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HISTORY OF SOMERSET
MASSACHUSETTS
1677-1940
Gc 974.402 So47h 1466373
M. L'
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
1
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 00086 1556
HISTORY
OF THE
TOWN OF SOMERSET
MASSACHUSETTS
SHAWOMET PURCHASE 1677 INCORPORATED 1790
By WILLIAM A. HART
PUBLISHED BY TOWN OF SOMERSET 1940
Acknowledgement
The previously published material on Somerset's history is limited to an article on the town by D. Hamilton Hurd in his History of Bristol County, 1883; the History of Bristol County prepared in 1899 by the Fall River Herald News, the Taunton Gazette and Alanson Borden of New Bedford; the Avery Slade Sketches of Somerset, 1885; Miss Elizabeth H. Brayton's book on the Brayton Homestead; the Patience Brayton Memorial; some brochures on Somerset churches; and the columns of the former Fall River News and Fall River Globe, and the Fall River Herald News. In its early chapters the History of Swansea, compiled in 1917 by Otis D. Wright, is also in many essentials Somerset's story. To all of these, and particularly to the History of Swansea for its list of Revolutionary soldiers compiled by the late John S. Brayton, this book's indebtedness is acknowledged.
Especial acknowledgment must also be given to the manuscript of the lecture on Slade's Ferry presented before the Fall River Historical Society by the late Herbert Skinner, and for other material in the Society's records.
The chapter on the Wampanoag Indians is compiled from the encyclopedia of the American Indian, published by the U. S. Bureau of American Ethnology. Governor Bradford's Journal is the source of Pilgrim references ; and Capt. Benjamin Church's autobiography of the facts and spirit of King Philip's War. The list of Somerset vessel registrations is from the records of the Port of Dighton and Fall River, year by year from 1790 to 1940, with the list of foreign-going vessels confirmed and enlarged by the National Archives Project on Dighton-Fall River Ship Registers, 1789 to 1938. Carl C. Cutler's Greyhounds of the Sea is this history's authority on the clipper ship and the source of the lively account of the Raven's epic race.
Acknowledgement
The previously published material on Somerset's history is limited to an article on the town by D. Hamilton Hurd in his History of Bristol County, 1883; the History of Bristol County prepared in 1899 by the Fall River Herald News, the Taunton Gazette and Alanson Borden of New Bedford ; the Avery Slade Sketches of Somerset, 1885; Miss Elizabeth H. Brayton's book on the Brayton Homestead ; the Patience Brayton Memorial; some brochures on Somerset churches ; and the columns of the former Fall River News and Fall River Globe, and the Fall River Herald News. In its early chapters the History of Swansea, compiled in 1917 by Otis D. Wright, is also in many essentials Somerset's story. To all of these, and particularly to the History of Swansea for its list of Revolutionary soldiers compiled by the late John S. Brayton, this book's indebtedness is acknowledged.
Especial acknowledgment must also be given to the manuscript of the lecture on Slade's Ferry presented before the Fall River Historical Society by the late Herbert Skinner, and for other material in the Society's records.
The chapter on the Wampanoag Indians is compiled from the encyclopedia of the American Indian, published by the U. S. Bureau of American Ethnology. Governor Bradford's Journal is the source of Pilgrim references ; and Capt. Benjamin Church's autobiography of the facts and spirit of King Philip's War. The list of Somerset vessel registrations is from the records of the Port of Dighton and Fall River, year by year from 1790 to 1940, with the list of foreign-going vessels confirmed and enlarged by the National Archives Project on Dighton-Fall River Ship Registers, 1789 to 1938. Carl C. Cutler's Greyhounds of the Sea is this history's authority on the clipper ship and the source of the lively account of the Raven's epic race.
