Clipping in the possession of Clarence Norwood provided by Lelia Norwood Adams; labeled "Cape Ann Shore," August 11, 1923, Pageant Gloucester Stage Fort Park, August 28 and 30. OLD NORWOOD HOMESTEAD: Interesting sketch of an historic Annisquam abode, now "Seven Acres" residence of Madame Hyatt" (now 698 Washington Street).

As one passes, on the road from Annisquam to Gloucester, the long stone causeway (Washington St. at Goose Cove), and sees, across the water, a great shingled house perched uneasily on a bank of withered grass, whose only distinction is its flaming orange awnings, there is little in its bare angularity to differentiate it from the proudest achievements of 1880. Yet this house has been the home of interesting people since the late 17th century. It has always passed by inheritance, with only one sale to strangers.

On March 23, 1664, the town clerk of Gloucester wrote in the records in gnarled handwriting:

"Given unto ffrancis Norwood att the Towne meeting, six
akers of upland liinge bye Goose Cove."

The law required that anyone who received a grant of land must build on it within six months on pain of losing the grant. This dates the foundation of the house before August 1664.

Francis Norwood, despite his title of "gentleman" and his coat of arms, a cross gules on a field of ermine, and an alert motto, "Nunquam Non Paratus" (never unready), had married the daughter of a Lynn tavern keeper, and their first child, Thomas, was born early in December, presumably in the new house. He must have been energetic, for at his death he had increased his "six akers" to 170. (Land Records)

We are accustomed to think of these times as a little drearier than they actually were, for the few miserable relics that breakage, moths, and rust have grudgingly spared us, smell, to cap the wreck, heavily of the museum.

We must think of Francis Norwood's rooms snugly sheathed in against winter and the sea fogs in sweet-smelling pine, of the two green rugs he owned, of the new-painted chests set against the walls as sofas, of his joint tables still dusty from the carpenter's shop, of his fleet of "canooes" with tackling and oars, beached in a row, of his seven beds with their white woolens, their black and prim "vallents" and coverlids, and we have the background of a life not entirely bare of charm and homely comfort.

At the death of Francis in 1709 he left his widow Elizabeth the lower floor of the western half of the house with the cellar and stipulations that she should be given cattle, hens, a horse for riding, wood, Indian corn, pork, apples, and cider by the rest of the family.

Across the hall in the eastern side of the house, Caleb and Francis, Jr., her sons owned jointly until Caleb sold out his share, perhaps forced to it by Francis's eight children.

Of these children Jonathan was the one to inherit the home. Though a strong man he preferred passivity, and under him things decayed. The roof became so rotten that, when it caught fire once, Jonathan, who had no ladder to climb up, stood under the eaves and, pressing from below, burst up, which shows both what he could do and what he had not done.

He was a dogged though inactive Tory, for, while he did not take arms for the English, he preferred to leave his fishing vessels to rot in the cove rather than let the Americans use them.

When Jonathan died in 1791 his debts were so huge that the officers of justice of the new republic, who may not have loved him overmuch, arrested his corpse in its hearse as it was being driven to the graveyard and the whole funeral scattered in the middle of the road until, after some parley, one of his sons-in-law offered security.

A deed of his son, Francis Norwood 3rd, recorded in the Salem probate Records, Book 140, page 42, flatly and clinchingly refutes the oft-repeated argument that the house the first Francis built is not the one now standing on that site. In this document, dated November, 1781, he refers to the house as "the house the sayd Jonathan now lives in, which formerly belonged to my grandfather Francis Norwood deceased."

One of his (Jonathan's) daughters was Judith, who married her cousin James Norwood. Old parish records call her "Judith the Bountiful, Judith the Gracious", and the bold poise of her signature is another proof of her distinguished character.

One of her sisters was Mary, wife of Joseph Baker, who lived in the house 60 years until her death.

Mary Baker's diary, which still raggedly survives, lifts a curtain directly into a peep show of the past. It starts on the first day of the new century in Mary's 50th year and keeps up, with a brave show of daily notes, for a year or so, when the lacunae grow slowly longer and longer and the narrative diminishes and trails off into silence broken only for brief jottings of the deaths of the ageing woman's friends.

With Mary Baker the feeling of passing time was lost in regular beat of daylight and darkness swelling into the often repeated months until one is shocked that anything of hers could be ended by so final and abrupt a thing as death. Not that she herself did not think of death and expect it hourly, like all the people of her time, but that thought only enhances her timeless calm.

