Old wall tells town's history By GREG COOK Staff writer It began with a question: What was the origin of the stone wall running along Peter Bergholtz's Rockport property? The wall begins at Old Garden Beach and runs west, roughly parallel to Harraden Avenue, until it turns northward, running roughly parallel to Highland Avenue, until it meets Rockport Harbor. It encloses 14 acres of land. Some of its granite stones are 5- to 6-feet-wide and weigh several tons. They are stacked in the old colonial fashion, without mortar. The wall runs some 2,000 feet, broken up here and there by roads and homes. In some sections it is low, but at the edge of Bergholtz's property at the end of Pool Place the wall rises 8 feet high. Bergholtz and Donald Dawson, a friend he knew from serving together on various committees in town, got to talking about the wall a couple years back. Dawson, a Rockport surgeon, had noticed the structure on his frequent walks about town. Bergholtz, who runs a manufacturing company in Reading, knew little about it, but the questions made him curious. The two men began visiting the Sandy Bay Historical Society in Rockport on Mondays to investigate the matter. There they met Eleanor Parsons, a retired teacher and local historian who frequents the historical society. Parsons recalled, "I said, 'You guys have to write this,' and you said, 'No you have to.'" And so she was drafted. After two years of digging through historical records and writing, the three have published "Fish, Timber, Granite and Gold," a book documenting what they learned about the wall, who built it, how the man came to own the land and how it was passed down through his descendents. They will talk about the book at the Sandy Bay Historical Society meeting tomorrow at 7:30 p.m., at the Rockport Community House on Broadway. The talk is free and open to the public. Proceeds from the sale of the book will go to the Sandy Bay Historical Society. The wall borders property on the Headlands in Rockport, land granted to colonists in 16 narrow lots in 1708. One of the first owners, Stephen Row, bought up the area and sold it to Gloucester merchants Joseph Allen and his son Joseph Jr. The property stayed in the Allen family until heirs sold it to a Caleb Norwood in 1772. Norwood was born in 1736, the youngest son of Joshua and Elizabeth Norwood, and grew up at Straitsmouth in what was then a neighborhood of Gloucester but now is part of Rockport. His ancestors came from Gloucestershire, England, and settled in Gloucester in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Caleb worked with his father fishing and making mooring stones from local granite, which some say was the start of the local granite industry. He probably was involved in the coastwise trade, perhaps shipping lumber. "Most guys in that era seemed to do a lot of things, whatever they could do to make a buck," Bergholtz said. But things changed around 1771, when some say Caleb Norwood discovered gold at Gully Point. Some believe he found gold bars left behind by pirates. Some say he was a privateer, a form of government-sanctioned piracy. Some think the story of the gold is a lot of hooey. But Bergholtz, Dawson and Parsons are convinced Norwood suddenly came into wealth around this time, perhaps as much as $1 million in today's dollars. "They were making mooring stones, fishing, not coming up with the big bucks. They were making a living but not that kind of money," Bergholtz said. "How he came by the gold we're not sure of. Probably he was doing some privateering, but we don't know that," Bergholtz said. "Instead of catching cod they were probably off catching Frenchmen, Spaniards, maybe even Englishmen." Bergholtz added, "You wonder how many people he killed to get it. We'll never know." Norwood moved his cabin from Straitsmouth to the edge of Sandy Bay Harbor, at the corner of what is now Mt. Pleasant Street and Atlantic Avenue, in 1772. He soon built a larger house to replace it. That same year, he bought land at the Headlands. He loaned money to the state treasury to help finance the American Revolution. As Parsons writes, "... it would have been natural for his neighbors to wonder where the money came from for such purchases." Bergholtz believes Norwood had the wall erected around his land around 1800. He believes the work was done by men using oxen and perhaps earth ramps. "In this case, I would say it was clearing the land. They wanted a mowing field here," Bergholtz said. When Caleb Norwood died in 1814, he left the 14-acre parcel bounded by the wall to his three sons as common pasture for their cows to graze. Over the decades it came to be subdivided again and parts were sold off. Family members died. Family members moved away. Today there are few Norwoods left in Rockport. "It's just one family, but it's probably a very typical family in many ways in how New England became settled and developed," Bergholtz said. Parsons hopes the book will help preserve a piece of the town's history and inspire others to be interested in the old stone walls. Bergholtz said, "They're what's left from a man's life and his work." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Gloucester Daily Times Home Page