Flowers at a Grave

The leaves crunch underfoot, just as they did exactly three hundred years ago in the same spot. There is a mossy bed that surrounds the head and footstone and the October light dapples through the leaves of beautiful poplar. Much has changed beyond the walls of this place, but the reelections on life and sanctity are part of a continuum that defines our small town. There is perhaps no more sacred a place to our history and memories than Canton Corner Cemetery. And, the starting point is the final resting place of Gilburt Indicott. 

The gravestone still reads “Indicott” but the name came down through history as Endicott. And the family tree in America begins right here in this cemetery. The gravestone states that Endicott died on October 18, 1716, age 58. A later descendent from Canton named George Munroe Endicott conducted extensive research and found that “Gilbert Endicott son of John, born October 22, 1648.” It has been accepted that this reference in the parish records of Marldon, Devonshire, England would make our man out to have been 67 years old instead of the 58 on his gravestone. And, who doesn't want to be thought of as ten years younger – even in pre-colonial Dorchester.  

Interestingly, even if Endicott was 58 years old when he died, he packed a terrific amount of activity in his life, which ended here in Stoughton and what is now Canton. In 1676, Endicott was serving as a soldier in King Phillip’s War under Captain John Jacob of Hingham. It was bloody and vicious campaign. In Medfield – less than twelve miles away, “the Indians had burnt about forty houses, near half the town, and killed and wounded about twenty people.” Military patrols guarded the towns between Milton to the Plymouth Colony, and Endicott was likely a foot soldier in this war.  

In 1677, Endicott received a grant of land in Wells, Maine. The condition of the grant was such that “he should build a house within one year, and should not desert the place unless he leaves an occupant upon it.” The small rural community on the seacoast was begun by the enterprise of Edmund Littlefield in 1641. Many of the people who came to Wells and took grants of land, did not continue long enough to fulfill the conditions attached to them, but moved to other places within a few years of their arrival. Endicott, however, seemed to thrive.  In 1681 he received a second grant on the eastern side of Branch River and also purchased fifty acres of land from Major William Phillips.  

The property that Endicott had bought from Phillips was upland on a little river at Cape Porpus. He erected a small sawmill and prospered enough to sell the property in 1683. Endicott married Hannah Gooch (spelled Gowge) in 1686. And they were still in Wells in 1691 when he purchased 30 acres of land in York, Maine. There is also a record of him being in Dorchester for a time in 1690.  

Yet, living in Maine was quite difficult for these were hostile and dangerous times for the Endicotts and their neighbors. In June of 1691, the Abenaki Tribe attacked the village of Wells and the residents had successfully taken shelter and fought off the attackers in a garrison house.  Things really went from bad to worse when on January 24 1692, the morning after Candlemas Day, the town of York, Maine was burned to the ground by a band of 150 Abenaki Indians.  The warrior Indians began systematically breaking into every home, killing the inhabitants inside, and then setting fire to the house. At some point, the killing stopped, and, as one observer wrote, “it would seem as if the savages themselves grew weary of the bloodshed.” With the exception of four garrison houses where some managed to take shelter, all of the 18 or 19 houses on the north side of the York River were burned. Between 40 and 48 people were killed in the massacre, with an estimated 100 others taken captive and forced to march with their captors to Quebec. Indian hostilities continued even after the horrific attack in nearby York, Maine and many families started an exodus from the region. 

By 1696, after almost twenty years in rural Maine, the Endicotts moved to Reading, Massachusetts. It was there that James Endicott was born and where Hannah was baptized. Many of the early settlers in Maine had left and came to Massachusetts for safety. Interestingly, several of Gilbert Endicott’s neighbors from York, Maine escaped after the Candlemas Day Massacre and settled in what is now Canton and Stoughton. Our local historian, Huntoon, wrote “It is a touching incident in our local history that the emigrants driven from the place of their first settlement in the Province of Maine, should have named the new place of their residence “York” and that this name should have been applied to a part of our town from that time to the present.” 

