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PEABODY INSTITUTE LIBRARY PEABODY, MASS.
Peabody Institute Library, Peabody 3 1253 00286 1753
DO NOT CIRCULATE Reference Only
For Reference Not to be taken from this library
PEABODY INSTITUTE LIBRARY PEABODY, MASS.
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Name ou portrait of Georgia Peabody in Nal AED arnoult
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HISTORY
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PEABODY, MASSACHUSETTS
BY
974.45 ositi cop. 4
THEODORE MOODY OSBORNE.
WRITTEN FOR
PEABODY LIBRAR 1852 PEABODY, MA
"HISTORY OF ESSEX CO."
1888.
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2004.190.1
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1930
PEABODY.
CHAPTER LXV.
PEABODY.
BY THEODORE MOODY OSBORNE.
Preliminary-Topography-Early Settlements.
THE town of Peabody occupies a part of the terri- tory originally belonging to the old town of Salem. Its boundaries are nearly the same as those of the old Middle Precinct of Salem, which was set off in 1710, and it continued to be a part of Salem until the in- corporation of the district of Danvers, in 1752. It was separated from Danvers under the name of South Danvers in 1855, (May 18), and the name of Peabody was assumed in 1868. Previously to 1710, it formed a part of the first parish of Salem, and was identi- fied with Salem in every respect.
It will be seen, therefore, that the early history of Peabody is in many ways inseparable from that of Salem. Its farmers were represented in the Salem town-meeting, and some of them at times held office in the town. Its sturdy yeomanry formed part of the training bands of the old town, and was called out to do service in all the frontier warfare of that early period. Its religious interests were centred in the old First Church, and the record of its proprie- tary interests is found with that of all the other lands belonging to the town of Salem. There was there- fore, during nearly a whole century of the settle- ment of the town, no occasion for any separate chronicle of the lives or interests of the families who lived in this part of Salem, and for nearly half a century after the establishment of the Middle Pre- cinct, the people were still one with Salem in every- thing but parish affairs.
For more than another century the parish was part of the town of Danvers, and its history is largely one with that of Danvers. It has had only about thirty years of independent existence.
An effort, however, has been made to select from the historic archives of Salem and Danvers some portions belonging to this locality, and to trace the beginning and growth of the community which has developed into the busy manufacturing town of Pea- body, as we see it to-day.
The limits of this sketch have not permitted the introduction of extended genealogical details, nor the description of the many old houses and localities whose interest belongs rather to family than to town history. It is designed to give an outline of the growth of the town, which it is to be hoped may be at some future time enlarged by others who are specially qualified to discuss the different branches of town history. If by means of this sketch an impulse may be given to the study of the history of his native town, the v riter will be repaid for his efforts.
TOPOGRAPHY .- When Endicott and his compan- ions arrived on the shores of Salem in 1628, their first settlements were made along the shores of the sea and the rivers which surround the present city of Salem. The struggle for existence was at first too severe to permit of extensive improvements in build- ing roads and developing farming lands more re- mote from the natural highway which the water furnished from one group of houses to another.
Wood in his "New England's Prospect " says, speaking of Salem, "There be more canowes in this town than in all the whole Patent, every household having a water-horse or two." The canoes were in- spected by order of the quarterly court.
But very soon the wonderful energy of those heroic Puritans led them to build roads and bridges which should open up the surrounding territory, and to im- prove the lands lying farther from the sea.
The country to the north and north-west of the first settlements was very early explored, and the re- gion toward the boundary of Lynn and Reading was found to be an excellent agricultural country. Sever- al large ponds of fresh water were found in this part of Salem, or on its boundaries, and the region about the head of the North River was distinguished by the confluence of several large brooks of clear and spark- ling water, which probably gave rise to the name by which this locality, now the centre of the village of Peabody, was designated in the early grants-the name of Brooksby.
The middle precinct and the village were together often spoken of in early times as "The Farms," and the settlers were called "The Farmers," in distinction from the dwellers in the town proper of Salem, most of whom lived by commerce, or followed the sea, or plied the various trades and industries of town life.
Through the region of Brooksby a road was opened to Salem Village (now Danvers Centre), which had been at first accessible only by boat up the Wooleston River (now the Danvers River).
