USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Dunstable > Historical sketches of Dunstable, Mass. Bi-centennial oration of Hon. George B. Loring. September 17, 1873 > Part 1
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மற்றும்மா வீடி. உ ரக க்கிரி
Gc 974.402 D9280 1781176
M. G.
REYN 3 METRICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01105 3276
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1673. 1873.
HISTORICAL SKETCHES
DUNSTABLE. MASS. 1673-1573
BI-CENTENNIAL
ORATION
OF
HON. GEORGE B. LORING
September 17. 1873.
GEORGE M. F .ET VOVERTER. No. As Centand Soon. 1-23.
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1781176
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Loring, George Bailey, 1817-1891.
4422 52 1673. 1873. Historical sketches of Dunstable, Mass. Bi-centennial oration ... Lowell, Mass. , 1873.
THELY CAND.
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ORATION.
MY FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS : --
I have accepted your invitation to deliver this address on the occasion of the second centennial anniversary of the settlement of your town, with great reluctance and many misgivings. I cannot expect to share with you all those hallowed memories which spring up in your minds and warm your hearts, whose homes are on this spot, whose ancestors repose beneath this sod, whose hearthstones are here, whose eyes have beheld the domestic scenes and whose hearts have felt the joys and sorrows which make up the story you would most gladly hear to-day. To you who enjoy this spot as home, the church, this village green, these farm- houses, every field and wooded hill, the highway and the by-path, the valley and the brook, all tell a tale of tender interest, to you who remember the events of childhood here, to you who to-day return from long wander- ings, to you who have remained and have brought this municipality on to an honorable era in its history, to you who turn aside to linger over the grave of a beloved parent, and to you who still pause and drop a tear on that little mound where your child has lain so long and from which, through all the years that have passed since it left you, its sweet voice has been heard, reminding you of your duty in this world and assuring you of the peace and joy of the world to come. To me, indeed. the domestic record of this town, the most sacred record to you, is, as it were. a sealed volume, open only to my gaze as a member of the same human family with yourselves, and as one feeling that common sympathy which binds, as with a silver cord, all the sons of God into one great brother- hood. While, therefore, I cannot intrude upon the sacredness of your firesides, nor claim a seat in your domestic circle, nor expect to be admitted within the railing of your altar, I can call to your minds those events in the history of your town which have established its intimate relations with that interesting experiment of society and State which has been worked out on this continent during the last two hundred years.
WHAT A NEW ENGLAND TOWN IS.
In celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of a New England . the peculiar and extraordinary nature of a civil organization of the's komt
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should not be forgotten, especially by those who enjoy the high privileges which belong to it. To many nationalities and peoples. a town means nothing more than a cluster of houses surrounded by a wall and fortified, or the realm of a constable, or the seat of a church : but to us in New England the town was in the beginning, as it is now, the primary organi- zation, sovereign in itself. "The colonists had no sooner formed a settic- ment, and erected their cabins in convenient proximity to cach other, than they organized themselves into a town. an independent municipality, in which every citizen had a voice and a vote." The first duty of these organizations, in the minds of our fathers, was the establishment of a church ; and the erection of a meeting-house and a school-house received their earliest care and attention. It is remarkable and interesting to see how, in the little municipalities of New England, all the rights of citizen- ship were cherished, and how silently and unostentatiously all the elements of a free state were fixed and developed. Starting away from the original colonies, they planted themselves in the wilderness, and assumed at once the duty of independent organizations. Their citizens, in town meeting assembled, had the control of all matters relating to their civil and criminal jurisdiction. " In the New England colonies the towns were combined in counties long after their establishment and representation as towns : so that the county here was a collection of towns, rather than the town a subdivision of a county." This system of town organization is maintained throughout New England to the present day, constituting one of the most interesting features of the civil polity of this section of our country. Says Barry, in his " History of Massachusetts," " Each (town) sustained a relation to the whole, analogous to that which the States of our Union hold respectively to the central power, or the Constitution of the United States." Says Palfrey, in his " History of New England," " With some- thing of the same propriety with which the nation may be said to be a confederacy of republics called States, each New England State may be described as a confederacy of minor republics called towns." Neither in New York, with its great landed properties, at first held and occupied by a kind of feudal tenure, and afterwards with its counties : nor in the Western States, where the town survey carries with it no local political authority ; nor in the South, where the county organization is the one which governs local matters, can be found that form of self-government which gives to the New England towns their individuality, and which has enabled them to enroll their names on the brightest pages of American history. How, in the oldlen time, they cherished the church and built the meeting-house ; how they fostered education and created the school-house : how they selected their wisest and bravest men for the public coundes : how they resolved for freedom in open town-meeting : how they hat ! defiance at the oppressor, and sprang up. in army of doit com. woods. each one feeling its responsibility, and ready and anxious to as- the Would you study the valor of your country in its carter dage: Gente
