USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Franklin > History of the town of Franklin, Mass., from its settlement to the completion of its first century > Part 1
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Gc 974.402 F85b 1136844
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01100 0384
A
HISTORY
OF THE
TOWN OF FRANKLIN,
MASS .;
FROM ITS SETTLEMENT TO THE COMPLETION OF ITS FIRST CENTURY,
2d March, 1878;
WITH
GENEALOGICAL NOTICES OF ITS EARLIEST FAMILIES, SKETCHES OF ITS PROFESSIONAL MEN, AND A REPORT OF THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.
BY MORTIMER BLAKE,
MEMBER OF OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ; HONORARY MEMBER OF NEW ENGLAND HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY.
FRANKLIN, MASS. PUBLISHED BY THE COMMITTEE OF THE TOWN. 1879.
COPYRIGHT SECURED BY THE AUTHOR.
J. A. & R. A. RFID, Printers, Providence, R. I.
INTRODUCTION.
1136844
AT the annual town meeting held in March, A. D. 1876, a re- port was presented by a committee previously chosen by the town, consisting of Messrs. Waldo Daniels, Stephen W. Richardson, William M. Thayer, William Rockwood, and Adin D. Sargent, to whom was referred the subject of the celebration of the one hun- dredth anniversary of the incorporation of the town.
Among the recommendations embodied in this report was the following : -
" That a history of the town be prepared and published, in which the important events of its early settlement and the suc- ceeding municipal transactions shall be recorded -including also, so far as practicable, its interest in and the part sustained by its citizens in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the late Rebellion ; also its ecclesiastical and educational work, the growth and development of our manufacturing interests, and of all that pertains to its prosperity as a township."
The report was accepted and the committee were authorized by the town to carry out the plan presented.
The committee were unanimous in their choice of historian - Rev. Mortimer Blake, D. D., of Taunton, Mass. His marked ability and well-known antiquarian researches, especially con- nected with the early history of Franklin, abundantly qualified him for this important work.
Dr. Blake with some reluctance entered upon the task, which he would not have undertaken for any town but his own.
At the annual town meeting, in March, 1878, the committee was enlarged by the addition of five members - Messrs. A. St. John Chambre, Henry M. Greene, James P. Ray, Paul B. Clark,
4
PREFACE.
and Edward A. Rand, to assist in the accumulating duties and preparations arising from the approach of the centennial celebra- tion. To the united committee Dr. Blake presented his valuable manuscript, which, after examination and discussion, was unani- mously accepted and ordered to be printed.
In presenting this volume to the citizens of Franklin and the publie generally, the committee feel that the reputation of the author as a historian and scholar is sufficient pledge of its value. They are confident that it will be found to be a rare history, abounding in facts, incidents, narratives, biography, genealogy, and whatever belongs to a superior town history - all enriched by the author's terse style and originality of thought.
WALDO DANIELS, S. W. RICHARDSON,
A. ST. JOHN CHAMBRE, H. M. GREENE, JAMES P. RAY,
WILLIAM M. THAYER,
WILLIAM ROCKWOOD,
ADIN D. SARGENT,
PAUL B. CLARK, EDWARD A. RAND,
FRANKLIN, December, 1878.
Centennial Committee.
HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
MR. PRESIDENT, THE HONORED CHIEF MAGISTRATE OF THIS COMMON- WEALTH AND HIS ASSOCIATES IN OFFICE, KINSFOLK AND FRIENDS -
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : A hundred years are crowding to tell their tales to-day. It will not, therefore, permit much time for introductory salutations. We will just congratulate one another that we are allowed to be here, at the centennial epoch of this grand old town, give a welcome hand to the sons and daughters who have come back (some from long distances) to this home of their childhood, and then we will stand aside to let the century talk of the men and their deeds who have given us a town history worth commemorating.
I must preface, however, that it was with great timidity I consented to be the spokesman of this hour. Living so far and so long from the sources of information, and crowded with the never-finished work of my vocation, it has only been by short visits and broken explorations that I have searched records to collate the story of this town's past. If the results seem meagre, please charge it-not to want of interest in the seeking, but to lack of time and material. And, had it not been for the zealous co-operation of your committee in charge of this celebration, and of other interested citizens, and the cordial responses of the town clerks into whose records the sources of our town history run back, and of Wrentham in particular, the present address would be still more meagre. To all who have aided in this service, let me here present my cordial acknowledgments. So much only will my short hour permit me to say for introduction.
