April 2, 2024
Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry shares photos and newspaper clippings about Provincetown, Massachusetts, from 100 years ago. Melissa is a genealogist who has a blog, AnceStory Archives, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.
A scrapbook belonging to Cora Gray West Fuller (1866-1930), a Cape Cod newspaper woman, is my feature today.
Cora was the daughter of Captain Simeon L. West and Eliza McLean, and the granddaughter of Eben West and Harriet Lavender. She married Arthur Wheeler Fuller, son of James Fuller and Maria F. Atkins.
Cora’s scrapbook, containing news clippings from the early 20th century in Provincetown, Massachusetts, was given to the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum by Mrs. Nellie Law in 1931.
Provincetown, known for its Pilgrims, prominent painters, and prismatic pageantry, has always harbored a potpourri of characters. You got your artists, sea dogs, activists, and statesmen.
Mayflower Scion
Many Provincetown residents can trace their lineage back to the Mayflower, such as the historian, suffragist, author, and Unitarian minister Rev. Nancy Wiley Paine Smith (1849-1940). She was born to Joshua Paine and Martha Freeman Atwood, and is a descendant of Thomas Paine and Mayflower passengers Stephen Hopkins and Elder William Brewster.
She married famed Provincetown photographer William “Billy” May Smith, son of William Smith and Mary C. Johnson.
Two of Rev. Nancy’s books, The Provincetown Book (1922) and A Book about the Artists: Who They Are, What They Do, Where They Live, How They Look (1927), are still regarded as some of the best histories of Provincetown and its inhabitants.
Here is a 1923 newspaper clip from Fuller’s scrapbook featuring Rev. Nancy in her home at Provincetown shortly after The Provincetown Book was published.
This photo caption reads:
Mrs. Nancy W. Paine Smith of Provincetown
Author of “The Provincetown Book,” who traces her ancestry back through 10 generations of Cape Codders. She occupies a quaint, but beautifully furnished home in Provincetown.
This newspaper article also reports:
Six generations of family portraits line the walls of Rev. Nancy’s home. Along with antique mahogany and glass, whales’ teeth, and East India conch.
Rev. Nancy stated: “All my forebears to the tenth generation have lived on the shores of this bay. They made their living out of its waters.”
She noted: “On my father’s side I am a quarter Paine, quarter Nickerson, quarter Harding, quarter Hopkins. On my mother’s side I am a quarter Freeman, quarter Atwood, quarter Newcomb, quarter Eldridge.”
Here is another newspaper clip from Fuller’s scrapbook, from 1929, reporting that Rev. Nancy believed Lief Erickson, a daring Scandinavian Viking, was buried under her home.
According to this article, Rev. Nancy spoke to a Massachusetts Library Club group and stated that history reveals that in 1004 Erickson, with a small group of followers, was attacked by Indians and his dying wish was to be buried at Provincetown.
She asserted she discovered a stone wall in the Scandinavian style near her home.
Painters & Pageantry
The natives of Provincetown opened their homes in the summer months to troupes of creative virtuosos.
In 1921 a feature piece from the New York Tribune dubbed Provincetown the “Latin quarter of the United States.” A feature illustration portrays the vibrant artist colony and melting pot.
In this article, author Eleanor Kellogg states:
Provincetown is like nothing else on earth. It is the Latin Quarter of the United States – a combination of Greenwich Village, Coney Island, and Chinatown. It has a main street which isn’t Main Street but is partly a street carnival and partly an art school. Not every house is a gift shop or a tea room. Some are art shops. Some are art schools. Some are art clubs. Some are art exhibition rooms. Some are art museums. There is art in the town hall and art in the post office. The sixth annual costume ball included a bullfight and other features not known even to Washington Square. As for the post office, it boasts a bulletin board which would make that of any Greenwich Village shop or club turn purple with envy.
Fuller’s scrapbook has photos from the festive costume balls, including one from that year, the 6th annual costume ball held by the Provincetown Art Association.
Here is another photo from that costume ball.
Here is a photo of Mrs. Isabella Luke from the 10th annual costume ball held by the Provincetown Art Association in 1925.
In 1926 Anna Goldthwaite, a well-known painter and printmaker, attended that year’s costume ball. She was born to Richard Wallach Goldthwaite and Lucy Boyd Armistead of Alabama. Her grandfather, U.S. Senator George Thomas Goldthwaite, was the Adjutant General of Alabama during the Civil War.
She descends from Massachusetts early settlers Ezekiel Cheever and Thomas Goldthwaite.
Here she is with other party-going artists including Provincetown’s famed painter E. Ambrose Webster.
To be continued…
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Note on the header image: beachfront art class, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1940. Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