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MAP OF THE TOWN OF SOMERSET
MASSACHUSETTS WITH SOURCE OF TOWN WATER SUPPLY IN DIGHTON
DECEMBER 1937 DECEMBER 1935
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CITY OF FALL RIVER
FREETOWN
1466373
Compilation of Somerset's story in the main, however, rests upon community and family tradition and personal recollection. In total, those who have contributed its facts are far more in number than can here be recounted. Their help, together with the known willingness of all the community to give similar help if opportunity had been found to ask it, has created a background of goodwill which is gratefully recognized.
Individual acknowledgement should, however, be made to Mrs. Fannie Melvin for access to her wealth of data on Somerset personalities; to Mrs. Waldron Rogers and Mrs. Charles Sherman for their scrap books and booklets; to Charles E. Hathaway and Patrick Synan for details of the pottery era; to Rev. Felix S. Childs for the story of St. Patrick's and to H. Freeman Bates for the story of the First Christian Church: to Charles S. Simmons, Miss Emma Eddy, Capt. Daniel B. Eddy, Miss Annie T. Costello, Adam W. Gifford, Edward Morrissey, Israel T. Almy, and Frederick S. Clarner for personal recollections; and to Francis "Dick" McGuire who contributed much of this book and ought to write another book himself.
Appreciation is also due to the Fall River Historical Society for permission to copy rare sketches in its pos- session; to Customs Officer Warren C. Herrick for mani- fold courtesies in the use of his office and records for research; to Ernest L. Peirce for books, photographs and hours of personal guidance about the town; to Henry J. Harvey for reading the manuscript; to Harold J. Regan for reading the manuscript and for untiring aid in the study of town records; and to Fernald L. Hanson for faith in this history when it was only an idea and confi- dent cooperation thereafter.
W. A. H.
J.O. # 6184
Contents
THE FIRST WHITE MAN
1
The Norsemen - Cortereal, Verrazano, Gosnold, John Smith-Winslow and Hopkins at Mt. Hope-Short Rations-John Hampden-The Great Cure-Main Street's Mystery House.
SHAWOMET LANDS
8
The Wampanoag Town-Boundaries-Food, Sugar, Salt, Medicine-Wampum-Prosperity-Children and Games- Oratory-Tribal Philosophy-Character-Mental Ability.
KING PHILIP'S WAR
16
Philip's Character-Ideas of Property-Outbreak of War-Captain Church-Weetamoe-Death of Philip- Cost of War-Result-Anawan and Church-Surviving Tribes.
SHAWOMET PURCHASE
23
Land Forfeited to English-The Lottery-The Pur- chasers-Division of the Purchase-Constable Eddy- Purchasers' Record - Spelling of Shawomet - First Comers.
1675-1775
31
Homebuilding-Crops-Building the Stone Walls-Orig- inal Roads-Meaning of the Docks-Jonathan Bowers- His Sons-William Slade Begins the Ferry-A Church and A School.
NOTES ON FIRST CENTURY
41
The Cliff Dwellers-Quaker Indians-Thomas Buffing- ton-Toussaint L'Ouverture-Miles' Bridge Lottery-The First Schoolmaster-Weetamoe.
FRIENDS' MEETING HOUSE
Swansea Quarterly Meeting-The First Building-A Quaker Meeting-Long Pastorates-Ministers-Patience Brayton - Her Anti-Slavery Campaign - Petition to George III.
THE REVOLUTION
The Assonet Raid-The Lexington Alarm-Guards at the Ferry-Attack on Fall River-The Rhode Island Cam- paign-Ruin of Henry Bowers-Capture of Obadiah Slade-Prison Ship-Roster.
55
63
RECONSTRUCTION
Revival of Commerce-Jerathmel Bowers-Somerset Incorporated-First Town Meeting-First Officers-The Name of Somerset-Mrs Jerathmel Bowers of Somerset Square, Boston.
THE NEW TOWN
71
Population - Heads of Families -First Churches - A Great Fleet-John Bowers' Garden-Failure of John Bowers-The War of 1812-Hurricane-The Year With- ยท out a Summer.
THE DAYS OF SAIL
81
The New Fleet Grows-Down to Joseph Brown's at Egypt-The Stage Coach Arrives-The Packets-Steam- boats -- Whaling-Herring Fisheries-The Railroads Come Nearer.
