Recorded History

Until the separate incorporation of Rockport in 1840 Halibut Point had for two hundred years formed the northern tip of Gloucester on Cape Ann. Paths of inquiry for the early settlement and affairs of Halibut Point therefore lie in records pertaining to the Town of Gloucester.

Left: Selectmen's Records, 1756-1781
Right: Town Records, 1753-1800

In the current exhibition Unfolding Histories at the Cape Ann Museum you have a chance to see how unusually rich the existing records are. Various volumes, documents, and artifacts on display represent more than a storehouse of antiquarian facts, more even than a trove of unique community treasures. A quiet moment with this array conveys the solemn beauty of church.

The Selectmen's Records, opened to the minutes of May 19, 1766, authorizes expenditures for "a cask of Powder to be used toward expressing our Joy for the repeal of the Stamp Act by Parliament." The Stamp Act had been one of the 'taxations without representation' that  provoked colonial Americans to revolt from England.

In the margin of the Town Records revolutionary debate on April 21, 1775 you will notice a paroxysm in the hand of Selectmen's moderator Captain Peter Coffin that "American Blood was spilt at Lexington by British Robbers."

Exhibition curator Dr. Molly Hardy

Unfolding Histories curator Dr. Molly Hardy has appreciated Gloucester's long timeline since spending childhood summers here in her grandmother's colonial-era house. She evolved professionally to a position with the eminent American Antiquarian Society in Worcester and will soon succeed Stephanie Buck as Librarian-Archivist of the Cape Ann Museum. Like many researchers in New England lore she marvels at the breadth of resources preserved here in the private collections of the Museum and in the Gloucester City Archives. She credits a significant initial conserving impulse to "antiquarians in our midst in the mid to late nineteenth century."

South steps of Gloucester's rebuilt City Hall, 1874. *
I believe City Clerk John J. Somes sits at lower left.

The raw records survived storage in the old wooden Town House, and in the vault of the first City Hall when it burned to the ground in 1869. They provided material for John J. Babson's epic History of the Town of Gloucester, Cape Ann, Including the Town of Rockport (1860). Babson was eased in his monumental study by a municipal grant to hire a team of women with legible script: "It was also voted that a sum not exceeding four hundred dollars be placed at the disposal of John J. Babson Esq. for the purpose of transcribing the records of the town and arranging the Town papers and preparing an index for them with the concurrence of the Selectmen." Town Records May 7, 1849. * The transcription in precise, flowing handwriting is a boon to modern researchers in the City Hall Archives.

1646 excerpt from the original Town Records
as seen on the City of Gloucester website

A year ago Gloucester hired its first professional archivist with duties split between the Sawyer Free Library and Gloucester City Archives. Katelynn Vance has filled that position with a zealous effort. Over the last year, eight volumes from the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries have been conserved and digitized at the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, Massachusetts. Funding for this project was provided by private donations given to the Gloucester City Archives. A grant was recently submitted to the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners requesting additional funds to continue the conservation and digitization of the oldest Gloucester records. Access to the digitized records is currently available on the Gloucester City Archives website, http://gloucester-ma.gov/index.aspx?NID=957.

Dr. Hardy applauds the digital scanning because of the greater access it gives researchers while sparing fragile originals further wear and tear. "But that doesn't mean we don't need the original materials. There's an aura about them which I believe in deeply. There are also very practical things that you can't tell from a digital surrogate, such as size, binding, and paper or parchment materials.

"Objects clearly deserve a kind of reverence. They capture time. They're vessels. You share human qualities. The marginalia. Look at the case of Captain Coffin. He had to get a little note in there. That's not exactly pertinent to the Town Record. It's an editorial moment for him. If you just wrote a transcript of the official record you'd miss that.

"As I take over the Librarian position I'm very interested in the history of collecting here, how things came to be here, particularly in the Museum. City Hall is more a repository for its own records. Why so much stuff ended up here, I need to learn a lot more about that."

* Courtesy of the Gloucester City Archives Committee.