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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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JOHN PRESCOTTS
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
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Edmond Parker
M: L.
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
Quindi 7. Mutcomb
March 4. 1938
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Thomas Rowlandfor
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SIGNERS OF THE COVENANT
The Story of Colonial Lancaster (MASSACHUSETTS)
BY MARION FULLER SAFFORD
ILLUSTRATED
Printed and Published by THE TUTTLE PUBLISHING CO., INC. RUTLAND, VERMONT MCMXXXVII
Copyright 1937 THE TUTTLE PUBLISHING CO., INC. RUTLAND, VT.
Preface
1157672
This work was undertaken at the request of the School Com- mittee and the Superintendent of the Lancaster schools. These were Mr. Herbert Reiner, Dr. Franklin Perkins and Mrs. Evelyn Hawkins Fentiman, School Committee, and Derwood Newman, Ed.D., Superintendent of Schools and Principal of the High School. They felt that a book on the early history of the town was needed for use in the schools, as nothing had been written for fifty years and everything then written was out of print.
Some knowledge of the past is necessary to the understanding of the present and it is well to keep in mind the people and the events of those early days, when not only this town but a great nation was in the making.
That this work is incomplete as a history of the town is obvious. It seemed advisable to read all that was available about Lancaster and select what was most important, and put down in more or less chronological order this record of the times. The books used for reference were Early Records and Military Annals of Lancaster, and The History of Harvard by the Hon. Henry S. Nourse; History of Lancaster, by the Reverend A. P. Marvin; a short History of Lancaster taken from Joseph Willard's book printed in 1825, and numerous newspaper articles from the pen of Mr. Nourse. There was no room for reference notes but the sources of all the facts used can be shown. The historical accuracy of the book has been checked by the Reverend Frederick L. Weis, Th.D., whose patience in going over the manuscript has been inexhaustible. His sugges- tions have been valuable. I am deeply indebted to Mr. Charles H. Bemis, of the Editorial Staff of the Boston Evening Transcript, who edited the manuscript as soon as it was produced; to the Reverend Frederick K. Brown, whose camera produced the photo- graphs; to Mrs. Phila Linville Staines, who carefully re-drew the maps; to Dr. W. Elmer Ekblaw of the faculty of Clark University, who edited the appendix chapter on the geology of the town. For moral support I owe much to the Honorable Herbert Parker whose appreciation of my efforts along the lines of local history has been my inspiration.
MARION FULLER SAFFORD
Lancaster, December 1, 1937
Table of Contents
Chapter Page
I The Coming of the White Men-First Steps Toward Settlement-A.D. 1643 I
II Compact with Sholan 1643-1647-The Trading Company . 4
III Plans for First Settlement 1650-1654. 8
IV 1654 The Prudential Men Need Help-A Minister is Settled-John Prescott Builds a Gristmill-A Survey of Town Bounds is Made. I4
V First Justice of the Peace, John Tinker-Major Simon Willard-John Prescott's Saw-mill. I8
VI 1657-1670 The Book of Lands-Town Roads- Treatment of Undesirable Persons. . 22
VII Paving the Way to Disaster 1670-1675. 26
VIII The Indians Strike Their First Blow 1675 30
IX The Massacre of 1675 /6 34
X Help Sent Too Late. 38
XI Raids Extended to Other Settlements-Mrs. Row- landson's Ransom 1676-1680. 40
XII Recovery of Captives-Punishment of Indians 1676. 43
XIII Rebuilding the Town 1680-1690. 46
XIV Fear of Raids-A New Attack 1690-1697 50
XV French and Indian Attacks 1697-1704. 54
XVI Meetinghouse Controversies 1704-1707. 57
XVII More Indian Raids-1707-1710-Petition for the Additional Grant. . 60
XVIII The Scar Bridge Road-Renewal of the Church Covenant 1708. 64
XIX Bridges a Source of Trouble 17II 66
XX Rapid Extension of Settlements 17II-1720. 68
XXI An Illiterate and Wilful Town Clerk-The Meet- inghouse Enlarged in 1725. 71
XXII Raids on the Indians-Bounty for Scalps-Love- well's War 1722-1726 74
Chapter Page
XXIII Country Life Around 1730. 77
XXIV 1730 Harvard Seeks Independence-Other Towns Follow. 83
XXV Two New Meetinghouses 1742-1744
87
XXVI Fifteen Years of Peace 1725-1740. 89
XXVII King George's War 1744-1749. 92
XXVIII Indian Raids on a New Frontier 1740. 95
XXIX End of the Ministry of Reverend John Prentice- Reverend Timothy Harrington Succeeds Him 1748 99
XXX The Centennial Year 1753. 102
XXXI Lancaster's Part in the Conquest of Canada 1754- 1755. IO4
XXXII The Acadian Expedition 1755. IO7
XXXIII The Acadian Refugees in Lancaster, Crown Point, Lake George and Ticonderoga 1756-1759. ..... .
