A History of Bristol County, Massachusetts, vol 1, Part 3

Author: Hutt, Frank Walcott, 1869- editor
Publication date: 1924
Publisher: New York, Chicago, Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 570

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BRISTOL COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS

during the last few years, spread to the South and East, and to every line of farm products. Selling organizations have thus far not come to pass among the farmers of this county, except in a limited way among the duck growers, the market gardeners and the dairymen; but it will come, and in the meantime those farmers of the county who rightly grade and put up their products will profit measureably by the effect of selling organiza- tions elsewhere in the better prices that result from standardizing the product and stabilizing the market. This sketch would hardly be complete without some word in regard to the forestry of Bristol county. We have stripped our timber lands bare. There are thousands of acres that must be replanted-land that is suitable for growing fine timber, but of little value for anything else. Here, again, a movement is now well under way that promises to do much to replace our wasted resources and add tremen- dously to the natural wealth of the county. The readiness with which those who hold lands have responded to the first call for reforesting, insures a steady improvement in this direction also, contingent on one condition only, namely, that the public generally protect our forests by suitable pre- cautions against devastating fires.

Proposed Waterway .- For more than one hundred years the question of the canalization of Taunton river for a barge-way between Weir Village at Taunton and Massachusetts Bay has been frequently presented to the State Department of Public Works. The county as a whole has its leading interest in the project from its north bounds to Narragansett Bay. Should the plans of the Atlantic Inland Waterways Commission meet with their expectations, they would bring about a solution to a large proportion of transportation problems that have always confronted the county.

The earliest recorded survey of an inland waterway from Boston harbor to Narragansett Bay was that shown in a map by Benjamin F. Baldwin in February, 1808, and it included two routes: The one beginning at Wey- mouth Back river, and passing through Weymouth, a corner of Hingham, Abington and East Bridgewater, to the Taunton river at Titicut bridge, about ten miles above Taunton; the other route began at Weymouth Fore river, and passed through Braintree, Randolph, North Bridgewater (Brock- ton), West Bridgewater, Bridgewater and Raynham, to the Taunton river near the easterly line of Taunton. The water supply was considered at the time, and it was decided to be sufficient.

A survey and report were made in 1902 of the cost of a canal 130 feet wide on the bottom, and 25 feet deep, extending from the deep water in the Taunton river at Somerset to deep water in Boston harbor, at the mouth of the Weymouth Fore river. The length of this structure would be about three and one-half miles between the outer faces of the terminal locks at each end of the canal. The summit level would be fourteen locks, sixty feet wide and 550 feet long, with intermediate gates. The amount of water required for the canal was so great that there was no source of supply which could be used, nearer than the Blackstone river; and this could only be used by destroying the water power of the river. It was also found that water could be pumped from the ocean cheaper than it could be secured from the Blackstone river, and the estimates were based on in- stalling pumps for furnishing this water. The total was estimated at

INTRODUCTORY

that time as $57,618,358. At the present time, the cost would doubtless be at least double that amount. Surveys were made in 1910 and 1911, when four routes were planned under the direction of a special board of United States Army engineers. Both routes started from Taunton river, one term- inating in Hingham bay and Boston harbor, the other in Plymouth harbor, thirty miles south of Boston harbor. These surveys were found to be superior to all the others that had been considered, including the route sur- veyed in 1902, and the Cape Cod canal route.

In 1915, the Harbor and Land Commissioners were authorized to make surveys from Weir Village to Brockton, and they reported two routes: One along the Matfield river, at an estimated cost of $8,861,960; the other along the Town river, at an estimated cost of $9,026,531. The summit level of the canal would be sixty-nine feet above tide-water in the Taunton river; and the distance from Weir bridge by the Town river route 25.85 miles, and by the Matfield river route 25.45 miles, the summit level being the same in both cases. In 1916 the Board of Harbor and Land Commission- ers were authorized to make further surveys for the construction of a canal from Taunton river to Massachusetts Bay, by the construction of a canal from Taunton river to North river, and the canalization of various rivers to Boston harbor. No final report was made, as none was called for by the resolve for the survey.

It is evident that the cost of a ship canal from Taunton river to Bos- ton harbor would be prohibitive, but the only solution of the problem would be a canal of barge dimensions. The report of Colonel John Mills, of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, upon the improvement of Taunton river from Fall River to Weir Village, submitted June 30, 1916, gives the sum of $1,301,746.60 as the total cost of a channel which would have a minimum width of one hundred feet and a minimum depth of eigh- teen feet at mean low water.

