Quite recently we heard a lecture by a representative of the Essex Greenbelt Association, an organization created to preserve as much of the early coastal area as possible. In the course of the lecture, a point was raised that the marshlands of eastern Massachusetts, especially of Cape Ann, were the least changed marshland areas on the East Coast.

A picture grows in the mind of the observer as to what this virgin land must have looked like to the settlers who lived first by the sea itself and then gradually inland, developing naturally grassy areas into farmland, and cutting down the trees in the forests to open up new agricultural areas and provide the timber for all the new buildings required. This picture, to a reasonable extent, is what the Greenbelt people would preserve, to whatever limited extent is possible almost four centuries after the beginnings.

As the early villages sprang up in the decades following the settlement of Plymouth, the sea became the obvious “thoroughfare” among them. Isaac Allerton, an enterprising businessman, acquired several vessels — shallops brought aboard larger vessels, pinnaces and larger “used” vessels that had survived passage across the north Atlantic — and served passage and communication among the seaside villages.

Plymouth at first seemed to be the “home harbor” of these vessels. Ports such as Ipswich, Salem and Boston, however, emerged as more active ports, especially as larger transport vessels took over the passages of the “Great Migration” from England, mainly to the Bay colony. Incidentally, the Angel Gabriel, a 16-gun vessel originally built for Sir Walter Raleigh, destroyed in Ipswich Harbor by one of the great storms of the century, is said to have been the only such passenger transport vessel lost in that period, and with a loss of human life.

Essex Country seems to have kept an unusual acreage of these early days through large farms and estates and, by the same token, much of the “littoral” — the coastal area.

In a series of essays I have been writing about the Cape Ann of my childhood 75 or 80 years ago for the Gloucester Daily Times, I had written especially about the marshland of Cape Ann, which the Greenbelt people spoke of as begin the most clearly representative of the early days. And my childhood, of course, was at a time before the onset of the major changes, which are seriously affecting the increasingly crowded coastline:

As I look at the Annisquam River from a nonscientific point of view, I see a waterway from Gloucester Harbor to Ipswich Bay, completed by the Rev. Blynman’s ‘cut’ from the marshlands to the harbor in 1642, or a conduit for draining and flushing the interconnected marshlands twice a day. The whole low-lying area is like a great shallow basin surrounded by how hills.

At dead low tide one can see the marshlands with their many narrow drains, like fine veins. The river is the main artery, with water flowing in from Lobster Cove, Goose Cove and Mill River on the Cape side, and from Little River and Jones River on the West Gloucester side. The water on the outgoing tide is always a mixture of the salt water and the clear water that has flowed in from the surrounding land. The water that flows out in the afternoon and evening has been warmed by the sun as it lies in the marshes.

During the summers of growing up, by canoe, or skiff or cat-boat, or infrequently motor launch, I came to know the river, and its tributaries from the coves and the meandering creeks through the marshes. It was a world of mystery with a life all its own.

But I saw it first through the eyes of a little boy, and so experienced it.

Across the street from Garland cottage lived Mr. & Mrs. Wiggins, where an easement led down to one of two float landings. The other landing, to the left, served the Copeland cottage. Still farther, to the left of the Copeland, was a landing below the Beardlsey cottage. According to the deeds, all the lots in the area enjoyed access there to a small beach to the left, or to the float area to the right by a common right of way. The float itself, as I remember it, was maintained and stored during the winter by contributions from those who used it most.

The general landing served the neighborhood. We would swim from these landings and either tie up or pull onto the float in small boats, like a skiff of a canoe, A larger boat, like Mr. Wiggins’ motor launch, would be moored at the entrance to the creek that followed the shore line to the right into the cove at low water. Periodically we would organize picnic parties to Wingaersheek Beach, across from the Annisquam where the river flows into Ipswich Bay.

Life was simple. The iceman came regularly. There was a gas line for cooking stoves and room heaters against the chilly, damp days. A surface pipe brought in city water and was turned off early in the fall. A man with a nice smile came around in a wagon to sell vegetables, fruits and other food items. I think someone came with meat and fish.

Sometimes memory becomes a blander instead of a clarifier. I think I might had heard “Ingy” (Mr. Ingersoll) in his metal launch; perhaps I remember only the stories about him. He ran the store in the old mill building in Riverdale. The mill had been a clever forerunner of the proposed Passamaquoddy Dam, which never came into being. The Passamaquoddy was to have used the great differences in tide in the Bay of Fundy to generate electricity, no matter which ways the water flowed. The tide mills were a Yankee use of the tides on a smaller scale.

Mill River drained the area where the Babson Reservoir is today. On its way to join Annisquam, it flowed through a broad alley. Where its waist narrowed, a dam was built with a weir to control the flow of water. The old mill at Riverside would use the water rising with the tide in Mill River, and then use the same water as it ran out with the tide, to grind grain.

To get back to Ingy, he would load his motorized metal launch with all kinds of groceries and ‘special orders’ and stop at the floats along Mill River and out on the Annisquam. As he came in for a landing, he would bang with a wrench on the metal launch to let people know he had arrived and was ready for business. Maybe I heard the last of his bangs; maybe I remember Mother’s stories about him. He was a character and an institution.

One of the great thrills would come when a tugboat would come through the river towing a brand new hull from the Essex shipyard (one of the earliest) to Gloucester in order to be fitted out. I saw this several times, at least once from a rowboat.

In the past century and a half, I think, we have seen the most traumatic changes from the earlier centuries. And I am wholeheartedly in favor of the work the Greenbelt people and similar organizations are doing. I hope that when we gather for our annual meetings in Plymouth, those who come from an inland distance will at least take a cruise through Plymouth Harbor in order to savor some of the beauty and uniqueness of the waterfront — and possibly visit Essex County to see the marshes and the beaches. There are still a few areas where we can see almost what our predecessors saw! In our Centennial Year, we saw some of Cape Cod very near to what they saw on the first landings.

This article appeared in the June 1999 issue of The Howland Quarterly.