Chatham Man Spearheads Effort To Find Cape Cod Cornerstone

by Tim Wood

            A map of Cape Cod and a portion of the South Shore covers one wall in Michael Farber’s Main Street apartment.  Different colored ribbons crisscross the wall, dividing the peninsula into a series of puzzle pieces.

            That’s fitting, because Farber, an attorney from West Virginia with long-standing ties to the area, is trying to solve a puzzle.  He’s looking for The Cornerstone.   

On a wall in his Chatham apartment, Michael Farber has recreated Morse Payne’s maps showing how boundary lines of Cape towns radiate from a center point in Cape Cod Bay.  A forum on The Cornerstone Project will be held in Wellfleet next Wednesday. TIM WOOD PHOTO

         Farber is spearheading an effort to identify “the first cornerstones,” the original stones delineating the boundaries of Cape Cod towns, as well as what he believes is the spot used by the Pilgrim Elders in the 1630s as a basis for the surveys establishing those boundaries, located somewhere in the middle of Cape Cod Bay.

            “The Cornerstone Project” has already had some success. Last month, Farber and eighth graders from the Lighthouse Charter School in Orleans found a boulder in Town Cove marked by an 18-inch “X” which he believes is a marker stone in a cluster of rocks denoting the southernmost boundary of the town of Eastham.  Students found the rock after seeing it in a photograph taken 100 years ago by H.K. Cummings, part of a collection housed at the Snow Library in Orleans.

            The boulder is an important piece of the puzzle that Farber is trying to assemble to prove a theory developed by architect H. Morse Payne in the 1980s.  Payne, who designed Nauset High School, suggested that the original Cape town boundaries radiate from a center point in Cape Cod Bay, “a natural compass rose,” said Farber, and that the Pilgrim Elders located the point along a line stretching from Provincetown to Quivet Creek in Dennis — both of which would have been visible from the mast of a ship stationed in the center of the Bay —following magnetic north.

            According to Farber, boundaries of Sandwich, Barnstable and Yarmouth established in 1639 all converge on this center point.  He’s tentatively located a similar boundary that stretches from Quivet Creek to Nantucket Sound in Harwich, and believes that the cluster of stones found in Town Cove also point to the same spot in Cape Cod Bay.

            Finding that exact spot is proving to be a bit tricky, and locating the actual stone or stones that Farber believes was placed at the location by the Pilgrim surveyors almost 400 years ago may be impossible.

            Sands could have covered the rocks, and fishing draggers which work the bay “could have run over that rock, could have moved it,” he said.  That’s why the project is initially focusing on what’s visible, the clusters of rocks Farber has seen while sailing along the Cape Cod Bay shore that he thinks may be some of the ancient cornerstones.

            He’ll discuss the theories at a public forum on ancient town boundary lines next Wednesday, July 23, at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church in Wellfleet.  Panelists for “The Cornerstone Challenge”  include author William Martin, Clark University Professor Paul Burke, and Paul Niles science teacher at the Lighthouse School.  Payne, a Bedford resident now in his 80s, will also be present, Farber said.

            Farber — whose brother Peter is a well-known Chatham lawyer and whose nephew Dawson is the Orleans Harbormaster — moved here from West Virginia to oversee the renovation of his family’s home in Brewster.  Now he’s consumed by the Cornerstone Project; maps, papers and books have taken over his apartment, and he spends most of his time researching or doing field work, a lot of which consists of sailing the shore identifying the rock clusters shown on some maps of the Cape.  The work calls on many of the skills he developed as an attorney, he said.

            “This really is law,” he said, “every aspect of it.  Surveying, title work, historical research.”

            The topic first drew his attention when he “stumbled” upon a 1985 article by Payne outlining the cornerstone theory.

            “It just leaped out at me that this man was on to something,” Farber said.  He contacted Payne,  who was eager to share his research.

            “He had done all the theory work but none of the field work,” Farber said.  “I decided to do the field work, and it quickly grew into an archeological project.”

            One curiosity is that while the boundaries between many upper and mid Cape towns appear to radiate from  the center point in the bay, the divisions between most lower Cape towns are at a 90-degree angle from that magnetic north line.  The town of Eastham, for instances, appears to have been divided into seven lots, one for each of the original settling families, with the bounds coming off the magnetic north line at a 90-degree angle.

            This shows how the Pilgrims used a sophisticated blend of surveying techniques, Farber said.  The grid-type system used to divide up Eastham was Roman in origin, while subdividing land based on a pie-shaped circle was English, and was used, according to papers by Payne, to lay out early Massachusetts Bay Colony towns.

            Recently, archeologist Catherine Macort signed on to the project, and Farber plans to continue to work with Lighthouse School students, who are lead investigators of the Town Cove site.  He’s also issued a challenge to Cape Cod surveyors to participate.

            “It’s an educational initiative,” Farber said in describing the project.  “To include the whole Cape community in the project is the objective.”

            Farber recently filed an amended special use permit application with the state board of underwater archaeological resources to continue work on the Town Cove cluster.  Along with students and other volunteers, he plans to further investigate the “X” boulder and determine if the mark is man-made or natural, as well as conduct off-shore searches to find more boulder clusters.  He’s also working with property owners in Truro to investigate the origins of a cluster of boulders just offshore which he believes may be another key in the cornerstone puzzle.

            The work is also showing students how something as dry as boundary lines and surveys can come alive and open up a window into history, Farber said.

            “It’s taking on its own color,” he said of the project.