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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
11
In
those
primitive
years,
before
any
town
but
Salem
had
been
named,
this
whole
region
was
known
as
Cape
Ann
Side;
and
about
ten
years
after
Winthrop's
arrival,
my
first
ancestor's
name
appears
among
those
of
other
hardy
settlers
of
the
neighborhood.
No
record
has
been
found
of
his
coming,
but
emigration
by
that
time
had
grown
so
rapid
that
ships'
lists
were
no
longer
carefully
preserved.
And
then
he
was
but
a
simple
yeoman,
a
tiller
of
the
soil;
one
who
must
have
loved
the
sea,
however,
for
he
moved
nearer
and
nearer
towards
it
from
Agawam
through
Wenham
woods,
until
the
close
of
the
seventeenth
century
found
his
descendants--my
own
great-great-grandfather's
family--planted
in
a
romantic
homestead-nook
on
a
hillside,
overlooking
wide
gray
spaces
of
the
bay
at
the
part
of
Beverly
known
as
"The
Farms."
The
situation
was
beautiful,
and
home
attachments
proved
tenacious,
the
family
claim
to
the
farm
having
only
been
resigned
within
the
last
thirty
or
forty
years.
I
am
proud
of
my
unlettered
forefathers,
who
were
also
too
humbly
proud
to
care
whether
their
names
would
be
remembered
or
not;
for
they
were
God-fearing
men,
and
had
been
persecuted
for
their
faith
long
before
they
found
their
way
either
to
Old
or
New
England.
The
name
is
rather
an
unusual
one,
and
has
been
traced
back
from
Wales
and
the
Isle
of
Wight
through
France
to
Languedoc
and
Piedmont;
a
little
hamlet
in
the
south
of
France
still
bearing
it
in
what
was
probably
the
original
spelling-La
Combe.
There
is
a
family
shield
in
existence,
showing
a
hill
surmounted
by
a
tree,
and
a
bird
with
spread
wings
above.
It
might
symbolize
flight
in
times
of
persecution,
from
the
mountains
to
the
forests,
and
thence
to
heaven,
or
to
the
free
skies
of
this
New
World.
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