USA > Massachusetts > Bristol County > Fairhaven > Brief history of the town of Fairhaven, Massachusetts; prepared in connection with the celebration of old home week, July 26-31, 1903 > Part 6
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One of Fairhaven's most successful farmers writes: "Agri- culture, always a prominent industry of the town, was never in a more prosperous condition than at present."
" New and up to date machinery and methods of tilling the soil are more and more in vogne, and the fertility of the farms is being constantly increased by judicious and scientific treatment ".
But the revolution and entire change in the industrial character of Fairhaven has not been greater than in its physical features ; today Fairhaven's public ways are in superb condition ; miles of her roads are macadamized, their gutters paved, and her curbed, granolithic sidewalks afford a delight to the pedestrian, as her well-shaded streets do to the bieyelists : yet perhaps the greatest, as well as the most beneficial, sanitary and aesthetic change is now in progress-the filling of the mill pond.
The remark of the Master, " Be thou removed and cast into . the sea", is being literally fulfilled, and a beautiful park will take the place of the present useless waste.
HANGINGS
MILL POND IN 1903
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COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION
Ready and easy means of communication and of prompt and cheap transportation to the market are essential and necessary for the successful prosecution of any business, whether it be the products of fishermen or of the farmer, or the more durable articles of the manufacturer.
Unless the goods of the farmer can be delivered promptly, they will suffer from decay ; and the products of the factory or mill must not be delayed on the route if the manufacturer would retain his customers.
To secure quick communication, there must be lines of tele- graph and telephone to transmit messages; and direct lines of mail for carrying the more cumbersome mail matter.
Today, Fairhaven has all these facilities, even a daily freight train which delivers goods in New York or Boston the morning following the day of shipment.
These facilities have been secured by the magnitude of business now being done, and other potent influences which in- duced the railroad to provide through cars for the freight of goods.
This was not always so, for before the building of the rail- road from New Bedford to Taunton in 1840, the journey to Bos- ton (only some sixty miles) and return, would consume as many days as it takes hours at the present time ; and communication is counted by seconds only as the telephone transmits the thoughts over the electric wire.
In 1854, the Branch railroad from this place.to Wareham, where it connects with the Cape Cod road, was constructed which afforded additional facilities for travel, and also, in a measure, for freight of merchandise.
To meet the conditions of trade today, prompt despatch of goods is demanded, and if one manufacturer cannot meet the re- quirements of business, others will-with the loss of trade to the former.
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In 1870, a few days after making a shipment of goods to a Boston house by the Fairhaven branch, the following trenchant message was received. "Have waited three days for goods, to ship west. We advise you send goods by ox team in the future ; quicker if not cheaper." From that date all goods were sent via New Bedford, where the railroad received them until five p. m., and they were in Boston or New York the next morning.
By this means the sharp competition of Tannton, Whitman, and the factories located near Boston or New York was met, but at some expense of carting goods some two miles to the north freight station.
Promptness of delivery is indispensable to success. To se- care this, communication must be perfect by wire and mail ; and celerity of freight as near so as possible.
Today, jobbers, dealers and manufacturers carry very little stock, making promptness of delivery imperative to the mann- facturer who would retain trade during the sharp competition of present commercial activity. Distance has been effaced, and facilities for transportation ample for those who judiciously use and improve them.
TRADE AND MONEY
When the Pilgrims landed on the shores of Plymouth, they had little money and very little use for it. As Bradford wrote : " There were no friends to welcome them, nor any inns to enter- tain them," so they had to depend on their own endeavors to supply their wants.
Of trading, there could be none until they were settled in the new homes they must build by their own labor : the virgin forests would supply the logs after the trees had been felled, and . the sea the fish for food. The Indians had little to supply the English, for they were too low in barbarism to utilize nature's crude materials, and they had none of the necessary tools to convert to their use what the Pilgrims subsequently utilized.
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COAL
POCKETS
NEW BEDFORD END OF NEW BRIDGE IN 1902
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They had learned to catch the fish that came up the river in the spring, and instructed the English in one of the rudiments of agriculture, the use of fish to fertilize the land for the growth of corn.
