OUR EXODUS
By Henrietta French Doble

(Wife of William Doble, founder of Pneumatic Scales)

The idea of this exodus had been, more or less in our thoughts for two or three years, nebulous at first but shaping into form as time passed. At this time, the year 1898, we lived in the small city of Quincy, whose main industry (mostly pertaining to granite quarries) hired all sorts of foreigners, some who made good citizens-others doubtful. Our orchard, where children loved to play, stretched back to a walled brook, and on the other side were houses, many of them little better than shacks. Children swarmed in the streets, and a group of boys from ten to fourteen years had formed themselves into a troublesome gang known as the Brackett Street Gang. Many were the encounters of our two older boys and their friends with these hoodlums, and many were the scratched faces, bloody noses, "shiners" as the boys called them, and torn clothes after each scrimmage - as well an astounding and objectionable increase in their vocabulary. I dreaded the hours after school ended until bedtime, Saturdays were nightmares; the long summer vacations were days of anxiety and apprehension. Something had to be done.

A few years before this some intimate friends of ours, the Stetsons, had bought an old homestead in West Harwich on Cape Cod, where we had spent several happy weekends. Knowing our difficulties and anxieties in regard to the children, they suggested that they look about in the vicinity to find a suitable home for us to buy. We agreed and one day in the late summer of 1897 we received a letter from them asking us to come down, for they had found a house that we might like. The very next weekend we went down, and immediately after our arrival our friends drove us over to inspect this house, which was a mile or more from the little village center. After a turn in the road and as we rattled over a rough wooden bridge that spanned a small river, my friend Clara, touched my arm and said, " Look, there's your house!" And there, green shuttered and gray with white trimmings, I saw the house, which afterwards became so dear to us. As we neared it, we found it was situated on a bluff, facing the mouth of the little river, Herring, by name, which emptied into Nantucket Sound.  Twenty miles of blue water separated us from Nantucket Island. A large group of pines, looking like a primal forest, stood on the side of the sound on a point, which jutted out into the water.  It was almost sunset and the scene I shall never forget.

The house was large and could not boast a vestige of classic architecture. It faced the west and on the north side was evidently the common roomy Cape Cod cottage of a story and a half, but on the south there rose a two-story construction exactly like the houses children draw, and wide piazza stretched across its front. We learned later on that the original house, the cottage, belonged to a well-known sea captain, Captain Ellis, who had sailed the seven seas, carrying cargoes of sorts, and that after a particularly successful voyage, he had added this taller building to please his wife. 

My friends had obtained the keys from the caretaker; the men opened the shutters to and we saw a good-sized sitting room.  A door led to a small bedroom behind. A tiny hall with a steep staircase led to two good size chambers, and on the second floor, to large chambers, and on the ground floor, two large chambers and a nice dinning room with a closed fireplace, and beyond that, the kitchen. There was no bathroom, and the only water supply came from a pump in the kitchen sink. Underneath the house were two commodious cellars, one, the round cellar, so common in the Cape Cod sandy soil.  

The next day the two men picked up the real estate man and carefully went over the underpinnings, sills and ground construction and found everything in good condition. A day or so later we went home to think this all over. During the winter following, we thought and talked over all the " pros and cons". My husband made several visits to the Point, as we began to call it, and one evening in March he came home and, smiling, told me that the house was ours.  With this finality, after the natural excitement and pleasure, there crowded thoughts in my mind of the work entailed to close our town house and to prepare to transport our large family to an absolutely empty house.  In our room that night your father, who had noticed my sudden silence in all the excitement of the children, said, " Don't be downhearted.  I know it will be a lot of work, but if you'll be happy about it, and see about cleaning and closing this house and preparing the children for the summer, I shall, with your help in lists of necessities, take the replenishing and furnishing of the house as my job ".  With misgivings I agreed. There were a little more than three months to the end of June, but when I thought of the benefit to the children, especially the two older boys, I took heart and went to work with a will.

Then came busy days. Naturally we could do nothing about putting away winter clothing until later - it was still March weather - or cleaning or closing the house, but we could get the children's clothing ready for the entire summer, and Mother, who, after my father's death, had recently (At your father's invitation) come to make her home with me, was a great help, as she was, as the old saying is, " handy with a needle ". 

