USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Braintree > Brief history of the town of Braintree in Massachusetts, prepared for the observance of the tercentenary celebration of its founding, 1640-1940 > Part 2
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Besides the management of church and school affairs the town fathers made definite provision for the unfortunate. The town appropriated money for special cases,4 and "for the maintaining the necessitous poor of the Towne, that have no estate of their own."5 In 1689 it is recorded that one Samuel Speere was ordered "to build a little house 7 foote long and 5 foot wide and set it by his house to secure his Sister, good wife Witty, being distracted," for which the town promised that he should be well paid." There are many other interesting sidelights upon Braintree life during the seventeenth century, but they are not within the province of this sketch, which is mainly concerned with the general growth and development of the town.
IV. EARLY INDUSTRIES
The colonial and town records of the period give ample evidence of the growth of farming and fishing, and of the clash of interests between the two occupations. Water power for gristmills meant the building of dams on the rivers, which in turn prevented the annual movement of fish up- stream to spawn. During the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- turies various acts were passed by the General Court to protect and regulate these fisheries.7
The discovery by Thomas Dexter of a deposit of bog-ore
I. Braintree Town Records, I, p. 15, May 13, 1672
2. Ibid., I, p. 19, Apr. 11, 1673
3. Hutchinson, op. cit., passim ; Wm. S. Pattee, A History of Old Braintree and Quincy, Quincy, 1878, pp. 181, ff.
4. Braintree Town Records, I, p. 39, Apr. 25, 1694; p. 47, Aug. 2, 1697
5. Ibid., I, p. 41, Mar. 4, 1695
6. Ibid., I, p. 34, June 4, 1689
7. Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 1692-1780, 21 vols., Boston, 1869-1922 ; III, p. 485 ; V, p. 42 ; hereafter cited as Province Acts and Resolves. Also Acts and Resolves of the General Court of Massachusetts, 1839-1938, 107 vols. including two for special sessions, five of General Acts and five of Special Acts, 1915-1919, Boston, published by the Commonwealth through various state printers ; Acts, 1840, ch. 37 ; hereafter cited as Acts, General Acts, Special Acts, or Resolves of the pertinent years.
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at Saugus, Massachusetts, led to the formation in England of a " Company of Undertakers for the Iron Works " about 1642: Richard Leader was appointed agent and sent to Boston together with a number of skilled workers under the direction of Joseph Jenks as master mechanic. John Winthrop, Jr., son of the governor, and himself later Gov- ernor of Connecticut, became interested in the project and was doubtless instrumental in securing favorable legislation for the undertakers, of whom he eventually became the leader.1 A series of grants by the General Court gave the company a twenty-one-year monopoly ; exemption from pub- lic charges and taxes ; grants three miles square of unappro- priated lands in the places where the works were to be lo- cated; the right to take ore, lumber and other natural resources as needed from unappropriated lands and by con- demnation proceedings from appropriated lands, and "to make ponds, wayes or water courses therein"; and finally the exemption of their workmen from "trainings & watch- ings."? The following May the court declaring that ". . . ye iron worke is very successful (both in ye richness of ye ore & ye goodness of ye iron) ... ", commended the project to those in the colony who had spare funds to invest, and even permitted small investors to pool their funds ". . . wch wilbe accepted in money, beavers, wheate, coales, or any such comodities as will satisfy ye workemen. . .
Samuel A. Bates, once town clerk and historian of Brain- tree, in cooperation with Robert C. Winthrop, Charles Francis Adams and William G. Spear, librarian of the Quincy Historical Society, wrote a valuable brochure called "The Ancient Iron Works of Braintree, Mass.," which was published by Frank A. Bates in 1898. Excerpts from this brochure follow :
"Among the first industries which were established in the infancy of the Colony of Massachusetts, was that of the manufacture of iron. A company was formed in England about the year 1644, called 'The Company
I. Herbert C. Keith and Charles Rufus Harte, Early Iron Industry of Con- necticut, pamphlet reprinted from Fifty-First Annual Report of the Con- necticut Society of Civil Engineers, Inc., Presented at New Haven, February 20, 1935, New Haven, Mach and Noel, Printers, no date, p. 3
2. Colonial Records, II, pp. 61, 82, 125, 185. The most comprehensive grants were those of Nov. 13, 1644 and Oct. 1, 1645, pp. 82, 125.
3. Ibid., pp. 103-104
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Undertakers of the Iron Works,' who set up their works at Lynn, Boston, Braintree, Hammersmith and other places in New England.
