This brown jug is a familiar sight to Scituate residents, but I often wonder how many people drive right by it on their way to the lighthouse without looking up and noticing it’s there.
Tom Turner, a lobsterman, owned this house around the turn of the century and cemented a little brown jug into the chimneytop. Turner was quite a character and came up with this ingenious method for determining if there was an ill wind blowing without even having to leave his bed. You see, if the wind is in the northwest, it blows across the mouth of the jug – and that sound can be heard by a lobsterman in his house below in the darkness of the very early morning. That sound says, “Don’t take to the waters today, Tom.”
Once this little house was among other small fishermen’s cottages on Cedar Point; now it is dwarfed by its neighbors which are occupied year round. But the little brown jug still remains, ready to sing its warning song – “Don’t take to the waters today, Tom.”
Tom is a descendant of Humphrey Turner, one of the “Men of Kent”, that settled Scituate and both are my distant relatives.
I have never heard of that story, very interesting post!
Anon, that’s true! The Turners have a long history in town.
Sheila, that jug makes me smile every time I see it. Tom was apparently quite a character!
Supposedly, the Turners in my family from Maine are also related, which I didn’t know growing up in Scituate.