Student sleuths hit the rocks

From the May 30, 2008 issue of The Cape Codder
Student sleuths hit the rocks

By Steve Desroches
Photos by Daniella Garran

ORLEANS - According to Indiana Jones, "X" never marks the spot when it comes to archaeology. But a classroom of students in Orleans begs to differ.

A group of middle school students at Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School is working with the Cornerstone Project, an effort spearheaded by Michael Farber of Chatham to locate stone markers and boulder clusters that might have been used by the Pilgrims as part of a land survey of Cape Cod marking old town boundaries and property lines. The work is part of many community partnerships the school forms with community members.

In an exciting development for these student archaeologists is a large rock in Orleans on the Sea Call Farm property with an "X" on it. Whether the "X" is hand carved or a strange natural coincidence remains to be seen, but the class is eager to find out. Read more...

Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School students, and Michael Farber, establish The Cornerstone Project

L to R: Morse Payne, Joey Benedict, Paul Niles, 

Daniel Brogan, Henry Von Thaden, Daniella Garran, Michael Farber

Two teachers, a group of Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School students, and their outside adviser, Michael Farber, have established The Cornerstone Project in 2008, working off a 1985 theory by retired architect and historian H. Morse Payne.

Payne surmised that around 1630, the Pilgrims set the original cornerstones for the first four towns, Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth and Nauset, dividing the region according to the English pie-shaped surveying methods.
To survey the towns, the Pilgrims would have established a central point in the bay, using an east-west line from Wellfleet to Manomet in Plymouth, and a north-south line set along the magnetic north.


Read More