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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01104 4184
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Andover: Symbol of New England The Evolution of a Town
Governor Simon Bradstreet, 1603-1697
Andover: 1 Symbol of New England The Evolution of a Town by Claude M. Fuess
Published by The Andover Historical Society and The North Andover Historical Society 1959
Copyright, 1959, by the Andover Historical Society and the North Andover Historical Society
Printed by The Anthoensen Press, Portland, Maine Plates by The Meriden Gravure Company, Meriden, Connecticut
Introduction
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P ROJECTED in 1946, this volume has been unavoidably de- layed because of the circumstances of the author's life. Oth- er commitments and some disasters have impeded its normal progress and prevented continuous research and composition. The writer will try neither to explain nor apologize, but does thank God that his life has been spared so that his self-imposed task has been brought nearer and nearer to completion. Those familiar with the career of Dr. Samuel Johnson will recall that in the eighteenth century he issued proposals for an edition of Shakespeare's works, received considerable sums in advance, and then, overcome by indolence, put off the task from year to year. He was finally goaded into finishing the edition by a satirist, Charles Churchill, who wrote of the Great Lexi- cographer:
He for subscribers baits his hook,
And takes the cash,-but where's the book?
The analogy is not perfect. I am no Samuel Johnson, and the only cash I have taken has been much less than the actual ex- pense of preparation. But my fellow citizens have been entitled to inquire, "Where's the book?" At any rate, here it is, at long last, not as good as I should like to have it, but as good as I can make it. With it, I pay in part a debt to my adopted town of which I have so many pleasant memories and in which I spent forty happy years.
CLAUDE M. FUESS
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$750
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Contents
I Preliminary 3
II "The Land about Cochichawicke" 8
III Origins of the Town 15
IV Life in the Early Settlement 31
V Andover's Anne Bradstreet, Puritan Poet 41
VI Maturing of a Township 50
VII Frontier War with the Indians 63
VIII The Great Andover Witch Hunt
79
IX The Church and the Community 105
X
The Great Andover Schism 116
XI Indians-and a Few Fryes 128
XII Growth and Development
142
XIII The Revolution
165
XIV
Party Politics and Leaders
186
XV Experiment in Education
211
XVI Citadel of Orthodoxy
227
XVII
The Rise of Industry in Andover
248
XVIII
Personalities, 1815-1861
268
XIX
A Half Century of Politics
290
XX Andover in the Civil War
311
XXI Places and Personalities
336
XXII To the End of the Century
361
XXIII Happy Days before the Storm
379
XXIV War Comes Again to Andover
401
XXV Postwar Transformation
419
XXVI Our Own Times
437
XXVII Today's Actualities and Trends
452
Index 463
vii
Illustrations
Governor Simon Bradstreet (1603-1697), from the copy, now hanging in the Essex Institute, in Salem, Massachusetts, of the original portrait in the Massachusetts Senate Chamber, State House, Boston. The artist is un-
known. Frontispiece
The Moody Bridges House, in North Andover, dating from about 1680, now owned by Edmund F. Leland, Esq. facing 32
The Benjamin Abbot House, in Andover, dating from about 1680, now owned by Mrs. Lloyd Morain. facing 33
The Parson Barnard House, in North Andover, long called the Anne Bradstreet House, but now believed to date approximately from 1715. facing 48
The James Frye House, Chestnut Street, North Andover, home of many generations of the Frye family. facing 48
The title page of Anne (Dudley) Bradstreet's Tenth Muse (1650), from the copy owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society. facing 49/
Judge Samuel Phillips, Jr. (1752-1802), from the unsigned portrait owned by Phillips Academy. facing 112
Two Phillips homesteads: (1) the Phillips House, in North Andover, built in 1752 by Esquire Samuel Phillips (1715-1790), and now owned by his direct descendant, C. Lloyd Thomas. facing 113
(2) The Phillips Mansion on Andover Hill, erected in the 1780's by Sam- uel Phillips, Jr., and destroyed by fire in 1887. facing 113
Abbot's Tavern, Elm Street, Andover, where President George Washing- ton breakfasted, November 5, 1789. Later, in 1795, it became the town's first Post Office, under Postmaster Deacon Isaac Abbot. facing 128 The Osgood House, North Andover, birthplace of Honorable Samuel Osgood (1747-1813), first Postmaster General of the United States. It is now owned and occupied by A. Murray Howe, Esq. facing 128
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ILLUSTRATIONS
Two buildings designed by the famous architect, Charles Bulfinch: (1) the Phelps House, now the Headmaster's House, erected in 1811 by An- dover Theological Seminary. facing 129 (2) Bulfinch Hall, originally constructed in 1818 as the main building of Phillips Academy. It was the "Classic Hall" described by Oliver Wen- dell Holmes in his poem, The School-Boy (1878). facing 129
