How a strapping 17th-century pilgrim settled Norwell and paved the way for Stetson hats

NORWELL − Cornet Robert Stetson certainly sounds like a dashing figure, part of the Great Pilgrim Migration, an enterprising founder of the town of Norwell who deserves to be remembered.

And so he was when his descendants gathered on a slope near the North River, in the very spot where he settled in 1636, with the original freshwater spring still flowing, to celebrate the first Stetson Heritage Day on Aug. 19.

The Stetson Kindred of America and the Norwell Historical Society opened the gates to the town's first homestead, which is usually closed, and invited local residents in for a look.

Cornet Robert Stetson was a strapping Englishman who arrived at age 21 with his 23-year-old wife, Honour Tucker, in what was South Scituate at the time. He couldn't read or write, but he could jump on a horse at a moment's notice, his big pistols by his side. He was good at collecting debts. He knew carpentry and other skills so useful in the early settlements.

After arriving with a large land grant and significant debt, he worked his way to freeman, raised 12 children and became the first selectman and the biggest landowner in the area. He built the area's first sawmill in 1656 on Third Herring Brook and owned three mills as shipbuilding prospered. In his 60s, when King Philip's War broke out in 1675, he led the Scituate squadron of troopers.

And he was just the first of the Stetsons, whether you spell his name Stetson or Stinson or Studson, as different documents did.

His descendants became known for the wide-brimmed, high-crowned Stetson hats and the Stetson Shoe Factory on Route 18 in Weymouth, which produced high-quality footwear through 1973. The Stetson Medical Building is there now.

Stetson Heritage Day took place as the Stetson Kindred Association had its 118th consecutive annual reunion at the 36-acre homestead at 83 Stetson Shrine Road.

"What really blew me away is how diverse the family is," Amy Forest Montgomery, who is not a Stetson, said. "The generations are all over the place.

"You think of the Stetson name and it comes back to these two people from England in the early 1600s. I love Norwell and I thought, 'Wow, I don't know anything about this part of Norwell history.'"

The widespread family presence in Norwell and Scituate includes roads named Stetson. A dozen houses built by descendants of Cornet Robert Stetson are still standing.

"And it's fantastic that this family has met for 118 years straight in the same location on the third Sunday of August," Montgomery said. "How many families can say that? The descendants of the original founders of Norwell. A great story that Norwellians should be proud of. Amazing."

A long gravel/dirt road leads to the homestead property. At the end of the road, visitors entered a large open field and had three program options.

Take a walk and imagine life in the 1600s

A pavilion at the far end held historical displays, a Stetson emporium and a copy of a recently discovered 1857 map of Scituate and Norwell.

Out on the field, Judy Grecco, of Hanover, a member of both the Kindred and the historical society, had set up the simple games that children played in Colonial times: rolling a hoop with a stick, a ring toss, a ball toss. Two friendly horses, gaited Missouri fox trotters, brought by Abigail and Mary Lambert, who were dressed in period costumes, were available for children to visit or ride.

Jim Stetson, of Westboro, a 12th-generation descendant and president of the Stetson Kindred, and Rebecca Lambert, of Norwell, the wife of a descendant, wore period costumes and portrayed Cornet and Honour. In an informal conversation with visitors gathered around them, they described the couple's life.

There was also a guided walk to the spring and a walk down a woodland trail similar to what the colonists might have used.

The original house where Cornet Robert Stetson lived is gone. As visitors strolled the field looking out over the North River and the salt marsh, some wondered what life might have been like in the mid-17th century.

"How did they actually clear the land?" Montgomery said. "How did they survive those initial winters, having to harvest food, having young children, without modern-day tools?"

What did the man who invented the Stetson hat look like?

Inside the pavilion, tables held photographs of the first early-20th-century family reunions. There was a portrait of John Batterson Stetson (1830-1906), a New Jersey native and Philadelphia hatter who invented the Stetson cowboy hat made of soft felt. There was a copy of Cornet Robert Stetson's will.

In the center of the pavilion floor, Wendy Bawabe, president of the Norwell Historical Society, had spread out a large 6-by-10-foot copy of an 1857 map showing what is now Norwell. She invited children to walk on the map and find where they now live.

Bawabe plans to take the map into the schools and talk about what South Scituate was like before and after it became Norwell in 1888.

"It's all a nice tie to the past," Emilie Bubin Green, of Scituate, a direct descendant of Benjamin Stetson, said of her Stetson Kindred ties. Green was in charge of the emporium selling Stetson T-shirts, mugs and holiday ornaments.

"It's fun meeting other descendants who come from all over the country, and the internet has made it possible to expand our board by Zoom meetings with people from Montana, California, Alabama," she said.

Green was a sophomore at Scituate High School studying genetics and 19th-century scientist Gregor Mendel when she did a family tree and learned her grandmother was a Stetson.

"I got interested in family trees and genealogy and I've stayed interested ever since," she said.

The Stetson Kindred was established in 1905 when four members of the family, including hatmaker John B. Stetson, reached out to as many descendants as they could find. The Kindred has some 300 active members and estimates there are 3 million descendants worldwide.

Reach Sue Scheible at sscheible@patriotledger.com.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Norwell's Stetson Heritage Day walks path of town's first settler