To All Alumni of Camp Wampanoag:
My wife and I stopped off in the Cape Cod area of Massachusetts at the beginning of last September, on our way back from vacationing in Vermont. We were visiting her friend and her friend’s family in Plymouth, so I took advantage of this opportunity to try and find out as much information about Camp Wampanoag as I could; and, if possible, find the place where the camp once stood.
After my mother passed away three years ago, my sister found all the letters I had written home from Camp Wampanoag, when I was there in the summer of 1967. When I opened them, I not only found my letters, but also the weekly mimeographed reports to parents from “The Watsons” (Harold and Geraldine Watson, the camp operators), which typically included a handwritten note at the bottom of the page, telling my parents how I was doing. The final notice from the camp was a typed letter on the blue camp stationery, summarizing how I had fared at camp, and signed by Lee Pattison. Lee, as it turned out in this past month’s journey, would become a big help to me.
Earlier this summer I got in touch with three people: Judith McAlister, Director of the Bourne Historical Center on Keene Street in Bourne; and Kim and Dave Matq1hews, who had recently purchased the camp’s old main house. I made an appointment with Judith to visit the Historical Center on Wednesday night, September 1, to look at the archives they had on the camp. And I made arrangements to visit the Matthews the following day.
The Bourne Historical Center’s archives were almost entirely undated photographs of campers and staff posing for group shots (all before my time at the camp); and several small official Camp Wampanoag photo albums stamped on their front covers, respectively, with the years 1953, 1954, and 1955.
Judith was immensely generous during my visit, providing help above and beyond the archives. She gave me a copy of an article from the historical center’s newsletter, Postscripts, written by Lee Pattison in the mid-1990’s. The historical center had created an exhibition in the summer of 1996 entitled, “Camp Wampanoag: 60 Years of Glorious Summers.” The exhibit ran for 12 days and included many photos and camp artifacts. In the same issue of the newsletter in which that exhibit was advertised, was the article from Pattison, “Camp Wampanoag – A Personal Memoir.” I’m going to try to find a way to get this article to anyone who is interested. But here, in the meantime, are the highlights:
- Lee Pattison had been involved with the camp since he was age 8 in 1928.
- The camp’s history:
o Second oldest private camp in New England.
o Original owners sold the camp to the Taylor family in the early 1900’s.
o The property had once been owned by one of the companies that hoped to build the Cape Cod Canal. When the Back River area was abandoned as a part of the canal’s proposed western end, the camp’s owners, who had been renting, purchased the property.
- The camp was run for many years by Dorothy Taylor of Newton, Massachusetts, who taught at Browne and Nichols during the winter. In the early 1960’s, she sold the camp to Harold and Geraldine Watson.
- At its peak, the camp had an enrollment of 100 campers.
- Lee attributed the camp’s decline in enrollment in its last years to two trends he called commonplace to many U.S. camps at the time: parents sending their children to more specialized camps; and parents wanting to spend their summer vacations with their children.
- Lee wrote at great length about the ways in which the camp kept detailed records on how each camper was doing, from the counselors responsible for their squads, all the way up to the camp director.
- He also wrote, in detail, about the daily life and weekly life of the camp, both for its campers and staff.
Before I left the historical center that night, Judith offered to put me in touch with the person who organized the 1996 exhibit. I am interested in speaking with her about what exactly was in the exhibit and about other ways to obtain information about the camp’s history.
The next morning, I went to visit the Mathews. Camp Wampanoag, as Judith had told me, was located on Old Dam Road, between County and Shore Roads, along the Back River. The area was all subdivided many years ago for homes. The old main house is located just off Old Dam Road on Plow Penny Way. I knew I was at the right place when I saw the camp’s old totem pole in the front yard.
It was a pleasure meeting and making the acquaintance of Kim and Dave Mathews. They were very gracious and very helpful during my visit, in explaining how they renovated the old house (described in local Bourne history as the “Sears-Bassett-Marvell House”), taking care to preserve as much of its original characteristics as they possibly could; in pointing out the geographical lay-of-the-land in their neighborhood, in terms of where the parameters and topography of the camp existed (for example, they showed me where the outline of the old swimming pool was); and, in giving me the time to look through a box of Camp Wampanoag documents and artifacts that they had found when they purchased the house.
Some of what I looked at were documents that had been given to previous owners of the house by Richard Jackson, a neighbor on Old Dam Road who is well-versed in local Bourne history. The rest had, apparently, been left at the house after the camp was sold in the early 1970’s.
Some of the documents included:
- Camp squad lists from 1967, 1968 & 1969, including campers, counselors and their tent assignments.
- Land maps of the camp’s property. Camp Wampanoag was comprised of two parcels of land: 2.19 acres on the south side of Old Dam Road, where the old main house, pool, and the Back River docks were; and 15. 4 acres on the north side of the road where the rest of the facilities were.
- Mr. Gil’s “Quickie Sailing Course,” which I remember taking when I was at the camp.
- A camp registration form, apparently from the 1960’s. Registration fee was $750.00.
All of these documents helped to jog my memory and fill in missing pieces of my recollections about the camp. A series of copies of legal documents in the box appeared to fill out Lee Pattison’s account of the camp’s origins – and its ending. As Pattison had stated, Dorothy Taylor had purchased the lands in 1928 for $5,000 from the Cape Cod Construction Company. The property, as it turned out, was sold to Harold Watson in 1971. Watson then sold the entire property to the Trust of Shea, Schofield, Sorgi and Sullivan, for $130,000. The property, as mentioned earlier, was subdivided into many homes.
The day I visited the Mathews coincided with the eve of the arrival of Hurricane Earl(which ended being downgraded to a tropical storm). Kim and Dave had to take care of a number of errands in preparation for the storm. So I had a limited though adequate amount of time to peruse all the documents and take notes.
When I thanked them and made my good-byes, Kim Mathews and I talked about the idea of holding a reunion at the house this coming summer. She said that we could use whatever names we had in our respective document collections to try and find camp alumni(campers, counselors, etc.) and invite them to the event. We agreed to talk more in the future.
I spent the rest of the afternoon walking about the parts of the neighborhood that corresponded with the old topography and features of the camp. I had previously already taken a walk down to the shore of Back River; and peered through the shrubbery into the next-door neighbor’s yard, to look at where the swimming pool’s outline could still be seen in the contours of the lawn. Now, having looked at the maps and gotten some helpful tips from Kim and Dave, I walked east on Old Dam Road to Anne Lane. This road wound up the same hill I walked to get to my tent at what I remember was the Intermediate Camp of tents that surrounded a central parade ground with the flag pole in the middle, all located on top of a kind of bluff surrounded by woods. Of course, that old route included many huts and buildings of the camp on the way to and from the tents, including the Seniors’ tent camp, crafts, nature, woodworking, and the house(whose name escapes me) where we once tried to score points for the War Games. All of this area now was full of subdivisions, houses, and barking dogs.
If you are interested in attending and/or helping to organize a reunion this coming summer for Camp Wampanoag campers and counselors, please contact me at 917-438-8252; or at
[email protected].