The first products of the Indians obtained by the English, were the corn and beans which were discovered by the Pilgrims in their exploration of Cape Cod, while the Mayflower was lying in the harbor of Provincetown.
For the corn and beans thus obtained the English subse- quently recompensed the Indians, but in what form, Winslow, who made the settlement when he visited Massasoit in July of 1621, did not state: however, the general remark of Bradford, " that they gave full satisfaction to their good content," is evi- dence a settlement was made to the satisfaction of both parties.
While this transaction was not " trading," yet being the first products of the Indians obtained by the English, and the momen- tous results to the Pilgrims of that seed-corn, it deserves men- tion. How the Indians must have viewed the transaction, the trespass on their land, and the taking away of the food they had provided for their winter's supply, we do not know ; but it is easy to imagine; and it must have exposed the Pilgrims to the anger of the aborigines to be thus treated by the strangers who had landed on their shores.
Fortunately this first act of the English was amicably settled with Massasoit, but it doubtless rankled in the breasts of the savages, and may have caused the destruction of Weston's settle- ment and the threatened annihilation of the Colony of Plymouth, averted by the slaughter of four of the Indian leaders.
The principal articles of the Indians which the English could use or exchange, were the corn and beans they raised, and . the beaver and otter skins they obtained. The former they could use as food, and the latter send to England, where there was a ready market for them.
That there was considerable trading with the Indians is
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evident from the fact that the "Fortune," which arrived in November, 1621, was loaded with two whoggsheads of beaver and otter skins," and "good clapboard and some saxefras," to the value of 500 pounds English money, and sailed in December for England. That the Pilgrims could have gathered together so many skins from the Indians, and have prepared clapboards and secured sassafras sufficient to have loaded the " Fortune," although only of fifty-five tons burthen, is a wonder, for, be it remembered, half of their number had died during the winter, and the remainder had been sick except Captain Standish and a few others, who had the care of the rest, and themselves to pro- vide with food.
To have obtained the $2,500 worth of merchandise to send home by the first vessel that visited them, shows they must have been diligent workers; yet they were condemned by the capital- ists at home because they sent so little. That perhaps was their misfortune, for the vessel was captured by a French pirate and all their goods taken.
The first distinct trade, recorded by Bradford, was the pur- chase of 26 hogsheads of corn and beans when he visited the Indians in the shallop, purposing to go around the Cape, but on account of " the shoals and fierce wind returned to Manamoyack Bay".
He does not state what was paid for the food they thus obtained, but probably in tools, a few hoes to plant corn and beans, and knives and glass beads. The latter cost the English very little, but being so much superior to the beads of the Indians, made from the quahog and periwinkle shells, they were esteemed very highly by the Indians, and while they were used as money of exchange by the men, they were worn as ornaments by the women.
The standard of value of the English was the pound ster- ling, and with that as the measure of value, the Court in 1640 fixed the price of wampum of the Indians at six for a penny.
FERRY BOAT "FAIRHAVEN," AND NEW BRIDGE IN 1903
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Thus the basis of trading between the Indians and the English was established, and continued so long as the Indians had any portable articles of value to trade with or to sell. By the time that John Cooke was ready to leave Plymouth and settle here, the Indians had little to sell except their land, and a large portion of that had been disposed of by the trusting Massasoit, who parted with his domains for a few agricultural tools, or a little cloth and wampum.
As has been stated, this section was bought by 34 of the original settlers of Plymouth, John Cooke being one. By his wife, Sarah Warren, he probably became the owner of another thirty-fourth, and may have bought half of another thirty-fourth, as he was the owner of two and one-half thirty-fourths of the territory.
But before the purchase of the Dartmouth tract, in 1652, Massasoit had sold, in 1637, the territory known as the . Titi- quet" Purchase to a Miss Elizabeth Pool, who seems to have been an enterprising lady, for she settled on her purchased land and cultivated it.
The year following, in 1638, Massasoit sold to the English another tract of land, which included the territory now embraced in Tannton, Easton, Norton, Mansfield, Dighton, Berkley, and Raynham.
