USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Petersham > An address delivered in Petersham, Massachusetts, July 4, 1854, in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of that town > Part 1
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01100 1960
AN
ADDRESS
DELIVERED IN PETERSHAM, MASSACHUSETTS,
JULY 4, 1854,
IN COMMEMORATION OF 100 th
THE ONE
HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE
INCORPORATION OF THAT TOWN.
BY EDMUND B. WILLSON
LIo .: CHICA. .
WWith an Appendix.
BOSTON: CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY, 111, WASHINGTON STREET. 1855.
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Willson, Edmund Burke. :
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An address delivered in Petersham, Massachusetts. July 4, 1854, in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of that town. By Ed. mund B. Willson. With an appendix. Boston, Crosby, Nichols, and company, 1855.
SKULLE CARD iv, 151-133 p. 23"m. "Account of the proceedings on the day of celebration" : p. : 1231-133.
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another copy.
58323 1. Petersham, Mass .- Ilist.
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PETERSHAM, July 31, 1854.
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REV. EDMUND B. WILLSON, WEST ROXBURY.
DEAR SIR, - The undersigned Committee of Arrangements for the Centennial Celebration on the 4th of July, respectfully request for publication a copy of the able and interesting Address delivered by you on that occasion. The profound attention with which that great audience listened must convince you, more than any thing that we can express, of the deep interest that was felt in the Address.
WILLIAM PARKHURST,
HUBBARD PECKHAM,
CEPHAS WILLARD,
JOHN G. MUDGE,
SETH HAPGOOD,
J. P. PILLSBURY,
LEWIS WHITNEY,
JOHN M. HOLMAN,
PHINEHAS W. BARR,
JESSE ROGERS,
JOSEPH G. PARMENTER,
WILLIAM COOK,
DANIEL STOWELL,
COLLINS ANDREWS,
WILLIAM H. BANCROFT,
Committee of Arrangements.
WEST ROXBURY, Aug. 3, 1854.
MESSRS. WILLIAM PARKHURST, CEPHAS WILLARD, AND OTHERS, Committee.
GENTLEMEN, - The Address delivered at our late Celebration is at your service. I shall have to ask a little time, however, to append a few notes, and such other related matter as belongs to it.
I have a lively and grateful recollection of the patient attention with which the Address was heard, despite the extreme heat and long sitting of that midsummer's day.
With much regard, I am yours,
E. B. WILLSON.
BOSTON: PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 22, SCHOOL STREET.
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PREFACE.
THE act of incorporation, by which the plantation of Nichewaug became a town, bears date April 20, 1754. The day chosen for the celebration of its centennial festival was not, it will be per- ceived, the precise anniversary of the incorporation. The true day falling in a month when the weather is quite unsuitable for out-of-door rejoicings, when the roads are usually bad, - some- times hardly passable, - and when, consequently, access to the town from distant places would be attended with much discomfort and difficulty, another day was substituted for it.
The writer of the following Address would have been glad to make something else of it, which should have been of more per- manent value. He would have preferred to recast and expand it into the form of a somewhat complete Town History. But he did not see how this could be done for some years at least ; while he did see that the present publication might indirectly serve the same purpose, by provoking a new and wider interest in the town's annals, and stimulating curiosity to a keener search after the materials from which a more complete account of the town could be made at some future day by some other hand.
The antiquarian experiences no greater difficulty in his re- searches, than that of making the inheritors of old family man- sions, and attics full of miscellaneous papers and time-yellowed
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PREFACE.
MSS., believe that there can be any thing of biographical or historical value among their neglected stores. They will not believe that an old almanac, an account-book, a letter, an occa- sional sermon, a newspaper article, a political handbill, or a ballad. once sung up and down their streets, can be worthy of notice, and are too often reluctant to let the stranger look among their "rubbish," because their garrets are not furnished in the style of a parlor. Indeed, the owner of the garret is often as ignorant of what it contains as the strangest stranger can be.
The following pages contain the record of many facts. It is not presumed that they will be found free from errors. The writer can but claim to have spent much time, and exercised a reasonable care, in their compilation. And even his error, as well as his truth, shall help his purpose, if it cause some other to come after him, who will set his wrongs right, and add more or fewer to the facts that are facts.
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ADDRESS.
