USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > Andover: symbol of New England; the evolution of a town > Part 5
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39
Many of the proprietors had, in England, lived as tenants on estates. But in America, where the only landowners aside from the aborigines were the chartered holding companies, the adop- tion of a plan for communal living was wise, indeed almost in- evitable, if only for protection against Indians or other intruders. Most of the territory unassigned to individual grantees was, in the course of time, sold for the good of all. But the proprietors never relaxed their policy of keeping Andover a restricted soci- ety. The selectmen were empowered to investigate the habits and character of all persons seeking to move into the vicinity.
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At a general town meeting in March, 1660, the citizens voted to impose a heavy fine on anybody building a dwelling house with- out "express leave from the Towne." In 1674, when a "great controversie" arose on the subject, the town fathers appointed a committee "to see if it be convenient to give away any more land or how and to whom." Having already granted "home lots" to all those whom they regarded as legitimate recipients, they refused to encourage squatters. There were occasionally some unwelcome visitors, and in 1665 the town constable, Thomas Johnson, arrested and sent to jail a vagrant, or "tramp," as well as John Upton, the citizen who harbored him. But the revenue derived from the sale of the reserve land was undoubtedly of much financial assistance to the proprietors and helped to keep the "rates" low.
Respectable newcomers who could pay their way were appar- ently welcome. Typical is the case of my direct forebear, Andrew Peters, an Englishman, although he probably lived, and possibly was born, in Holland. Coming to this country about 1659, he settled in Ipswich, where he owned one share in Plum Island, Castle Neck, and Hog Island. He was given a grant for service in King Philip's War in 1676, and about ten years later moved to Andover, where he bought some land near the house of John Abbot, in the south end of the town, paying at the rate of thirty shillings an acre for three acres and sixty rods of land. A distiller by occupation, he was allowed by the selectmen, on December 21, 1692, to retail liquor by the quart. At this time he was spoken of as "being lately burnt out by ye Indians & put by his husband- ry." In 1697, Peters, who had meanwhile simplified his Dutch name, was elected as the first town treasurer. Evidently an out- sider could come to Andover, acquire land, and earn a position of responsibility without too much difficulty or delay.
The fact that Peters settled where he did, in what we may continue to call for convenience "the south end of the town," is significant for this narrative. As we have seen, George Abbot, Nicholas Holt, and others, with their families, had early taken
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up residence there, and the population increased year by year. One indication of the growing importance of that district is re- vealed in 1674, when for the first time surveyors, William Bal- lard and William Chandler, were appointed specifically for the south end. Two years later, in 1676, a constable, Christopher Osgood, was named for that section. By 1694, the south end had its own fence-viewer and pound-keeper. The list of taxpayers for 1692 is actually divided into two parts: those "for the North End of the Towne of Andover" and those for the "South End of the Town." The north enders numbered eighty-one; the south enders sixty-one. Among those listed as belonging to the south end are nine Abbots, including one "Widdow," six Chandlers, four Lovejoys, three Osgoods, and three Phelpses, as well as Andrew Peters.
Several of these named south enders were, like George Abbot and Nicholas Holt, proprietors who had decided to use as farms the outlying lands originally assigned to them for wood lots or tillage. Newcomers, like Edward Phelps and John Gutterson and Hopestil Tyler, presumably purchased acreage from some of the proprietors or from the unassigned land belonging to the town. In either case, they had to pay their rates like the other residents and were regarded as in good standing so long as they behaved themselves and did not disturb the peace.
The Massachusetts Bay colonists gradually worked out their own methods of self-government, often by trial and error. The title of selectman was created to designate an elected adminis- trator, and comparable titles had to be devised from time to time as new officials became necessary. For many years in the Records we come across the phrase, "At a lawfull meeting of the Propri- etors of the Common and Undivided Lands in Andover." The earliest town meeting of which there is any extant record was held on January 9, 1656, and was "chiefly warned and intended for the entering & recording of Town orders now in force and particular men's grants of land in a New Town Book; the old
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being rent and in many places defective and some graunts lost." Even the battered volume here mentioned has now disappeared, and we have no authentic entry before 1656, ten years after the town was incorporated. Although gatherings were certainly held for business purposes at an earlier date, we can form no picture of how the voters functioned except by resorting to imagina- tion and surmise or to accounts of what happened in similar communities.