In 1641, Massasoit sold "ten miles square"; this sale in- cluded what is now Rehoboth, Seekonk, Pawtucket, and Provi- dence.
The purchases by the Massachusetts Settlement probably stimulated the Plymouth people to buy some of Massasoit's land before their more enterprising neighbors of Boston should get possession of the whole of it from the too easy King. They no doubt realized that the treaty of peace they had made with Mas- sasoit before even the Massachusetts Settlement had begun, and the favorable impression Governors Bradford and Winslow had produced on the Indians' minds of their pacific and friendly in-
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tentions, were being used for the benefit of those who had come after them; in self-defence, therefore, they decided to protect themselves before their active and less serpulous neighbors had appropriated all of Massasoit's land.
The first transaction in real estate recorded in the records of Plymouth, was the sale of one acre of land " lying on the north side of the town, by Philip Delanoy to Stephen Dean, " and the price named was " four pounds sterling or the equivalent of that amount in goods."
Having disposed of abont all they had to the English, ex_ cept what land they actually ocenpied, the Indians realized their poverty as compared with the English, and naturally grew dis- contented with their lot, and envious of the newcomers who were possessors of their hunting grounds which were being converted into fruitful farms, stocked with cattle, horses, sheep, hogs, and towl, while by the use of the saw-mills, the trees were being quickly converted into lumber, and the grist-mills ground the corn into meal.
It is not surprising that the Indians viewed with conster- nation the great change introduced by the newcomers.
The water of the rivers that had ron undisturbed to the sea, was made to do the work of the white man ; to grind his corn, or to saw the lumber to be used to build his houses, his forts, or his ships. With his guns he could shoot the deer or the wild turkeys of the woods, or kill the ducks and geese which they could seldom reach with their arrows, and those same guns were deadly weapons when used against them in warfare.
Their money, wampum, was wrought out only by slow, laborious work ; and when finished with the utmost skill, did not compare in beauty and finish with the glass beads of the English, made with little labor, but the result of chemical knowledge that enabled them to produce from the sand a substance unknown to the Indians and of more valne than their wampum.
"Knowledge is power, " whether in the domain of produc-
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tion or destruction-and the Indians became conscious of it. Their measure of value, and their medium of exchange, were de- stroyed, and a new measure substituted, the English pound ster- ling was henceforth to be that measure while many substitutes might be the medium of exchange in trade.
Thus at the time of the settlement of Fairhaven, the money of the Indians had been "demonetized", rendered worthless, by the case with which glass beads could be produced in England, and could be sent here by the shipload. With their money made worthless, their hunting grounds converted into farms, their rivers made to do the work of the English, thus interfering with the ascent of the fish, upon which they depended for food ; the deer and the rabbits, the turkeys and quails of the woods frightened and diminished in numbers by the guns of the white man, the condition of the Indians, at the time of the death of Massasoit in 1661, was desperate indeed.
Should the inhabitants of some distant planet come to on earth and settle among ns, who had knowledge as superior to ours as the Englishman's was to the Indian's, who could convert the earth and rocks of our world into gold by some simple chem- ical process known only to them, with weapons of destruction as much exceeding ours in the power of destruction as the gons of the English did the bows and arrows of the Indians, and with the gold made from the stones should purchase all our land, and other property, we would then be in an analogons condition, in our relations to the newcomers, as the Indians were when their wampum was valueless, their land gone, and the game of the forest frightened beyond their reach.
Such was becoming the condition when John Cooke moved to Fairhaven and began the settlement of this section of the country bought of Massasoit and his son.
To consider the financial situation it would be necessary to know the monetary conditions of John Cooke's time, and above
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does not seem to be an exaggerated statement of affairs as they then existed.
The Indians had parted with all of their beaver and otter skins, and the rapid settlement of the country by the English, and the use of the rivers for mills and boats, so invaded the sources of their supplies that beaver and otter skins were no longer obtainable to sell to the English for fire water, or the glass beads for wampum.
Wealth indues the possessor with unlimited power for good or ill.