CITIZENS OF PETERSHAM, -
To you belong these lands that lie around us, but not wholly to you. There are many of us here, who can show no title in the county records to a foot of all this soil, who, nevertheless, feel that we have, in some sort, a property and an interest in it as well as you. The acres, we admit, are yours. The memories that attach to them are ours as well. We have . learned, may be, to call other places home. But, up and down your roadsides, on the slopes of your hills, and by your streams, we see the homesteads of our fathers, our own birth-places perhaps, the play-places of our childhood. We identify, very likely, the spot where we were schooled in "manners " and multipli- cation-table; and that to which we went, with sobered step, on calm, summer sabbath-mornings at bell-ring- ing. We find here, in your keeping, those sacred enclosures which the ploughshare never enters, where our dead and yours sleep. All around us are objects which awaken reminiscences and associations of the
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profoundest interest to us ; objects to be remembered as long as we remember any thing.
In all these, with their memories and histories, we have a joint inheritance with you. Wherever we . have been scattered, eastward, westward, northward, southward, near and far, we have remembered these. We could not forget them. This ground was not to us as other ground. You will believe, then, that we heard with a willing ear, and not without a thrill of pleasure, your invitation to come and observe with you this day of commemoration. We have come. We were right glad to come. Our hearts go out to meet your welcome. They are as deeply in this occa- sion as yours. We shall not be a whit behind you in the zest and joyfulness with which we enter on the proceedings of this our common festival.
FRIENDS, who have come from beyond these bor- ders ; natives of this place ; children and descendants of the native-born; you who have married wives out of these houses, or whose fathers did; you who have sometime dwelt here, tilling these fields and pasturing your herds on these hills ; - all you who have come hither to-day, because you cared for Petersham ; who cared for the place, because you cared for some- thing that it contains or has contained, - I have taken upon me to speak in your behalf; to say that you have come in full-hearted gladness. Your num- bers, your faces, give me warrant that I spoke truth. Now, in behalf of those who dwell here, I take the liberty to repeat their welcome to you. Welcome, all ! for you are welcome. See it in the open doors,
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the open faces, the open hands, that bespeak the open hearts with which you are received !
I foresee that this day will not be found long enough for all that we have to say and to hear, to see and to do. When we disperse, it will be to leave many intended greetings unspoken, purposed inquiries omitted; and many a broken thread of " old acquaint- ance," which we had hoped to take up and tie, still hanging loose at end. I desire, therefore, to waste no moments of these precious hours - of which there will not be enough - in superfluous sentences of introduction. We are introduced already. The occa- sion has introduced us to each other and to our sub- ject. Some of us may have been strangers to one another till now. But stranger is a word of which we know neither use nor meaning to-day. As little need is there that the theme of the hour should have formal announcement. But one theme can have sug- gested itself to any mind as the topic of this occasion: I am here, not to choose what I will say, but to say that which the time puts into my mouth ; that which I have come on purpose to say, and you as expressly to hear. We set apart this day to a special use, - to one special use; to commemorate the beginning and the history of this town.
For this time, then, we will assume, if you please, the Creation of the world; take the Flood for granted ; pass by the Discovery of America as a conceded fact ; and limit ourselves to a study of the Chronicles of Petersham.
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This town had not its beginning in an act of incor- poration. It had begun even before the first pioneer had set his cabin here, or turned a sod. The earliest settlers of these parts had their settlement in mind, before they had it as a fact visible to the eye. That is where we propose to begin, - in the minds of the founders. We cannot but be curious to know what put it into the minds of those men to come here ; to know who they were; and what chance or providence turned their attention and their feet this way.
