USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Braintree > Brief history of the town of Braintree in Massachusetts, prepared for the observance of the tercentenary celebration of its founding, 1640-1940 > Part 1
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Gc 974.402 B732h 1778988
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01105 7616
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A BRIEF HISTORY
Town of Braintree - OF THE
IN MASSACHUSETTS
Prepared for the OBSERVANCE OF THE
Tercentenary Celebration
OF ITS FOUNDING
1640-1940
OF . BE
1640
NMOJ
TREE
..
:
1940
MASSACH
1640 USETTS
COMPILED AND WRITTEN FOR THE TERCENTENARY COMMITTEE MARION SOPHIA ARNOLD, Editor
YHOT21H
£
1778988
1:
HISTORICAL RECORDS SURVEY. Massachusetts.
F 844125 .41
A brief history of the town of Braintree in Massachusetts, prepared for the observance of the tercentenary celebration of its founding. 1640-1940 ... Marion Sophia Arnold, editor. [Boston, Mass., T. Todd company, c1940] 64p. 23cm.
Bibliography: p.61-64. "Braintree historical sketch [byj Edmund B. Barton": p.5-39.
NL 40-5495
SHELF CARO
Gift '40
BRAINTRI
OLD
QUINCY 1792
BRAINTREE 1640
RANDOLPH 1793
1640
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... ....
...... ... +
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GEORGE BUCKINGHAM
THE TOWN HALL, 191:
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Acknowledgment
F OUR YEARS ago the Historical Records Survey of the Work Projects Administration was established on a nation-wide basis to survey and preserve historical source materials of all kinds. In this task, which is as tre- mendous in its scope as it is important in its cultural impli- cations, steady progress has been made. Originally federally sponsored, the project is now under the sponsorship of Secretary of the Commonwealth Frederic W. Cook.
In Braintree the inventory of the archives of the town has, among other tasks, been completed. As an introduction to this inventory publication an historical sketch of Braintree was prepared based as much as possible upon original sources : records of the town and colony, state laws and ar- chives, minutes and reports of official bodies, etc., all of which are clearly stated in the footnotes. When it became necessary to include an historical account of the town in its tercentenary publication, this sketch was offered to the Tercentenary Com- mittee and the offer was accepted.
Naturally, no sketch of this length could do justice to three centuries of the life of any community, much less one as color- ful as Braintree. We have sought to present, therefore, only the main outlines of the town's development.
The sketch was originally written by Edmund B. Barton, a supervisor of the survey, and, except for some additions by the present writer, is his work. The survey wishes to acknowl- edge its debt to the Tercentenary Committee and the town officers of Braintree for their cooperation ; also to its Wash- ington office which gave the sketch editorial review.
CARL J. WENNERBLAD, State Supervisor, Historical Records Survey.
