1839 Barnstable Centennial Celebrations and Re-Write of Auld Lang Syne
- attcorin
- 7 days ago
- 2 min read
The report of the Centennial Celebration at Barnstable on September 3, 1839 is a treasure trove of insights into our community as it once was:
Among its many offerings, the report records that September 3, 1639 was the date that Barnstable was incorporated, and so that is the date for all future centennial celebrations. It also reports the founding fathers of Barnstable village, whose family names many will recognize on Cape Cod today:
Rev. Mr. John Lothrop
Mr. Joseph Hull
Anthony Annable
Henry Cobb
George Lewis
John Cooper
Isaac Robinson (son of John Robinson, Pastor of the Pilgrims in Leyden in the Netherlands)
Bernard Lombard
Henry Bourne
Samuel Hinckley, father of Governor Thomas Hinckley
Thomas Dimmock
William Parker
John Allen
Henry Ewell
Robert Shelly
John and William Crocker
Isaac Wells
Edward Casley
The 1839 Centennial Celebrations started with a procession at 9am at the Old Court House, proceeding to the East Meeting House (now the site of the Unitarian Church of Barnstable on Cobb’s Hill). After a lengthy presentation, there was then a second procession from the Meeting House to a nearby Pavilion where a “centennial thanksgiving” party for 1458 guests was hosted with a brass band, and the ringing of village bells. In the evening there was a Ball in the Court Room, and after that “a shower of sky rockets” and “a magnificent display of Heaven’s own fireworks, an aurora borealis” with “radiant light … in a galaxy of glory.”
Two of many toasts of the day were:
Our Fathers! Where are they? Echo answers where?—The grass withereth and the flower fadeth, but their fair fame, their pious patriotism, their long suffering, their public and private virtues, are embalmed in the memory of their posterity.
And
THE CAPE; God bless her! The sons and daughters of Barnstable are among the fairest jewels in her crown of honor: wherever dispersed, there is not one of them who will not exclaim,
Where’er I roam, whatever realms to see
My heart untraveled fondly turns to thee.
The Honorable Chief Justice Shaw, who grew up in West Barnstable and who rose in his profession to become the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court (1830-1860) was invited to speak and he spoke affectionately of home:
… in the cherished recollections of bygone years … that … bind thousands of hearts in one common feeling of mutual attachment …it is good for us to be here … this the home of our infancy and childhood … [w]here we … felt the pleasures of friendship … every house, every field, every grove has its history … every local object is a talisman, which revives its long train of remembered joys … the school … the social circle, the play-ground, the meeting-house … these attachments … so closely connect the past with the present.
To close, one of the fun offerings of the day was the re-write of the classic tune Auld Lang Syne (a Scottish song meaning “days gone by”):
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