CLIPPER SHIPS
91
Somerset Captains-The Mexican War-The Clipper Ship-The Clipper Captain-Hood Shipyard Begun-The Rosario-The William Nelson - The Raven - Raven Records and Race.
CLIPPER SHIPS II
99
The Governor Morton-Launching the Morton-The Archer-The Rip Van Winkle-Revenue Cutters and Lightships-The Mischief Capsizes-Hood Yard Burned- S. F. Dickinson-The Clipper Passes.
PROGRESS ASHORE 107
Fall River Builds Cotton Mills - Prudential School Board-Cholera Ship -- The Davis Captain-Myricks and Fall River Railroad-Job M. Leonard-Steam Ferry Boats.
CIVIL WAR YEARS 115
Town Meetings-The Moore House-Bounty Jumpers-A Railroad on Brayton's Point-Bealky Shipyard-Cyrus M. Wheaton Post G. A. R .- O'Neill's Beach-Roster.
SLADE'S FERRY 125
Beginnings-Two Ferries in One-Horse Boats-The Faith-The Weetamoe-Ferry Finances-Ferry Rates- Competition-Slade's Ferry Bridge-The Ferry Stops.
THE INDUSTRIAL ERA 135
The Railroad Comes to Somerset-Mt Hope Iron Works- Irish Settlers-The Nail Works-Successors-The Stove Works - The Coal Docks - Brilliant Polish - Egypt Industry-Strawberries.
145
THE POTTERIES
Beginnings-The Sloop Warren-Somerset Pottery Co. Founded-The Little Potteries and Their Locations- Turning-Firing-Marketing-Clay-Tile-Last Days.
THE INDUSTRIAL SCENE
155
A Generation of Captains-New Fleets-The Village in Its Prime-Racing for Customers-Livery Stables-The Trolley Arrives-Brightman Street Bridge-Hood Li- brary-Fall River's Boom.
WORLD WAR 169
Universal Conscription-Registration and Draft-Liberty Loans-Influenza-Progress of the War -Victory- Brothers-Deaths-Welcome Home-American Legion- World War Memorial-Roster.
THE GOLDEN AGE 181
Looking Backward-A Town of Homes-The Era of Building-Water Works-Parks Shellac Co .- The Mon- taup Co-Clifford M. Holland-Three New Churches- Horse Show-The Hurricane.
SOMERSET IN 1940 195
Statistics - Departments - Town Buildings - Schools - Somerset High School - Recreation - Town Officers- Roster of Town Clerks.
THE CHURCHES 201
Introduction - South Somerset Methodist Episcopal -Christian Congregational St. Patrick's Roman Catholic-Federated Church: Baptist, Methodist, Epis- copal, Congregational, Founders-Buildings-Pastors.
LOCAL NAMES IN SOMERSET 222
Origin and Location. SOMERSET VESSELS 225
Description, Owners and Masters-1790 to 1815, Coastal and Foreign-1815 to 1865, Coastal and Foreign-1865 to 1940, Coastal and Foreign-The Last Commercial Sail.
REVOLUTIONARY WAR ROSTER 245
Enlistments from Swansea, including Shawomet Lands, the later Somerset.
