USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > Andover: symbol of New England; the evolution of a town > Part 24
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cere in their belief, unwilling to make even the slightest compro- mise with the slavery cause.
To these seceders from the West Parish were added several members of the Methodist Episcopal group, so that the founders of the new "Free Church" numbered forty-four. Their first pas- tor, the Reverend Elijah C. Winchester, was installed on Febru- ary 1, 1846, and for some time the members used the Methodist meeting house. In 1850, John Smith acquired this building, which, after being moved to a new site and remodeled, was dedi- cated on March 8, 1850, the day after Webster's famous Seventh of March Speech which so eloquently expressed ideas obnoxious to the Free Church congregation. Thus organized as an inde- pendent church, it shortly found itself in such close sympathy with the beliefs and policies of the Congregationalists that it allied itself with that denomination.
So far as can be ascertained, the original settlers of Andover included no Roman Catholics. In the 1750's, as we have noted, some Acadian refugees were assigned to Andover and, at first with some difficulty, found ways of practicing the rites of their religion. No need for a Catholic church seems to have been felt, however, until the mid-nineteenth century, when the expansion of Lawrence brought many Irish immigrants into the surround- ing area. In 1852, Andover became a mission of St. Mary's Church, in Lawrence, and the Reverend James O'Donnell, O.S.A., erected there an unpretentious chapel dedicated to St. Augustine. Services there were conducted until 1866 by neigh- boring Lawrence clergy; but in that year the Reverend Michael Gallagher, O.S.A., became its first regular pastor. In 1869 he was succeeded by the enterprising Reverend Ambrose Mullen, O.S.A., a former president of Villanova College, who bought the land where the present church is located. During the period covered by this chapter the devoted priests of Lawrence kept the Catholic church in Andover alive and established the relation- ship with the Augustinian Order which it still maintains.
The Theological Seminary had organized its own church in
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1816, with its professors serving as pastors. A Universalist So- ciety, established in the south district, lasted for more than a quarter of a century but has long since been extinct. Two church- es were formed in 1850 in Ballardvale-one Methodist Episco- pal and one Union Congregational.
The establishment of these various church groups indicated that Andover, in religion as well as in business and politics, was no longer a completely coherent community. The new freedom of the nineteenth century allowed the expression of opinion, no matter how unorthodox or unfamiliar; and the spread, first of Unitarianism and then of Roman Catholicism, was merely a healthy sign of the times. The Puritan control of man's mind had vanished forever.
The increasing industrial activity of the town brought to the front a new group of business leaders, shrewd Yankee traders, quite different from the scholarly bookworms on the Hill. These were the men who set up the financial machinery for starting stores and mills. On March 27, 1826, the first meeting of the stockholders of a proposed "Andover Bank" was held at the home of James Locke, at 111 Main Street. Samuel Farrar was elected president and held that position for thirty years. The first cashier was Amos Blanchard, another of those "leading citi- zens" who, throughout the town's history, always seem to ap- pear when constructive imagination is required. Scott H. Para- dise, who prepared a short biography, has said, "I cannot think of any one who was so closely interwoven with the texture of Andover life during its glorious days as Amos Blanchard." Born on January 14, 1773, in Wilton, New Hampshire, he moved to Andover as a lad of fourteen, attended Phillips Academy, and early became the trusted factotum and protégé of Judge Phil- lips. Modeling himself on Franklin's industrious apprentice, he was regarded as a local Jack-of-all-trades and general handy man. After Judge Phillips' death in 1802, Blanchard became clerk to Squire Farrar, then treasurer of the Academy, and acquired a reputation for hardheaded business sagacity. During this period
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he lived in a house on the Salem Turnpike which, now moved to Hidden Field, is used by Phillips Academy as a dormitory. Some years after his marriage to Elizabeth Jenkins in 1802, Blanchard built a more pretentious residence on the "Essex Turnpike"- now Main Street-and was recognized as one of those "warm men" called upon to subscribe to new enterprises.
