USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > Andover: symbol of New England; the evolution of a town > Part 11
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sition. In this pioneering enterprise Captain Benjamin Stevens and Deacon John Osgood were leaders; and in 1730 a minister was ordained for the new settlement, with the two Andover cler- gymen, Mr. Barnard and Mr. Phillips, assisting at the ceremony. Thus while more and more Andoverians were concentrating in the South Parish, others were moving farther into the interior. Mobility as an American trait was revealing itself even then.
For several reasons Andover residents had found it difficult to maintain a school, and in 1712 the selectmen reported that, in spite of vigorous efforts, they had been unable to find a school- master. The language which they used had a pathetic tone be- hind the quaint spelling:
We doe take the best care we can to bring up our children to Reeding by school Dames; and we have no Gramer Schoole in our Town as we know of; and we are now taking the best care we can to obtaine one, therefore pray that we may be Favoured; so far as may be; for we cannot compell gentellmen to come to us; and we do suppose they are something afraid by ye reason we Doe Lye so ex- posed to our Indian Enemys; pray consider our great extremitie in that Regard, and we shall doe our uttermost to answer the true in- tent of the Law in that behalf.
The North Parish was thus explaining to the General Court why it found it impossible to comply with the law. The South Parish also had its problems, and in 1714 voted to construct its own schoolhouse, twenty-two feet by sixteen in dimensions. After a considerable delay, this was located "on the Hill on the south- west of the Meeting house," not far from the parsonage and the present center of the village. James Bailey, the first recorded schoolmaster in a section now nationally famous for its educa- tional facilities, agreed for a salary of 24 pounds "to teach chil- dren to Read and older persons to wright and sifer so far as they are capable for the time being, according to the regular methods of such a school." For the somewhat unusual spelling of such simple words as "write" and "cipher" we may hope that the town clerk, not schoolmaster Bailey, was responsible. He was to
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teach alternately in the two parishes for the same length of time.
In September, 1723, the following contract, a little less badly spelled, was made with my collateral ancestor, Andrew Peters:
The selectmen of Andover from the day of the date hereof agreed with Mr. Andrew Peeters that he should keepe a Grammer School a twelve month in the said town, allso that he wold teach boys to Read, Rite, and Cypher, and that he wold teach and keep school in each precinct according to each Precinct's pay, for which service the Se- lectmen of sd. Town promised to give the sd. Andrew Peters forty- four pounds.
Within a few years the Andover schoolmaster became an itin- erant pedagogue, keeping school at different periods in the mid- dle of the town, in the south end, and "behind the pond" (pre- sumably near Haggett's Pond). Under such a haphazard system the formal education of children must have been intermittent and unsatisfactory, but it was supplemented occasionally by "dame schools" and also by instruction in the home. Under such conditions the schoolmaster could hardly help being restless, and it is not strange that few incumbents remained very long.
The establishment of the new South Parish Church gave the residents of that district a feeling of assurance. Their numerical preponderance in town affairs was thus openly conceded. Year after year they continued to take a leading part in local govern- ment. The same south end names appear again and again as moderators of town meeting, clerks, treasurers, and assessors- Abbots, Chandlers, Ballards, Holts, and others-sound Yankee stock doing faithfully the day's work. Eventually special distinc- tion came to the North Parish through its mills and industries and to the South Parish through its educational institutions. For this strange bifurcation chance seems to have been largely re- sponsible. But through the eighteenth century up to the close of the Revolution and beyond, Andover was still a unit, politically, economically, and socially, facing the threats from Indians and from the British monarchy without any internal dissension.
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CHAPTER XI
Indians -and a Few Fryes
C OMPARISONS of Andover with other Essex County towns in A the first half of the eighteenth century are difficult to make, for no trade or population or building statistics are available. We may assume that Andover, though growing steadily, seemed less important to the Colony than Salem or Ipswich or Newbury. Although its representatives to the General Court were compe- tent, it had produced no political leader except Simon Brad- street. The fact that Anne Bradstreet had brought some cultural distinction to her village made little difference to her neighbors. Andover had no maritime commerce, like Gloucester and Mar- blehead, and very little industry except a few sawmills and grist- mills. It did, however, have its war heroes, at least two of whom have become legendary in New England history.