"' The first mention of the Iron Works was January 19, 1644. There was granted unto Mr. John Winthrop, Jun'r and his partners, and to their heyres and assigns forever, three thousand acres of the common land at Braintry, for the encouragement of an iron worke, to be set up on Monotocot river. The said three thousand acres to be layd out in the land next adjoining and most convenient for their said Iron Worke, by the direction of the select Townsmen.'" This last was done "No- vember 23, 1647 by the selectmen of the town of Boston." However, the works were in operation be- fore that time, "1644 or 1645."
" During a visit to England, in 1642, John Winthrop, Jr., had persuaded a number of his friends to invest money in this undertaking, and at the outset, acted as their agent. Among his papers was found the draft of a petition to Parliament setting forth that, in May, 1643, he ' at great costs and charges did imbarque himselfe in the good ship An Cleeve of London, wth many work- men, servants, & materialls for the setting up of iron workes.'
"Soon after his arrival in New England he, with his miners, visited 'Braintre, Greeneharbour ( Marsh- field), Plimouth, Richman Iland ( Richmond Island, near Cape Elizabeth, Me.),' and along the shore be- tween that place and Massachusetts, having heard that there was ore at 'Pascataway (Portsmouth), Aga- maenticus (York), Sako (Saco), & Blackpoint (Scar- borough ) .' At many of these places he found iron ore, but on account of the scarcity of laborers, and inferior- ity of the ore, he preferred Braintree, where these diffi- culties did not exist. He writes early in 1644 : 'Although this place of Braintre - was principally in my thoughts -both before I went into England and since my last arrivall here, for the fittest and most convenient place for the first setting up of an Iron worke; yet being a worke of consequence, I conceived it necessary to have other places searched. - This sort of ore at I intre is
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B
12
IM1727JH
OLD MILESTONE ON COUNTRY WAY TO PLYMOUTH, COMMERCIAL STREET
-
B
QUINCY AVENUE, EAST BRAINTREE, LOOKING SOUTH, ABOUT 1840
.
HOLLIS INSTITUTE AND SOUTH CHURCH, BEFORE 1850
O
WELD "PLANTATION HOUSE," BRAINTREE HIGHLANDS BUILT ABOUT 1712
--
of the same sorte wch they call in Ireland the Bogge mine. We have tried it since we came over, - and the finer hath made good iron; that wch we sent into Eng- land was made of that from Braintre. - Therefore necessity seemes to drive us to accept of this place.'"
On June 4, 1645, the Promoters of the Iron Works in England wrote to John Winthrop, Jr., that they were sending over their agent, Mr. Richard Leader. This disposes of "the claim that the first iron works - were set up by said Leader in Saugus, a suburb of Lynn, in 1642. The works at Saugus were simply an adjunct to those of Braintree, both of them being under the con- trol of the same company." There were interesting ones at Quincy also. "The 'Company Undertakers of the Iron Works,' as they were called, commenced the erec- tion of their works about 1644 or 1645, and continued their operations until they had in their possession prop- erty in 1653, to the amount of 666 pounds which was the appraised value at their failure in that year."
The Iron Works were "located near the corner of Elm and Middle streets, on the site where the factories of 'Morrison Brothers' now stand." (Large stone mill.) The boundaries of the Iron Works are quoted from an early deed by Bates as follows: "'Sept. 29, 1645, George Ruggles of Braintree, conveys to Richard Leader, in behalf of the Company Undertakers of the Iron Work, twenty acres, lying in Braintree, bounded with Monotocot river north, Isaac Shelly east, Hugh Gunnison south, Francis Newcomb west.'"
"Morrison Brothers dug a well on the premises, and found a vein of iron slag below the surface of the ground, which evidently had remained undisturbed for many years. When the pipes of the Braintree Water Supply Company were laid on Adams street, nearly opposite the factory of the Morrisons, the workmen who dug the trench found there bars of iron four feet and four inches below the surface." A piece of the iron slag was placed by Mr. Bates in the collection of the Weymouth Historical Society.
In his diary which John Winthrop, Jr., kept on his journey between Connecticut and Boston in 1645, he
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records : " Dec. 4, Thursday. Waded over Naponset, the tree being carried away by the thaw flood, also an- other little river before. A third made a bridge over, felling a small tree. Passed over Monotaquid at twi- light. Came by the direction of the noise of the falls to the forge. Lodged at Th. Facksons, Mr. Hoffes farmer."
(Thomas Faxon, tenant farmer of Atherton Hough, lived on the site of a house on Dickerman Lane, which, known as the " Dickerman House," was standing until about 1907.)-M. S. A.
