USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > Conway > Celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of Conway, Massachusetts : at Conway, June 19th, 1867 : including a historical address by Rev. Charles B. Rice poem by Harvey Rice oration by William Howland and the other exercises of the occasion > Part 3
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Reviewing thus this time Mr. Emerson declares " while the
of e ..
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rank and situation of your fathers did not admit of that ex- ternal polish and refinement, or elegance and luxury in living, which modern fashion and taste has introduced, and prosperity can now better afford, yet their comparative indigence did not subject them to the extremities of want or merited contempt. Providence smiled upon their honest efforts and industry, by which they were rising to a state of credit and respectability ; verifying the remark of Solomon that " the hand of the diligent maketh rich."
The first inhabitants of Conway are described by one still living, who remembers them, as " men and women of sound minds, frugal and industrious habits, strict integrity of char- acter and sterling worth." There is much other testimony to the same effect. They were, as a class, hardy, resolute, indus- trious, endowed with strong common sense, attached to the principles of morality and good order and earnest maintainers of the doctrines and institutions of religion. There was, however, among them, as in almost every community of every age, those of whom so much could not be said. The memories that go back to the past are apt to overvalue the distant in comparison with the near. If the question is put whether on the whole the population of that day was superior in point of character to the present, we should have need to hesitate before answering that it was. There can certainly be gath- ered up, in stories and songs illustrative of the social habits that prevailed in some circles, and from the records of the church, · enough to comfort those who fear that our town is deteriora- ting in the quality of its population and running hopelessly into looseness and disorder. There was dishonesty, not per- haps at first quite down to the average, (it may be feared in in this respect we have made no gain at least,) ; there was in- temperance, after a little, below the line of recent times; there was as much vulgarity of speech and of manners and as much immorality, and irregularity of life in general as is usual in modern times. It will not be expected that I should pro- duce the proofs on some of these points. And it is not pleasant to lower the estimate many may hold of those who lived here before us. But waiving further comparison with the present,
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if we take the' years between 1840 and 1850, it is a matter of the clearest knowledge that there was never any earlier period at which our town had on the whole a better popula- tion than it had then. More than this, it is my decided belief that, going back from that time, the levels will be found dropping somewhat lower. What changes the last few years have wrought I can not undertake to determine. Moreover, to look fairly on the later generations is in justice, also, to the fathers themselves. Then set on foot appliances of education and religion upon the working of which they relied, not only to maintain for their own time the power of sound principles, but also to perpetuate them and to pass them down to the coming generations. To place the present below the past is to disparage the past ; for it was the business of the past to make the present better. Our fathers meant to do it.
Previous to the incorporation of the town, religious meetings had not been held with regularity. Such as were able went to Deerfield; or they attended any occasional meeting they could hear of. At the second town meeting provision was made for hiring a preacher. The Congregational church was organized in less than a year-July 14th, 1768. It had thirty- two members, sixteen men and sixteen women,* After a little Mr. John Emerson of Malden was invited to preach as a can- didate for settlement. "It was," says he "in the month of .April, 1769, when I commenced my public labors here on the Sabbath, being the 9th day of that month and year. We met at a barn. It was surrounded with thick growing wood except a small adjacent spot cleared, which admitted ye light of heaven ; a place different indeed from those costly and splendid edifices erected and dedicated to the worship of ye Most High since that day, and very dissimilar," he goes on to say, em- phasizing his words, " from that in ye ancient church in Brat- tle St., Boston, where I had been called only ye Lord's day before to preach." "On this Sabbath," he continued, "the people, all 'tis supposed that were able, came to hear the word.
*The whole number of admissions into this church from the beginning, is stated by Mr. Cutler, the present pastor, tobe 1450, the present membership 263, and the total of baptisms 1711,
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Natural curiosity indeed was doubtless one motive for this attention. The speaker was a stranger from a distance, and a youth of small stature, nothing otherwise distinguishing ; only it was literally John preaching in the wilderness when they came out to see and hear."
Mr. Emerson pleased the people and was ordained pastor, Dec. 21, 1769. He was voted " for an encouragement " an annual salary of fifty pounds, with a yearly addition of three pounds until it should rise to eighty. He was also to have, within two years and a half, an additional sum of one hund- red and fifty pounds " settlement."
