USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Braintree > Centennial celebration at Braintree, Mass., July 4, 1876 > Part 1
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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01105 7590
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CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION
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BRAINTREE, MASS.,
JULY 4, 1876.
PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE TOWN.
BOSTON : ALFRED MUDGE & SON, PRINTERS, 34 SCHOOL STREET. 1877.
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ORATION BY HON. F. A. HOBART.
AN American in a foreign land, speaking of his own coun- try, would naturally dwell upon its national aspects, its history as a whole, its marvellous resources, extended do- main, considering those masculine traits that suggest and reveal force, renown, and results. Upon American soil the same individual will turn with warmer and tenderer emotions to the "spot of his origin," and will be drawn by ties of affection to his home, to the town of his nativity, regarding all that concerns it with minute and special interest.
With such filial regard and affection let us recite, on this glorious anniversary, the story of the birth and growth of our venerable mother town. Tracing back this interesting narrative for two hundred and thirty-six years, we shall find,
" A thousand fantasies Begin to throng into our memory, Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, And airy tongues, that syllable men's names On sands, and stones, and desert wilderness."
That vast scheme of colonization, comprehended and ad- vocated by Bacon,1 and instituted by Raleigh2 with all the brilliance of romance in behalf of the Crown of England, had seized upon the main estuaries of the Atlantic shore between the French occupation of the Saint Lawrence3 in the north, and the lordly Mississippi in the south, - the discovery of which had proved both the glory and the grave
1 Bancroft's Cen. Edition, Vol. I, p. 238.
2 Bancroft's Cen. Edition, Vol. I, p. 86.
$ Bancroft's Cen. Edition, Vol. I, p. 14.
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of the Spaniard, De Soto; 1 the Roanoke, Susquehanna, and Delaware had been explored ; the James, Piscataqua, and Saco had undergone experiments at settlement ; native chiefs had parleyed with Hudson on the North River, and that majestic stream had been opened to Dutch traffic. That wonderful traveller, whose adventures read like a tale of the Arabian Nights, had sailed this coast from Wessagusset to the Merrimack, and as Whittier, referring to Smith's visit to Cape Ann, informs us, -
" On youder rocky cape, which braves The stormy challenge of the waves, Mid tangled vines and dwarfed wood, The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood ";
giving in 1614 to this rugged land the name it bears to-day, and to knowledge the first rude map of New England.2
These events had transpired, and the Pilgrims had for ten years lived under that governmental contract conceived on the deck of the " Mayflower," to afterwards become the charter and covenant of an empire, before the occurrence of that immediate emigration which preceded the advent of this town. And here it is but just to say that the ground of earlier incident and preparation, for the maturing of this ancient town, has been already traversed by diligent students, accomplished scholars, and eloquent orators, and our task to-day is simply to glean from a well-garnered harvest.3
Before the English emigration of 1630, plantations were scattered over the lands in Massachusetts Bay, then counted "the paradise of New England."
Maverick was at East Boston, Thompson ocenpied an island off Squantum Neck, Blackstone was on the peninsula, 4 and Capt. Wollaston, in search of commercial advantages,
1 Bancroft's Gen. Edition, Vol. I. p. 50.
? See Sd, 4th, 7th, and 8th chaps, Bancroft's Cen. Edition, History of the United States, with reference to early settlements by the English.
8 Whithey's notes upon Quincy, Lunt's Second Century Sermons, C. F Adum''s Town Hall Oration, at Braintree, in text, notes, and appendix, are very thorough upon certain points of our preliminary history.
4 Baneroft's Cen. Edition, Vol. I, p. 266.
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rested in this distinct locality a short time previous to his departure for Virginia.
Stepping into his vacant place, and making the first permanent settlement in Massachusetts, after Plymouth, we have Thomas Morton,' of somewhat unpleasant reputation, who caused the primary memories of our vicinity to be somewhat conspicuous for ribaldry and disorder.
This frolicsome gentleman, on the very outpost of our civilization, was addicted to contraband trade and much intercourse with the "brew of Soma," and by his bacchana- lian orgies, interspersed with aboriginal variations, he earned an unenviable notoriety.