In those days, over a half century ago, there was plenty of ready-made clothing in the stores, but the things I could afford I simply could not put on the children (so cheap in material and workmanship), and the things I wanted and liked were beyond our pocketbook, so there was only one alternative- to purchase good material and patterns and make the clothing at home.   We could buy most of the two older boys' outfits.  I remember that we made blouses and nightshirts for them and bought the rest, underwear and socks play trousers and good suits.  But for the other four children, with the exception of certain pieces of underwear, shirts and hosiery, we made everything.

After looking over the clothing on hand, Mother and I made lists of the needs of each child for the whole summer, as there would be no stores to go to in the little country village where we would be. Then I made shopping trips to Boston, buying suitable materials and suitable patterns. I spent every leisure moment for days in cutting out and basting night clothes, pants, waists, and petticoats for the two girls, Rama and Clarice, and Jack, the baby - dresses for the two girls and jack, for in those days little boys wore dresses until three years old – and blouses and trousers for little Ken. Mother stitched seams and took out bastings and overcastted; I sewed on the trimmings and made buttonholes. 

By the end of May we had neat piles of clothing ready for each of six children with only a few more things to buy, like shoes and sneakers for all, and woolen blouses and corduroy trousers for the two big boys to wear on wet days. The putting away of so much winter clothing - always a hard and distasteful task - was done at last. Closets were regulated and the house was cleaned with my faithful Mary Lynch's help, "Old Lady Lynch" as my disrespectful boys called her, and what a comfort this Scotch woman was for me for many years!  Louise Beauchamp, our Cape Breton maid, entered into the preparations heart and hand, so everything went well, with much excitement on the older children's part as they witnessed our daily activities.

And your father was not idle through all these months. The house we had bought had been empty and closed for several years and was sadly out of repair. Much carpentry was necessary, and the house needed painting outside and in.  Each room must be freshly papered and the floors painted and spattered in good old Cape Cod fashion. The grounds, too, had been neglected; grass and weeds had overgrown everything.  All these repairs necessitated many trips to the Cape to hire workmen and with them to investigate what needed to be done, then to see that it was done satisfactorily.   It meant selecting colors in paint for the house outside, woodwork and floors inside, and choosing paper for each room. It took time and he was a busy man, but I'm sure he enjoyed it.  In fact, it was the beginning of his hobby, buying and fixing furniture that culminated in the houses at Old Mill Point, as later it was called.  At first, with only a few houses on the Point, we named our place, "Point Kewahdin ", a point of the southwest wind, the name taken from Longfellow's,  “Hiawatha".  

While these repairs were going on, your father was buying furniture for the many rooms (seven chambers, living room, sitting room, dinning room and kitchen), rather, I should say furnishings, for besides the furniture he must purchase rugs of different sizes for the chambers, living room, sitting room and hall. As we had no bathroom, toilet sets and slop jars were necessary and for the kitchen a range, ice box, a complete supply of kitchen utensils (I remember that they were a long-wearing Grey enamel ware, popular at the time), and very important, screens for all the windows and doors. 

Then there was the bed linen (sheets, pillowcases, summer blankets and spreads) and kitchen linen too, for he had decided to equip the house fully, so that nothing but the family clothing would need to be carried down and back each summer.  As the three older children attended the public schools at that time, we were obligated to wait until the end of June when the schools closed, to make our moving.  However, we brought down trunks and suitcases from the attic and started the packing a week before our exit.   This was my job. I made lists of each child's clothing, even to shoes, placed them in piles, and Rama brought me the piles as I needed them for the trunks, leaving out enough clothing for two days for the suitcases to be taken with us. So the time came for the exodus, and we were busy and excited family.

There was no train stopping at Quincy to reach the Cape and up railway station at West Harwich so our trip was a bit complicated, especially for a family of six children and four grown-ups.  I shall leave to your imagination the hurly of those last days, and especially the day before the circus moved.

The excited children were at last asleep, and Mother, Will and I, and the maid, Louise, went about doing last things in closing the house. Will had hired a freight train to take down our livestock; the two cows, two horses, mother's little cocker spaniel, the children's pets (rabbits and guinea pigs) were taken in and loaded that afternoon, together with the hired man who was to sleep in a hammock in the car according to law, Oh, and our carriages, too.

