Local author’s new book reveals Weymouth’s history and quirks

Local author Mark Schneider said life in Weymouth was “peaceful enough for a long time,…”, after the first settlers arrived in 1622.

“Weymouth never really developed a stratification of social class like many other Massachusetts Bay towns did,” said Schneider, a member of the Weymouth Historical Commission. “There was no shipbuilding industry or fishing industry. Mass Bay became a national leader in merchant trade, and Weymouth had none.”

Schneider is the author of “Colonial Weymouth: The Forgotten Second Settlement”, which tells the story of Weymouth’s early years through the American Revolution and the founding of the Constitution.

Commission chairman James Clarke said Schneider describes Weymouth’s early life “comprehensively”.

“It helps us better understand when the settlers arrived, how the land was divided and how it was used,” he said.

Weymouth Settler Oddities

Schneider said Weymouth’s first settlers came from Batcombe and Somerset, England.

‘The people of Weymouth were pretty much like country hoodlums compared to the highly educated, middle class people who came to settle in other towns like Hingham and Braintree,’ he said. “All these other cities had people who came with very educated ministers.”

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Schneider said early Weymouth settlers were rural farmers and “much less religious” than the Winthrop Puritans who settled in Massachusetts in 1630.

“The people who settled Virginia were from Somerset, England, and chances are the early settlers here had a southern accent,” he said.

Schneider said English businessman Thomas Weston, founder of Weymouth’s first settlement in Wessagusset, financed the Pilgrim’s journey to Plymouth in 1620.

“But he was a fringe businessman who was on the run from the authorities in England,” he said.

Weymouth settlers ‘land peacefully subdivided’

Schneider said the early settlers at Weymouth “divided the land quite peacefully among themselves”.

“One of the ways we know it was when the Reverend Samuel Newman (founder of Rehoboth, in 1644) left, he wrote down who had what land and where it was,” he said. “We have this document, and it’s in the town safe.”

Clarke said the book contains maps that detail land ownership patterns.

“He worked with David Finney, a local architect, to put together the maps based on a 1923 town history,” he said.

Relations of the settlers of Weymouth with the Native Americans

Schneider said the first settlers of Weymouth in 1622 “are somewhat maligned” by historical records because of their clashes with Native Americans.

“I think of them as poor young men who were probably recruited from the docks and didn’t have the ability or the background to cope in a new environment,” he said.

The book highlights a clash at Weymouth in April 1622 between the Massachusett tribe and Captain Myles Standish, a military adviser to Plymouth Colony.

“Plymouth got information about a plot against Wessagusset,” he said. “One of these warnings came from Phineas Pratt, who lived here. At the same time Chief Massasoit of the Wampanoag told Edward Winslow, a pilgrim, that it was true and that they should “go up there and kill the leaders”.

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Schneider said he believed the clash between Massachusetts and Standish happened because of “a few angry young tribesmen.”

“They were saying let’s kill these people because they’re stealing our food, and we don’t like them,” he said. “A bunch of other tribesmen said it sounded good. The plot was mostly free talk because it’s nonsense when you read the narrative about how Standish kills these people. It doesn’t does not correspond to the fact that the Indians are a tribe that wanted to annihilate the people of Wessagusset.

Schneider said a memorial stone on Great Hill wrongly celebrates Standish’s victory over the Massachusett tribe and “saves the settlements”.

“The opposite happened,” he said. “The colony of Wessagusset was abandoned and all the settlers returned home to England. A historian speculates that one of Standish’s aims was to get rid of the people there because they were rivals in the fur trade .”

Schneider’s book at Tufts Library

Clarke said Schneider detailed his book during a recent Weymouth 400 anniversary lecture series at Tufts Library which was “well attended”.

“There were a lot of good questions and interest,” he said. “One of the fascinating things was how the library signed up and took on the job of being an editor. It was the first time they had done this. They worked with Mark and edited the book. It was quite an accomplishment for the library.”

Weymouth Public Libraries manager Robert MacLean said library staff “rushed” to help Schneider publish the book.

“We live our lives with books, but we had never published a book and we didn’t know how to do it,” he said. “With the Weymouth 400 celebration coming up, we knew we had to help Mark get the book published. It is a period of Weymouth history that is unrecorded and for sale to local historians and residents , it’s an important book to be a part of and to get into as many hands as possible.”

MacLean said the book can be purchased for $25 from Tufts in the “Friends of Weymouth Libraries” section.

“It’s also on the library shelves and customers can look it up without having to buy it,” he said.