USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > Andover, Massachusetts : Proceedings at the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town, May 20, 1896 > Part 5
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1 Josiah Quincy in a letter to Harriet Beecher Stowe gives a description of the tything man as he, while a student in the Academy, saw the official in the South Church : "In the left hand gallery sat the ladies, in the right the gentlemen, in the midst of whom and in front sat the tything man, with his white pole, three or four cubits in length, the emblem of his dignity and power, and in his right hand a short hazel rod, which ever and anon in the midst of the sermon, to the awakening and alarm of the whole congregation, he would, with the whole force of his arm, bring down with a ringing slap on the top of the gallery, shaking it, at the same time, with a terrific menace, at two or three frightened urchins who were whispering or playing in a corner."
? Book 2, line 800.
8 March 4, 1691.
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been appointed in 1682, but, as he declined the office, he was ordered by a town vote 1 to sit among the boys for three months to come, or to pay twenty shillings to the constable for the use of the town, and a like penalty was to be paid by all others who should receive election to the office and then refuse to serve. The tything men had also a certain police duty other than this to perform, for, "ye 16th ye I month 1679/80" the selectmen pass solemn vote as follows :
" We have also ordered that whosoever shall enterteine any person or persons in his house whout just occasion and without there be sich buisness as shall be warrantable and as shall render a satisfactorye account thereof to sich as have power to make inquisition after sich persons, being so found after nine of ye clock at night, the persons so enterteining shall by ys order be liable to pay to ye use of the towne the sum of five shillings for every sich offence and on ye last day of ye week at night and Sabbath day nights young persons are [not] alowed to be abroad nor enter- teined without just occasion extraordinarye, and the tithing men are required care- fully to inspect sich houses where psons are wont to resort that by their carfull inspection this order may be observed and prosecuted, ye above sum to be gathered by ye constable duely by warrant from ye selectmen and ye like penaltie of five shillings is to be alike gathered of those psons yt are unseasonably from their owne houses."
So careful was this little community that the slumbers of its hard working citizens should not be broken after the curfew rang, and so watchful were they that the safeguard of home influences might be cast over the morals of its younger members.
The cause of sound learning did not flourish in Andover in the early days, a fact all the more surprising in view of her great reputa- tion later as a center of educational influence. By a colonial statute passed in 1647, every town of fifty families was required to maintain a school for the public education of children. The number of rateable polls in 1679 was eighty-eight, while in 1700 it had increased to one hundred and forty-five. It seems surprising therefore that no school was established until about 1702. But yet the town had not been wholly without instruction, for the ministers and the " school-dames" no doubt gave private lessons, and in 1679 (January 5) the following vote was passed : - " Graunted to Goodwife Barker, Jr., in considera- tion of ye benefit ye towne has received by her teaching their children, six acres of land somewhere near her husband's pond ground." The Mrs. Barker here mentioned was doubtless a " school-dame," and the
1 January 7, 1683.
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wife of Richard Barker, Jr., and the services she rendered at a time when education was as difficult to gain as money, justly entitled her to the recognition that this vote implies. February 3, 1701, it was voted that a " Convenient Schoolhouse be erected at ye parting of ye ways by Joseph Wilsons to be twenty foot long and sixteen foot wide." The building was soon finished, for, by a vote 1 passed the following year, two pence per week were to be paid for instruction in reading, and four pence for writing and ciphering. In 1703 2 the selectmen were author- ized " to agree with a schoolmaster for the year ensuing, and to assess upon the inhabitants as the law directs to Rays money to defray our minister's Rates, a Schoolmaster's Salary," and other necessary charges. But schoolmasters in those days were hard to find, and it is a fair inference that none could be found until 1704,3 when Dudley Bradstreet agreed with the selectmen to take the school for £8 12s. per quarter. From this time there seems to have been no diffi- culty in obtaining schoolmasters, one at least was regularly engaged, and as the town increased and instruction was needed in the outlying districts, the schoolmaster went the rounds of the town. This is well shown in the case of Timothy Walker, - significant name, - who was engaged in 1728 4 for one quarter at the rate of £50 per annum. He was sent to "ye South end of sd Town and Contineed there untill the Last of January, and then was sent and Contineed in middle of the Town unto ye last of February next, and then was sent behind the Pond on ye 3d day of March, and to Continew there fourteen-nights, and then ye Ist March was ordered to ye middle of ye Town and continied there nine weeks." In 1714 it was voted that the select- men and schoolmaster should " compound together with the school- master's Complyance wherewith to serve the one halfe part of his time in the north precinct and the other halfe in the south precinct for the benefit of the whole." 5 A school house in the South Parish was finally finished in 1718, and it would seem that this school was equal in all respects to the one first established in the North Parish, and they are referred to generally as the Centre or the Grammar School. And in 17546 it was voted that the Grammar School should keep the whole year round. This vote deprived the children in the