When the Andover Bank was formed, it was natural that Blanchard should be elected as cashier and secretary to the board of directors. The position demanded those qualities for which he was conspicuous-knowledge of town affairs, trustworthi- ness, and discretion. Mr. Paradise found in the bank archives "more than 92 folio pages of minutes written in Blanchard's strong and beautiful penmanship." After 1825, when he was chosen a deacon of the South Church, he was always called "Dea- con Blanchard." He was three times moderator of the Parish town meeting, a member of the standing committee from 1817 to 1825, and trustee and treasurer of the ministerial fund. When he died in 1847, he left to his wife his house and barn, two wood lots, his furniture and books, pew 82 in the South Church, and the income from 5,000 dollars. He was representative of most of the activities, educational, spiritual, religious, or practical, that brought Andover distinction.
On July 1, 1826, the Andover Bank was opened for business in rented quarters on Main Street and received its first deposit of 100 dollars from an unnamed customer. In 1832 the bank bought the building and made an addition on the northerly end. It has been in continuous and successful operation since its es- tablishment, conducted and controlled by some of the commu- nity's most responsible citizens.
In May, 1835, the Andover Institution for Savings was incor- porated by thirty residents of the town and opened for business in an old wooden structure at the corner of Main Street and Post Office Avenue. Deacon Amos Abbot was the first president and John Flint the treasurer. The original rate of interest on deposits was five per cent.
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Meanwhile the Merrimack Mutual Fire Insurance Company, an institution of a unique type, had been organized in January, 1828. At the first meeting of the policyholders, Hobart Clark --- later the projector of the Andover & Wilmington Railroad-was elected president and Samuel Phillips, grandson of Judge Phil- lips, was made secretary. The original board of directors includ- ed several of Andover's elite, among them Captain Nathaniel Stevens, Colonel Moody Bridges, Deacon Amos Blanchard, Abraham Marland, and John Flint. At the end of the first year the amount of insurance in force totaled the modest sum of 213,925 dollars. The fee of the directors was then 50 cents for each meeting attended.
It is impossible in a short chapter to cover all aspects of the town's economic life at this period of expansion. Trends and developments have been indicated, but we cannot here list the scores of citizens who contributed to the industrial evolution of the town. One gets the impression of intense and varied activity, especially in the South Parish, which had become a center for business as well as for education. The Andover of the 1830's was certainly very different from the country village of pre-Revolu- tionary days.
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CHAPTER XIX
A Half Century of Politics
TT cannot truthfully be maintained that Andover, during the first half of the nineteenth century, was politically more prominent than other New England towns of comparative popu- lation and constituency. A few of its local leaders extended their range to Boston and even to Washington, but their influence on state and national policies was certainly not decisive. The voters were alert to important issues, like the tariff and internal im- provements and slavery, and debated them with vigor. But An- dover's town meetings and elections are interesting more because they were typical and characteristic of New England democracy than because they were out of the ordinary.
Once again we have no accurate descriptions or pictorial rep- resentations of the town fathers. No portraits exist of the two Kittredge physicians who were so prominent in local affairs. I can find no letters of the Honorable Gayton P. Osgood or Con- gressman Amos Abbott, who is still alphabetically the first in the Biographical Directory of the American Congress. Their names are recorded on legislative roll calls and cut on tombstones in the parish burying grounds. We have a few sentences from a few speeches. But we know nothing of how they looked to their neighbors and how they behaved in their homes. They are shad- owy figures, a little blurred and vague and colorless. But to their contemporaries they were as real as our present-day selectmen and school committee members are to us. We must never forget that "John" and "Peter" and "Samuel" were once flesh-and- blood members of a very lively community.
Without having anything to say about it, Andover was in-
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volved in the scandalous "Gerrymander" of Massachusetts. El- bridge Gerry, born in Marblehead in 1744, had been a delegate to the Federal Convention of 1787, although he had not ap- proved of the constitution which it produced. Later, in the 1790's, as his opposition to the Federalism of Washington and Adams intensified, he suffered a kind of social ostracism in his native state. Nominated by the Republicans, or anti-Federalists, for governor in 1800, he was defeated in that year and in three successive years for the same office. In 1810, however, when he was sixty-five, he ran once more and won over the Federalist aristocrat, Christopher Gore. Re-elected in April, 1811, he be- gan a systematic purge of Federalist officeholders. His growing partisanship led him, in 1812, in the midst of war, to approve a redistricting of the Commonwealth in such a fashion as to give the Republicans a representation in the Senate in excess of their voting strength. In this revision, Andover was joined with Ames- bury, Haverhill, Methuen, Newbury, Middleton, Lynnfield, Danvers, Salem, Lynn, Chelsea, and Marblehead in a grotesque- ly shaped geographical district extending around the border of Essex County. The conspirators thought, quite correctly, that the heavy Republican vote in the town of Marblehead would offset Federal majorities in the other eleven towns. The clever, if unscrupulous, plan worked so well that, although Gerry was defeated for governor by the veteran, Caleb Strong, in April, 1812, the Federalists elected only eleven senators as compared with twenty-nine Republicans.
