"So many things go with the people, and you think they’re going to live forever, and they’re gone, and you never know what they do know."

John G. Lewis interview with Tales of Cape Cod, June 06, 1978 in Osterville, MA.  Born on July 29, 1907 in Osterville, Mr. Lewis recalls that his father was a laborer and his mother was a paper hanger and house cleaner.  His father cut ice on Joshua Pond in the winter and also worked for Mr. Crosby who had oyster plots in the village.  Mr.

February 14, 1978 interview with Elizabeth Woodman, who describes her experiences in the Lighthouse Service. One track towards the end of the tape is distorted, but it is still audible.

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/.

Born in 1914, Mrs. Crane talks about her ancestors coming to Situate and moving down to Barnstable in 1639.

Born in 1906, in Ostrerville, Mr. Lewis recalls that his paternal grandfather was a peddler and grandmother was a nurse who worked for wealthy summer residents. She was a Bliss and her family owned substantial land in Centerville.  His father was a carpenter and shell fisherman.  His mother took in washing and ironing.  Mr.

"My generation – we’ve lived through the horse and buggy days right up to mechanized machinery and people going to the moon and landing on the moon and like that.  You can't visualize anything that could advance to that, but I suppose it will be."

Biographical Sketch

Dr. Crosby was born in Brookline in 1895.  He reads from the introduction to his unpublished memoirs for approximately 10 minutes.  This section deals primarily with the train trip from Boston to Buzzards Bay and then on to the Chatham depot, the ride from the depot to their summer home in East Harwich, and his earliest memories as a child during the summer with his family and relatives.  Dr.

Madeiros describes her experiences living on Cape Cod in Cotuit in the 1920's, including bootleggers, silent movies, the Barnstable Fair, travelling medicine shows, the one room schoolhouse in Santuit, MA, travelling peddlers and local businesses, doctors and medical care, and Christmas celebrations.

"See, in the latter part of my grandmother being at the lighthouse, President Roosevelt was off the backshore in a government boat on a vacation.  They told him about her being the only woman lighthouse keeper in the country.  He said he would like to meet her.  So, they brought him around, around Provincetown and into Wellfleet Harbor.  They rode him ashore.  He shook hands with my grandmother."

Malcolm “Max” Crosby age 85 (born 1893) and Horace M. Crosby Jr.