County Treasurer and Commissioners .- The functions of these officers are directed by a group of practical and far-sighted officials who have in their financial charge a number of county institutions, judicial, educational and medical, each of which adds in no small degree to the general excellence of the aggregate of similar institutions throughout the State. It has been the continuous endeavor of these officials to make the institutions paying ones; and the latter are at this hour county foundations that are gradually being freed of debt through their efforts.

A statement made by Chairman John I. Bryant, of the County Com- missioners, early in 1923, was to this effect. The county debt twenty-three years ago amounted to $1,250,000. Since that time the commission has built the Registry of Deeds building in Taunton, the Bristol County Tuber- culosis Hospital in Attleboro, the Second District Bristol Court building at Fall River, the Third Bristol District Court building at New Bedford, the Registry of Deeds building at New Bedford, and the Agricultural School building at Segreganset (burned in January). With all this im- provement to the county, affairs have been so managed that the debt before the school building burned was but $331,500. The records of County Treasurer Edgar L. Crossman show that in the twelve months previous there had been a net reduction of $69,000 in the bonded debt of the county,

BRISTOL COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS

and that among the obligations cared for in 1922 was the payment of the final note on the New Bedford-Fairhaven bridge.

The New Bedford district continues to lead all the registries of deeds of the county, as it has for several years past, in the amount of fees from recording real estate transfers. The total receipts there were $23,489.75. The receipts in the Fall River Registry in the same period were $17,432.90, and the Taunton Registry collected $11,475.45. Criminal costs in the su- perior courts were increasing, the expenses of this branch of the county business during 1922 being $33,716.19, as against $29,227.86 in 1921. The expense of the civil side of the superior court was more than $2,000 less than in 1921. The amount received in fines was $28,632.28, as against $20,068.96 in 1921.

Work at the Bristol County Agricultural School had been making commendable progress, the receipts from produce sold and from other sources outside of the appropriation having been $28,039, as against $22,605.96 in 1921.

In 1922, the county treasury paid out more than $64,000 for improve- ment of inter-city roads, through more sparsely settled communities, such bills totalling in 1921 only a little over $38,000.

The following was the 1923 inventory of property of the county of Bristol: County Court-house, land and furnishings, Taunton, $385,000; Registry building, land and buildings, Taunton, $100,000; Jail, land and buildings, Taunton, $175,000; Court-house, land and furnishings, New Bed- ford, $100,000; House of Correction, land and furnishings, New Bedford, $400,000; Registry of Deeds building, New Bedford, $175,000; Third Dis- trict Court-house, New Bedford, $150,000; Court-house, land and furnish- ings, Fall River, $260,000; Second District Court-house, Fall River, $100,- 000; Third District Court-house, Attleboro, $100,000; Agricultural School, Dighton, $75,000; Law Libraries, $50,000; Norfolk, Bristol and Plymouth Union Training School, $3,500.

The County Commissioners are John I. Bryant, Richard E. Warner, Arthur M. Reed, and Edgar L. Crossman, treasurer.

County Landmark-The most famous landmark within the bounds of Bristol county is the "Dighton Writing Rock," at Berkley, that town having originally been a part of Dighton, This noted granite rock within the river margin is eleven and one-half feet long and five feet high. Since the year 1889 it has been the property of the Old Colony Historical Society at Taunton, from a deed of gift of the Royal Society of Northern Anti- quaries of Copenhagen. The rock was purchased in 1857 of Thomas T. Dean, of Berkley, by Neil Arnzen, of Fall River, who placed it in the posses- sion of the Copenhagen Society in the belief that the findings of the archæ- ologist were proof positive that the markings were those of Danish explorers.

Up to the present time, and dating from the year 1680, there have been proposed more than twenty distinct theories concerning the origin of the symbol-like drawings and letter-like marks that cover the face of the rock, but all of which traceries are slowly becoming defaced both by tides and weather. The theories of the writings are many and varied, the leading one being that they were originally those of native red men. Professor E.