6
HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
The life and roundness of our story have decayed in the lapse of time, leaving but a skeleton of dismembered facts. I am appointed to wire together these scattered bones and reclothe the framework of our past with the motor forces and flush of a recovered life. If I can so much as make the cen- tury stand before you, I shall feel amply rewarded, even if the countenance be lack-lustre and homely.
The century we commemorate to-day by no means carries us back to the beginning of the town. To reach the forces which have shaped its character and history, we must go still further back by more than another hundred years. Seventeen hundred and seventy-eight was only when this town became of age and took her place among her sister towns. Her child- hood dates really from 1660, when her mother, Wrentham, first came to live in Wollomonopoag. But her birthday was close upon the beginnings of the Massachusetts colony. To compass, therefore, the full history of this town, we should confer with the original Puritan immigrants of 1630 around the Bay. But such a quest would cover two hundred and fifty years, a period that cannot be compressed within this hour's review. I must, therefore, content myself with the humbler aim of selecting what may seem to be the hinge-facts on which the course and character of our town history have turned.
These facts mainly cluster about three points : First, The rights of the settlers to the soil; Second, The character and aims of the settlers ; and Third, The subsequent development of their history.
It may be of no present consequence to learn by what title these goodly farms are held ; but it is a satisfaction to know that our ancestors were not lawless trespassers upon their original Indian occupants. And the evidence lies abundant in the colonial charter, the laws of its courts and the purchase deeds of the settlers. By their Patent, the lands belonged to the settlers as a company and not as individuals. But they had the right of distribution among themselves, and they turned to this task with becoming gravity. As a preliminary caution, their court had voted (Marchi 4, 1630) that "no man shall
7
HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
buy land of Indians without leave had of the court ; " and, as an immediate necessity, it votes that " all swamps of above one hundred acres be free to any freeman to fetch wood."
But, interesting as it might be, we must not spend time in waiting upon this court and reporting its cautious and wise conclusions. A few only, which touch our present inquiry, will be quoted. To prevent the scattering and weakening of the settlers, no house shall be built above half a mile from the meeting-house without leave of the court. A special com- mittee shall set out and bound all towns and settle all bound- ary difficulties, and towns may divide up their own lands. As we listen to the debates and orders of this Court of Assist- ants, we gather these conclusions of their policy : None but freemen acceptable to the court shall have any lands ; such shall have lands only as companies and in masses of territory ; for signal service to the colony, however, single persons are paid in special grants of land ; all grants to companies or to individuals are to be set and laid out by and with the approval of the court. The occupants of their soil are thus to be as- sured friends of the colony ; and for a man to become a free- man and proprietor of a farm, is an endorsement of his goodness by the Puritan standard.
The court, further, is particular to transfer only its own title to the soil. If the lands granted be subject to any Indian claims, these must be extinguished by the towns themselves. Thus, Concord is directed, in 1637, to purchase the ground within their limits of the Indians, and an agent is chosen in 1638 to agree with the Indians for land in Watertown, Cam- bridge, and Boston. But in 1639 John Bayley is fined five pounds for buying land of Indians without . leave. We care- fully note these sample acts, as vindicating the honesty of the Puritans towards the Indians. They are in accord with the general letter from the governor and council of the New Eng- land Company, dated Gravesend, April 17, 1629. " If any of the salvages Ptend right of inheritance to all or any Pt of the lands graunted in or patent, wee pray yo'r endeav'r to p'rchase their tytle, that wee may avagde the least scruple of intrusion."
8
HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
Still lingering about this venerable court of the governor and his assistants, our ears catch the words of an order in which we immediately feel an interest. The session is at New- towne, Sept. 2, 1635, and the order is, "that there shall be a plantation settled about two miles above the falls of Charles river, on the northeast side thercof, to have ground lying to it on both sides the river, both upland and meadow, to be laid out hereafter as the court shall direct." This must have something to do with Franklin, for it is on one side of Charles river. We drop into the session of next year, Sept. 8, 1636, to read on its record : " Ordered that the plantation to be set- tled above the falls of Charles river shall have three years' immunity from public charges as Concord had, to be accounted from the 1st of May next (i. e. 1637) ; and the name of said plantation is to be Deddham, to enjoy all that land on the southerly and easterly side of Charles river not formerly granted to any town or particular persons, and also to have five miles square on the other side of the river." The courts of those days followed rather than led public opinion, and we find, back of this large grant of territory -including now thirteen towns and parts of four others -the impulse of twenty-two solid men, ancestors, some of them, of persons here present .*
Our genealogical line is Franklin, Wrentham, Dedham, and this line would be the full path of our history, starting from Newtowne Sept. 2, 1635. We need not go back even so far as Dedham, for others have already told its story. We will, however, on our way to Wrentham, look in upon Dedham long enough to form some idea of our ancestral beginnings. Rev. John Allen, the first minister, or Michael Metcalf, the head selectman, can tell us their story. They described their char- acter in the name they have given to their town, "Content- ment," and in this peaceable prelude to their covenant, "We, whose names are hereunto subscribed, in the fear and rever-
* These towns, following the compass, are Dedham, Needham, Natick in part, Dover, Sherborne in part, Medfield, Medway, Bellingham mostly, Frank- lin, Wrentham, Norfolk, Walpole, Foxboro in part, Norwood.
