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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01114 8894
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A HISTORY OF MILTON
By EDWARD PIERCE HAMILTON
MCMLVII MILTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY MILTON ยท MASSACHUSETTS
@ Copyright, 1957, by the Milton Historical Society PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
In memory of L. B.H.
1439161
Acknowledgements
M ANY have been of help and assistance to me in writing this book. I owe, however, special thanks to the friend who I might say lured me into starting the research that has led to this history, Walter Muir White- hill. He has done penance by reading the manuscript and so must be for- given. Two other friends, Stephen T. Riley and Clifford K. Shipton, have been of much assistance and encouragement. I have also been greatly aided in my delvings in the Norfolk and Suffolk Registries of Deeds and of Pro- bate by the wonderfully complete and meticulous index of Milton deeds, wills and inventories compiled many years ago by the late Deacon John Atherton Tucker, a keen student of Milton history. His studies of Milton tax lists and locations of old houses have also been of great assistance. Many other Milton friends have aided me with suggestions or useful criticism, but they would be too numerous to record. Finally I owe a word of thanks and appreciation to those teachers of history at whose feet I was once so fortu- nate as to sit, Edward Channing, Albert Bushnell Hart, Roger B. Merriman, Samuel Eliot Morison and Frederick J. Turner.
Milton, October 1956
Edward P. Hamilton
Contents
To the Reader
... XIII
Introduction
3
The Story of the Town
The Beginnings
7
1662
23
1700
27
1770
33
1831
41
1857
45
1888
49
The New Century
57
The River
63
The Schools
91
The Church
113
Town Meeting
141
The Poor
165
The Highways
169
The Police
175
The Firemen 179
The Library 189
The Wars 191
First Things 209
Appendices
1. The Possessions of our Ancestors 221
2. Milton Houses Built Before 1805 and Still Standing in 1955 242
3. Statistical and Financial Figures 245
4. Biographical Sketches of Prominent Milton Residents 1634-1929 247
5. Suggested Further Reading 264
6. Major Changes and Events Since 1929 265
Bibliography 266
Index 267
List of Illustrations
Map of Milton, 1634
5
Indian Wigwams
opposite 9
Peak House
opposite 16
Neponset Oyster Shell
opposite 16
Map of Early Land Grants
20
Map of Milton, 1662
24
Map of Milton, 1700
28
Robert Tucker House
29
Map of Milton, 1770
32
Map of Milton Village, 1765
35
William Foye House
36
Badlam Mirror
opposite 36
1774 Pound
opposite 36
Governor Hutchinson House
38
Wadsworth House
39
Map of Milton, 1831
40
Map of Milton Village, 1826
43
Paul's Bridge
44
East Milton Square, about 1860
opposite 45
Map of Milton, 1857
47
Milton Village, about 1865
opposite 49
Map of Milton, 1888
51
Carey Hill in the 1890's
opposite 53
Milton Village in 1885
53
A Brush Hill Governess and her charges
opposite 55
A Meadowbrook Cart
opposite 55
A Railroad President's Mansion of the 1880's
56
Milton Village, about 1900
opposite 58
Kerrigan's Corner, about 1910
opposite 58 opposite 71
Broadside of 1776
Hannon's Chocolate Wrapper
opposite 74
Mattapan Paper Mill
opposite 74 79
Chart of Mills on the Neponset
Village Mills, about 1865
opposite 81
View from Adams Street in 1885
88
""The Old Brick" opposite 101
""The Old Academy Building"
102
Children at the Center School
opposite 108
The New Academy
111
Page of Records of Milton Church
opposite 126 139
Page from Milton Town Records
Notification of Town Meeting, 1774
opposite 149 opposite 149 opposite 156 opposite 162
1955 Town Meeting
Blue Hill Avenue, about 1890
opposite 173 opposite 173
East Milton Square
The Police Force, about 1905
opposite 175 opposite 176
Fountain Engine No. 1, 1858
opposite 183
Steam Pumper and Hose Wagon
opposite 186 opposite 200
The Suffolk Resolves House
First R. R. Car in America
210
Sheer Pole 211
Mr. Rotch and Weather Balloon
opposite 215 opposite 215
Picnic on Blue Hill
First Airborne Recording Thermometer
opposite 218
Blue Hill Radiosonde opposite 218
Population and Real Estate Evaluation Chart 244
Milton Churches
Warrant for 1843 Town Meeting
Police Department Stanley Steamer, 1912
To the Reader
M ANY years have passed since Dr. Teele wrote his History of Milton, and many changes have taken place, both in the character of our town, and in the methods of writing history. In 1887 Milton was a small commun- ity, of diverse interests it is true, but still in many ways a large family, where most people knew, or knew of, every one else. Dr. Teele's interest appears to have been largely in the early inhabitants, wars, first things, local geogra- phy, and personages, and he showed relatively little knowledge or concern in the social and economic phases of life. He apparently believed that Milton people wanted to know primarily about the early families, their own ances- tors, and the location of the sites of the old houses, as well as the flora and fauna, and the lives of many men then living or only recently dead. He had a vast fund of information available concerning these and many other things. The book was planned very much in the fashion of other town histories of the day, and covered primarily those matters which appealed to the readers of over two generations ago. It still remains the basic source of Milton mate- rial, but in some ways it fails to meet the needs of today. Moreover it is no longer available, and the existing copies are rapidly falling to pieces.