III
XXXIV Colonel Willard's Orderly Book-The End of the War 1759-1762. II5
XXXV Town Annals Around 1766. II8
XXXVI Town Meetings I26
XXXVII Rumors of War-1765-Looking Forward to Independence. 129
XXXVIII Lancaster Loyalists. I35
XXXIX The Lexington Alarm 1775 140
XL Bunker Hill and the Siege of Boston 1775 . 142
XLI Concerning Finances 1775 . 149
XLII Surrender at Yorktown-Shays' Rebellion 1781- 1787. I55
XLIII More of Mother Lancaster's Children Come of Age 161 XLIV The Lancastrian Towns at the Close of the Revo- lution. 166
XLV The Important People in Lancaster at the End of the Colonial Period. 169
XLVI "The Old Order Changeth, Yielding Place to New" 172 Appendix Geology and Geography of Lancaster. 176
Index 185
Illustrations
Signers of the Covenant Frontispiece Facing Page
Outline Map of the Original Purchase.
6
Site of the Trading Post. . 22
Site of the First Two Meetinghouses.
54
Site of the Third Meetinghouse, Bridecake Plain . 86
Site of the Fourth Meetinghouse and Little Common 86
An Englishman's Idea of King Philip I34
Old Swan Swamp 172
Maps-Home Lots of the First Settlers End Papers
The Story of Colonial Lancaster
CHAPTER I
The Coming of the White Men-First Steps Toward Setttement -A. D. 1643
THREE CENTURIES HAVE PASSED SINCE WHITE MEN FIRST LOOKED upon the site of old Lancaster. The territory all about us was the home of a small tribe of red men, known as the Nashaways. They were independent, although they spoke the same language as the Indians of the coast towns, which also was that of the Nipmucks, the Quabaugs, and the River Indians who dwelt to the south and west of them. In war, these Massachusetts tribes were allied against their common foes-the Mohawks and Mohe- gans.
Before the coming of the white men, the Nashaways had been powerful and prosperous; but wars and disease had greatly reduced their numbers. They had been visited by a dreadful pestilence, in 1612. Again, in 1633, small-pox had swept away hundreds more, leaving only a few hundreds of the former thousands, in Massa- chusetts. Thus, in the belief of the Pilgrims and the Puritans, a special dispensation of Providence laid open the way for chosen people of God to come into this new land, even as into Canaan of old.
There were three groups, or villages, of these Nashaway Indians: one at the eastern base of Mt. Wachusett; another on a little plateau between the two little lakes of Washacum; a third near the meeting of the two branches of the river which was called by the pioneers the "Penecook," but long since known as the Nashua. Nashaway, or Nashawog, in the Indian tongue means the place between, or land in the angle made by two rivers, and is descriptive of the locality. The central, and largest, village was at
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THE STORY OF COLONIAL LANCASTER
Washacum, and there was the home of the sachem who ruled over his little empire. He seems most often to have been called Sholan, though we find him called Showanon, Nashowanon, Shaumaus, Shoniow, and Nashacowam. So, also, we find his subjects called by the names of their native villages; and the Eng- lish spoke of them as Wachusetts, and Washacums, as well as Nashaways.
No one knows where these red men came from or how long they had been here; but these fertile valleys, with running streams and intervales easily cultivated, dotted with elm and walnut trees, must have been a favorite dwelling place for many ages.
The name of this Nashaway sachem, Sholan, appears often in early Colonial papers, always as the friend of the white men. John Eliot, the saintly apostle to the Indians, visited the Nasha- ways four times in the summer of 1648 and claimed, by his own efforts, to have converted Sholan, and many of his followers, to the Christian faith.
Among the Englishmen whom Sholan came to know in his visits to "the Bay," as Boston and its vicinity was called, was Thomas King, of Watertown, whom Sholan particularly liked. He urged King to visit him at Wachacum, and offered him generous grants of land, upon the condition that King would set up a trading post near by, where the Indians could exchange their furs and wampum for iron kettles, weapons, cloths, beads, and for novelties which had been brought from England. The Indians already had acquired a taste for rum, and although it was soon prohibited, clandestine selling of rum was carried on, and at great profit to white men. A gallon of cheap rum brought the equivalent of twenty shillings-a beaver skin.