One of the rhymes of the "Wayside Inn" speaks of Sir Christopher, "Knight of the Holy Sepulchre," who wore, in the streets of Boston, -
" Doublet and hose and boots complete, Prince Rupert's hat and ostrich plume,"
passing his leisure hours with "roystering Morton, of Merry Mount," but who was afterwards "extradited " for his immoralities, proving, if the poet Longfellow is correct,
" The first who furnished this barren land With apples of Sodom and ropes of sand "
It must be admitted that our earliest landed proprietor, selling gunpowder and rum, and carousing with " ye savages," was of that order of citizen thought proper in these days " to send to the rear,"2 and so Morton, very consistently, was ordered to be " put in the bilbows " and sent to England.
It seems somewhat singular that this quiet, respectable, and sedate town, for more than two centuries pursuing a calm life of sobriety and integrity, should have been ante- dated by a loose, lawless, and reckless barrister, and a cavalier who was a Jesuit in disguise, - men who, in their conduct and opinions, were guilty of everything obnoxious
1 See Whitney's Quincy ; New England Memorial, pp. 136-138 ; Hutchin- son's History, Vol. I, p. 32 ; also, C. F. Adams, Jr.'s, address at 250th anniversary of settlement of Weymouth, p. 30.
2 Hon. C. F. Adams refers to Morton as a " carpet-bagger."
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to the devout settler, who came here out of hatred to prelacy and the manners of the court.
Wollaston, not finding this point, as a " trading post," quite as profitable and successful as such affairs have proved on the frontiers in our times, left for richer pastures, his name, however, adhering to this range of land.
The attempt to change the name to "Merry Mount," though signalized with unbecoming revel, was futile, as was also the short-lived effort of Endicott to call the place " Mount Dagon," when, in Christian wrath, he cut down the offensive May-pole which stood on the particular elevation known from 1625 to this hour as " Mount Wollaston."
The first decade of the Massachusetts Colony developed great activity and progress, while it exhibited serious differ- ences in material, and grave dissensions in spiritual affairs.
The year 1628 found Salem struggling for existence, with Endicott as its central figure. Two years later Winthrop and Dudley sailed into waters, since made famous as a harbor of great maritime importance, having with them seven hundred associates.
Dispersion soon colonized Lynn. Malden, Charlestown, and Boston. Pynchon and Eliot located at Roxbury ; Hooker, the "Light of the Western Churches," as history delights to call him, halted at Cambridge before he felt called upon "to go west " as far as Connecticut ; Salstonstall and Phillips advanced to Watertown ; Ludlow planted at Dorchester, and according to Hubbard, twenty considerable towns were built and peopled shortly after 1630.1 The General Court had commenced its sessions, and the elders and church began that authority which for a century ruled the New World, as absolutely as crown and Parliament did the Old .?
An attempt on the part of the magistrates to check exces- sive attendance on lectures and sermons, as injurious to the public " by a consumption of time," was suppressed by the
1 Bancroft's Con. Edition, 9th chapter.
" It is one of the traditions that Blackstone left Boston, as he said, " to get away from the tyranny of the Lord's brethren," as he left England to get rid of the " Lord " Bishops."
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church, though the movement seems to have accomplished its object, as I have heard of no account since then of any particular danger from inordinate church-going.
Cotton, "an acute and subtle spirit," assistant pastor of the First Church, opposing rotation in office, advocated the . notion, somewhat in vogue now, that the right of an official to his place was like that of a "proprietor in a freehold." 1 Winthrop led the magistrates and the church party, and was vanquished by Henry Vane, the brilliant young statesman, who, acting with the freemen of Boston, precipitated the grand contest, based on the idea of the "absolute control of the majority in civil affairs." True to this promise of his youth, Vane afterwards died gloriously ou the scaffold in England, a martyr to liberty.2 Another prominent dis- turbance in the young colony, upon religious matters, had an important bearing upon the destinies of this town. What may very properly be called the first or the original " Woman's Club," so far as this hemisphere is concerned, was held in Boston in 1636 or thereabouts, at the house of Mrs. Hutchinson,3 and there was nestled and nurtured that heated controversy called by its advocates "the conflict of faith against works," but stigmatized by its adversaries as the " antinomian heresy," and honored by the historian Bancroft 4 as being the legitimate fruit of the Protestant idea, and a bold vindication of "the right of private judgment." This division of sentiment led to the assignment of Rev. John Wheelwright to preach at " the church to be gathered at Mount Wollaston" in 1636, the territory having been annexed to Boston in 1634.5 Having, a year after his set-
1 Bancroft's Cen. Edition, Vol. I, p. 286.
2 See Appendix B, note 1.
3 The male members of the church of Boston had been accustomed to convene in order to report and debate on the discourses delivered on Sundays. Mrs. Hutchinson, a very extraordinary woman, established a similar meeting for her own sex. See Hannah Adams's History of New England, p. 58.
