Happy 125th Birthday Bourne Ma.
April 02, 2009 BOURNE — Bourne will celebrate its 125th birthday today, as Cape Cod's youngest town —
although it was once part of the Cape's oldest.
It's the first — and last — town most visitors see when they visit the Cape,
and the only one split by the 540-foot-wide Cape Cod Canal.
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Bourne was incorporated on April 12, 1884, making it the 15th Cape town, after several unsuccessful attempts to separate it from Sandwich, the Cape's oldest official town.
Here are 10 things to celebrate about the Cape's youngest and oldest town:1. Myles Standish, military adviser to the Pilgrims at Plimoth colony, was the first to suggest a canal be built where the Cape Cod Canal now stands.
The next person to suggest it was Gen.George Washington.
2. The Pilgrims established the Aptucxet Trading Post around 1627 where the Scusset and Manomet rivers almost met, and shielded the traders from pirates.
3. In April 1865, Capt. Russell Gibbs and sailor Stillman Ellis, both of Sagamore, were temporarily arrested in the dragnet to catch presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth as they sailed back down the Potomac after delivering marble for the expansion of the Capitol.
4. The town was named after Jonathan Bourne of New Bedford, in appreciation of his legislative assistance in allowing the town to split from Sandwich. Bourne was born in what is now Bourne Village, but moved to New Bedford at the age of 17. And Bourne amassed a fortune on his way to becoming the most successful whaling ship owner in New Bedford.
5. Jonathan Bourne gave the town one gift over the course of his life, a bell that to this day rings in the steeple of the Bourne United Methodist Church on Sandwich Road. His daughter, Emily Bourne, used her family fortune to build a town library, designed in 1897 by Henry Vaughn of Boston, the first architect of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The building now is home to the historical society, the town archives, and the historical commission.
6. Bourne was home to one of the most prolific serial killers of her day: "Jolly" Jane Toppan, shown below, a nurse who moved to Cataumet in the 1880s. She allegedly poisoned four members of the Davis family to death on what is today Mystery Lane. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to the Taunton Insane Asylum until her death. She admitted killing 27 others.
7. The Jonathan Bourne Historical Center's collection includes a large bronze bust of Jonathan Bourne made by Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore. 8. Taylors Point (where Massachusetts Maritime Academy is located today) was named after summer resident Gen. Charles H. Taylor, the onetime owner and publisher of the Boston Globe. He gave his son, John, a baseball team, the Boston Puritans.
John renamed them the Boston Red Sox.
9. The Massachusetts National Cemetery is the final resting place of American soldiers
from almost every major conflict in our history,
including several "officially unknown" Union soldiers from the Civil War.
10. Celebrities who have visited or lived in Bourne include President Grover Cleveland, who had his summer White House at Gray Gables from 1893 to 1897; artist Tasha Tudor; actor Joseph Jefferson the hot actor of 1895); actress Patty Duke; travel writer Sydney Clark, ; painter John O'Hara Cosgrave; Lionel Barrymore (who was a boatman for Jefferson); Mark Twain; Franklin Delano Roosevelt; and Morley Safer.
who knew ! ha !
*grins* who ever said there is/was no steam here on "Old Cape Cod"
love the place I do !!1
Happen to see the train today *grins* yep she still runs daily
not the dinner train this time of year ..
just the garbage cars that's how we transport our waist off the cape !!
Still always make me smile when I see and stop for da train
Little things i tell ya !!!
gosh they make me smile !!
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