USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Bellingham > History of the town of Bellingham, Massachusetts, 1719-1919 > Part 1
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INCOR
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Gc 974.402 B417p 1127850
M. L.
GENEALOLA COLLECTION
(Norfolk Co.) 490
600
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01095 4110
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/historyoftownofb1719part
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MEDWAY
CARYVILLE
PEARLI
BEECH ST.
CH
SCH IDOL
TOWN FARM
NORTH BELLINGHAM
ICH
BEAVER POND
HIXON ST.
FARM ST. WARTOA CEMETERY
MILL
PINE ST.
OAK ST.
HOPEDALE
SOUTH MILFORD
NASON ST
No. MAIN ST.
CHARLES RIVER
--
--
CEMETERY
TAUNTON ST.
WALES
#
HIGH ST.
CHURCH 1744
RED MILL
TOWN HALL SCHOOL
MENDON
ST.
CEMETERY
CHURCAL 1826
FOUR CORNERS
MENDON
CHURCH 1722
FRANKLIN
SOUTH
1
HOAG
LAKE ST.
CROSS'
SOUTH MAIN ST.
CHESTNUT ST.
RAILWAY
ST.
PARK ST.
CEMETERY
CENTRE ST.
RIVER
LAKE ST.
FRANKLIN
*
TE
PE
JENCKEST RES.
LOCUST ST.
CROOKS CORMER SCH
WRENTHAM ST.
WEST MINSTERAVE.
GOVERNOR / AVE.
BUNGAY BROOK
SOCIALSL
ST.
WOONSOCKET
MAP OF THE TOWN OF BELLINGHAM IN 1919
SHOWING THE STREAMS, STREETS, STEAM RAILWAYS, ELECTRIC RAILWAYS ( - - - ),
CHURCHES, SCHOOLS, MILLS AND CEMETERIES
SCALE: ONE INCH TO MILE
BLACKSTONE
St.
BLACKSTONE ST
MAIN ST
NORTH
SOUTH MAIN ST
MECHANIC ST.
BROOK ST.
DEPOT ST.
CRIMPVILLE
MAPLE ST
-=
GROVE ST
MILFORD
WRENTHAM
BELLINGHAM
PAINE ST.
ARTHUR ST.
-
HISTORY
OF THE
TOWN OF BELLINGHAM MASSACHUSETTS
1719 - 1919
BY GEORGE F. PARTRIDGE
PUBLISHED BY THE TOWN
1919
Copyright 1919 By Town of Bellingham
1
1127850
PREFACE
THE two hundredth anniversary of our town this year brings the occasion for writing its history, for both those who are interested now and those who may care for it in the future. My purpose has been to collect and preserve the essentials of the story, not to describe the life of this rather unusual border town as it deserves. In the strug- gles of Baptists and Quakers for religious liberty from its beginning, and in the anxious times of the Revolution and the settlement of the constitution, the town was a leader in its day. Genealogy and much else that is interesting has been left out, and documents have been quoted exactly but with omissions. The chief sources used have been the town records and the vital statistics, church records, the Massachusetts Archives and General Court Records, the Registries of Deeds and Wills at Boston and Dedham, and the Metcalf and other family papers. There are in print two sermons of Rev. Abial Fisher on our first century, and a chapter on Bellingham by R. G. Fairbanks in Hurd's "History of Norfolk County," 1884.
This book has been made possible by the vote of $500 for its publication by the town, and by Mr. A. E. Bullard, who has met the expense of printing beyond that sum. The author's thanks are due also to the town's committee on publication, and to many others who have helped him in the pleasant task. That committee is Maurice J. Connolly, Percy C. Burr, and Orville C. Rhodes, now deceased.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
I
Governor Bellingham
1
II
King Philip's War
14
III Secretary Rawson and his Farm
22
IV Baptist and Quaker
29
V Early Settlers
44
VI The Town Church
73
VII Town Affairs, 1719-1747
89
VIII The Baptist Church, 1736-1819
100
IX Town Affairs, 1747-1819 118
X The Mills . 141
XI The Churches, 1819-1919 160
XII Town Affairs, 1819-1919 172
XIII
Public Persons
187
XIV
The Town in 1919
201
Index .
219
A map, eleven autographs, and twenty-six pictures.