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town records of New England. Would you learn where the leaders and statesmen were taught their lesson of independence and nationality? Read the recorded resolves of the New England towns. The origin and orga- nization of these New England towns were by no means uniform. In some instances they were founded immediately on the landing of the colonists, out of lands conferred upon them by their charter. In other instances, they were made up by grants of land to an offshoot from the parent colony, whose enterprise consisted in organizing a new town. In other instances, grants of land were made from time to time to individuals and corporations for farms and other purposes, which grants were after- wards consolidated into townships. In this last manner grew up that large town organization known as DUNSTABLE. It occupied one of the most beautiful sections of New England. "To the great Indian cribes the Merrimack and Nashua Rivers were as well known as they are to us. From the great lake of New Hampshire to the sea ran for them the strong and flashing river, whose waters abounded with fish of the best variety, and whose banks were diversified with warm and sunny slopes, fertile valleys, and tree-crowned hills.
"To the white explorers these lands presented great attractions : and so in 1659 and 1650, and on to 1673, grants of land were made in these regions from time to time to the explorers Davis and Johnson, to Mrs. Anna Lane, to John Wilson, to the town of Charlestown for a 'School Farm,' to John Whiting, to Phinehas Pratt and others. to Gov. Endecott, to Henry Kimball. to Samuel Scarlett, to Joseph and Thomas Wheeler, to the ' Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston.' and to others of less chivalry and less note. It was the proprietors of these farms and others disposed to settle here, who, in September, 1673, presented a petition to the General Assembly that they might be 'in a way for the support of the public ordinances of God,' for without which the greatest part of the year they will be deprived of, the farms lying so far remote from any towns." The petition was granted upon the conditions which were then universally inserted in the charters, viz., " that the grantees should settle the plantation, procure a minister within three years, and reserve a farm for the use of the colony."
HOW DUNSTABLE WAS FORMED.
The township of Dunstable, thus chartered, embraced a very large tract. probably more than two hundred square miles, including the towns of Nashua, Nashville, Hudson, Hollis, Dunstable, and Tyngsborough, besides portions of the towns of Amherst, Milford. Merrimac. Litchfield, Londonderry. Pelham, Brookline, Pepperell, and Townsend. and formed a part of the county of Middlesex. It extended ten or twelve miles west of Merrimack River, and from three to five miles cast of it, and its average length north and south was from twelve to fourteen miles. The present city of Nashua occupies very nearly the centre
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of the original township. In 1674, because there was " very little medo left except what is already granted to the ffarmers," the easterly line of the township was extended to Beaver Brook by an additional grant from the General Court, and the town was called Dunstable It received its name in compliment to Mrs. Mary Tyng, wife of Hon. Edward Tyng, one of the magistrates of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, who came from Dunstable, England. This extensive tract of land, thus incorporated and thus named, has been subjected to many divisions. In 1731 the inhabitants on the east side of the river petitioned to be set off, which petition was granted, and a new town was created by the As- sembly of Massachusetts, called Nottingham. In 1733 a part of the town lying west of Merrimack River was incorporated into a township by the name of Rumford, but soon after was called Merrimac. In 1734 Litch- field was set off and incorporated, because the inhabitants there had, as they said, "supported a minister for some time." In 1736 Hollis was set off from Dunstable ; and in 1734 Amherst was settled and incorporated. In 1732 Townsend was incorporated, taking in the southerly part of the town, including Pepperell. Thus township after township had become parcelled out from the original body of "old Dunstable." until in 1740 the broad and goodly plantation was reduced to that portion only which is now embraced within the limits of Nashua and Nashville, Tyngsborough and Dunstable. At length the boundary line between New Hampshire and Massachusetts was established in 1741, severing Dunstable very nearly in the middle, and leaving the town of Nashua within the limits of New Hampshire. To the township of Dunstable in Massachusetts, where we are now assembled, have since been added portions of the town of · Groton, the first portion having been set off Feb. 25, 1793, and the second Feb. 15, 1820, for the convenience of the inhabitants, and that the bound- ary lines might be straightened.
