_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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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