“These are the Highlands of Cape Cod, the most dangerous point on the Cape,” wrote Shebnah Rich in his landmark Truro history. “No place, perhaps, has witnessed more shipwrecks, and […]
Graveyard Shift
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
The Lifesaving Legacy of Capt. David H. Atkins
A historian lifts the shadow cast by anonymous critics and unfounded reporting
Edward Rowe Snow, the master chronicler of New England sea stories, wrote a letter to the Provincetown Advocate in February 1964, seeking information about descendants of Capt. David H. Atkins, […]
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
In Althea Boxell’s Pages, a Hidden History of Provincetown
Collected in a visitor’s scrapbook, nuggets of ‘old-timer’ gold
As history buffs explore the Provincetown History Preservation Project’s collections online, one name, Althea Boxell (1910-1988), pops up repeatedly. But were it not for Provincetown artist John Dowd, we might […]
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
The Long-Lived Gross Sisters of Wellfleet
Connections to Kamehameha, and other stories seagoing families needed to believe
“A most remarkable picture was taken yesterday” read an item in the Sept. 30, 1851 issue of the Boston Evening Transcript. The story announced that the artists Ormsbee and Silsbee […]
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
Mr. Greenough’s Tea
A wreck at Race Point plunged the Outer Cape into Revolutionary politics
In Wellfleet’s Duck Creek Cemetery, three remarkably well-preserved colonial headstones with classic iconography are a tangible reminder of the John Greenough family. The stones, like too many in Cape Cod’s […]
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
Amazing Grace: A Mother’s Legacy
The deathbed testament of Grace Smith in 1710 offers a timeless creed
A bronze tablet attached to a boulder in Eastham’s Cove Burial Ground is one of the few tangible reminders of the Ralph Smith (or Smythe) family, who arrived in Eastham […]
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
The Schooner Rienzi and the ‘Mystery Brig’
A 15-month voyage in 1859 and 1860 was long remembered for a strange encounter
During Provincetown’s fishing and whaling heyday, the Bowly brothers — Joshua Elsbury (1813-1883) and Gideon (1816-1893) — were among the town’s most prominent owners and outfitters of vessels. In 1849, […]
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
Isaiah Hatch and the Wreck of the Franklin
On his first excursion to Cape Cod in October 1849, Henry David Thoreau stopped in Cohasset to view the gut-wrenching aftermath of the wreck of the brig St. John, carrying […]
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
Freeman Hatch, Eastham’s Captain of the Saucy, Wild Clipper
His 76-day, 5-hour voyage from San Francisco to Boston has never been equalled
In Eastham’s Evergreen Cemetery where, last spring, the courageous service of the keepers of Nauset Beach Light Station was honored with a solemn ceremony, the nephew of keeper Henry Young […]
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
The Illustrious Atwoods of Provincetown
The life of Nathaniel Ellis Atwood spanned the town’s golden era
Henry David Thoreau, enjoying his fourth and last visit to Cape Cod, wrote in his journal dated June 21, 1857 that he had “called on Mr. Atwood, the Representative of […]
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
The Fates of Families
Truro’s cemeteries tell a series of heartbreaking stories
TRURO — The fog was thick on Monday night, April 19, 1852 — what sailors call “pea soup.” Gale winds blew from the east. At midnight, after making Cape Ann […]
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
A Life-Saving Beacon in the Fog of Politics
Nauset Light Society honors the memory of its keepers
EASTHAM — The offshore waters of Outer Cape Cod, with their hidden sand bars, took so many vessels and lives that the stretch from Chatham to Provincetown came to be […]
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
Rediscovering Eastham’s Elijah Knowles
A trusted public servant and justice of the peace
Excitement rippled through Eastham with the recent rediscovery in the archives of the historical society of a document signed by Samuel Adams. Adams, born in 1722, was one of the […]
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
Eastham Looks Back at Its First Preacher
Samuel Treat Day will ask ‘emotional questions posed by our history’
EASTHAM — The grave marker in the Cove Burying Ground is plain: “Rev. Samuel Treat died Mar. 18, 1716, aged 69 years,” it reads. But the story of Eastham’s first […]
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
The Loneliest of Lombards
On a woods walk, the burial place of a family affected by another pandemic
WELLFLEET — Deep in the woods of Wellfleet’s Bound Brook Island, a path padded with pine needles and slashed with filtered sunlight rises and dips, showing the way to a […]