Miss Bailey, who was indefatigable in her quest for the early records, reported that they were "scattered and unmethodical" -which is a demonstrable understatement. We do know, how- ever, that Andover soon had a working government, based on the principles of true and theoretical democracy and in accord- ance with the English common law. The citizens managed their own affairs, subject to the regulations and supervision of the General Court. The processes by which they groped their way towards an effective town organization were more easily arrived at because of procedures laid down in older communities like Salem and Ipswich. Emergencies they met in their own fashion. On February 10, 1673, for example, we have the following entry:
It is ordered and voted that if any man shall speake in the town meeting whilst anything of towne affairs is either in voting or in agitation after ye moderator hath commanded silence twice, he shall forfeit twelve pence for each time; the twelve pence shall be levied by the constable. This order to stand good, forever.
Anybody who has ever attended a New England town meet- ing knows how essential it is to maintain decorum, to restrain the noisy and the garrulous and to secure fair play for all. This the Andover voters proceeded to do. Among them, certain men early stood out because of personal qualities, such as resourceful- ness, reliability, and fluency of speech. Since the average mem- ber is usually willing to rely on intelligent leadership, the more outstanding personalities were soon placed in authority. But
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these citizens had no Cushing's Manual or Roberts' Rules of Or- der. If exigencies required new officers or committees or formu- las, they were easily created.
Beginning with 1669 we know the town fathers, or most of them. In 1670, for example, the selectmen were Simon Brad- street, John ffry, Richard Barker, and Lieutenant John Osgood, with William Chandler as constable and Stephen Osgood as Grand Juryman. The earliest mention of a town clerk occurs in 1673, when Dudley Bradstreet, son of Anne and Simon Brad- street, was chosen as "Clerk of ye writts and of the town and like- wise to record all grants laid out in the Towne book." Three years later it was voted that this same Bradstreet should "enter all graunts in ye great towne booke, for which he is to have two pence a graunt in money or else he is not obliged." Bearing two fine Puritan names, Dudley Bradstreet succeeded his father as Andover's first citizen. He was not only selectman and magis- trate but also successively captain, major, and lieutenant-colonel in the militia. His name appears often in connection with town affairs.
Although the selectmen seem at first to have varied in number from year to year, they were by 1676 stabilized at five. Among the key figures were Lieutenant John Osgood, Ensign Thomas Chandler, Sergeant John Barker, and Daniel Poor. The south end was well represented by such personages as Christopher Os- good, Joseph Ballard, Abraham Foster, Samuel Blanchard, Sam- uel Hoult, and William Johnson.
Fence-viewers and pound-keepers, as we have noted, were as- signed to both the north end and the south end. Other minor functionaries were leather-sealers, "surveiors" (surveyors), tyth- ing men, and a mysterious officer called "clerk of the market." Mention is also made of "hawards," or "field-drivers," who were responsible for keeping cattle and other domestic animals from doing damage to hedges and fences. Andoverians had the char- acteristic English gift for improvisation displayed so notably by Robinson Crusoe.
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No representative from Andover to the General Court was elected until 1651, when John Osgood, whose name stood second on the list of householders, was elected. Apparently he attended only one session, for he died in October of that year, at the age of fifty-six. This "Mr." Osgood was the progenitor of a long line of respected Andover residents. While we know nothing of his personal traits, we can deduce something about his economic status from the inventory of his estate preserved in the Essex County Records. His house, land, and meadows were valued at eighty pounds, and he owned also four oxen, two steers, six cows, seven young "cattel," and eight swine, quite a menagerie for a farmer in a town which had been settled less than ten years. Among his other possessions were "a feather-bed & furniture," "five payre of sheets & an odd one," "nineteen yards of carsa- mere," "ten payre of stockings," not to mention "two muskets & a fowling piece," together with "a sword, cutlass, & banda- leeres." His total effects were valued at 374 pounds, seven shil- lings, six pence. This, in the New England of the seventeenth century, was not far from wealth.
