USA > Massachusetts > From the Hub to the Hudson : with sketches of nature, history and industry in north-western Massachusetts > Part 1
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From the Hut to the Hudson
BERKELEY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
To one of my dearcet) 11/1.
. Mrs. BB Hammond. Bene. N. E.
His hand writing .
١
FROM THE HUB
TO THE HUDSON:
WITH SKETCHES OF
Nature, History and Industry IN
NORTH-WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS. BY
WASHINGTON GLADDEN.
BOSTON : THE NEW ENGLAND NEWS COMPANY. 1869.
LOAN STACK
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by WASHINGTON GLADDEN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
SAMUEL BOWLES & COMPANY, Electrotypers, Printers and Binders, SPRINGFIELD, MASS.
F70. G54
PREFACE.
IN the collection of materials for this little book I have been assisted by many friends ; among whom are Messrs. Stevens of the Mansion House in Green- field; and Rev. Robert Crawford, D. D., Nathaniel Hitchcock, Esq., and Dr. Charles Williams of Deer- field. Hitchcock's Geological Report, Holland's His- tory of Western Massachusetts, Hoyt's Indian Wars, Barber's Historical Collections, and the various re- ports of Commissioners and Engineers upon the Hoosac Tunnel, have been of great service to me. The engravings of the Tunnel were executed from photographs by Messrs. Hurd & Ward of North Adams.
The book is built on these two maxims :
I. History begins at home.
2. It is better to see one town from all its hill- tops than five hundred towns from the car windows. The reader will find upon its pages extended
223
iv
PREFACE.
notices of various persons and industries. I ask him to take my word for it that these are not pur- chased puffs, and they were not prompted by that species of gratitude peculiar to politicians-" a lively sense of favors yet to come."
My first purpose was to let the book be anony- mous, from a foolish feeling that such work might be considered unprofessional; but I have concluded that the attempt to show people how and where they may cheaply and pleasantly spend their few days of summer vacation-often the dreariest days of the year-is nothing to be ashamed of or apologized for. A book that helps anybody to see and enjoy the Connecticut Valley or the Berkshire Hills, will be likely to do less harm than a book about the Mode of Baptism or the Origin of Evil. I do not, however, pretend to have been wholly actuated by considerations of benevolence. I have enjoyed the writing of the book. It may be death to my readers, but it has been sport for me. -
The rest of the preface will be found in the body of the book. W. G.
NORTH ADAMS, May 1, 1869.
From the Hub to the Hudson.
CHAPTER I.
FROM BOSTON TO GREENFIELD.
A CERTAIN Vermont Yankee, extolling, as Yan- kees are wont to do, the town of his nativity, mentioned as one of its distinguishing peculiarities the remarkable fact that you could start from there to go to any place in creation. The Yankee who hails from Boston may, without exceeding his usual modesty, make the same claim for the place of his residence. Boston is a good place to start from. Indeed it is said that pretty much everything that moves in this world has started, or does start, from Boston. Here the fires of revolutionary patriotism were kindled ; here is Faneuil Hall, and the Old South Church ; here John Hancock learned to write that large hand which so boldly leads the column of signatures to the famous declaration ; here Adams spoke, and Otis wrote, and Warren fought and fell. Out of Boston came the Radical Abolition-
6
FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
ists ; forth from Boston proceed the apostoli and the apostolae of the new gospel of Woman Suffrage ; and from the pent-up confines of this crooked town issue those twin prodigies of literature and statesmanship, George Francis Train and the Count Johannes. Who can deny that Boston is the proper base of all opera- tions, and the perspective point from which the world must be pictured and regarded ?
It was inevitable, then, that our book should begin at Boston. And as charity which begins at home is often greatly minded to stay there, so the book which begins at Boston is not likely to get far beyond it. Being at the center of the universe, the centripetal force is almost irresistible. But the centrifugal im- pulses are sometimes felt, even in Boston, as every- body knows, and taking advantage of the first wave of outward movement, we will fly from the hub toward the periphery.
