Born in 1898, Mrs. Lapham describes her experiences growing up in North Eastham, Massachusetts.  She was born in Boston and at the age of 3 was adopted and brought to North Eastham by her adopted parents.  Her father was a fisherman and mother a homemaker.  She recalls her youth in North Eastham, going to a one room school with one teacher and 40.  She remembers swimming on Billingsgate Island, which is now covered by water.  She traveled to school on a horse-drawn barge carrying 15 students.  On weekends she would walk 3 miles to the library on Saturday.  She would attend church all day Sunday.  (morning service, Sunday school and evening services).  She remembers seeing peddlers selling all kinds of goods from wagons pulled by horses.  She also comments on seeing a car for the first time, a Stanley Steamer.  Her uncle drove a Maxwell and would take she and her mother to church.  She also recalls her father seeing President Theodore Roosevelt when he came to Provincetown.  Mrs. Lapham tells of hearing about rum runners dropping bottles of liquor in Barnstable harbor and her neighbors picking it up at night.  She recalls that the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was very active and would pray for the salvation of rum-runners.    

Notes: The Tales of Cape Cod Oral History Collection is housed at the William Brewster Nickerson Archives in the Wilkens Library at Cape Cod Community College in West Barnstable, Massachusetts. For more information about the collection, please contact the Nickerson Archives, http://www.nickersonarchives.org/.