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EDITORIAL COMMITTEE JOSEPH LYLE MCCORISON, JR. Chairman, Ex Officio JOHN A. BLASER ALICE HOLBROOK
MARION SOPHIA ARNOLD Editor
Braintree Historical Sketch EDMUND B. BARTON
I. EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT
In the spring of the year 1614 that stout pioneer Captain John Smith set sail from London with two ships to explore and chart the northern coast of what was then known as Virginia. His account of this voyage, A Description of New England, published in 1616, is the first book in which North Virginia is called New England. In it appears Smith's first map of the coast from Monhegan southward. "I have drawen," he says, "a Map from Point to Point, Ile to Ile, and Harbour to Harbour, with Soundings, Sands, Rocks and Landmarks as I passed close aboard the Shore in a Open Boat."1 On this map we find " the high mountaine of Massa- chusit" to which Smith refers marked "Chevyot" in a spot which probably identifies it with the Great Blue Hill near Boston. Various other Indian names in his account serve as romantic echoes of the days when the Massachusetts and other tribes hunted and built their wigwams on the slopes of the Blue Hills and Passonagessit. Smith was evidently im- pressed by this particular section of the coast, for he speaks of " the Countrie of the Massachusets, which is the paradise of all those parts,"2 and gives it the name London on his map. In the autumn of 1621 Captain Myles Standish, on an exploring expedition along the coast north of Plymouth, found the same spot, and spoke enthusiastically of its suit- ability for settlement.3 As a matter of fact "ye place," as regards structure and soil, was far more favorable for pioneering and settlement than Myles Standish's own loca- tion at Plymouth. The abundance of glacial lakes, the great outcrop of granite and slate, which produced rugged hills and
I. Captaine John Smith, A Description of New England, Boston, 1865 (reprint from London edition of 1616), p. I
2. W. D. Orcutt, Good Old Dorchester, Norwood, Mass., 1916, pp. 66-67 ; Old South Leaflets, No. 121, p. 16
3. Samuel Drake, History and Antiquities of Boston., Boston, 1856, p. 44; 'Quincy " in History of Norfolk County, D. H. Hurd, ed., Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis and Co., 1884, p. 257
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gave rise later to important industries, the abundance of fertile soil above sedimentary strata, and the numerous rivers for water-power, were all lacking at Plymouth. Further- more, the local deposits of bog-iron were to be an important determining factor in the industrial development of the district.
Smith's object was to explore, not to colonize. The first white settlement in the district, so far as we know from actual records, was that of Captain Wollaston, who had probably heard of the region from Smith himself, and who in 1625
. with a company of thirty or forty colonists cleared the land and built rough-hewn log-huts on the seaward slopes of the hills in what is now the city of Quincy.1 The settlement was called Mount Wollaston, and the little stream upon which they built, the Wollaston River, now Black's Creek.2 Wol- laston remained only about a year, and then left for Vir- ginia with many of his followers. Soon after his departure one of his company, a clever royalist adventurer named . Thomas Morton, assumed the leadership of the depleted colony and renamed it Merry Mount. Under his lawless régime the morale of the settlers degenerated so rapidly that in 1627 the scandalized Separatists of the neighboring Plymouth colony persuaded Captain Standish to arrest him and send him back to England.3 Undismayed, Morton re- turned to the colony in 1629, but was promptly arrested by the authorities, put in the stocks,4 and sent back to England, where he served a term in Exeter jail." The Court of Assist- ants pronounced judgment upon him as follows: "It is ordered by this present court, that Thomas Morton, of Mount Wolliston, shall presently be sett into the bilbowes, & after sent prisoner into England, by the shipp called the Gifte, nowe returneing thith (er) ; that all his goods shalbe seazed vpon to defray the charge of his transportacon, payemt of his debts, & giue satisfaccon to the Indians for a cannoe hee vniustly tooke away from them ; & that his howse, after the goods are taken out, shalbe burnt downe to the
I. D. M. Wilson, Three Hundred Years of Quincy, Boston, 1926, p. 4
2. Ibid., p. 3
3. Wilson, op. cit., p. 10
4. Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, 1628-1686, N. B. Shurtleff, ed., 5 vols. in 6, Boston, 1853-1854, I, P. 75. Hereafter cited as Colonial Records.