Thomas King accepted Sholan's invitation and, as far as we know, he was the first white man to cross over the Wataquadock range which spans the horizon to the East of the town. That was in 1642. He came by the Indian trail which later was called the Bay Path.
We may imagine King, astride his horse, gazing at the scene which spread out before him from the top of Wataquadock hill.
The civilization of three hundred years has not changed this broad and beautiful landscape. To the north, King must have viewed the picturesque peaks in New Hampshire-the Temple Hills, Jo English, and the Uncanoonucks, with the sharp cone of
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THE STORY OF COLONIAL LANCASTER
Monadnock rising above them. Near by, were the Pack Monad- nocks, which tradition tells us were dropped off from the "pack" of the giant who brought Monadnock down out of the north. In the middle distance he saw Wachusett Mountain. The Indian name means "the Great Hill." Near by hills were Monoosnock in Leominster and Watatic in Ashburnham. In the foreground were the George Hill range and the hills in Sterling. At his feet stretched the fertile intervales, and the river, winding its way through the valley.
Although the section must have been much more heavily wooded then, we are told that it was not a wilderness. Twice each year the Indians fired the woods to free them from underbrush-the better to protect themselves from some stealthy foe, also to help in the pursuit of game. In that way the woods about their homes had come to look like huge parks, passable even for horsemen. The fertile meadows were burned bare of trees and brush-wood, and grew coarse grasses, "some as high as the shoulders." Even the austere Puritan must have been impressed with the beauty of the scene!
King's visit to Sholan resulted in the establishment of a trading post. He was a poor man, but he succeeded in interesting in the enterprise one Henry Symonds, a freemen, a capitalist, and a successful contractor living at the head of what is now North Street, in Boston. Together they bargained with Sholan. No deed of sale was ever found; but later events disclosed the fact that the purchase-price paid to the Indians was twelve pounds, for a strip of land ten miles long from north to south by eight miles wide. All of the land of Lancaster, Clinton, Bolton, Berlin and much of Harvard, Boylston and Sterling, was included in this territory. An additional grant after the turn of the century included Leo- minster and Sterling.
For the site of the trading post they chose a spot by the side of a little brook, at the parting of two trails; one that led to the westward towards Wachusett Mountain, the other, to the south- west towards the home of the Quabaug Indians. This latter site is on the southeastern slope of George Hill. There they erected their trucking house, the first building put up by white men in the Nashua valley. It was at the frontier. There was nothing be- yond the hill which shadowed this first store save forests, and savages-and the unknown.
4
THE STORY OF COLONIAL LANCASTER 1
CHAPTER II
Compact with Sholan 1643-1647 The Trading Company
THIS FIRST TRADING COMPANY WAS SHORT-LIVED, FOR HENRY Symonds died within a year, and Thomas King lived but a few months longer.
The next proprietor was John Cowdall, a trader from Boston. Soon, however, we find that a company, of which Cowdall was a member, bought the rights to the territory, and signed a compact with Sholan. There was a provision in the deed that restricted the purchasers, or their successors, from "molesting the Indians in their hunting, fishing, or usual planting places." It was evident that it was expected that the Whites and the Indians would live together in the land, in peace and harmony.
The Nashaway Company, having signed a compact, at once began the assignment of home lots among its members and to seek legal sanction from the authorities at Boston for their under- taking. They received a favorable reply to their petition on May 19, 1644, and from that time on, the names of the co-partners appear in various records.
At the head of the list stand the names of two graduates of Cambridge University, England-Nathaniel Norcross and Robert Childe. It was expected that Reverend Nathaniel Norcross would become the pastor of the Plantation. Robert Childe was a scholar, a traveller, and an intimate friend of John Winthrop, Jr. A third partner was Stephen Day, a locksmith. He had become well known, as he had set up, at Harvard College, in 1639, the first printing press in America. Day was a strong promoter of the com- pany's interests: he often entertained Indians and prospective planters at his home in Cambridge.
Four workers in iron were in this company: John Prescott, Harmon Garrett, John Hill, and Joseph Jenckes. They expected to find valuable ore, especially iron, in these New England hills.
