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WINCHESTER
WN
TERFIELD 1638.
WINCHESTER 1850.
SEAL
ASS
..
Gc 974.402 W723c 1154053
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
L
GEN
(Middles)
= ur
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 00084 6748
Gc 974.402 W723c v. 1
Chapman, Henry Smith, 1871- 1936. History of Winchester, Massachusetts
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019
https://archive.org/details/historyofwinches01chap
THE SQUAW SACHEM SELLS HER LANDS TO JOHN WINTHROP From the Mural Painting by Aiden L. Ripley in the Winchester Public Library
HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
MASSACHUSETTS
BY HENRY SMITH CHAPMAN
L
DRAWINGS BY W. H. W. BICKNELL
=
OF
T
WATERFIELD 1638. WINCHESTER 1850.
SEAL
MASS
S.
PUBLISHED BY THE TOWN OF WINCHESTER
1936
Copyrighted 1936 BY HENRY SMITH CHAPMAN
THE MURRAY PRINTING COMPANY CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
1154053
FOREWORD
The circumstances which led up to the writing of this history are not without interest. Early in the business depression, a com- mittee of citizens under the chairmanship of Mr. Frederic S. Snyder raised a large fund by private subscription to be used for the relief of unemployment. Difficulty was found in providing work for educated men and women who were not suited for manual labor. Mr. George T. Davidson, vice-chairman of the committee, con- ceived the idea of employing such persons to collect facts relating to the history of the town. A large amount of material was col- lected. It was soon apparent, however, that this work could not be effectvely done except under expert supervision. The matter was taken up with Dr. J. Harper Blaisdell, president of the Win- chester Historical Society, with the result that the town was asked to appropriate a sum of money for the writing and publishing of a town history. The town made an appropriation for the writing of the history and a committee was appointed to secure a competent author and historical investigator and to supervise the work. Very appropriately the town authorized the withdrawal of the necessary amount from the Winchester Fund, which had been given to the town by Colonel William P. Winchester in appreciation of the honor of having the town named for him. When the history had been written, a further sum was appropriated for printing it.
The committee was fortunate in securing the services of one of its own townsmen, Mr. Henry S. Chapman, to whom the com- mittee desires to express its appreciation for the vast amount of research which he has made and for the literary form in which he has cast the results of his investigations.
EDGAR J. RICH, Chairman A. NATALIE JEWETT, Secretary J. HARPER BLAISDELL GEORGE T. DAVIDSON BERTHA G. THOMPSON Committee on Winchester Town History
iii
6.50
J. S. Canner.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
This book is something more than the chronicles of the incor- porated town of Winchester. It is the story of a community, which, even while it was included within the corporate limits of two or three other places, developed a flavor and individuality of its own, insomuch that the town, when it was at last formed, was only an inevitable step in the development of that preëxistent community. Few Massachusetts towns, even of the original constellation, have accumulated more material for a book of this description. A sur- prising number of Winchester citizens have been diligent in search- ing out the origins and antiquities of this ancient community, and their labors have made the task of the present writer the lighter.
I wish to recognize my indebtedness to the researches and reminiscences of such enthusiastic local historians as Abijah and Leander Thompson, Rev. George Cooke, Arthur E. Whitney, Nathaniel A. Richardson, Moses W. Mann, Oliver R. Clark, Luther R. Symmes, Charles A. Lane and E. A. Wadleigh in particular, and to all the contributors who have made the collections of the old Winchester Historical Society, printed in its Record, and in the Winchester Press, such a mine of useful historical material.
I acknowledge also the generous help that I have received from many now living - Samuel S. Symmes, Miss Helen Twombly, Miss Cora A. Quimby, E. Henry Stone, Daniel W. Kimball, Miss Jean Mclellan and Henry C. Robinson. Miss Twombly's careful work in tracing the history of the Squaw Sachem land and of the early families who dwelt on the West Side and the Andrews Hill region is especially valuable. A word of appreciation is due to Walter C. Goddard for his transcription of many significant documents.
I am grateful for the unfailing support and consideration which the committee in charge of this work has shown me, and for the help that I have received from all the town officials whom I have had occasion to consult.
Whatever is of value herein these collaborators, past and pres- ent, may claim as their contribution. The faults are my own, and I hope there are not too many of them.
V
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
Page
I
The Prehistory of Winchester
The Squaw Sachem and Her Red Men
CHAPTER II
I5
White Men on the Aberjona First Settlement at Waterfield Woburn Incorporated
CHAPTER III 29
The Converse and Richardson Families
CHAPTER, IV .