Will and I got little sleep that night, and by four o'clock we were up and doing, for at seven we had to be at Quincy station to go to Boston where, after a short wait, we would take a local train to North Harwich; then would follow a bus ride to West Harwich I shall never forget it.  This first journey was taken without spectators, but several of our friends who visited us that year heard of our start from Mother, Will and me, each year they would gather to see us off.  They said it was better than any vaudeville.   The trunks had been taken to the station the night before, so our work that morning was getting the children up and dressed for breakfast, which they were too excited to eat, and the final cleaning up and checking on doors and windows.

The station was a short distance away, and as I recall it, your father with Ralph walked while Morrissey's station wagon came for the rest of us.  Carl had already started the day before in the donkey cart to drive to the Cape attended by a friend who drove Will's horse, Jolap, down.  So nine of us with four suitcases piled in and were soon at the Quincy station. Your father busied himself with checking the trunks while we sat in the almost deserted station. Soon it was time for the train to take us to Boston. Will had found out from the stationmaster where the passenger cars would probably stop, and there we stood, carefully marshaled. 

I was to get in first with one of the suitcases to select seats; Mother to follow with Jack (Enoch Hall Doble II), the baby, then Louise carrying Ken, the three-year old who had suffered an injury to his hip and had not been able to walk for weeks before and, indeed all that summer; then Rama (Rachel Mary Doble) with Clarice carrying the cat, his head sticking out of the green lawyer's bag; then Ralph and Will with the other suitcases. This plan was followed and we hustled aboard an almost empty car. Our stay in South Station in Boston was an anxious time for me but the children enjoyed watching the people come and go, while Will (William Henry), with Ralph in attendance, got our tickets. Soon we were on the train and our exodus had really begun!

It is strange how little things remain in my memory. I can vividly remember Ralph's clipped head, for he and Carl (Charles French Doble) had begged to have a clip cut and their father had agreed. Ken had on a dark blue sailor suit, one of his first real boy's suits, of which he was very proud and which was very becoming to him with his fair skin and blonde hair.  Jack sat with his wide brown eyes watching everything, in a white dress, red reefer with brass buttons, white stockings and red shoes, also a white sailor hat with red streamers under which his brown curls bobbed.  Clarice sat quietly with the cat in her lap besides Rama.  I can see them now!

The journey was hot and tiresome for us grown-ups. The baby slept in my lap as did Ken in Louise's part of the time. Rama, Clarice and Ralph eagerly watched the scenery from the windows.  Will read his newspaper. Only once were we really disturbed. This is when a wail came from Clarice, " Mama, Mama, the kitty is leaking"- and the necessary repairs afterward. It seemed hours, and it was, too, before we reached the North Harwich station for the train stopped seemingly at every back door, but at last the family stood safe and unbroken on the North Harwich station platform.

There a station wagon drawn by two horses awaited us and in it we climbed. It was long before good roads were laid.  We ploughed through deep sand, which followed the wheels around, and we bumped over ruts. It was almost noontime on a hot last-of-June day and we were tired, all of us. Will tried to keep up our sprits by calling our attention to the pines and their pungent odor, the smell of the salt sea breeze and the thunderheads, which began to gather.  It was not long before we were rattling over the shaky bridge, and a quick turn brought us to the house. There we were met by old Freeman Ellis, barefooted and shaded by a big farmer's hat, and Mr. Erastus Chase, who, after greeting us warmly, went to his carriage and brought out a pot of baked beans which he presented to me.

The front door was open, and we went in. In spite of the misgivings I had had on the purchase of the house, the hard work of preparation, and the toil still awaiting, I felt a thrill as I stepped over the threshold of this first house we had ever owned and which was to be our pleasant summer home for more then fifteen happy years. Mother, Louise and the children followed me into the sitting room. Evidently the furniture had come and was left where the express man had dumped it. Mother and the two younger children sat down. 

