Who are “they?”  The Duxbury Rural and Historical Society.  Specifically, Carolyn Ravenscroft.  She is the Archivist at the Drew Archival Library, better known as the Wright Building.  You know, the beautiful 1907 building right across from DHS, attached to the Student Union (you should see inside – wonderfully restored).

Anyway, They know everything about Duxbury. Since my wife is co-chairperson of Duxbury’s 375th Anniversary Committee, our house has lately been chock full of talk about times of yore.  The other day, this riddle was posed: “What was Washington Street named before George Washington was born?”  After all, Duxbury was incorporated 95 years before he came into this world.  The street must have been there, right?  Why not?  I went straight to the source: Carolyn.

Well, she knew the answer right off the top of her head – then she enthusiastically dug out the original documents to prove it.  Oh well, Washington Street didn’t exist until 1803-four years after he died. 

And she even knew why.  Turns out, the town was mostly rural back then: farmers and fishermen.  As the new century dawned (the 1800s), Duxbury’s shipbuilding blossomed.  Shipyards sprouted on the Bluefish River, craftsmen gathered raw material or made ship components all over town (think masts, carved figureheads, lumber).  The new titans of industry wanted an efficient way to transport all this stuff to where the ships were being built-along the shore where Powder Point Avenue arcs around the marsh, just beyond today’s flagpole.

A road transecting the town, parallel to the shoreline was proposed.  But, wait!  How to get all that stuff to the opposite shore of Bluefish River?  How about a bridge?  Too expensive, claimed many townspeople.  Helping to earn his moniker “King Caesar,” Ezra Weston wielded his personal version of a tax override: he promised the town the bridge would be affordable. Then he compelled local craftsmen to make it so.  The road and the bridge were approved in 1799 at Town Meeting (sound familiar)? 

Both were dedicated on July 4 1803.  Thus was born Washington Street, bolstering the burgeoning shipbuilding industry.  To showcase the shipbuilders’ newfound wealth, many new houses began popping up along this new thoroughfare in the early 1800s, built in the popular “Federalist” style.

A footnote: ever wonder why many of the cape-style homes along Washington Street don’t face the road?  Long before the road was commissioned, that part of town was populated by fishermen.  Needing to get to the shoreline, they made cart paths to the water and built their homes facing them.  Washington Street came along perpendicular to these lanes (which still exist today).  While the newer federal homes faced the new street, the older homes faced the other way.

Who knew? They did.

– Steven J. Antonellis