Norwich bulletin., 1919-06-09

oieS Of this sort is LongfelloW's Wreck of the Hesperus,' of which Nor mans Woe, off Gloucester is the scene, though that particular story is only traditional. Thacher's Woe marks the wreck of vessel from Ipswich bound for Marblehead, carrying a clergyman and his six children. When the vessel was battered to pieces on a rock the only survivors were this son-in- law, Anthony Thacher, and his wife
 'The fishing banks lie between the Atlantic shores and the Gulf Stream The theory of their information is that ice masses float southward until they encounter the streams warm currents. As they melt the earth and sand they carry is deposited to form the banks and hollows where fish are spawn.
 'Schooners are said to have originat- ed in Gloucester and to have been so named by a Gloucester ship wright a spectator exclaim, "Oh, how she scoons!' That expression was used to describe the bounding of a pebble thrown sidewise into the water.
 -"The cooperative arrangements of the fisherman, making voyage a part nership enterprise. has interested stu
 
 autnoriy as he commander needs to direct the vessel the crews are as dem ocratic as the town meetings. Hence the fishing industry of Gloucester is almost unique for it's record of near ly three centuries without labor troubles.
 Quaint town and family records of Gloucester afford priceless records of early Colonial customs. Absemious for their time, some said squeamish, it merely proves that times change to note that at an all day session of the Gloucester selectmen in TAO the mu- nicipal expense account was more than three English pounds for flicker at the house of Mir James Stevens In- toxicants were served freely at fun erals. and gloves were presented to the bearers.
 Many facts about Gloucester, as other early New England communities, are derived from such native verses as those left by Thomas Fuller, an early settler, who wrote:
 ''In thirty eight, l set my foot Upon New Eagland's shore;
 My thoughts were then to stay one year,
 And here to stay no more. But, by the preaching of Gods word By famous Shepard he, In what a woful state I was I then began to see" Tax records, too,, have their his- toric sidelights especially biographical, such as the lists of exemptions with items like these:
 Capt Haskell hath been sick al- most this half-year, and still remains. Richard Dike being distempered ; in ye head.
 MT. Henry Walker, very aged; not able to do nothing.
 Thomas Riggs, Senior, is decrepit in his lims.'
 "In ITO a book by the Rev. James Kelly, found among the effects of an English sailor, fell in the hands of | Gloucester citizens. They agreed with the views therein expressed, and in order that they might be preached reg ularfy the first Universalist church in the new world was founded. "Gloucester has among it's rocky cliffs and lodges one floral curiosity of great beauty and fragrance the mag nolia glaucus. which grows in the swamps near the city. l "Rafes chasm, where the pounding waves church and rumble: the Rock ing Stone. oscillated for an inch or SC by the incoming tides: Old Mother Ann and Whales Jaw are among the natural wonders Gloucester discloses.
 The Massachusetts state census of i 1915 gave Gloucester population of 2447S. Before the war most adult males, numbering about 5000, were en- gagged in fishing or collateral occupa- tions.'