EARLY SETTLERS.
Among the original proprietors of this land we find the names of many of the leading men in the colony, some of whom, with the children and friends of others, removed here and took up their abode at an early period. Of this number we find Governor Dudley, who married a daughter of Hon. Edward Tyng, of this town ; Rev. Thomas Weld, who was the first min- ister, and married another daughter ; Thomas Brattle, Peter Bulkely, Hezekiah Usher, Elisha Hutchinson, Francis Cook, and others who were assistants and magistrates. Many of the first settlers belonged to Boston and its vicinity, a circumstance which gave strength and influence to the infant plantation.
EARLY MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
Of the motives and manners and customs of those who foundel t'> town let me here say a word. They formed a part of that large Loin of
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Dissenters, who, under various names, came to New England and settled the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. They came, it is true, to enjoy religious freedom, but they also sought a civil organization, founded upon the right of every man to a voice in the government under which he lives. In the charters of all the towns granted by the General Court, it was provided that the grantees were " to procure and maintain an able and orthodox minister amongst them," and to build a meeting-house within three years. " This was their motive. In all their customs they were obliged to exercise the utmost simplicity, and they voluntarily regulated their conduct by those formal rules which, in their day, constituted the Puritan's guide through the world. We are told, as an illustration of their character and manners, that by the laws of the colony in 1651, " dancing at weddings " was forbidden. In 1660 William Walker was imprisoned a month "for courting a maid without the leave of her parents." In 1675, because "there is manifest pride appearing in our streets," the wearing of "long hair or periwigs," and also " superstitious ribands " used to tie up and decorate the hair, were forbidden under severe penalties ; men, too, were forbidden to "keep Christmas," because it was a " Popish custom." In 1677 an act was passed to prevent " the profaneness " of " turning the back upon the public worship before it is finished and the blessing pronounced." Towns were directed to erect "a cage " near the meeting-house, and in this all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath were confined.
At the same time children were directed to be placed in a particular part of the meeting-house, apart by themselves, and tithing-men were ordered to be chosen, whose duty it should be to take care of them. So strict were they in their observance of the Sabbath, that John Atherton, a soldier of Col. Tyng's company, was fined by him forty shillings for " wetting a piece of an old hat to put into his shoes," which chafed his feet upon the march ; and those who neglected to attend meeting for three months were publicly whipped. Even in Harvard College students were whipped for grave offences in the chapel in the presence of students and professors, and prayers were had before and after the infliction of the punishinent. As the settlers of Dunstable are described in the petition as "of soberly and orderly conversation," we may suppose that these laws and customs were rigidly enforced.
MODES OF LIVING.
Perhaps a word upon the subsistence and diet of your ancestors may interest you here. Palfrey tells us that " in the early days of New England wheaten bread was not so uncommon as it afterwards became," but its place was largely supplied by preparations of Indian corn. A mixture of two parts of the meal of this grain with one part of rye has continued. until far into the present century, to furnish the bread of the great hody of the people. In the beginning there was but a sparing consumption of butcher's meat. The multiplication of flocks for their wool, and of herds
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for draught and for milk, was an important care, and they generally bore a high money value. Game and fish to a considerable extent supplied the want of animal food. Next to these, swine and poultry, fowls, ducks, geese, and turkeys, were in common use earlier than other kinds of flesh meat. The New-Englander of the present time, who, in whatever rank of life, would be at a loss without his tea or coffee twice at least in every day, pities the hardships of his ancestors, who almost universally, for a century and a half, made their morning and evening repast on boiled Indian meal and milk, or a porridge, or a broth made of pease or beans and flavored by being boiled with salted beef or pork. Beer, however, which was brewed in families, was accounted a necessary of life, and the orchards soon yielded a bountiful supply of cider. Wine and rum found a ready market as soon as they were brought from abroad ; and tobacco and legislation had a long conflict, in which the latter at last gave way.