9
HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
ence of our Almighty God, mutually and severally promise amongst ourselves and each other, to profess and practice one faith according to that most perfect rule the foundation where- of is everlasting love." Happily named, Contentment.
Some of the settlers, however, especially John Dwight and his son Timothy, John Page, and John Rogers, are not con- tented. They remember the old home town in England whence they came, and especially their minister, Rev. John Rogers, grandson of the proto-martyr, John ; and for love of him and of it they change the name of Contentment to Dedham.
It is but a few minutes' walk along the short street east of the present court-house. The ninety log-houses are nearly alike, thatched with long grass from the meadows, cach with a lad- der from the ground to the chimney, and standing near the front edge of its twelve acres ; which are dotted with stumps and bounded with uneven pole fences. In the rear of these lots are the fields or pastures, called "herd walks " or " cow- commons," simply cleared of timber and burnt over each spring under the oversight of the wood-reeves. Bounding the pastures outside is the virgin forest, filled with wolves more than dogs and hunters can keep under ; although there is a bounty upon their scalps, and there are regulation muskets from three feet nine inches to four feet three inches barrel length, and such noted marksmen as Sargent Ellis and Dea. Ephraim Wilson behind them.
In one of these houses Michael Metcalf is keeping school for the year for £20-two-thirds part in wheat at the town or country rate, and the other part in corn at the said rate, to be kept, the record says, " at the school-house, except the wether be extreme to hinder, and then he is to attend at his own dwelling-house. The town to have the harth laid in the school-house forthwith, and windows made fitt, and wood for the fire to be laid in. In the heat of the weather, if the said Michael desire to make use of the meeting-house, he may do so, provided the house be kept clean and the windows be made good if broken (as if the young Dwights and Fishers and
10
HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
Metcalfs of that day ever threw stones !), the school to begin the 19th of the present month (1656) and the pay quarterly."
In another house Michael Powall has, since 1646, kept a licensed ordinary, where we may find a dinner or a bed. Near by him, if exhausted with our toiling through the woods from Boston, we may find something stronger - as the selectmen petitioned in 1658 that, " in regard of their remoteness from Boston, Left. Joshua Fisher (one of their chief men) have liberty to sell strong waters, to supply the necessity of such as shall stand in need thereof in that town." Here are the elements of a promising civilization ! Besides, there is Capt. Eleazur Lusher " impowered to marry ; " Mr. Edward Allen, John Kingsbury, and John Luson to "order small business under 20 shillings;" John Haward constable, a barrel of gun- powder, a train band and a small cannon, or drake, presented by the colony to this now called " out towne."
But it is drawing towards 1660, and stories are afloat of a mine of some kind of metal near certain ponds, about thirteen miles to the westward of Dedham, which must be somewhere in this region.
The people, alert for any increase of their hard-earned and small incomes, talk it over when they come together "in a lecture day," and the selectmen send out (22º 4m., 1660) four men " to view the lands both upland and meadow near about the ponds by George Indian's wigwam, and make report of what they find to the selectmen in the first opportunity they can take." Six months after, their report gives so much en- couragement that two other men are sent to compound with the Indians for their rights to the soil.
But great enterprises like the settlement of new towns in the wilderness must move slowly and cautiously. For it is no trifling afternoon project to vacate a home, though it be just built of logs and thatch in a stump-covered lot, and to forsake companions who have worked in the fields and sat in the rude meeting-house together, and to start everything anew in the forests twenty miles of unbroken paths away. We cannot
11
HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
appreciate their obstacles or their hesitancies. But we do admire their cautious deliberations and prudent conclusions.
