USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Milton > Three hundred years of Milton 1662-1962 > Part 1
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Gc 974.402 M642mil 1904579
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 00082 9595
THREE HUNDRED YEARS OF
MILTON
+ LIOS
EUS NOBIS
ÆCOTIA FE
1662 -1962
MILTON . MASSACHUSETTS
Spfrom nowin famies uthorten sing cevallos moky 51 Sconszex Clap: Reger (umnie were appointed, fithings man in milton by the select, men for the grace 16817:
the 10 of march 16812. John Einfly was appointed of the fai directed by the filed men to Bee Clave's of the market in the Course of millon: 100.
at a publick Town ming in million 82 it was then volo lui the town that sucks family in the Town Should nowing warning to help with a hand or fromi to mand the high ways and if any yfor wike defective it should To gathered 4. the Constable in the next down Rata bu aware of this filect mon to God disposer of for the Coun rp:
John, Einfly wat hajon !? m+ 82 to to the Charge of the write in the Town of million: July 82 John Einfly was approfit of the Country Carte Church of the write 2022,
PAGE FROM MILTON TOWN RECORDS
THREE HUNDRED YEARS OF
MILTON Mass
1662 -1962
GC 974.402 M 642mil
1904579
Preface
T HIS little booklet has been published by the committee charged with planning the observance in 1962 of the three-hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of the Town of Milton. The text reproduces the spoken words of the actors in the pageant which was part of that observance.
Each impersonator in that bit of pageantry portrayed a real person who once lived in our town. Each of these former Milton residents, evoked from the past, was thus enabled to tell the townspeople of today what Milton was like in his time, and of the life and events of which he was a part. As a group they have given us a clear retrospect of Milton's three hundred years.
Also included in this booklet are a number of maps which show our town at various stages in its long history, as well as a selection of pictures of people and places as they were many years ago.
5-24-6 Gesto Kommen May 1962
MILTON TERCENTENARY COMMITTEE
Charles F. Batchelder, Chairman Joseph M. Cronin Frank B. Frederick Edward P. Hamilton Florence L. Wall
D
Cast of Characters and the Date of Which Each Speaks
Thomas Morton 1626
Kitchamakin 1636
Richard Collecot 1640
Robert Tucker
1665
Abigail Wadsworth 1680
Peter Thacher
1700
Thomas Vose 1760
Thomas Hutchinson 1774
Rachel Vose
1790
Stephen Miller 1800
John Gourgas
1810
Benjamin Crehore 1832
Terence Fitzsimmons 1841
Nathan Martin 1860
Mary A. Cunningham 1900
A. Lawrence Rotch 1910 Charles S. Pierce 1948
Charles F. Batchelder 1962
Thomas Morton, 1626
I AM Thomas Morton, gentleman, once a lawyer of Lincoln's Inn, London, but later a fur trader at Wollaston on Boston Bay. I hear that history has been unkind to me, and makes me out a drunkard and a scoundrel, but remember that that history was written by those cant- ing hypocrites of Plymouth and Boston. They did their drinking behind locked doors. I used to hunt a great deal in the Milton region (the Indians called it Unquity) during the 1620's, and it was a fine country, full of game. The turkeys were so common that I got tired of eating them. The land was not all forest; many parts of it were largely open country, much like the parks of the gentry in Old England. The Indians used to burn the underbrush every year for their plantings, so there were many fields, often with great trees scattered through them. Of course there also were swamps and thickets, but newcomers to the re- gion were always surprised to find that the wilderness they had expected scarcely existed at all. It was wonderful country, and nearly empty ex- cept for the wild animals that abounded, for almost all the Indians had died in the great plague a few years before.
Kitchamakin, 1636
M Y brother Chickataubut was chief of the Neponset tribe of Indi- ans, but smallpox killed him, and now I am the chief. He did not like the white men much, but I get along with them finely, and I have just sold to the men of Dorchester most of our land south of the Neponset River. We do not need it for there are not many of my people
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INDIAN WIGWAMS One is covered with grass mats lashed down with cords, while the bark covering of the other is held in place
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left. I have about threescore in my tribe, and there are about as many more living along the north shore of Boston Bay. All the rest died in the great sickness twenty years ago, and there are no other of my race nearer than three day's travel to the west. We Neponset Indians spend the summer near the lower falls of our river where we catch quantities of fish of all kinds, and in winter we build our wigwams, made of frames of sticks covered with grass mats and skins, back in the Blue Hills, where there are lots of rabbits and deer. Sometimes we do a little work for the white men, but we do not do much, and the days to come will take care of themselves.