History of Bellingham
CHAPTER I
GOVERNOR BELLINGHAM
THE town of Bellingham has a name that has not been much used, for either persons or places. In England Sir Edward Bellingham was a headstrong and quarrel- some Puritan soldier, who died in 1549. In Northum- berland, not far from the Scottish Border, is a quaint little town of that name, with a remarkable church, built about seven hundred years ago, when the noble family of Bellinghams lived there. It produces many sheep, and coal, iron and lime from its mines.
In America, when the English navigator Vancouver first explored the coast of the State of Washington in 1792 and found what is now called Bellingham Bay, he named it for Sir Henry Bellingham, the British naval officer who had dismissed him on this voyage. The flour- ishing city of the same name on its shores is a county seat, with a normal college, four railroads, and manufactures that give it the fourth place in its State. Its chief products are shingles and salmon, and it has great quarries. Its population is thirty-three thousand. Besides these two places, there appear to be only two small post offices of our name besides our own, one in Ontario and one in Minnesota.
Our town was named for the third Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, the old Puritan lawyer, Richard Bellingham.
]
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HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
His name will never be forgotten, because it is pre- served in a famous book, Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," but only a few of those who read it there ever know the life story that makes him memorable for his own sake. He was born in England of a good family in 1591, and educated for a lawyer. Few men gave up that profession to become a Puritan as he did, and he was naturally a leader among them all his long life. He was the Recorder of the important English town of Boston, helped to draw up the charter of the new Massachusetts Bay Colony, was one of the twenty-six original members of the company, and subscribed fifty pounds for it. He arrived in Boston in 1634 with his wife Elizabeth and his son Samuel.
He was given a sort of greeting in that quaint and childish book, "Johnson's Wonder Working Providence in New England," published in 1654: "At this time came over the much honored Mr. Richard Bellingham, whose estate and person did much for the civil government of this wandering people, hee being learned in the Lawes of England, and experimentally fitted for the worke, of whom I am bold to say as followeth:
"Richardus now, arise must thou, Christ seed hath thee to plead,
His people's cause, with equall lawes, in wilderness them lead; Though slow of speech, thy counsell reach, shall each occasion well,
Sure thy stern look, it cannot brook, those wickedly rebell."
Probably these four lines are amply enough to show how bold the poet was.
Newcomers in Boston then were not citizens until they joined the church and were accepted as freemen by vote. His name is on the first list of twenty-six free- men, and he and his wife joined the church in 1634.
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GOVERNOR BELLINGHAM
The very next year he received two high honors, when a military commission for public defence with extraordinary powers, including the penalty of death, was appointed, consisting of the magistrates and Mr. Bellingham; besides this he was Deputy Governor for the year.
He was repeatedly placed on a committee to draw up a code of fundamental laws based on the Bible, but the task was always put off because the magistrates avoided it in order not to transgress their charter; a natural growth of the common law was safer for them. He had a larger share in the law-making for the colony than any other man, unless Winthrop.
In 1636 a public subscription for a school in Boston was started, and Bellingham's name came third on the list with a gift of ten pounds. "Like Winthrop, Dudley and Bradstreet, he was a man of property above the rest."
In 1640 he was Deputy Governor again, and men began to think of him for the higher office, which was then held by Joseph Dudley of Roxbury. This was Dudley's first term, and he was the first Governor who was not a voter in Boston, chosen probably not on account of any dissatisfaction with his predecessor, Winthrop, but because "the freemen feared a governor for life." No good reason appears why Dudley was not continued in office for another year, but the remarkable election of 1641 put Bellingham in his place.
We have no account of the campaign, but Winthrop's History says: "There had been much laboring to have Bellingham chosen." Every freeman of the colony could vote for Governor either in person or by proxy, and Bellingham was chosen by six votes, out of fourteen hun- dred. When this result was announced, some men who had not voted when they entered the room, as the custom
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HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
was, asked to be allowed to do it then, but they were too late. Besides the mortification of seeing this close result, the new Governor was at once insulted by the General Court, for they immediately repealed the Gov- ernor's annual grant of one hundred pounds, and he was left with no salary for this year till October, 1643, when the Court voted him fifty pounds.