Although Andover was increasingly in touch with coastal civi- lization, it was still in constant danger of attack by Indians on the rampage. Often full of rum and usually dirty and greedy, they were unpleasant neighbors, and the white settlers never trusted them. When aroused, they struck without warning, and what- ever mercy they showed was whimsical, not consistent. Some communities, like Groton and Deerfield, underwent serious raids, and Andover had no reason to think that it would be neglected.
The redskins were incited by the French, who had long been rivals of the English in colonial North America. The short truce following the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 was broken in 1701 by what was known in Europe as the War of the Spanish Succession but was called in New England Queen Anne's War. These Euro-
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Abbot's Tavern, Elm Street, Andover
The Osgood House, North Andover
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The Phelps House, erected in 1811
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Bulfinch Hall, constructed in 1818
INDIANS-AND A FEW FRYES
pean events had their inevitable repercussions in Massachusetts Bay, which underwent ferocious invasions. During the twelve years of conflict ended by the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, no inte- rior town in the Colony felt really safe. In the prolonged struggle for the domination of the continent the Indians had a large and vindictive share.
In spite of the Truce of Casco in June, 1703, the Abenakis continued to make raids on isolated Maine settlements, burning houses and carrying children off into captivity. In February, 1704, they even struck as far south as Haverhill, and Andover militia were for some weeks constantly on the watch. The most terrifying attack was on Deerfield, near the extreme northwest- ern frontier of Massachusetts, when fifty-three villagers were slain and one hundred and eleven led into the wilderness as prisoners. This was only a few months before the Duke of Marl- borough's victory at Blenheim and the seizure of Gibraltar by the British fleet, the news of which took a long time to reach Boston.
In this crisis, Governor Joseph Dudley, brother of Anne Brad- street, although far from popular in Massachusetts, did his best to bring about cooperation among the New England colonies. The Essex County militia were ordered to be always in readiness. The Andover town fathers accumulated stores of powder, bullets, and flints and even furnished troops with snowshoes for a pos- sible winter emergency. In the winter of 1704, when the alarm was at its height, Dudley wrote to Colonel Saltonstall, "I pray you to give direction that your snow-shoe men from Newbury to Andover be ready at a moment's warning till the weather break up, that we may be quiet awhile." Of the four blockhouses erect- ed that same year along the Merrimack, under instructions from the governor, two were within the limits of the town of Andover -one at the fording place called "Deare's Jump" and the other "at the fording place commonly called Mr. Petter's wading place." On these sites, now impossible to identify, Captain Christopher Osgood, then Andover's military officer, directed
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the building of the blockhouses, each twelve feet wide and fif- teen feet long. The task took six weeks to complete.
Andoverians in those days never felt entirely safe. Strange stories from other settlements haunted mothers with young chil- dren. Seven-year-old Eunice Williams, daughter of the minister of Deerfield, was carried off to Canada, where, to use Parkman's words, she forgot "her English and her catechism," married a "savage," and even when ransomed refused to return to her country and her family. She had several half-breed offspring and lived as a squaw of the tribe to a great old age. The two Tarbell boys captured in the attack on Groton in 1707 also preferred to remain with the redskins-and what normal American young- ster wouldn't? Environment in these dramatic instances tri- umphed over heredity, proving that life among the Indians had its attractions. The Tarbells actually married the daughters of chieftains and themselves became tribal leaders.
Although Indian raids on other towns kept Andover citizens under tension for many years, the result of the large-scale strug- gle was never in doubt. The energy and the resources belonged with the English and their colonial allies. It is true that a march on Quebec in 1711, led by the incompetent Admiral Sir Hoven- den Walker, ended in failure; but British and American forces had already taken the important fort at Port Royal. The Peace of Utrecht, with its many separate treaties, ceded Acadia and Newfoundland to England and left France in a precarious posi- tion on the North American continent.
No logical reason for continued hostilities now existed, but the bad feeling between the frontier whites and the roving In- dians could not be immediately eradicated by conferences in Europe. The savages with their intermittent and unpredictable depredations were a constant source of anxiety. In 1724, as a consequence of several outrages committed in the town of Dun- stable, John Lovewell and other petitioners were allowed by the General Court to raise a company and to "kill and destroy their enemy Indians." While thus on active duty, they were to be paid
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2 shillings, 6 pence a day, with a generous bounty of 100 pounds for each Indian scalp. On the second of their forays into the wil- derness the alert Lovewell and his men surprised and slew ten sleeping braves who were apparently marching south from Cana- da, well supplied with muskets and ammunition.
