While tracing your ancestors, don't overlook the wealth of information to be found by visiting the towns where they lived and reading the histories of those towns.
This will help you find those little known facts about your ancestors not included in the broadlybased genealogies and state histories, as well as interesting background material that will give you a better understanding of the kind of lives your ancestors lived.
Several months ago, I visited Manchester-by-the-sea, a beautiful coastal town which began as a settlement on the 400 acres of land known as Jeffrey's Creek that was
once the part of Salem.
The immigrant, Pasco Foote, lived there in the 1600s. The "History of Salem" tells us that he was from Bedfordshire, England, and that he was a fisherman.
Many years before Pasco immigrated to America, fishermen in England and surrounding countries had begun migrating westward to Greenland and Newfoundland as competition in the fishing grounds close to home steadily increased and the supply of fish steadily decreased. Mariners were continually searching for new fishing grounds where cod and mackerel were abundant in order to supply the great demand for these fish In England, Europe and the West Indies.
The first English settlers to reach the northern coast of America sent reports of excellent fishing back to England and in 1622 a royal proclamation was issued in England which gave the Massachusetts Company a monopoly for fishing and curing fish on the shores of New England.
In the following decades, increasing numbers of mariners migrated to New England to engage in the lucrative fishing industry developing there. Pasco Foote arrived in Salem in 1636. He was the patriarch of a long line of fisherman, shoremen, mariners and shipwrights who depended upon the sea for their living.
Catching and curing fish for export was already a thriving industry in Salem when Pasco arrived. It centered around Winter
Harbor which was between what was called The Neck and Winter Island. Winter Harbor was so named because the Salem fishing vessels remained in that harbor during much of the winter.
Eager to encourage the fishing industry there, Salem gave fishermen grants of half-acre lots on the shores of The Neck and Winter Island for a term of years or for life. These grants could not be inherited, however.
On January 16,1636/37, Pasco was one of eight men who received half-acre grants at Winter Harbor. The fishermen had houses and wooden platforms called "flakes" for drying and curing fish, and warehouses for storing the fish when ready for market.
In May of 1639 the town of Salem ruled that those who had fishing lots around Winter Harbor would be allowed to fence in their lots to keep the swine and goats from their fish. The following January, the town further ruled that all of Winter Island could be
fenced in for the safety of the fishing trade; and in June, ordered that dogs on the Neck must be tied up during the day and that any dogs spoiling fish there would be sent away or killed.
To further encourage men "to set upon fishinge," the general court ordered that ships involved in the "taking, making, and transporting of fish" were exempt from all country charges for seven years and that all men were forbidden to use "any codd or basse fish for manuring of ground" except the heads and offal of such fish for fertilizing corn. In addition, all fishermen, while away from Salem during the fishing season, were exempt from military training.
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