The older children ran to the beach. Louise and I went directly to the kitchen, carrying the pot of beans. There were cases of kitchen utensils partially opened, a carton from S.S. Pierce Co., an ice chest on the piazza outside, the sink and pump- but no kitchen range. Louise and I looked blankly at one another. "No stove", said Louise. The children had been so excited at their early breakfast that they had eaten little. They had sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, cookies and fruit on the train, but we had planned to give them something to eat as soon as we could after arriving. "No stove"!  This was a calamity with a family of ten people. 

I ran outside to Will who was chatting with Mr. Chase. "There's no range in the kitchen". "What's that, no range?" said he, "I sent one down days ago", and he hurried to the kitchen, then hastily searched the house and barn but there was no range. Remember, we were in the country, no telephone, no car line, and our horses hadn't arrived. Will was angry; he asked Mr. Chase to take him back to the station, as the range must be there. But it wasn't! Checking the things he had sent he found that neither were the cases of bed linens and blankets nor the screens, three most essential things. And too, he found out the reason for the trouble.  The freight cars with these things aboard had been wreaked some stations back. Nothing on them had been delivered our cases among them. 

In the meanwhile the thunderheads we thought; so beautiful had been gathering, and we heard the first rumbles.  Soon came sharp lightening and thunder, which shook the house. Ralph, Rama and Clarice came rushing in. I gathered the children into the sitting room - all but the baby. He had wandered into the dinning room searching for me, and as a terrible bolt with crashing thunder echoed through the house, he came running, tripped over the threshold and fell, striking his forehead on the corner or the door jam. I gathered him up, screeching with fright and pain. As a large angry looking bump appeared, Mother rushed for water. Ken began to cry as did Clarice, and the other children huddled around while the elements let loose above us. Added to this was growing anxiety about Carl, who should be nearing the house, as they had started the day before, making a two-day journey down.   And where was your father! The rain came down in torrents, and after what seemed ages, the storm passed. We heard later that this was one of the worst tempests ever known on the Cape. Many places were struck and trees blown down. So there we sat, a forlorn little group waiting for the lord and master to appear. 

After a weary waiting, Will appeared with Mr. Chase, and in the back of the carriage was an oil stove. Mr. Chase had driven him to the only store nearly as soon as the tempest was over. He had procured this stove, together with bread, butter and milk, eggs and bacon, sugar, coffee, tea, fruit and cereal. After another anxious wait the stove was set up, lit and milk warmed for the baby, Ken and Clarice and those blessed baked beans warmed up and tea made. Things began to look a bit brighter.

I could see that both Will and Mother were anxious about Carl as they kept going to the window and looking toward the bridge. As for me, although I said nothing I was frantic. I know that he and his escort must have been caught in the storm, so it was a great relief when Will said, "Carl and Hugh are coming", and we heard the rattling of the bridge. The whole family rushed out to greet them and to hear their story. They had been in the storm. A tree was struck soon after they passed it, and a house just before they reached it. The donkey was frightened and began to run, but Carl was able to pull him in. Rain came down in buckets-full, as they sought refuge in a house until the storm was over. It was a tired, hungry but proud and happy little boy who told us of his adventure with Hugh.

Then we began to think of supper and sleep after our tiring day - no bedding! In the rush of events we had forgotten that. But your father, tired as he was, was resourceful. He took the horse and went across the river to the Hotel Belmont. It wasn't open, but the proprietor, Mr. Johnston, and his daughters were then in preparation. Will had never met him before, but when he explained our plight his daughters gathered sheets, pillowcases and blankets from their store and gave them to him. Mother, Louise and I made up the beds with thankful hearts.

Soon after, faces and hands were washed, supper (mostly bread and milk) was over, and the children tucked in and asleep. Poor tired Will, after a few encouraging words to me, he dropped off and was even snoring by my side. The baby in his crib slept peacefully under netting but not me, I was too tired to sleep. And as I mentioned among other things, our screens hadn't arrived. Cape Cod mosquitoes may not be as large as the famous New Jersey ones, but they are every bit as vicious. I, never able to sleep with even one in the room, before morning could swear by listening to the gamut of buzzings that a whole glee club, sopranos, contraltos, tenors and bassos, hovered over my head. I spent the hours until early morning light killing and brushing them away until from sheer fatigue I, too, slept. So ended our first day on Cape Cod.