Not only was the pleasure of his triumph spoiled by these two public disappointments, but his grand house, on Tremont Street opposite to King's Chapel burying ground, had lost its mistress by death, and he was left alone with his son Samuel. The house is imagined in " The Scarlet Letter ": "It was a large wooden house, decorated with strange figures and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of the age, which had been drawn in the stucco when newly laid on, and had now grown hard and durable, for the admiration of after times. With many variations, Governor Bellingham had planned his new habitation after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here then was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the whole depth of the house. At one extremity this spacious room was lighted by the windows of two towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal. At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated by one of those embowed hall- windows which we read of in old books, and which was provided with a keep and cushioned seat. Here on the cushion lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles of England, or other such substantial literature. The fur- niture of the hall consisted of some ponderous chairs, and a table in the same taste, being heirlooms from the Governor's paternal home. On the table stood a large pewter tankard.
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GOVERNOR BELLINGHAM
On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of the Bellingham lineage, and at about the centre of the oaken panels that lined the hall hung a suit of mail, not like the pictures an ancestral relic, but of the most modern date. This armor was not meant for idle show, but had been worn by the Governor on many a solemn muster and training field, and had glit- tered moreover at the head of a regiment in the Pequod war. For though bred a lawyer, the exigencies of this new country had transformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier as well as a statesman and ruler."
The Governor's mansion was not long without a new mistress, and she was found in a remarkable way. In 1635 Penelope Pelham, sixteen years old, had come to Boston, and had lived since then with her brother Her- bert in Cambridge, who was the treasurer of Harvard College in 1643. She became the Governor's wife only a month or two after his election. Winthrop says: "The young woman was ready to be contracted to a friend of his, who had lodged in his house and by his consent had proceeded so far with her, when on a sudden the Gov- ernor treated with her and obtained her for himself. He excused it by the strength of his affection, and that she was not absolutely promised to the other gentleman. Two errors more he committed on it. First that he would not have his marriage contract published where he dwelt, contrary to an order of court, and second that he married himself, contrary to the constant practise of the country."
This remarkable marriage is described in a novel whose heroine is the Governor's bride, Carpenter's "Woman of Shawmut." Her brother Herbert reminds the Governor that the banns have already been pub- lished between her and another man, and asks, "Will
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HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
the godly ministers or the magistrates unite thee and her?" Bellingham replies: "Is not the Governor or of Massachusetts Bay a magistrate who outranks them all? Have I not in me all authority which in another lieth?" "It is even so," says Herbert, bowing low.
Then, seizing the hand of Penelope, he leads her to the centre of the room, and standing there with his arm about her, he demands, "Summon thy household, good Master Pelham, and they shall see Governor Belling- ham's power. Now, this very hour, shall Penelope Pel- ham be his bride." A vivid flush rises to the girl's cheeks, but she says nothing, and the household is assembled. "Penelope Pelham," says the Governor, "wilt thou, in the presence of these, take Richard Bellingham to be thy lawful husband?"
"Yea, I will," softly answers Penelope.
"And I, Richard Bellingham, will take thee, Penel- ope, to wife. And now I, the Governor of His Majesty's Colony of Massachusetts Bay, do pronounce and declare that Richard Bellingham and Penelope Pelham are man and wife together. The King shall be my witness."
The effect of this conduct of the chief magistrate can only be imagined, for there is no historical account of it. The astonishment and indignation of the Puritan colony must have been great. At the next session of the magistrates, while he was presiding, "The case of Rich- ard Bellingham for breach of order of the court," was presented, but Bellingham kept his seat. Few magis- trates were present, and the secretary said that the case must be postponed if he would not leave his seat to stand at the bar. The Governor replied that he should not leave his seat unless commanded, perhaps adding, "Who will command me?" There is no record of further action in the case.
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GOVERNOR BELLINGHAM
Naturally the Governor's term of office was not very smooth, but no very great troubles are found in the records. With all his domineering and quarrelsome disposition he had a legally trained mind and a Puritan conscience. The magistrates were offended at his con- duct in taking the part of a poor miller against the rich ex-Governor Dudley, and at his improper interference as they considered it, in a fine which was duly imposed in court on a humble citizen. Winthrop says, "The General Court was full of uncomfortable agitations and conten- tions by reason of Bellingham's unfriendliness to some other magistrates. He set himself in an opposite frame to them in all proceedings, which did much retard all business, and was an occasion of grief to many godly minds and matter of reproach to the whole Court in the mouth of others, and brought himself low in the eyes of those with whom formerly he had been in honor." He showed "an evil spirit of emulation and jealousy, through his melancholic disposition, at seeing others of the magistrates bear more sway with the people than himself. Dudley, being a very wise and just man, and one that would not be trodden under foot of any man, took occasion (alleging his age, etc.) to tell the Court that he was resolved to leave his place. The Court was much affected and entreated him to leave off these thoughts. The Governor (Bellingham) also made a speech, as if he desired to leave his place of magistracy also; but he was fain to make his own answer, for no man desired him to keep or to consider better of it." Before his year of office was over, even the Deputies, with whom he had been more friendly than the magistrates, sent a committee to give him a solemn admonition, a thing which was never done to any Governor before. Though the freemen of Boston chose him selectman at
8
HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
this time, as the custom was to include the Governor in that body, he was not to hold his higher office again for thirteen years.
