USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > Andover: symbol of New England; the evolution of a town > Part 22
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The labor required came largely from young men-and even- tually also from young women-who in pre-Revolutionary days would inevitably have remained on the farm, with no other place to go. Youths who would normally have expected to be planting and plowing and harvesting all their lives now became mill op- eratives with stipulated hours of work, a regular weekly pay check, and a different, and in most cases a higher standard of living. To these were added immigrants from Scotland and, in the 1840's, from Ireland, drawn here by the glad news that work was to be had. The prosperous Smiths and Doves were pleased to be able to offer opportunities to relatives and friends in Brechin and its vicinity. This was a fine racial stock, frugal, law- abiding, and cooperative, which sent down new roots in the South Parish and produced a high grade of responsible citizen- ship.
Through this process the once simple agricultural community underwent a transformation so sudden and complete that not all of its implications were at once apparent. Trade in the town stores became brisker. Church membership increased. More peo- ple appeared on the streets on Saturday afternoon. Referring to the economic changes, Miss Bailey quotes relevantly part of a petition drawn up in 1825 for the organization of the Andover Bank:
The trading and manufacturing capital of the town has very much increased within a few years past by the erection of several establish- ments for the manufacturing of cotton and woolen cloths and for other purposes .. . Your petitioners are confident that the amount
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ANDOVER: SYMBOL OF NEW ENGLAND
of mercantile and manufacturing business done among them ... and which is manifestly increasing, and the amount of money trans- actions growing out of that business, are sufficiently large to render a banking institution a great convenience.
One potent factor in this increased industrialization was the coming of railroad transportation in the 1830's. When the Bos- ton and Lowell Railway was opened for traffic in 1835, cloth and other products could be teamed to Wilmington en route to oth- er sections of the country-a demonstrable saving in money and time. Shortly before that an Andover promoter, Hubert Clark, Esq., had called a public meeting in the Locke Tavern, on Main Street, at which a group of citizens with speculative tendencies had agreed to petition the General Court for a charter for a pro- posed Andover and Wilmington Railroad which would bring the town closer to Boston and Portland, Maine. The charter was granted in 1833, a thousand shares of stock were quickly sub- scribed, and the short link was completed in 1836. As the first locomotive puffed its way along the tracks, crowds of spectators cheered the engineer and the fortunate passengers.
The first local railroad "dee-po" was placed where the present motion picture theater now stands. The route followed from there can easily be traced today by a pedestrian with some aware- ness of topography, through the back yards of several Central Street houses, across Abbot and Phillips streets, through what is now Spring Grove Cemetery and by Pomp's Pond, and on through pasture land and meadow to North Wilmington. The grass-grown "Old Railroad Track" is one of the pleasantest walks in the town of Andover.
In 1840 the existing road was still further extended to the North Parish and from there to Exeter, New Hampshire; and by 1843 freight shipments could be arranged by rail direct from Andover to Portland. With the growth and demands of nearby Lawrence in the 1840's, a still newer line was ultimately com- pleted along an even straighter route between there and Boston.
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THE RISE OF INDUSTRY IN ANDOVER
The hour arrived when the little stretch between Andover and Wilmington was no longer profitable to operate. The iron rails and even the picturesque depot were abandoned, and the wooden ties were put to other purposes. Further astounding changes in transportation will be noted later, with the coming and going of the horsecar and the electric trolley car and the arrival in the twentieth century of the ubiquitous automobile and the air- plane. In the history of Andover, as of other New England towns, very few institutions have been static. This may or may not rep- resent progress, but it must be stated as a fact.
What was happening in Andover, significant though it was for that township, seemed trivial as compared with what was go- ing on in Lawrence, which, even as late as 1840, was a quiet river village, of less than two hundred population. On Pine Island, four miles up the Merrimack, was an Indian settlement. Not far away was the large farm of Daniel Appleton White, covering more than three hundred acres. Near Bodwell's Falls two ferries once crossed the broad river-Marston's, a little below the pres- ent city, and Bodwell's above the dam where it is today. These were superseded in 1793 by the Andover Bridge, the second in Essex County to span the river. This was close to where the Broadway Bridge is now located. The oldest residence now within the limits of the city of Lawrence is probably the Bodwell House, built in 1708 by Henry Bodwell, but this has been con- siderably altered by additions. For the most part the land was occupied by peaceful farms, and the locality was regarded by Andoverians as a kind of sleepy hollow, from which little, either for good or for evil, was to be expected. They were to have rea- sons for changing their minds.
