Near Cherry Street in Gloucester, in a large tract of conservation
land surrounding the reservoir, you can find the remnants of an early village. This was the earliest settled place in
Gloucester, when the town grew up inland.
After the War of 1812 the people felt safer about living near the
harbor, and most left this area to move to the coast. Only the poorest people stayed behind in what
became known as “Dogtown” because of the abandoned dogs who scrounged the
cellar holes and shacks. Widows,
vagabonds and the insane were left behind with the dogs.
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| This Babson boulder marks the spot of Dogtown Square |
During the Great Depression in the 1930s, Gloucester
resident Roger Babson hired Italian stonemasons to carve inspirational
quotations on 22 boulders in Dogtown. At
the time, the land was clear of trees, and there were numbers marking the
cellar holes of colonial residents identified in his grandfather John James Babson’s
“History
of Gloucester”. Now, the area is
heavily wooded, and hikers have to search for the numbers, cellar holes and
Babson boulders.
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| An antique postcard showing what Dogtown looked like before it was swallowed up with forest |
I had several ancestors and their relatives live in
Dogtown. I previously posted a story “Tammy
Younger, the Witch of Dogtown” at this link: http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/02/tammy-younger-witch-of-dogtown.html
Today’s post is part of a series of stories I wrote for this
week all about stones and stone walls:
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| One of Roger Babson's inspirational boulders |
This Dogtown website http://www.thedacrons.com/eric/dogtown/visiting_dogtown_gloucester.php
has maps and history, including the location of most of the Babson boulders.
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Copyright 2012, Heather Wilkinson Rojo
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