Richard Collecot, 1640
M Y name is Collecot, Richard Collecot. I was a member of the Dorchester Company that was formed in England and came here to settle along Boston Bay. We had title to all the land from there south to the Providence Plantation, save for what the Pilgrims of Plymouth held. But no white man lived there for many years, except along the shore of the Bay. In 1634 my good friend Israel Stoughton built a grist- mill on the lower falls of the Neponset, and the place became known as Unquity, and then later as Milton, but do not ask me why. Perhaps the name came from Old England or perhaps it was because of the mill. Stoughton and I went to war together in 1637 to quiet the Pequot Indi- ans. He was the commander, and I was the supply officer of the expedi- tion. We got some Indian slaves, and I was lucky enough to get one for myself, a nice little squaw. Most of my time I spend trading with the Indians for furs. Sometimes I go as far south as Cape Cod, but there is not much fur left in these regions today, and I have to travel farther afield. When Stoughton built his mill, he put up a bridge over the river, and that same year I started the first house in Unquity, very near where your Adams and Centre Streets of today come together. At first I did
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not live there much, but kept a servant or two to look after the place. My Dorchester house was my base, but I was always on the move in those days, and did much trading in the regions you now call Maine. I had a little shallop which I sailed down along the coast. But I also owned quite a lot of land in Unquity and lived there for a while in my later years, and then finally moved to Boston.
A few years after I built my little house John Glover started his farm near what you now call Turner's Pond (you really should call it Glover's Pond, you know) and he had a big farm there with many cattle. All the cows of the Dorchester people also used to be pastured in Milton just south of the Neponset. Early every morning the town cowherds blew their horns and everyone turned his cows out into the street. The cow- herds drove them over the river into the pasture land, watched them all day, and brought them back at night. Of course there were wolves in those days, but they prowled the Blue Hills and kept away. Besides they were scary beasts and would never hurt a man, although a lamb or a stray calf would almost certainly fall prey to them if it wandered away after dark.
Robert Tucker, 1665
I AM Robert Tucker, a farmer on Brush Hill, and the house I built is still standing there. I came to Milton in 1663, a year after it was set off from Dorchester by the General Court and became a separate town, but there was not much settlement here in those days. A rough little road went from the gristmill bridge up over Milton Hill, the Bay Path to Plymouth, and what you today call Canton Avenue ran to the west as far as Glover's Pond. Our little meetinghouse stood on Milton Hill, where your Churchill's Lane branches off, but it was a simple little building, of boards with a roof of thatch. It was at about that time that we stopped making roofs of thatch, for they caught fire too easily. I lived way up on Brush Hill, but I got down to the other part of town quite
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PEAK HOUSE, MEDFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
The best known example of the first type of permanent housing built by the earliest settlers. The very sharp roof indicates that it probably was originally thatched. (Soc. Pres. N. E. Antiquities)
LUCKY STRIKE
OYSTER SHELL DREDGED FROM NEPONSET RIVER "The oisters be great ones in form of a shoo horn-"
ROBERT TUCKER HOUSE
The oldest house still standing in Milton, it represents the second and more ambitious type of house construction.
often. There was not a great deal there, and most of the people lived along the road over Milton Hill. Their houses were usually two stories high, clapboarded but without paint. The newer ones had roofs of shin- gles. The barns were pretty small, almost what you now would call sheds. Pigs ran loose everywhere, with board collars around their necks or big rings in their noses so they would not root up the crops. The old Indian fields were pasture land for sheep, cows, and horses. There were not many of us in those days when we first became a town, perhaps 250 in all, man, woman, and child, and some twoscore houses were scattered over the town.
We had a little meetinghouse, as I said before, but at that time there was no regularly organized church in the town, a most unusual condi- tion, because the General Court insisted that no town should be incor- porated unless it had its own church. We had a temporary minister most of the time, but some of us still went to the Dorchester meetinghouse on Sundays.