44
The Symmes, Gardner and Johnson Families
CHAPTER V
57
.
Waterfield in the Sixteen Hundreds
Church and State in Old Woburn
CHAPTER VI .
72
Colonial Militia and Primitive Schools
CHAPTER VII
86
Eighteenth Century Memories The Black Horse Tavern
CHAPTER VIII
Winchester in the Revolution
IOI
CHAPTER IX
.
II6
Winchester in 1798 The Middlesex Canal
CHAPTER X
.
130
Men and Industries of a Century Ago
The Railroad Comes to Town
CHAPTER XI
146
The First Church
Incorporation Agitated
CHAPTER XII
I60
The Town of Winchester is Born
vii
vfii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page I74
CHAPTER XIII
The Early Years of the Town Fire and Flood Social and Community Life
CHAPTER XIV 19O
Men and Events in the Sixties Winchester in the Civil War
.
208
CHAPTER XV
Winchester in the Seventies The Story of the Water System The Banks
CHAPTER XVI 226
History of the Churches in Winchester
CHAPTER XVII 245
The Schools of Winchester
CHAPTER XVIII
262
The Story of Winchester's Parks and Playgrounds
CHAPTER XIX 278
Fire and Police Protection Town Hall and Public Library
Growth and Progress
CHAPTER XX 297 .
Men and Events at the Turn of the Century
A Growing Town The Hospital
The Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary Celebrated
CHAPTER XXI 316
The Grade Crossing Controversy
Winchester in the World War
Tercentenary Celebration
CHAPTER XXII
339
Clubs and Social Organizations of Winchester
EPILOGUE 357
APPENDIX A .
359
APPENDIX B . 360
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Squaw Sachem Sells Her Lands to John Winthrop Frontispiece View of the Upper Mystic Lake Opposite Page 8
Dogwood in the Middlesex Fells
24
The Town Hall Across the Converse Mill Pond
40
The Gardner-Swan House in 1936 52
The Boat Club Cove from the Aqueduct
60
The Trees of Winchester 72
The Black Horse Tavern
96
Governor John Brooks IIO
The Symmes House at Symmes Corner I20
The Robert Bacon House
I34
Winchester Center in 1845 I52
Col. William P. Winchester I60
Two of the First Selectmen I68
Frederick O. Prince 180
Dr. and Mrs. Frederick Winsor with Their Family
202
Samuel J. Elder
210
The First Water Board 214
View of the South and Middle Reservoirs
218
The Church of the Epiphany
232
The First Congregational Church
232
The Unitarian Church
232
The First Baptist Church .
232
The Christian Science Church
240
St. Mary's Catholic Church
240
The Crawford Memorial Methodist Church
240
The New Hope Baptist Church
240
The Second Congregational Church
240
The High School
248
The Junior High School
256
Forrest C. Manchester
264
The Site of Manchester Field in 1890
268
ix
x
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Manchester Field in 1936 .
Opposite Page 268 274
Site of the Park as it was in 1930
A Park on the Aberjona as it is in 1936
274
The Town Hall
288
The Public Library
292
Governor Samuel W. McCall
300
Mrs. Harrison Parker, 2d .
308
Mrs. Joshua Coit
308
The Winchester Hospital
312
The War Memorial
328
Lewis Parkhurst
336
View from the Country Club Golf Course
. 342
PEN DRAWINGS
Sagamore John's Monument
Page 8
The Edward Converse House
30
The Jeduthan Richardson House
42
House of Capt. John Symmes 48
The Gardner-Swan House in 1900
5I
An Ancient Grist-Mill .
9I
The Brooks-Le Bosquet House
III
The Thaddeus Parker House II7
Lock in the Middlesex Canal at Horn Pond
I25
The First Railway Train
I37
The Church Street Elm
176
Old Lyceum Hall
177
The Samuel Richardson House
184
The E. A. Brackett House
19I
The Old Wyman School
246
The Grass Hopper
279
Winchester Boat Club .
344
MAPS
The Original Division of Waterfield Lots Opposite Page 20 The Town of Winchester in 1854 I74
The Town of Winchester in 1936 .
320
.
HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
CHAPTER I
THE PREHISTORY OF WINCHESTER. THE SQUAW SACHEM AND HER RED MEN
THE town of Winchester lies within a pleasant valley at the head of the Mystic Lakes. The eastern wall of this valley is formed by the rocky ridge of the Middlesex Fells, still largely covered by forest growth, and now one of the most picturesque parts of the beautiful Metropolitan Park system. To the southwest and west the valley is enclosed by the tumbled cluster of hills, which, under various names - Myopia Hill, Andrews Hill, Turkey Hill, Indian Hill and Zion's Hill - stretch in the direction of Arlington Heights and Lexington; by the rounded summit of Horn Pond Mountain and the ledges of Blueberry Hill in Woburn. Northward the floor of the valley slopes gradually upward to the higher ground on which Woburn stands. Southward it is prolonged toward the sea by the trough in which lie the Mystic Lakes and the course of the Mystic River.
Properly speaking, this is a part of the Mystic Valley, though the narrow and placid stream that winds through it, to fall into the twin lakes, bears in Winchester the name not of the Mystic but of the Aberjona River. A characteristic and very charming feature of the region is the number of attractive bodies of water that lie in and around it. Besides the Mystic Lakes, the natural beauty of which is comparable to that of many famous lakes that Americans travel far to admire, there are Horn Pond, Wedge. Pond, Winter Pond and Black Ball Pond, all on the valley floor, while on the heights above the town and in the Middlesex Fells are Long Pond and the three artificially created reservoirs that supply Winchester with water. It is no wonder that the first white men who visited the spot, and saw the gleam of water on every side shining through the trees of the primeval forest, gave it the lovely name of Waterfield, which might well have been preserved as the name of the town that grew up there.
I
2
HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
Winchester itself lies some eight miles from the salt water of Boston Harbor, but so gradual is the descent thereto that the center of the village is scarcely twenty-five feet above sea level. The hills that lie about the town rise some two hundred feet above it; in the case of Horn Pond Mountain about four hundred feet. The houses of the town fill most of the level floor of the valley, which varies from a mile to a mile and a half in width, and they creep up the hill- sides as well, especially on the side toward the Middlesex Fells. Those which stand on the high ground of Highland Avenue or of Myopia and Andrews Hills command prospects as wide and as attractive as can be found anywhere in the immediate neighbor- hood of Boston. In the Fells themselves the people of Winchester share with those of the neighboring towns and cities of Melrose, Stoneham, Malden and Medford the advantage of having at their very doors a lovely forested park, whose striking beauties of hill and dale, bold ledges of rock, sparkling ponds and melodiously running brooks have been, as far as is possible, preserved for the enjoyment of those who love the charm of nature unspoiled by the artifices of man.
This Mystic Valley of which we speak has a very interesting geological history. Thousands upon thousands of years before any man, white or red, looked upon it, it was the course of the great river which today we call the Merrimac, then a much wider and deeper stream than it is today. There was then no great bend at Lowell; the river flowed in a nearly straight line southeastward from the mountains and lakes of New Hampshire. It poured its flood of water right down the valley where Winchester now stands, through the bed of the present Mystic Lakes, and then directly across the ground where Cambridge, Allston and the south end of Boston were later built, and so into Boston Harbor and the sea, the shores of which lay several miles further to the eastward than they do today. Geologists can trace that old river bed through almost every foot of its course by the deposits of gravel and silt that the water laid down.
Then - perhaps forty thousand years ago - came the Ice Age. All this part of New England was buried for ages under an immense sheet of ice. Eventually conditions changed again; the glaciers melted and disappeared; but as they did so they left behind
3
PREHISTORY OF WINCHESTER
enormous quantities of "glacial drift" - gravel and clay and loose boulders of rock which they had scraped up and carried southward with them, frozen into the ice. The drift was so thick in the old bed of the Merrimac that the river, released at last from its prison of ice, found its former path to the sea completely blocked. Accord- ingly it turned eastward at the present site of Lowell and scoured out for itself a new course to the sea at Newburyport. Only the diminished stream of the Aberjona remained to occupy the lordly valley of the ancient river.
But if the Ice Age took away the river it left something beau- tiful in its place. All the charming lakes and ponds, so character- istic of Winchester scenery, were born of the departing glacier. In. some cases their beds were scooped out of the existing soil by the ploughing masses of ice; in others they were formed by great blocks of ice which became detached from the retreating glaciers and were buried under the drift of sand and gravel. When in time these fields of ice melted, the gravel that covered them slumped in, caus- ing more or less rounded depressions in which the water gathered. When underground springs were present, or when there was suffi- cient drainage from the surrounding slopes, these ponds, so formed, became permanent. They are called "kettle ponds" from a fancied resemblance of their basins to the inside of a kettle. Winter Pond is a perfect example of a kettle pond. Wedge Pond and Horn Pond were very likely formed in the same way, at least in part.