Among those who served as representative to the General Court after Mr. Osgood, Dudley Bradstreet was the most con- spicuous, but others, including Thomas Chandler and Christo- pher Osgood from the south end, had brief terms. Bradstreet set for his townfolk a fine example of independence and courage. When the Massachusetts Colonial Charter was annulled and a new royal governor, Sir Edmund Andros, imposed extraordinary taxes upon the people, Bradstreet bluntly refused to collect them in Andover and was shortly imprisoned at Fort Hill, in Boston. Feeling ran high at the time, not only in Andover but also in Ipswich, Salisbury, and other Essex County towns. Eventually Bradstreet, realizing that opposition was useless, gave bonds for one thousand pounds and was released. The governor mean- while had forbidden town meetings in Andover and other rebel- lious townships. But when the news arrived of the landing of William of Orange at Brixham on November 5, 1688, the citi-
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zens of Boston promptly seized all the British officials who could be found, including Andros; and Andover, in a mood of rejoic- ing, declared in a special town meeting its desire to resume char- ter government and chose Captain John Osgood to express its views on this and related matters. This was a period of intense excitement for politically minded Andoverians.
The list of gainful occupations of the settlers indicates that seventeenth-century Andover was quite self-sufficient. A con- siderable number were rated as husbandmen, or yeomen, which means simply that they were farmers subsisting on the land. Among the trades represented were carpenters, tanners, masons, bricklayers, coopers, wheelwrights, blacksmiths, weavers, tailors, shoemakers and cordwainers. As early as 1654, Deacon John Frye was appointed a retailer of strong liquors, and there were innkeepers in the town shortly after the midcentury. Mills of various types were soon in operation, including a sawmill and a corn mill, followed later by a fulling mill. In 1697 a mysterious Major March undertook to build and launch two vessels on the nearby Merrimack River, but soon learned that Andover was not geographically a logical shipbuilding center. Fisheries, how- ever, formed a profitable industry, and certain parts of streams and lakes were reserved by concessions from the town fathers. Not until the eighteenth century were any physicians or lawyers located in the town, and midwives only were available for the delivery of babies.
As we attempt to visualize the seventeenth-century village, we must keep in mind that, in a period when travel was both ardu- ous and time-consuming, it was on the periphery of the Bay Col- ony. In 1693, Andover had its local "market," at which country produce was displayed and sold in the manner prevalent in the older Andover in England. It was a long journey to the nearest store in Salem, and few of the residents could afford to take it. Consequently most families took care of their own needs for clothing, food, and household utensils. A spinning wheel was as important for a home in those days as an automobile is in 1959.
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Study of an isolated group of persons like the Andoverians of early colonial times reveals several significant sociological fac- tors. The boys and girls, associated from childhood with the same close neighbors, tended to intermarry-Abbots with Chan- dlers, Allens with Faulkners, Danes with Osgoods. Poring over the names in the old records and in the published genealogies, one gets the impression that everybody was related by blood or marriage to nearly everybody else, and that the population was unusually homogeneous. Intermarriage seems to have produced no evil results, perhaps because the stock was basically healthy.
The settlement was for many years a selective and restricted community from which undesirables were so far as possible ex- cluded. The proprietors included no person of Latin or Slavic origin. In Mexico and the West Indies the Spanish explorers co- habited freely with the native Indians, but in Puritan New Eng- land miscegenation was rare indeed. Even the few Negro slaves caused no mixture of races, such as took place in our Southern states. The conception of the typical American as a mongrel had no support in seventeenth-century Andover, which was as pure- ly Anglo-Saxon as any rural hamlet in Sussex or Kent. This basic homogeneity was fostered by the fact that there was only one church, which everybody attended, and only one political or- ganism, the town meeting.
Since no system of birth control was practiced, families were large-fortunately, for children, who began to work at an early age, were an economic asset on a farm, like hens or horses. The mother of the household was frequently pregnant and only too often died in childbirth. Families of twelve or fourteen were not uncommon, but the mortality in that frontier region and in that rigorous climate was high. Accidents were constantly happening, and infections took their deadly toll. In one household entries record the deaths of three children within a week of what was called the "throat distemper," probably diphtheria. Many a po- tential genius must have perished in that mere struggle to live. When one infant died, his name was sometimes bestowed on a
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later arrival of the same sex, to the bewilderment of the genealo- gist. Three brothers in the same family, each named Joseph, are confusing on a tombstone.