I have attempted primarily to trace the growth and the changes of our town from its first exploration by the white men down to the period when it became a suburb of Boston. In doing this I have at the same time tried, in the case of some subjects, to avoid the purely local aspect, and to make a somewhat broader approach. In other words, if there was a certain action or condition known to have existed generally in New England, yet there is no specific record of it here in Milton, I have not hesitated to borrow it from elsewhere and to include it here. Only in this way can the smooth transition of the whole be presented. By doing this I also hope that a local history of a town of the old Bay Colony will also to a considerable extent present a gen- eral sketch of New England history over the same period. The social and
xiii
To the Reader
economic developments, the Church, the Schools, and Town Meeting were all very nearly the same throughout the towns bordering on Massachusetts Bay, and, save for personalities, one was much like another. The names and the lives of the early inhabitants mean less today to our town than they did when their descendants still formed a large proportion of Milton, and I have omitted from the text much of the material of that nature which Dr. Teele had included in his book. Brief sketches of a considerable number of people have been included in a biographical appendix for those who wish more in- formation on this subject, but a history should not attempt to be a genealogy, and this appendix makes no claim to be complete.
In writing history one must stand back a few years in order to gain suffi- cient perspective. Accordingly I have chosen to stop at the year 1929, and there are two important reasons for this choice. That year marked the end of an economic and social era, and the impact of the resulting changes has perhaps been greater here than in many other places. The new era initiated the breaking up of many of the large estates which wealthy Bostonians had been establishing in Milton over the previous two generations. Thus new land became available for further real estate development. The move from city to suburb had been under way for many years, but it received greatly added impetus here from the extension of the Metropolitan rapid transit system. It was in this same year of 1929 that the old steam railroad gave place to the electric surface car and the Cambridge Subway. These two fac- tors were in a very few years, assisted also by the automobile and the de- mands of a rising standard of living, to change the whole character and as- pect of our town, and to result in a very great increase in population in a rel- atively short time. Old families and old traditions were overwhelmed by the inrush of new population, and old Milton disappeared-almost overnight it seems in looking back, but it really has been a quarter century.
I have chosen to present my material in a somewhat different manner than that which has customarily been used in the local history. First, I have attempted at each of several dates to depict what the town then was like, how big it was, and what was going on. Time is fluid and cannot be neatly sliced off and tied up, each piece by itself, and I have not attempted to re-
XIV
To the Reader
strict each episode solely to its precise date. History, moreover, is always in transition and periods overlap, just as some old men still wore knee breeches and cocked hats while their contemporaries were sporting the stovepipe and the uncreased pantaloons which we associate with Abraham Lincoln.
Certain special subjects are treated in monograph form, and each of the chapters which concern them is complete in itself. In several appendices there is placed material which will have a special interest to some, but not to all, and hence is better left somewhat separate from the rest of the text.
The genealogist will discover almost nothing here to aid him in his re- searches, but it is my hope that the reader who wishes to learn of the past of his town will here find a broad picture of those major changes, political, eco- nomic, religious and social through which Milton has passed during the more than three hundred years of occupancy of the soil upon which we live today.