It is also ironic that when Gilbert Endicott came to Ponkapoag in the “wilds of Dorchester,” that he should again engage closely with the Indians. In 1700, Endicott built a house here and had a second child named Sarah who was baptized in the church in Milton. A lease from the Ponkapoag Praying Indians is dated February 27, 1704-5. In exchange for a yearly payment of “£4 in pepper-corn” Endicott received an illegal lease that would supposedly run for two hundred years. Endicott also owned land in what is now Sharon and was bounded by Massapoag Brook. 

In Canton, he settled at what is now the intersection of Chapman and Washington Streets and kept an unlicensed tavern. In 1702 he was obliged to appear before the court for permission to continue his enterprise – which was allowed. Yet he had many simultaneous occupations.  

It would appear from all the real estate transactions that Endicott was fairly prosperous. In 1708 he purchased a half-acre of land in Orange (now Washington Street) in Boston. Quite the enterprising man, he built a dwelling house “of 30 foot long 20 wide & 22 studd with a flatt roof on his land scituate at ye South end of Boston.” This too was to become an inn, but Endicott found it difficult to license and so he ended that venture in 1711. 

Gilbert Endicott died in 1716, and was buried in a new burying ground to the rear of where the new meetinghouse was being built. Today at Canton Corner, this gravesite is the most ancient of the early settlers. On this past Tuesday night, three hundred year to the day of his death, this author – accompanied by a handful of residents walked quietly through the leaves to the grave. Kneeling in the damp grass, we took a moment to reflect. In the flickering light from colonial-era lanterns we paid homage to the legacy and memory of Gilbert Endicott. It was an emotional and touching scene as we left flowers at the grave – perhaps for the first time in hundreds of years. Rest in peace Gilburt Indicott 1648 – 1716. 

A Ring of the Son of Thunder

Memento Mori ring cast as a memorial to
Rev. Samuel Dunbar, 1783. (Courtesy of Eldred’s Auction)

The simple inscription on the inside of a small gold ring tells an amazing story that reaches back over 300 years to the birth of Samuel Dunbar. The inside of the ring in a colonial script reads: “Rev’d Saml. Dunbar June 15, 1783 AE 78” and a makers mark “PR.”


For all purposes, know that when I write of Canton, I write of the place that began as Dorchester, became Stoughton, was divided into parishes, and ultimately became what we know as Canton in 1797.

A receipt from 1777 signed by Samuel Dunbar
in the collection of the Canton Historical Society

As this town grew, the need for ministerial guidance was at the forefront of this community. The town minister was as important, and perhaps even of greater importance as that of the town doctor or miller. Samuel Dunbar was born in Boston on October 2, 1704, and when he was 4, his father died. At a very early age he attracted the attention of the Reverend Cotton Mather. Mather held the strictest of religious doctrines, best exhibited by his views on witchcraft and the subsequent hangings at Salem. Under Mather’s guidance, Dunbar attended Boston Latin School and Harvard College. By 1727, the people of Canton reached out and sent letters of inquiry asking that the 23 year old accept a ministry over the Church of Christ in Stoughton.


Through the years in Canton, a handsome house was built on what is now Chapman Street. A family grew and the reverend became extremely influential in all things religious and politic. The image of the man in a “long black gown, his snow white bands, his flowing gray wig, his black short-clothes, his knee and shoe buckles” stir a very proper picture of a righteous man. Upon the death of a resident who had not been an attendant at church, Dunbar stood at the head of the coffin and turned to the surviving relatives and proclaimed that “his body was before them, but his soul was in hell.”


In his early ministry in Canton he was a staunch supporter of the Crown, as all were in the middle of the 18th century. Dunbar was of the highest moral character and most esteemed by the entire community. When the call of duty was made by the king in 1755, Dunbar, as chaplain, accompanied Richard Gridley and Paul Revere (then 21) to fight against the French at Crown Point.

