129R Commercial Street.
Dwarfed by Elisha Freeman’s Wharf, immediately to the west, Nathaniel Freeman’s Wharf nonetheless played a role in the fishery. It extended just about from the foot of Freeman Avenue. In his thumbnail history of town wharves, Irving S. Rogers noted: “The Freeman brothers connected their respective piers with a bridge, and this facilitated the handling of fish between the wharves.”¹ Nathaniel Freeman’s Wharf is so small, it doesn’t even get a name on the 1889 Sanborn insurance map. (Elisha Freeman’s Wharf was known in 1889 as the “J. Paine Jr. Wharf.”) There are no traces of the wharf on the 1910 atlas at the Pilgrim Monument and Pilgrim Museum.
The dinky “Wharf” at the center is the Nathanial Freeman Wharf. Detail of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map From Provincetown, Barnstable County, Massachusetts (1889), courtesy of the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division. Digital ID No. g3764pm.g038261889. (Tinting of the harbor by the author, for visual clarity.)
¶ Last updated on 16 January 2019.
129R Commercial Street on the Town Map.
Thumbnail image: Detail of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map From Provincetown, Barnstable County, Massachusetts (1889), courtesy of the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division. Digital ID No. g3764pm.g038261889. (Tinting of the harbor by the author, for visual clarity.)
¹ “Puffs and Pot Shots,” by Irving S. Rogers, The Provincetown Advocate, 9 October 1941, Page 2.