POPULATION.
It is difficult to realize how feeble and few were the colonists at the time when this town was passing out of its confederation of farms into an organized corporation. There were then probably " in New England from forty thousand to forty-five thousand English people. Of this num- ber twenty-five thousand may have belonged to Massachusetts. ten thou- sand to Connecticut, as newly constituted, five thousand to Plymouth, and three thousand to Rhode Island. They inhabited ninety towns, of which four were in Rhode Island, twelve in Plymouth, twenty-two in Connec- ticut, and the rest in Massachusetts. . . Connecticut, according to the account sent home by the royal commissioners, had many scattering towns not worthy of their names, and a scholar to their minister in every town or village. In Rhode Island, they said, were the best English grass . and most sheep, the ground very fruitful, ewes bringing ordinarily two lambs, corn yielding eighty for one, and in some places they had had corn twenty-six years together without manuring. In this province only they had not any places set aport for the worship of God ; there being so many subdivided sects they could not agree to meet together in one place, but, according to their several judgments. they sometimes associated in one house, sometimes in another. In Plymouth it was the practice to persuade men, sometimes to compel them, to be freemen, - so far were they from hindering any. They had about twelve small towns, one saw-mill for boards, one bloomary for iron, neither good river nor good harbor, nor any place of strength ; they were so poor they were unable to maintain scholars to their ministry, but were necessitated to make use of a gifted brother in some places. The commodities of Massachusetts were fish, which was sent into France, Spain, and the Straits, pipe-staves, masts. fir boards, some pitch and tar, pork, beef, horses, and corn, which they see to Virginia. Barbadoes, etc., and took tobacco and sugar for payment, which they often sent for England. There was good store of iron made in the
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province. In the Piscataqua towns were excellent masts gotten, . . and upon the river were above twenty saw-mills, and there were great stores of pipe-staves made and great store of good timber spoiled. In Maine there were but few towns, and those much scattered ; they were rather farms than towns. In the Duke of York's province beyond the Kennebec there were three small plantations, the biggest of which had not above thirty houses in it, and those very mean ones too, and spread over eight miles at least. Those people were, for the most part, fisher- men, and never had any government among them; most of them were such as had fled hither to avoid justice. In Boston, the principal town of the country, the houses were generally wooden, the streets crooked, with little decency and no uniformity ; and there neither months, days, seasons of the year, churches, nor rivers were known by their English names. At Cambridge they had a wooden college, and in the yard a brick pile of two bayes for the Indians, where the commissioners saw. but one. They said they had three more at school. It might be feared this college might afford as many schismatics to the church and the corpora- tion, as many rebels to the king, as formerly they had done if not timely prevented."
ACTION OF THE TOWN AFTER THE DIVISION OF MASSACHUSETTS AND NEW HAMPSHIRE.
The division of the original township and the adjustment of the bound- ary line between Massachusetts and New Hampshire by no means removed all the difficulties which had attended the course of the town thus far. On the 12th of March, 1743, a town meeting was held at the house of Ebenezer Kendall. not only " to raise money to defray ye charges of said town, and to support ye Gospell," but also "to choose a committee to treat with a committee in the District of Dunstable, if they choose one, to examine the debts and credit of ye town and to know how they stood before the line was run between ye Province of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire." Deacon John Taylor, Ebenezer Parkhurst, and Capt. John Cummings were the committee. A large part of the business of the town for several years, at the time I refer to, consisted in running lines, and endeavoring to adjust the debts and claims, interspersed with debates upon building meeting-houses and laying out burying-grounds. Now and then a young and ambitious community, which had started off and set up on its own account, expressed a desire to return to the old roof-tree; and.it was found necessary to vote, in 1743, not to annex Nottingham, which had been set off but twelve years previous. The places for public worship seem to have been steadily provided, either in some private house or barn, or in a building erected for that purpose. Preaching ile people would have at any rate. Of education. I cannot say quite is toall'. The burden was, perhaps, at times, a little too heavy for that prindere people, and so in 176) they voted not to raise any money for the se; port
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of a school, at one meeting, but at another they voted to spend £20 for a school, and in the same breath, mindful of their dangers and necessities, they voted £6 and ios. for ammunition. In 1771 they raised {24 for a school, and £60 for the highways. In 1774 it was voted not to raise money for schools. But in the midst of all the trials and the impor- erishment of the Revolutionary war, they voted, March 5, 1778, "to raise and be assessed {50 for the support of a school," recognizing the value of a cultivated mind in a community assuming the duties and enjoying the rights of a free people. I am also reminded by their record that they intended to hold their public servants to a strict accountability, for in 1751 an article was inserted in the warrant for a town meeting, "To choose a committee to search John Stealls account as town treasurer"; but John Steall, in spite of his name, turned up an honest man, and the article was dismissed from the warrant.
