Rocky Start

[by Fred Lynch in Gloucester, Massachusetts]

It’s about 78 miles from Plymouth Rock to this other rock in Gloucester, Massachusetts, by car—but shorter by sea. I’ve read that Anthony Day, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather probably sailed from one rock to the other around 1642. He was one of the earliest white settlers of the area, and not surprisingly, he was from Gloucester, England. He moved around on Cape Ann from Gloucester to Ipswich to Salem and then back to Gloucester. From an old book: “Anthony Day died in Gloucester, April 23, 1707, aged ninety-one years. He did not settle permanently in Gloucester until 1657, when he bought a house and lands in the town, formerly in the possession of Charles Glover, having the rocks called the Poles on one side.”

This boulder is up on Poles Hill, one of a number scattered about on the bald, rocky hilltop. It’s said that Native Americans used this barren hill and these peculiar, isolated boulders, close to shore of the Annisquam River, as an observatory of the sky and seasons.

Day is probably my earliest immigrant ancestor, and he faced a lot of hardships, I’m sure. I can’t imagine how he survived the weather. On the day of my drawing the sun was bright, but the wind off the Atlantic was fierce. I had originally hoped to draw by the shore but that was impossible. Sitting on Pole’s Hill however, I couldn’t help but think that the arrival of my ancestor and his fellow “settlers” closed this observatory of the original settlers down and drove away what the old book called the “savages.” Sadly, we stepped into the story of America by kicking the natives aside.