I was lucky with my farm and all went well, so that I guess you would say that I was pretty prosperous for the times. Anyway only a few men
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paid a larger town tax than I did. We grew barley and rye, but mostly Indian corn, and we had all sorts of vegetables, with lots of peas, excel- lent for a hearty soup in winter. There were still lobsters to be found on the Neponset flats at low tide, and clams were so plentiful that we often fed them to our swine. Sometimes we ate the alewives that swarmed up our brooks and the river, but mostly we used them for fertilizer. The wolves still howled in the Blue Hills, but they never bothered my stock, and the wolf pits we dug near where you now have an M.D.C. skating rink kept them pretty well thinned out.
All in all we led a happy life here in Milton. There was plenty still to do, more land to clear, stone walls to build, and roads to mend, but there also was a little leisure and chance to enjoy the fruit of our toil.
Abigail Wadsworth, 1680
I AM Abigail Wadsworth, widow. My husband, Captain Samuel Wadsworth, was killed in the Indian war four years ago. We had always thought that the Indians were our friends, and some of them lived in our houses as servants, but that wicked King Philip stirred them up and they tried to kill us all. Samuel had always been one of the lead- ing men in Milton since we moved here in 1656. He held many town offices and was a selectman for the last six years of his life. When the Indian war started, Samuel was made captain of a company raised in these parts and he was away on active service on the frontier all that winter of 1675-76. I hardly saw him at all. Late in April the Indians raided Marlborough and Samuel marched his company there. Then the Indians turned on Sudbury, and the company rushed there to head them off, but they were ambushed on the way, and Samuel and half the company were all killed.
Not many Milton men went off to this war. Sergeant Robert Badcock went and so did Selectman Thomas Swift, but most remained at home to guard the town, for Indians raided almost into Milton, although they
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never quite got here. They murdered people in Braintree, you call it Quincy today, and in Weymouth. So we kept our doors barred and our guns ready at hand. There were hard times for all of us after the war, but three of my six boys were big enough to keep the farm going and we made out.
LACROIX
WADSWORTH HOUSE
Peter Thacher, 1700
I AM the Reverend Peter Thacher, the first regular minister to the good people of Milton. Of course there were ministers before me, but they were only temporary and there was no regular organized church until I came here in 1680 from Barnstable on Cape Cod. I found a pleas- ant little town with about 400 people in it. A new meetinghouse had recently been built on Vose's Lane, near what you now call Centre Street, and the old one on Milton Hill was being used for a school. There was quite a sizable little settlement at the lower falls of the Neponset, where there had long been a gristmill, and a gunpowder mill and a fulling mill to process our woolen homespuns have since been added. They are talk-
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ing of putting up a sawmill also. Down on the edge of the marshes the Badcocks are building an occasional ocean-going ship in their boat yard, and many smaller ones. But there really is no one village, my people are scattered all over the township. Most of them live in the eastern part, although I myself built a house a few years ago on the plains south of the upper falls of the river. Today you call it Mattapan.
Of course everyone comes to church on Sunday. They like to listen to my sermons, for it gives them something to think about, a change from the everyday life of the farm. They really no longer have to come, for the rigid old way of Puritan life has greatly changed for the better, and new sects, like the Baptists, are now allowed to worship in peace. An Anglican church has just been established next door in Braintree. But the Milton people all come to our meetinghouse on Sunday, both morning and afternoon. Most bring their lunch with them, and the noon- ing time is a great social occasion. Our farms are scattered all over town, and this is the one day in the week when we can all get together, for worship certainly, but also, we all know, for gossip as well, and a general good time. I would not have it any other way, for I like a little pleasure myself, perhaps hunting deer in the Blue Hills, bowling on the green, or playing on my bull fiddle in the evening for a few friends, and then smoking my pipe while we all sip some of the cordial I make in my little still.
Probably I should not say it, but I must be honest and tell you that I am a wealthy man, probably the richest in the town and not at all de- pendent on the salary the town pays me as minister. Most of this comes in what we call "country pay", meat, corn, and vegetables, all products of the soil. Hard coin is always scarce in the colony. I operate a good- sized farm, and I have horses, cows, sheep, and swine, with two black slaves to help me run it, and another in the house to assist Mistress Thacher. Sometimes I import goods from England for sale in Boston, and at times I export some of my horses to the West Indies for sale there.