THE HEROISM OF THE TOWN.
But not in matters relating to the religious and civil and educational interests of the town alone were your ancestors engaged, from the carliest settlement in 1655 to the period to which I have now arrived. The lands were too fertile, and the rivers too fair, and the forests too well stocked with game, to be abandoned without a struggle on the part of those abo- riginal occupants who had enjoyed their possession for many generations. The popular rights there asserted, as the town grew into a definite civil organization, were not to be established without a blow ; and later still, the integrity of that government which had been founded at such a vast expense of blood and treasure, and by the exercise of so much study. sagacity, and wisdom, was not to be preserved except by the devotion and valor of loyal men in arms. In every crisis occurring within a century and three quarters of its existence -- now in struggle with a savage foe, now in strife against the tyrant and the oppressor, and now in deadly con- flict with the traitor - Dunstable has always done her duty well. As early as July 5, 1689, your ancestors were called to arms against that savage band, which, having attacked Dover and having killed Major Waldron and his men, turned their bloody attention towards this town. In the summer of 1691 this attack was renewed, and in the month of September .of that year, one hundred and eighty-two years ago, the entire family of Joseph Hassell was slain, - the first sacrifice offered up here in the cause of civ- ilization, -- whose simple monument has long since been obliterated by the hand of industry, and whose sad and touching story alone remains. The town now became a garrison. The General Court granted aid for the support of its church, and made a liberal abatement of its State tax. Upon Jonathan Tyng, that nime so long honored and beloved here and so con- spicuous for generations in the annals of our country, fell the dirty of pre- serving the very existence of the place, as commander of the totta cialis crested to protect it. That this war, which laste! until toys, was mit of
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thrilling and painful incident in this town, we have every reason to sup- pose, although we find no written record, and the tradition was long ago forgotten ; but we do know that here Joe English performed his won- derful exploits, and that Mrs. Dustin, who was captured at Haverhill, and who slew her captors, ten in number, at the mouth of the Contoocook River. found her first refuge as she wandered down the valley of the Mer- rimack on her way homeward, in the house of old John Lovewell. " father of worthy Capt. Lovewell," which stood on the side of Salmon Brook, a few feet northeast of the Allds Bridge. When, in 1703, the Indian hos- tilities were renewed, and the General Assembly offered C40 for every Indian scalp, it was Capt. Jonathan Tyng, of Dunstable, who first accepted the tender, and made a goodl winter's work by going to their headquarters at Pequawkett, securing five scalps, and receiving therefor f265. It v.s in this war that the family of Robert Parris was massacred, two little girls alone escaping by fleeing to the cellar and hiding in a hogshead (who cannot hear their little hearts beating in agony amidst the terrors which surrounded their dark and narrow retreat ?), one of whom was preserved to become ancestress of the useful and distinguished family of Goffes, so well known here and in New Hampshire. It was in this war that a bard of Mohawks surprised your garrisons and murdered your people, and in which, I am proud to say, the men of Essex County came to your resene and defence. It was in this war, which lasted until 1713. a period of twenty years, that the population of this town was reduced one half, but thirteen families and eighty-six persons remaining : that the entire popu- lation was obliged to live in garrison ; and that fear and desolation reigned everywhere, as the savages hung upon the skirts of the English villages " like lightning on the edge of a cloud."
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