Let us fix a few early dates. In the month of January, 1731, Old Style (by the New Style, '32), John Bennet, Jeremiah Perley, and others, petition the General Court of Massachusetts for a grant of this tract of land, on which to plant a town. Their suit is urged on the score of services rendered, and hardships undergone, as volunteers, under Captains Lovell and White, in the Indian wars. The Court taking no action upon their petition, it is renewed in the following May, with a like result. In April, 1733, the memorialists present themselves a third time, respectfully reminding the Court of their former repeated applications, and again pressing the con- sideration of their case upon that honorable body. This time they are favorably heard; and, on the 25th of April, 1733, Mr. John Bennet is empowered by the Court to convene the proprietors of the plantation for the purposes of organization, and the adoption of needful rules .*
* The petitions of January and May, '32, are lost. That of April, '33, is pre- served; and it is from it that we learn all we know of the preceding ones. (See
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It is to be noticed, that these petitioners did not ask, in general form, for unappropriated lands, leaving it to the Court to select the place; but they asked definitely for this piece of territory, designating its extent and bounds with great exactness. The pre- ference thus manifested for this spot indicates some previous knowledge of it; a knowledge which they must have come by either from report or from. per- sonal observation. That some, perhaps many, of them had had opportunities to see and traverse these lands is probable. Those expeditions into the Indian country, on which they founded their claim for land, had, it is likely, led them this way, and made them acquainted with the locality which they afterwards selected for their plantation. That the present limits of the town of Petersham were crossed, and that the tract of country which they include was, to some extent, ranged over, by English scouting parties, sent to look for Indians, is hardly less than certain.
What has been designated as Lovell's or the Three Years' War was brought to a close in the early part of 1726. The seats of the hostile Indians then lay to the north of the Massachusetts Colony, in what is now northern New England and Canada. Such was the dread entertained by the English of the sudden incursions of thesc savages, that the utmost vigilance
Appendix, A). The grant must have been made by the General Court. between the 5th and 25th of April, 1733, as may be seen by comparing the time when the petition was presented, with the date and phraseology of the act authorizing the calling of the proprietors' meeting. Of the grant itself, we can find no record; and perhaps it is because the General Court of 1750 could find none, that they then formally re-granted the same territory.
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was used to keep them at a distance from their remotest settlements. Accordingly, during the years 1724 and 1725, companies of forest rangers, consisting of. from six or eight to ten times as many men, were sent out almost daily from the frontier towns, to scour the country back of those towns, and keep it as clear as possible of their wily enemies. The frontier towns in this direction were, at that time, Brookfield, Rut- land, Lancaster, and Lunenburgh (then called Turkey Hills). After leaving these towns, all was wild and unsettled, till the posts along the Connecticut River were reached, of which the principal ones were Had- ley, Deerfield, Northfield (whose Indian name was Squakheag), and Fort Dummer, at or near the site of Brattleborough, Vermont.
Through these woods and wilds, scouting parties were kept constantly beating and searching for their foe. We can trace them up, in some instances, from Rutland and Brookfield to the Ware and Swift rivers, and across the country between Lancaster and Lunenburgh on the east, and Northfield on the west .* It was probably by means of these excursions that some of the original proprietors of this town became acquainted with these places, and were led, then or afterwards, to the determination to seek them for a plantation.
The petitioners for this grant, it will be remembered,
A considerable number of journals, kept by the commanders of these scouting par- ties during these marches, are filed in the office of the Secretary of State. Some of them possess an interest for the curious. One, detailing the march of a party from Turkey Hills, in January, 1725, records that they encamped one night on the top of Monadnock; rather a bleak bed-chamber, one would think, for a mid-winter's night. .
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asked it as a consideration for services rendered, under Captains John Lovell and John White, in the Indian wars. What proprietors of this town rendered ser- vices under Captain White, of Lancaster, or what the particular services rendered were, it is out of my power to tell; * but we have the means of identifying above forty of the seventy-one proprietors of this town, as having been volunteers under the famous and redoubt- able Captain Lovell, of Dunstable, on the last but one of his marches into the Indian country, - they con- stituting about three-fourths of his whole force. This was the expedition in which a camp of ten Indians was surprised, and the whole number exterminated. As so many of the first proprietors of this town were engaged in it, it may not be out of place briefly to relate the circumstances.
In answer to a petition of Lovell and others, for encouragement to hunt Indians, the General Court of Massachusetts had offered a bounty of £100 for every Indian scalp which should be brought in. Lovell, who was known as a gallant and successful warrior, had no difficulty in gathering round him a band of resolute men, ready to share with him the dangers and profits of Indian hunting. In December, 174, 2 his party had brought one scalp and one living cap- tive, from beyond Lake Winnipiseogee, and received
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* Among the proprietors are named " the heirs of Samuel Mossman." The fol- lowing entry appears in a journal kept by Captain White, during an expedition into the Indian territory, in the spring of 1725: -
" 24 day [April] . . . This day, Samll Moosman actidently kild himself with his own gun."
