At the very time in 1893 that the defaulted fortunes of
Jonas French and the Cape Ann Granite Company resulted in the acquisition of his
Bay View enterprise by the Rockport Granite Company, rumors flew that Colonel
French had secured title to the former Bay State Granite Company. It was
understood that he intended to build a mile-long railroad from its principal
quarry (now Bianchini's) in Lanesville over the ox track to the wharves at
Pigeon Cove. 1 Before long the Gloucester
Daily times exulted that he owned "the best piece of quarry land on
the Cape." 2
 |
|
A new corporation 3 |
Subscribers to out-of-town newspapers might have discerned
that the Colonel was re-launched from the State of Maine. His new holdings
included red granite quarries in Jonesport. Somehow he had drawn together founding
assets of $100,000.
 |
Re-orientation of the
Cape Ann Granite Company 4
Bay View, Gloucester
1869-1893
Pigeon Cove, Rockport
1894-1902
|
In repositioning from Bay View to Pigeon Cove the Cape Ann
Granite Company traced an arc almost completely across the hinterlands of
Halibut Point, first from the western, then the eastern flank of Lanesville.
Initially the new Company took its products by cart down to
Lanes Cove for shipment. Perhaps it hadn't yet won privileges to stockpile
stone on the wharf while awaiting a vessel. One day before Christmas 1894 the
men loaded 45,000 paving blocks onto the schooner Emma C. Cotton in 7½
hours, claiming "the quickest time on record where the entire
freight has been set in by [horse-drawn]
teams." 5
 |
|
Main Street, Pigeon
Cove - Cape Ann Tool Company on right 6 |
Meanwhile crews began setting tracks down the long incline
from upper Lanesville to Pigeon Cove. J.
M. Gamboa's barber shop was moved to make way for the railroad. Col.
French negotiated agreements to cross Granite Street to reach the wharf. A
large portion of the stock of the Pigeon Cove Harbor Company had come with his
quarry purchase. "Big times in Pigeon Cove in the sweet-by-and-by," chimed the Times reporter. 7
 |
|
Locomotive Nella delivered to the Rockport depot,
April 1895 8 |
Col. French named the new locomotive for his wife Nella. From
the Rockport train depot it had to reach Pigeon Cove in a leap-frogging advance
of rail segments up Granite Street. Four years later an easier transport was on
hand when the engine set out for repairs in Portland Maine. A switch joined the
company's track to that of the new electric railway enabled Nella to be taken over the trolley line
at 2:00 Sunday morning and put in tow of the freight to Beverly. 9
 |
|
Nella at work for the Cape Ann Granite Company 10 |
It is said by those
who are supposed to be good judges that the Cape Ann Granite Company's granite
quarries at Lanesville are the best on the Cape. Last Wednesday, under the
direction of foreman Thomas A, Erwin, a blast was made, six holes nineteen feet
deep having been made, which were loaded and fired by a battery. The result of
the blast was a large pieced of granite, 130 feet long, 30 feet wide and 30
feet deep, which would weigh 10,636 tons. 11
 |
|
Railroad terminus at
Pigeon Cove Harbor 12 |
In September 1897 the Company completed its first contract
for putting 240,000 tons of stone on the Sandy Bay Breakwater. It commissioned
a new steam lighter, the Jonas H. French.
 |
|
The steam lighter Jonas H. French 13 |
Col. French adroitly navigated the public-private facets of
commercial success. As a member of the Executive Committee of the Sandy Bay
Breakwater, an immense Federally-funded project, he toured dignitaries to the
offshore project aboard the Jonas H.