"In 1682, or soon after, John Hubbard built a dam and started a forge on that portion of the Monatiquot river, which lies below the Iron Works bridge (East Braintree) and about that time bought the land of Joseph Allen, son of Samuel, the first of the Allens who settled in Braintree. This was afterward in the posses- sion of Thomas Vinton" and it was his dam that ob- structed the passage of the fish up the river, occasioning a long controversy with the town.
REF. Proceedings of Mass. Hist. Soc., Oct. & Nov., 1892. 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., Vol. vi, pp. 61, 62. Vinton Memorial by Rev. John Adams Vinton, 1858. Appendix. Research of Marion S. Arnold.
The town records reveal at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the concern of the inhabitants for their most impor- tant natural resource, granite. At the town meeting of March 5, 1710/II, it was voted that “ no person freeholder or other Inhabitants shall hence forward carry any wood or stones off of ye common out of ye Town to make merchandise thereof but what is allowed by ye Committee hereafter chosen, under the penalty of forfeiting Twenty shillings for every cart load so taken and carryed away to ye poor of ye Town." 1 Five years later the prohibition was again restated by the town meeting, although the penalty was reduced to ten shillings. Each inhabitant was permitted to take whatever stone he needed for his own use within the town, but the com- mittee was instructed to "give no license to any Person to dig or carry off any stones from said Lands, to make sale or merchandise thereof without the Town's Direction." 2 Seven- teen years later, in 1732, the town refused by direct vote to
I. Braintree Town Records, I, p. 108, Mar. 5, 1710/11
2. Ibid., I, p. 121, Aug. 16, 1715
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sell the granite (always mentioned in the records as stones) to possible purchasers.1 The matter seems to have become quiescent for a time, but in 1748 the town meeting refused to restrict "the getting & carrying off of Stones." 2 The fol- lowing year the question of restriction was again inserted in the town meeting warrant. This time the meeting voted that no one might carry any stones off the common lands except by leave of the committee on penalty of being deemed tres- passers. Even inhabitants of the town were required to buy stone at the price set by the committee, which in turn was required to turn over the proceeds of such sales to the town treasurer at six-month intervals.3 Thereafter, the question of the disposition of the town's granite seems to have been settled or at least to have been merged in the larger question of the disposition of the common lands themselves.
V. THE REVOLUTION
While the town was thus going about its lawful occasions, a bombshell in the shape of the execrated Stamp Act of 1765 shattered the peace of the little community. At the Septem- ber town meeting a committee, of which John Adams was a member, submitted a letter of instructions to the town's representative at the General Court.4 It is a restrained and powerful arraignment of George Grenville's ministry and its colonial policy : " And we can no longer forbear Complaining that many of the measures of the late ministry, and some of the late Acts of Parliament have a tendency in our appre- hension to divest us of some of our most Essential Rights and Liberties." A spirited echo, in short, of Patrick Henry's speech of the previous May. Thus was the town drawn grad- ually into the economic and political hardships of the difficult ten years before the Revolution. One excerpt from the town records of 1768 shows how the taxes imposed by Parliament affected individual towns. A committee was chosen in that year " to consider and agree upon some effectual method to promote occonomy, Industry and Manufactures thereby to prevent the unnecessary importation of European commodi- ties which threaten the country with poverty and Ruin." 5 In
I. Braintree Town Records, II, p. 5, Mar. 15, 1732
2. Ibid., II, p. 128, Mar. 6, 1748
3. Ibid., II, p. 133, Aug. 14, 1749
4. Ibid., II, p. 233, Sept. 24, 1765
5. Ibid., II, p. 248, Mar. 7, 1768
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1
1
the same year it was voted to choose a committee "to join the Comtees of the other Towns in this Province in convention to consult and advise such measures as his Majesty's service and the peace and safety of the subjects in this Provence may require." 1 This " Committee of Convention " was then given full instructions as to their policy in the convention. In 1773 the town committee presented to the Town Meeting their favorable reply to the Boston committee, which had sent to Braintree a pamphlet on taxation without consent.2 The fol- lowing year a long memorandum concerning the "East India Company sending their Teas into America subject to a duty here for raising a revenue out of us against our consent," was accepted by the town and ordered "transmitted to the Comttee of correspondence at Boston." 3
The mustering of armed men at a moment's notice was an almost automatic habit with the colonists. In Braintree military training as a precaution against Indian attacks dates from the very earliest years of the settlement. By 1640 there was a town watch-house,4 and the records contain frequent references to the "trainbands" and their officers. These companies of local militia formed the contingents sent by the town to fight during the Indian and the French and Indian Wars. A large contingent of Braintree men fought in the war against the Narragansetts. During the war with France more than two hundred of them were in active service.