Illustrations
Map of Somerset
Insert
Purchasers' Record
Frontispiece
Map of Shawomet Purchase
Insert-22-23
Jonathan Bowers House
32
Henry Bowers-John A. Burgess House
54
John Bourne House
54
Mrs. Jerathmel Bowers 64
Jerathmel Bowers House and Garden 70
Marble House 82
Captain Andrews House
82
Clipper Governor Morton
98
Somerset Captains 108
William Brown
John A. Burgess
Daniel Brayton Eddy Surbinas P. Marble
Slade Homestead 124
Somerset Village 1887
136
Pottersville 1887
146
Schooner Governor Ames 156
World War Memorial
168
Somerset High School
180
Selectmen 1940
194
Fernald L. Hanson
Adam W. Gifford
Israel T. Almy
Tanker Phoenix Ashore
224
welt aries of Prawomat for Belanginy to y purchases of $ 200 Staromar ling and ' Other
Wand's par tainting to "
& Bih was Began my years 1680 2 sparenalors
- Remura
formatos of sacrament ker IA's friend me
A copy of condition of und fredry
The grand side of the sale of charmant fois I wanted to cant john makaron to di fid + por for the vin of the provisions of it langs so wany
----
THE PURCHASERS' RECORD
THE FIRST WHITE MAN
IT may be that Leif, son of Eric, built his "Leifbooths" at Mt. Hope in the year 1000 and wintered there. Norwegian scholars believed it, and the schoolbooks for three generations told us so. Few, if any, now believe that the Dighton Rock is a record of the discovery of Vineland. But a Vineland there certainly was.
Thorwald, another son of Eric, in 1002 and 1003, spent two winters at Leifsbooths. Thorfall, who sailed in 1007, named Cape Cod "Wonder Strand" (Furdustrandir), Martha's Vineyard "Stream Isle" (Straumey), Buzzards Bay "Stream Firth" (Straumfiordr), and Mt. Hope "Hop."
So goes the story which Norwegian historians have worked out from the unquestioned fact that in the year 1000 Leif the Lucky and his sons began a series of voyages to America. Some interpret their discoveries as being in Green- land; others that they were Nova Scotia; Maine is sure that it was that coast; and Marblehead and Boston historians have identified their harbors with Leif's and Eric's exploits.
There is no doubt that at Hop (Mt. Hope) Thorfall in 1007, leaving his fellows to winter elsewhere, wintered with eight men and his wife, who there bore him what may well be the first white child born in the New World, named Snorre. The next fall the Skrellings, as they called the Indians, attacked them. Thorfall and his family removed to Stream- firth (Buzzards Bay) and there stayed until little Snorre was three years old.
If Mt. Hope was not Thorfall's Hop, nobody has proved it. It is a fascinating possibility.
After Leif and his sons, it would take five hundred years for the pen of history to record more definitely. But it then began to write with ever increasing speed the chapter that would culminate in the name Somerset.
1
2
HISTORY OF SOMERSET
In 1497, John and Sebastian Cabot cruised to the coast of New England. The next year they explored the coast patiently from Maine to Cape Hatteras, and saw and described Narragansett Bay, whether they came up its Mt. Hope arm or not.
In 1511, Miguel de Cortereal, Portuguese navigator, explored this coast, and left among the various inscriptions on Dighton Rock, as the late Prof. Delabarre thought, his name and the date. Many accept this scientist's detailed and careful studies as conclusive. If they are, Mt. Hope Bay and the Taunton river were definitely entered by the White Man, in 1511.
Certainly, soon thereafter there was a White Man and a great ship in our waters. For the Florentine Verrazano, sailing in 1524, definitely and surely anchored for a few days at Newport, discovered Block Island, and explored Mt. Hope Bay and the Taunton river sufficiently to record that a ship could sail far up its course and that thereafter it might be navigated by "small shallops."
The White Man was getting nearer. When young Bartholomew Gosnold arrived with his merry men in 1602 for a summer's stay on No Man's Land, which he named Martha's Vineyard after his little daughter, he found that Dutch and French trading vessels had become rather frequent visitors to these waters and that the tribal seat of the Wampanoags at Mt. Hope was a favorite trading point of theirs.
The attitude of the Indians showing fear and dislike of the White Man, when, 18 years after Gosnold, the Pilgrims arrived, was explained by them as arising from ill-treatment at the hands of these traders. There is no question that they were in these waters, and had landed both on the Cape and on Mt. Hope. There is no reason why they should not have landed at the populous Indian town reaching from Brayton's Point to Broad Cove, one of the six great villages of the Wampanoags.