The names of eleven others appear in the company's records. The partners were from various walks in life. Their first step was to send out men to build houses, store provender for wintering
5
THE STORY OF COLONIAL LANCASTER
cattle, enclose within a fence a "night pasture," for protection of their stock from wild animals at night and prepare the fields for grain.
Three men from Watertown, Richard Linton, his son-in-law, Lawrence Waters, a carpenter, and John Ball, were the first employed. They were given lots, and built for themselves the first dwelling houses in the Plantation. Their lands lay in the vicinity of the Lancaster railroad station.
These men were not destined to become the actual settlers of the Plantation. In his History of New England, John Winthrop wrote, in 1644, "the persons interested in the Plantation being most of them poor men, and some of them corrupt in judgment, and others profane, it went on very slowly, so that in two years they had not three houses built there and he whom they had called to be their minister left them for their delays."
In those days, to be "corrupt in judgment" or "profane" meant that these men were not members of the church.
Perhaps greed of land, and expectation of mineral wealth influenced some to join the company. However, one by one, they lost interest in the enterprise, and every member of the copartner- ship, save the stalwart John Prescott, deserted.
One great obstacle in the way of the settlement was the danger and difficulty of approach to the town because of the crossing the Sudbury river and marsh. The planters petitioned the Governor and Magistrates for a bridge across this river, "for transporting our persons, cattle and goods." They were granted a mere twenty pounds, and for a hundred years travellers in seasons of flood were forced to make long detours. The men in authority in Boston were not interested in the success of the enterprise. Indeed they felt little interest in Prescott, who, at the time was not a freeman, as he had not joined the church and even was supposed to be in sympathy with some of the politically unsound views of Dr. Childe. Prescott however, had taken the oath of fidelity and, without benefit of the approval of the men in authority, had assumed the place which he held throughout his long life, at the head of the community.
There is nothing to disprove that, from the first, Prescott was other than a sincere Christian-even austere in his religious views. He had sold his estate in Watertown and, packing his household goods upon horses, had set out with his family, through
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THE STORY OF COLONIAL LANCASTER
the woods, by way of the long Indian trail, to establish his new home in the Nashaway Plantation. At the very outset he met with disaster which might have changed the whole story, for "he lost a horse and his lading in the Sudbury river, and a week after, his wife and children being upon another horse, were hardly saved from drowning."
Tradition tells us that Prescott's first choice of a home lot in this broad valley, was the site of the present civic center of this town. Here he planned to build his home upon the "Neck of Land," which spread out between the rivers. This would have been near the only two dwellings already erected-those of Waters and Linton. In the light of later events that lot would have proven a wiser choice, as it would not have been so easy for a surprise attack by the Indians: but the pioneers had nothing to guide them in their dealings with this hitherto unknown race of men and, at the time of settling, the Indians were very friendly.
So John Prescott sold his land in what long has been called the Center, to Ralph Houghton, and established his family at the foot of George Hill, where a beginning had been made at the trucking house, which he had bought from John Cowdall.
John Prescott was born in 1604, in the hamlet of Shevington, in the parish of Standish, Lancashire, England. His ancestors can be traced back in direct line to Charlemagne, in the 9th century. He married Mary Platts, at Wigan, in 1629. He is suppos- ed to have been a soldier in England, and to have left that Country to avoid persecution. He first sailed to Barbados, in 1638, thence to Boston, in 1640. He owned one hundred twenty-six acres of land in Watertown, where he resided, and soon became interested in the Nashaway Company.
Hon. Henry S. Nourse, Historian of the Nashua Valley, gives us the following picture of this man, who was destined to become the founder of Lancaster: "We get very few glimpses of Prescott from the meager records of succeeding years, but those serve to show that he was busy, prosperous and annually honored by his neighbors with the public duties for which his sturdy integrity fitted him" * ** * * "John Prescott was a rare type of man, an ideal pioneer. Not one of the famous frontiersmen, whose figures stand out so prominently in early American history, was better equipped with manly qualities that win hero worship in a new country, than the father of the Nashaway Plantation. Had Pres-
N MAP OF LANCASTER 1653 - 1883 SCALE 1/4"SIMILE
LUNENBURG 1728
NORTH
Uncachewalunk
Massapodq. |
GROTON
5
SHIRLEY
AYER
---
-
NOTOWN
, LEOMINSTER 1740
LANCASTER 1653
7 PENE COOK
Bare Hill
1732
BOXBORO 1783
STERLING 1781
BOLTON 1738
1
LLEG !