The legions of the Caesars despoiled the world to enrich Rome ; and the Spaniards massacred the inhabitants of Mexico and Peru to obtain their gold and silver, and the shiploads of the precious metal wrenched from them by Drake, laid the founda- tions of England's wonderful commercial prosperity and made her the mistress of the seas.
Fairhaven was settled amidst the poverty of the aborigines, and by their poverty they were destined to extinction ; the war of King Philip was a last desperate effort to regain what had been lost, and to avert the annihilation to which they were doomed. During this savage war, twelve towns were destroyed and more than six hundred English killed, among them four of the settlers of John Cooke's homestead.
COINAGE OF MONEY
The increase of population in Massachusetts required a medium of exchange, as well as a measure of value. The latter had been fixed, the pound sterling being the standard. In 1652, some eight years before Cooke's settlement here, the General Court, at Boston, established "A mint to coin money". These coins were to be of the fineness of English money, of 12d., 6d., 3d., each-to be stamped "N. E." on one side, on the other XIId., VId., and IIId., according to their respective values.
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HORATIO JENNEY HOUSE IN 1900 HISTORIC CANNON AT "FOUR CORNERS"
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These coins were in cirenlation when John Cooke settled in Fairhaven, but silver was then too precious to escape the cupidity of the avaricious, and their plainness subjected them to so much clipping and washing, they were supplanted by coin of shillings and smaller coin, with a double ring on either side with Mass- achusetts and a tree in the centre on one side, New England and the date on the other. Every shilling was to weigh three-penny troy weight, and lesser coins in proportion of value.
In 1662, two years after John Cooke's settlement here, a two-penny piece was added to the coins.
The Massachusetts mint continued to coin these pieces for a period of 34 years, but all bore the date of 1662.
During the reign of William and Mary of England, copper coins were struck in England, for the New England colony, hav- ing on one side an elephant (possibly significant of the load England had on her hands, ) and on the other "God Preserve New England".
During the reign of George I, coins were made in England composed of copper and zine, resembling gold in color. On one side was stamped the head of King George, on the reverse side a large double rose and the words, "Rosa Americana Utile Dulei ". Strennous efforts were made to introduce these coins in the colonies, and created much indignation among the col- onists.
During the years 1778 to 1789, the power of coinage was exercised by the confederation and also by several of the states.
Vermont, Connectient, Virginia, New Jersey and Maryland as sovereign states, issued money stamped in their own mints, and Massachusetts again started her mints and coined cents with the figure familiar to her citizens. On one side, was the American Eagle with arrows in the right talon, and an olive branch in the left; a shield on its breast bearing the word "Cent." The motto, " Massachusetts, 1788". On the reverse, the figure of an
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Indian holding a bow and arrow, legend . Commonwealth" and a star.
After the adoption of the constitution, a code of laws was enacted for the regulation of coinage. Some changes were made in 1837, when the standard of fineness of both gold and silver was fixed 9-10 fine ; the weight of the gold coins remained un- changed, but the weight of the silver dollar was reduced to 412 1-2 grains, or 375 grains of pure silver and 37.5 grains of alloy.
In 1873, the gold dollar of the standard weight of 25.8 grains was fixed as the unit of value for the United States.
Thus gradually the measure of value was changed from the English pound sterling adopted by the colonies, to the gold dollar of 25.8 grains troy weight, of 9-10 fine,-one-tenth being copper and silver.
So from the wampum of the Indians to the gold standard of the Nation, the money of Fairhaven was necessarily changed to conform to the conditions as fixed by custom or law.
Locally, Fairhaven was early favored by having a bank to meet the requirements of its business. As whaling increased, the need of ready money became pressing, and to meet this need, the Fairhaven Bank was established in 1831. The money of this institution contributed greatly to the settlement of accounts upon the return of the vessels from the long voyages that were neces- sary during the most prosperous times of this industry. The Fairhaven Bank was a State institution and operated under the banking laws of Massachusetts. Before 1864, each State estab- lished its own banks, which issued their own bills: these gene- rally passed current within the limits of the State in which the bank was located ; but beyond those limits the bills were subject to discounts, often ten per cent., in many cases even larger discounts were demanded for money of banks located in another State. This made good business for brokers, who exchanged the money of banks out of the State, for the money of the State in which it was to be used, for a liberal discount.