White himself had served under Captain Lovell, and went out to bury that brave man after his last fatal expedition against the Pequawkets.
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their reward. It was in the following February, that, having increased his number to ninety men (though it was subsequently reduced to sixty), he set out on another excursion to the same region. On the eastern side of the lake, they came upon a trail; and, just before sunset of the 20th of February, descried a smoke, which indicated an encampment. Taking extraordinary precautions to prevent discovery,* they waited in silence for the dead of night. Then, stealthily creeping near, they discovered the forms of ten sleeping Indians, lying round a camp fire. At the first shot, seven were slain. Two of the remain- ing three fell the same instant that they started from their sleep; and the last, badly wounded, was seized by a dog, as he attempted to escape, and immediately killed. Not one was spared.t The pond by the side of which this tragedy took place has since been known as Lovell's Pond. It is situated in the town of Wake- field, N.H., principally, and at the head of one of the branches of the Salmon River.
Thus, after a short absence, the hunters returned to Boston, with their ten scalps stretched over hoops, and received, besides their regular daily pay of two shil- lings and sixpence, £1000 in prize-money.#
* They made no fire to cook their supper, lest the sinoke should betray them; and muzzled their dogs, to prevent their barking. During the day preecding the attack, they were near enough to the Indians to watch their motions, and to perceive that they were hunting beaver and other game.
t They were found to be provided with extra snow-shoes, moccasons, blankets, and. other equipments, which they were supposed to have brought along with them for the use of captives. These preparations indicated an intended attack on some settlement, probably Cocheco [Dover].
# Appendix B.
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It is not surprising that the result of this expedition should have been to set on foot another similar one very soon after. In April, Lovell was again on the march for the territory of the Pequawkets, at the head of forty-six men. The melancholy termination of this expedition has been celebrated in verse, described in graphic narrative, and recounted at a thousand win- ter firesides, where harking ears and horror-frozen hearts have attested the deep interest which the bloody tale excited. It was fatal to the daring adventurer with whose name the early history of this town has become associated.
It is not much that we know of the personal his- tory of the men who planted this settlement. Whit- ney * says they had among them enough who were wealthy and enterprising to give the plantation a good start, and an encouraging growth in the years of its infancy. The General Court made. it a condition in their grant, that the grantees should either settle on their lands themselves, or send some of their descendants to occupy them. This condition, it is evident, was not very strictly complied with. But few of the original proprietors actually took up their residence here; and, in numerous instances, they sold, at an early day, the lots which they had drawn in the township. Many of them, however, who had already their homesteads in other and distant places, probably endowed marrying daughters, or sons arriving at man- hood, with these uncultivated estates. This desire to
* Rev. Peter Whitney: History of Worcester County,
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give an outfit to man-grown sons, and daughters of marriageable age, it was, doubtless, which brought many petitioners for land-grants before the Legislature, in almost every one of those years. Fortunate they were who could urge past services to the State as a ground for their claims. The petitioners had no more land than they wanted for themselves, while the State had wild lands, unoccupied, in plenty. Money they had not - much; but they were rich in children, to whom, as was natural, they wished to give a portion of worldly goods, as the one sex should arrive at majority, and the other enter the state of wedlock. Here was a way by which the ambition which their children had inherited from them, to become large landholders, might be gratified without cost. It was well for the State. It was well for themselves. It was well for their children.