The Doty Tavern depicted in an 1876
drawing for Potter’s American
Magazine (Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

Over the years, as discontent grew among the people of the colonies, the fiery reverend changed sides and vociferously supported the patriots’ cause. In fact, in 1774 Dunbar bore witness to the birth of liberty. On Tuesday, August 16, 1774, delegates from around the surrounding towns gathered at Doty Tavern, at the foot of the Blue Hill, to hold a “Congress.” This meeting would bring about the emancipation from the tyrannous hands of the king. What would become known as the Suffolk Resolves was first discussed at this meeting. Dunbar, against the advice of family, friends and fellow ministers, attended the meeting and opened with a prayer that was described as “the most extraordinary liberty prayer” ever heard. It would not be hard to imagine coming from a person who once prayed that God would “put a bit in their mouths and jerk them about, send a strong northeast gale, and dash them [the British fleet] to pieces on Cohasset Rock.”


Dunbar was an amazing man, and in the truest sense a patriot, alongside Adams, Hancock, Revere, and Warren. He was known alternatively as a “Son of Thunder” and a “Son of Consolation.” As the “eldest Son of Liberty,” Dunbar bore witness to an extraordinary time in our history, giving comfort during times of distress and thanks during times of triumph. Samuel Dunbar lived long enough to see victory and the birth of our nation.


The first minister to publicly read the Declaration of Independence from the pulpit died on June 15, 1783. It would take 13 days for the great man to die, in excruciating pain, yet surrounded by family and friends at his home in the Old Parsonage. Huntoon describes the scene: “As the shades of evening approached, his pulse became slower and his breath shorter…” An affectionate friend kneels and inquires upon the old man’s pain, to which the response is, “I have served a good Master, and he has not forsaken me.”

Samuel Dunbar’s Parsonage which once
stood on Chapman Street. (Courtesy of the
Canton Historical Society)

Dunbar’s obituary ran in the Independent Chronicle and the Universal Advertiser on July 3, 1783. “They gather’d together, and with a generofity and tendernefs chearfully agreed to inter him at their common expence” continuing “the congregation, form’d in two ranks, proceeded from the dwelling houfe of the deceafed firft, the church next, then the deceafed borne by twelve principal men of the parifh, and the pall fupported by eight of the neighboring minifters.” Once committed to the grave, the obituary concluded, “The sweet remembrance of the just, Shall flourish when he sleeps in dust.”


And now to the ring. A recent caller from Cape Cod inquired as to what I knew of Dunbar, all of which I have related in this story. The initials “PR” intrigued me. Could this be … Paul Revere? In fact, this gold ring was most likely cast by the hands of the patriot and friend of Dunbar. As was the custom for the wealthy, a provision was made to quickly gather up gold and silver and have it cast into rings as a Memento Mori. These rings would be given as gifts to those closest friends as a way of signifying the importance of the man and as a literal reminder that you too shall “remember your mortality.”


A call to my friend, Nina Zannieri, the executive director of the Paul Revere House, confirmed, “It looks pretty good to us.” But, how does “pretty good” stack up? Digging further we found that in 1783 Paul Revere wrote in his day book that he cast eight rings for a single client, Capt. James Indicot. Zannieri writes, “It seems unlikely that is related to the one in your picture.”


What Zannieri did not immediately connect was the fact that Indicot was actually James Endicott — of Canton. James Endicott served as a captain in the Revolution at Lexington, Dorchester Heights, Cambridge, and Ticonderoga. Endicott was a friend of Revere; in fact, when Endicott’s house burned to the ground in 1806, it was Paul Revere who led the public financial campaign to rebuild the house against the impending winter. The brick house still stands on Washington Street, just past the high school.


Endicott, at 44 years old, was a rising and prominent citizen. A representative to the General Court, justice of the peace appointed by John Hancock, member of the committee that separated Canton from Stoughton, and the town treasurer, it was Endicott that placed an order for eight gold rings with Paul Revere. The daybook entry is made after May but before July 1783, and reads, in part, “to 8 Gold morn’g ring, weight 15.8 – 4 pounds, 4 shilling, 4 pence. Making ——- 1 pound, 6 shilling, 8 pence – Paid.” So, eight rings were cast about the same time as the death of Samuel Dunbar; one has survived.