4 Bancroft's Cen. Edition, Vol. I, p. 297. Also, for the most correct idea of this important controversy, which did so much towards the formation of Braintree, read the address of Hon. C. F. Adams, at dedication of Braintree Town Hall, in 1858.
5 See Hancock's Cen. Sermon .. Also, Hannah Adains's History of New England.
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tlement over the Mount Wollaston flock, in a marked sermon defending the "covenant of grace," maintained the obliga- tion to a "higher law" as against human institutions, a dortrine that became the political faith and creed of states- men of the stamp of Summer and Seward and Andrews in another generation, Wheelwright was deemed insubordinate by the majority, and was banished to New Hampshire, where he reported a year after.
Roger Williams, the "apostle of intellectual liberty," retiring from the same inflexible majority, had wandered through the forests of Massachusetts to sow the seeds of a "free, full, and absolute liberty of conscience" on the shores of the Narragansett. A large number of the members of the Boston church being imbued with these seditious doc- trines were disarmed and disfranchised, and being allowed to receive allotments of the Wollaston lands, they removed thither in 1639,1 receiving, on petition to the General Court, a grant to set up as the town of Braintree in 1640.2
To ascertain definitely the reason why this name was selected is a difficult if not impossible matter. A body of people known as the " Braintree Colony,"3 of which Hooker was the leader and master, were on the Wollaston lands in 1632-3.
Whether, as Savage (the editor of Winthrop) and John Quincy Adams held at a later day, a portion of the colony remained after the main part had removed to Cambridge, or whether, after the Hooker company left for Hartford, some came back to Wollaston, as Lunt suggests, or whether, as C. F. Adams intimates, the great number who settled here, because of the Boston disruption, would be most likely to
1 August 3, 1869. In Boston "eight men were chosen to consider of Mount Wollaston business and how there may be a town and church there with the con- antal the town& intentionts." See Adams's Town Hall Oration, Appendix, p. 63. At a Gegend Court of Election in Boston, May 13, 1610, the petition of the Dlategots of Mount Wollaston was voted and granted them to be a town, accord- bog to agreement with Boston, and the town is to be called Braintree.
Anyoverleg Winthrop in his Journal, under date of AAngust 14, 1632, mentions that the Brutto company (which had begun to sit down at Mount Wollaston, ) My order of Continued to Newton. These were Hooker's company.
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furnish the name, being the parties most interested in the choice, is an affair more of conjecture than proof ; the weight of evidence, however, is with the presumption that from the time of the Braintree company, in 1632, Wollaston was never without settlers; and if this view is sound, as they were the " oldest inhabitants," they were likely to be instru- mental in determining the name. But without troubling ourselves further as to how it came about, I think there has never been any complaint that the selection was not entirely satisfactory.
In 1640 our municipal existence commenced, with fifty square miles of territory,1 but with a population small in numbers 2 as the town nucleus.
To understand well the subsequent career of Braintree, it is necessary to understand the stern, earnest, religious colonist who was here established. He has been aspersed, bitterly and violently, for his bigotry and intolerance, and the shaft of ridicule, often sharpened by the blade of envy, has been driven at him by scoffer and satirist, while feebler weapons have been aimed at him by the weaker sentimen- talist. Wheelwright in exile, and Williams in retreat, have been pointed to as examples of martyrdom ; and the isolated era of witchcraft has been allowed to eclipse, with some, the lustrous record of the early Massachusetts colonist. As we owe to him all we have of corporate worth and local char- acter, we should review, with pride, those elemental traits that have done so much, not only for us, but for mankind. The founders of Braintree and its sister towns were true disciples of that profound and logical theologian, John Calvin, of whom Bancroft says he announced "a stern and militant form of doctrine, lifting men above human limita- tions, bringing them into immediate dependence on God, whose eternal, irreversible choice is made by himself alone, not arbitrarily, but according to his own highest wisdom and justice." That was the faith of the colonist, and no other
1 See Appendix B, note 2. Also, see C. F. Adams's Town Hall Oration, p. 33. 2 Appendix to Adams's Oration, p. 61, gives list of grants, with names in alpha- betical order.