On a third expedition in the spring of 1725 Lovewell planned to attack the Indian village of Pequawket, colloquially known as "Pigwacket," on the upper Saco River. He enlisted under him forty-six soldiers, including Jonathan Frye, of Andover, who as- sumed the duties of chaplain. Only twenty years old, Frye had graduated from Harvard in the Class of 1723, with Andrew Pe- ters, who almost immediately became Andover's schoolmaster. Jonathan was the third but only surviving son of Captain James Frye (1652-1734), who had participated in the Great Swamp Fight against King Philip in 1675; and Captain James was him- self the youngest son of John ffrie, a wheelwright by trade, who landed in Boston in August, 1628, became a proprietor in An- dover, and was conspicuous among the community members for killing wolves, receiving five pounds a head in colonial bounty. Thus out of obscurity emerged a figure who created a New Eng- land saga of family indestructiblety and service. John ffrie seems to have had virility, stamina, and a longing for adventure, quali- ties which were transmitted to a long line of descendants. The name appears in the records in various picturesque spellings, in- cluding "ffrie," "frie," "Frye," and "Fry." Which was used at the moment depended on the mood or the intelligence of the official scribe. By the middle of the eighteenth century it had be- come standardized as "Frye."
Jonathan Frye's brief career has been romantically sentimen- talized by chroniclers. As the legend goes, he became attached to a girl of thirteen, Susanna Rogers, oldest child and daughter of the minister in neighboring East Boxford, whom the young man's parents regarded as beneath them in social standing and fortune. This part of the tale lacks plausibility, for a clergyman's status in those days was seldom questioned. However that may
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be, the lover, whether thwarted or not, joined up with Lovewell in a raid which received much publicity. He proved to be a pop- ular addition to the troop, and when one of them, Ensign Wy- man, killed their first Indian, the chaplain is said to have assisted in the scalping.
On the morning of May 8, 1725, as Lovewell's company ap- proached Saco Pond, an Indian unexpectedly appeared. When they fired at him with their rifles, he responded with beaver- shot, mortally wounding their leader. The colonists, decoyed into a position of grave danger, now engaged in a prolonged and sanguinary battle against twice their number. The engagement opened about ten in the morning and continued all day, until the waters of the quiet pond were stained crimson with blood from both red men and "palefaces." In the midafternoon, Chap- lain Frye, who had been active not only in comforting the in- jured but also in aiming and firing his own gun, was shot down. The contemporary account of the affair, written by the Rever- end Thomas Symmes, of Bradford, says of Frye, "But when he could fight no longer, he prayed audibly several times for the preservation and success of the residue of the company." At sun- set the enemy withdrew, leaving several of the white men dead or mortally wounded.
The surviving troopers, including nine who were unhurt, marched off in retreat; but four of them, of whom Frye was one, after they had traveled a mile and a half, were unable to proceed further. Their comrades left them with some provisions, hoping to reach the fort at Ossipee and send back fresh soldiers to their rescue. Frye and his three companions struggled along with dif- ficulty and pain until he, realizing his hopeless condition, urged the others to leave him to his fate. The account says simply:
He laid himself down, telling them he should never rise more, and charged Davis, if it should please God to bring him home, to go to his father and tell him that he expected in a few hours to be in eternity, and that he was not afraid to die. . . . They left him, and this amiable
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and promising young gentleman, who had the journal of the march in his pocket, was not heard of again.
Of this unfortunate quartet, Farwell, the lieutenant, after walking a few miles further, had also to be left behind, and was never seen again. The remaining two, Davis and Jones, after some gruesome experiences, reached shelter and food. A band of English soldiers returned as soon as possible to the scene of the action, where they found and buried many corpses. But some- where in the forest south of Fryeburg still rest the bones of the gallant chaplain, who died so young.
The dramatic incident was commemorated in a contemporary ballad, one stanza of which runs as follows:
Our worthy Captain Lovewell among them there did die; They killed Captain Robbins, and wounded good young Frye, Who was our English Chaplain, he many Indians slew And some of them he scalped when bullets round him flew.
