City Archives

It would be interesting to know whether Criterion was part of his commercial enterprise, catching or trading fish. I brought the question to Erik Ronnberg, Maritime Curator at the Cape Ann Museum, who had studied a text from the period at the Sandy Bay Historical Society. Based on Criterion's tonnage he surmised it would have been a Chebacco boat rather than a schooner. He produced from his files this unique illustration of contemporary vessels by a local young man who gave business instruction to aspiring fishermen. Erik values it as one of the clearest depictions in existence of a Chebacco boat.

Watercolor illustrations in Jonathan Parson's Exercise Book, 1833
Schooner at left, Chebacco boat at right
Courtesy of the Sandy Bay Historical Society

Our conversation took in a literary novel we both admire, set in Pigeon Cove in the early nineteenth century, Peter Gott, Cape Ann Fisherman. The story draws on the same economic relationships, hardships at sea, and village character that we can imagine surrounding Criterion.

Cape Ann garnered its first regular news reporting when the Gloucester Telegraph began publication in 1827. Three years later it carried a petition for incorporation of the Pigeon Cove Harbour Company envisioning the construction of a stone breakwater, with signatory David Babson among those "employed and interested in the Boat Fishery there carried on."

Excerpt from Gloucester Telegraph, August 7, 1830

I was not able to find newspaper references to Criterion. It may have passed from existence by the time the Telegraph came into print in 1827. If it was still in service, we might at least appreciate that it didn't generate headlines as being lost at sea.

Erik advised visiting the regional office of the National Archives in Waltham for the possibility of finding fuller information on Criterion. Among its collections are registrations of vessels submitted by the Gloucester Customs Officer who routinely visited local coves and harbors to monitor import duties. While it was not unheard of for Gloucester coasters to bring back undeclared goods from Canadian ports, the main focus of supervision was on vessels larger than the Criterion's 30 tons.

The United States Customs Service at the time was the primary source of revenue for the federal government. It maintained two types of records: registrations for ships engaged in or capable of foreign trade, and enrollments of smaller vessels. Only the lists of registrations were forwarded to Washington, DC and preserved in the National Archives. Hence Criterion is not mentioned in the Essex Institute publication Ship Registers of the District of Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1789-1875 (1944) derived from those lists.

Early records for small vessels such as Criterion are scarce but fortuitously mentioned in the Town of Gloucester Valuations. Through the extraordinary diligence of City Archives Committee volunteer Stephanie Buck all the local vessels between 1797 and 1859 have been indexed on a searchable digital data base enumerating name, owner, age and tonnage. She extracted the information page by page from assessors' records like the one pictured above in City Hall vaults. The volumes from 1860 forward changed to a very large format inconducive to the limited storage space at City Hall and are presently in the basement of the Cape Ann Museum where Stephanie works as Librarian/Archivist. Those volumes have yet to be winnowed for their vessel listings.

Stephanie Buck with Fred's compilation

Stephanie's husband Fred came in to the Museum initially to help her as a volunteer but soon joined the staff as the Photo Archivist. In response to people's frequent inquiries on family history and the Gloucester fleet he transcribed the vessel listings published annually by Procter Brothers from 1869 through 1906, compiling in a simple digitally-searchable format the port's registrations and captains. Stephanie notes that "there is a ten-year gap [1859-1869] between my stopping and Fred's starting. Somebody could fill in that gap, if they felt like it." She savors opportunities to help with discoveries. "Anybody who is studying their family genealogy loves to have the little tiny details of their great-great-grandfather."

Stephanie will be retiring next month after fifteen years as the Museum's Librarian/Archivist. Fred passed away in February, having summoned over recent years every moment and ounce of energy to fulfill requests despite failing health.

Fred and Stephanie Buck
the wedding day of their oldest daughter

Local author Paul St. Germain recalls the couple's unstinting support on his book projects. "Fred was something of a magician, not only searching out the photographs but fixing them so they look good. You know Fred's sense of humor. Shall we say acerbic? I'd show up and the banter would go back and forth. But he was more than solicitous, more than helpful. Anything you asked him he'd be happy to do--'But I can't do it now! I've got this other project!' The amazing thing is he not only knew what he had in the archives but he had amassed so much metadata on each photograph. I'd get an email from him at two o'clock in the morning with a couple of pictures. 'I came across this. This might be good.'

"Every time I went in I'd let Stephanie know what I was looking for, which was usually captions for the photographs. I'd work at the big round table in back. She'd come over every now and then to drop off books or documents. 'You might find this useful,' she'd say, even before I asked her about a particular subject.