The story has several versions, but according to the most authentic, Major Benjamin Russell, editor of the Columbian Centinel, outlined on a map in a bright crimson color the towns selected for the new district and hung it on the wall of his office. At a Federalist committee gathering, Gilbert Stuart, the artist, took a pencil and with a few skillful touches emphasized what resembled claws and wings, exclaiming, "There! That might pass for a salamander!" Russell, hitherto busy with a pen at his desk, looked up and cried, "Salamander? Call it a gerrymander!"
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On the drawing, Andover, the largest Essex County town, was the back of the bird to which wings were attached, Marblehead and Salem were the claws, and Salisbury the beak. Soon a cari- cature showing the area, with Gerry as a sinister figure in the background, was being circulated widely throughout New Eng- land. Gerry himself, later in the year, was elected Vice-President of the United States on the ticket with James Madison and took office on March 4, 1813. He died on November 23, 1814. Mean- while, with a change in the political complexion of the Massa- chusetts Legislature, the Gerrymander had been repealed on June 16, 1813. But although it had not lasted very long, it added a new word to the dictionary.
There was a period at the turn of the century when Andover, for some reason, seemed to be growing less conservative. In 1800, for example, the majority for Gerry in the town was 173 against 150 for Strong. Two years later, when the same two perennial candidates ran for governor, Andover gave Gerry 176 and Strong 170. The only other town in Essex County to show a majority for the anti-Federalist ticket was Marblehead. Indeed in that same election Manchester went for Strong 69 to 1 and Hamilton 87 to 1.
Judge Samuel Phillips, Jr., had been a presidential elector-at- large in 1788, 1792, 1796, and again in 1800. Further he was for some years one of the five state senators from Essex County, and obviously an outstanding citizen. Some reason exists, however, for believing that he was not altogether popular in his home town and that the large Republican vote in Andover was due to antagonism against him in his community. In 1801, he allowed himself to be named as a candidate for lieutenant-governor on the Federalist ticket with Caleb Strong. The unexpected can- didacy of another Federalist, Edward H. Robbins, for lieutenant- governor, split the party vote for that office, and while Strong on April 6 had a comparatively easy victory, the vote for lieutenant- governor was divided: General Heath (anti-Federalist) 18,044, Phillips 15,501, Robbins 8,212, and Gerry 250. In accordance
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with a statute invoked for the first time in Massachusetts elec- tions, the House of Representatives chose two out of the four, Phillips and Robbins-clearly a party procedure-and in the Senate, which decided the contest, Phillips had 29 votes out of 32. In reporting the results of the campaign, the Columbian Centi- nel said:
Last year we had pleasing satisfaction in being able to cheer the public mind on the subject of the State elections. At this moment our felicity is inexpressible in having it in our power to announce the Bright Prospect of the COMPLETE TRIUMPH of calumniated virtue over mendacious vice; of pure Principles, undeviating Patriotism, and staunch Federalism over empty Pretensions, canting Hypocrisy, and hollow-hearted Jacobinism.
There could be little doubt where that newspaper stood in the ever-recurring battle between traditionalists and progres- sives. Thomas Jefferson, to the sorrow of most of New England, had been elected President in 1800, but the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was still uncorrupted. On Friday, May 29, 1801, Strong and Phillips took the oath of office, and the latter made a pleasant little speech. Within nine months he was dead.