Bodwell's Falls was described as "a tumbling rapid, broken by projecting ledges, with a descent of four to five feet in a third of a mile." It was certainly no Niagara; but men who had dis- cerned the possibilities of the unimpressive Shawsheen and the Cochichawicke were not likely long to overlook the tumultuous
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ANDOVER: SYMBOL OF NEW ENGLAND
Merrimack, especially after it became evident that water power opened the way to opulence. The region near Bodwell's Falls was not far from shipping ports on the coast, and the problems of development were not insuperable. Foremost among those who realized the possibilities was Daniel Saunders, a Salem, New Hampshire, boy, who for a brief period had leased a mill in An- dover and carried on a small business in cloth-dressing and wool- carding. In the 1840's he had moved to a farm in the West Parish, in what was locally called "Moose County," near the Andover toll bridge. As Miss Bailey has pictured it, the prosperity of that area had departed with the decline of the turnpike and the ad- vent of the railroad:
The taverns became silent, the bridge comparatively deserted, and the river Merrimack flowed amid scenes almost as solitary as when the Indian paddled his canoe, and was the sole tenant of the forests.
Mr. Saunders, a Yankee with a prospective mind, saw beyond the barrenness of the flat and sandy "Shawshin Fields." As he watched the water tumbling down the rapids, he imagined more than beauty; he had visions of industrial activity producing wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. Quietly and secretly, as the months went by, he bought up cheap land along the river bank from farmers who were glad to get rid of it. Then, in due season, he disclosed his plans-and his holdings-to capitalists in Lowell and Boston. In 1843 the Merrimack Water Power As- sociation was formed, with Samuel Lawrence as president and John Nesmith, of Lowell, as treasurer. Several citizens of An- dover, including Nathaniel Stevens, joined in the project. On March 20, 1845, the Essex Company was incorporated, with a capital of 1,000,000 dollars, granting to Samuel Lawrence, Dan- iel Saunders, John Nesmith, and Edward Bartlett, their associ- ates and successors, the right to construct a dam across the Merri- mack. Work was begun at once on what was called the Great Stone Dam, which was completed on September 19, 1848. Our
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THE RISE OF INDUSTRY IN ANDOVER
far-off war with Mexico seems in no way to have interrupted or impeded the construction.
Meanwhile an act incorporating a new town called Lawrence was passed by the General Court and signed by Governor Briggs on April 17, 1847. This township was formed from territory set off from both Methuen and Andover, apparently without any remonstrance from either. Some adjustment of taxes and indebt- edness had to be made, but the Lawrence government was soon in full operation. The Essex Company not only built the dam and the mills but also opened up streets and provided housing for employees. The town in those early days resembled a west- ern mining camp, with a population accurately described as "mixed" and with inadequate sanitary and police regulations. Saloons opened on every corner, disorder was widespread, and the courts were very busy. All this was virtually at Andover's back door.
The population which, in 1846, was only 1,160 had increased by 1850 to more than 8,000. Ten years later it was recorded as 17,639. Many of the machine workers were farmers from the surrounding countryside or French-Canadians lured down from the north by the prospect of large wages. A still larger propor- tion, however, were Irish immigrants, who had left their famine- stricken island to seek the land of abundance. Most of these be- gan by working on the railroad or on construction gangs, doing unskilled manual labor. Their habits, their ways of living, their religion were different from those of the neighboring villagers.
With the rapid growth in population the need for a city form of government became apparent. Accordingly in 1853 a city charter was granted by the legislature to Lawrence, and the mu- nicipality was divided into six wards. The first mayor, Charles S. Storrow, was inaugurated on May 10, 1853, with considerable ceremony. By 1916, Lawrence had over one hundred thousand people and had become the most cosmopolitan and polyglot city on the North American continent.
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ANDOVER: SYMBOL OF NEW ENGLAND
This is the story of Andover, not of Lawrence, and there is no reason for going into detail regarding the busy mills which were based on the dam and the plentiful water power which it supplied. The Bay State Mills, opened in 1848 for the manufac- ture of woolen goods, particularly plaid shawls, failed in the Panic of 1857, but others, including the Washington Mills, the Atlantic Cotton Mills, the Lawrence Machine Shop, the Pember- ton Company, and the Pacific Mills-long the largest of all- were successively opened and brought a rich reward to their stockholders. This was not extraordinary, for the hours of work were long and the pay for the employees was low.