The General Court had voted contrary to the charter in 1636 as follows: "The General Court shall elect from time to time a number of magistrates for term of their lives as a standing council, not to be removed but upon conviction of crime or other weighty cause, and to have such power as the Court shall endue them withal." Bellingham aspired to this office, but Winthrop, Dudley and Endicott were the only members ever chosen, and it was soon voted that all officers of the Colony should receive their powers annually, so that the plan came to nothing.
It had happened in 1636 that the rich and rather unpopular Captain Keayne, the founder of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, had a stray pig brought to him, which he advertised and kept nearly a year. Before he killed it, but after he had killed another pig of his own, a poor woman named Sherman came to identify the stray, declared that the one he had killed was hers, and claimed damages. The elders of the church and a jury both decided against her, and the jury gave Captain Keayne three pounds damages. Then the rich man sued the poor woman for slander, and got a verdict of forty pounds. She appealed to the General Court, which sat as one body though it consisted of both mag- istrates and deputies. After seven days of discussion, in 1642, two magistrates and fifteen deputies voted to reverse the award for slander and seven magistrates and eight deputies to uphold it; seven deputies did not vote. Thus the magistrates supported the rich man, and the deputies the poor woman, and the case was not considered settled. "Bellingham would have the mag-
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GOVERNOR BELLINGHAM
istrates lay down their negative voice," that is, give up their veto power on the deputies. "Much contention there was." One of the magistrates wrote a small treatise to maintain the need of a second independent legislative body, and an attack on this pamphlet was written, it is supposed by Bellingham. Governor Winthrop made a speech of apology during this controversy, regretting his undue freedom in judging the acts of his brethren. The elders approved the sentence of the court, but the poor woman appealed again to the General Court for a new hearing, which was granted, and Captain Keayne was advised to return a part of the damages awarded him. The great constitutional question thus raised was thor- oughly discussed, and not settled in haste, as Bellingham and the deputies wished. In 1644 it was voted apparently without opposition that hereafter each body should sit separately, and that only votes agreed to by both houses should become laws.
In 1653, when the original leaders of the colony had mostly died, Bellingham was chosen Deputy Governor, and the next year Governor. But one term of him was found enough, for he was immediately put back into the Deputy Governor's place, and kept there while Endicott was annually chosen Governor, for eleven years, till his - death. After that event, Bellingham, the last survivor of the chief founders of the colony, was its Governor for the rest of his life.
In 1656, two Quaker women came to Boston to spread their faith. As the Governor was absent, Belling- ham, the Deputy Governor, sent men to their ship to search their goods, and about one hundred of their books were burnt by the hangman; they were stripped in the search, and were kept imprisoned on their ship five weeks, till the captain took them away. When Endicott returned,
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HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
he was not pleased at this mild treatment, and declared that he would have had them well whipped. It was noticed that Bellingham grew milder towards the Quakers in his old age, but so did the whole colony, and besides the King's commissioners forbade such persecutions.
The fate of the Governor's own sister might be thought enough to quench such fanaticism. Her hus- band, Mr. Hibbens, had been a magistrate, an agent of the colony in England and an eminent merchant, but lost his property and died leaving his widow in poverty. She became very querulous and troublesome to her neighbors, and was hung as a witch on Boston Common in 1656, the second victim of the witchcraft delusion in the colony.
It seems impossible to believe that the Massachu- setts men could be so foolish, unless we know the pre- vailing belief of the mother country at the same time. From 1660 to 1718 twenty-five books on this subject were published in England. Joseph Addison, the great writer, defended the doctrine in 1711. John Wesley said that if he gave up witchcraft he must give up the Bible. Sixty persons were executed as witches in one year in one county in England, and five as late as 1722. The English law against witches was repealed in 1736.