Gosnold, in the interval of collecting beaver skins and cedar lumber with which to pay his uncle for his voyage,
3
THE FIRST WHITE MAN
and his evenings of games with the Indians of Sakonnet and Westport, sailed into every bay and inlet from Nantucket Sound to Long Island Sound. He doubtless included Mt. Hope Bay as he included Narragansett Bay in these investiga- tions.
The names of voyagers to the New England shore now became too numerous to follow. In 1606 the Plymouth Company, not to be confused with the Plymouth colony, settled on the Kennebec but got only suffering and failure for their pains.
In 1614, Capt. John Smith, hero of the Pocahontas story, voyaged along New England and made a map of its coast and islands. A schoolboy today could draw a better one, but it included Narragansett Bay, and had the name of. New Plymouth where our Plymouth is today. The Pilgrims had one of his maps with them when they arrived, and it was Capt. John Smith and not they who named their settlement.
The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth on December 21, 1620, with 102 persons. Barely six months later, two of them would become the first White Men of record to set foot on Somerset soil.
The men were Edward Winslow, who would later become governor of Plymouth, and Stephen Hopkins, who had had a son Oceanus born on the Mayflower on the way over. They were bound for Mt. Hope on a courtesy visit to the Wampanoag chief Massasoit and incidentally to learn the extent and numbers of the Wampanoags and the details of their Mt. Hope stronghold.
We cannot know exactly the route these men traveled, but three different Pilgrim colony records furnish much detail concerning it.
They were guided by Squanto, a Wampanoag Indian, who had been three times to England before the date of the Pilgrims' arrival. It was he who had greeted them when they landed with the memorable words "Welcome, English- men." He had been at school a year in England, spoke English well, was at the moment in favor with Massasoit, and altogether was a godsend to the Plymouth settlers. When
4
HISTORY OF SOMERSET
he died, the following year, of the Indian disease of nose- bleed, he was sincerely mourned in all the colonial records.
Squanto guided them northwesterly through the present region of Middleboro to a "knowne ford" of the Taunton river. Here they stopped for the night, sharing the food they had brought with them with the several Indians who had attached themselves to the party. This was a mistaken generosity which taught them something. It was nearly two days before they had another meal.
Next morning they crossed the river and turned south following its course closely and noting that it was cleared and had formerly been cultivated land all the way. But the farms were deserted and grown up to weeds and the frames of the numerous Indian houses stood matless and untenanted. Bradford's journal recounts the situation and the reason vividly :
"They found ye soyle good, & ye people not many, being dead & abundantly wasted in ye late great mortalitie which fell in these parts aboute three years before ye coming of ye English, wherin thousands of them dyed, they not being able to bury one another ; ther sculs and bones were found in many places lying still above ground, where their houses & dwellings had been ; a very sad spectackle to behould."
The Indian trail they followed from the Segreganset river south is perpetuated in the present route of Elm Street. This old trail, winding its way from the Taunton ford to Gardner's Neck, therefore crosses the present Somerset territory bringing the first recorded White man into our boundaries.
Corbitant would have been their ferryman from the Neck to Mt. Hope. That was his business, sachem though he was. His tribe, or sub-tribe, was small and therefore, though he did not like Massasoit, nor get on with him well, he staid very closely under his wing. It was probably too early on this visit, or on the second visit the following year, for Winslow to see toddling around Corbitant's house a little daughter by the pet name of Weetamoe, meaning "Sweet- heart." No revelation of the future would have made him take note of her if he had.
5
THE FIRST WHITE MAN
Massasoit was not at home, but he was sent for and soon arrived. He greeted them with great pleasure and immediately donned with pride the red coat they had brought him for a present. Then they sat down to talk. Having had no food since the night before at the ford, they watched hungrily for the hour of the evening meal. It came, but no meal was served. Many braves joined them around the campfire, and they had more talk, and played several games, but no supper appeared.
Somebody behind the scenes must have been scurrying round because at a late hour an Indian arrived with a small fish. But all partook of it and the individual share was small. Then from somewhere Massasoit scraped up a handful of parched corn. This was the final course and they went to bed. The next morning was even worse. There wasn't even a small fish and some parched corn. Massasoit was visibly embarrassed, but both Red Man and White acted like gentlemen. There was more talk, farewells as brief as the hungry Pilgrims dared make them, and Winslow and Hopkins left.
