Before refrigeration, salt was essential to the New England fishing industry. Without salt, the usually lucrative commodities like cod and herring were worthless.  But there were no local sources of salt in early America, and the colonists relied on Britain to supply it. When the British blockaded the coast during the American Revolution, the industry was slated for collapse.

 For years, Brewster Historical Society puzzled over the ethnicity of the Harris-Black family, who occupied this little house. Federal census data from 1790 through 1880 listed them as “All other free persons,” “Mulatto,” or “Indian,” on the whim of the census takers, as they farmed their remote spot of land on Red Top Road near the current Stony Brook Mill Site.

Henry Hopkins was born in 1845 the son of housewright Moses Hopkins, Jr. He lived at 463 Long Pond Road. At the age of 22, with his father Moses, he built a blacksmith shop on their property across the street at 4 Depot Road, where he shod horses and made hinges, hooks and pulleys, among other tools.

In 1908 The Cottage was sold to my great grandfather for $1.00.  We still have a copy of the old hand-written deed.  The property was the guest house for a neighboring estate.

As I turned for home (a good mile and a half of sand away) I looked down one last time and spied something unclam-like sticking out of the sand: the neck of a bottle, seal intact. I dug it out and found that it contained an appealing brown substance with some sediment in it. I read the bottle label: “Golden Wedding Whiskey.” I couldn’t wait to get home and look it up.

As I was looking through items that might be of interest to the Brewster Historical Society’s exhibit for 2024-2026, Letters from the Front. I came across a group of letters, telegrams, and V-Mail sent to my mother during World War II.