5. William Bradford, The History of the Plimouth Plantation, Boston, 1896, P. 303
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ground in the sight of the Indians, for their satisfaccon, for many wrongs hee hath done them from tyme to tyme." After his release he wrote a scathing satire on the colonists, entitled The New English Canaan (1637). Once more he returned to America, but was again arrested in Boston, and after serving another sentence retired to Agamenticus, now York, Maine, where he died in poverty in 1646.2
These early troubles undoubtedly prevented the colony from crystallizing into a town for some time, for in 1634 the district was annexed to Boston. In that year it is recorded that the general court " hath ordered that Boston shall have convenient inlargemt att Mount Wooliston, to be sett out by foure indifferent men, whoe shall drawe a plott thereof & prsent it to the nexte Genall Court . . . " 3 During the next few years grants were made in the Mount Wollaston area chiefly to residents of Boston,4 many of whom did not settle, but merely held the land, a fact that led to much litigation later on. Those who did settle during this period were genuine pioneers, seeking some favored spot in the new land where they could build their huts and till the soil free from religious persecution. That the life of the settlers had its social side is also revealed by the permission given by the General Court in 1639: "Martin Saunders is alowed to keepe a house of intertainement at Mount Woollaston." " The following year the same individual was "alowed" to "draw wine" at Braintree.6
A new chapter in the history of the settlement may be said to have begun with the grant by the General Court to Rev. John Wilson of five hundred acres at Mount Wollaston, in the year 1635. This was followed by similar grants in 1636 to Edmund Quincy, William Coddington, and William Hutchinson, whose wife Anne was excommunicated for her liberal religious views, and established a settlement in Rhode Island in 1638. Other grants of especial interest were those to Atherton Hough and Rev. John Wheelwright in 1637.7 It was Hough and Wheelwright who, with Coddington, ad- vocated the establishment of a church at Mount Wollaston
I. Colonial Records, I, p. 75
2. Encyclopedia Britannica, 13th Ed., XVIII, p. 882
3. Colonial Records, I, pp. 119, 130
4. Boston Records, 1634-1637, P. 33
5. Colonial Records, I, p. 259
6. Ibid., I, p. 291
7. Wilson, op. cit., p. 18
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because of the difficulty experienced by the residents in attend- ing the First Church in far-away Boston. Permission was granted by the First Church authorities, and on Febru- ary 20th, 1637, a grant of 250 acres was made to Wheel- wright " where may be most convenient without prejudice to setting up a town there."1 Rev. John Wheelwright, who was the brother-in-law of Anne Hutchinson, and thoroughly in sympathy with her liberal or Antinomian ideas, built the first meeting house, and christened it the Chapel of Ease. The date of erection is not established, but it stood near an old stone bridge across what is now known as the Town River, and was a familiar landmark as early as 1641.2 (The church was near the corner of Hancock and Cliveden Streets-in the middle of the street facing south lengthwise across the street. )
The congregation of this church formed the nucleus of the town government which was authorized by an act of the General Court in 1640: "The petition of the inhabitants of Mount Woollaston was voted, & granted them to bee a towne according to the agreement wth Boston; pvided, that if they fulfill not the covenant made wth Boston, & hearto affixed, it shalbee in the power of Boston to recover their due by action against the said inhabitants, or any of them & the towne is to bee called Braintree."3 This name was probably chosen because many of the followers of Rev. Thomas Hooker had moved from Mount Wollaston to Newtowne ( Cambridge) in 1632, and of these a considerable number were doubtless from Braintree, a town not far from Hooker's own parish at Chelmsford, Essex, England.4 Apparently settlement proceeded slowly, for five months later "the towne of Braintree were enioyned to make their pound, stocks & watchouse by the Quarter Court in the first month." 5
II. LAND GRANTS
Land and the boundaries of land were matters of vital concern to the early settlers. It was not surprising then that
I. Wilson, op. cit., p. 19
