In the News

From the April 16 2009 issue of the Cape Cod Times

Cape boundary hunters get lesson in archeology

By Susan Milton
smilton@capecodonline.com
April 16, 2009

BREWSTER - There were no tractor-trailer trucks and cars whizzing by Sam Higgins, Jim Rogers and Tim Doane in 1803 at the Orleans-Brewster line.

But the 1803 trio left enough clues to guide another band of boundary hunters yesterday as they narrowed their search for the same large boulder, marked with an "S" more than 300 years ago.

"I think we're real close to it right in here," Steve Ellis of Orleans said yesterday, as he stood on Route 6A with Lighthouse Charter School students and teachers, historian Michael Farber of Chatham and other searchers.

Nobody found the big rock yesterday in a quick check through brambles and briars on a hillside south of Route 6A. But a more systematic search is likely now that modern searchers have combined their clues, taken from maps, documents and histories, with their own ingenuity.

The big boundary rock was at the head of Namskaket Creek, which starts inland south of Route 6A and runs all the way into Cape Cod Bay. Yesterday searchers traced the creek to a culvert under Route 6A and wetlands. Farber read aloud master millwright Thomas Paine's description of a boundary dispute in 1700 that placed the marker a little above the highway in a "neat nook" of marsh. In 1803, the boundary was found on a little hill near the head of the creek, wrote historian Josiah Paine in his History of Harwich.

Yesterday searchers imagined how colonists could stand on a nearby hill and see down the creek to Cape Cod Bay. But they also eyed the usually overlooked stone wall, buried in spots, that lined the northern side of Route 6A. Paine had written that a stone wall was standing on the boundary rock.

Ellis has searched for the "S" stone over 25 years in the woods, marshes and bogs that his family owned and worked for generations. Through their own yearlong search, Farber and the students are learning about primary records, Cape history and archeology in their search for historic boundary stones used in the 1640s to mark property and town boundaries, social studies teacher Daniella Garran said yesterday.

"It's a great opportunity for the students to have a chance to do some backyard archeology," she said.

Participating students also are making a video about their search, so far successful in finding historic boundaries at Sesuit Harbor in Dennis and at the Yarmouth and Barnstable boundary.