Our family property at 77 Keziah's Lane in Orleans can be traced back to Henry Knowles Cummings, or as we came to know him as youngsters ages 7 and 5 summering at our house on "the Point", as Uncle H.K..
HK was a true "Cape Codder' who was filled with an entrepreneurial spirit, and he had a very significant impact on the early years of the Town of Orleans. He took over a business that his father, Joseph H. Cummings and his partner William H. Howes founded in 1872. The business was located at the site where the current land HO restaurant and the surrounding area is, and they manufactured shirts, overalls and pants there. Once steam power became available in 1899 the business rapidly expanded and they grew to 200 employees who made over700 pants and overalls in a single day! A great fire destroyed the factory in 1908, but H.K. rebuilt and continued to trade in "Dry and Fancy Goods" at that location until it too burned down in the early 1950's. Being one of Orleans' most pre-eminent entrepreneurs, in 1910 H.K. also became a founder and Chief Operating Officer of the Orleans Telephone Company. How this occurred is a very curious Cape Cod story. It seems that the New England Telephone Company was attempting to expand their territory on Cape Cod, and they approached H.K.to help them develop a telephone franchise in Orleans. They told H.K. that if he got five customers they would put a switchboard in an upstairs room in his General store. Cummings found that obtaining customers was so easy that he figured that he could start his own company, and the Town felt that to simplify things, only a single telephone franchise would be permitted. It was awarded to Cummings and not to New England Telephone! He then sought out a firm that made a magneto and a crank Machine that could carry a human voice a 100 miles. It cost him $15. Not too long after that H.K. ended .UP getting 32 subscribers on a single wire line that ran about three miles out to East Orleans. Then the budding czar and his brother George cut 125 cedar trees from a swamp in back of the Masonic Hall, and used them for poles to hang the telephone wlres. His farthest customer away was Walter Mayo at the duck Farm on Nauset Heights. H.K. charged $10 per customer and eventually, for the time he stayed in business he netted about $2,500 for his enterprise. However, New England Telephone remained determined to carry out their cape Cod expansion and convinced H.K. to sell his poles to them as they were starting to cover other areas of Orleans. There was a stipulation that Cummings could keep his own wires on the poles, but it wasn't too long . before NET informed Cummings that while he did indeed have the right to keep his Wires on the poles, he couldn't use the space between them. It was a blatant attempt to put him out of business, but it was one that H.K. (Being a foxy, and sometimes stubborn New Englander} had anticipated. He produced a paper that showed that as the actual franchise owner for the town, he had the right to share the use of the poles regardless of who actually owned them, and that included the space between them. The tussle continued for a couple of years before H.K .sold his telephone operation to the New England Telephone Company and they agreed to rent a room over H.K.'s store where the telephone Exchange was set up for a tidy sum of $80 per month. (Credits to the Summerscape 2011 article written by James Coogan for much of the content of this bit of fascinating history) HK was probably best known for his avocation as one of the earliest pioneers in the field of photography on Cape Cod. The Snow Library in Orleans has over a 1,000 of his photographic plates which captured scenes of the "Outer Cape" featuring storm-smashed sailing ships, crews of Life Saving Stations, horse drawn carriages, and sailboat races. HK was loved by all and he was readily welcomed to take many photos of the local folks and families of Orleans as well as the other surrounding towns. HK was also an avid sailor. He loved sailing to Nantucket and the other tsiands, and he cherished the salt water estuary and "The River" waters that flowed in through Big Pleasant and Little Pleasant Bays. It was his boat, the "TIOGA'', a 40' cape Knock-About design, that lead him to purchase the two acre lot on the River which was situated on a point with water on all three sides. Hence the name we use to describe our property is "The Point". After his purchase, he built the large Boathouse on our property and the Dock at which he moored his boat. This afforded him a very protected mooring place, which featured the desirable deep water access to Pleasant Bay and the Atlantic Ocean he required. H.K. created railroad tracks that went up from the river to the back of the Boathouse inorder to be able to securely store his sail boat for the winter months. A special custom made Cradle" was crafted to fit the hull of the "Tioga", and through a system of Block and Tackle gear, the boat was slowly winched up the tracks into its winter home. H.K's dock and Boathouse are virtual fixtures on "THE RIVER" which have been admired by generations of boaters who ply the waters from Meeting House pond and Nauset Marine East to the wonderous waters of the little and Big Pleasant bays and to the Atlantic beyond. H.K. certainly demonstrated his strong pioneering ways when he built his dock to be able to explore the vast waters of Cape Cod on his famed "Tioga", and he must have been one of the very first citizens of Orleans to have a dock, especially one situated on the "River". * I am certain that H.K. would now be "rolling over in his grave" at the mere threat to the existence of his cherished dock which was the summer mooring place for his "Tioga", and he would be well armed to handle that circumstance just as he was with the challenges that the New England telephone company presented him with. HK's permanent home was located close to the center of Orleans near what is now called Academy Place, and because of this, he did not build a house on the property at Keziah's Lane until 1926. HK decided on a traditional, full Cape Cod style house, and not much has changed since it was constructed, making it as authentic as you can find. The house still has its original bead board walls throughout the home, and one can easily admire all of the quality carpentry employed in its construction since nothing is hidden behind sheet rock. If you want to experience genuine Cape Cod charm this is the epitome of it! Because HK already had his other home, he built our house as a summer cottage, but he never lived in it. He was married to a sea captain's daughter named Theresa Paine who was quite a sea-farer in her own right in her younger years. They had no children, and unfortunately she was burdened for most of her later years with ill health and she predeceased HK by a good number of years. Our grandmother, Phebe Steere Brown was an Orleans school teacher and at some point HK became very friendly with Phebe and her husband, Howard, and allowed them to use the summer cottage as their own. The friendship continued to blossom after Theresa's passing, and HK visited often, taking us out in his brightly varnished Chris-Craft. We took many sunset cruises with HK at the helm navigating through the Islands called Hog and Sampson when the tides allowed it. Usually these forays were followed by HK's treat to ice cream at Howard Johnsons then located at the traffic round-about where the Lost Dog Pub currently is located. As young boys those days were very memorable! My grandmother eventually inherited the property from HK at his passing, and it has been in the Brown family ever since, passing to her daughter Elizabeth Brown in 1959. (later she became Elizabeth Brown Lyon). Then in the late fall of 1974, our aunt transferred the property to her two Nephews David and Richard (narrative author). We have many treasured memories of our youth growing up at "the Point" during the Summers, and we have subsequently created the same for our children and now the Grandchildren also have their own special memories of their "Cape-Times". Our decision to sell has been an extremely difficult one, because the house has NEVER been "For Sale" before, and that makes it even more painful to be actually letting it go. Our hope is that the new owners will love and cherish this special property with its views, its privacy, its serenity, its deep water dock and especially the Full Moon paths that streak like diamonds through the waters of the "River" towards our front door!