Finally I must apologize for, or better perhaps explain, what may appear to be a somewhat informal method of presentation. History may be written in a stately and ponderous style, and then few but the scholar will read it. If one can keep on a more informal plane, bring in a little fun where possible, and yet adhere to the solid truth at all times, history will be much pleasanter to read. It is with that approach that I have tried to write, and I have done my best to make this book as painless to read as possible.
XV
A History of Milton
Introduction
T THIS is the story of a town of old New England and its gradual progress from the camping ground of the Indian, through its various transitions, to its ultimate fate, a residential suburb of a great city. The Indian gave way to the Puritan farmer, intent upon following his chosen creed into a new and unsettled land, and yet, probably in many cases, most willing to better his economic condition in so doing. The tide of immigration was abruptly cut off by the Parliamentary wars of the 1640's and for many years this ini- tial homogeneous population of Englishmen remained largely isolated. It bred and multiplied greatly, mellowing as the years went on from the rela- tive narrowness of the initial theocracy, and yet retaining many of the old characteristics. Thus was the old-time New Englander produced, with his faults it is true, but also with his balancing virtues. Of such a stock, always with the occasional exception, the Scot, the Scotch Irishman, and the Ne- gro, were the inhabitants of Milton for nearly all of its first two hundred years, while the hamlet of little farms grew into the prosperous country town.
By the middle of the last century two little wavelets of new migration had started to trickle into the town, one from Ireland, the other from the neigh- boring city. Both were small and gentle and they quickly merged into and were absorbed by the town, which continued to grow, but still retained its old New England character. Gradually the effect of the city was felt more and more. Milton was ceasing to be a relatively self-sufficient community and was starting to become a suburb. Finally within the last generation a tidal wave of migration from Boston engulfed and eradicated the last rem- nants of the quiet old country town. We have, however, been most fortunate
3
Introduction
in that, despite the many great changes, the old Yankee spirit of service to the community and the desire for integrity in local government have largely persisted. Relative newcomers are just as proud of the town and just as de- sirous of maintaining those characteristics which caused them to select it as a place in which to live as are the few remaining descendants of the Voses, the Tuckers and the Swifts.
Note on the Maps
This and the following maps attempt to present a graphic picture of the town from 1634 until 1888, after which date further maps would serve little purpose. I have shown on each map all the roads that appear from the records to have existed at the approx- imate date chosen, and all the houses that I can locate with what I believe is a reasonable degree of accuracy. In most cases I have assumed that a house once built continued to exist and thus the houses of one map are shown on the succeeding one. As an im- portant new road first appears I have noted against it the name by which it, or that road of which it today constitutes a part, is now known. In order to prevent cluttering up the maps with too many names I have not repeated these street names after their first appearance. The four maps previous to that of 1831 are re- constructions, and as such represent my best judgment, assisted by all available data. They cannot, however, be considered as en- tirely correct, although I do believe that they give a good general idea of the state of the town at the various periods selected. The last three maps are reproductions of actual contemporary maps with a few minor additions.
Of the two Village maps included, that for 1765 is my recon- struction, while that for 1826 is copied from an actual survey.
4
GRIST MILL
UNQUITYQUISSET
PINE TREE BROOK
UNQUITY BROOK
COLLECOTT'S HOUSE
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PLYMOUTH TRAIL 2: 1
1
BLUE
HILLS
MILTON 1634 A Part of Dorchester
BLUE HILL RIVER
E. P. H. Feb. 1954
The Story of the Town
The Beginnings
V ERY probably the first white man to visit Milton was "mine host of Ma-re Mount", Thomas Morton. He stated in his book, The New English Canaan, that he spent the summer of 1622 at Wessagusset on the south side of Weymouth Fore River, and that he explored the sur- rounding countryside. Three years later he was back again, established now at Merrymount, some two miles from the eastern edge of Milton, and he spent much time afield with his gun and his trained hawks in the country to the west. His book is the earliest detailed description of this area and its Indians, and it is an excellent one.