On April 9 at Eldred’s Auction Gallery in East Dennis, we will see Paul Revere’s memorial gold ring cast for our second minister, Samuel Dunbar, hit the auction block. Presale estimates for this piece of our town’s history are between $4,000 and $8,000. History is alive and well — but at the right price.

A Cave to Remember

Fairbanks Ledge on Standish Way
 (photo by George T. Comeau)

I was intrigued the day I opened the email from my good friend and fellow historian Dave Lambert. Lambert is one of the town of Stoughton’s preeminent local historians, and since Canton was once part of Stoughton, he shares my passion for all things related to the history of our two sibling communities.

The email arrived in early January 2009. The body of the email was simple and read: “Here are the images of Fairbanks Cave in 1908, and the location in 2009. Want to go on an adventure; let me know!”

An adventure? “Yes” always was my answer. After all, I assume, dear reader, that you saw my last installment on the subject of trespassing. The very idea of a “cave” in Canton was more than I could hope for. The email contained the map illustrated with this story.

Old maps are not new to Canton. The “Histy” has dozens upon dozens. Nestled in banker’s boxes, on the shelf above the vault door, hanging on walls, in flat files, and just about everywhere throughout the building. In fact, several similar maps to the one that Lambert sent me are in a small metal drawer just inside the Historical Society vault. Some of the maps are so old and creased that great care must be taken with simply unrolling the vellum.

It turns out that actually finding this cave would be harder than it seemed. Canton has changed so much in a hundred years. The landscape has been bulldozed, filled, excavated, and man has dominated the natural form such that little unprotected and untouched open space remains. A cave might surely be lost to growth and expansion of subdivisions and modern construction.

That said, the accompanying map that came with Lambert’s email had a few tantalizing clues. It was amazingly detailed and accurate in measure and scale. The map was sketched en route to accompany an outing of the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC). The trip of 44 persons came to Canton on April 11, 1908, and “hiked” from Canton Junction to the Wetherbee Pasture and onto the Fairbanks Cave. The total hike was 4.5 miles and took a few hours to complete.  Today, actually finding this cave would take me several days of research and driving around town.

The Wetherbee Pasture in 1918 Now the
Blue Hill Country Club
(courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

The map was drawn by E.G. Chamberlain. Chamberlain had written the guide on the Blue Hills for Appalachia, the Journal of the AMC, in 1883 and likely led the club’s excursion to Canton and Milton in 1883. Chamberlain’s map of the Blue Hill Range is highly detailed and superbly drawn. By 1904, Chamberlain’s Blue Hill Panorama had been carelessly copied by so many people that he had an original copy lithographed, and it became standard issue for all day hikers from the AMC.

It was the practice of the AMC to bring along a mapmaker on outings to draw details of the trip and publish these as small “blue prints” to be distributed to members. The map that Lambert had emailed me was a small blueprint that captured small details in the paths and landscape perfectly. It should prove easy to find the cave’s location simply looking at old maps and overlaying Google Maps with the 1908 drawing.

The puzzle on the Fairbanks Cave Map is that I could find no local reference to Fairbanks. It was Chamberlain’s practice to name objects discovered by the club during their outings. For instance, Chamberlain writes of a trip to Amesbury, Massachusetts: “After visiting Powder House Hill we crossed a deep valley and ascended a higher hill, which diligent search shows has never appeared on any map. Even the recent state topographic map omits it. So I called it ‘Lost Hill’ on my outing map.” This was a clue that perhaps Chamberlain had simply named the cave on whim.

It turns out that in the Canton Historical Society a small map drawn to accompany the 1887 Fast Day Walk to the same spot described the topography, 21 years earlier, as Fairbanks Ledge. The historian Daniel Huntoon walked with the society members that day and told the story: “A huge mass of cold gray granite rises abruptly in the midst of the woods and underbrush. On the westerly side is an opening where six or eight men might easily find shelter. Here tradition asserts that one Fairbanks, ages ago, was obliged to secrete himself for a long time in order to avoid the officers of justice. It would appear that an Indian made some offensive gesture, accompanied with an insulting remark to Fairbanks; whereupon the latter, upon the impulse of the moment, fired a charge of buckshot into the Indian, from the effects of which he died.”