Very likely, however, there will be numerous travel- ers seeking the shadows of the Berkshire hills and the quiet of the Connecticut meadows, for whom Boston will not be the natural starting-point. It is not given to all of us to breathe the atmosphere of this classic town, nor to be blown upon by its east winds, nor to sneeze with its influenza. And such as have been denied these happy distinguishments of fortune may not care to read any further in this chapter. From them we will part company here, in the hope of meet- ing them a little nearer to sunset.
One word before we go any further. This is not a
7
NOT A GUIDE-BOOK.
guide-book. If you bought it for that, you are badly
cheated. The guide-book knows everything ; and there are a great many things that this little book does not know. The guide-book stops at all the towns ; this book will trundle right through many of them, not even halting five minutes for refreshments. The guide- book knows just how many meeting-houses, court- houses, school-houses, banks, jails, mills, stores, each town contains ; how long all the rivers are ; how deep the lakes ; how high the mountains. This little book confesses its ignorance of many of these things. It does not mean to burden its readers with many statis- tics ; it seeks to be a pleasant companion not only to railway travelers, but also to fireside travelers. And if, without attempting any exhaustive account of the region where its scenes are laid, it shall succeed in calling attention to some of its most attractive features, and in bringing back some of the associations of the olden time, the end for which it was written will be attained.
All this might have been said in the preface, but people never read prefaces.
Having a good start and a fair understanding, we roll out of the noble granite passenger-house of the Fitchburg Railway, and are soon crossing the Charles River upon one of the many viaducts and bridges which span that stream. To the right is Charlestown, with Breed's Hill and Bunker's Hill ; the former of which is crowned by the famous obelisk that marks the spot where Prescott and Putnam and their brave
8
FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON. . provincials planted the tree of liberty ; the latter of which is surmounted by a costly Roman Catholic cathedral. Bunker Hill monument divides the honors now with half a dozen brick smoke-stacks ; some of which appear from this point even taller than the monumental shaft. So, too often, are the great events of history overtopped or obscured by the nearer but meaner facts of daily use and custom.
On the left, the old bridge crosses from Boston to Cambridgeport ; and on the top of Beacon Hill the dome of the State House remains the most conspicuous figure of the landscape, well guarded by the sentinel spires of Park Street and Somerset Street churches.
East Cambridge welcomes us to its hospitable, but not very attractive shores ; and the view we get of old Cambridge, further on, is not one that does justice to It , its beauty. Is it Holmes, or was it Hawthorne, who once told us that the railroads almost always take us past the back doors and show us the worst sides of houses and towns? The rule has some exceptions, but old Cambridge is not one of them. There is an excellent flavor of age and respectability about this ancient town, if you know how to take it. " Doubtless God could have made a better, but doubtless he never did," quoth our worthy Hosea Biglow. We shall be compelled to take his word for it, while we whistle through the out- skirts of what might, but for a few ancient elms along the railway, pass for a first-class western "city."
Belmont next puts in an excellent appearance. It is one of the neatest of the "subhubs ;" its charming resi-
9
WAVERLY AND WALTHAM.
dences on either side the railway must prove a delight- ful resort to men whose days are spent in the narrow and noisy streets of Boston.
I Waverly is a pleasant name for a pleasant place. Like the capital of the country, it is a village of mag- nificent distances ; like the other Waverly, it is largely a work of fiction, though founded on fact.
Waltham-here we come to the solid realities again. This is the western end of old Watertown, and was separately incorporated in 1738. The occasion of the division of the town was a church quarrel. The old church edifice was at the eastern end of the town, and the inhabitants of that section were determined to keep it there ; but the star of empire led the tides of popula- tion westward; and since the dwellers in the ancient burg would not be content with the church that was built midway, they were obliged to have the town divided, and the Walthamites sat down under their own vine and fig-tree, by the banks of the smooth flowing Charles. Waltham is a very substantial and thrifty town of something less than ten thousand in- habitants. Eight churches offer to worshipers all varieties of faith and form ; a public library of 4,500 volumes carries on the education begun in the excel- lent schools ; a Savings' Bank holds the accumulations of the mechanics and operatives who constitute the population ; and two weekly newspapers, one radical and the other neutral, furnish those of the people who are not able to think for themselves with ready made opinions on all sorts of subjects.