1 January 5, 1702.
2 March I.
* Nov. 24.
4 December 23.
5 March 16.
6 March 8.
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outlying districts of their opportunity to get instruction, and question arose at once what should be done for them. In 17541 the town declined to raise any fund for the support of "Reading, Righting and Cifering Schools in the outscurts of the Town." But the agitation was kept up, and in 17582 a vote was passed creating six schools in the outskirts, but no such schools were to be within one mile and a half from the centre schools, and they were to be elementary schools for "Reading, Righting and Cifering." The curriculum for the Grammar Schools was broad enough to fit boys for college; but when Phillips Academy was founded in 1778, the school at the South Parish gradually lost its importance and soon disappeared for ever, while the school in the North Parish continued to exist, though feebly, until 1799, when, with the foundation of Franklin Academy, it finally died out, and the function of a Grammar School as a fitting school in the classics ceased altogether.
As the first fruits of the new school system, in March, 1736, it was voted " there shall be a law book bought at ye sd town's cost for ye use of ye said town, -for ye town clerk and his successors to have it in keeping."
These votes will suffice to show how far the citizens had control over their own affairs ; what a measure of self-government they en- joyed, and how careful they were to preserve to their own uses such slight advantages as they possessed, and how, as they increased in their ability to support themselves, as they got a firmer hold on the land, their view broadened out to the necessity of progress in intellec- tual and moral directions. The subjects of the foregoing votes were closely personal to the citizen ; they arose out of necessities that had their origin among the settlers as co-laborers to one end in a small community ; these citizens discharged every duty, they met every obli- gation manfully and faithfully, nor shall we find a less degree of loyalty in that larger relation, when they were called by the central authority at Boston to do their duty as a part of the Colony of Massa- chusetts Bay, nor when, emancipated by their own act, as part of the State of Massachusetts, they fought the battle for a complete inde- pendence of the mother country.
Alongside of these votes, that indicate high capacity for
1 May 20.
ª September 21.
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rational conduct, must be placed an historical fact that points to an abnegation of reason and a complete loss of self-control. In the session of the general court held May 10, 1648, a vote was passed that the course that had been taken in England for the discovery of witches, that is by watching them a certain time, should be adopted here, and it was ordered that this custom, as being the best and surest way, be put in practice immediately. This vote was undoubtedly designed to meet the case of Margaret Jones of Charlestown, who was executed for witchcraft in 1648. She was accused and convicted of having so malignant a touch that she communicated deafness, vomit- ing, or some violent pain upon whomsoever she laid her hand.1 This was the beginning of the persecutions for witchcraft, and from time to time other unfortunates met a like unworthy end up to the year 1692, when the detestable hurricane broke in fury over Salem and Andover. In Salem Village, or Danvers as we know it now, some young girls, at first for sport, but finally crazed with the spirit of in- vestigation into the occult world, had worked their minds into such a state of frenzy that they fell into an hysteria, from which the crude medical science of the day could not relieve them. The doctors, thus baffled, referred their afflictions to the visitation of an evil spirit ; this suggestion in a Christian community made the matter a proper subject of inquiry by clergymen, and the latter, after special prayer and con- sideration, solemnly decided that the girls were possessed of a devil. This finding was at once communicated to the girls, and they immedi- ately suggested certain persons of no worth about the town, vagrants or objects of charity, as the source through which Satan had entered into them. Too literal an interpretation of scripture texts had given the devil a very definite existence in puritan communities, and as his alleged indwelling in these dependents was likely to make them undesirable citizens, it is not surprising that the town was speedily rid of their presence. We are not informed that the sufferers were restored to health, but their experience, in the opinion of their neighbors, had gifted them with an enormous power ; it was felt that they had a clairvoyance to detect disease, as infallibly as the lode- stone reveals iron, and, accordingly, whenever a sickness baffled the limited intelligence of the doctors, the spectre evidence of these girls was sought, and they invariably referred the ills of sufferers to the
