CHATHAM——
The First American to Fly
The Atlantic “Hopped Off” Here
“You don’t say hum and eggs, do you?” chided the old native.
So, the proper pronunciation for the town of Chatham is—Chat-ham. With the accent on the hind end. To the native this is important. And so it is on the opposite side of the nation where the true citizen of San Francisco winces when you say “Frisco” and would prefer to have you articulate the whole name of his fair city.
Chatham, with some 50 miles of shoreline, is one of the most beautiful, unspoiled seashore places on Cape Cod. Architecture of great seafaring days, the primitive, lonely cry of the seagull, the home-spun shell fisherman, a history crowded with drama, bright little Yankee streets, art and literature and here and there a touch of international fame—this is Chatham. The writer is prejudiced, because this is the place where, 18 years ago, he spent his first night on Cape Cod. And met his first artist acquaintance, a dear friend for two decades, Harold Dunbar.
PEOPLE OF DISTINCTION
The late Joseph C. Lincoln was a widely known Chatham resident. The writer of many fiction-novels about Cape Cod folk contributed more than any other person to make this peninsula known to the nation at large. Arthur Wilson Tarbell of Chatham, a modern historian, wrote an outstanding book, “Cape Cod Ahoy!” Sinclair Lewis did some of his early writing here. Alice Stallknecht Wight got on the Associated Press wires as a result of the excitement caused by her mural painting in the Chatham Congregational Church. “Christ Preaching to the Multitude” is its title. The multitude consists of well known Chatham faces and Christ, depicted as a fisherman, is shown addressing them from a boat. For a companion piece Mrs. Wight later painted “The Last Supper”, showing Coast Guards, sea captains and other Chathamites as the disciples.
And in a pleasing, secluded spot the late Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis had his summer home for many years.
The tiptop spire of the Congregational Church is fashioned from a spar on the bark R. A. Allen, wrecked on the Chatham shore in 1887. Lightning damaged the church in the same storm. And the Cape’s toy windmill industry, that has waxed fat from the summer trade, started in Chatham. The humble carver of the first shop is romanticized in Lincoln’s novel “Shavings”. But a Coast Guard station skipper is given credit for making the first toy windmill. The art spread to other stations and business got so brisk the Government issued an order, forbidding the guardians of the deep from engaging further in the profitable sideline.
LINKED WITH OLD ENGLAND
Chatham is named for the County of Kent town in old England. Before the Pilgrims came to the Cape, Champlain, the French explorer, arrived here in 1606. He planned to establish a French colony in Chatham, but a fight with the Indians drove him off. In 1658, William Nickerson of Norfolk, England, appeared on the scene and gave the sachem Mattaquason a shallop for the sea-girted acres. Complications developed; Nickerson was called to Plymouth Court and ultimately he had to pay 90 pounds as a fair purchase price. In 1712 Chatham was incorporated as a town.
The Mayflower, her passengers looking to a settlement below the Hudson, barely escaped being wrecked on the Chatham shoals. Here she turned back to enter Provincetown Harbor.
Three hundred years later a Navy flier repaid this visit, wafting down from the heavens onto Plymouth, England.
Lieut. Albert Cushing Read of Hanson, Mass., was the first man to fly the Atlantic, and he took off from Chatham. He competed in a trans-ocean contest of the Navy “Nancies” in 1919, the N-C’s 1, 2, 3 and 4. The original takeoff point was Rockaway Beach, Long Island. Read rode the N-C 4, which was disabled far off this shore, but managed to get into this port, where, as luck had it, a Navy air station was located for the training of large numbers of fliers for the last war. A new motor was installed, the N-C 4 winged off to the Azores via Trepassey Bay, New Foundland and the pioneering flight was completed with fifty-two and a half hours having been spent in the skies. Read flew on to Plymouth, perhaps for sentiment’s sake, having the Mayflower in mind.