THE INDIAN STORY

D. Delabarre, renowned archæologist, whose earlier criticism was that the drawings might have been made by Egyptians, 2000 B.C., has compiled three volumes from the publications of the Colonial Society of Massachu- setts on the subject of the rock. His more recent theory is that there are marks on the rock that appear to disclose the name of Miguel Cortereal, Portuguese explorer, and the date 1511. In the realm of ethnology, archæ- ology and cheirology, this monument of great age has been visited and written about by savants of all times and for nearly three centuries. John Fiske and others refute the Norse origin of the writings. Schoolcraft, the explorer, in 1853 decided they were of Indian origin. Yet concerning the source of the writings on the rock, about which a small library has been · written, no one is absolutely sure.

CHAPTER II. THE INDIAN STORY

Imbibing, as we do, the realism of our times, it follows that we must consider the Red Man's story as genuine as that of the age that ensued, although historians now and then have seen fit to invest much of their era with the glamour of romance. The Indians were real people; their troubles and sorrows were actual; and those of our Massachusetts shores possessed very little of comfort and enjoyment in life, whether from the white man's point of view or their own.

We are now nearly two hundred and fifty years away from King Philip's War, and weighing all causes, as we must, we know that while the colonists had good and sufficient reasons for the eventual retirement of the Indian from the scene, we grant that the natives often suffered at the hands of the newcomers, whose demands, like those of Winslow himself, upon King Philip, were frequently made in an offensive manner. In the formative period of the Old Colony, the transactions between the races were rather ideal, as a whole, but, as the years passed, in spite of the strict governmental rules for clemency of dealings with the Indians, individuals on both sides gradually undermined the fabric of friendship and of mutual help.

Massasoit was easy-going; King Philip was crafty; yet the reasons for rebellious outbreak on the part of the natives were not always fictitious ones. The real Indians hereabouts were a poor and needy type of human- ity; but they bitterly resented and always remembered the enforced en- slavement of certain of their kind by marauding Europeans before the "Mayflower" came. Naturally, they disliked being driven from pillar to post; they found fault when their gardens were destroyed and when mem- bers of their families were mistreated. Their methods of vengeance were terrible in result; but through the heavy mists of the blood that was shed, it was very hard for that generation of white people, or succeeding ones, to maintain any faith whatever in the ethnological value of the Indian.

The honor once accorded the writer in being granted an interview with Zerviah (Mitchell) Robinson, Indian princess by right, then ninety-three

Bristol-2

BRISTOL COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS

years of age, was augmented by the consciousness that she was a direct descendant of Massasoit, chief of the Pokanoket confederacy of the originally powerful tribe of Wampanoags, first recorded occupants of the present Bristol county region. That Indian woman, who in her early years had been a teacher in public schools, was in her nineties bright and active. Her eyes flashed with hereditary brilliance of the nomadic forbears; but her features were sharp and mummy-like, and drawn with advanced age. She was one of the few that remained of her race; yet, living in our times, as she was, she had made the best of her life. But Zerviah was a living re- minder of all that had been known and verified of that wise and peace- performing Massasoit who with his tribe and offspring were familiar to all this section before Taunton or Fall River or New Bedford were foreseen, and who for a half century, when the Europeans appeared and set up their homes here, generally fraternized with the strangers and allowed them the settlers' privileges. After nearly three hundred years, then, prac- tically the last remnant of the people of the woods and barrens had disap- peared, and the city and its builders had taken their place, race annihilating race in the ages-old way.

So far as the first settlement of the white people in the old bounds of this county is concerned, their combats with their Indian neighbors were nil-there was no menace, to speak of, on the part of the first dwellers here, no disastrous breaks-a condition not usual with the invasion of newcomers elsewhere. At Cape Cod and Plymouth the skirmishes were few and far between, and in early Bristol county the Indians peacefully con- veyed lands and were satisfied with whatever was given in exchange.

The paucity and segregation of the branches of the tribes were the main causes for the easy foothold obtained here by Europeans. And the leading reason for the lack of anticipated wholesale warlike front on the part of the Indians is found in the declaration made by the Indians and the settlers, that a plague understood by many writers to have been like influenza had already swept thousands of the Red Men hereabouts out of existence, and that only a few years before the "Mayflower" arrived. Everywhere graves were abundant, and remains were found heaped to- gether in pits. Those that survived of the nearby Wampanoags, therefore, were weak and generally unhostile. Hence, so far as the traditions have declared, the new homes of civilization increased, and the Red Men's tents were bound to retreat. The Indian occupancy in this region, however, had been and was to be for many years to follow, a real possession. It is too actual a chapter that it should ever be dismissed from the whole story. Romance, poetry and song are not powerful enough realms to absorb the hard realities of the existence of the Indian.

