Solomon Bangs, Jr.

454-456 Commercial st Provincetown , Ma. Solomon’s Temple

A modest home with a grand name, Solomon’s Temple commemorated its occupancy by Capt. Solomon Bangs (1821-1905), a weir fisherman, and his enterprising wife, Rosilla Bangs (1823-1908), the founder of Bangsville, a tent and cottage colony in the area now known as Mayflower Heights [?]. “Uncle Solomon’s home was a three-story structure with a large front yard,” Josephine Patterson recalled in 1942, “not landscaped with a lawn and flowers, but gleaming white with an expanse of fish flakes, upon which was spread to dry the fish he had salted when he returned from his fishing traps.” Rosilla Bangs introduced herself to President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907, when the chief executive came to town to lay the cornerstone of the Pilgrim Monument. A year later, as she was passing along the base of High Pole Hill (then known as Monument Hill), a railcar filled with granite blocks was untethered when the line was struck by lightning. It hurtled down the hill, killing Bangs as it did so. She was the only fatality in the construction of the monument. (“Only One Fatality Marred Memorial but That Was Death of Rosilla Bangs,” The Advocate, 19 March 1942.)