When, therefore, the call to arms came in 1775 the town was already well supplied with officers and trained men. In March of that year a covenant of the town with the Conti- nental Congress, restating colonial grievances, was read and accepted "very unanimously,"5 and at the same town meeting it was voted to raise and equip three companies of minute- men." In the autumn of 1776 a copy of the Declaration of Independence, signed by a Braintree man, John Hancock, president of the second Continental Congress, was included in the records, together with the order of the General Court that the declaration be read to their congregations by all ministers in the state, and transcribed into all town records,
1. Braintree Town Records, II, p. 252, Sept. 26, 1768
2. Ibid., II, p. 273, Mar. 1, 1773
3. Ibid., II, pp. 279, 280, Mar. 11, 1774
4. Colonial Records, I, p. 310
5. Adams, op. cit., p. 330
6. Braintree Town Records, II, p. 291, Mar. 15, 1775
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1
"there to remain as a perpetual memorial thereof."1 In February, 1778, the Articles of Confederation were read at the town meeting "distinctly and Repeatedly," and approved .? Two years later we find the town offering substantial bounties to the six months3 and three months4 men so badly needed by the Continental army, and authorizing the selectmen to "procure Corn at Harvest and Store it for the men until they return.'
It took the town a long time to recover from the disastrous economic effects of the Revolution. As compared with a total town appropriation, or "rate," averaging about £92 between 1670 and 1770,6 the amount jumped to £1,500 during the years 1777-1779.7 In this connection it is interesting to ob- serve the extreme simplicity of town accounts during this period. The selectmen's accounts of receipts and expendi- tures for the year 1770, duly approved by the auditing com- mittee, read as follows :
" Yearly benefits. We also report that the yearly incomes of the Town appears to us to be nearly as follows, (viz.)
In Rents about £ 35:6:8
Interest do
121:3 :-
Assessm's
80 :-:-
£236:9:8
" Annual expenses. And that the annual expenses of the Town are nearly as follows, viz.
For the Poor abt £ 90 :-:-
Schools, abt 110 :-:-
Selectmen's Services
9 :-:-
To the Treas' Conste & Sundry other expenses abt 36:11:13
£245:11:13
J. Palmer Joshua Howard Comtee John Hayward
The above Report was Voted accepted." 8
I. Braintree Town Records, II, p. 301, July 4, 1776
2. Ibid., II, p. 318, Feb. 2, 1778
3. Ibid., III, p. 344, June 27, 1780
4. Ibid., III, p. 345, July 10, 1780
5. Ibid., III, p. 344, June 27, 1780
6. Ibid., I-III, passim
7. Ibid., II, p. 325, May 21, 1778
8. Ibid., II, p. 262, May 25, 1770
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£
1
Large sums were spent by the town during the war for sol- diers' pay and equipment, and by the beginning of the year 178 I the town debt in depreciated currency was £200,000.1 During one of the lean years immediately following, the nine assessors, the seventeen surveyors of highways, and three constables all acted as tax collectors, which is significant.2 The town even tried the old Roman system of "farming" the taxes, or awarding the contract to collect to the highest bidder and continued the system for over a hundred years.3 To make matters worse a large amount of the "Continental " money then in circulation had so depreciated in purchasing power that it had to be refunded by the town.4 This depre- ciation of currency was due to the issuance by the Continental Congress during the war of paper currency aggregating nearly $360,000,000. It began to depreciate rapidly after 1776, until by 1780 no one would take it.5 A similar situation had existed during the Indian wars, when the Province fitted out the Louisburg expedition, to which Braintree sent a con- tingent of men. In that case, however, specie sent from Eng- land was used to redeem the " old tenor " issues of the Prov- ince before 1740, and the £35,000 "new tenor " issue of that year. The fact that the post-war depression left many people penniless led finally to the building of a new almshouse 6 to take the place of the modest structure originally set up, and practically unused hitherto.7 Trade was bad, and trade re- strictions were a constant thorn in the flesh to the struggling merchants and shopkeepers of the town.8 Another evil after- math of the war was the increase in the number of cases of smallpox. That Braintree had its share of these is clear from the discussions recorded in the contemporary town records,9 and from the fact that the town voted in 1792 to establish a ' small-pox inoculation hospital." 10
I. Braintree Town Records, II, p. 350, Jan. 11, 1781
2. Ibid., III, p. 2, Mar. 3, 1783
3. Ibid., II, p. 336, Nov. 29, 1779 ; III, p. 7, May 16, 1783 ; III, p. 77, May 14, 1789, to 1880, passim
4. Ibid., III, p. 11, Aug. 11, 1783
5. Felt, Joseph B., An Historical Account of Massachusetts Currency, Boston, 1839, p. 128
6. Braintree Town Records, III, p. 29, May 9, 1785
7. Ibid., III, p. 36, Mar. 20, 1786
8. Ibid., III, p. 46, Sept. 25, 1786
9. Ibid., III, p. 118, Nov. 2, 1792. As early as 1717, the inhabitants of Dor- chester, Braintree and Milton had petitioned the General Court against the establishment of a " Hospital for the Entertainment of Infectious Persons " on Squantum Neck, then part of Dorchester. Province Acts and Resolves, IX, 1708-19, ch. 159, p. 513
10. Braintree Town Records, III, p. 116, Sept. 3, 1792
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Braintree is an interesting example of the effect of the post-war economic collapse upon an individual town. During the year 1786 and the early months of 1787, when Daniel Shays, a distinguished Revolutionary soldier, was organizing an armed revolt against the constituted authorities in central and western Massachusetts, many towns, including Brain- tree, sent statements of grievances and demands for legisla- tive action to the General Court. On September 26, 1786, the town voted to instruct its representative, Col. Ebenezer Thayer, to support the following measures in the legislature :
"First, That the Public Salarys of this Common- wealth be reduced in an equitable manner. We feel ourselves willing that every Public officer should receive a Quantum Meruit but not an extravigant salary. And also that the number of salary men be reduced.