As soon as they were on the mainland, the two Pilgrims sent a swift runner to Plymouth for someone to meet them with food, and making a forced march themselves they met the food shortly after they had recrossed the ford. They got home the third night of their adventure, very tired and still hungry, but they had learned much, including the wisdom of taking food with them when they went to visit Indians.
And White Men had set their foot at last upon Shaw- omet Lands, the future Somerset.
Winslow visited Mt. Hope again the next year, following the same route, but accompanied this time by "Master John Hampden," who was spending a year at Plymouth and desired to see King Massasoit's people and state. There is no proof that this was the great John Hampden, the merchant whose refusal to pay Charles I's ship tax made him forever a hero in the fight for the people's rights as against the tyranny of kings. But historians feel sure that
6
HISTORY OF SOMERSET
it was he; and that he had come to Plymouth to study the great experiment in liberty which was going on there. He had not yet made his famous defiance. History would not have noted his departure from England on such a visit.
It is, therefore, altogether probable that Somerset lands, whose later inhabitants have unfailingly stood firm and fought for liberty, were early consecrated by one of the great liberty-lovers of the English race.
On this second visit Winslow found that Massasoit had plenty of food on hand and indeed too much. He had made the trip because word had come that there was a Dutch ship ashore at the foot of Mt. Hope and that Massasoit was dying. By the time he arrived the Dutch ship had worked itself free and gone, but Massasoit appeared to be in extremis and could only greet Winslow faintly with "Farewell, Winslow, I shall never see thee again."
By a judicious use of an emetic and a purge, together with sitting by Massasoit all night and feeding him with a thin gruel of water and cornmeal, Winslow brought him through, to the wonder of all the tribe and the definite cementing of the Massasoit friendship that would last for forty years, until his death in 1661.
This was the "great cure" celebrated in colonial history. Its singular outcome is that it brought to Bristol County the first domestic fowl the region had ever had. For when it appeared that Massasoit might revive if fed properly, Winslow despatched a runner to Plymouth for a pair of fowl with which to make a broth. The runner made the trip by water and land to Plymouth and back in a single day. The birds he brought happened to be a male and a female : and the canny Massasoit, now feeling almost well, decided to keep the pair alive and go to raising hens.
There now remained for someone to be the first White Man to settle in Somerset. It was fifty years before he came, by all appearance, but who he was, or why he came or what he did for a living will never be known. Whoever he was, he lived in Somerset Village. When Henry Bowers, Somerset's great merchant of Revolutionary times, was laying out
7
THE FIRST WHITE MAN
Main Street, in 1765, his workmen came upon the foundation of a house or cabin, of which the last stick above ground had disappeared, but with an underground tunnel leading from the cellar to the river waterfront some distance away.
Evidently this tunnel was for escape in case of Indian attack. It was too early in the country's history to need it for smuggling. As for Indian attack, there was nothing of the sort among the Wampanoags up to the time of Massasoit's death in 1661; no threat of it under his elder son Alexander ; and nothing but threats from his successor Philip up to the outbreak of 1675. It seems probable, there- fore, that the elaborate and laborious work of excavating so long a tunnel must have been prompted sometime after Alexander's death in 1662.
In all probability when Philip finally did attack it served its purpose, since there is no record of a White Man's being killed in that vicinity.
SHAWOMET LANDS
THE Somerset of today in extent and boundary is closely identical with the Indians' Shawomet. Precisely what Shawomet included was not defined. Until the White Man's respect for property compelled the Indians to set definite bounds to the land sold and bought, place names were generally for designation, not definition. Hunting and fishing bounds were indeed often meticulously established, as in the case of Lake Chauggamog, near Worcester, whose full name means "I fish on my side of the lake, you fish on your side of the lake, nobody fish in the middle of the lake."
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