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would have kept civilization alive in New England. Others had crossed the perilous ocean, seeking adventure, gratifying ambition, amassing wealth and estate. The colonists breasted the trials, tempests, and dangers of the sea in the interests of the soul. and on his lips, " Thus saith the Lord " was both authority and benediction. These men were of English Puritan stock, the most remarkable body of men, says Macaulay, " perhaps which the world has ever produced, - a body to whose courage and talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations." In England the Puritans drove the theatrical and effeminate dress of the courtier and noble out of fashion : they purged literature of its foulness, and made life and manners abroad more serious and real. It took precisely these men to face the hostile savage, bear up against the bleak and withering climate, grapple with the meagre and unwilling soil, and wring from this unpromising domain institutions as enduring as the granite on which they were reared. It was such men that Mrs. Browning had in mind when she made her heroes declare, -
" Then we act to a purpose, we spring up erect,
We will tame the wild mouths of the wilderness steeds, We will plough up the deep in the ships double-decked, We will build the great cities and do the great deeds."
And they have done all this, honor to their memory ! Forty millions of people to-day unite to praise them, and nearly forty States bless the civilization which has come from them. Amid the acclaim and hosannas that herald the virtues of the Pilgrim and Puritan, we can forget, if not forgive, those moral and intellectual dwarfs, who would withhold the crown, and sully the fame, of those who laid the foundations of our town and of New England, breathing into the great Republic itself the breath and life of freedom.
With striking consistency the meeting-house, with us, anticipated the municipality, and we had " brethren " before we had townspeople. It was so with the parent town, and with those divisions that came in after years, the " house of God" was always the forerunner of the " precinct " and the
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corporation. The Puritan stamp and " sign manual" is unmistakable in all our civil as well as religious life. The first words that meet the eye upon opening the ancient records of Braintree are "School Fund," 1 and the Act that introduces our town's existence designates property held for purposes of education ; and from the year 1645, when the " Free Latin School "2 was established, till now, learning has found a home and friends here. Nothing can exceed the simplicity, fidelity, and rigid economy of our early town management, and a century passes with an unvarying repe- tition of ordinary transactions, by which the roots strike deeper, the branches push out farther, the leaves become more numerous, as the town expands around its central points, - the Church, the School, and the Town Meeting.
Much of the oversight, enterprise, and welfare of the com- munity has always been under the supervision of that especial Puritan officer, the selectman. In the roll of honor, if not of fame, the selectman stands deservedly high, for the cus- todians of the treasure, and the judge of the development of the towns of New England, have been most important factors in its history. The debt which the country owes to these devoted, much-abused, and generally ill-paid public servants will never be adjusted or fully appreciated, for usually the selectman gets his reward, if at all, from a consciousness of duty well done.
For about thirty years the business of the town related to the protection of Richard Wright in his mill privilege, lay- ing out a footway from Goodman Penniman's to the meeting- house, over the "old bridge," providing that "noe inhabi- tante " shall sell land or house, without consent of those hav- ing charge of town affairs, ordering the marsh to be improved for the " Elder's use," notifying those "Loving Brethren "
1 In a note to Hancock's Cen. Sermon, William Coddington is referred to as " the munificent donor of our school lands," from which the town has reaped great benefit in good schools for many years past. This is the grant referred to in the first item of the town records.
2 In 1735 the town petitioned the General Court "for something gratis for having had a Free Latin School for nearly ninety years."
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and neighbors not having " cattel " of their own that they minst not take any " cattel " from other towns to feed on the Commom, imposing a penalty of " nineteen shillings and eleven pence" for each three days that a stranger is harbored in the town without authority, making the Common free to all local inhabitants, and equalizing the interest in a grant of six thousand acres of land. made by the General Court for the benefit of the town. We shall hear of this " land grant" again, for it proved for a long time to be an elephant that Braintree could neither get rid of, or put to use.
six thousand acres of land, most anywhere in Massachu- sett- to-day. would be a valuable legacy, but that amount of unimproved real estate, located among " red skins," did not, in 1666, awaken any boisterous emotions of joy.
