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Advocate Archives
This week’s look back into the Advocate Archives spotlights an arson at St. Peter’s Church in 1937, an effort by Dune Poet Harry Kemp to protest the omission of Provincetown in the Mayflower II’s itinerary in 1955 and an automobile’s wild spin into Mrs. Mary Snow’s home in Truro in 1965.
April 8, 1937
Church Endangered By Flames
Serious consequences were averted Sunday, when Mrs. Mary Ferreira of Watson’s court, a parishioner, returned to the Church of St. Peter the Apostle for a pocketbook that she had left behind after the 11 o’clock mass, and found the church filled with smoke.
She called the Rev. John A. Silvia from the parish house next door, who rushed into the church and found a settee near the altar, with the large cushion in flames. After dragging the burning settee from the edifice the blaze was extinguished.
Early Monday evening a second blaze was discovered in almost the identical location as the Sunday blaze, by Miss Lillian Gracie, the housekeeper of the rectory, who saw the flames reflected in the stained glass windows of the church from her position in the rectory and called Father Silvia, who also extinguished the second blaze. The two blazes are not thought to be accidental, and police have been called in to investigate, believing them acts of incendiarism.
April 7, 1955
Dune Poet Kemp Cables Sir Winston
A mass meeting has been called for April 12 by the Provincetown Chamber of Commerce to protest the omission of the Cape End town in the itinerary of the Mayflower II which British interests are in the process of building to re-enact the voyage of the Pilgrims and their famous vessel.
Dune Poet Harry Kemp who, in recent years, has been spearheading a project to rebuild the Mayflower in this country and then sail it on a good-will mission to Holland and England, and who is now particularly disturbed by the omission of Provincetown in the proposed itinerary, has been asked to speak at the mass meeting on the history of the Pilgrims and tell what should be done to insure Provincetown’s rightful place in Pilgrim history.
Dune Poet Kemp has addressed a personal plea to England’s Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill asking his support in having the Mayflower II follow closely the actual course taken by the original vessel. Late Saturday he sent the following cablegram to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street:
“To you who are the very soul of England and have ever been the central heartbeat of a great empire’s courage which you kept undivided; to you, Sir Winston, we make our most earnest and respectful plea, that you have the new Mayflower when it voyages to America, come into the Cape Cod Harbor of Provincetown.
“In these serious days it is meet to recognize true history ... as registering Provincetown and Cape Cod as the First Landing Place of the Pilgrims.”
April 8, 1965
Car Lands In Truro Living Room
After Wild Spin On Down Grade
Mrs. Mary A. Snow of Truro Center is grateful that she was not watching the late show on television Saturday night, which she often does. “If I had been, you’d probably be writing about my funeral today instead of what happened!” she told The Advocate.
When Mrs. Snow watches the late show, she’s sitting near the fireplace in her living room, and sometimes, she admits, she falls asleep in her chair. Around 2 a.m. Sunday a Volkswagen, driver and all, came crashing through the sidewall of her house and into her living room, to halt at the brick fireplace which stopped its flight after the car had splintered furniture and tossed a lighted space heater several feet. A safety valve on the oil heater prevented an explosion, Mrs. Snow said.
The driver of the car, Keith J. Knauer, 23, of Sandusky, Ohio, was taken to Otis Air Force Base Hospital, Falmouth, where he was released after treatment for lacerations over his right eye.
He was traveling westward on old Route 6A, down a slope of the road which curves right at this point, when his car went off the right hand side of the road and hurtled down the bank into the house owned and occupied by Mrs. Snow.
Mrs. Snow, who had retired earlier but arisen for a glass of water, heard and felt something “that sounded like a strange tremor.” Turning on a light, she beheld the damaged car wedged in her fireplace.
“The man in the car called to me, ‘I saw God! Please help me!’ I told him I couldn’t help him but I’d call the police.”
Mrs. Snow is still shaken by the unusual accident and her own nearness to disaster. Her cat, “Tinker,” which fled in fright from the scene, has returned, though still exhibiting nerves.
“Dazed and all as I’ve been,” she says, “I know the thing had its funny side and once or twice I came near to laughing, myself. But it wasn’t really funny!”
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Apr 3rd, 2008