The immediate newcomers landed practically unopposed, and, living up to their ideals of fair play, they sent their delegates a long way in order to find the nearest head man of any tribe, for good fellowship's sake. It was Samoset who welcomed the Englishmen; it was Squanto, who claimed that he was the last of the Patuxet tribe, that led the way to Massasoit.

The town of Bristol, now in Rhode Island, formerly in Massachusetts, and the head of the county, was founded upon the site of the Indian en- campment of the Pokanokets, at Montaup (the Englishmen phonetically

THE INDIAN STORY

calling it Mt. Hope), and there lived Massasoit, who is accounted one of the wisest chiefs that ever ruled a savage race. In 1619 Captain Dermer, a transient visitor, had stopped at Nemasket, just outside this section, and had there met Massasoit and his brother Quadequin. But in July, 1621, was made the first record of white men traversing the Bristol county territory, when Edward Winslow and Stephen Hopkins, accompanied by Squanto, sought out Massasoit in order to make their treaty of friendship. Their visit was successful; so were all their dealings thereafter with that chief.

Yet there were displeasing episodes. One was that connected with the sub-chief Corbitant, whom Winslow pronounced a "hollow-hearted friend"; though his hospitableness afterwards was conceded. It is stated that Cor- bitant had been inimical towards Squanto, whose part being taken by Myles Standish and the Plymouth people, Corbitant himself, thereupon, was con- strained to sign a treaty of peace at Plymouth. When Winslow made his second visit to Massasoit in 1623, while passing through Corbitant's do- minions, at the present Swansea, he was alarmed at the report of the death of Massasoit, lest the latter be succeeded by Corbitant to the chieftaincy. But the report was negatived, and Corbitant proved a generous host to Winslow and his friends. Another episode concerned Awashunks, the squaw-sachem of Seaconnet, whose husband was the Indian Tolony, and who had sons, Peter and William. She nearly precipitated a war at Free- town, in August, 1671; and again, in 1675, she was almost persuaded, with her warriors, to cast in her lot with that of the English.

Massasoit, who was also known as Ossamequin, as has been pointed out, ruled the Wampanoags, whose sub-tribes and branches were included in thirty villages, at least, throughout the present Bristol and other counties.

The principal of the sub-tribes that have to do with this section were the Seaconnets, who lived where Little Compton, Rhode Island, now is, and they were ruled by the squaw-sachem Awashunks, to whom reference has been made. The tents of the Pocassets were pitched throughout the territory that is now Fall River, Tiverton, and a part of Swansea, and their rulers were Corbitant and Weetamoe. In succession also were the Tetiquets, who lived on the east side of the Tetiquet (now Taunton) river; and the Assawampsetts, their next door neighbors. =

Massasoit was born in 1581. His wife was living in 1621; and besides the brothers of the chief, Quadequin and Akkampoin, there was a sister. Massasoit's two famous sons were: Wamsutta, afterwards known as Alexander; and Metacomet, better known as King Philip; and his daugh- ter was Amie, who married Tispauquin, from whom Zerviah Mitchell was descended. Massasoit · died in 1662. A monument to his. memory was dedicated at Warren, Rhode Island, October 19, 1907, at the Massasoit Spring, there, by the Massasoit Monument Association. Charlotte and Alonzo Mitchell, direct descendants of the chief, were present, and unveiled the monument.

Many names for many occasions, the Red Men seemed to have. The English at first knew Wamsutta as Mooanam, but after 1656 he and King Philip were called by the Christian names they afterwards bore. Alex- ander, the chief who took Weetamoe, daughter of Corbitant, for his wife, had from the first held an unfriendly attitude towards the whites, generous

