Excerpt from 'A Gentleman's Guide to Belvidere Plain'

It was my pleasure to spend the afternoons of Sunday, June 11, and Sunday, June 25, 2006 in the home of Mr. & Mrs. William C. Wyman at No. 290 Woodland Road in Auburndale, Massachusetts. During my first visit, Mrs. Jane Wyman greeted me at the door and walked me to their dining room where I sat down with Bill Wyman who was to be the subject of my interview. He and I each spread out our many papers, photographs and maps while Mrs. Wyman seated herself nearby to ensure that we got all the facts straight. Over a plate of brownies and "Congo" bars, I set my pen to paper and recorded Mr. Wyman's personal history and his memories of the Belvidere Plain.

One of the Plain's prominent personalities in the latter half of the twentieth century, was born William Charles Wyman, Jr. in 1923. His parents were William Charles, senior born 1882 and died 1930 in Ottumwa, Iowa and Helen Maxwell (Lowry) Wyman, born 1890 and died 1996. The elder Wyman was a veteran of World War I in France, and later a county engineer for Wapello County, Iowa. His father before him had two brothers who lived in West Newton, Massachusetts one of whom would often visit with his brother at the family's home in Iowa. That brother and his wife, being unable to have a son of their own, doted on their nephew William Charles, senior. On the latter's return from the Great War in Europe, he visited with this uncle in West Newton where he spent time with the couple's only daughter who was his first cousin. Her good friend and neighbor was Helen Maxwell Lowry. In 1920, William C. Wyman, senior and Helen were married. The couple had three children. Faith (Wyman) Lindsey was born first in 1921. William Charles Wyman, Jr., the subject of this essay, was the second child born in 1923, and his younger brother was Edward Lowry Wyman, born in 1925.

The Wyman family spent their first summer in Falmouth in 1922 though their mother was here since the age of five in 1895. Wyman is of Scottish and English derivation. Bill's grandfather, Maxwell John Lowry was the son of a Belfast, Ireland man named Maxwell Lowry, born in 1820 who in turn was the son of a Seaford, Ireland man named Samuel Lowry, born 1779. The Belfast man settled at Dorchester, Massachusetts. His son, Maxwell John Lowry was born in 1862 and eventually entered the patent leather business with his Japannery in Mansfield, Massachusetts, with offices at No. 60 South Street in Boston. A daughter named Katherine Anderson Lowry was later born in 1863 and died in 1956.

The young Mr. Lowry married Abba Elizabeth Martine, born 1865. She had a great-great-grandfather in the French Revolution whose parents were killed. That man ran to England where he stowed away on a ship to America.

Fearing for his life, he refused to give his real name and thus the ship's Captain named him "Martine." He later entered the sailing profession, became a captain of a cargo ship that sailed for several years at a time. He brought home a Willard clock to his wife after one such journey, which would later figure into family lore. Maxwell and Abba (Martine) Lowry had four children. Eldest was Ruth (Lowry) Durkee, a fun woman who always saw the proverbial glass as halffull.

She was born in 1888. Next, Helen Maxwell Lowry was born in 1890. The third child born in 1893 was Maxwell J. Lowry, Jr., nicknamed "Bun" who died in 1976 and never married. Some years later, in 1907 a fourth child was born to the couple, Elizabeth Avery "Betty" Lowry. Betty married in 1934 to Samuel Taylor Tuthill, divorced and then in 1954 married Louis Barton Curry. Family anecdote has it that Abba Martine Lowry was sitting for the child of a sick couple who worked for her husband. At this time there was a sort of plague in the Boston area. The couple eventually recovered and reclaimed the baby. Mrs. Lowry had become so attached to it that she yearned for a final "change of life" baby of her own.

What brought Bill Wyman's maternal grandfather to Falmouth originally was that he achieved a financial position that allowed him to consider a summer home. On the advice of his friend, Dr. George Faulkner who vacationed with his family at No. 268 Shore Street, he was persuaded to visit Falmouth. In 1895 he rented the home at No. 11 Wheeling Avenue with his first three of four children.

His son "Bun" slept up in the high tower, which must have been reduced in height during the late 1920's.

Following the creation of Falmouth Inner Harbor, Mr. Lowry built the harbor home at No. 79 Girard Avenue in 1919. At the time, with many visiting friends and the growing Durkee family a point was reached where the elder Lowrys required more space and some rest from the commotion of their grandchildren. The Wymans in turn were also just about to start having children. This is when the Wheeling Avenue home was sold to Bob Dana. The harbor house was then a one-story bungalow with stairs that led to a landing where a couple of World War I surplus navy ship hammocks were hung. There was one bedroom on the ground floor. When the grandparents had visitors, the women would share the downstairs bedroom and the men would sleep up in the hammocks.

In 1930, Helen Wyman's husband died leaving her a widow with three children. The elder Mr. Lowry filled in for his deceased son-in-law in many of the duties of fatherhood until he himself died at his home in Falmouth one afternoon in 1947 while out working in his yard. His wife Abba had died earlier that same year. The house then passed to his daughter, Helen. During his time in Falmouth, Maxwell Lowry had been owner of many lots of land on the Plain.

The Oswald house at No. 186 Clinton newly built is seen across the cove at left. To the upper right are the Robertson and Hawkridge homes at No. 45 Swing Lane and No. 25 Swing Lane. In the rowboat from left to right are Faith Wyman, Edward Lowry Wyman on his grandfather Maxwell John Lowry's lap, William Charles Wyman, Jr., and "Bun" Lowry.