To the valley thus devastated and reshaped by the forces of nature, vegetation began to return; first the hardier grasses and shrubs and then, as the climate continued to moderate, the trees that are the glory of New England - pine and spruce and hemlock, oak, ash, birch, maple and elm. Forests covered the land of which our Winchester valley was a part, from the high places to the shores of the ocean, except in low-lying spots along the coast or in the interior where marshes and swamps gathered and formed ground too wet for tree growth. It was this wide-spreading forest, dark, shadowy, inhospitable, yet rich in the timber that was to be one of their earliest sources of wealth, that faced the English colonists on every side when they first stepped on the shores of New England.
We read, however, that there was, here and there, open country among the trees; meadows and grass lands, which required little
4
HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
labor to make them fit for the plough. There is reason to believe that a part of the Winchester west side, which lies level beneath the slopes of Andrews Hill, was one of these open, grassy areas. There were also clearings which the Indians had made for the grow- ing of corn or other purposes. Thomas Morton of Merrymount remarks that "the savages are accustomed to set fire of the country in all places where they come, and to burn it ... at the Spring and at the fall of the leaf. ... Otherwise it would be so overgrown with under-weeds that it would be all a coppice wood and the people would not be able to pass in any wise through the country out of a beaten path."1 Yet the prevailing aspect of the country was that of a great forest wilderness, "an uncouth wilderness," yet "full of stately timber," as the first settlers of Charlestown described it.
While we are speaking of the return of vegetation to the plains and hills that lie within the borders of Winchester it is interesting to note that little Winter Pond is remarkable for certain very rare plants that are found growing upon its shores. These plants are southern species nowhere else found as far north as the latitude of Winchester, while one of them, at least, has not been found any nearer to our town than northern Georgia or central Illinois. Among these plants are the Coreopsis Rosea, the nut rush (Scleria Reticularis), the rattle box (Crotalaria Sagittalis) and the wild sensitive plant .(Cassia Nictitans). All of these are rarely seen farther north than Cape Cod and Rhode Island, and never north of Winter Pond. The most exceptional specimen of our Winchester flora, one that is so unusual that it apparently has no common name, and is known only by its botanical name, Scirpus Halli, grows near Winter Pond, but nowhere else within a thousand miles.2
All these plants are believed to be of preglacial origin, driven southward by the advancing ice, and not sufficiently hardy to regain a foothold in their former territory when the glacier retreated. Why Winter Pond should prove so much more hospitable to these declining species than many hundreds of ponds similar to it in every observable respect is a question even the botanists cannot answer.
The time came at last when the land was again fit for human
1 New English Canaan.
? Lyman B. Smith, instructor in botany at Harvard. Article read before the Winchester Historical Society, 1934.
5
PREHISTORY OF WINCHESTER
habitation, and at some unknown period in the past Indian tribes, migrating undoubtedly from the west or southwest, came to occupy the forest country of our New England states. They were all of the Algonquin race, a people at once less intelligent and less war- like than some other redskins - the Iroquois for example - and far less advanced than their distant cousins who lived in Mexico or in our own Southwest. They were not without their savage virtues, however, for they were a tall, well-proportioned race, skill- ful hunters and fishermen, and good enough farmers to raise corn and pumpkins on ground that they had cleared and burned over for the purpose. They were stone-age people, of course, and seem to have known nothing of metals. Their arrowheads of chipped flint, their stone axes and gouges and pestles were scattered widely over the country around Winchester, and in the early days were often turned up by the plough. Several interesting relics of this sort are to be seen today in the room of the Winchester Historical Society in the Public Library building.1
The Indians who dwelt hereabouts belonged to a tribe whose members called themselves Pawtuckets. This tribe seems to have been the head of a loose confederacy of wandering savages, which, under varying names, occupied not only the territory that now forms Essex and Middlesex counties in Massachusetts but south- ern New Hampshire as far as the sites of Concord and Portsmouth, and perhaps a bit of southern Maine as well. The early settlers used a confusing number of designations to describe these Indians. They were often called Aberginians, which is manifestly a name of English rather than Indian manufacture, but the origin of which is obscure. Some writers have tried to connect it with the name of our placid Winchester river, the Aberjona, which seems like- wise more English than Indian in composition. This name appears very early - at least as early as the settlement of Woburn - but without any explanation of its derivation; and it has been a sad puzzle to the antiquarians ever since. The learned Mr. Cutter,2 to whom we are indebted for so much valuable research into the
1 A most interesting Indian relic is to be seen on the summit of Horn Pond Mountain. It is a deep bowl-like depression in a ledge of rock, either artificially made or, if natural originally, adapted to their purposes by the Indians. They certainly used it as a mortar for grinding their corn into meal. A much smaller rock mortar is to be seen in the woods near the foot of the North Reservoir.