We still hear the wolves howling in the Blue Hills, but there are not many left. Traps and wolf pits got rid of most of them. One of my old friends, a man named Pitcher, once missed some of his vegetables, so he dug himself a big wolf pit and carefully covered it over. Next morning
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Dec. 26.1716. Brother Samuel Anderos of Dorchester Villa Não Brother Peter sion before me at my house (Deacon juifs, Deacon Jucker Jeni. Deacon Jucker Juni? Deacon Wadsworth Seiutenant boje being present) after Being with prayer we gave Bro. Andros liberty to declare his offences than we gave foro Peter sion liberty to make his defence; Then we received & Evidence Anderes produces to prove his offence; After a full de: Gate we found Pever sion Legally guilty & to brought him to make a confession & Bro. Anders by brethren prefant Express of lechiffaction & fo he was fo forgiven sithen we closed with prayer & prayle. June 2.1717. m Elizabeth & m Sarah Gul: liver being propounded to y thr ?Congre gation in milton as defireing to cure yo. Covenant & come under y watch & difepime of y ERR & to have Graphyme, y tin vote. y Affirmative:
Octo. 24: 1718. im George Jumner Rad Ris lifter m Elizabeth Sumner before me for Ican Talizing his Owne mother & represented her as a witch & I had y presence of reason. Tucker Jeni? & Deacon Jucker Junis Lica- con J. Was worth & Secutenant boje to be present & in john Badcock & withoffer S we found in Elizabeth Summer quils of bread of the fifth fix, si ninth commandm & the confessed her fault & craved forgiveness of god & of all whome ffic i'm offended& mg- Hummer shy refr received fatifaction & to for gave her. & I was to lightsy to y Chtiger by that latifaction was given & taken.
PAGE OF RECORDS OF MILTON CHURCH The handwriting is that of Rev. Peter Thacher.
he found one of his neighbors caught in it, and the man ever afterwards was nicknamed "Pitcher's Wolf".
Life is pleasant here in Milton, and my people are prosperous and happy, with all the trials and hard times that followed King Philip's War now well behind us. The road into Boston is quite good and I often go to town to the Thursday lecture, what you might call a prayer meet- ing, do a little shopping perhaps, and come back before nightfall. Or sometimes I spend the night with my old classmate Judge Sewall, while we discuss a few weighty matters as well as some of the pranks of our college days.
Thomas Vose, 1760
I AM Captain Thomas Vose, captain because three years ago I led a troop of horse off to war when we heard that Ft. William Henry on Lake George was besieged by the French. But we were too late; the fort fell before we got there, and the Indians massacred many of our soldiers.
My house is on the Stoughton Road at what you now call Atherton Street and my farm covers over a hundred acres. I am not among the rich men of the town, such as Samuel Miller, who owns 900 acres and has five negro slaves, but we are comfortable and live well. Often I have the teacher of the West School, which is just down the road, boarding here. I have just helped my boy Daniel set up a partnership with his cousin, Joe Fenno, to start a store at the lower falls village. There is getting to be quite a little settlement there now. The gunpowder mill blew up a few years ago, but the paper mill is doing well, and there are also two fulling mills and a snuff mill, as well as the old gristmill that has always been there. It is a busy place these days. Then there are the mills at the upper falls at Mattapan, where the slitting mill cuts iron bars into the small rods out of which they make nails. There are about 700 people living in Milton, in 115 houses, and there are in all 14 slaves, 179 horses, 176 oxen, 388 cows, and 1,359 sheep.
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Thomas Hutchinson, 1774
I AM Thomas Hutchinson, late his Majesty's governor of Massachu- setts Bay. I am not really a Milton man, Boston has been my home, but my summer cottage on Milton Hill has, since 1743, been the place I loved the best. Now I must leave it all and cross the seas to England, but I shall come back after the present disturbances are over. General Gage has relieved me as governor, and I think that when I am in Eng- land I can help smooth out the difficulties between the home country and the colonies that have been plaguing us so much the last few years. If only my King could see a little more clearly the point of view of my people, and they in turn would realize that it was only fair and just that they should pay some tax to help protect the empire and themselves. Men in England are taxed far more than they are here. But Sam Adams and his Liberty Boys have stirred things up so much that logic and com- mon sense are forgotten. Men of reason face difficult days ahead. I shall do all that I can to reconcile my country and my King.
