| The Brooks Academy Museum features exhibits on
Harwich’s early days on the sea and the first commercial cranberry bog
cultivated by Capt. Alvin Cahoon in 1846, thirty years after Dennis
farmer Henry Hall discovered sand helped cranberry growth. Harwich
history is celebrated each September at the Harwich Cranberry Festival.
Harwich native and Amherst College graduate Sidney Brooks
opened the Greek Revival museum in 1844 as the Pine Grove Seminary,
which offered the area’s earliest navigation courses. The town purchased
the building for $1,000 in 1869 and operated it as a private school
until 1880, when Harwich High School began classes there. It served as a high school and elementary school
through 1963, except for a few dormant years.
Behind the museum is the Old Powder
House, which is the only American Revolution ammunition depot remaining
on Cape Cod. A small park features a water fountain and a plaque
honoring Capt. Jonathan Walker, who went down in American history as
“The Man with the Branded Hand.”
The Harwich native was branded with
the letters “SS” on his hand for “Slave Stealer,” in 1844 and imprisoned
for nearly a year after attempting to free seven slaves in Penascola,
Fla. He returned to his family in New England as poet John Greenleaf
Whittier immortalized his experience in “The Branded Hand.”
Walker, his wife Jane Gage Walker – also
a Harwich native – and their nine children later pushed their
anti-slavery message in Wisconsin by helping the Underground Railroad
effort and in Michigan, where they moved in 1864. Walker died there in
1878 and his grave at Evergreen Cemetery in Muskegon, Mich. is adorned
with a 10-foot monument with the text of Whittier’s poem and an engraved
picture of Walker’s branded hand. It was paid for by fellow abolitionist Photius Fisk, a retired chaplain from Boston.
Museum open late June – Aug., Wed. –
Fri., 1 p.m. – 4 p.m. |