2. Rev. John Hancock, Two Sermons, 1739, Delivered at the Centennial of the Church ; published by S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1739 ; reprinted by Lincoln and Edmonds, 1811, no place of publication mentioned
3. Colonial Records, I, p. 291
4. Encyclopedia Britannica, 13th Ed., XIII, p. 674; James Savage, John Winthrop, Boston, 1825, I, pp. 87-88
5. Colonial Records, I, p. 310
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even before the setting off of Mount Wollaston as a separate town there should have been disputes and adjustments in the vicinity. Between 1635 and 1639 Boston and the adjoining town of Dorchester were in constant disagreement over boundaries.1 Braintree was particularly unfortunate in this respect. At the time of its incorporation in 1640 Braintree did not control all the land within the town limits, as is shown by references to such land belonging to Boston in 1642 and 1644.2 The fact that much land was held by absentee owners who were residents of Boston may have accounted at least in part for the strong prejudice against outsiders. As early as 1637 the General Court passed an " Alien Act," which forbade outsiders to settle in any town without its consent.3 In 1641 the town ordered that " noe inhabitant shall sell or dispose of any house or land to any that is not received a in- habitant into the town without it be first offered unto the men that are appointed to dispose of the towns affairs." + Grants of from eight to 500 acres were made to inhabitants of the town, and one of 3,000 acres to John Winthrop, Jr., and others for the encouragement of the iron industry.5 Most of these grants were made before 1645. It was not until 1673, however, that the town obtained definite control of all its land. In that year the selectmen of Boston formally turned over to Braintree all "lands lying between the bounds of Dorchester and the bounds of Waymouth."" That the town of Braintree dealt fairly with the Indians in the matter of land is shown by the fact that the town purchased the rights of Chief Wampatuck or Josiah, an Indian sachem, in the town lands, and guaranteed to all residents who held land " that they shall forever enjoy the same as their own proper right."? The original of this Indian deed, dated August 5, 1665, is in the Braintree Town Hall. "This deed came into my possession with other family papers. How we came by it, I know not, but I am sure it has been held for at least two
1. Pattee, History of Old Braintree, p. 18
2. Boston Records, I, pp. 57-59
3. Colonial Records, I, p. 196
4. Braintree Town Records, 1640-1940, 12 vols., mss., in office of Town Clerk, Braintree Town Hall, I, p. 1, 1641. Volumes I, II and a portion of Volume III have been transcribed and published under the title, Records of the Town of Braintree, 1640-1793, I vol., Samuel A. Bates, ed., Randolph, Mass., Daniel H. Huxford, Printer, 1886. Hereafter cited as Braintree Town Records
5. Wilson, op. cit., p. 271
6. Braintree Town Records, I, p. 21, Aug. 27, 1673
7. Ibid., p. 26, Oct. 27, 1679 ; p. 28, Apr. 5, 1683
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generations. On the back of it are these words : 'In the 17th reign of Charles 2d, Brantrey. Indian Deede given 1665, August 10. Take great care of it.' My inference is that at a former time, when much less value was attached in towns to old documents than is the case now, this was placed in the hands of John Adams for safe keeping. But I do not think he or his successors ever regarded it in any other light than as a trust. And now that this town has erected so noble a depository for it, I purpose to restore it ; and after repairing it and putting it in a suitable frame, to cause it to be placed in the care of the officers of Braintree, for the benefit and for the edification of all future generations of the people of the three towns."1 The validity of the town's title to its lands, however, was challenged in 1682 by one Richard Thayer, who held that the land had been deeded to him by the Indians, but who was never able definitely to prove his case.2
Meanwhile the pressing need for more tillage is evident from petitions for more land 3 sent by Braintree to the Gen- eral Court in 1645 and 1659. This need was met in the first instance by a grant by the court in 1645 of not more than 10,000 acres near what is now Warwick, Rhode Island,4 " in ye place where Mr. Gorton did live." 5 An interesting con- dition of the grant was the stipulation that, of the total number of settlers, "seven be freemen to dispose of toune affaires." Another grant "eight miles square " was made in 1660 at Quonshapague in the south central part of Massa- chusetts,6 officially named Mendon in 1667.7 In answer to another petition from Braintree citing that the idle land re- maining in the town was barren and rentals on fertile land high, the General Court made Braintree still another grant in 1666 of 6,000 acres in the same district, confirmed in 1669.8 The location of this latter grant was not mutually
