In 1832, Levi Crowell's father built a wharf and warehouse in West Dennis, just where the river narrows as it heads north past the Bass River Golf Course in South Yarmouth. His father landed merchandise for his store here, accepted deliveries of fish, provided goods and services to the fishing and shipping businesses in the river, and leased space to a sail maker. It must have been a busy place.
Looking east, at the site of the wharf and warehouse, from the Bass River Golf Course.
His father died one evening in November 1836 while working at the wharf. Levi was nine. The estate continued to hold many of his father's shipping and real estate assets for many years. I've been able to follow it in Dennis assessor's records as late as 1860. In fact, the estate acquired, as well as disposed of, assets during these years. I assume the executors maintained the estate for the continuing benefit of Levi's mother, Julia Ann.
The first job Crowell mentions in his autobiography, was working as a cook on a schooner when he was 18. He also worked for $0.50/day in Major Obed Baxter's saltwork's at 19. In 1847 he shipped out as a cook, and in 1848 as a cook on one vessel, as a foremast hand on another, and as mate on a third. In 1849, he married, and then shipped out as mate on a coasting vessel, later going mackerel fishing.
When he got married, he and his wife moved into his father's house, where his mother continued to live with them for many years. This was about 10 to 15 minute walk from his father's wharf, which was still standing.
In the spring of 1850, at 22, he started his first business: the first coal, wood, and lumber yard in West Dennis.
In the spring of 1850, I started to keep a coal, wood and lumber yard, the first one in West Dennis. I went to Philadelphia and bought 150 tons of coal; 100 tons of stove-, and 50 tons of egg size, and shipped them to West Dennis by Schooner Southern, Capt. Jacob Studley. It was lightered up Bass River in scows of ten tons capacity to my father's wharf and put in bins on the wharf. I then went to Gardiner, Maine, to purchase lumber. I took passage on Schooner Anthraphord, 98 tons, Capt. Miller Whelden, Jr. I bought a cargo of lumber and shipped it on Capt. Whelden's schooner to West Dennis. It was rafted up Bass River to my wharf. It took me two years to sell that coal and lumber, and I got discouraged.
It is hard to imagine a man of Crowell's energy and ability sitting around for two years watching a pile of coal and stack of lumber slowly dwindle, but he doesn't say anything about other activity during this time. In the spring of 1852, however, when he says that he'd disposed of his inventory, he bought a schooner and entered the shipping business.
Postscript: Coal was once important to many Cape residents for cooking, heating, and steam power. I think the railroad was still delivering coal to South Dennis about 1960. I get the impression that Crowell was a local pioneer in the business.
Crowell himself says that his was the first operation in West Dennis. The Barnstable Patriot of November 12, 1905 reports the recollections of A. B. Crocker, who remembered the first cargo of coal, 30 tons, delivered at Hyannis in the 1840s. Crocker remembered that Captain Alvin Snow, who was in the lumber business, took deliveries of 70 tons in 1850, and of other cargos in 1851 and 1858. The Patriot went on to say that the trade had grown, and that T. Crocker & Sons had landed 14,000 tons in 1902, while H.B. Chase & Sons "alone" handled some 3,000 tons in 1904.
One of the objections to building the bridge between South Yarmouth and West Dennis before 1832 was that it would be an obstacle to rafting lumber up the river. Apparently Crowell was able to get his lumber past the bridge. This bridge had been built by a private corporation, chartered by the legislature in 1832; Levi's father, whose business upriver depending on the ability of vessels and scows to pass the bridge, was one of the corporation's founders and original stockholders.
Sources: The autobiography of Levi Crowell, Capt. Levi Crowell Civil War Prisoner. His Personal Biography. page 17-18. Edited by Peter D. Howes. The autobiography is available from the Dennis Historical Society bookstore. The Barnstable Patriot for this period is available on line through the Sturgis Library web site: here. Coal deliveries to South Dennis based on personal recollections of coal bin just east of the intersection of the tracks and Main Street. The photograph is mine. The Dennis Historical Society has posted an early petition against allowing bridge construction, in part because of the obstacle it would pose to rafting lumber. Nancy Thacher Reid gives the location of the wharf and warehouse on page 341 of her history of Dennis.
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