2 dly, That the Court of Common Pleas and the Gen- eral sessions of the Peace be removed in perpetuam rei Memoriam.
3dly, That the money raised by Import and excise be appropriated to pay our foreign Debt.
4thly, We are of opinion that there are unreasonable Grants made to some of the officers of Government.
1
5thly, We object against the mode adopted for Col- lecting and paying the Last tax.
6thly, We humbly request that there may be such Laws compiled as may crush or at least put a proper check or restraint on that order of Gentlemen denomi- nated Lawyers the completion of whose modern con- duct appears to us to tend rather to the distruction than the preservation of this Commonwealth.
7thly, That the General Court be removed from Boston.
8thly, That Real and Personal Estate be a tender for all debts when call'd for provided the Interest be punc- tually paid.
9thly, That Certain premiums be granted to encour- age our own Manufactures.
Iothly, That if the above grievances cannot be redresd without a revision of Constitution, in that case for that to take place.
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i
IIthly, It is our earnest Request that every Town Clerk be a Register of Deeds for the same Town." 1
Between the lines of these Braintree resolutions, and in the opening words: "The clouds are gathering- over our heads pregnant with the most gloomy aspects, we abhor and detest violent measures," we can discern the dangers and hardships which the town faced during its first and most critical post-war depression.
VI. THE NORTH PRECINCT
The early history of Massachusetts towns illustrates in an interesting manner the way in which the Anglo-Saxon instinct for local self-government permeated the entire political fab- ric of the colony. The original settlement or plantation usu- ally crystallized into several small villages or districts as the number of settlers increased. These districts, owing to the iso- lation necessarily existing in large areas with difficult means of intercommunication, very soon acquired an individuality of their own and a consequent desire to manage their own affairs. The North Precinct of the town of Braintree is a good example of this evolution from district to corporate town government. Captain Wollaston's original settlement and the most important early industries were in the northern part of the town, which gave to that district a distinctive and in- fluential standing from the first. By the end of the seven- teenth century the settlement had spread inland so rapidly that it had become necessary to build a new meeting house in the southerly part of the town." At a town meeting in 1706 it was "proposed that whereas there was Two meeting houses erected in this town whether the south end shall be a congre- gation by themselves for the worship and service of God." 3 This was agreed to and was the first step toward the breaking up of the widely scattered settlement into the precincts or parishes which were to become miniature towns within a town. Two years later the division of the town into two defi- nite political units was formally recognized at a town meet-
I. Braintree Town Records, III, p. 47, Sept. 25, 1786
2. Ibid., I, p. 42, Aug. 15, 1695
3. Ibid., I, p. 91, Nov. 25, 1706
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JOSIAH FAXON HOUSE, BUILT 1660
SCHOOL STREET SCHOOL, ABOUT 1860
THE BRAINTREE HIGH SCHOOL, 1926
ing. "November ye 3d, 1708. The Inhabitants of Braintree being Lawfully Assembled, it was then voted that there should be two district precincts or Societies in this Town for ye more regular and convenient upholding of ye worship of God."1 The General Court confirmed this division two days later, when it ordered " that two Precincts be settled and con- firmed according to the vote of the Town of Braintree." 2 The words "political units" are used advisedly, for it must be borne in mind that during the first century of town govern- ment in the province the original group of church elders not only managed the business of the parish, but were the " elders of the town " for the administration of ordinary town affairs.
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