The house on Main Street, Andover, in which Samuel F. Smith (1808- 1895), as a student at Andover Theological Seminary, wrote in 1831 our national hymn, America. facing 176
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), resident of Andover from 1852 to 1864, who wrote during that period Dred, a Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), The Minister's Wooing (1859), and The Pearl of Orr's Island (1862). facing 177
The Chapel Burying Ground on Andover Hill, where Mrs. Stowe and many other eminent persons lie buried. facing 192
Map of Andover Village about 1850. facing 193
Samuel Osgood (1747-1813), first Postmaster General of the United States. facing 240
Isaac Ingalls Stevens (1818-1862), first Governor of Washington Territory. facing 241
An Andover Reading Circle in the mid-nineteenth century, from a photo- graph owned by Miss Mary Lee. facing 256
A famous educational institution: Abbot Academy, founded in 1829. facing 257
President Calvin Coolidge at Andover in 1928. facing 304
Brigadier General Marlborough Churchill (1878-1931), Director, Mili- tary Intelligence Division, U.S.A. facing 305
Thomas Cochran (1871-1936), of Morgan and Company, Benefactor of Phillips Academy. facing 320
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ILLUSTRATIONS
William Madison Wood (1858-1926), President of the American Woolen Company and creator of Shawsheen Village. facing 320
The modern campus of Phillips Academy. facing 321
Nathaniel Stevens (1857-1946), President of M. T. Stevens & Sons and President of the Andover National Bank from 1907 to 1937. facing 384
Abbot Stevens (1888-1958), President of M. T. Stevens & Sons, President of the Andover National Bank from 1937 to 1958, and Trustee of Phillips Academy, Andover. facing 384
The celebration of Andover's Tercentenary. facing 385
The formal greeting from Andover, England, in 1946. facing 400
The House of the Andover Historical Society. facing 401
The House of the North Andover Historical Society. facing 401
xi
In Recognition and Gratitude
MY interest in the history of the town of Andover was first aroused by the late Reverend Markham W. Stackpole, School Minister at Phillips Academy, and was later further stimulated by Dr. Charles E. Abbott, the first president of the Andover His- torical Society. Both men knew much and were always trying to learn more, and they were never-failing fountains of informa- tion. The factual material for this book has been gathered from many sources, beginning inevitably with The History of Andover from its Settlement to 1820, published by Abiel Abbot, A.M., in 1829, and Historical Sketches of Andover, Massachusetts, which ap- peared in 1880. Miss Bailey's volume, prepared after exhaustive research into the existing original documents, has been indis- pensable. My work has been carried on in the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New England Historical Genealogical Society, and the Boston Athenæum, with occasional visits to the Memorial Hall Library, in Andover, and to the State Archives. The North Andover Historical Society and the Andover His- torical Society contain many important items, and their custo- dians have been both cordial and generous. Needless to say, the files of the Andover Townsman for the past seventy years have been of great assistance. I have consulted town reports, local newspapers, genealogical treatises, family records, church his- tories, and a vast amount of biographical material. For more re- cent events I have relied to some extent on the recollections of older residents, including myself.
A bare mention of those who, in various ways, have contrib- uted to this project would cover two or three pages and even then would be inadequate. Some of them, including Thaxter Eaton, Roy A. Hardy, and Miss Caroline Underhill, are no longer with us. Among the living are Dr. and Mrs. Horatio Rogers, Mrs. Abbot Stevens, Mr. Samuel F. Rockwell, Mrs.
xiii
IN RECOGNITION AND GRATITUDE
Forbes Rockwell, Mr. Charles D. McDuffie, Miss Mary Lee, Mr. Cornelius A. Wood, Mr. J. Radford Abbot, Mr. Edmund F. Le- land, Mr. Francis B. Kittredge, Mr. Tyler Carleton, Mr. George H. Winslow, Miss Miriam Putnam, and Miss Elizabeth Eades. I owe much to articles published from time to time by those in- defatigable antiquarians and historians, Miss Bessie Goldsmith, Mrs. Kay Noyes, and Mr. Scott H. Paradise. Mr. Rudolph Ru- zicka has advised on the format of the book, and Mr. Walter M. Whitehill, without being in any sense responsible for the con- tents, has with high professional competence helped to see it through the press. My friend, Frederick S. Allis, Jr., has acted as my representative during my absence abroad. My thanks go out above all to the town fathers for their encouragement and patience, and to the Stevens Foundation, which has made publi- cation possible.