An expedition from Plymouth had visited Boston Bay in the fall of 1621, and a good description of the trip is on record. This unfortunately is not suf- ficiently clear to allow us to determine exactly where they went. Dr. Teele believed,1 and he was not alone, that these Pilgrims explored Milton, while others concluded that they had visited the mouth of the Mystic rather than that of the Neponset. While we can never be certain, the weight of evidence seems very much to favor the area north of Boston, and today it appears highly improbable that the Pilgrims got nearer to Milton than Squantum.
It certainly is of no great importance who first explored the Milton area, but we are most interested in what the land was then like. Fortunately there are a number of descriptions of the general Massachusetts Bay area, and some specific information concerning our particular part of it.
The Milton Indians are a subject which appears to be of great interest to everybody, and I believe that this is as good a place as any to tell about them, 1. A. K. Teele, The History of Milton (Boston, 1887).
7
History of Milton
although I fear that the reader will be disappointed, for the Milton Indian was a harmless soul who deserved a better fate than that which he finally gained.
Our region was inhabited by the tribe of Massachusetts Indians, and they were a race which had advanced somewhat beyond barbarism, migratory to a limited extent, but returning to their cornfields each year. They repre- sented a little higher state of civilization than did the Indians of Maine, a fierce and warlike people.
In the first decade of the seventeenth century the Massachusetts tribe probably numbered between four and five thousand, divided about equally north and south of the Charles. In 1616-17 they were swept by some sort of contagious disease which was devastating in its effects. We do not know what it was, but it probably came from Europe, and may have been measles or some similar ill against which they had no immunity. This plague ap- pears to have covered all of eastern New England from southern Maine to Narragansett Bay, and to have extended inland thirty or forty miles. Through- out all this region scarcely one Indian out of twenty survived. In 1630 the entire Indian population of the Boston Bay area consisted of only about 125. Chickataubut was the chief of the Neponset group and he ruled only fifty or sixty subjects, while two other groups, each almost as large, lived on the Saugus and Mystic Rivers. To the westward no Indians were found for sev- enty or eighty miles, until the Nipmuck country near Webster was reached. Over the next ten years the great Puritan migration poured into the area of Massachusetts Bay, and the few remaining natives were submerged and overwhelined. Indian troubles of the future were to develop from outside of this region and never from within.
The Neponset group moved around the Milton-Quincy-Dedham area with the seasons, planting their corn in Milton and near Wollaston, and hunting in the Blue Hills and beyond, but the falls of the Neponset at the head of tidewater seem to have become their most favored habitation. This they called Unquity-Quisset, shortened to Unquity by the whitemen. Here they fished in the spring, and after the grist mill was built I can imagine them loitering there, begging a little meal of the miller, and making a nui-
8
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INDIAN WIGWAMS One is covered with grass mats lashed down with cords, while the bark covering of the other is held in place by sticks and branches tied through to the inner frame. (Photos from model by Theo. B. Pitman at Fruitland's Museum)
The Story of the Town
sance of themselves. The Rev. John Eliot first preached to them in the au- tumn of 1646 below the falls of the Neponset at Unquity. He encouraged them to move away from the white settlements and to start building a new town in the Sharon-Stoughton area. It was due to his exertions that a reser- vation of some six thousand acres was established for them at Ponkapoag by the Town of Dorchester in 1657. In 1670 there were twelve families on this reservation, a total of sixty souls, and they had a chief, a constable, and a schoolteacher. The more industrious of the Indians spent much of their time in a cedar swamp making clapboards and shingles for the Boston mar- ket. After King Philip's War broke out in 1675 they were moved to Deer Is- land in Boston Harbor, and later back to Brush Hill, where they were under the charge of Quartermaster Thomas Swift of Milton. Except for one short period when there was a morning and evening roll call, it does not appear that they were forced to reside on the reservation, and they continued to make trips to the falls at Unquity. In 1666 the Dorchester records mention an Indian dying of smallpox in his wigwam2 a little north of Neponset Mill, probably somewhere near St. Gregory's Church. The Town of Dorchester in 1674 forbade anyone employing Indians to get out shingles or clapboards in Town swamps unless they were given a copy of a permit obtained from the Selectmen. A few years later the Rev. Peter Thacher was hiring two In- dians to clear some of his land in Milton. Thus we find the few remaining Indians gradually degenerating into something part way between a pauper and an unskilled laborer, and as time went on intermarrying more and more with negroes, so that practically speaking the race had disappeared in East- ern Massachusetts by about the time of the Revolution.