BRISTOL COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS

though his father had been with the new-comers. Yet Alexander was chief only a few months after the death of Massasoit, when he died, having "fretted himself to death," in all probability because he foresaw the power- lessness of his race and, as King Philip did, their extinction. It was Alex- ander who disposed of lands where Taunton and Attleboro now are. His squaw, Weetamoe, was one of the most noted Indian women of her times in the story of this region. When Corbitant, her father, died, she auto- matically became the ruler of the Pocassets. Known at first as Nunmam- paum, and being called Weetamoe first in 1662, she married in 1675, just before King Philip's War, Petonowowet, or Peter Nunnuit, as the English phonetically styled him. Later, and before the close of that war, she mar- ried the Narragansett sagamore Quinnapin. The unique description that exists of this squaw leader is worth repeating: "She was dressed in a ker- sey coat covered with girdles of wampum, from the loins upwards. Her arms from the elbows to the hands were covered with bracelets; and besides a handful of necklaces about her neck, there were several sorts of jewels in her ears. She had fine red stockings and white shoes; her hair was powdered, and her face painted red. She was a severe and proud dame, bestowing every day in dressing herself as much time as any of the gentry in the land; and when she was dressed her work was to make girdles of wampum and beads." Yet in spite of her finery while she was at her best, the lot of Weetamoe was an unenviable one. With the breaking out of the King Philip War, she had about three hundred armed Indians subject to her rule. Her second husband, "Peter Nunnuit", went over and aided the English, but she remained faithful to her race and shared their lot. Separating herself from Nunnuit, she became the wife of Quinnapin, both of them then being the followers of Philip. Quinnapin, being accused of plotting with Philip, was shot at Plymouth. His queen, Weetamoe, fled, but by means of the perfidy of a deserter from her camp, her hiding place was made known. In all probability she drowned herself, but her corpse drifted ashore, and, being seized by the white settlers, her head was cut off and exhibited upon a pole at Taunton.

Philip, whose Indian name was pronounced Pometacum, though at first the English called him Metacomet, is remembered by us of today, chiefly because of the fact that his name was connected with the Indian war of this section, as its leader, in 1675-6. He married a sister of Weeta- moe, named Wotonekanuske; and one of the blots on the pages of our history, as we view it today, is the fact that she was sold into slavery with her son, at Bridgewater.

And so Philip, the plotter, and yet the fighting man for his race, came into view on the stage of the time-Philip, untutored, unlettered, vengeful- but whom we must credit with a great love for his people, and as having in his heart a great regret that a new race had come into possession of the lands of his ancestors. While the charge of the colonists was that King Philip and his followers, in a time of comparative peace, were plotting against the new government of the settlers, it should be conceded today, after weighing carefully much that has been recorded with regard to the arrogance and the trespassing of the whites upon the property and the rights of the Indians, that the latter were no more than rebels against what they believed to be a tyrannizing of the colonists. The following incident,

THE INDIAN STORY

told in brief, may be cited as one of the causes that brought on the war. John Sassamon, a Massachusetts Indian, though attached to King Philip, had received his education at the Indian school at Natick, and became a home missionary to the Nemasket Indians (where Middleboro now is). He also received the favor of the chief Tuspaquin, who con- veyed to him 27 acres of land at Assawampsett Neck, in the town of Lakeville. Sassamon had a daughter, Assowetough by name, called "Betty" by the English, who married the Indian Felix. To him Tuspaquin and his son William deeded 581/2 acres of land, and both conveyed to Assowetough ("Betty") a neck of land at Assawampsett that today is called Betty's Neck. But Sassamon, because of a treacherous communication to the English to the detriment of Philip, met his death at the hands of Philip's people. Thereupon the murderers, Tobias, Wampapaum and Mattushamama, were apprehended and shot by the English. Only fifteen days after this execu- tion, or on June 23, 1675, an Englishman was shot at Swansea, and his wife was scalped. The following day, others were killed at the same place. It was about this time, too, that Edward Bobbitt, John Tisdale and others were killed at Taunton.

It was on April 10, 1671, five years before the war, that Philip, at- tended by his warriors, came to Taunton upon request of the colonists, who had become alarmed at the warlike preparations of the Indian party. This council was held in the meeting house near the present Church Green, and after recriminations upon both sides, King Philip and his men signed a treaty and delivered up their arms, at the same time with the promise given that the tribe as a whole would surrender their arms at Plymouth. But the promise was not kept, and after a second one, made on September 26, 1671, the Indians were generally and forcibly disarmed, with the trouble that was bound to ensue.

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A History of Bristol County, Massachusetts, vol 1, Part 3

Author: Hutt, Frank Walcott, 1869- editor Publication date: 1924 Publisher: New York, Chicago, Lewis historical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 570

Author: Hutt, Frank Walcott, 1869- editor
Publication date: 1924
Publisher: New York, Chicago, Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 570