The picture at right is a family photo. It was taken in 1898 in Kyiv, Ukraine and is the original cabinet card — a thin photograph mounted on a 4¼-by-6½-inch […]
History
ACTIVISM
Ella Josephine Baker
Drawing by Mary DeAngelis
Ella Baker grew up listening to her grandmother’s stories about life under slavery. Her grandparents bought and farmed land that was part of a North Carolina plantation where they had […]
ACTIVISM
Fannie Lou Hamer
“Righteousness exalts a nation. Hate just makes people miserable,” was one of Fannie Lou Hamer’s mantras. She fought passionately against attempts to deny Black people the right to vote. Born […]
IN THE STACKS
A Family Portrait Lost and Then Found
The story behind a haunting trio at the Eastham library
The Eastham Room of the town’s library is brimming with archival records. But just outside the room hangs a trio of 19th-century portraits of residents whose lives were rich with […]
HOME/MAKING
Baker’s Belvernon Enters a New Era
Historic elements found in the basement and attic reappear in renovations
WELLFLEET — Jay and Allison Bombara love history. Jay is president of the historical society in Farmington, Conn., where the couple live most of the year in an antique house, […]
SHADES OF HISTORY
What Color Was This Old House?
Paint followed practicality and the swinging pendulum of styles from overseas
Edward Penniman, considered one of the most successful sea captains in New England, traveled the world hunting whales in the mid-19th century and amassed enough wealth to retire to Eastham […]
MULLIGANS
Thwarting Par at Eastham’s Devilish Cedar Bank Links
A brief history of a marshy golf course that gobbled up balls and hosted clambakes
EASTHAM — Resting beneath the National Seashore’s Salt Pond Visitor Center is what used to be the ninth hole of the Cedar Bank Links golf course. The Eastham Town Hall […]
PROVINCETOWN HISTORY
Teddy Roosevelt’s Prescient Denunciation of Corporate Power
The president’s speech, given 114 years ago, rings true today
On a splendid August morning 114 years ago, a yacht carrying President Theodore Roosevelt glided into Provincetown Harbor. He was welcomed by what must have been the loudest boom the […]
MEET THE MAKER
Sailors’ Valentines Were Seashell Souvenirs
A Wellfleet sailor makes a folk art tradition his own
Ever since Kevin Foley sailed the Wind Gypsy, his first charter boat, out of Wellfleet Harbor, he’s lived what he calls a nautical life. Foley — you may know him […]
GOOD TIMES
Jasper’s Surf Shop Lingers in Memory
Fourteen years after closing, the business remains part of local surfing lore
EASTHAM — The origin story behind the Outer Cape’s most storied surf shop is a simple one. One summer day in 1967, after Kevin “Foggy” Foley ran out of gas […]
LOCAL HISTORY
Moe Van Dereck and Jot Small’s Inuit Racing Boats
Built in the ’20s and ’30s, Tarkoo and its siblings ruled the waves
PROVINCETOWN — In 1959, a Provincetown teenager named George Van Dereck Haunstrup, more commonly known in town as Moe Van Dereck, breathed life into a storied sailboat on its last […]
MEMORIAL DAY 2021
The Civil War Memorial Reminds Us of Our Racist Past
We cannot change history, but we can face it to build ‘a more perfect union’
I strolled through the Gifford section of the Provincetown Cemetery recently, reading the inscriptions on headstones I found intriguing. Many of the people named on those stones are not in […]
RE-USE
Modern Business Can Co-Exist With History
‘These buildings have a story to tell’
WELLFLEET — Mac Hay was standing at the sushi bar in his restaurant, Mac’s Shack, on Duck Creek. In the quiet of a preseason day, he paused to run his […]
GALLERY
House to House on Bound Brook Island
Exploring the past on a walk in the woods
Following the roads and paths of Wellfleet’s Bound Brook Island, you’ll find hillsides covered with bearberry and stands of winterberry along the now-still tidal brook below. There are houses, too […]
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
The Brothers Dyer: A Provincetown Family of Captains
Lives lived and lost by the sea
PROVINCETOWN — In January 1868, during the heyday of Provincetown’s whaling era, the Barnstable Patriot noted in a small item, halfway down column two on page two, that four whaling […]
