This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[27]
Its people are the most homogeneous in the State, never having received a large infusion of new blood.
It is not a desirable place for foreign settlement.
The county, therefore, retains its old names, and its people their good old ways; yet in no portion of the State will one find a more intelligent and well-bred people, in no community is there a more equal distribution of wealth, or a more genuine feeling of generous but unobtrusive hospitality.
There are but thirteen towns in Barnstable County, one of the largest and most important of which, at the present time, is Provincetown, at the extreme end of the Cape, whose capacious harbor is one of the best on the Atlantic coast.
In 1860 the population of the county was 35,990, in 1865 it was 34,489, being a decrease in five years of 1,501.
The valuation of the county in 1860 was $12,621,291.00, in 1865 it was $14,276,198.00, showing an increase in five years of $1,654,907.00.
The number of men which Barnstable County furnished for the war was reported by the selectmen of the towns, in 1866, to have been 2,305.
This return must have been altogether incorrect: the number could not have been less than thirty-six or thirty-seven hundred, the percentage of men furnished throughout the Commonwealth being about 91 to every 100 inhabitants; and that Barnstable County was not behind any other portion of the State is conclusively shown by the fact, well ascertained and indisputable, that each of its towns filled its contingent of men upon every call of the President, and at the end of the war each was credited with having furnished a surplus over and above every demand, which in the aggregate amounted to three hundred and nine men. The total expenses of the towns on account of the war was $308,985.08. This is exclusive of $90,934.84, which was raised and paid for State aid to soldiers' families during the four years of the war, and which was reimbursed by the State.
Total, $399,919.92.
The following is the record of each town in the county:—
1871. E. P. DUtton and Co. Boston,.
Tufts University. provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.