I*
IO
FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
The large brick factory on your left, nearly opposite the railway station, is the cotton mill of the Boston Manufacturing Company. Here was erected, in 1814, the first power-loom for cotton weaving ever operated in America. In this large establishment, (then much smaller than now,) the great cotton manufacturing interest in America had its origin. A little pamphlet, by Hon. Nathan Appleton of Boston, giving the history of the beginning and the growth of this enterprise, is as interesting as a romance, not only to all who make cotton goods but to all who wear them. The project was formed by Mr. Francis C. Lowell, while in Edin- burgh, in the year 1811. At that place he and Mr. Appleton discussed the practicability of weaving cotton cloth by power ; and before he returned to this country Mr. Lowell visited Manchester to gain all possible information upon the subject. As the result of these deliberations, the Boston Manufacturing Company was formed in 1813, this water-privilege at Waltham was purchased, and the machinery was procured.
. "The power-loom was at this time being introduced in England ; but its construction was kept very secret, and, after many failures, public opinion was not favor- able to its success. Mr. Lowell had obtained all the information which was practicable about it, and was determined to perfect it himself. He was for some months experimenting at a store in Broad Street, employing a man to turn a crank. It was not until the new building at Waltham was completed, and other machinery was running, that the first loom was ready
THE FIRST POWER LOOM.
for trial. Many little matters were to be overcome or adjusted before it would work perfectly. Mr. Lowell said to me that he did not wish me to see it until it was complete, of which he would give me notice. At length the time arrived. He invited me to go out with him and see the loom operate. I well remember the state of admiration and satisfaction with which we sat by the loom; watching the beautiful movement of this new and wonderful machine, destined, as it evi- dently was, to change the character of all textile industry. This was in the autumn of 1814.
" Mr. Lowell's loom was different in several partic- ulars from the English loom, which was afterwards made public. The principal movement was by a cam, revolving with an eccentric motion, which has since given place to the crank motion now univer- sally used. Some other minor improvements have since been introduced, mostly tending to give it in- creased speed.
" The article first made at Waltham was precisely the article of which a large portion of the manufacture of the country has continued to consist-a heavy sheeting of No. 14 yarn, 37 inches wide, 44 picks to the inch, and weighing something less than three yards to the pound."*
These goods were sold in 1816 for 30 cents per yard ; in 1819, for 21 cents ; in 1826, for 13 cents ; in 1829, for 8. 1-2 cents ; in 1843, for 6 1-2 cents,-the lowest figure they ever reached. They are now (March,
* Introduction of the Power Loom : By Nathan Appleton.
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
1869,) quoted in the New York wholesale markets at about 13 cents a yard.
The property of this company now consists of two mills for making cloth, containing 40,000 spindles and 700 looms ; one mill for making hosiery, turning out about 600 dozen per day ; and a bleachery and dye works, with facilities for bleaching and dyeing about six millions of pounds of cotton cloth per annum. It employs about 1,300 hands, and has a capital stock of $600,000.
Another famous industrial establishment is found at. Waltham. As we leave the village going westward, the shops of the Waltham Watch Company down by the banks of the river attract our notice. The main building is more than 300 feet long, with wings and cross-wings more than doubling this space. Three- quarters of a mile of benches are surrounded by 750 operators, about one-third of whom are women and girls of American parentage. If you should walk up the main street in time to meet these work people going to dinner, you would be pleasantly im- pressed by their intelligent countenances, their neat attire, and their orderly manners. You might travel far before meeting in one company no larger than this an equal number of thoughtful and cultivated faces. Since about 350,000 of the watches made by this com- pany have found their way into the pockets of the American people, it is safe to suppose that its history and its methods of operation are not altogether un- known. Unlike the Swiss and other foreign watches,
I3
THE WATCHES OF WALTHAM.
.
every part of the Waltham watch is made by some delicate and ingenious machine. No such large manu- factories of watches are found in the Old World. In Geneva, since all the work is done by hand, the opera- tives take it to their homes, and each one spends his life-time in making one particular piece of the mechan- ism. Machine work being more uniform and accurate than hand work, the Waltham watches ought to keep better time than foreign watches, and this we believe is the verdict of experience.