I. An address on the occasion of the opening of the new Town Hall in Brain- tree, July 29, 1858, by Charles Francis Adams, Boston, 1858, p. 38
2. Massachusetts Archives, 417 vols. in 418, mss., Rm. 438, State House, Boston, III, pp. 34-35
3. Colonial Records, III, pp. 49, 376-377
4. Encyclopedia Britannica, 13th Ed., XII, p. 261
5. Colonial Records, III, p. 49
6. Ibid., IV, part I, p. 445
7. Ibid., IV, part II, p. 341 ; Adrian Scott. " Mendon " in History of Worcester County, Massachusetts, D. Hamilton Hurd, ed., 2 vols., Philadelphia, 1889, I. p. 607
8. Colonial Records, IV, pp. 324, 461 ; V., p. 252. This petition is in the Massachusetts Historical Society Library
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agreed upon by the General Court and Braintree until 1721, when a tract between the present Brookfield and Rutland was assigned, and a few settlers took possession of what is now the town of New Braintree.1 In 1670 Braintree also petitioned the court for an enlargement of the town's bound- aries in the direction of Plymouth, a plea which was denied.2 Nine years later it requested an additional grant due to the increasing number of indigent residents, this petition being approved by the magistrates and deputies.3
III. LIFE IN EARLY BRAINTREE
Agriculture was necessarily fundamental to the life of the town. From various items in the town records it is clear that in the earliest years of the settlement grazing and the grow- ing of crops were the main occupation of the colonists. The fact that the town minister was paid part of his salary in wood, barley, peas, Indian corn and malt upon one occasion 4 indicates the nature of the crops raised. At first, because of the limited amount of arable and pasture land the town adopted the system of common land for these purposes,5 a system with which the settlers were already familiar in Eng- land. There were many disputes over the best method of cultivating the common fields, and as to trespass upon them,6 but on the whole the records show them to have been a sub- stantial source of revenue to the town, as well as a boon to the settlers. Parts of the common were leased to individuals,7 one particularly interesting example being in the nature of a land reclamation project. In 1685 a twelve-acre swamp was leased to one Timothy Winter for twenty years.8 The con- ditions of sale were that " he and his heires and assignes shall cleene and subdue the sd. Swamp land " in twelve years, and pay the town three pounds a year "in corne" for the re- mainder of the lease.
Footpaths, cart-roads, and highways naturally occupied the attention of the town fathers from the earliest years of the settlement. Entries in the town records of 1640, 1641,
1. Braintree Town Records, p. 146, Apr. 12, 1721
2. Massachusetts Archives, CXII, p. 206
3. Ibid., p. 278
4. Braintree Town Records, I, p. 18, Oct. 26, 1674
5. Ibid., I, p. 6, Jan. 29, 1650
6. Colonial Records, II, p. 149 ; III, p. 67
7. Braintree Town Records, I, p. 14, Dec. 27, 1670 ; p. 28, Mar. 5, 1683
8. Ibid., I, p. 30, Apr. 1, 1685
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and 1642 concern the laying out of the town's section of the Plymouth "coast road" between Weymouth and Dor- chester,1 a footway, and a cart path.2 In the latter year a committee was appointed by the General Court to " settle highways." 3 The part of the Plymouth highway connecting Weymouth and Dorchester by way of the Braintree meeting house was laid out and in use by 1648.4 According to the Braintree Records: "The Country Highway was layed through Brantry . . . 25th : 12th month 1648." Before the erection of bridges along this road, ferries played an impor- tant part in transport. In 1635 the General Court authorized one Thomas Applegate to run a ferry between Weymouth and Mount Wollaston, the fare to be a penny for persons and twopence for horses,5 and passed a number of other laws regarding the location and management of ferries.6