CLAUDE M. FUESS
xiv
Andover: Symbol of New England The Evolution of a Town
CHAPTER I
Preliminary
I IN the late spring of 1946, the good citizens of the town of An- dover observed with impressive ceremonies the three-hun- dredth anniversary of its incorporation. Distinguished visitors came at the invitation of the town fathers: Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal, United States Senator Leverett Saltonstall, Governor Maurice J. Tobin, Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers, and President James P. Baxter, III, of Williams College, together with Mayor Young and his official "Mayoress," Mrs. Sainsbury, from Andover, England, who had flown the Atlantic for the occasion. Plenty was said at the time regarding the contri- bution made by Andover to the life and development of Com- monwealth and Nation. As its history was repeated, the guests concluded that very few communities in New England have had such an outstanding record. Mayor Young, as he departed, re- marked, "I'm going back to tell my countrymen what a great town our ancestors sired!"
The seaports, Salem, Newburyport, New Bedford, and Nan- tucket, may seem more romantic. The association of their mari- ners with foreign parts, with Singapore and Bombay and Ran- goon, has about it something very attractive. The New Bedford of Melville's Moby Dick and the Salem of Hergesheimer's Java Head are no commonplace cities. Gloucester from early colonial times was a harbor from which fishermen went down to the sea in ships, making nothing of stormy voyages to the Grand Banks in tiny vessels. Cape Ann was romantic long before Kipling laid there the background for his Captains Courageous.
But however fascinating they may appear in fact and fiction,
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ANDOVER: SYMBOL OF NEW ENGLAND
not one of these interesting communities equals Andover over the years as a symbol of New England culture. From its origins it possessed an intellectual quality which set it apart from neigh- boring settlements. Here Anne Bradstreet composed her quaint volume of verse, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up In America (1650), the earliest contribution of New England Puritanism to belles-lettres; here were founded three famous educational in- stitutions, Phillips Academy (1778), Andover Theological Sem- inary (1808), and Abbot Academy (1829); here, as the nine- teenth century progressed, were written dozens of books with a total circulation in the hundreds of thousands; here were trained some of our country's foremost leaders, including Samuel F. B. Morse, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Bishop William Lawrence, and Henry L. Stimson; here Samuel F. Smith wrote our national hymn, "America"; and to Andover from time to time have come our statesmen on their travels, from Washington through Web- ster and Theodore Roosevelt to Calvin Coolidge and Wendell Willkie. Edmund Quincy made it the scene of his Wensley, A Story without a Moral (1854) and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps of her A Singular Life. Plenty of productive thinking has emanated from Andover, much of it theological and ethical, but some of it imaginative. Indeed, at certain periods the spirit of enlight- ened Puritanism was more pervasive, perhaps more articulate, in Andover than elsewhere in New England.
The town has had no Hawthorne, like Salem, no Emerson and Thoreau, like Concord, no Whittier or Bryant or Melville. It has never competed with the urbane society of Cambridge, with its scholarly celebrities like William James and Charles Eliot Norton and Charles William Eliot and its cultured poets like Longfellow and Lowell. But Andover in its triad of schools pre- served certain aspects of Puritanism-a preoccupation with the- ology, an insistence on the value of dogma, a passionate desire for self-expression, a dignified austerity of living-longer than any community in Massachusetts. "Brimstone Hill," the cita- del of an inflexible and now obsolete religious philosophy, per-
4
PRELIMINARY
petuated too long some of the less amiable aspects of Calvinism. But the softening process was going on even while the super- ficial rigidity remained. For these and other reasons the town has never lacked personality, which makes it stand out above many a Massachusetts village less vigorous and vocal.
Gradually in the eighteenth century Andover grew larger, less homogeneous, perhaps less distinctively individual. The three traditional divisions of the Hill, the Till, and the Mill became more differentiated. To it came new citizens to whom the theo- logical doctrines of the Calvinists were antediluvian anomalies. Nowadays the mixture of races and backgrounds is apparent in the people whom one passes on the sidewalk or meets in the stores. This, however, is merely symptomatic of changed times, in New England as in Oregon. What is even more significant is that the newcomers have responded to something in the atmos- phere of the place and have even, on appropriate occasions, in- dulged in boasting of its history and traditions.