1 Hutchinson's History.
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witchery of some person. It happened in 1692 that the wife of Joseph Ballard of Andover had been sick for a long time with a disease that the doctors could not cure ; tired of the uncertainties of medicine, her husband determined to test the surer method of spiritual cure, and, accordingly, two girls from Salem were summoned to pass upon Mrs. Ballard's case. With great solemnity, on their arrival in the town, they were escorted to the church, and Mr. Barnard, the associate minister with Mr. Dane, uttered fervent prayer for their guidance and exhorted them, quite pertinently it would seem, to tell the truth. With infallible accuracy, no doubt, the clairvoyant girls pointed out the sources of the malign influence ; persons in Andover and in other places were indicated, and were at once arrested upon warrants and imprisoned in Salem jail.
With this as a beginning, the madness of witchcraft started in Andover ; like some foul miasma it tainted for almost a year the whole community, sweeping away to death, or harsh imprisonment, or the terrors of a trial conducted by hostile judges, the innocent child, the blameless wife and mother, and the industrious father of the family.
The jail at Salem was filled with alleged lymphatics, half starved and half frozen, bound hand and foot, who, though conscious to them- selves of no wrong, were yet the victims of the pitiless scorn of their neighbors, and knew full well that the whole apparatus of government was interested in their conviction. Forty-one persons of Andover were indicted ; of these eight were condemned, and of the eight, before the general jail delivery, three were executed. Their names are Martha Carryer, Samuel Wardwell and Mary Parker. I name them to honor them ; let there be pity only for their accusers and judges.
The frenzy pervaded every rank in the social scale of the town. In the family of Thomas Carryer, it hurried off the wife to the scaffold, imprisoned the sons, and made a little girl of eight years a witness against her mother ; at the other extreme of the social scale, the vener- able Francis Dane, then in his seventy-sixth year, suffered the condem- nation of a daughter and granddaughter, while one other daughter, a daughter-in-law, and two other grandchildren were accused. The spectre evidence had pointed its finger to the wife of Dudley Brad- street, while Dudley himself, who as justice had examined some of
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the accused, growing weary of the task, and fearing probably that his conduct might subject himself to accusation, sequestered himself until the fury was spent.
It is not easy to conceive the turmoil and horror of those months. No man or woman could tell, no matter how exemplary his life or conduct, or how charitable his deeds, when the accusa- tion would be made against him ; nor if once arrested, no accused person could say what trusted friend might appear to condemn him. In the trial of cases a certain terror seemed to pervade the mind, of the witnesses ; leading questions were put, and answers having a meaning only for the moment were given. Again and again, as those who were examined, awoke out of their trance of terror, they changed their evidence, declaring that they had no knowledge of the things to which they had formerly testified, that they had given their evidence under fear and compulsion, that they had said the things they had been told to say. As the fell frenzy raged through the community, the only way to avoid an accusation was to become an accuser, and, accordingly, the number of the afflicted increased every day, and the number of the accused in like measure. Those who confessed and recanted escaped, while those who stoutly maintained their innocence, like Martha Carryer, were convicted.
