The lad was uncommonly ingenious and tenacious. Recruited by the
fulling mill operator to assist in the cobbling work, the boy grew
impatient at the tediousness of the task. He conceived a time-saving
and labor-saving machine. Then he dreamed up another and another. He
wrote to Washington and obtained a patent on each new invention as fast
as it took shape.
These same patents are in use today in the big shoe plants of America,
and the earnings from them continue to flow handsomely to the present
Winslow heirs. Thus, the mighty United Shoe Machinery Company got its
first breath of life on old Cape Cod.
Brewster is named for Elder William Brewster, a crusader for religious
freedom, who sailed to Cape Cod on the Mayflower and acted as pastor to
the church at Plymouth. He is described as having been “tender harted,
and compassionate of such as were in miserie.” Further, “none did more
offend him and displease him than such as would haughtily and proudly
carry and lift up themselves, being rise from nothing, and haveing
little els in them to comend them but a few fine cloaths, or a little
riches more than others.” On his death, we are told, Elder Brewster’s
complete estate consisted of 275 books, of which 64 were “in the
learned languages.”
Quaint names are associated with Cape Cod lore. Fear Brewster was one
of Elder Brewster’s daughters and he had sons named Love Brewster and
Wrestling Brewster.
SEA ADVENTURES OF OLD
When Brewster town history is recounted there is always talk of the
colorful seafaring oldsters and their great sailing craft. Outstanding
is the Pitcairn Island story. Captain William Freeman of Brewster
landed at the bleak hiding place of the Bounty mutineers in 1883,
and brought his daughter Clara along with him. Clara cultivated the
friendship with Rosa Young, daughter of Edward Young, who survived the
hardships and bloody conflict among the mutineers after they found
refuge on the island in 1790. Later, they corresponded. Today, in the
Brewster Public Library, there is the original manuscript of Rosa
Young’s letters, extending over a period of six months.
In one of these letters, Rosa tells of her meeting with the chaplain
of the man-of-war Constance, who landed at Pitcairn. All descendents
of the mutineers, including Rosa, were intensely religious. Thus, she
described the visiting chaplain to her Brewster friend: “Whether he
experienced the same feeling that I did I cannot tell, but I certainly
thought that a more un-chaplain-looking man was hard to find, and if
words and manner are an index to a man’s character, he certainly did
not seem rightly fitted for a sacred office.” And then, as though to
show how shocked she was, Rosa Young concluded, “as we were about to
leave ship he said, ‘Now, we will have to sing, _The Girl I Left
Behind Me._’”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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