The Old Andover of the Theological Seminary unquestion- ably had its unique distinction, but the hour arrived when that was outmoded. The publicity which the institution received dur- ing the heresy trials of the 1880's threw a spotlight on the Hill and its immobility under the Dead Hand. Many citizens un- doubtedly preferred to have their town less notorious and more normal. The removal of the Seminary, after precisely a century of rise, dominance, and slow decline, meant the increased pros- perity of Phillips Academy, a school which actually better re- flected the spirit of the age. The Academy was better integrated with the townspeople, and has remained so, to the benefit of all concerned.
Coming as a complete outsider, I was for forty years a member of the Andover community, as devoted, I trust, to the Town as I was to the Gown. With zealous pedestrian companions I wan- dered over nearly every acre of ground within the limits of the Andovers, including sections virtually unknown to most natives. The boundaries enfold an infinite variety of meadow and wood-
5
ANDOVER: SYMBOL OF NEW ENGLAND
land, underbrush and swamp, as well as brooks and ponds, some of them unsuspected in an area so thickly populated. I have been overturned in a canoe on the Shawsheen River, and have fallen through thin ice skating on Pomp's Pond. I have visited often the fascinating soapstone quarry on the banks of the Skug River, the black tarn hidden deep in the Harold Parker State Forest, Rattlesnake Hill, Den Rock, and the winding grass-grown wood roads in North Andover. I have walked the length of Indian Ridge, speculating on the origin of that strange formation. I have followed the old railroad track from Andover to Wilmington and the long-abandoned trolley track from Lawrence to Salem. And of course, I have climbed Holt's Hill, now Prospect Hill, the highest landmark not only in the township but in Essex County.
Within the limits of Andover even now one may sometimes startle a deer drinking at a secluded pool or watch a fox in stealthy quest of an accessible chicken yard. There are still stands of tall pine comparable with those in the forests of Maine. The Andover of the Puritans was a fair and pleasant land, whose settlers and their descendants enjoyed their share of durable satisfactions. It is not astonishing that the coastal settlers, push- ing restlessly inland, paused near Lake Cochichawicke and re- solved there to build their permanent homes.
But I think of Andover in terms not of topography or scenery but of people. Many figures pass across the stage in this narra- tive, at first shadowy, with no form or features, then more clearly delineated, until we reach persons whose portraits we have stud- ied and whose voices we have heard. The first John Stevens and George Abbot are vague indeed as compared with their de- scendants today. But they all have helped to create the town which we know.
In its completely democratic style of government Andover is representative of the best in Puritanism, that which survived when the angularities and excrescences had been rubbed away. Town meetings still function as they did in the seventeenth cen-
6
PRELIMINARY
tury. Good men and women run for office and serve on commit- tees without remuneration, in spite of carping criticism. Public opinion is sound and its expression wholesomely frank. Many a violent dispute has ended in a wise compromise. Although its unfortunate share in the witchcraft delusion and its temporary association with a cruel theology are blots on its record, it is ac- tually an old-fashioned New England town where freedom of thought and speech are taken for granted and in which the resi- dents are cooperative neighbors. Because of its independent edu- cational institutions, Andover is known throughout the nation. But these, after all, are only a part of the town, and the other part, which existed before these schools were dreamed of, is well worth portraying.
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CHAPTER II
"The Land about Cochichawicke"'
T HE first European to gaze upon the unspoiled charm of Lake Cochichawicke, or to climb what is today called Prospect Hill, is as mysterious as the Unknown Soldier. One can, how- ever, make plenty of surmises. Some of Samuel de Champlain's sailors in 1605 or 1606 may have taken shore leave, gone ex- ploring up the Merrimack, and wandered a little into the forest in quest of game. That far traveler, Captain John Smith, who in 1614 drew our earliest accurate and detailed map of New England from Penobscot Bay to Cape Cod, noted that north of "the faire headland Tragabigzanda [Cape Ann]" there was re- ported "a great river, and at least thirtie habitations." This was undoubtedly the Merrimack, but having "no leasure to discover it," Smith passed by without landing. It was Smith who, in his Description of New England (1616), wrote, "And of all the foure partes of the world that I have yet seene not inhabited, could I have but the means to transport a Colonie, I would rather live here than any where; and if it did not maintaine itselfe, were wee but once indifferently well fitted, let us starve." This was candid testimony from a pioneer who had watched the establishment of the settlement at Jamestown. Not often has the location of Mas- sachusetts been preferred to that of Virginia, but it must be re- membered that Smith visited New England in June and July, not in February.