On January 10, 1860, a tragic disaster appalled the city and its neighborhood. The Pemberton Mill was a huge wooden structure, five storeys in height, two hundred and eighty feet long and eighty-four feet wide, with many smaller outbuildings. At thirteen minutes before five in the afternoon, without any warning whatever, the walls and roof collapsed, burying hun- dreds of employees in the ruins. Although many of these were rescued, eighty-eight died. To add to the horror, fire broke out; and the mill girls, many of them trapped without hope of escape, began to sing the hymns which they had learned in church. The bare details of the disaster may be read in a pamphlet of ninety- six pages, called An Authentic History of the Lawrence Calamity, giving the testimony offered at the investigation. But in Ando- ver a girl only sixteen years old, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, daugh- ter of Professor Austin Phelps, of the Seminary, heard all about the tragedy and later spent several weeks investigating the facts. She consulted engineers, officials, and physicians, newspaper re- porters, and many of the survivors of the disaster. She then wrote a story called "The Tenth of January," which was published in the young Atlantic Monthly. Of it she said, "This story is of more interest to its author than it can possibly be now to any reader, because it distinctly marked for me the first recognition which I received from literary people." The immediate effect of the catastrophe was to draw attention to building construction in
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THE RISE OF INDUSTRY IN ANDOVER
that unhappy city and to expedite some badly needed reforms in supervision and inspection.
The rapid rise of Lawrence and its subsequent expansion were naturally disturbing to Andover, which, although to some extent industrialized, still remained an orderly New England village. Lawrence, only three miles away, was a hurly-burly, a melting pot, a crowded and complex city with all the problems which a society without traditions or cultural background must meet. A large percentage of its alien population could not understand the principles upon which Andover had been established. In- evitably, however, some of its more prosperous executives and tradespeople bought or built homes on the Andover shore of the Merrimack, close to both the North and the South Parishes; and the time came when many of these commuted to their offices or stores in the city. The pressure from those who favored a so- called "Greater Lawrence," with Andover as just another sub- urb, was to be aggressive, especially after Andover, for political reasons, was districted with some of the wards in Lawrence. This issue, always imminent, has not yet been settled.
The Andover mills, operated by the Stevenses and Marlands and Smiths, were different from the Lawrence mills, which throve on the exploitation of cheap labor from foreign countries. The tendency in Lawrence, moreover, was for many years to- wards absentee ownership, with its inevitable sad and bad con- sequences. The process of adjustment between the town and the city has also been one between two different theories of manage- ment. But they do have to live close to one another, and what hurts Lawrence cannot be beneficial to Andover.
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CHAPTER XVIII
Personalities, 1815-1861
A NOT too inaccurate picture of life in Andover during the years between our Second War with England and our War between the States may be put together from contemporary or recollected accounts of what went on at the two academies and the Seminary. On the Hill were several articulate men and wom- en, with a passion for communication and an eye out for pos- terity. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's Chapters from a Life (1896), Sarah Stuart Robbins' Old Andover Days (1908), and Susan E. Jackson's brief Reminiscences of Andover, all scented with nostal- gia, portray the town as primarily a cultural center. Oliver Wen- dell Holmes's "Cinders from the Ashes," printed in his book, Pages from an Odd Volume of Life, preserves the candid memories of a Phillips undergraduate in the 1820's. These and other de- scriptions of how the students and faculties worked and amused themselves are important, even though they are limited to only one phase of town society. The downtown citizens, although defi- nitely not overawed, called upon the Seminary professors for leadership and had for them an honest respect.
To round out the story and make it more complete we could wish that we had a similar core of documentary evidence from the tradespeople and mill owners, from the farmers and mill employees, who made up the larger part of the community. We do have the town Records, giving the bare, undecorated facts, and a few interesting family letters. But we have very little illumi- nation of personalities, and about some men and women who were apparently both prominent and useful we know almost nothing. A few intimate diaries would have been very helpful.
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PERSONALITIES, 1815-1861
The first issue of the Andover Advertiser, a weekly newspaper published by John D. Flagg, did not appear until February 19, 1853, but after that date the issues are invaluable. It contained four pages, and the subscription price was one dollar per annum, "in advance."