When the news of her sweetheart's death reached her, Susan- na Rogers composed some verses in rhymed octosyllabics, under the title, "The Mournful Elegy of Mr. Jonathan Frye, 1725." These were first published by Samuel L. Knapp, a popular writ- er of the early nineteenth century, in his Lectures in American Literature (1829). Knapp stated that the poem was "lately found in an ancient manuscript of a gentleman of the native place of the lovers and lately transmitted to me." As the emotional out- pouring of an adolescent girl it should be spared criticism. Its literary quality, as well as its manifest sincerity, may be judged from the opening lines:
Assist ye muses; help my quill Whilst floods of tears do down distill Not from my eyes alone, but all That hear the sad and doleful fall Of that young student, Mr. Frye, Who in his blooming youth did die.
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Fighting for his dear country's good He lost his life and precious blood. His father's only son was he, His mother loved him tenderly And all that knew him loved him well
For in bright parts he did excel
Most of his age; for he was young.
Wounded and bleeding he was left And of all sustenance bereft Within the hunting desert great None to lament his cruel fate. A sad reward, you'll say, for those For whom he did his life expose.
Miss Rogers closed her "effusion" with the following address to Jonathan's mother, Lydia (Osgood) Frye:
And now to you, his mother dear, Be pleased my childish rhymes to hear. Mother, refrain from flowing tears; Your son has gone beyond your cares And safe at rest in Heaven above With Christ, who was his joy and love, And in due time I hope you'll be With him to all eternity. Pray madam pardon this advice, Your grief is great, mine not much less, And if these lines will comfort you I have my will, Farewell, adieu.
If Father and Mother Frye had actually forbidden their son to marry Susanna Rogers, she now had the satisfaction of respond- ing with a modest Christian charity. Unfortunately research fails to tell us whether her early tragedy was followed by a rewarding later happiness, after her marriage to Dr. Jacob Peabody, a Leominster physician, at the ripe age of twenty-three.
Even in defiance of strict chronology and with the possibility of some reiteration, it is convenient at this point to follow the
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"Fighting Fryes" a little further. The present name of the place where the famous battle occurred is Fryeburg, given to it in 1777 in honor, not of Jonathan, but of his nephew, Joseph Frye (1712-1794), who had a long military service during which he moved on and up. This Joseph Frye, grandson of the original Andover proprietor and the ninth of the thirteen children of Sergeant John Frye, was an ensign in Hale's 5th Massachusetts Regiment at Louisburg in 1745 and later a major in Governor Shirley's expedition which, in 1755, expelled the Acadians from their homeland, thus providing the background and the plot for Longfellow's Evangeline. Promoted to colonel, he was at Fort William Henry in 1757, when it surrendered to Montcalm and his Indian allies. He escaped with his superior officer, the gallant Lieutenant-Colonel Munroe, reaching Fort Edward "naked, half-starved, and half-crazed." This episode was described, with all its thrills, by James Fenimore Cooper in The Last of the Mohicans.
In 1762, in response to his petition, the General Court grant- ed the veteran Colonel Frye a township of land in the Maine district, quite fittingly comprising the spot where his uncle had lost his life. In 1770, then, Joseph Frye moved with his family to Pequawket, where he opened a store. When the town was le- gally incorporated in January, 1777, it was named for the dis- tinguished grantee-and Fryeburg it is, to this very day, the town where Daniel Webster was later to teach school. In 1775, when he was sixty-three the Provincial Congress appointed Frye a major-general of Massachusetts militia, and early in 1776 Washington made him a brigadier general in the Continental Army. By this date, however, he was crippled with rheumatism and was forced to resign from service on April 23, 1776. An- dover's outstanding military leader spent his last years as a semi- invalid in Maine.
General Frye married Mehitable Poor, of Andover, and had eleven children, of whom three were christened Mehitable, two John, and two Samuel. The first Mehitable died in 1738, only a
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few months old; the second lived but a few days after her birth in 1739; but the third, more robust, born in 1741, lived until 1818. The persistence of the parents in endeavoring to preserve the mother's given name is a remarkable phenomenon, seldom found except among the early Puritans.