It is difficult to define accurately the psychological aspects of witchcraft. To bring a charge of this nature no doubt often served the uses of private malice and revenge ; but here was a people of industrious habits, condemned by the nature of their existence to harsh manual toil, and likely therefore to develop a strong common sense in matters of every day concern ; yet black cats and broom- sticks, and baptisms by the devil, and firm compacts with him, had so far got the ascendency over their minds that this mad frolic of un- reason possessed them for a twelvemonth to the exclusion of every finer feeling, And, stranger still, they refused to listen to their once venerated guide. The manhood of Rev. Francis Dane, who for forty- four years had been the minister of the church, revolted against the senseless excitement, yet no one listened to his words, and he barely escaped an accusation himself. To his honor, be it said, that through- out it all he stood stedfastly against every manifestation of the evil, the one sane mind in all the community. But this was a people of extreme religious fervor ; they walked with God as no other people
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had walked with Him before, and as other peoples in the dim outlines of history
" Oft forsook
Their Living Strength, and unfrequented left His righteous altar, bowing lowly down To bestial Gods,"
so perhaps this people in the very excesses of their zeal, turned aside for the moment from their customary reliance upon His goodness, and beheld Him chastening them for their sins, and allowing the spirit of malice to prevail among them. It is a sad blight upon an otherwise respectable community, and I turn from it and its sickening horrors, with a certain sense of congratulation that nothing akin to it has ever again reared its dark and odious presence in this community, and that the liberalism of the present day is the surest guaranty against its second malevolent approach.
When our ancestors settled in these parts, they found the red man the sole possessor of the soil; he lived an easy indolent life, arousing from time to time only to such activity as would procure him sustenance for the moment, then falling back into a dreamy lack of thought that lasted only so long as the pangs of hunger were allayed. He was differentiated from the brute by the fact that he did recognize somewhat supernal in nature, something other and more spiritual than himself, whose slave he was ; and he did have some store of tradition, which by crude characters or by word of mouth he could communicate to his children. From many mixed motives our ancestors put them- selves at once in a helpful attitude toward these Indians ; as sitting in the outer darkness of heathendom, they were proper receptacles of religious light ; as beings prone to steal, unacquainted with truth, and not unskilful in murder, they were to be brought under the restraining influence of English law. So it happened that as early as 1643, Cut- shumache and four chiefs of neighboring tribes were induced to put themselves, their subjects, their lands and estates, without any constraint or persuasion, under the government and jurisdiction of the Massa chusetts ; in the same instrument they promised to be true and faithful to the government, to give speedy notice of any conspiracy against it, and they expressed their entire willingness to be instructed in the knowledge and worship of God. The pious Eliot soon began his labors among them, and the result was that by 1670 numerous bodies of
.
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them had been collected into communities of " praying Indians," as at Natick or Wamesit, while still others as " converted Indians " became farm laborers and were instructed in useful civilized arts. But still from the first the settler looked upon the Indian with suspicion, and felt that he must be armed and equipped against any ebullition of Indian caprice. Hence it is that even our early Andover community had its body of armed soldiers ; indeed every citizen was a soldier, bound as much to protect the commonweal as to support his own family.
For a time all things are fair; Massasoit and his older son, Alexander, live in peace with New Plymouth. But when they pass from the scene, Philip, the younger son, becomes sachem. Nature has given him a lithe and supple frame and immense endurance ; his experience has filled his mind with an implacable hatred of the Eng- lish ; he is the genius of Indian discontent and perfidy ; he conspires ; he treats ; he breaks his compacts, and finally, to the dismay of every pale face, he unites in league with him all the red men of New Eng- land : fleet as the wind but noiselessly as a zephyr, messengers run from tribe to tribe ; beacon fires blaze from hill to hill, and the whole country is in terror. A regiment is raised to meet the hostile bands that are gathering in the distant settlements. Twelve citizens of Andover are in the forces that meet and defeat Philip in the great fight at Pettysquamscot, December 18th, 1672. Philip is in hiding all the winter, but with the return of spring he again emerges, and the swift current of destruction sweeps eastward with ever increasing forces. Northampton, Springfield, Brookfield, Lancaster, Marlbor- ough, Groton and Chelmsford, all suffer. Day by day Andover awaits her turn, and finally, on the 8th of April, the approach of the Indians is noticed by Ephraim Stevens ; he at once rides back to town to warn the inhabitants, with the Indians in close pursuit ; without dis- turbing other settlers, the red men hasten to the house of George Abbott in the fields opposite this church; Joseph Abbott, son of George, is killed at his work, and Timothy, another son, a lad of thireeen, is taken prisoner. The town is now thoroughly aroused and every reasonable measure for defence is taken. Garrison houses are erected here and there, and, by order of the general court (May 3, 1676), Andover, Chelmsford, and four other border settlements, are created frontier towns. This vote allowed the soldiers of Andover
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who were in the service elsewhere, to return and go on duty in the town, and this increase in the military force for a time frightened away the savages.