Although the good people of Dedham had talked together of the meadows towards the west, where they had cut hay in 1649, and of the great ponds towards the Narragansett country, and now especially of the mines near them, and of the report of the men sent to explore the western wilderness more thor- oughly, still when the motion was made (27th March, 1661) to begin a plantation and give 600 acres for its encouragement, some objected. But the movement had begun already. Ten men, at least, had gone to break ground in Wollomonopoag, as this region was called. As soon as they heard of this encouragement of the 600 acres, they claimed it as pioneers of the projected settlement. You will recognize their names, if not the persons: Anthony Fisher, Sargent Ellis, Robert Ware, James Thorp, Isaac Bullard, Samuel Fisher, Samuel Parker, John Farrington, Ralph Freeman, and Sargent Stevens. . Some of their descendants are probably here to-day.
But Dedham could not be in such haste. It had chosen a committee to attend to three things in due order: First, "to determine when men present themselves for entertainment there, who are meet to be accepted ; " Second, to " proportion to each man, thus accepted, his part in the 600 acres ; " Third, to " order the settling of the plantation in reference to situa- tion, highways, convenient place for a meeting-house, a lot or lots for church officers, with such other things necessary as may hereafter be proposed." Yet this committee made com- mendable haste, for before the year 1661 closed they reported, and the town of Dedham adopted their boundaries and plan of a settlement. But now the cautiousness has shifted to the side of the colonists. They have some grave problems to lay before their townsmen before they depart into this wilderness of Wollomonopoag. The selectmen of Dedham, therefore, call a meeting of the proprietors of the town, 12th January, 1662, to hear these propositions. The prospective colonists say, through their committee, Anthony Fisher, Robert Ware, Richard Ellis, and Isaac Bullard, that they have secured but
12
HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
ten men, and they cannot go with so small a company - " they are not desirous to leave the world altogether," as they put it, but will go if they can " proceed in a safe way." For their justification, be it said, it was not Indians, nor solitude, nor hard work in a wilderness which they were afraid of, but a jeopardy of their legal rights and privileges of citizenship. They were not willing to enter into the wolf's den without good assurance that responsible hands were hold of the other end of the rope and would keep hold of it.
The town of Dedham, they knew, had at a general town meeting already approved the setting up of a plantation at Wollomonopoag, and had sent two men to inquire of the Indi- ans about their title. But what will the proprietors of Ded- ham do about it? for these were two different parties. Will they make the way safe by paying the Indians and giving the lands to the venturing settlers ? The proprietors, and not the town, you remember, owned the lands not already granted to individual settlers or set apart for public use, and they, and not the town, must sell and give the title of their 600 acres to their hesitating colonists. I have not time now to report the discussion of this grave problem in that proprietors' meet- ing of 1662. But the conclusion, at a second meeting in the next month, 2d March, 1663, was that the proprietors could not advise the settlement in the present circumstances, but would satisfy for the necessary expense of those who had broken ground at Wollomonopoag. So the project seems to be exploded. But Timothy Dwight and Richard Ellis, the two agents chosen two years before, in 1660, to confer with the Indians, have, meanwhile, been busy in dealing with the wily Wompanoags, and now, in 1662, bring to the proprietors a re- port which gives a new aspect to the problem.
Philip has this year succeeded, through the death of his father Masassoit and elder brother Alexander, to the headship of the tribe of the Wampanoags, and, perhaps to collect the means for his projected war upon the settlements, is ready to conclude the long negotiations for his lands. By the aid of Capt. Thomas Willett, one of the Plymouth commissioners, long
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
skilled in Indian tactics - afterwards the first mayor of New York city, and whose grave lies on the banks of Bullock's Cove in Seekonk -the Dedham agents have purchased and seeured a deed of Wollomonopoag, five miles square (six says Worthing- ton) for £24 10s., which sum Captain Willett has advanced for the town out of his own pocket. This money must be repaid to the generous captain and the newly-bought land must supply the means of payment.
The proprietors, therefore, at this same meeting of March, 1663, vote a general dividend among themselves, both of the 600 acres set apart for a settlement and of its price of £160, one-quarter to be paid annually. This land and its cost is to be divided according to each one's cow-common rights. There are thirty-four shares of the 600 acres and of the £160.