The ancient way, in use while Essex Street was still a wilderness, followed Broad Street up to the boundary of the commons. From a point on the Sa- lem turnpike, some distance beyond where Boston Street now turns from Essex Street, a road turned sharply to the right, and coming round the head of the inlet which in those days extended to the south of Boston Street, went on toward Brooksby over the high land by Gallows Hill. By this road it is said that Governor Endicott used to ride from the town to his estate in the Village. The location of this old road may still be traced, and there are still some buildings on the line of the ancient way. Subse- quently a branch of this road was made from what is now Proctor's Court, along the line of Goodhue Street to Trask's lower mills (now called Frye's Mills), whence, by turning in a southerly direction, the trav- eller came into the other road at a point on Trask's Plain, near the great elm which stands in the middle
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of the street, with the date 1707 on a stone at its base, and which is known as the "big tree." In 1715 the road leading from the middle precinct meeting-house to Salem was referred to as "ye highway that leads into ye North field by Trask's Fulling-Mill."
At the lowest point on Boston Street, just about where Goodhue Street and Boston Street meet, an arm of the sea crossed the road, large enough to admit of boats passing up and down. Across this inlet a bridge was built, known as the Town Bridge, which became a historic landmark. At that time the salt water inlets were much more extensive than now. The changes of elevation caused by building the streets and houses of the city, the accumulation of soil brought down by the various streams, and, in later years, the construction of extensive systems of railroads have tended gradually to fill up many of the inlets which were then accessible. The sea has not for many years approached within a considerable distance of the place where the Town Bridge once stretched across the water, and the street now crosses the lowest part of the hollow (which bears the unc- tuous name of Blubber Hollow, from the materials used in the early manufacture of leather in that vicinity ) on solid ground.
The general aspect of Brooksby at that early time may be imagined from its present characteristics, and from what has come down from the history of that day. While a large part of the town must have been much more thickly wooded, it is plain, from the lan- guage of the early grants, that there were consider- able areas of meadow "fitt to mowe," and large ex- tents of barren hillside, swamp and pasture, such as are seen to-day. The North River was open to boats at high tide nearly or quite to the mill-pond where Captain Trask built his first mill-one of the earliest in the Commonwealth. This stream, whose shores were doubtless wooded to the edge of the upland, car- ried down a large volume of fresh water from Brooksby, and was a beautiful bit of scenery, hard to reconstruct in imagination from the muddy and foul stream of to-day, crossed and recrossed by the rail- road, and carrying the drainage of great manufac- tories. The brooks themselves were much larger than now. The stripping away of the forest about their sources, the intercepting of surface water by the streets and constructions of the town, and the use of large quantities of water for domestic and manu- facturing purposes, have combined to diminish greatly the flow of water in the ancient beds ; and if one of the early settlers were to look on the turbid streams that now flow by walled and underground channels through the town, he would find it hard indeed to re- alize that this was the beautiful Brooksby of old, with its clear and sparkling streams, green with woodland foliage to the water's edge, and surrounded at inter- vals with meadows dotted with herds of cattle. A considerable part of the woodland consisted of a heavy and valuable growth of oak timber.
A large variety of trees and plants are native to the soil, and many more have since been introduced. Two at least of the flowering plants which give character to its fields and hills were introduced by the early settlers-the woodwax or gorse, golden bright on the pasture slopes, and the chrysanthemum leucanthemum, or white weed, sometimes of late called daisy, which tradition says was brought in by Gov- ernor Endicott himself. There must, however, have been a very great similarity, at least in the outline and aspect of that part of the town which has never been occupied by dwellings, to its present appearance.
There are many interesting localities whose natural beauties are great, and which contain striking and peculiar geological formations. Ship Rock, a huge boulder in South Peabody, near the station on the South Reading Branch Railroad, is owned by the Es- sex Institute, and is surrounded by interesting marks of glacial action. There are several high hills, from whose summits are seen broad expanses of landscape and wide reaches of the sea, extending far down the northern shore of Massachusetts Bay.
* EARLY SETTLERS .- It is not known where the very earliest settlement within the present limits of the town of Peabody was made. By 1633 there were some settlers in Brooksby.