In 1672 the town allotted a "house and land for an orchard " that "shall stand as an accommodation and supply to the min- istry ": voting the minister eighty pounds a year, " seventy- four in wood parte and corne," at county-rate price. In the sillue year a movement in the popular direction was made by having " an open town-meeting for the whole inhabitants,"- a Step toward the time when individuality rather than property becomes the title to citizenship.
Boundary altercations were an early experience of the town. but were, as a rule, settled by amicable arrangement. Braintree originally comprised an immense territorial extent, affol in subsequent town formations, she was liberally sliced up In the executive, Carver. In 1737 the town petitioned the General Court " for consideration for having had four thou- sand acres of land set off to Milton," and this is but a speci- men of a series of dismemberments, which has befallen over- mich amputated Braintree.
Tre tirst litigation mentioned in the records, in which the town was a party, concerns the mill referred to at the first town-meeting. Gateliffe, who succeeded Richard Wright, the muller of 1610, had, by his neglect. evidently won the displacare of the town; but as he promised " by God's wietance," for himself' and heirs, "to so improve said pond "
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that the town "should have sufficient grinding," a satisfac- tory issue was the result, and peace and " proper grist ." were restored.
In 1674 this mill was burned, making the first fire recorded in Braintree, if we except the conflagration of Morton's habi- tation, which was fired by order of the Court, - that being the summary manner of dealing with objectionable haunts in that age.
In 1679, there evidently being no " Indian Ring " in opera- tion in those days, an agreement was made with Wampatuck, the first tribal sachem of this region, for certain lands, the deed of which, the gift of Hon. C. F. Adams, is an interest- ing possession of this public building, and now hangs upon its walls.1
Between the years 1682 and 1697 the salary of the pastor of the church appears to fluctuate, ranging from eighty to ninety pounds per annum, this sliding scale clearly indicating a division of sentiment, which finally culminated in the divi- sion of the society. To compromise this salary matter, a town vote was passed in 1695 "to go to contribution every Sabbath, and if Mr. Fiske see cause to take up with what is so given he shall have it all, but if not, we engage that if the contribution falls short of eighty pounds money, we will make it up at the year's end, and if it be over and above, it shall go to the use of the town, and that every man shall give an account to the Deacons what they give in." This plan probably would not have been approved by the man who said, " What he gave to the church was nothing to no- body." The selectmen, among their other duties, were ordered, by vote of the town, "to seat the meeting-house by appointing persons to their places."
An innovation upon the ancient custom of church attend- ance was made in the year 1697, "by allowing, in case any room was left after drawing up the men's seats . with the women's seats, in the meeting-house, that by the consent of the selectmen, family pews might be built at private ex-
1 See Appendix B, note 3.
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pense." This radical change was undoubtedly brought about, because of the alteration of the building, and probably broke up the absurd and meaningless custom of the separation of the sexes at public worship. One freeholder certainly obtained a " high " and elevated place in the synagogue, hav- itty been allowed, by special vote. "the privilege of making a seat for his family upon the two beams over the pulpit, but not darkening the pulpit."
The items of expense audited for the year 1694 are as follows, viz. : -
" Five pounds for John Belcher's weekly maintainance ; thirty shillings for keeping William Dimblebee; twenty- tive shillings for the ringing of the bell and sweeping of the meeting house in 1694 : seven shillings to William Saville for Dinblebee's coffin: eight shillings to constable for warning the town : five shillings for the exchange of a towu's cow to Samuel Spear: and ten shillings to Thomas Bas- for debt for ringing the bell formerly, this to be raised by rate."
The town allowed, also, "twenty shillings for looking after the boys at meeting." The pay of the representative to General Court was fixed at six pounds per annum, and in those days was paid by the town. The State is more liberal in our day, and has given as high as seven hundred and fifty dollars a session to those self-sacrificing patriots who sit in the modern halls of wisdom.
As an instance of the old style of squaring accounts, I find a receipt copied on the town records, of the school- master, Benjamin Thomy son, who had literally grown gray at his task. and receiving only a yearly pittance of one hundred and fifty dollars, had got somewhat behindhand. The acknowledgment says: " Whereas there hath been an old reckoning upon the account of my service for many Vents which I have served them in : that all may issue in love and all other matters of difference ended, and all former accounts balanced, upon the clearing my debt to Jonathan Hayward and Mr. Willard, in all being five
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