With Phillips' demise, Andover's foremost citizen was gone, and no one emerged to take his place on the political scene. His one surviving son, John, a graduate from Harvard in 1795, was never in robust health, and his activities were accordingly much curtailed. He married Lydia Gorham, daughter of the wealthy Nathaniel Gorham, by whom he had ten daughters and three sons; and after practicing law for a time in Charlestown, he set- tled in the family mansion in the North Parish. In 1802, he was defeated for representative to the General Court, but in 1809 he was chosen as one of the state senators from Essex County. He died in 1820, at the age of forty-four. With him the family in- fluence in the male line in Andover disappeared, and the name which once meant so much in town affairs is carried on only through Phillips Academy.
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After 1802, the leading political figure in the town for many years was Dr. Thomas Kittredge (1746-1818), of the North Par- ish, who, in addition to being a skillful physician also was not averse to public office. His name is spelled in the town and state records erratically as Kittridge, Kitteredge, Kittridg, Kitreg, and Kittredge, and one gets the impression that he himself had no marked preference. He had followed a strong family tradition by becoming a doctor, but he was a man of driving energy and broad interests outside his profession. He married Susannah Osgood, sister of Samuel Osgood, in an alliance which joined two distin- guished Andover families. They had seven children, five girls and two boys, and both of the latter became physicians. In 1784 he built the great mansion on Academy Road now occupied by his direct descendant, Francis W. Kittredge.
In November, 1800, Dr. Kittredge ran for Congress in what was then the Fourth Middlesex District as an anti-Federalist against the versatile Manasseh Cutler, of Hamilton, but was de- feated, receiving in Andover only 91 votes to Cutler's 165. Two years later, however, he defeated John Phillips for representa- tive by a majority of 14. From then on until his death from apo- plexy on October 16, 1818, Kittredge was seldom out of the General Court. The number of members to which Andover was entitled in the Lower House varied mysteriously from year to year, but Kittredge was one of them in 1803, 1804, 1805, 1808, 1809, 1810, and 1811. In 1813, for no explicable reason, Andover had three representatives-Timothy Osgood, George Osgood, and Benjamin Jenkins-but in the following session the only one recorded is Timothy Osgood. In 1815, however, Dr. Kitt- redge was back again; and in 1816 and 1817 he seems to have served with Stephen Barker and John Kneeland. He was a mem- ber of the legislature at the time of his death.
For years Andover had no Congressman of its very own, but in the 1830's a singular succession of events gave the town at last a Representative in Washington. John Varnum, of Haverhill, who had served the Essex North District for three years, had had
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enough, and in 1830 declined to be a candidate for the Twenty- second Congress. The prospect for an ambitious young man seemed bright, and Gayton P. Osgood (1797-1861), born in Sa- lem but a member of the distinguished Andover Osgoods, ac- cepted the nomination of the lusty newly risen Jacksonian Party. A graduate of Harvard in the Class of 1815, he had become a law- yer and in 1819 had opened an office in Andover. He was a really profound scholar and classical student, stately and dignified in bearing and unblemished in character. He had joined the Demo- crats against the advice of his friends and, like Franklin D. Roose- velt a hundred years later, was accused of being a traitor to his social class.
Two National Republican aspirants ran against him-Caleb Cushing and Stephen W. Marston, both of Newburyport. Cush- ing, as his later career was to prove, was the ablest of the trio, but his aggressiveness had made him many enemies in his home town. The ensuing campaign was bitter, prolonged, and for many months indecisive. After three trials no candidate had a majority, and Marston's followers then substituted for him Dr. Joseph Kittredge (1783-1847), son of the physician who had so long represented Andover in the General Court. He was a graduate of Dartmouth College in 1806, had married Hannah Hodges, of Salem, and had seven children. He was a well-known resident of North Andover, the inheritor of a considerable es- tate, and popular in his district.
The struggle still continued, and on the ninth trial Dr. Kitt- redge at last received a plurality of the votes. Cushing then with- drew in favor of his fellow National Republican, but his adher- ents continued to produce such a large "scattering" vote that neither Kittredge nor Osgood, the two Andover men now pitted against each other, could secure a majority. Finally the weary Kittredge withdrew and was replaced by Jeremiah Nelson, an- other Newburyporter. He was an old campaigner who had served in Congress from 1805 to 1807 and from 1815 to 1827 and was trusted by the people. At last, on the thirteenth trial,
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all the anti-Jackson strength was united under a candidate who had few enemies, and Nelson defeated Osgood, 2,952 to 1,686. This contest is unsurpassed in American political history for its prolonged bitterness.
