The Gloucester Archives Committee

Sarah Dunlap lives within sight of Halibut Point near the line that carved Rockport out of Gloucester in 1840. Much of her drive home from Downtown to Lanesville retraces 'the old road around the Cape.' The part of the route that crosses Goose Cove she knows is quite different from colonial days, before Washington Street's namesake became "first in the hearts of his countrymen." The present causeway began with the construction of a dual-purpose mill dam in the 1820s. The way around Goose Cove had been a tough pull for the stage coach up Holly Street and the steep switchbacks of Bennett Street from Riverdale to Annisquam. 


Sarah Dunlap examining records of The Highway Committee

Sarah has volunteered with the Gloucester Archives Committee for over forty years, pulled along by a stream of discoveries such as the ancient system of road maintenance recorded by the Highway Committee (1698-1873) in accounts of labor performed in lieu of taxes.

The Committee operates from a room in the basement of City Hall. Most of the people they help are digging for information on their family trees. Sarah's original quest related to the history of her own house, from its beginnings on the early Woodbury tract through its stage coach tavern days, to Mrs. Shakespeare's inn for summer visitors of the Folly Cove art colony. Along the way she learned that she and other Archives volunteers shared Gloucester ancestors from the 1640s. According to co-worker Sandy Williams, "everyone who comes in here for genealogical research is related to me through Esther Elwell," a local woman charged with witchcraft in 1692. 


Sandy Williams (L) and Mary Williams (R) preparing
digitally searchable records to Oak Grove Cemetery

Sarah recalls that the plight and potentials of the Gloucester archives came to light when bibliophile Greg Gibson "happened to look into some of the vaults. Things were in great disarray. You opened the door and things would come tumbling out on you, Christmas decorations, boxes of old papers, original documents. He put an ad in the paper asking people to come help." 


A look inside one of the City Hall vaults in 1994

Mary and Alan Ray (my aunt and uncle) formed the Archives Committee as an adjunct of the City Clerk's office in 1987 from those who responded to Gibson's alert. They asked their neighbor Sarah Dunlap, who had a degree in library science,  to come help. Sarah chuckles at the nomadic beginnings here and there in the basement of City Hall. "It started out in the hallway. Every time the door opened we'd have to hold down the papers. The cold air would come blowing in on us. We finally got this room back in the 1990s.Initially I joined them one day a week, then two, then five." 


Mary and Alan Ray in the Archives Room, 2001

"We would write down every day what we had done. Mary would go home and enter it in her computer. We would read the next day what she had written to make sure it was right. She produced what we now call 'The Bible', the guide to City records." Eventually they collaborated in publishing the encyclopedic Gloucester Massachusetts Historical Timeline, 1000-1999 as an annotated index to the trove of books, documents and clippings that had been stuffed in the vaults. 


Sarah Dunlap holding 'The Bible'

Members of the Archives Committee played a central role in correcting the misconception that had arisen in the art world about Fitz Henry Lane's name. They have hosted research efforts such as Penn State University  scholar Dan Beaver's investigation of colonial land distribution patterns in relation to English systems of ownership. Archivist Stephanie Buck is culling from the Assessors' Valuations of the late 1700s to mid-1800s, which list each taxpayer's property, the proportional ownership of vessels registered in the port of Gloucester, that is, who owned the shares. This work has unearthed interesting material, for instance, regarding local linkages to the transportation of slaves under investigation by Lise Breen.

The earliest Valuations, written on hand-made, hand-sewn paper, received high priority in the preservation efforts of Katelynn Vance who has been hired to bring professional guidance to management of the archival programs of both the City and the Sawyer Free Library. Her work is in part supported by grants recognizing Gloucester's archives as among the most ancient and complete in the Commonwealth. They were moved from the wooden Town House (present-day Legion Memorial Building) to the vaults of the first brick City Hall in 1867 where they survived its destruction by fire two years later. 


Record of Indenture dated July 27, 1749
Joel Ingersoll, son of Joel Ingersoll, deceased, bound to  Ebenezer Collins to learn the trad of cordwainer (shoemaker) for 9yrs 10 months (until he is 21.)

Among the archival treasures are the records of the Overseers of the Poor from 1739 to 1852. This Town committee arranged apprenticeships for boys and girls of indigent families, to be supported and trained by local tradesmen, farmers, or fishermen in exchange for work. The circumstances of the contract were termed an 'indenture,' copied twice on a sheet of paper that was cut in two along a toothed (dentured) line. The contractual parties each held half of the indenture that uniquely fitted together.

Sarah Dunlap has observed that "they took very good care of their poor. There were all sorts of notes in the records: 'Need not be taxed because he's poor.' 'Should not be taxed--supporting a poor mother.' 'Need not tax because he's lame.' There was also a Town Farm, an alms house, but it was a harder place to go and live.

"It's been an exciting thing to get up and do every morning. We were always coming across some little detail. Something really fascinating, like when the term Dogtown was first used. We've learned about the history of the place where we live."