2 William R. Cutter of Woburn.
6
HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
history of our own and neighboring towns, convinced himself that the first part of the word was the Celtic "aber" which is common in Scottish and Welsh place names, and is said to mean "the place where a small river flows into a larger, or into the sea." It seems unlikely that settlers from the eastern countries of England should have imported a word which was unfamiliar in their native dis- tricts; but even if Cutter is right in this he had to confess himself unable to account for the "jona." Nor has anyone else ever been able to do so.
The Pawtuckets regarded the Charles River as their southern frontier. Beyond that, around the head of Boston Bay and to the southwest thereof, lived the Massachusetts, a kindred tribe that seems to have differed from the Pawtuckets only in the region they inhabited. Both these groups of Indians were once comparatively numerous. When Captain John Smith explored the coast of Mas- sachusetts in 1614 he found the shores along which he passed "all a long, large corn-field," and saw "great troops of well-proportioned people" on every hand.1 Thomas Morton, the gay and lively pioneer of Merrymount, whose lack of seriousness and piety so scandalized the Pilgrim Fathers that they felt obliged to break up his settlement, relates that the Indians of the region were wont to boast that "they were so many God himself could not kill them."2
But a few years before fate led the white men to their shores, these complacent redskins fell upon evil days. For some obscure savage reason they incurred the hostility of the Tarratines, a related "nation" that lived along the eastern coast of Maine. The Tarratines proved to be the better fighters. They overran the whole region from the Kennebec to the Charles. The slaughter of the Pawtuckets was, as Sir Ferdinando Gorges reports, "horrible to be spoken of."3 Nanepashemet, the great sachem of the Paw- tuckets, hastily removed his home from the borders of the great marshes between Lynn and Revere to the high land at the southern extremity of the Middlesex Fells, which could be more easily defended. His last palisaded fort was probably on Rock Hill in Medford, only a mile or so from the present borders of Winchester.
1 Smith, Generall Historie.
2 Morton, New English Canaan.
3 Gorges, Brief Narratives in Mass. Hist. Society Collections, Vol. 26.
7
SQUAW SACHEM AND HER RED MEN
Its remains were seen by Englishmen in 1621, as we shall learn in the next chapter.1
Following this disaster came a worse one in the shape of a mysterious pestilence which carried off most of those who had escaped the tomahawks of the Tarratines. This plague seems to have descended on the unhappy red men about 1616 or 1617, and it ravaged all the Indian tribes of eastern Massachusetts. Cotton Mather heard it said in after years that "nine parts in ten, yea nineteen parts in twenty" died of this mysterious plague, which some believe to have been smallpox. Thomas Morton draws a horrid picture of the piles of bones and skulls that he himself saw in the abandoned villages in the neighborhood of Merrymount. Another writer of a later day was told by the Indians that the Pawtuckets, who formerly numbered three thousand warriors, besides women and children, were reduced by this pestilence to two hundred and fifty fighting men.
The tribe thus enfeebled was finally attacked once more by the implacable Tarratines, and the great sachem Nanepashemet was killed defending his Rock Hill stockade. Contrary to the usual custom among the red men the authority over the remnants of the Pawtuckets fell not to another warrior but to his widow. This was the famous Squaw Sachem - we know her by no other name - whose relations with the settlers of Charlestown and of so many other of the Middlesex towns form so peculiar and picturesque a feature of early Massachusetts history. Nanepashemet had left three sons, whom the white men later came to know as Sagamore John (of Charlestown), Sagamore James (of Lynn) and Sagamore George (of Salem). But they were only boys at the time of his death, and the slaughter among the warriors had perhaps been so great that no ambitious brave cared to assume the responsibility of restoring the confederacy, shattered by war and pestilence, to its former importance.
Nevertheless the Squaw Sachem, though she may have owed
1 Many years later (in 1862), the skeletons of five Indians were uncovered in a field belonging to Edward Brooks in West Medford by laborers who were digging there. One skeleton seemed to be that of a chief, for near it lay a soapstone pipe with a copper mouthpiece, a rare and valuable possession for a redman. It has been sug- gested that these may have been the bones of Nanepashemet, for they were found not far from the Rock Hill stronghold where he met his death. The skeletons were all sent to the Peabody Museum at Harvard University.
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