Any compilation of Andover celebrities of this period inevi- tably involves some reference to the tiny Chapel Cemetery on Andover Hill, not far from the present Cochran Sanctuary. This burying ground is said to hold the mortal remains of more dis- tinguished Americans than any plot of land of its size in this country. It is a lovely spot, sloping down towards Rabbit Pond and shaded with many oaks and elms, so secluded that the con- stant hum of traffic on Main Street can hardly be heard there. Although it has a charm like Stoke Poges, it is not the resting place of "mute inglorious Miltons." The Seminary dead were nearly all vocal and at times inspired. They were theologians and preachers and dialecticians, expounders of the ways of God to man. The inscriptions on the tombstones are often complete essays, detailed and laudatory. Most of these eminent divines are now forgotten, but they were powerful figures in their day and carried themselves with the dignity of conscious pride. A visitor who cherishes the past will find much here of interest. Certainly no historian of Andover can ignore their careers and accomplishments.
The Dictionary of American Biography, perpetuating the names and accomplishments of Americans generally recognized as "worthy," includes sketches of the following professors at An- dover Theological Seminary before 1861: Ebenezer Porter (1772-1854), Leonard Woods (1774-1854), James Murdock (1776-1856), Moses Stuart (1780-1852), Justin Edwards (1787- 1853), Bela B. Edwards (1802-1852), Austin Phelps (1820-1890), Calvin E. Stowe (1802-1886), and Edwards A. Park (1808-1900). Six of the nine died in the 1850's, a devastating decade for the Seminary. To the ranks of the illustrious must be added three one-time principals of Phillips Academy, Eliphalet Pearson
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ANDOVER: SYMBOL OF NEW ENGLAND
(1752-1826), John Adams (1772-1863), and Samuel H. Taylor (1807-1871), and two popular women authors, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) and Elizabeth Stuart (Phelps) Ward (1844- 1911). Thus fourteen residents of Andover at this period have been officially declared outstanding in the nation. No other town of its size in the Commonwealth had a comparable record.
During the eighteenth century the growth of the town had been gradual, without any sudden spurts. In 1765 it had 2,442 in- habitants, in 1790, 2,863, and in 1800, 2,941-increases account- ed for by an excess of births over deaths. By 1810, the population had advanced slightly to 3,164; but thereafter, with the opening of several mills, outsiders came seeking employment. The census statistics offer the following figures:
1820
3,389
1830
4,530
1840
5,207
1850
6,945
The unprecedented growth of the town from 1840 to 1850, largely the concomitant of the remarkable activity of Lawrence, is especially noteworthy. Of course more money was being spent in Andover, and its economy rapidly became more complicated. Although much of the outlying land continued to be used for agricultural purposes, and even Phillips Academy had its own farm and dairy, new residences, some of them imposing, were going up on Elm and Central and School streets, and before long on what is now Main Street. Construction underwent what we should now call a "boom," interrupted briefly by the Panic of 1837. Stores of various types were opened, to meet the de- mand. Lawyers and physicians found Andover a pleasant and profitable place for the practice of their professions. Although the thoroughfares were unpaved and hardly to be distinguished from country roads, the traffic on them, all horse-drawn, was heavier than it had been; and after the coming of the railroad and the erection of the local station, buses regularly met the
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PERSONALITIES, 1815-1861
trains and conveyed passengers to their destinations. The Man- sion House, the Blunt Tavern, the Locke Tavern, and later the Eagle Hotel in the square took care of visitors, of whom there were many; and other sporadic hostelries had their unpredict- able rise and fall.
In 1825, when the aging General Lafayette came to the United States, he helped Daniel Webster dedicate the Bunker Hill Mon- ument on June 17 and then, on Tuesday, June 21, set out for Concord, New Hampshire. At the Reading-Andover line he was met by a troop of cavalry formed from the Andover militia. As he and his carriage companion, Josiah Quincy, were riding along, the Frenchman asked Quincy, who was a graduate of Phillips Academy, to tell him something about the town which he was approaching. Quincy, who was well-informed, fluent, and diplomatic, gave him an "earfull." When the procession reached the Mansion House, the Marquis, in excellent English, addressed the students of the Academy and the Seminary, speaking as if from intimate knowledge and in highly complimentary terms of "this consecrated Hill, from which light has gone out to the heathen and religion to the ends of the earth." This was even then a very effective oratorical technique, which pleased the audience and evoked cheers and loud applause. Passing through Andover later in the day on his return to Boston, Quincy called on Principal John Adams, who expressed delight at the speech, adding, with charming naïveté:
I was surprised at one thing: I knew in our religious world our school held a very high position, but I was unprepared to find that a man who had spent his days in courts and camps, who had been through the entire French Revolution, should have known so much about our Theological Institution.