As compared with other settlements Andover suffered but little in this war; besides the melancholy death of Abbott, some few buildings were burned, some cattle killed or tortured. King Philip met his death in August, 1676, and with him went out the hopes of his allies for further victories and hostilities for a time ceased. But meagre as the losses by this first war may have been, who shall tell the anxieties of those few months ? with what fore- bodings of pending evil the housewife did her daily tasks, working alike in the house and field, while her husband was on duty in the war ? how tenderly she pressed her babes to her bosom at night, for fear that the morrow might bring who could tell what dangers and distress ? Who can adequately say what passed within the yeoman's mind, as, looking upon his growing crops, and the few poor buildings that housed his family and stores, he thought of the dangers that lurked in the forest, or that dogged his footsteps as he went forth to his fields.
The wars between France and England that began in 1688 and did not end until 1761, furnish a record of bitter strife. In spite of occasional treaties, the hostility of France to England never slum- bered ; but on the continent it called forth the marvelous generalship of Marlborough that added imperishable glory to the English arms, while in the colonies the period ends with the luminous figure of Wolfe, dying in the full tide of victory on the Heights of Abraham, an intrepid commander who softened the harsh outlines of a soldier's life with the meditations of a scholar, and a sweet human tenderness that might well have sprung from the bosom of a Sydney ; and out of the din and clangor of these wars, there arose above the horizon one star of steady aspect and promising beauty, that was destined to take its majestic course to the zenith, and, as George Washington, to shine without its fellow in the firmanent. In politics it gave to England the great names of Walpole and Burke, and the full- orbed radiance of Pitt ; while who can tell what influences operating in the colonies produced those serious reflections, that afterwards reached their perfect expression in the Declaration of Independence ? And the experiences of the colonists in these wars were like dragon's
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teeth, that, sown in the ground, sprang up a race of warriors ready armed and equipped for the contest in 1775.
It was a part of the French plan of campaign to court alliances with the Indians and to encourage in their minds hostility to the English ; and, supplied as the Indians were with guns and rum and ammunition by the French, they became a formidable enemy to colonial progress. In all these wars Andover and her citizens were involved. In 1689 John Peters and Andrew Peters were killed on the way to Haverhill, and in the same year four other citizens died in the war that was waging in the eastern counties. In 1698 the Indians eluded the watch, and, making a descent upon the town, burned some houses and took away the town records ; they also killed Pascoe Chubb and his wife and three other persons. Chubb had in 1693 assembled at Fort Pemaquid a council of Indians, in order to arrange for an exchange of prisoners ; he had taken care to have the Indians well supplied with liquor, and at a signal given by him, the English in the council began a massacre of the Indians, and killed several of them. This unfair act justly incensed the Indians against him, and, together with the French, they beseiged the fort, and threatened to torture the commander unless he surrendered : after securing his own personal safety Chubb gave up the fort. For this act of cowardly incompetence he was imprisoned for a time in the jail at Boston, and finally, on his own petition, he was released and allowed to go to take up his residence in Andover ; and here he was in hiding at the time of the Indian outbreak ; with savage delight the red men killed both him and his wife, satisfying thus a desire alike to shed the pale-face blood and to take vengeance on a treacherous enemy.
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