+ Before 1635 Captain William Trask, the ancestor of the Trask family in this vicinity, received a grant of about fifty acres at the head of the North River, near the present location of the square in Peabody. Here he built his first grist-mill, at a point near where Wallis Street crosses the railroad. The mill- pond, originally of considerable extent, remained in use for some mechanical purposes until within twenty years, when it was filled and a street laid out across it. The pond collected the water of the three princi- pal brooks from which Brooksby took its name. About this mill, near the meeting of the Boston road and the road to Salem Village (now Danvers), a small vil- lage soon sprang up, several house-lots having been granted near the mill. Richard Adams had a grant of five acres in the vicinity in 1637, and William Hathorne was given a ten-acre lot near the mill about the same time. Thomas Goldthwaite is be- lieved to have settled in this vicinity.
Captain William Trask was one of the earliest settlers with Endicott. He was a man of much natural energy of character, and filled a variety of public stations. He owned several tracts of land, which he brought under cultivation, besides carrying on the mills. He was prominent as a military leader, and was the captain of the train- band from its beginning. His services in the Pequot War in 1636 and 1637 were rewarded with additional grants of land by the General Court, and his funeral in 1666 was observed with great military parade, and honored by the whole surrounding country. He was one of the surveyors or "layers out " of the lands granted by the town of Salem to
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settlers in the vicinity. The land included in the limits of the settlement was considered as belonging to the community as a whole, and was granted by the town or the "seven men" to whom that authority was delegated, to such persons and in such quantities as seemed to them most likely to insure the healthy growth of the settlement, the establishment of various useful trades and occupations, and the gathering of an industrious, law-abiding and God-fearing commu- nity. These grants were generally made in the first instance with only a general indication of their lo- cality, and the boundaries were then measured and defined by the "layers-out," who usually entered the record of their location soon after the first grant.
About 1640 Captain Trask built another mill about half a mile down the stream from the first, near where Grove Street now is, and soon after removed it to what is now known as Frye's Mills. On March 30, 1640, it is recorded that "Captain Trask hath leave to set up a tyde myll upon the North River, pvided he make passadge for a shalloppe from halfe flood to full sea." In October, 1640, the mill was completed, and half an acre was granted to him ad- joining it. This mill also became the centre of a settlement. In September, 1640, while this mill was building, or soon after its completion, Captain Trask received a fatherly admonition from the court " to be more carefull about his grinding & Towle takeing." Previous to 1663 Captain Trask's mills held the mo- nopoly of this business. John Trask, at one time, some complaint being made, agreed in behalf of his father with the town that they would " make as good meale as at Lin, and that when they could not supply the towne for want of water or in any other respect," then they would "provide to send it to Lin upon their own charge and have it ground there."
/ In 1636 Colonel Thomas Reed, one of the original company, received a grant of three hundred acres, including Buxton's Hill, formerly known as Reed's Hill, and extending to the present location of Endi- cott Street on the east, bounded southerly by the brook, and extending on the west and north to the Ipswich road, and across the road leading to Salem Village, including the Rogers' farm. This large and valuable tract of land afterwards came into the pos- session of Daniel Epps, who was prominent in the formation of the middle precinct in 1710.
December 21, 1635, it was ordered " that Mr. Cole shall have a farme of three hundred acres in the place where his cattle are by Brooksby and Captain Trask and the rest of the surveyors are to lay it out and bound it according to their discretion, provided in case Mr. Cole be disposed to part with it by sale that he make his first profer unto the towne upon reasonable terms." This was a common condition in the early grants. On the 28th of the same month we find the more formal record after the survey had been made. "Granted unto Robert Cole, his Heirs and Assigns three hundreth acres of land whereof
forty acres in Marshe fitt to be mowed lying and being about three miles from Salem westward upon a fresh water brook called the North brook."
This grant included Proctor's corner and a part of Felton's Hill. It was sold in 1638 to Emanuel Down- ing, and was leased and cultivated by John Procter, who settled in Salem about 1660, and who was one of the most prominent victims of the witchcraft delusion.
John Thorndike had a very early grant in the northwestern part of the town, which he soon after- ward gave up, taking land in Salem Village. He also owned land in Rockville, near Lieutenant John- son's. The land given up by him was afterwards granted to other settlers in smaller lots, of twenty, forty and fifty acres, among others to John Sanders, Henry Herrick, William Bound, Edmund Marshall, Thomas Antrum, William Walcott, Robert Cotta and Edmund Batter, mostly in 1636 and 1637.
A considerable number of these small grants lying together were purchased of the owners by Robert Goodell, and with a grant to him of forty acres made up a farm of over five hundred acres, which was laid out to him in 1652. William King had a grant of forty acres in the northern part of Peabody in 1636.