2. The wigwam of the New England Indian was very different from the skin-covered conical te- pee of the Western Plains. It was built by sticking the butt ends of saplings upright in the ground in the shape of a circle, and bending in and lashing together the slender ends, each pair forming an inverted u. The resulting framework, not unlike half a sphere in shape, was covered with grass mats or bark lashed in place, leaving a smoke hole in the top at the center. Some Eastern and Middle Atlantic Indians built them with a rectangular floor plan, arched in cross section, but Morton's description of the Massachusetts Indians mentions the circular type only. Many of the early settlers built rectangular wigwams for their first temporary dwellings. There is record of a circular wigwam built by Indians which was fifty feet across and was used as a council house.
9
History of Milton
D. T. V. Huntoon, in his most excellent History of Canton,3 records quite a bit about the tribe after it had moved to Ponkapoag. He makes a most in- teresting statement to the effect that in the early days if a negro slave mar- ried an Indian woman the children were born free. This would easily ac- count for some of the mixed marriages. An early record refers to a man as "an Indian mulatto of the Punkapoag tribe". Some of the family names of the Punkapoags were Moho, Momentaug, Ahauton, Pomham, Bancroft, George, and Croud, also spelled Crowd. They were always considered to be wards of the Province, and later of the State, and one or more appointed guardians kept watch over their welfare. The last piece of the old Reserva- tion was sold by the guardians in 1827. An 1849 report recorded the Punka- poag tribe as consisting of four men and six women, while eight years later the guardians said that the tribe was nearly extinct, only about fifteen or twenty remaining, and those mostly of mixed blood. Of these, only three owned real estate, but all were well behaved and their children attended the Town schools. Shortly after this the guardians were discharged, and the re- maining Punkapoags received full rights of citizenship.
There is one record of an Indian attempting to break into a Dorchester house in 1675, but I am more inclined to think that he was a local Indian under the influence of "firewater" than that he was one of King Philip's warriors. There is absolutely no mention of any trouble within the area of Milton proper, and the nearest that the war came to this area was an Indian raid on part of Braintree where a man was "knocked on the head" and a woman "captivated" in January of 1676. A number of Milton men were killed, but this was while on military service on the frontier. There never was any Indian trouble within the borders of Milton.
A very old Indian named Mingo lived as late as 1763 on the south side of Canton Avenue just beyond Robbins Street. In 1898 Mingo Street was built in the vicinity of the site of his shack, and at a point eight hundred feet in from Canton Avenue five graves, apparently those of Indians, were encount- ered. Oddly enough it was within almost a stone's throw of here that there
3. Cambridge, 1893. He, incidentally, was a descendant of Daniel Vose of Milton, and son of the Rev. Benjamin Huntoon, who had been the first Unitarian minister of the First Parish Church.
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The Story of the Town
lived one of the last known Milton residents of Indian ancestry. This was Mrs. Mary Crowd, born in Canton of the Punkapoag Indians, who died at 970 Canton Avenue in 1916 in her ninety-first year.
: That is all that I can learn of the history and end of the Neponset tribe of the Massachusetts Indians. It is rather an anticlimactic one. Instead of the tomahawk and the warpath we have a little group of people, by nature un- fitted for the white man's civilization, adjusting themselves as well as they could to the changing conditions, and finally being absorbed into the Negro race. In 1849 it was said that there still lived in Ponkapoag one pure-blood- ed Indian, the last of his tribe, and the last of his race in our vicinity.
The early inhabitants of the Bay Colony meant well by the scattered groups of Indians that remained within the settled areas. One of the pur- poses of the migration to New England, largely, I am afraid, only an ostensi- ble one, was the Christianization of the natives, and many earnest attempts were made. The best known and most effective efforts were those of the Rev. John Eliot of Roxbury, but many others did their bit. Mrs. William Daniels, who lived where 320 Adams Street now stands, for three years after 1650 taught a group of local Indians to read. The Commissioners of the United Colonies rewarded her with f12 for her services, and encouraged her to continue for at least another year. She lived until 1680, but we do not know how long she kept up her teaching.
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