Today in Massachusetts the women considerably outnumber the men, with the result that the proportion of spinsters is rela- tively large. But in the seventeenth century there were more males than females in Andover. Consequently the girls, unless repulsive or abnormal, married early, and widows were seldom left long disconsolate. Every male adult, unless crippled or ill, had to labor to keep himself alive and therefore needed a woman to care for his household. Age made little difference. Simon Bradstreet married a second wife, Mrs. Ann (Downing) Gard- ner, at the age of seventy-three; and the efforts of Judge Samuel Sewall, in his late "sixties," to acquire a third spouse occupy a considerable space in the most entertaining of American diaries.
Generally speaking, the women toiled almost as hard as the men and were physically as sturdy. It was, however, a man's soci- ety, and woman's place was in the home, not in politics or busi- ness. The relations between the sexes seem to have been for the most part normal, and we hear little of such sophisticated prob- lems as impotence, frigidity, homosexuality, and sexual mal- adjustment. On the other hand, the natural human desires sought and found their fulfillment, not always within the law.
Andover was not without its sinners, those unable to resist temptation, to restrain their anger or their greed or their lusts. In 1661, John, a servant of Mr. Bradstreet's, was charged with stealing "several things as pigges, capons, mault, bacon, butter, eggs, &c." One notorious reprobate, John Godfrey, was accused in 1658 of witchcraft, apparently because he was a nuisance, and when he was acquitted, largely through the influence of the in- telligent Reverend Mr. Dane, proceeded to bring suit for slan- der and defamation of character. The record describes him as being known through Essex County as an "ill disposed person." Indiscretions, especially those involving drunkenness or forni- cation, were often brought up before the entire church congre-
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gation for public censure. In 1677, the General Court passed an act authorizing a cage to be set up in Boston for the confine- ment of Sabbath breakers, and the Andover town fathers seem to have been correspondingly severe with this offense.
A fight took place in 1678 between two full-blooded Andover young men, William Chandler, Jr., and Walter Wright, in the course of which the latter drew a knife and cut a deep gash in the cheek of his opponent. Andover even had its murderer, a father of several children, who, in a quarrel with his wife over a piece of land, stabbed her fatally in the throat. He was convict- ed and executed. Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia, gives a grue- some description of his speech of repentance on the scaffold and of his being turned over "into the Eternity in which we leave him in."
We should not forget that our ancestors, although carrying on the day's work under unaccustomed conditions, were human be- ings like ourselves, with the same conflicting and often devastat- ing passions, the same eagerness for pleasure, the same ambitions and frustrations, the same dreams and derelictions, the same blend of brutality and idealism. Driving in our comfortable automobiles where once they walked or rode on horseback, see- ing the acres where they struggled so hard to eke out an existence, we must picture them as men and women suddenly transported to a strange land, facing situations which they had not been brought up to meet. If we can only imagine how we should have felt and behaved under similar circumstances, we shall under- stand them better. And we shall be far more likely to sympa- thize than to condemn.
Those who passed safely through early attacks of disease and the perils of forests, rivers, and Indians often acquired a kind of immunity and became venerated patriarchs. John Frye, the last survivor of the original proprietors, died in 1698 at the age of ninety-two, outliving even Governor Bradstreet. He had been a wheelwright by trade and had prospered well. In 1657 he had slain wolves for bounty, receiving five pounds a head from the
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Colony government. In his old age he had plenty to look back upon-Indian raids, religious controversies, witchcraft hysteria, and the building of a new nation-and he left a small army of descendants.
A few among the first settlers may have arrived with inden- tured servants, and later in well-to-do households the lady usu- ally had somebody to clean and cook and wait on table. From time to time the selectmen apprenticed the children of paupers until they were twenty-one, evidently in the hope that they would not become charges on the town. Small though it was, the Andover community had its recognized social strata, which few were inclined to question. In due course the people with proper- ty, as always, gained control and authority, including social dis- tinction. Massachusetts Bay was an oligarchy, not a democracy.