Washacum
--- 2
CLINTON
.. HUDSON 1868
1866
BERLIN 1784
-
WEST . BOYLSTON! 1805
MARLBOROUGH
BOYLSTON 1786.
NORTHBORO 1766
HOYES SURVEY 1659 "THE MILE" NEW GRANT SURVEY TOWN LIMITS 1883 WADING PLACES X
1711
RIVER
HARVARD
LITTLE TON
SHREWSBURY
STOW
MASHAWAY
-
FITCHBURG
K
RIVER
7
THE STORY OF COLONIAL LANCASTER
cott, like Daniel Boone, been fortunate in the favor of contem- porary historians, to perpetuate anecdotes of his daily prowess and fertility of resource, his name and romantic adventures would adorn colonial annals. Persecuted for his opinions, he went out into the wilderness to found a home and for forty years he fought, thought and wrought to make his home the center of a prosperous community."
"Having no likeness of Prescott, we must trust to tradition, which portrays a man of commanding stature, stern of mien and strong of limb, and a heart devoid of fear; great physical endurance, and unbending will. His manual skill and dexterity must have been great; his mental capacity and business energy remarkable; for we find him not only a farmer, trader, blacksmith and hunter, but a surveyor, builder of roads, bridges and mills. Prescott was a Puritan soldier, a seeker of liberty, not license: rebellious against tyranny, but no contemner of constituted authority or moral law. His neighbors and friends-John Tinker, Simon Willard and Reverend Joseph Rowlandson, doubtless exceeded him in culture, but could not surpass him in personal force, either mental or moral."
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THE STORY OF COLONIAL LANCASTER
CHAPTER III
Plans for First Settlement 1650-1654
LITTLE WAS ACCOMPLISHED TOWARD SETTLEMENT OF THE PLANTA- tion before 1650. Gradually, as the first partners lost interest and sold their holdings, others took their places and joined the colony. Prescott's goal of a township was already in sight. As yet there was neither church nor school.
When the petition asking rights for a township went to the General Court, in 1652, it stated that there were living at Nasha- way "about nine familyes." There had been born ten white children in the settlement, two to Prescott, five to Waters, two to Sawyer and one to Daniel Hudson.
The petition requested that the town "be called Prescott" in honor of their leader. The General Court at first granted this request: then someone in authority, remembering that not even a governor of the colony had been honored in this way objected to exalting this blacksmith, who was not even a freeman, and substituted an amendment which was carried, "that it shall be called henceforth 'West Towne.'" This was not an appropriate name, as Springfield was farther west, and the name was not accepted by the planters. At least then they would ask to honor their leader by remembering his home in England, and another petition went up asking that the town be called 'Lancaster.' This request was answered on the 16th of May, 1653, in a decree which stated that "the name of it be henceforth called Lancaster." The decree further set forth that, "although the first Undertakers and partners in the Plantacon of Nashaway are wholly evacuated of their claims, yet such as have contributed to the ministry and to the purchase from the Indians or any public work shall be repaid in allotment of lands, provided they make use of such lands within three years by building and planting."
Now that the Court had ratified the Indian purchase, all were required to take the oath of fidelity and to provide for the ministry. Six men were chosen to advance "the settling of the place." These men were John Prescott and Ralph Houghton, from Watertown;
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THE STORY OF COLONIAL LANCASTER
Edward Breck from Dorchester, William Kerley from Sudbury, Nathaniel Hadlock from Charlestown (who died before he was settled here) and Thomas Sawyer from Rowley. These were called "prudential men," and they were ordered to "send down one able man to be sworn before some magistrate, for the con- stable of the plantacion."
Surely no one could call men "corrupt in judgment," whose agreements and acts of incorporation were, first of all, "for the maintainance of the ministry of God's holy word;" establishment of church land, and for "a meeting-house for the public assembling of the church and people of God;" to build a house for the minister, and to pay him. There is another article in the agreement headed "What inhabitants not to be admitted." They then agreed to "end all differences by arbitration." Furthermore, they agreed to be taxed, according to their means; and to respect the law of "equality" of men, in regard to the division of lands. It all seems, after nearly three hundred years, to have been very wise, far- sighted, and fair-aside from the matter of religious tolerance. Persecuted for their religious opinions as they had been in Eng- land, they still had no tolerance for the belief of those who differed from them, and they were determined that all who came to live in the Utopia which they had planned should accept the Puritan's religion.
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