On October 9, 1637, Edmund Batter received a grant of one hundred acres of upland and twelve acres of meadow. On December 25, (it seems the “ seven men " did not observe Christmas Day), a farther grant of thirty acres was made to him, and the former grant is referred to as " at Brooksby," and as having been formerly granted to Mr. Thorndike. This shows that the whole region, even the northwestern part of the farms, was called Brooksby. Mr. Batter was promi- nent among the early settlers, and owned land in the town of Salem, near North Street, at one time.
Next to Robert Goodell's land on the west was a grant made to Rev. Edward Norris January 21, 1640, which was afterward bought by Joseph Pope, in 1664. This grant gave the name to Norris' brook. It was north of Brookdale.
Mrs. Anna Higginson had a grant of one hundred and fifty acres made in 1636, near the last-named grants, just south of Mr. Goodell's farm. It was sold to John Pickering in 1652, and two years later he sold it to John Woody and Thomas Flint. Some of the descendants of the latter still reside in the vi- cinity.
The farm of Job Swinerton, acquired partly by va- rious grants from 1637 on, and partly by purchase, lay partly in the extreme northwestern part of the present town. Some of his descendants, of the same name, have continued to live in the vicinity.
Captain Samuel Gardner's farm was just west of Mr. Norris' grant, toward the extreme boundary of the town.
John Humphrey, one of the original grantees un- der the first charter, and a man of considerable im- portance in the early colony, received at various times from 1632 to 1658 grants of land, chiefly from
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the General Court, amounting to fifteen hundred acres, of which five hundred lay in Salem, about the pond which bears his name, sometimes called Sun- taug Lake. In May, 1635, he received a grant from the General Court of "500 acres of land and a freshe pond, with a little ileland conteyning about two acres." This island was so highly esteemed as a place of security in case of attack by Indians that the right was reserved for the inhabitants of Salem and Saugus (now Lynn) to build store-houses on it "for their vse in tyme of neede." Block-houses were erected there in 1676, but there is no record of any fighting there. The grant of this pond to John Humphrey is believed to be the only specific grant of a " great pond," that is, a pond over forty acres in ex- tent, before the colonial ordinances of 1640 and '47, which made all such ponds free fisheries for the pub- lic, with right of access over the lands of those bor- dering on the water ; and this pond is therefore the only great pond in the State in which fishing is not free to the public. The town of Lynnfield has, in recent years, acquired a small piece of land on the margin of the pond, whereby its inhabitants have the right to fish in it.
Mr. Humphrey was one of the justices of the Quar- ter Court, and was prominent in town and colony af- fairs. In 1642 a considerable part of his lands were sold on execution to Robert Saltonstall.
Near Mr. Humphrey's grant was William Clarke's farm, from whom Clark's Hill was probably named. April 17, 1637, it was " Agreed that Mr. Clarke shall have two hundred acres by Seder Pond, not exceed- ing twenty acres of meadow, to be laid out according to the discretion of the layers out." In 1642 a far- ther grant was made to William Clarke of sixty acres "South of Mr. Downing's greate medow towards Mr. Johnson's land." Clarke's land was near John Marsh's farm.
Joshua Verryn had a grant of one hundred and sixty-five acres in 1637, "next to Mr. Clarke's on the North side, laying down his former." The Very fam- ily is supposed to be descended from the Verryns.
Lieutenant Francis Johnson had a grant of two hundred acres in January, 1635-36, in Brooksby, in the region of King's Hill. The farm was described by the layers-out as bounded by Mr. Thorndike on the north side and the common on the other. "The farm is on the North side of the River Brooksbie" (evidently Goldthwaite's Brook), "about two miles from Salem westerly." This grant was relinquished by Lieutenant Johnson a few months afterward, at the same time at which Mr. Thorndike relinquished his grant. Mr. Thorndike settled in Salem Village; a new grant of the same extent was made to Lieuten- ant Johnson, in what is now South Peabody, includ- ing the crossing of the Lynnfield and Ipswich roads, and lying on both sides of Goldthwaite's Brook. This locality was known for many years as Johnson's Plain. The order for this new grant declared that
Mr. Johnson " shall have six acres of Meadow ground and fourteen acres of other ground at Brooksby afore- said, where his cow house now is, and nyne score acres more nere the Cedar Pond above a mile distant from it."