In Massachusetts four persons were executed in Boston at different times, and finally at Salem sixteen by a special court appointed by a rash and ignorant provincial governor, Sir William Phips, representing not the people of Massachusetts but the King. Four years later the State's repentance was expressed by a public Fast Day, and in 1703 the Representatives solemnly voted: "Ordered that no Spectre Evidence may hereafter be accounted valid . . within this Province, and that
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GOVERNOR BELLINGHAM
the Infamy and Reproach cast on the names and Pos- terity of the accused and condemned Persons may in some measure be Rolled away." Even eighteen years after the dreadful mistake their consciences were not at rest, for in 1710 a bill was passed to remove the legal disability of persons condemned for this crime, and to pay them and their representatives five hundred and seventy-eight pounds for damages.
When the King of England wrote in 1666 that "it was very evident that those who govern the colony of Massachusetts did believe that his Majesty had no jurisdiction over them, and that no one could appeal to him from their decisions," he commanded Richard Bellingham and Major Hathorne with two or three others to be chosen by the General Court "to attend upon his Majesty forthwith." After some discussion and delay, the Court pretended not to understand the order, and voted that they should not go, but the last business of the session was to send the King a present of masts for the Royal Navy worth nearly two thousand pounds, and that ended the matter.
The records of the Suffolk Deeds contain a quaint story of the old Governor. In 1673 James Penniman testified to a conversation with him about four years before on the highway to Roxbury, when the Governor, coming riding by, asked him who pulled down the Gov- ernor's fence. He replied that the road was so bad that travellers often took down the fence to mend it. The Governor seemed troubled and said, "I have given Angola the Negro a piece of my land fronting on the highway of fifty feet square."
"If your Worship now you are a giveing will be pleased to give mee a piece, I would thank you and accept of itt."
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HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
"Thou never didst that for mee which hee hath done, he was the only InStrument that under God Saved my life, comeing to mee with his boate when I was sunke in the River betweene Boston and winisimet Severall years since, and laid hold of mee and got me into the boate he came in and saved my life."
"Also Meneno Negro saith that some foure yeare since being at Carrying of the Late Govern's Richards Bellingham Esq' Wood into his yard when wee that is my Selfe & Angola had done, the Governor giveing us a Cup of Sack Said Stroaking Angola on the head I have given you a piece of Land of fivety foot square."
Only the Governor's son Samuel in London outlived him. In 1642 he graduated at Harvard College, and he afterwards went to Europe to study medicine. He received his degree at Leyden and married in London about 1695 a widow from Boston in Massachusetts. Another son John also graduated at Harvard College, in 1660, but he died about 1670, and the Governor himself died December 7, 1672. His estate of three thou- sand two hundred and forty-four pounds was left mainly for charity, but fate would have it that the old lawyer's will was set aside by the Court as not properly drawn. Mrs. Bellingham lived a widow for thirty years, till 1702.
In the northwest corner of the Granary Burying Ground, very near the spot where he built his mansion so long ago, is the Governor's tomb. There are two great slabs of sandstone separated by six graceful columns. The visitor is surprised to read on the upper one the name of Governor James Sullivan, for the tomb was assigned to him by the Selectmen, as the Bellingham family was extinct. The lower slab has the inscription for the older Governor, ending thus:
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GOVERNOR BELLINGHAM
Virtue's fast friend within this tomb doth lie, A foe to bribes, but rich in charity.
This grave is remarkable for another reason. The soil here is damp and springy. More than a century after it was first sealed up, when the new owner took possession, the coffin and remains of the old Governor were found floating about in the ancient vault. Not even in the grave could his stormy life find a peaceful end.
Richard Bellingham Gons 1591-1672
1
CHAPTER II KING PHILIP'S WAR
THE land that is now Bellingham was very late in being settled by white men; most of it remained only "the common or undivided land of Dedham" till 1719, though Mendon on the west became an independent town in 1667, Wrentham on the east in 1673, Sherborn on the north in 1674, Medway in 1713, and Attleborough on the south in 1694. The first reason for this delay was fear of the Indians, whose ravages in King Philip's War on all sides of this territory kept away newcomers and drove away those who were already settled there.
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