The proprietors of this place lived somewhat widely scattered; though they were chiefly inhabitants of the north and west part of Middlesex County, and the north and east part of the county of Worcester. Lancaster contained, by considerable, a larger number of them than any other town. Samuel Willard, John Bennett, John White ; the Houghtons, - Jonas, Ephraim, James, Edward, Stephen, and Daniel; the Willsons, - Jonathan and Joseph; the Whitcombs, - Joseph and David ; the Sawyers, - John, Ezra, and Samuel; John Goss, Fairbank Moor, John Wil- der, Moses Chandler, and probably others, were of Lancaster. The Perleys, - Jeremiah and Jacob, ---- were of Boxford. The Farnsworths and (sometime)
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the Athertons were of Harvard. Benoni Boyenton, Edward Hartwell, and Joshua Hutchins, belonged to Lunenburgh ; Jonathan Parling and John Barker, to Concord. Tarbell, Spalding, and Shattuck were probably of Groton. John Varnum and Henry Col- burn lived in Dracut ; Moses Hazzen .and Abicl Foster, in Haverhill. Farmer, Walker, and Stickney were probably of Billerica. Jonas Adams was of than Hassanamisco [Grafton]. Aaron Rice and Samuel Brown were of Rutland. Others lived in Sudbury, Worcester, Amesbury, Exeter, N.H., Bedford, Chelms- ford, and other places. Probably not a dozen of all the original proprietors ever came here to live .* In a report made by the proprietors to the General Court, of the state of the plantation, at the end of the year 1750, the names of forty-seven of the sixty-one fami- lies then actually settled in town are given; and, of the whole forty-seven, the name of Joseph Will- son alone appears on the list of the first propric- tors.t
It will be remembered that the grant of this terri- tory, for a settlement, was made in April, 1733. The first proprietors' meeting was held on the tenth of the following month ; and measures were immediately
* As, by the conditions of the grant, there were only sixty families required to be settled on the granted territory within three years, and there were some seventy-two proprietors, the privilege of postponing actual settlement beyond the term of three years was conferred on such twelve of them as would pay the largest consideration for the same into the proprietors' treasury.
t See Appendix C.
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taken to commence the partition of the land among the proprietors .*
It is impossible to say with certainty where the first dwelling was erected, or by whom, or at exactly what time. It is a reasonable conjecture, however, that several settlers came together, or nearly together, to make their homes here. I know no reason to think that any settlement had been made before the grant; and probably, as soon as the allotment of lands had taken place, not one alone, but several, came, with- out loss of time, to begin their clearing and building. The first division of land, for home or house-lots, was made in 1733; and, it is likely, made so early in the year, that improvements were begun before the winter following. A tradition exists, that Joseph Willson built the first house in town, near the pre- sent residence of Mr. David C. Page; and I believe the tradition sometimes adds that he was the first white man who spent a winter here. If Mr. Simeon Houghton, who settled on what is known as the Charles Wilder Place, was not here as early as Mr. Willson, he certainly was not much behind him. And, if Mr. Willson did really precede Mr. Houghton, there is traditional evidence that Mrs. Houghton was not preceded by Mrs. Willson, or by any other of her own sex in the new settlement.t The tradition runs,
* This first meeting was held in Lancaster, at the inn of Thomas Carter. Samuel Willard was chosen moderator, and William Lawrence, clerk. A Committee was. chosen to lay out to each proprietor fifty acres, for a first allotment, with authority. " to make up in quantity each proprietor's lot in quality, so that each proprietor may draw for his lot." - Proprietors' Records.
t While this address was in the course of preparation, and after this paragraph was written, the writer received a communication from Jared Weed, Esq., who has
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that Madame Houghton, albeit not the possessor of a well-favored countenance, was gifted with a genial disposition ; and that she used to say, in the post meridiem of her life, shaking her head significantly at the fairest of the maidens around her, "Take no airs : I'd have you know, that the time was when I was acknowledged, without dispute, to be the hand- somest woman in the town ; " - that time having been when there was yet no woman in the town besides Mrs. Houghton herself.
This settlement, occasionally called, in old records and papers, Volunteerstown (or, in abbreviated form, Voluntown), because granted to volunteers, was almost universally known, from its settlement to its incorpo- ration in 1754, by the name of Nichewaug, - a name as variously spelled as the fancy, caprice, or ortho- graphical vagary of the writer happened to dictate .* This was the Indian name of the place. There had
devoted much attention and given mueh research to the antiquities of this town, and has presented, by lectures and newspaper articles, much curious and valuable infor- mation to the public thereupon. Mr. Weed thinks that Mr. Willson eame here and planted himself as early as the autumn of 1731. This opinion he bases upon the tes- timony of tradition. If this tradition were true, it would seem somewhat surprising that the earliest proprietors' records should not contain some incidental mention of a settlement, or settler's elaim, already existing. It would seem not unlikely, that the Legislature, in voting the grant, would make some allusion to such an occupant or occupaney of the territory they were ceding. There is nothing in the proprietors' records, or in the action of the Legislature (unless it has escaped my notice), which indicates that the whole traet deseribed was not clear of ineumbranee at the time of the grant. Mr. Willson appears to have drawn his share or division of land by lot among the rest, in 1733; and nothing appears to show that he previously abandoned any claim he had before made.
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