Several Andover households had Negro slaves. Miss Bailey discovered the record of the death in 1683 of Jack, colored serv- ant of Captain Dudley Bradstreet, but no evidence can be found of how he was brought to the town. In 1690, Lieutenant John Osgood owned a Negro boy described as "small as to his growth and in understanding almost a foole." The Reverend John Bar- nard, pastor of the North Precinct Church, sold in 1730 "a cer- tain Negro-Girl named Candace" to Benjamin Stevens for the sum of 60 pounds; and as late as 1770 James Frye advertised in the Essex Gazette "a healthy, strong negro boy, 20 years old last month," to be sold by the subscriber "cheap for cash or good security." In the Old Burying Ground in North Andover is a monument in memory of Primus, servant of Benjamin Stevens, Jr., who died in 1792; and to match it in the Old South Burying Ground another gravestone commemorates Rose Coburn, col- ored servant of Mr. Joshua Frye, with the inscription, "She was born a slave in Andover, and was the last survivor of all born here in that condition." She died in 1859, at the age of ninety- two, having long been paid a pension as the widow of a Revolu- tionary soldier.
It may be stated categorically that Negro slavery in Massachu-
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setts in the eighteenth century, although not widespread, was re- garded with almost the same tolerance as it was in Georgia. The chief difference was that colored persons in New England were nearly all kept in domestic service, not as laborers in the fields. They were cooks and maids and butlers. Furthermore they did not apparently complain of their condition, and no reformer then thought of them as mistreated. The fact that clergymen had slaves in their households indicates that the situation was re- garded as normal.
In 1647 the Massachusetts Colony, facing a difficult situation, voted that every community of fifty families or more should es- tablish a free school to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, and that every community of a hundred families or more should establish a grammar school to teach Greek and Latin. It was easier to pass this law than to enforce it, and the inhabitants of Andover managed for some years to get along with dame schools for the smaller children and a private school conducted by Mr. Dane, the minister, for the few who wished to prepare for Har- vard. Not until 1700 did the town set up its own grammar school by voting to erect a convenient schoolhouse "at ye parting of ye ways, by Joseph Wilson's, to be twenty feet long and sixteen feet wide." Even then it was difficult to find a competent and willing schoolmaster, and parents only too often had to bring their chil- dren "to Reeding by school Dames," to quote the protest of the selectmen in 1713. The town was then very far from being the educational center which it afterwards became.
The elementary facts of our earthly pilgrimage were very close to these Andover men and women and their families. Births and burials, festivals and famines, were all part of a rou- tine existence, to be accepted like sunshine and snow, as natural phenomena. Living close to and in many respects like animals, the Puritans had no patience with affectations or false modesty. Even a lady like Anne Bradstreet had to accustom herself to rough living. Furthermore, for many years they dwelt in the midst of danger, of the pestilence that walketh in darkness and
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the arrow that flieth by day. Under such conditions mere preser- vation was in itself a kind of victory. I am reminded of Lucinda Matlock, one of Edgar Lee Masters' characters in his Spoon River Anthology, who raised twelve children in a pioneer area and lived to the age of ninety-six. Annoyed by the feebleness of her de- scendants, she cried:
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness, Anger, discontent, and drooping hopes? Degenerate sons and daughters, Life is too strong for you,- It takes life to love life.
These early settlers, the founders of our town, had vitality, fortitude, and renunciation-qualities essential in those en- gaged in a pioneer venture.
What is the most ancient house now standing within the lim- its of the two Andovers? It was long supposed that the so-called Bradstreet House dated from 1666 and was, therefore, the old- est in the vicinity, but that assumption now apparently has to be abandoned. The Benjamin Abbot homestead, still standing on the Shawsheen River, south of Andover village, probably dates from 1675. The home now belonging to the Leland family, not far from Lake Cochichawicke, also has its claims. The older por- tion of the dwelling dates by tradition from 1680, having been constructed by John Bridges. When he added a wing in 1733, the dwelling was called a "mansion" because of its front and back stairs. Later it was occupied by his descendant, Colonel Moody Bridges, one of the town's most versatile citizens. His son, also Moody, was for half a century deputy sheriff of the county and won some local prestige by siring nine daughters, all of whom married widowers. Mr. Edmund F. Leland, who acquired the property in 1908, has retained the original structure of the house and also has preserved and added period furniture for the charm- ing colonial rooms. Its priority may be questioned, but not its antiquity, or its attractiveness.
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