Quincy did not have the heart to undeceive the kind old prin- cipal, who, to the end of his days, never ceased to relate the story of Lafayette's marvelous knowledge of American affairs. It should be added that Lafayette, with some assistance, recog-
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ANDOVER: SYMBOL OF NEW ENGLAND
nized several Revolutionary veterans in the throng and insisted on shaking their hands.
At the Mansion House, Lafayette had been formally greeted on behalf of the town by Esquire John Kneeland, merchant, law- yer, and member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Conven- tion of 1820. After a lavish collation at the Mansion House, La- fayette was guided about the Hill and then escorted to Squire Kneeland's home at the corner of Central and Chestnut streets. Built in 1784 by Abner Abbot, a blacksmith, it had been bought by Kneeland in 1796. There from the front porch the General made a few remarks to the townspeople who had assembled to greet him, and then before proceeding north enjoyed a hot tod- dy in the west parlor. This house, retaining many of its original architectural features, is still standing and is called Rose Cottage.
It is particularly gratifying to learn that the Andover ladies had their share in the welcome. The Boston Daily Advertiser for June 23, 1825, in describing the ceremonies, concluded, "In Lafayette's progress through Andover the windows were very generally filled with well-dressed females"; and the Columbian Centinel for June 25 commented, "The windows of the houses on the road were filled with ladies and children, who greeted him in their acceptable manner." The entire episode reminds us that Thomas Jefferson once said that Lafayette "had a canine appetite for popularity and fame."
In the spring of 1832, Amos A. Lawrence, later the distin- guished merchant, statesman, and philanthropist, was “rusti- cated" by Harvard College for his share in a so-called Gunpow- der Plot and, to pass the time, settled first in Bedford, with his tutor, John F. Stearns, and later at the Mansion House, in An- dover, where he spent several months with other Harvard stu- dents also under suspension. He engaged in much doctrinal dis- cussion with the Seminary students and, as a good Unitarian, noted that "truth in Cambridge becomes a lie in Andover, and the same of Andover truth when carried to Cambridge." Com- menting on his fellow rusticators, Lawrence said:
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PERSONALITIES, 1815-1861
There is one who does nothing but smoke and eat. The divines smoke and eat too, but in subordination to more important consid- eration; a good argument, for instance, is more relished than all the puddings for a term.
It is to Lawrence that we are indebted for a contemporary account of the visit of General Andrew Jackson to Andover on July 1, 1833. Although he was in feeble health, he had come to Cambridge from Washington in order to receive an honorary degree on June 26-an award which made conservative Har- vard graduates, like John Quincy Adams, fume and sputter. He had been persuaded to extend his tour as far as Concord, the capital of New Hampshire. On his way he stopped at the Man- sion House, in Andover, where Lawrence reported what hap- pened:
I went to Boston to see President Jackson, who, with his cabinet, has been making a triumphal tour, as it were, of the Northern States. The Bostonians honored him as much as he deserves, perhaps more. I saw the old gentleman first in a procession near the State House. His appearance struck me instantly with a kind of respect for him, it is so remarkable. He alone was uncovered, and displayed a head higher than those about him and silvered with age. His hair is remarkable on account of its thickness, and his fashion of combing it back. He reviewed the troops and showed himself to be an accom- plished horseman. From Boston he went to Salem, thence to Lowell through Andover. I was one of the cavalcade here in Andover and had a very good sight of him. He put up at this house and ate a lunch of bread and milk in his chamber. Mr. Van Buren, Vice-President, dined in Mr. Skinner's parlors, and so did Major Donelson and my- self, and some other of the illustrious. We escorted him out of town, took a stage coach and followed him to Lowell, where we arrived just in time to see the famous procession of factory girls. It consisted of three or four thousand, marching by fours. This, if nothing else, was a splendid sight for the old general.
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