This part of Brooksby is referred to as early as 1635 as "The Rocks." This name has clung to the local- ity till very recently, and later the village which grew up in the southern part of Peabody was called Rock- ville.
In the same part of the town a grant was made in 1646 to Zacheus Cortis, who also bought land of Joshua Verryn. Cortis was a man of valor, for it is recorded that he was furnished with one of the few much prized steel corslets belonging to the town of Salem, "in good repayre."
Robert Moulton's grant, the boundaries of which are somewhat difficult to ascertain, lay to the north of Humphrey's farm, somewhere in the vicinity of the Newburyport turnpike. Moulton was a promi- nent citizen of the town ; he was foreman of a jury in 1636, and his name appears in connection with various town affairs.
John Brown, Sr., had a grant of fifty acres, in 1673, near Humphrey's farm and Robert Moulton's, in the vicinity of Walden's Hill. It is stated by Hanson that Hugh, Samuel and Christopher Brown also set- tled in Brooksby.
Richard Bartholomew received a grant in January, 1637-38, near the beautiful pond which still bears his name.
Capt. William Trask had two grants of land in South Peabody, one of which, near Spring Pond, he sold in 1656 for a cow worth £5. The brook running from Spring Pond to Goldthwaite's Brook was then called " But Brook," and there were early settlements near where it crossed the Boston road.
Following the Boston road toward the main village of Salem, several early settlers located themselves, among them William Lord and Thomas Gardiner. Near the southerly boundary of the farms were lands granted to Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, the latter name famous because of the persecutions which she suffered as a Quaker. Lawrence Southwick and Ananias Concklin were "glassemen," and it was hoped to foster this industry, whose works were situated in the vicinity of Aborn Street. William Osborne and William Wood were also granted house lots and small lots of land "lying nere Strong Water Brook or Mile End Brook."
John Pickering, though residing in the town proper, owned land in the farms, including a lot near Brown's Pond. Lieut. Richard Davenport, who lived in Salem near North Street, and also at the village, owned land near Brooksby, among other parcels being "2 acres or thereabout lying on the west side of the but brooke not far from the place that the way goeth over to Lin." Lieut. Davenport was a famous soldier of the early colony, and was concerned with Endicott
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in cutting out the cross from the king's colors. John Marsh had a grant of twenty acres near one of Lieut. Davenport's grants.
John and Anthony Buxton also had early grants, and there are many whose lands it is not now easy to locate who settled in the middle precinct, and many settlers who obtained their lands by purchase, and whose names do not appear in the book of grants. The Flints, Popes, Uptons and Needhams had valua- ble farms; the Proctors removed here from Ipswich in 1660, the Pooles from Cambridge in 1690, the Fos- ters from Boxford, the Suttons from Rowley, the Jacobses in 1700, the Poors in 1770, and the Prestons, Shillabers and other prominent families came in at different periods. A part of the farm of George Jacobs lay in Peabody.
The early settlers were picked men. They re- ceived grants of land by reason of their supposed fit- ness to build up the prosperity of the settlement, and they were mostly eminent for their piety as well as for the qualities which make the enterprising and successful pioneer. Mr. Upham has preserved a curious document, which illustrates the rigid observ- ance of Sunday restrictions, and indicates some of the men upon whom the community depended for the ex- ecution of its laws.
"At a general Town meeting, held the 7th day of the 5th month, 1644, ordered that two be appointed every Lord's Day, to walk forth in the time of God's worship, to take notice of such as either lye about the meeting-house, without attending to the word and ordinances, or that lye at home or in the fields without giving good account thereof, and to take the names of such persons, and to present them to the magistrates, whereby they may be accordingly proceeded against. The names of such as are ordered to this service are for the 1st day, Mr. Stileman and Philip Veren, Jr. 2ª day, Philip Veren, Sr., and Hilliard Veren . 3d day, Mr. Batter and Joshua Veren. 4th day, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Clark, 5th day, Mr. Downing and Robert Molton, Sr. 6th day, Robert Molton, Jr., and Richard Ingersol. 7th day, John Ingersol and Richard Pettingell. 8th day, William Haynes and Richard Hutchinson. 9th day, John Put- nam and John Hathorne. 10th day, Townsend Bishop and Daniel Rea. 11th day, John Porter and Jacob Barney."
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