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Early Occupations
The first generations of Yarmouth settlers were farmers - the principal occupation - and their bountiful vegetable and corn crops provided the food staple upon which a growing town depended. There were, of course, blacksmiths, cobblers and other craftsmen whose trades were vital to Yarmouth.
Food was plentiful; these settlers didn't go hungry as had their brethren in the early days of the Plymouth colony. Cape Cod Bay and its nearby coves overflowed with lobster, mackerel and cod, sometimes referred to as `Cape Cod Turkey". Nantucket Sound to the south provided much the same fare. Scallops, quahogs, clams and oysters found their way to the supper table as did geese and ducks hunted on the salt marshes. Dense forests hosted a plentiful supply of game, and many of the town's twenty two glacier-carved `kettle' ponds yielded pickerel and bass.
Once much larger than its present eight square mile radius, `Old' Yarmouth once included the lands of Chatham, Harwich, Brewster, Dennis and the Barnstable village of Cummaquid. Dennis was the last `land holdout', initiating a successful, friendly split in June 1793.
In the later half of the 17th century, the Indians sold off chunks of their land to
European farmers and a reservation in South Yarmouth was set aside for
Indians' use. A smallpox epidemic that wound through Yarmouth in 1763 virtually wiped out the local Native American population and the Quakers then took up residence on the old reservation, then appropriately called Quaker Village.
During the Revolutionary War, Yarmouth responded to requests for troops, sending 39 men to the front between May, 1777, and March, 1778. Captain Joshua Gray commanded the local militia. Townspeople heeded repeated calls for war supplies and in June, 1780, Yarmouth sent north some 51 shirts and the same amount of shoes and stockings, 26 blankets and over 10,000 pounds of beef. Soon, with its town resources badly depleted by the war effort, Yarmouth successfully applied to the General Court for relief from taxation.
Yarmouth was a well established community in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; its three villages had by this time acquired distinct personalities. West Yarmouth was settled in 1643 by Yelverton Crowe, who built a house on Nantucket Sound. His land was acquired in a peculiar way. An Indian sachem told Crowe he could have as much land as he could walk on in an hour in exchange for an `ox-chain, a copper kettle...and a few trinkets'.
Yarmouthport was incorporated as a separate village in 1829. A few years later, Central Wharf near the Mill Creek estuary was built and served as the building headquarters for the growing packet service or `water taxi', ferrying passengers from the Cape to Boston. Soon Simpkins Wharf was constructed nearby and on it a general store and sail loft were added to assist larger ships.
"West Yarmouth was settled in 1642 by Yelverton Crowe. His land was acquired in a peculiar way. An Indian sachem told Crowe he could have as much land as he could walk on in an hour in exchange for an `ox-chain, a copper kettle...and a few trinkets."
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