Photo: Lawson Tower, Scituate

The Lawson Tower, pictured above, was a gift to the town of Scituate in 1902 from copper magnate Thomas Lawson. Described as the "most photographed and most expensive water tower in America", it is 153 feet high, and the interpretive sign at the tower's base says it has "...a clock room and a bell room complete with tuned bells upon which melodies are played on special town occasions," my visit apparently not being one of these.

The name "Scituate" comes from the indian word "satuit", meaning "cold brook". My reason for visiting the town was not to see its water tower; in fact I quite accidently stumbled upon it (if one can 'stumble' across a 153-foot Roman-inspired musical water tower...) on my way to the real purpose of my visit, the town library and its archives. My ancestors landed in Plymouth in the early 1600s and settled in Scituate, and I wanted to see if there were any local records about them that I had not been able to discover during previous internet searches at home. But first, we had to get into the port at Scituate, which was made more exciting that we thought necessary by some rather large rollers that seemed to come from nowhere, and so we partially surfed through the narrow channel into port before tying up at the Scituate Harbor (I keep wanting to type a "u" in that word) Yacht Club, where we bumped into one of the yacht brokers who took us around just over a year-and-a-half ago when we were boat-shopping.

My lineage is supposed to go back to one Ephraim Kempton, whom I thought had crossed the Atlantic with his brother Mannasseh in 1623 in the Anne. The records I found suggest that while Mannasseh was on the Anne which arrived in Plymouth in July 1623, Ephraim (the first of five generations of Ephraims, the baby-name book must have been small back then...)and his son Ephraim Jr. were not, but that they crossed over sometime between 1637 and 1640. In 1641, Ephraim and another settler who were appointed constables were summoned to the "General Courte" in Plymouth to explain why they apparently did not collect four pounds sterling and change in taxes. On 7 March 1642 Ephraim was fined twenty shillings for "unclean speeches and carriages" (I can just imagine what that meant...) toward one of the town's main administrators (at least he wasn't burned at the stake, or tarred and feathered), and he died owing his brother Mannasseh twenty-one pounds. So far, not exactly an auspicious start in the New World. However, subsequent generations must have made up for the shaky beginning, as several of the New England histories I read say that "...the Kempton family is among the oldest and best known families of the State (Massachuesetts)." See, you can fool some of the people....

Anyway, I left with some questions answered, and more questions in their place (and maybe I should just stop digging, perhaps I don't want to know why Ephraim and Jr. bugged out of Ye Olde Englande in ye firste place), but it was still a worthwhile expedition. Once back in Semper V, we made ready and headed north to Marblehead and the Boston Yacht Club, where Judy has managed to secure not only a couple of tickets to the Commodore's Ball on Saturday night (see, Judy's being a member of the RNSYS Board does pay off at times!), but also a berth alongside the Club so we won't have to worry about the girls being left out on a mooring, which also spares us having to row the dink in and out wearing our best bib and tucker...