Visual Telegraphs

The following account of the enterprise of an early Dartmouth graduate appeared in a recent issue of The Sea Breeze, a quarterly magazine published by the Boston Seaman's Friend Society:

Before the development of the telegraph invented by Samuel F. B. Morse, native of Charlestown, Mass., and a graduate of Yale, 1810, various devices were produced for speeding up communications. The early "visual telegraphs" were rather crude affairs but represented a great advance for those early days in expediting maritime information. Naturally, the merchants and ship owners of Boston were vitally interested in any means which might enable them to get advance notice of the arrival of vessels along our coast. The first long distance signal stations in this country were operated from Martha's Vineyard to Boston by Jonathan Grout Jr., a graduate of Dartmouth in 1787. At one time there were thirteen of them between West Chop and Dorchester Heights, whence final messages were picked up at the "telegraph station" at 112 Orange Street, out on the Neck. This "line" was in operation from 1801 to 1807. It is from these old stations along our coast that so many heights of land get the name of "Telegraph Hill."