Sometime around 1900, two Civil War Veterans, Waldo Turner and Jeremiah Spencer, built over the tomb of the first colony at Wessagusset (1622-1623). They placed five of the seven skulls found into the jog of an eastwardly wall of the cellar. Mr. Spencer had metal buckles from shoes, belts and maybe hats in his cellar on an overhead beam. One of the subsequent owners of this #43 Bicknell Road property had the skulls chopped out of the concrete wall, and handfuls of cement pressed into the openings.
It was said that this house was haunted by the ghost of the Giant Indian PECKSUOT, massacred by Myles Standish in 1623 at Wessagusset. Shortly after they moved into the house at #43 Bicknell Road, Mrs. Walter Lang Jr. told Stinson Lord that she and her children had seen this ghost. She knew nothing of Weymouth history, and would wake up at night to find Pecksuot glowering across the room, and could still see him after awakened and with her family.
This house at 236 Sea Street was built by Edward Blanchard in the early part of the 19th century. The headless skeletons of the Sachem WITUWAMAT and the giant PECKSUOT were exhumed when the cellar hole was dug. According to Jeremiah Spencer: The skeleton dug up with an "awful long neck" in the cellar of the next house on the south of Cecil Evans, Cecil thought was of the young brother of Wituwamat, the freshest "teen-alter" that ever lived, or rather died. "A fourth, a youth of eighteen, was overpowered and secured; him, Standish subsequently hung." The papoose skeleton found in the 1930's by workers putting in the flagpole for the Bicknell School, had its skull bashed in. Later, enlargement of diggings brought to light the Squaw, with her head in the same condition. One wonders if this could be the child of the man who married an Indian Squaw at Weston's Colony. No doubt he suffered a worse fate, in the game of tit-for-tat, typical of those rough times.
The bones of WITUWAMAT and PECKSUOT were reinterred here, in the embankment of his own family lot, by the late Edward Blanchard, in what was a remarkably kind act! Embankment was terraced later. Skeletons removed? Told to Stinson Lord by John H. Leighton, owner; J. Spencer and others, 1930.
Source: Stinson Lord's Diary 1931-1963, as found in:
Immortal Voyage … And Pilgrim Parallels: Problems, Protests, Patriotism 1620-1970,
Edited by Jack Frost, Hawthorn Press, North Scituate, Mass., 02060 Copyright 1970
And thanks to John Buczek for sharing this with us.