A manuscript discovered by Miss Bailey summarizes the achievements of the Frye family in the following fascinating memorandum:
Mr. Fry was one of the first settlers in this Towne and his offspring men of Grate Note; there was Copprils, Sergeants, Clarks, Ensignes, Lieuts, Twelve Captains, Magrs, Cornels, and Mager Generals, Two Judges of the Corts Superer and Court of Common Pleas, and two that had the titel of Honoral Counsellors and severall Justices of the Peace and some of the Rest Excelen Good Citizens.
In its ramifications and exploits the Frye family strikingly il- lustrates the preoccupation of most Andover citizens, even be- yond the Revolution, in military affairs, in recurring problems of security and defense. The fifth child and third son of the im- migrant, John Ffrie, was Samuel (1649), who was successively corporal, ensign, lieutenant, and captain in the militia. His son, John (1672-1737), known locally as "Sergeant John," was later a lieutenant as well as town clerk from 1719 to 1734-decidedly a man of parts. His son was the General Frye whose notable ca- reer has just been described.
Of General Frye's eleven children, one, Joseph (1743-1828), was a captain in the Revolutionary Army. When he was married in 1764 to Sarah Robinson, it was said that they were the hand- somest couple to go down the aisle in an Andover church-but they have since had some stiff competition! His son, also Joseph (1765-1814), moved to Ohio, and was there a lieutenant in the militia. According to Frye's Frye Genealogy he was "a farmer and teacher and never indulged in profanity"-surely an illuminat- ing characterization!
Thus in one branch of the Frye family members of five suc-
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cessive generations were at one time or another under arms. Many others, their cousins of the same name, also took part in warlike expeditions. One of the ablest was James Frye (1711- 1776), of the fourth American generation, who was at Louis- bourg in 1745 and was later lieutenant-colonel in Plaisted's Regi- ment in the assault on Crown Point in 1756. In the intervals be- tween campaigns he went back to farming and kept a tavern in the old homestead in North Andover. He it was who, in 1745, as chairman of a meeting of the proprietors, arbitrarily changed the spelling of the family name from "ffrie" to "Frye."
In 1776 James Frye literally left the plow and took command of a regiment. On the morning of June 17 he was presiding over a court-martial at Charlestown, but hearing that a battle was taking place, he jumped into the saddle and galloped off to Bunker Hill to join the colonial troops. Later in the day, as the Americans were retreating, he was wounded in the thigh by a musket ball which passed through the flesh and lodged in his horse's back. He dismounted, extracted the bullet, and rode on, remarking, "The Regulars fire damned careless!" With him at Bunker Hill were at least four relatives: Timothy Frye (1734- 1811), who had joined the Minute Men at Lexington; Lieuten- ant John Frye (1741-1816), who was an officer in Colonel Frye's regiment; Sergeant Joseph Frye (1748-1819), who was there as a drummer and afterwards had five years in the Revolutionary Army; and Frederick Frye (1760-1826), who was a private at sixteen and later became a captain and the representative of his family in the Order of the Cincinnati.
To these must be added the somewhat mysterious Benjamin Frye, son of Sergeant Joseph Frye and his wife, Deliverance, who answered the call to Lexington in 1775 and later enlisted as a seaman. He was taken prisoner by the British and later, in an exchange of prisoners, was sent to Boston on the cartel Silver Eel. Meanwhile he had contracted smallpox, was sent back to his home, died the next day, and was buried at night in a far corner of the farm by a stone wall. In 1945, through the efforts of Charles
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W. Tucker, registrar of the Brigadier-General Joseph Frye Chap- ter, Sons of the American Revolution, the grave was discovered in the forest, about one-third of a mile from Chestnut Street, on land owned by Mrs. Mary Greenwood. A marble headstone was obtained from the Quartermaster's Department in Wash- ington and set up as a marker, just two hundred years after the birth of the deceased.
These fighting men of the Frye family were plain citizens who in time of need took up arms to preserve and protect their safety and freedom. Many of them appear in the records as farm- ers, but there were also shoemakers, clothiers, millers, land sur- veyors, hatters, fullers, and even two tavern keepers. Although a few, like General Frye, moved away to seek their fortune else- where, most of them dwelt in Andover from the cradle to the coffin and were duly buried in the North Parish cemetery. They were a prolific stock, whose families tended to be large. Typical was Timothy, the veteran of Lexington and Bunker Hill, who had thirteen sons and daughters. All the boys received Biblical names-two Reubens, Timothy, Ezekiel, Jedediah, Peter, Sam- uel, and Enoch.
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