Her diary begins and ends with death. Its title page bears this inscription underlined in her darkest ink:

And on the next page is a "Bill of Mortality", a list of all the dates she can remember for a year or two back. The longest item is for her sister Judith's baby:

"May ye 5 Month: 1800 William Norwood, son of James deceased and Judith Norwood, age 5 years and one month and eighteen days, at 2 o'clock and 46 minutes at the sitting of the moon, at low water. Buried ye 8. The moon fulled the same night about two hours after the funeral."

And in those long, still Sabbaths, when all her crowded house had driven away to meeting in Gloucester or Sandy Bay, leaving her alone to tend the fire, then surely, while she sat with hands folded in this unaccustomed repose and silence, must have come the thought of mortality.

...she has left a record of one such experience on an early September night of 1803:

"Last night I heard distinctly what people call a Death Watch, but I have no Faith in them things. I lay long after all was fast asleep thinking how I could extricate myself out of work and care and all was Hush. I heard a droping, I listened with Attention never hearing such a noise before till it had dropt about forty times and then stopt & I lay long awake but heard no more--whether it is a forerunner of Death or not, I know Death must and will make his demand ere long, I desire to be prepared for what is allotted me. 9 September, 1803".

But in the daylight and on weekdays she had not time for what she surely would have called "such nonsense", for her diary is full of entries of all the activities the seasons brought, of "grynding cider", of making 253 candles in a day, of setting cheese with Else, the black slave they had bought for 20 pounds in 1776 at the early age of seven.

There was also the weather to note, every day a new kind, such as "terrible hot" or "showery" or "fine growing weather", or "bloom off the tree", or -- this rarely -- "beautiful day".

Nor were they without society, for there are almost daily notes of friends dropping in to tea or supper or just to call, as when a Mr. and Mrs. Norwood, inspecting the marsh on a certain Friday, fell in and "wet themselves cleverly".

Then, in the winter there were quilting bees, and hardly a year passed without its local sensation, a goldsmith's shop robbed, or Mr. Caleb Poole "declaring his vision in Publick in Sandy Bay Meeting House after Meeting on Apr. 28, 1805", and doing the same thing again on the 12th of May and right in Squam Meeting House this time. Had this only happened in 1800 she might have described it and she certainly would have gone, but age was already draining her.

In February 1809 there is again something to think about, for she notes: "A Solemn Fast kept by the two Houses Viz. Senate and Representatives on Account of the dark Time".

Most of this latter part is sad reading, for the diary, with her growing age and the flight one by one of her children, breaks down into the Bill of Mortality with which it started. Here is the last entry but one:

"May 25, 1825, the Subscriber is 75 years old this Day. Rainy Day. Mrs. Martha Riggs went from here this day. She had been here taking care of me some 10 or 12 days. I have been sick".

What a penetrating simplicity those bare words have!

Mary Baker lingered on, alone in the partly closed house, until her death, her long foreseen messenger, took her in 1832.

The house then fell to a great-niece, Mrs. Esther Wheeler, a woman whose poise and dignity survived even in her extreme old age. Her daughter-in-law, Sophia Poole Wheeler, a Latin and Greek scholar with a love for botany, decided to turn all this learning to account by converting the house into a girls school. Toward that end she altered, about 1870, the arrangement of the rooms downstairs, which meant tearing down the huge outside chimneys at each end and ripping out the secret stair case and the panelled walls, which were prudently used for pigpens, henhouse, and the coalbins. Then she sat down in her neat, good-as-new house to await her pupils. And waited long, for no one ever came.

The bank foreclosed the mortgage and the house was on the market for several years until Prof. Alpheus Hyatt bought it in 1878. He started there the first marine biological laboratory in the country. It later moved to Woods Hole.

Mrs. Hyatt has long been interested in searching out the history of the house and gathering there, whenever possible, pieces of furniture which once belonged to the former owners.

The only change that has come of late is that the coalbins have been carefully dissected for their panelling and it has been restored to the sitting room as far as its mangled rottenness would permit.

The following important and encouraging message arrived 7 December 2000:

"I, Alfred Mayor, am the great grandson of Alpheus Hyatt, who bought the Norwood house in Annisquam in 1879. The house has been in my family since then. I have placed a conservation restriction on the house and the 3 1/2 acre lot it sits on. The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities holds the restriction in perpetuity, meaning that future owners may not sell off parcels of land or alter the historic aspects of the house. The house is now listed on the National Register. As I have no heirs, the house will eventually be sold....

Alfred Mayor."

This paper was originally transcribed by James G. Dempsey from the clipping cited in the header above and retranscribed by Richard C. Norwood, Jr. for inclusion in this web site on 13 March 1998.

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