Next morning it was a sorry looking and mosquito-bitten lot of people who sat down to the breakfast Louise had prepared. Soon after, our man appeared driving the span, Nancy and Kusa, with the landeau, and Mother's little dog, Donnie. He reported an
uneventful trip, but he, too, looked hot and tired -no wonder, after a night spent in a hammock in a freight car with so many animals, our family livestock. He took old Freeman back with him in the carriage to get the cows and to walk them home. An old hayrack brought the children's rabbits and guinea pigs.

It was several days before our range, bedding and screens arrived, but in the meanwhile the two-burner oil stove proved adequate for our simple meals. Mother, Louise and I busied ourselves in, as Grandma Doble would have said, "regulating" the rooms.

The kindness of Mr. Chase who met us with the baked beans, the storekeeper who lent us the oil stove, and Mr. Johnston of the Hotel Belmont, proved to us the warm-heartedness of the Cape folks, and in many pleasant ways they were real "friends in need". So began friendships, which lasted for many years. The storekeeper was a retired sea captain, dear old Captain Peterson, who with his wife, a childless couple, immediately adopted our family. They were invaluable, too, in telling us where to get meat, fish and staples, where to find a gardener, old Simon Frazer, a Scotchman with rough burr in his tongue, whom the boys insisted on calling "Hoot Mon"!

Because this house was the first one, as I mentioned before, where your father had the opportunity to really exercise his hobby, although he had furnished our first home as I recall, maybe you would all like a description, for the three younger children were too young to remember, and the three older, I'm sure, have only a hazy memory of details. 

Outside, your father had kept the house the same color as when we saw it first, a pretty shade of Grey with white trimmings and green blinds. Inside, the woodwork all over the house was a soft cream white. The floors were all painted and spattered in good old Cape Cod style. The chambers were Grey with spatters of black and white; the big room floor was a dull red with spots of black, white and green; the sitting room and hall were dark green with the same colored spatters; and the dinning room and kitchen, a darker Grey with black and white spots. The floor planks luckily were wide and smooth so they presented a nice even surface.

The walls of the chambers were tastily papered with flowery designs, mostly with backgrounds of cream or pale Grey, all dainty and cheerful. The big room had a cream-white wainscot and above it was a rather startling paper of large red poppies with their green leaves, but the walls were broken up by doors, two mantels and French windows that there wasn't enough showing to make it garish, and we learned to like it. The sitting room, low posted, had a striped design of shades of green, very pretty, and the dining room above the wainscot had gay paper depicting a hunting scene. The kitchen walls were painted a soft green. 

The furniture of the chambers with the exception of the beds (which were iron, painted white, some decorated with brass balls) was wood, also white; the sitting room was fitted out with castoff chairs and tables from our house in Quincy and was very cozy. For the big room and dining room your father had chosen strong plain furniture of sturdy ash with woven rush seats. In the big room were straight chairs of various sizes, a couch and tables. In the dining room was a long table, sideboard, side tables, two armchairs, ten straight chairs, and a high chair. He had selected this furniture for its durability. It was well made and well fashioned, and its durability has been proven, for even now, the high chair and several of the rocking chairs are still in good order and use.

The rugs were pretty and colorful, all log cabin for the chambers in suitable sizes. The two big rugs of rough drugget, rose-red and green with medallions carpeted the big room and a similar smaller one of beige and green covered the sitting room floor. The dining room floor was left bare. When I had arranged the rooms with "Mother's touch", as the children use to say, and later draped all the windows except the big room with ruffled white muslin curtains, and long curtains of pale beige and red material for the French windows there, it was as nice and cool-looking a summer house as one could wish. The only drawback was the lack of a bathroom and running water, but as your father remarked, there was the whole wide ocean to accommodate!

To be sure, the older children spent most of their time on the beach in and out of the water, and the little ones sat on the edge and let the waves break over them. We found that the salt water rubs on Kendall's injured hip helped noticeably.

