Evening Capital

CAPE COD ALBINOS.

A COLONY OF PINK EYED AND WHITE HAIRED PEOPLE.

It Is About 150 Years Old and at One Time It Numbered About Fifty Persons.

The Story of the Pittsleys and Their Physical Peculiarities.

Since the appearance of albino girls in side shows and dime museums the general public has indulged in considerable speculation as to where the managers of these freak aggregations procure their frizzy haired specimens. Although seldom met with at other places, there is at Cape Cod a settlement of these pink eyed and white haired people. For generations the Pittsley family, known in the section as the "white haired Pittsleys," have been albino.

They have intermarried, and, although clannish in the extreme, years ago took into the family fold a man named Reynolds, in whose children the peculiarity cropped out, and added the "white haired Reynolds" to the little army of Cape Cod's human curiosities. Until quite recently a dozen or 15 Pittsley albinos might have been found within half as many miles of each other and sometimes under the same roof. But the families in which there are albinos have scattered lately and spread over the most lonely parts of the country from Freetown to Wareham, at the entrance to Cape Cod.

The museum albino and the albino in real life have little in common. The albino at home is disappointing. His or her hair isn't crimped to the museum limit. It doesn't stand out a la Circassian. In the natural Pittsley state the albino hair is dingy, because they don't know any better, and if they did they probably wouldn't adopt the modern methods of washing hair.

The eyes of the albino in this region prove their albinism beyond question. They are usually described as pink, like rabbits' eyes. They are extremely weak and almost closed, so that it is difficult to get a square look into the eye itself. When the eye is opened, the lid is lifted only for a second, and it takes a quick look to discover that the pupil is dark red and surrounded with a lighter red ring, while the ball of the eye is pale pink and surrounded with the pinkish rim of the eyelid. The effect would be thoroughly pink if the eye remained at rest. It is almost impossible to obtain a direct look into the eye, because from the eye of the healthy albino red lights seem to dart, while the pupil quivers and dilates and seems to move unceasingly.

It is over a century and a half since the appearance of the first albino was recorded in the Pittsley tribe. Since that time probably more than 100 have been born bearing this name or having mothers from this family. At one time it is estimated that only a few less than 50 albinos were living within a radius of 25 miles. Barnum might here have held an albino congress if he had been able to engage all of these people with the wonderful wine red pupils. It has always been among the legends of the county that the great showman did recruit his collection from this locality, but today the proud Pittsleys deny indignantly that Barnum ever had money enough to engage even one of them to pose in public.

The origin of the family is connected with one of the wickedest episodes of the early history of the new world. There is even a chance that perhaps some Pittsley was a relative or friend of the sweet and pious Evangeline.

When the English deported from the vales of Acadia the families of French neutrals and scattered them in almost every settlement from the mouth of the Penobscot around to Louisiana. Freetown, which was near the colony of Plymouth, had not been able to send its full quota of men to the army. So in the distribution of the French from Acadia 15 men, with some women and children, were left in Freetown. The bitterest of all was the separation and splitting up of families. The people were filled with dejection, and the poorest of them apparently built some rude lodges in the forests and took no care how they lived. None spoke their language. They were strangers in habits and manners. Men had been separated from wives and daughters, and wives left without their husbands.

Just what the name of the French neutral ancestor of the albino Pittsleys may have been no research has ever revealed. On the town records, until within 50 years, the name has been Piggsley. In many cases the name Piggsley has been corrupted into "Hoggsley."

The first appearance of pink eyes and white hair was in a Robert Pittsley somewhere in the first half of the eighteenth century. Some place it as early as 1731. From that time down the albino characteristics have been continually reproduced. It is believed that continual intermarriage has been largely instrumental in handing down the pink eyes and white hair. The Pittsleys were clannish. They wouldn't mingle with other families, much less take wives from them. They clubbed by themselves, but oftener one family made a home for itself in some deserted house or jacket house in a lonely part of the woods or out of the way end of a township. They rarely came to town to live.

In their ways and their love of outdoor life those people show many of the characteristics of the gypsy, and another point which allies them to the wandering clans is their ability to "swap" horses, a business at which most all of the males are experts. They are illiterate and account for their physical peculiarities by the theory that one of their ancestors had his hair turn white after a fright and bequeathed his curious hirsute possession to his children. -Philadelphia Times.

We love music for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings it can summon at a touch. -L. E. Landon.