Education was a matter of vital concern to our forefathers. The intolerance of the Stuart kings in the old country, where James I had informed the disillusioned Puritans that they would conform or he would "harry them out of the land," and where education was mainly for the gentry, gave a new meaning to the words church and school. It is not surprising, therefore, that the first town record which has come down to us should refer to the establishment of a school fund from the proceeds of Coddington's farm lands leased ( ?) in 1640 and sold after 1800.7 The keen interest of the town in education is typical of the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a whole. The General Court in 1642 gave to selectmen in every town the power to supervise the education and employment of chil- dren, and made it the duty of selectmen to see that children could read and understand the "principles of religion." 8 Later the famous Acts of 16479 provided that every town of fifty householders should establish a school, the master to be paid either by parents or by the town, and that the towns of one hundred families or more were to set up a grammar school to prepare for "the university," which, of
I. Braintree Town Records, I, p. 11, Feb. 25, 1648
2. Ibid., I, p. 1, May, 1641, and p. 3, Oct. 19, 1642
3. Colonial Records, II, pp. 4, 271
4. Ibid., II, pp. 40, 27 1
5. Ibid., I, p. 156
6. Ibid., I, p. 275 ; II, p. 244 ; III, pp. 81, 128, May 13, 1648
7. Braintree Town Records, I, p. 1, March, 1640
8. Charters and General Laws of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay, Boston, 1814, p. 74
9. Ibid., p. 186
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course, meant John Harvard's new college at Cambridge. This act definitely laid down the principle of compulsory edu- cation in Massachusetts. There was no free education in the modern sense, except in cases of extreme poverty.1 In Brain- tree parents paid varying fees in money or in kind.2 For example, a fee of a shilling a quarter for each child was charged in 1700, while in 1701 the amount was increased to five shillings per annum.3 This money went toward paying the schoolmaster's salary, the larger part of which was taken from the school fund. An entry in the town records for 1668 indicates the practice of the time. It was voted that year to "lay the school land, that is to say the Annuall Income of it for a salliry for Schoole master, and to make it up twenty pounds besides what every child must give." ‘ Unfortunately very little is known, beyond surmise and local tradition, of the early Braintree schools. We know that the schoolhouse existing in 1648 was sold by the schoolmaster, Rev. Henry Flint, to Dr. John Morly,5 that the income from the school lands was substantial, and that the schoolmaster's salary was increased periodically.6 At the close of the century the build- ing of a new schoolhouse 7 and the appointment of a gram- mar-school master to prepare pupils for college indicate the steady increase in the number of families. From 1675 to 1700 there were forty marriages, 607 births, and 203 deaths,8 and up to the latter year grants of land had been made to at least sixty freemen,9 which means a substantial and growing population.
That the town assumed responsibility for the support of the church as well as the town school is clear from the records. In 1670 it was voted that there should be "a chh (church) rate made to the sum of sixty-six pounds," 10 and two years later that a house and land should be bought "as an accom- modation or supply for the ministry from time to time, and allowance for a yearly salyry " of sixty pounds, besides the
I. Braintree Town Records, I, p. 72, Sept. 26, 1701
2. Ibid., I, p. 26, Mar. 3, 1679 and p. 115, Dec. 28, 1713
3. Ibid., I, p. 68, May 13, 1700 and p. 72, Sept. 26, 1701
4. Ibid., I, p. 13, Feb., 1668
5. Ibid., I, p. 4, Nov., 1648
6. Ibid., I, p. 13, Feb. 1, 1668 ; p. 26, Mar. 3, 1678 ; p. 27, Mar. 10, 1680
7. Ibid., I, p. 48, Oct. 22, 1697 ; p. 57, Mar. 7, 1699
8. Ibid., I, pp. 77, ff.
9. Ibid., passim ; Boston Town Records, 1634-1660, passim
10. Braintree Town Records, I, p. 15, Jan. 2, 1670
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hay from five acres of the town salt marsh.1 An interesting sidelight on currency and a tribute to the shrewdness of the town minister is the fact that the following year "Pastour Mr. Moses ffiske " gave his receipt to the town for " the full sum of Sixty pounds in lew of the Sixty pounds of money of New England ingaged by the sayd Towne to me." 2 The re- ligious aspect of town life from the time of the early Anti- nomian dissensions forms a history in itself.3
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