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[The above image appeared at the head of the original article - Ron] A Thanksgiving Story By The Editor For many year I had heard of the Bowerman home at West Falmouth, on Cape Cod, but not until Friday, Oct. 13, of this year, did I have an opportunity to visit this, the oldest house in West Falmouth, and one of the oldest on the Cape. In going down there from Boston, I reached West Falmouth in the forenoon. The tourists, artists, writers and what-have-you, had spent their summer there and had departed. A stranger is impressed with the quiet dignity of the place, and after a visit to the graveyard of the "Friends Meeting House," the atmosphere was one of solemnity. Here have, for many generations, reposed, with their descendants, the early Quaker settlers who came to West Falmouth in 1667. About that time persecution of Quakers was part of a day's work and during the general uprising against the sect in that year at Sandwich, many sought homes in other places. In that year the King, through the Governor of the colony, gave grants of land at West Falmouth to three families, namely the Bowermans, the Swifts and the Giffords. We were told these families intermarried for several generations and their names appear on many tombstones in the above mentioned graveyard. Among the first names, Thomas, Benjamin, Barnabus, Simeon seemed to be favored and the gentle wives of that early period (dating back from 50 to 200 years) were named Wealthy, Farewell, Charity, Faithful, Virtue, Mehitable and many more on that order. Here the records show that Ichabod, of the fifth generation, migrated to Westchester County, New York, and his descendants, shortly after the revolution, went to Canada where they established the Quaker denomination in the Bay of Quinte District. After a walk on the main thoroughfare, one comes to the winding road going down to the Bowerman house, built by Thomas Bowerman about 1685, and described by Arthur Wilson Tarbell in his "Cape Cod Ahoy!" as the Rainbow Roof House. The visitor is greeted by Mrs. Virtue Bowerman Gifford, a tall, capable looking lady who has taught school, been historian of that section for many years and knows many noted writers and artists, who frequent the Cape, by their first names. Her brilliant conversation brought out much wit and humor concerning noted summer residents of that end of the Cape. For a description of this ancient homestead we borrow a paragraph, correct in every detail, from Tarbell: "The structure is a delight to lovers of early American architecture. It has some fine wide panelling, hand hewn joists and rafters, and floor boards sawed from the entire width of the tree, running twenty-four inches at one end and tapering down to sixteen at the other. The great chimney is unusual. Instead of the usual bricks it is built of flat stones of gray schist, gathered from the nearby hills of glacial origin. It has five fireplaces, the largest one capable of consuming a six-foot log. Its outstanding feature, the crowned roof, was a trick borrowed from ship-building. If bowed timbers added strength to the hull of a vessel, why not to the roof of a house? There are now less than five old homesteads with roofs of this shape on the entire Cape. Of recent years, it has been copied now and then in the construction of new summer cottages." The pearl grey hand hewn shingled houses of earlier days are everywhere to be seen. They have resisted the salt air and sand storms to a remarkable extent, many being the original shingles. We were told, "Clap boards are quite recent, only about the last sixty or seventy years." The late Wm. K. Burr of Picton, Ont., and Lockport, Ill., in writing the Bowerman history, told of five spinning wheels in the attic of this venerable homestead. It was, indeed, almost a sacred ceremony when the writer of this article placed her hand on each of these spinning wheels and tried to imagine the early scenes of generations ago, when in that very place, the Bowerman mothers had spun yarn which was to be knitted and woven into warm winter garments. The narrow, steep, enclosed stairway built over two hundred and fifty years ago, and also another stairway built in the same style, probably one hundred years later, were both abandoned as stairways but were used as clothes closets for the ground floor. The modern, comfortable Cape Cod stairway now used by the family was erected probably three generations ago. These grants of land to the three pioneer families of West Falmouth border on Buzzard's Bay and extend to the main highway running from the village of Buzzard's Bay to Woods Hole. This east shore is as popular today as it was around the turn of the century when visited each summer by President Cleveland, Joseph Jefferson, the actor, and their swanky set. For a description of the original Thomas, we go back to another paragraph of "Cape Cod Ahoy!" "The original Thomas Bowerman, who created this venerable homestead, was an uncompromising Quaker. Falmouth was a wilderness when he came to it around 1684, but a wilderness was what he wanted, to avoid persecution for his religious faith. He was not entirely free from it even then, for the records show that in 1705 he was committed to the Barnstable Jail for not helping to support the minister, and from 1709 to 1728, for the same reason, the constable was seizing cows, hogs, and sheep from him with considerable regularity. Evidently, old Thomas was prepared to pay the price for adherence to his principles. We shall leave this ancient house with a sentence about it which occurs in Dorothy G. Wayman's book 'Suckanesett' -- 'From its door stepped demure Quaker ladies to mount on massive wooden saddles on oxen to make the fifteen-mile journey through the forest to the Friend's Meeting at Sandwich, before the first Friend's meeting house was built in West Falmouth.' " Dear old fighting Thomas Bowerman was buried at Barnstable. Mrs. Gifford, the ninth generation to live in the Rainbow Roof house, receives each year letters and visits from hundreds of Bowerman descendants, and we are reminded of the hundreds and thousands of descendants of pioneers of the New England Colonies who have for nine and ten generations built up the social, professional, and industrial life of the continent. Were we to pause for a moment and reflect on the hardships of our ancestors on those early Colonial Thanksgiving days, we would probably stop complaining about our lot and wish they might be with us this year as "Partakers of our Plentie." --- Edith Z. Bowerman Source: "Silver Creek News and Times," Vol. XXXIII, No. 46: Silver Creek, Chatauqua County, New York; Thursday, Nov. 23, 1939 Webmaster -
Dr. Ronald L.
Lahti, M.A., D.A.
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