The AMC Outing to Fairbanks Cave
(courtesy of David Lambert)
Click to enlarge details

The map is very technically drawn and is very similar to several other hand-drawn maps of the same period. Canton had plenty of connections in the AMC. Frederic Endicott, a prominent Canton resident and superb surveyor and cartographer, served as a councilor to the AMC. Many of Endicott’s maps survive in the Canton Historical Society and are superbly drawn and highly accurate. Endicott drew the 1887 Fast Day Walk map that identifies this site as Fairbanks Ledge.

The overlays of historic maps, the AMC Map, and our new age Google Maps – complete with satellite imagery – do not solve the question. After unsuccessfully locating the cave using our modern technology, it was time to talk to people in the area.

I called Mrs. Meadow, who lives on the west side of Elm Street and whose property I guessed the cave would be located on. Meadow came to Canton in 1956 and had purchased the Draper property on Elm Street. The original tract of land totaled almost 75 acres, and when Route 95 cut through the property it was reduced to the present 40 acres. This large property is largely intact and could be a breakthrough in this research. Mrs. Meadow, however, did not think the cave was on her property, but a return call from her son, Richard, confirmed both the existence and the location.

Richard Meadow, a prominent archeologist at Harvard University, had indeed recalled what he described as the “Indian Cave.” In reality, it was a large rocky outcropping with a deep hole that he would explore with other friends while hiking his own property and the neighboring Fish property. A small opening in the fence gave access to the area where the “cave” was situated.

And so the mystery is solved; you too can visit the Indian Cave. It turns out that the “cave” was never really lost and never really a cave in the truest sense. Fairbanks Ledge is readily accessible if you drive to the very end of Standish Way. The rock is, as Huntoon described it, “immense,” and well worth the drive by. Finding an old map and discovering our rich local history is as impressive as the journey itself.

This story originally appeared in the Canton Citizen on February 3, 2011.

Our Relationship with Mother Nature

A photo of the storm of 1898 taken near
Washington and Pond Streets by
George Burt (courtesy of the
Canton Historical Society.)

If you live in New England and you do not love the snow, at the very least you have to appreciate the amazing forces of nature that converge upon us and present themselves in the form of a Nor’easter. The recent storm that dumped 18.2 inches of snow as recorded at the Blue Hill Observatory ties for the third largest amount of snow in January ever measured at this renowned meteorological station.

This was an intense snowstorm and it is amazing how quickly we recover from such a storm. Snowplows begin work early on, and our intrepid DPW crews work day and night to ensure that we are hardly interrupted by Mother Nature’s fury. Criticism over snow removal today is echoed in a Canton newspaper commentary of 1898: “If the critics had the handling of the job probably they would be criticized just as harshly.” So while we may complain about the weather, there is little we can do about it. There are, however, several notable snowstorms to look back upon that provide a historical glimpse of the relationship between man and nature.

Most significantly is the Great Snow of 1717. The storm began on February 27 and lasted until March 9. What was thought of as one long storm was actually four storm systems back to back that crippled Boston and our town of what was then Dorchester. Just seven days prior, a storm had already dropped a significant amount of snow, so when the Great Snow bore down, the cart paths and roads were already hampered. The severity of this storm is hard to fathom today. Colonists had little warning, and in their memory there was never an event like this one. The natives who lived alongside the early colonists shared that there had been no snow in over 200 years that equaled this storm.

A woodcut depicting the storm of 1717

The damage was severe and brought incredible hardship as a result. Vast numbers of cattle were lost — buried where they stood they died in place. Nearer to the ocean, the wind brought driving rain, snow and sleet, and when combined with the wind-chill actually formed rime over the animals’ eyes such that they wandered blindly into the sea and drowned. Cotton Mather, the politically influential Puritan minister, wrote of the devastation: “One gentleman, on whose farms were now lost above 1100 sheep, which with other cattel, were interred (shall I say) or innived, in the snow, writes me word that there were two sheep very singularly circumstanced. For no less than eight and twenty days after the storm, the people pulling out the ruins of above 100 sheep out of a snow bank, which lay 16 foot high, drifted over them, there was two found alive, which had been there all this time, and kept themselves alive by eating the wool of their dead companions.”