French and joined Massachusetts Senators Hoar and Lodge in a speechmaking
banquet at the Turks Head Inn. 14
Mrs. Nella French hosted at her home a
meeting of nearly one hundred women to organize a Ladies Aid Association for Addison
Gilbert Hospital. She was elected president pro
tem "with the grace for which this lady is noted." 15
Headline of a Letter
to the Editor, 1898 16
At the end of the century Col. French was facing evolving
challenges in technology and labor. Along with other local industry leaders he
hosted Mr. Stanford, engineer in charge of building the Charlestown naval dry
dock, in an effort to convince the government to choose granite over concrete
as a superior but more expensive material. 17
On the labor front, emotions were
running high during the quarrymen's strike for a nine-hour work day. When the
Rockport Granite Company was slow to implement the settlement terms in June
1899 a bomb exploded on its tracks at Granite Pier. Col. French had come to
terms with his workers and kept his crews employed. The newspaper mused that
"the Rockport Granite Company has the cow by the horns, the Pigeon Hill
Company by the tail, while the Cape Ann Granite Company is quietly getting the
milk." 18
 |
|
Portrait of Jonas H.
French 19 |
The Gloucester Daily
Times carried effusive details about the wedding of Stella Evans French to
sugar magnate Charles Alphonzo Farwell of New Orleans. The bride was the widow
of the late Harry G. French, the only son of Colonel Jonas French. The marriage
took place at his home in Bay View, sumptuously decorated with ferns, lilies
and roses. "Aside from the bride and groom the two persons who attracted
the greatest attention were Col. French, tall, dignified and military in his
bearing, and his gracious wife."
My fellow readers must be tantalized by the note that
"Mrs. Albert Baldwin, Jr., of New Orleans, becomingly gowned in white
silk, lace yoke and chiffon garniture, carrying a bouquet of red roses,
attended the bride as matron of honor."
Following the wedding Col. and Mrs. French took the
afternoon train to spend a week at their Boston residence, leaving the bride
and groom to honeymoon at Rocklawn.
 |
|
Catalog of the estate
sale of Col. French's library 19 |
By 1902 the Cape Ann Granite Company had fallen victim to
financial trouble and was sold at auction. Colonel French died of apoplexy a
few months later, his passing noted in The
New York Times. General Butler's children were startled to discover that
Mrs. French promptly sold Rocklawn to
the Archdiocese of Boston and that Archbishop O'Connell was their new neighbor. Upon his elevation in
the Church hierarchy it became known as The
Cardinal's. 20
For a murky few years the assets of the Cape Ann Granite
Company came unsuccessfully under operation of the New England Granite Company
controlled by a Boston financier from Jonas French's circles. The Rockport
Granite Company eventually acquired everything. In 1911 Nella went by barge to the Folly Cove Pier for locomotive service
bringing blocks down to the pier from the Babson Farm Quarry at Halibut Point,
to cap the Sandy Bay Breakwater.
The granite quarries and the granite industry each entwined
aspects of brutality, beauty, and aggrandizement. They incorporated modern
human themes of dominion over the land and of advancing a better life. Talents,
desires, and limits to power shaped the physical and social landscape. Every
block of stone bore the marks of aspirations.
--Finis--
Sources
1. Gloucester Daily
Times (GDT ), September 9, 1893.
2. GDT January 16,
1894.
3. Boston Journal,
February 7, 1894.
4. Drawing adapted from "Cape Ann Quarries" map by
Barbara Erkkila, Hammers on Stone,
1980.
5. GDT December
26, 1894.
6. Postcard view courtesy of Robert Ambrogi, Vintage Rockport.
7. GDT October 26,
1894.
8. Photograph courtesy of the Sandy Bay Historical
Association.
9. GDT April 10,
1899.
10. Moulton stereograph, courtesy of the Cape Ann Museum.
11. GDT March 12,
1898.
12. Postcard view courtesy of Robert Ambrogi, Vintage Rockport.
13. Photo from Barbara Erkkila, Hammers on Stone, 1980.
14. GDT August 25,
1897.
15. GDT October
14, 1898.
16. GDT October
24, 1898.
17. GDT September
17, 1898.
18. GDT June 13,
1899.
19. Portrait printed in the catalogue, from the Cornell
University Library.
20. GDT September
12, 1900.
21. Harriet Robey, Bay
View, 1979.
