Barnstable County, Massachusetts Genealogy

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Towns


Barnstable County is a rural geographical district comprised of fifteen towns. The town of Barnstable contains the largest metropolitan population in a village known as Hyannis. The towns in Barnstable County (which is nearly contiguous with Cape Cod) are:

Barnstable, Bourne, Brewster, Chatham, Dennis, Eastham, Falmouth, Harwich, Mashpee, Orleans, Provincetown, Sandwich, Truro, Wellfleet and Yarmouth

It is interesting to note that if you extend the original town lines out into Cape Cod Bay they intersect at one point in the middle of the bay. This is probably the location of the anchored survey ship that was used to survey the lines (possibly at night with the aid of a light on the ship).

Barnstable County is part of Cape Cod and was made an island when the Cape Cod Canal was finished in 1914. (besides the two vehicle bridges and a railroad bridge across the canal the only other other access is by boat or plane). Well there is a little piece of the county (part of Bourne) on the north side of the canal, but it is still fun to think of it as an island. In fact, some of the islanders may have advocated closing the canal bridges to vehicle traffic.

History

The Mayflower and its 99 passengers landed first on Cape Cod near Provincetown and then at Plymouth on 21 Nov 1620. The ship Fortune arrived in Nov 1621. The Anne and Little James followed so that by 1624 there are about 180 persons in Plymouth Colony. It is the late 1630s when we see settlements formed in what is now Barnstable co. In Sandwich there are some families led by Rev John Vincent before 1637. We find settlers in Yarmouth before 1639 and the Town of Barnstable in 1638. Eastham is the fourth area settled in Mar 1644.

Why create a county? Barnstable County was originally part of Plymouth Colony, separated from Massachusetts Bay colony to the north by "the Old Colony Line." Plymouth Colony was initially centered on the landing place of the Pilgrims, the town of Plymouth. But since the 1620s the population and reach of the colony had grown considerable. At first, Governor Bradford had only one assistant, Isaac Allerton. By 1685 the colony was governed by a governor, a deputy governor, six assistants, deputies and constables from seventeen towns, grand jury members, and highway surveyors. The seventeen towns of Plymouth Colony at that time were governed by selectmen. So in 1685, with government rapidly growing and travel still difficult, the deputies of the General Court which made the laws for the Colony decided to divide the colony into three counties, Bristol to the south and west, Barnstable to the south and east and Plymouth to the north. These three counties would each have a government able to record deeds, operate judicial courts and more closely respond to the needs of the citizens.

Barnstable - The County, Town or Village? Town of Barnstable - founded by Rev Lothrop and his group after they left Scituate(pronoune Sit'-u-et). September 3, 1639 is the precise birthdate given to Barnstable, which really represents just the best guess of when a band of hardy colonists officially took advantage of Plymouth Colony laws passed in March, 1638 authorizing towns to send deputies to the General Court.

Ancient History

prepared for the 1880 Atlas of Barnstable County by John B. D.Cogswell - It seems to be now generally conceded that the Northmen visited Cape Cod and the adjacent shores, nearly nine hundred years ago. Professor Rafn, of Copenhagen, the learned editor of the "Antiquitates Americanae," adduces analogies between certain Cape names (of localities) and Norse words, which appear; to say the least, sufficiently conjectural. But, in the year 1000, Leif the Lucky, son of Earl Eric the Red, was at Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, and skirted the coast of New England, spending the winter in a region called by him Vinland (Vineland). This is supposed to be within the present limits of Rhode Island. An earlier landing-place had been found upon an island conjectured to be either Nantucket, or an island called Nauset, between Orleans and Chatham, on the back of Cape Cod, which long since disappeared. In the spring of 1004, Thorwald, the brother of Leif, was driven ashore on Cape Cod, perhaps at Race Point and remained long enough to repair damages, putting in a new keel. The old keel was set up in the sand, and the place was called Kjalarnes (Keel-ness, or Keel Cape). Another expedition, under Thorfinn, sailed by Keel Cape in 1007, and called it Cape Cod Furdurstrands, or Wonderstrands, "because it was long to sail by."

Bryant, the latest historian of the United States, thinks that Sebastian Cabot, in his voyage of 1798,made under the patronage of Henry the Seventh, doubled Cape Cod, and sailed as far south as Cape Hatteras.Bancroft asserts that Cape Cod was the first spot in New England ever trod by Englishmen. This was the company of Bartholomew Gosnold, an intrepid navigator, who sailed from Falmouth, England, March 25, 1602, in a vessel called the "Concord." Some time in the latter part of May, he anchored off Cape Cod, about a league from Provincetown. His men at first called the place Shoal Hope, but afterwards Cape Cod, for "we took great store of codfish." They found pease, strawberries, whortleberries, cypress, birch, and beech trees. The shoals back of the Cape were then peninsulas, which have been wasted away by the action of the sea. The vessel was actually "pestered" by codfish. Martin Pring, Gosnold's mate, sailed again from Cape Ann to Cape Cod in 1603.

In August, 1609, Henry Hudson, an Englishman, voyaging under the auspices of The Dutch East India Company, coasted the north headland of Cape Cod, calling the region New Holland, before he knew it was "Gosnold's Cape."

Previously, however, - i.e., in the summer of 1606,- Poutrincourt, a French navigator, had his ship stranded upon a shoal near Cape Cod, whence he returned to Port Royal.

Two French navigators- DeMonts and Champlain- were here in 1605. On Champlain's map the peninsula is called Cap Blanc, or the White Cape, from the color of its sands, and Nauset (Eastham) Harbor is called Malle Barre, or the Bad Bar. In 1614, John Smith explored the whole coast from Penobscot to the Cape, and made a map of the country, which he named New England. Prince Charles, afterwards King Charles I, changed the name of the peninsula to Cape James; but the royal caprice could not efface the homely Cape Cod, "which name," said Cotton Mather, "I suppose it will never lose till shoals of codfish be seen swimming on its highest hills."

Most unfortunately, Smith re-embarked for England, leaving his vessel under the command of Thomas Hunt, to load with fish. When the ship was laden and ready to sail, Hunt enticed sundry Indians of Nauset and other places on board, under the pretense of trade, and perfidiously and most unwisely carried them off - twenty-seven in number - to Malaga, in Spain, where he sold the most of them for twenty pounds a man. This cruel and treacherous deed was never forgotten by their countrymen; and the first hostile passage between the Pilgrims and the Indians was at Nauset, ever known in the Plymouth annals as the "First Encounter."

Unincorporated Communities
There are no unincorporated communities in Barnstable county. All town boundaries are shared with other towns.

County Government Site
[www.BarnstableCounty.org]

Neighboring Counties
Barnstable county is bordered by *Plymouth county to the west. To the north is Cape Cod Bay. To the east is the Atlantic Ocean. Across Nantucket Sound to the south can be found the island counties of *Dukes county (comprised of Marthas Vineyard and other small islands) and the *Nantucket county comprised of the island of Nantucket.

Genealogy Societies
Falmouth Genealogical Society serves primarily Upper Cape towns.

Cape Cod Genealogical Society serves primarily Mid and Lower Cape towns. If you image Cape Cod as an arm with Provincetown as the hand then Upper Cape corresponds with upper arm and lower Cape corresponds with lower arm (even though Lower Cape town of Provincetown at the tip of the peninsula is "higher" than Falmouth which is located in the Upper Cape)

Genealogy and History Websites
Barnstable County USGenWeb Site