By many accounts the storm wiped out 95 percent of the deer population. Many houses, smaller then for sure, were covered completely over and not even the chimney showed over the drifts more than 25 feet deep. It would take months to recover from this storm. Orchards were destroyed, bird populations were disrupted, and transportation was all but limited to walking.

It would be the advent of modern science that brought a keener study of storms and their affects. The Blue Hill Observatory figures prominently in the annals of atmospheric science. Founded in 1885, it would be the perfect place to record storms as they rolled through the Neponset Valley. The year 1898 was a particularly bad season for winter storms, including two major storms that brought death and destruction to our area.

The first “great storm” recorded at the observatory came in late January 1898 and was classified as a blizzard. This storm caused $82 million in damage. Ships were driven ashore, and in Boston alone more than 200 horses were killed. In Canton, thermometers dropped to 15 degrees below zero on February 4. At the height of the storm, two trains collided head-on at Canton Junction at the terminus of the Stoughton Branch. Several passengers were injured and the cowcatchers in front of the engines were destroyed.

The local paper wrote about the effects of the storm: “Wires succumbed everywhere. The telephone operator sat before a silent switchboard. In the depots the telegraph instruments were mute. Electric light wires gave way and on Sherman Street several poles were down. All over town trees were broken down and windmills suffered severely. The snow clung to the sides of buildings in heavy sheets and made many beautiful pictures and the oldest inhabitant has been busy with reminiscences all week to match this storm with ‘those when we were boys.’” The damage was considerable and the town spent more than $1,000 cleaning up the mess.

That same year, in November, what would become known as the Portland Gale produced a storm surge of about ten feet in Cohasset harbor and hurricane-force winds in Nantucket. The storm killed more than 400 people and sank more than 150 boats and ships. The storm dumped 15 inches of snow, and it took two dozen men 48 hours to dig out Randolph Street by hand. Most notably, this storm destroyed the S.S. Portland, which wrecked off of Stellwagen Bank with 192 passengers on board. Fortunately, no Canton residents were on board, but many locals reported that they “felt a sad familiarity with the scenes that must have occurred” that fateful evening. In a small leather diary, Frederick Endicott takes note of “a snow storm with very high winds.” Continuing on, he writes of “immense drifts,” adding that it “took nearly the whole morning to get shoveled out.” And the final entry that week mentions the “great loss of life at sea in Sunday’s storm. Steamer Portland wrecked off Cape Cod.”

February 1899 on Chapman Street.
Photography by I.C. Horton
(Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

Canton has always “weathered” the various storms much like surrounding towns. The photographs taken by local shutterbugs show classic street scenes with houses covered in snow up to the first floor windows. The views looking down the “Turnpike,” now Route 138 in Ponkapoag, are idyllic scenes of winter. The images of the blanketing of fields across the meadows looking toward Blue Hill are among the most splendid views in the collection of the Canton Historical Society.

The view across meadows towards the Blue Hill.
Photo taken in 1898.
(courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

An observer of 1898 wrote: “Standing at the turn of the road just beyond the old Fenno house a wide stretch of country is spread out at one’s feet and the effect is the more striking from the steepness of the slopes. The ice covered surface of Ponkapoag Pond and the frowning projections from Blue Hill make this gorge seem far deeper and more picturesque than can be expressed in measurements in feet and inches, while to the west the eye may range for miles without meeting a barrier in the way of overtopping heights. On a clear day the view rivals many famed mountain scenes and the beholder never wonders that here men grow old contentedly and maintain their health and strength and good nature through a green old age.” 

And that is why we live in Canton.


This story ran in the Canton Citizen on January 20, 2011.