NATIONAL BANK OF FAIRHAVEN
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The personal experience of one of our own citizens, is per- haps a good illustration of some of the difficulties of the days before the national banks issued their paper money, or the gov- ermment its legal tenders, United States notes and Treasury notes, all of which pass current in any part of this country, and can be used at their face value in most foreign countries.
Our citizen's experience as related by him was as follows :
"Just before the war of 1861, while at work in Dighton, I was paid my monthly wages in bills on a Rhode Island bank. I can seem to see them even now : they were of a deep red color and presented a striking appearance."
" With my money in hand I went to the grocer's and handed him some of the bills to pay my account."
" The grocer took the bills, looked at them, shook his head and returned them to me with the laconic remark 'no good.'"
"I then tried the butcher, who also refused to receive the money saying . can't take foreign money. '"
" After some inquiry, I went to one of the banks in Taunton where I exchanged the 'foreign' money for Taunton bills, with which I soon settled my accounts, but I had to allow 10% com- mission for good home money."
Sometimes it was almost as hard work to dispose of the money received for labor or for articles of commerce as it was to carn or to get it ; a statement incredible to those of the younger generation whose only difficulty is the getting enough of it.
The war for the preservation of the Union required immense sums of money to prosecute it, and the state banks were turned to as a source of supply ; they did not disappoint the government.
In 1863, an act of Congress, amended in 1864, authorized the establishment of national banks, and the Fairhaven Bank became a national bank that year, by complying with the requirements of the law and subscribing and paying for the required amount of government bonds. There were at that time, 1600 state banks in
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the country, yet, in the numerical order of national charters, the Fairhaven Bank numbered 490.
The promptness with which the bank of this town tendered its aid to the government, in its extreme urgency for money to defray the expenses of the war, was a credit to its management, and an honor to its stockholders, who approved and ratified its action.
Gold at that time was $2.85, and the debt of the government over two thousand million dollars.
Happily the ready aid of the national banks contributed in no small degree to the help of the government in prosecuting its gigantic war to a successful issue.
In the year 1832, the year following the establishment of the state bank, the Fairhaven Institution for Savings was organized by the General Court of Massachusetts, which has furnished a safe deposit for the earnings of the people, and has been an encouragement to them to practice frugality, and thereby lay the foundations for the saving of earnings for disability or old age.
Today, the Institution has deposits aggregating over half a million of dollars, which are loaned to parties, who require aid to make themselves homes of their own, and to corporations which furnish employment to the people.
It was only by possessing capital, the savings of labor, that the great mills that are operated on the banks of the Acushnet river, were erected, and by its possession and use, those institu- tions of industry secure the necessary raw material and pay the weekly wages of the 15,000 employees that find employment in them.
The savings banks of Old Dartmouth have been an important factor in promoting the growth and prosperity of this section of . the country, and every depositor in those institutions, has con- tributed his or her share to that end.
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THE MILLICENT LIBRARY
OLD ACADEMY BUILDING - NORTH MAIN STREET
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CHAPTER V
EDUCATIONAL HISTORY
BY GEORGE H. TRIPP
T 'HE educational history of the town may properly be divided into three distinct periods : the era of the District School, when each district was almost a complete autonomy, managed for good or ill by the discretion or the unwisdom of the petty dictator, the prudential committeeman, when the object seemed to be, in too many cases, to fulfill the letter of the law by keeping a school regardless of the spirit of true education in keeping a good school, when but for the influence and exertions of some few far- sighted men ou the town committees, the schools would have been even worse than they were ; the second period, dating from the establishment of the High School and extending to the time when the District School system was finally abolished, and the schools were managed by a central anthority, and the teachers and schools were directly responsible to the authority of the town committee ; and the third period which covers the time from the building of the Rogers School and the election of the first superintendent of schools to the present day.
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