There were the toilet sets in each room and I placed a pail with soap and towels outside the back door for the children's foot washings before they entered the house. But still longed for a bathtub. We had purchased wooden tubs for the family washings, and one was just right for the smaller children to sit down in. On Saturday nights we made a fire in the little airtight stove in the sitting room, filled the tub half way with hot water which had been heated in the clothes boiler on the kitchen range, and with Ivory soap, towels in hand, Louise and I began the family baths, beginning with the youngest. Kneeling by the tub, I scrubbed and rinsed, then passed him over to Louise who dried him and put on his nightdress and carried him to his crib where Mother tucked him in. Then Louise and I carried the tub of bath water and emptied it on our flower garden. (Right here I'll say that your father had an oblong space ploughed up on the left of the house and our gardener, old Simon who certainly possessed the preverbal "green thumb", had cleared the ground and scattered many and sundry annual flower seeds therein. It seemed impossible that anything could grow in such sandy soil, but before the summer ended we had a garden fairly teeming with flowers of all kinds and colors, put in hit-or-miss but all lovely).

Ken came next, then Clarice. The two older boys and Rama were old enough to bathe themselves with close inspection of necks and ears. Thus we managed for all the summers we spent in that house before Cedarlog was built, which had two bathrooms. Shampoos had to be indulged in almost daily, for, playing in the sand, the children got their scalps and hair filled. Was I glad of the boys clip cuts.

Another annoying handicap during this first summer on Cape Cod while we kept the horses and cows, were the flies.  I cannot remember having flies in our Quincy home although the stable was quite near and we had the same livestock, but at the Cape they were legion.  With our screens, the old-fashioned sliding kind, we managed to keep most of the rooms passably free of both flies and mosquitoes, but the dining room and kitchen swarmed with them. In those days there were no wonderful sprays to annihilate them in one night-all we had was poison paper which we didn't dare use because of the children, and those obnoxious things, sticky fly papers. We reluctantly used them and both rooms were disfigured with those ugly oblongs, which we sprinkled with sugar to make more alluring. I don't know of anything more objectionable then to see numerous flies struggling and buzzing their swan song on sticky flypaper. We even strung the loathsome sticky strips from the ceiling at night in hopes of a major catch and were seldom disappointed. But the flies still came by myriads. 

Although we didn't abandon the flypaper, and added strips of flapping paper to the outside of the screen doors, as the natives did, we formed another plan. Before each meal we closed the curtains and the outside blinds. Then, in darkened room, the whole family armed with towels and stationed around the walls of the dining room, we brushed the flies toward the bright door, which opened, into the kitchen. We did the same thing in the kitchen, one of the children opening the screen door as we neared it. The children thought it great fun and sang and shouted joyously as they brushed. We lived through several summers using this method; not a perfect one but fairly adequate.

As the days passed, our neighbors, people from various cities who owned summer places, began to call on us, all pleasant and friendly people. The older children found playmates their own age, children quite different from the "Brackett Street Gang", and they were very happy.

In the village were the Stetson's, our Quincy friends who had been instrumental in finding the house for us, the Caleb Chases, the Erastus Chases, the Anthony Kellys and later, the village doctor, Dr. Nickerson, and his wife. On the river, a little winding stream, were the Mackays, Orcutts, Jacobs and Captain Snow and Annetta, his wife.  All became good friends, even our next-door neighbor, Dr, Thayer, whose wife the children came to call "Aunt Gertrude". When this lady saw our retinue appearing (horses, carriages, cows, etc.) she remarked that she didn't care how many plutocrats came to live on the Point, she would hoe in her garden just the same. And she did.

Looking backward I remember that most of these families included a grandmother. The Hastings had Mrs., Brown; the Arnolds, Mrs. Warren; the Stetsons, Mrs. Demeth; the Thayers, Mrs. Rice; and of course my own dear mother, Mrs. French. It is hard to realize that these dear women were only in their sixties at the time, and have now gone "the way of all flesh", and even we, who were young mothers then are few in number. As far as I know only Mrs., Arnold and I are left, and we have attained our eighties. Many of us have seen our children grow up, marry, and have children of their own; even enjoying being grandparents and great-grandparents. Barney Carson, Jeffrey Thayer, and two of the Frances boys are gone, and the rest are scattered in many directions.

Those early summers on Cape Cod are happy memories. How I wish that again we could be the happy and united family we were then.