Maxwell Lowry was not a developer per se but had an active interest in seeing the many parcels put to good use by respectable families. Joining him in this activity was his neighbor Mr. Goodnow who also owned a large number of lots on Belvidere Plain. The Goodnows and the Lowrys had property in Jamaica Plain, where Mr. Lowry sold to Fitzgerald, who provided another connection to Falmouth.102 Albert W. Goodnow sold to Mr. Lowry the land where the latter built his harbor side home overlooking new Falmouth Harbor. Much of the land was new – made up of fill from the dredging of Deacon's Pond in 1907. It is assumed that local landowners like Lowry and Goodnow requested this rather than see the fill dumped out at sea.

Bill Wyman remembers how as a child he and his sister and brother would fear taking a short cut from Clinton over to Shore Street through the Beebe farm because the cows would run after them. Closer to home, where the Regatta Restaurant eventually stood, was a short beach later known as Simpson's Landing where the summer circus would allow its animals to bathe in the water.

It was quite a sight to see elephants and many large four-legged animals in the circus being walked down Scranton Avenue to this beach. Kids would line up along the opposite side of the cove to watch the spectacle.

Bill Wyman went to grammar school in Ottumwa, Iowa. When his father died in 1930, the family stayed in Ottumwa while their grandmother Wyman was still alive. She was Alice (Prugh) Wyman, born 1852. After her death in 1935, mother Helen (Lowry) Wyman moved her children to Newton, Massachusetts.

Bill's grandfather was named William Cutter Wyman, born at Salem, Massachusetts in 1848. Bill spent a year at the Newton High School but the transition was hard from rural Iowa to a Massachusetts public school so he later transferred to the Lenox School run by the Episcopal Church in Lenox, Massachusetts where he was graduated in 1942. During those early years, he spent six summers at Camp O-At-Ka in Maine.

When Bill first obtained his driver's license, he recalls motoring very fast down Girard Avenue until nearly colliding with Judge John J. Burns, Sr. at the corner of Harrisburg Avenue, where he promptly received the jurist's summary judgment.

In the summer of '42, Bill worked at the Ten Acre Store on Main Street in Falmouth, an S. S. Pierce outlet. There he delivered groceries for its owner Hollis Lovell, son of the store's founder Col. Andrew J. Lovell.103 Hollis Lovell's widow Ermine was well-known in Falmouth as a real estate agent along with her longtime business partner Francesca Parkinson. In my dealings with both women, I found them to be friendly, engaging, and enjoyable to work with. After high school, Mr. Wyman enlisted in the navy. He was called to active service in January 1943 and sent to a flight training program at the Keene Normal School, (now Keene College), in Keene, New Hampshire, known as the Civilian Pilot Training or CPT Program. He was subsequently sent down for basic naval training, (boot camp), at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This is where newly enlisted naval flight cadets learn the basics of service in the armed forces such as marching, chain of command, uniforms, etc. His football coach was "Bear" Bryant of Alabama fame. Also enrolled in his unit were baseball notables like Johnny Pesky, and Ted Williams. Once he completed his basic training, Bill Wyman attended primary training flight school in Glenview, Illinois learning to fly in bi-planes known as "Yellow Perils." Final flight training was at Corpus Christi, Texas, where he was commissioned and received his golden wings in 1944. Actor Tyrone Power was here at that time. Bill became a naval flight instructor in the primary command, stationed coincidentally in his old hometown of Ottumwa, Iowa where he served until March 1945, transferring to Norman, Oklahoma until the end of his tour of duty and the close of the Second World War.

William Charles Wyman met Jane Cooper, (born 1923), a friend in the neighborhood, and married her in 1944. The couple had three children. Marilee Wyman was born 1946 and grew to become a celebrated character actress after graduating from Emerson College. She was friends with Ann Travolta, sister of famed actor John Travolta, both of whom have visited the Wyman home on Belvidere Plain. The family's second child was William C. Wyman, III. The youngest was a girl named Suzanne Wyman, born 1950, who married into the Willard family, (of clock making fame in the United States). She received from her great-uncle "Bun" as a wedding gift the old Willard clock that had been presented to her fifth great-grandmother Abba (Martine) Lowry so many years before, with the poetic intent that: "the clock had now been returned to the Willard family." Bill Wyman attended Northeastern University under the G.I. Bill where his father-in-law Thomas Cooper was a teacher. During his career, Mr. Wyman was an engineer and later in the insurance underwriting business. In 1960, he purchased the vacant lot from his mother that he still owns today across the cove and just west of the old Regatta Restaurant.

Long before Bill and his siblings were born, his mother Helen (Lowry) Wyman who worshipped at the Second (Congregational) church in Newton, Massachusetts met a young boy. It was the custom to have week-end gettogethers with the children from other parishes. On one such week-end, a youth group from Taunton, Massachusetts came to visit the Newton church. Included in this group was that young boy of twelve years of age by the name of C. Stuart Robertson. Years later, the two families would find themselves neighbors on Belvidere Plain.

In the early years on Belvidere Plain large boats could not enter the harbor. These had to weigh anchor off the beaches. Those that later did come in had to be moved about by "powered tenders" the forerunner of today's tug boats. There used to be two captains who rented out their sailing vessels for hire. These were Captain Borden and his ship Chippewa, and Captain Reuben B. Handy aboard the Sea Robin.