This view on our left as we leave the village of Waltham is a very charming one,-the Charles River at our feet in the foreground, and winding gracefully through the valley; the village of Waltham, scattered over an undulating plain, and the low hills in the dis- tance toward Newton.
Stony Brook is the name of the next station. The brook which gives the station its name is in the fore- ground on the right, and is not remarkably stony either.
Weston comes next, and a single fact in its history must suffice us. After having been twice directed to procure a preacher, this town was at length, in 1706, prosecuted at the Court of Sessions for not having a settled minister. The instances are not frequent in our day, let us trust, in which people are compelled to resort to the law in order to obtain the gospel.
Lincoln is only a crossing and a depot ; leaving which, we are soon plunging into the Walden woods, and skirting along the Walden pond, made immortal by the hermit of Concord. It is a beautiful region.
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
The quiet woods and the placid lake might tempt to hermithood one less fond of nature than Thoreau. On the western shore of the lake, however, we discover evidences that this solitude would not be so welcome to the gentle philosopher if he should return to it. Here are huts, and swings, and platforms, designed to accommodate picnics ; and it is more than likely if the day is pleasant that the woods are filled with a frolic- ing company of Sunday-school children, or a crowd of Teutons guzzling lager, and singing about " der Doitcher Fodderlant." Just beyond the woods, a wide view opens on the left across level meadows, and in the western horizon Mount Wachusett, nearly thirty miles distant, in the town of Princeton, is plainly seen on a clear day.
The next shriek of the locomotive means discord if it means anything; but the conductor looking in just now, says " Concord;" and it is impossible to doubt him. "In 1635," says the chronicler, " Musketaquid was purchased from the Indians and called Concord, on account of the peaceable manner in which it was obtained." Strange that the town which was so ami- cably-settled should have been the town where the first battle of the revolution was fought ! In Johnson's " Wonder Working Providence," a quaint old Puritan record, we find some account of the early settlers. After describing the miserable huts in which they first found shelter, he goes on to say :
"Yet in these poor wigwams they sing psalmes, pray and praise their God till they can provide them houses, which ordinarily was not wont to be with many till the
-
15
THE PIONEERS OF CONCORD.
earth by the Lord's blessing brought forth bread to feed them, their wives and their little ones, which with sore labours they attain ; every one that can lift a hoe to strike it into the earth standing stoutly to their labours, and tear up the rootes and bushes which the first yeare bears them a very thin crop, till the soard of the earth be rotten, and therefore they have been forced to cut their bread very thin for a long season. But the Lord is pleased to provide for them great store of fish in the spring time, and especially Alewives about the bignesse of a Herring. Many thousands of these they used to put under their Indian corn which they plant in hills five foote asunder. . . . The want of English graine, wheate, barley and rice proved a sore affliction to some stomacks who could not live upon Indian bread and water, yet were they compelled to it till cattell increased and the plowes could but goe. Instead of apples and pears they had pomkins and squashes of divers kinds. . . . Thus this poore people populate this howling desert, marching manfully on (the Lord asisting) through the greatest difficulties and sorest labors that ever any with such weak means have done."
Under such schooling as this the men of Concord learned the steadfastness and heroism that they needed in after days. The stuff that was bred in them by these hardships was inherited by. their descendants ; and at length, one bright morning, a hundred and forty years after this battle with hunger and cold was begun, the echoes of a more illustrious if not a fiercer conflict were heard among the Concord Hills.
-
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
It would be worth our while, could we spare a few hours in our journey, to stop at this ancient town, and take a stroll through its quiet streets, and its memora- ble places. We should find it a remarkably well-pre- served old village ; not a squalid building is to be seen ; many of the houses bear marks of age, but all are neat and many are tasteful and elegant. The principal street is one of the pleasantest in New England. There is not much noise of business, but an air of thrift and cultivation pervades the place. Here have dwelt and are dwelling now a larger number of famous people than one small village commonly contains. Here our great Hawthorne lived and died. Here Marcus Antoninus reappears with the physiognomy of a true Yankee, bearing the title of the "Sage of Con- cord," and answering to the name of Ralph Waldo Emerson ; here Alcott the seer, and his daughter Louisa, whose vision is not much duller . than her father's, spend their days ; here the brilliant Thoreau found a residence, and here those who loved and cared for him to the last are living yet; here is the home of Mrs. Jane G. Austin, one whom the novel-reading world knows well ; here Frederick Hudson, for many years the wheel-horse of the New York Herald, is trying to repair the frame he has broken with too much toil; here dwells Judge Hoar, the jurist, the scholar, the 'orator, the wit, and the noblest Ro- man of them all. Time would fail us if we tried to note the stars of lesser magnitude in the Concord constellation.