Rachel Vose, 1790
I WAS born Rachel Smith. My father was Jeremiah Smith, who came to this country from Northern Ireland over sixty years ago. When the paper mill was built at the lower falls, he moved to Milton to manage it for the proprietors, but he soon bought out their interest and became the sole owner. It was the first paper mill built north of Philadelphia and it was the training school for many of the men who later set up mills elsewhere in these parts. My husband Daniel owns the mill now, as well as the little distillery, but his main business is that of wholesale mer- chant supplying the storekeepers of the Neponset Valley with their goods. He is the leading businessman of Milton.
It was here in my house in the village at the lower mills that the Suffolk Resolves were signed by the members of the county convention
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THE SUFFOLK RESOLVES HOUSE As it formerly stood in the Village.
in the fall of 1774, and then Paul Revere rushed them to Philadelphia to the Continental Congress, where they made a big stir. You can talk all you want about the Declaration of Independence, but I say that the Suffolk Resolves were what started the whole thing, and they were voted and signed right here in my house.
Daniel was lieutenant of one of the companies of Minute Men, but they never got to the Concord fight, they had too far to go. Then he was captain of an artillery company during the siege of Boston, but that was all the military service he did. Many other Milton men served in the war at one time or another, but after the British left Boston, the war became pretty far away, and we had quite a struggle to keep things going during the hard times that followed.
The town has grown a lot since I knew it as a girl. They built the new meetinghouse four years ago on the Canton Road on the hill near the
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road that goes to Thacher's Plain. We had a great time when they auc- tioned off the pews. Daniel got a good one, but he had to pay a lot for it. All the town, except for the poor rocky land in the Blue Hills, is now taken up by farms. There must be at least 1,200 people here these days, and the road over Milton Hill is a busy one all day long.
J
I
BADLAM MIRROR
This painting, supposed to have been made by Gen. Badlam, shows part of Milton Village just before 1800. The view is south and east and Milton Hill should (but does not) show in the background. In center foreground on the Dorchester side is shown the first fire en- gine house, while beyond it at the extreme left is the old paper mill. One of the small buildings in center background is Daniel Vose's distillery, and under the arch appears John Lillie's shop.
Stephen Miller, 1800
I AM Colonel Stephen Miller, and I now live in New Brunswick. You may call me a Tory, but I say that I am a loyal Englishman. My grandfather had the old inn on Milton Hill, and he did very well with it. My father, Samuel Miller, who lived on top of Tucker Hill, where your Hillside Street joins the road to what you now call Randolph, was almost the richest man in Milton. He was selectman and moderator of town meeting for many years, and so was I until I had to choose between
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my King and my home. After I left Milton all my possessions were con- fiscated by the rebels, as were those of the rest of the loyalists who quit the town. I know now that if I had remained in Milton and paid the special taxes assessed on the loyalists I could have kept my property. James Murray was certainly a loyalist, but his daughter, who married the Reverend John Forbes, lived on their Brush Hill estate right through the war and was not troubled by the rebels. Old Mrs. Foye, whom every- one knew as true to her King, kept her property, and her daughter lives there today.
John Gourgas, 1810
I AM John Mark Gourgas, a native of Switzerland, but I lived in Eng- land for many years and became interested in Dr. Jenner's work on vaccination against smallpox. I arrived in Milton in 1803, and became friends with Dr. Amos Holbrook, who had married Daniel Vose's daugh- ter Patience. He also had heard of Jenner's work and had even vacci- nated a few people with the cowpox virus. You today have no idea what a curse smallpox was. If you lived, you usually were defaced for life. Of course you could gain immunity through getting inoculated with the disease by infecting yourself with scrapings from one who had it. You would hope for a light attack, and you probably would come through all right, and not be marked much. But it was an unpleasant business, while Dr. Jenner's method was entirely safe, effective, and free from any ill effects except for an arm that might be sore for a few days. Holbrook and I finally got the idea of vaccinating everybody in Milton who had not had smallpox, and our chance came in 1809 when a serious outbreak of the disease occurred in a nearby town. In July a special town meeting was called to consider wholesale vaccination of everyone. I won't say anything of the preparatory work behind the scenes by Dr. Holbrook, Edward Robbins, and others of us, but in August the town voted to go ahead with the project. We organized the whole township into areas and
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set up committees of volunteers who brought the people to several dif- ferent vaccination centers on successive days. When we had finished we believed that there was only a score of people in the whole town who had not either been vaccinated or had already had the disease. They tell me that this was the first organized health improvement undertaking ever carried out in all America, and we of course were greatly pleased when before long all the other towns in the State were following our lead.
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