scattered and far away. This peculiarity of
settlement meant much in days where there was no newspaper, no system of
public transportation, no regular post, and Europe was months removed. A
few of the young men went with the fishing fleet to Cape Sable, or
sailed on trading vessels to the West Indies or Spain, but it is
doubtful if any Weymouth-born woman ever laid eyes on the mother country
during the first hundred and fifty years.

The records of the town are painfully dull. They are taken up by small
domestic matters: the regulations for cattle; running boundary lines,
locating highways, improving the town common, fixing fines for roving
swine or agreeing to the division of a whale found on the shore. There
was more or less bickering over the salary of the town clerk, who was to
receive thirty-three pounds and fourteen shillings yearly to keep "A
free school and teach all children and servants sent him to read and
write and cast accounts."

Added to the isolation and pettiness of town affairs, the winters seem
to have been longer, the snows deeper, the frosts more severe in those
days. We have records of the harbor freezing over in November, and "in
March the winter's snow, though much reduced, still lay on a level with
the fences, nor was it until April that the ice broke up in Fore River."
They were difficult--those days ushered in by the Reverend Joseph Hull.
Through long nights and cold winters and an endless round of joyless
living, Weymouth expiated well for the sins of her youth. Even as late
as 1767 we read of the daughter of Parson Smith, of Weymouth--now the
wife of John Adams, of Quincy--scrubbing the floor of her own
bed-chamber the afternoon before her son--destined to become President
of the United States, as his father was before him--was born.

But the English stock brought in by the Reverend Hull was good stock. We
may not envy the ladies scrubbing their own floors or the men walking to
Boston, but many of the best families of this country are proud to trace
their origin back to Weymouth. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont; then
New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut attracted men from Weymouth.
Later the Middle West and the Far West called them. In fact for over a
century the town hardly raised its number of population, so energetic
was the youth it produced.

As happens with lamentable frequency, when Weymouth ceased to be naughty
she also ceased to be interesting. After poring over the dull pa