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WHO BEGUN IT.
Any one will show you the road that leads to the spot where on the 19th of April, 1775, the Revolution- ary War began. The day before, at Lexington, the American militia had been fired on by Pitcairn's British . regulars, and eight of them had been killed; but no shot was fired in return. Here, where the North Bridge formerly crossed the Concord River, the first battle was fought. The bridge is now removed, and the highway which led to it is enclosed ; but a monument marks the spot where the British soldiers were posted when the engagement began, and directly across the river in what is now a quiet meadow, the place is seen where
"the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world."
The British, as everybody knows, had gained pos- session of the town, and were destroying the stores gathered by the provincials in anticipation of war ; while the militiamen had assembled outside the village, and across the stream, partly because unwilling to begin hostilities, partly because greatly inferior in numbers to the forces of the king. But before the sun was high, military companies from the adjoining towns began to arrive, and volunteers from all parts of Con- cord came, with such weapons as they could find, to increase the force, until the number had grown to two hundred and fifty or three hundred. Then, though greatly outnumbered by the British regulars, they " deliberately, with noble patriotism and firmness, re- solved to march into the middle of the town to de-
18
FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
fend their homes, or die in the attempt; and, at the same time, they resolved not to fire unless first fired upon."
If they had known what had happened the day before at Lexington, they might have been less scru- pulous. But their determination to make the British take the initiative in the fighting showed how coolly they were carrying themselves in the midst of all these exciting events. How steadily they marched down to the bridge, receiving first a few scattering shots of the British soldiery, and then a fierce volley that killed two of their men and wounded two others ; how bravely they took up the gage of battle then, and drove the red coats from the bridge and from the town; how pluckily they dogged them all the way to Charlestown Neck, falling on their flanks as they hastily retreated, and making the road by which they marched a continual ambuscade ;- all this has been told oftener than any other tale of our history ; and it shall continue to kin- dle the patriotism of countless generations of brave . boys yet unborn ; till, by and by, it will pass that un- discovered bourne which divides history from mythol- ogy, and philosophers will forge elaborate treatises in languages yet unwritten, to prove that there never was any such war as the Revolutionary war, nor any such town as Concord, but that this story is only a type or illustration of the great struggle between Liberty and Authority which has been going on for so many ages. Let us all be thankful that we live in the day when the story is not a myth, but one of the solid-
19
WHO HELPED TO FINISH IT.
est facts of history ; and when we may read in this quiet field by the river side, on the marble inlet of the granite shaft that commemorates the day and the deed, these substantial statements :
" HERE, on the 19th of April, 1775, was made the first forcible resistance to British aggression. On the opposite banks stood the American militia. Here stood the invading army, and on this spot the first of the enemy fell in the war of the Revolution, which gave Independence to these United States. In gratitude to God, and in the love of Freedom this monument was erected, A. D. 1836."
Eighty-six years from this very day, in the city of Baltimore, on the 19th of April, 1861, the first soldier fell in the later and greater conflict which gave to the country the Liberty which the Declaration of Inde- pendence only promised, and consummated the work here begun. That first soldier was-it is almost a matter of course-a Massachusetts man ; and his home was in this gallant old County of Middlesex in which we are standing now. If we walk back to the public square in the middle of the town, we shall find another granite shaft bearing witness in such words as these to the fact that Old Concord was ready to do her part in the last war as nobly as in the first :
" The town of Concord builds this monument in honor of the brave men whose names it bears, and records with grateful pride that they found here a birthplace, home or grave. They died for their country in the War of the Rebellion, 1861 to 1865."
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