A HISTORY OF ‘WHITE GOLD’ IN BEVERLY, MASSACHUSETTS (SPRING 2026)

Gadus morhua (Atlantic cod). Wikipedia 

 The subject of Historic Beverly’s first exhibition of 2026, was well chosen to coincide with the city’s 400th anniversary. After all, it was the cod industry of the 1620s that prompted Roger Conant to leave his homeland in Devon, crossing the Atlantic to settle with his family in New England and founding both Salem and Beverly. 

 ‘Built on Cod: The Fish that Fed a Revolution and Crowned an Aristocracy’ opened on 13 December 2025 at the Cabot House in Beverly, and included a Curator’s Tour on 29 January in the New Year. 

 In the words of its curator, the exhibition explored the remarkable legacy of this industry and ‘the outsized influence of a species (Gadus morhua) that shaped communities, fueled economies, and sustained a nation in its fight for independence’. Visitors learned how the cod industry’s global trade routes aided the American Revolution, supplying ships and goods that supported the war effort and helping create a social class called, sometimes mockingly, the ‘codfish aristocracy’ exemplified in wealthy New England families like the Cabots and the Lowells. 

 Well before the 18th century American Revolution, commercial cod fishing dates back to the discovery of the rich cod resources of Newfoundland in the late 1490s. 

 

The English county of Devon’s historic links with Newfoundland were explored in a celebratory event organised by the Devonshire Association from 3-16 April 2017. A notable part of that event was a talk by the Exeter-based historian Dr Todd Gray on Devon’s fishery expansion to New foundland in the period 1500-1650. 

 Dr Gray, an American brought up in Gloucester MA but now living in Devon, pointed out that because the harvests in Devon typically failed one year in ten, dried fish, or ‘toerag’ as it was known, helped fill the belly at a time when there were no potatoes, rice or pasta. Indeed the first half of the 17th century in England was a time of economic slump. 

 It was against this background that about 120 investors in the neighboring county of Dorset founded the commercial angling organisation known as the Dorchester Company of Adventurers. It was led by John White, Rector of Holy Trinity Church in the town of Dorchester, who had become well known for his philanthropic activities. 

 The plan, as explained by Dr Gray in a talk he gave at Gloucester’s Cape Ann Museum in November 2012, was to leave some fishermen ashore on the New England coast with provisions for the winter to build a fishing station and start a plantation to support the next season’s fishing expedition. 

 The investors optimistically believed that while waiting for the fishing fleet to return in spring, the fishermen on shore could build stages and dwellings, cure fish, make salt, construct fish boxes and salt barrels, trap and trade with the Indians for furs, hunt for venison, and plant crops. Illustration of a fishing stage and cod processing. 

 

Engraving by P. Fermagalli, Musée de la Gaspésie

The Dorchester Company was officially dissolved in the fall of 1625 as unprofitable and unsustainable. However White was desperate to protect the Company’s assets on Cape Ann, including its fishing stage and valuable supplies of salt. John Conant was a Company investor and Rector of Limington, some 25 miles north of Dorchester. He alerted White to the fact that his brother, Roger Conant, had emigrated to Plymouth Colony in 1623, and suggested that he might make a good manager for the Company’s affairs. 

 Roger Conant accepted the offer of a post and arrived at Cape Ann in the summer of 1625. Meanwhile, some English investors attempted to claim the Dorchester Company’s assets by hiring a Welshman, Captain John Hewes, to sail from New Plymouth and seize whatever assets he could find on their behalf. But Plymouth also had a claim. Governor William Bradford sent Captain Myles Standish with an armed troop to challenge Hewes and his men. The scene was set for the celebrated confrontation at Fisherman’s Field, where Conant’s intervention between the parties is said to have averted bloodshed. It has been imaginatively depicted by Budleigh artist John Washington. 

 Cod has been known by many people over the centuries as ‘white gold’ for its value as a commodity. As late as the mid-20th century it was the central cause of a series of real-world international conflicts between Iceland and the United Kingdom, known as the ’Cod Wars’. 

Blessed Are The Peacemakers by Budleigh artist John Washington © 2022. The painting is on display in All Saints Church, East Budleigh, where Roger Conant was baptised. It is similar in concept to the 19th century Tiffany glass ‘Peace Window’ commissioned by Roger’s descendant Hezekiah Conant for the Memorial Church in Dudley MA. 

 You could say that Conant, thanks to his courage and diplomacy by intervening in the dispute, averted a ‘Cod War’ of sorts.