These cow-common rights, so often mentioned, may require an explanation. The territory belonged to the proprietors as a company, in which each held shares in proportion to his property valuation. The ratio was one common right per each £8 of estate. The number of acres set apart for pasturage was in proportion to the number and needs of the cattle owned by the proprietors, five sheep being reckoned cqual to one cow, and each owned such a share of this land, or so many cow-common rights, as one-eighth of his property valua- tion might express in units. The whole grant or township was held by the proprietors in a similar manner, and when five-acre, eight-acre divisions, etc., were subsequently granted by the proprietors, each drew five, ten, or fifteen acres of the common land, as the number of his common rights might be. For many years the business of proprietors and of inhabitants were transacted in common, but a colonial law in 1720 organ- ized the proprietary as a separate body from the town, and their acts disappear from the municipal records and mostly from our present knowledge.
Those who have already made improvements at Wollomono. poag are allowed first to choose their lots. I count nine men, and these were presumably the first comers to Wollomonopoag to settle. You may recognize among them your grandfather's
14
HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
grandfather : Anthony Fisher, Jr., Sargt. Richard Ellis, Robert Ware, James Thorp, Isaac Bullard, Sam'l Fisher, Sam'l Parker, Josh. Kent, and Job Farrington. Good Franklin names, most of them. To them are to be added Sam'l Sheers (the first actual settler apparently), Ralph Freeman, and perhaps Daniel Makiah. Where these men located their lots it is not possible now accurately to determine. But the record says the first lot was " to be where the Indians have broken up land not far from the place intended to build a mill at," which was where the Eagle Factory now stands .* Perhaps the remaining thirty- three lots went southwards to the meeting-house, and thence westward along the two present main streets of Wrentham.
It is now 1662, and the owners of the thirty-four lots enter one after another, either in person or by proxy, upon the occu- pation of their territory. In the next year, 1663, they lay out their first highway, with the sanction of the selectmen of Ded- ham, " at the east end of their lots." Was it the road from the present meeting-house of Wrentham towards Franklin ?
The five succeeding years are laboriously spent in taming the native forests for fields of corn and rye, building their log- houses, fencing in their pastures and watching the wolves. We hear nothing from them but the echo of their axes against the big trees until 1668, when the irrepressible Indian reappears. It is a woman this time. What is her grievance we do not know; but her absence is more desirable than her presence, and she herself thinks so, for at a town meeting in Dedham, where their affairs are still conducted, 4th February, 1668, Sarah herself is present with her son John and her brother George, and requests that her little farm of ten acres among the white men may be exchanged for a tract elsewhere. The proposal is ac- cepted, and they give her ten acres of upland in exchange, with liberty to take fencing stuff, "near a pond about two miles westward from the situation of the township at Wollo-
* Such is the current interpretation; but Hon. Ezra Wilkinson, in his explo- rations of ancient deeds, has concluded that this first lot was on South street, and that this was the first street laid out in the present Wrentham.
15
HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
monopouge." From some previous allusions to George Indian, we suppose the ten acres quitted by Sarah were near the Eagle mill, and as there is no other pond "two miles westward" than the present Uncas pond in Franklin -on whose banks the almshouse farm now is - who knows but the Indian Sarah and her son John and brother George were the first occupants of our poor farm, and prophets of the Indians' coming fate ! But they are hardly removed to their new quarters when the irrepressible Philip reappears. At least, a messenger hurriedly comes to Dedham to say that Philip is at Wollomonopoag with more lands which he is anxious to sell. It is doubtful to the Dedhamites what claim further he has ; but, as he is a neigh- bor not politic to provoke in these ticklish times, Timothy Dwight and four others are hurried off to buy up whatever lands he may have to offer, " provided he can show that he has any." Suspicious that the six miles square he had sold did not cover the space between Dedham and the western line of Wollomonopoag, as he well might be, he claims a new-moon- shaped lot on its eastern side, including part of the present Walpole and up to the lands of Chickatabut, sachem of the Neponsets of Sharon, etc. This tract is also purchased, as near as we can ascertain, for £17 8d., and is accepted by the town of Dedham, 15th November, 1669. Before Dedham has done with these dusky peddlers of real estate it pays out at least £66 18s. for seven different purchases within its boundaries, and has seven different Indian deeds, which are committed to Dea. Aldis to be kept for the town in a box. But it came to pass in process of time that the deacon's children wanted the box for other uses, and the deeds, like so many other now in- valuable documents, went where other like precious papers have gone, and are going yet, for want of some vigilant interest and care. But our fathers honestly paid the price asked by the Indian claimants for their lands, and with somewhat better than the traditional peck of beans, at which nearly all towns are reported to have been bought; so that they cannot be justly charged with wronging the natives of their soil. These
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