Captain Thomas Dermer, who in 1619 made observations along the Atlantic coast, apparently landed more than once to look around. Certainly the Pilgrims, under the restless and tire- less Myles Standish, and the Dorchester adventurers in 1623,
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"THE LAND ABOUT COCHICHAWICKE"
and even Roger Conant at Cape Ann and Naumkeag, may have made excursions into the then unknown wilderness. But nobody left a record on which the historian can rely.
It is difficult to believe that some of the vigorous young men who accompanied John Winthrop in 1630 on the ship Arbella would not quickly explore the back country, if only out of curi- osity. I have myself in these degenerate modern days walked the seventeen miles between Andover and Salem without unusual fatigue. The Plymouth Pilgrims, as early as 1633, followed In- dian trails to the Connecticut Valley. When most of the arable soil near the sea was pre-empted by the leaders, it was a tempta- tion for less influential but still enterprising colonists to move inland. After all, the territory granted the Bay Colony by royal charter extended to the Pacific Ocean, which even the best in- formed geographers thought then to be not much beyond Henry Hudson's river. Furthermore, John Smith had said of New Eng- land, as he saw it, "Here every man may be master and owner of his owne labour and land." Why not investigate the possibilities of just a short move to the west?
The earliest extant specific mention of the section now com- prised in North Andover and Andover occurs in the records of the General Court held at New Towne, March 4, 1634, and reads as follows:
It is ordered, that the land about Cochichawicke shalbe reserved for an inland plantacon, and that whosoever will go to inhabite there shall have three yeares immunity from all taxes, levyes, publique charges & service whatsoever (military dissipline onely excepted). John Winthrop, Rich: Bellingham, & Will'm Coddington, Esq., are chosen a committee to license any they think mete to inhabite there, and that it shalbe lawful for no p'son to go thither without their con- sent, or the major p'te of them.
We may assume from this order that although some venture- some explorers had already visited this area and reported on it, nobody had as yet settled there permanently. "Cochichawicke,"
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ANDOVER: SYMBOL OF NEW ENGLAND
as it is commonly spelled, is said to mean "the place of the great cascade," a reference perhaps to the falls on Cochichawicke Riv- er later to be utilized for water power in manufacturing. At any rate, the district was not unfamiliar to the Colony officials, who were prepared to make concessions to ensure its settlement by responsible persons. In that unique Bible oligarchy, Captain John Smith's promise of independence was ignored, and indi- viduals were not encouraged to choose their own site and fend for themselves. The Plymouth Colony had formally warned its members against "liveing lonely and in a heathenish way from good societie." Under a law passed by Massachusetts Bay in 1635 no dwelling house could be built more than half a mile from a church. Hence it had to be arranged for a group of families to move to Cochichawicke, with their own minister, and establish their township in the orthodox way.
This policy had the important advantage of affording protec- tion against possible raids by Indians. Many authorities have agreed that if it had not been for the terrific mortality caused among the natives by the mysterious plague of 1615 and 1616, the white colonists could not have sustained themselves at Plym- outh or Salem. Within two or three years the Indian population in the area between Cape Ann and Cape Cod is estimated to have shrunk from one hundred thousand to not much more than five thousand. Thus the Europeans arrived at precisely the moment when the aborigines were weakened by a disease which had car- ried off many of their most valiant warriors.
With the red men around them the Pilgrims and Puritans had almost nothing in common. James Truslow Adams has summed up the situation by saying, "At the time of the discovery, the na- tives encountered along the Atlantic Coast had advanced from savagery to the lower status of barbarism, and were still in the Stone Age." They did understand something of crop rotation and had their temporary villages where reserves of corn and vegetables were stored. Indeed the Indians taught the colonists their own successful fertilizing and cultivating methods. John
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"THE LAND ABOUT COCHICHAWICKE"
Smith found at Agawam in 1614 many "corn fields and delight- ful groves." Although the aborigines were largely dependent for food on hunting and fishing, they were not nomadic, but made their seasonal migrations. Nevertheless they were far from hav- ing attained the high state of culture reached by the Incas, the Mayas, or the Aztecs. Their pottery was crude, and although they did carve bowls and spoons from bird's-eye maple, they had little skill in pictorial representation.
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