So much time had now elapsed that the period had passed when a Representative to the next, or Twenty-third, Congress would ordinarily have been chosen, and a special election had to be called. Osgood, valiantly persistent, again agreed to be the Jacksonian standard-bearer; but Nelson, despite his recent suc- cess, was growing old and made up his mind to return to his prof- itable shipping business. This left an opening for the undis- couraged Caleb Cushing, who, at a National Republican Con- vention held in Andover and presided over by Dr. Kittredge, was once more put in nomination. It now looked as if the two opposing parties would appear in their full strength. But Cush- ing's enemies, still relentless, insisted on putting forward Eben- ezer Bradbury, of Newburyport, hoping that he would draw enough National Republican support to bring about another deadlock.
When, after elections on April 1 and May 6, 1833, no choice was apparent, Bradbury decided that he had had enough, and in June Osgood and Cushing came "nobly to the grapple." But a new complication now appeared. The anti-Masons, who had been growing in numbers in Massachusetts, came out openly against Cushing, who was a member of the Masonic order, and he received only 2,894 votes to Osgood's 3,277. The long, ex- hausting contest was thus concluded. Gayton P. Osgood, Jack- sonian Democrat, was seated in Congress as the Representative of a district which was actually overwhelmingly anti-Jackson in sentiment; and after forty-four years under the Federal Consti- tution, a citizen of Andover had become a lawmaker in Wash- ington. Meanwhile, in November, 1832, Andrew Jackson had been re-elected President; but in 1833, after the election had been thrown into the General Court, John Davis, strongly anti- Jackson, had been chosen Governor of Massachusetts.
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In 1834, having held his Congressional seat for only one ses- sion, Osgood was again a candidate. Unfortunately, however, he had incurred the wrath of the "god-like" Daniel Webster, who did not like the idea of a Jacksonian Representative from Essex North. Caleb Cushing unreluctantly accepted the nomina- tion from the rising Whig Party, and soon all the power of the Whig Olympians-including not only Webster but also John Greenleaf Whittier, Edward Everett, and Rufus Choate-was mustered to crush the Andoverian. On November 10, 1834, Cushing received 4,536 votes to Osgood's 2,676, and was to re- main the very vocal and influential Whig Representative from Essex North from 1835 to 1843. Gayton P. Osgood, as Andover's first Congressman, had very little time or opportunity to impress either his party or his country.
Meanwhile, however, another equally well-born Andover citi- zen was growing in political esteem. Amos Abbott (1786-1868), who spelled his name with two t's, was a direct descendant of the original Andover proprietor, who had been content with one t. After attending the local public schools and Bradford Academy, Amos engaged in what were called rather vaguely "mercantile pursuits," which meant that he kept a store, did a little miscellaneous trading, and acted at times as a real-estate agent. He made his home for many years in the Abbot Tavern, on Elm Street, where George Washington had had breakfast in 1789. Abbott held several town offices, including surveyor in 1812, 1814, and 1816, town clerk in 1822, 1826, and 1828, and town treasurer from 1824 to 1829. From 1828 to 1830 he was also a member of the school committee. Following a familiar small-town pattern, he then moved into broader fields, as rep- resentative to the General Court in 1835, 1836, 1837, and 1843, and state senator from 1840 to 1842. In short, he was a very ac- tive local figure of the David Harum type, regarded as available for almost any respectable elective post. He was, moreover, a founder of the Boston and Portland (later the Boston and Maine) Railway and one of its directors from 1833 to 1841.
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In 1842 Caleb Cushing, who had served four terms in Con- gress, had to decide whether he would run again. After President Harrison's death in 1841, Cushing, like Daniel Webster, had supported his Democratic successor, John Tyler, thus incurring the animosity of Whig leaders in Massachusetts. Cushing knew that President Tyler intended to offer him a cabinet position; but he also, like Webster, did not wish to have it thought that he had permanently left the Whig Party. In his embarrassing situation, he adopted a policy of watchful waiting. When the Whig Convention met at Andover on October 17, he allowed himself to be recommended by a committee for renomination and then solemnly declined the honor. He thus created the im- pression that a re-election was his if he had chosen to accept it. This was shrewd, as well as obvious, practical politics.
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