The ordaining council had dinner at Consider Arms's. Tradition has preserved the story that after dinner two of the ministers were unable to find their way back to the church-on account of the woods. Yet it may here be mentioned that fifty- eight years later, at the settlement of Daniel Crosby, it was reckoned a strange thing that he should propose and insist upon the entertaining of the council without liquors .*
All proceedings with respect to the support of preaching were then, as for many years, had in town meetings. The town was the parish. The money raised for religious purposes was collected with the other taxes.
Here, also, by the town, were taken all steps for the building and furnishing a meeting house. For several years no subject appears more frequently upon the records. At the second town meeting, held in Sept. 1767, a committee was appointed to find the center of the town, with this object in view. This committee discovered what they regarded as the appropriate spot in the so-called "center lot ; "+ the same being what is now known to a few as "the old common," situated 25
*A list of ministers and of their wives for both the Congregational and Baptist churches, prepared by Mr. Coffin, will be found in appendix A. And the papers furnished by Rev. Mr. Cutler and by Mr. Coffin, and herewith published, touching further upon the ministry and the religious growth of these churches, have led to the omission also from this history of certain other paragraphs thereby rendered un- necessary.
t This was before the great addition on the northwest from Shelburne. The center of the town at present can not be far from this hill on which we are assembled.
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or 30 rods south of - Mrs. William Avery's, and now owned by Jabez Newhall. But the matter of location was not so settled. Many meetings were held, and many e onflicting votes taken. A committee from abroad was called in. They re- ported the true center to be seventeen rods south west of the old common spot, and not suitable for building on; and rec- ommended a site on the Elijah Wells place, a few rods east of where H. B. Childs now lives .* And their report was also " excepted " and the spot " established." But neither did this stand. They subsequently voted to build a. small house near Jonathan Whitney's ; rescinded this vote, and finally, in the Spring of 1769, determined " yt ye Nole, about fifteen or twenty rods north of the southeast corner of ye Center lot, where is a large stump with a stake Spoted, standing within ye same, be established for a spot to build the meeting-house upon." The site thus fixed on was the same now occupied by the school-house in Pumpkin Hollow, a third of a mile east of " the old common," and within, and near the eastern line of, the same center lot, which, stretching westward over the hill, included both the other locations selected by the com- mittees. On this " nole" was raised the house which stood, a meeting and a town house, until within the memory of all of us who have attained to middle age. The frame was put up in the spring and summer of 1769. The first town meeting, and perhaps the first meeting of any sort, was held in it, Sept. twen- ty-fifth of that year.t And it was in this building that Mr. Emerson was ordained, as before noticed, in December fol- lowing.
It was then, and for years after, only a shell. The minister took for a pulpit one end of the carpenter's work-bench, which was left against times of further use. Part of his congrega- tion sat on the other end. The larger portion occupied benches made of slabs. The questions of the sale of pew ground, of the building of pews, of pulpit, gallery and porches
* The " seventeen rods southwest " brought the site from the fine swell at the former supposed center, down upon a marsh, as may be plainly seen.
t Before this time town meetings were usually held at the houses of Thomas French, Nathaniel Field or Jonathan Whitney.
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continued long to exercise the ingenuity and to disturb, it must be feared, the temper of our fathers. The pews, when they began to be builded, were not put in all at once, but there remained a space still occupied by benches. There are signs of a jealousy of the pew building as of aristocratic ten- dency, and of a disposition on the part of some to stand by the common benches as more suitable to a wholesome sentiment of equality .* Gradually, however, the house grew into order and convenience. It was enlarged in 1795 and 1796 to meet the wants of a rapidly increasing congregation. Porches and a steeple were built and a clock provided. In 1842 it was taken down, a new house having been built a quarter of a mile north, which still stands. The connection between town and parish having been then dissolved, arrangements were made by which the town secured the right of holding its meet- ings in the basement of the new building.
The old meeting-house was not warmed by a fire until 1819, fifty years after it was built, when stoves were put up in it. Hot stones and foot stoves were often carried, to miti- · gate the severity of winter. The minister preached with overcoat and gloves on. And notwithstanding what may be said of the hardy habits of former generations there is abun- dant evidence that they suffered much from cold.
Another provision for warmth on Sundays may also be . mentioned. There was a small log-house, called the " Little House," perhaps also the same that is once mentioned in the records as " the Sabbath House " which stood a few rods south of the Meeting House on the flat back of the residence and store of Wm. C. Campbell. Here a huge fire was built on Sundays, which was resorted to at morning and noon.
* The force of this sentiment is illustrated by an anecdote which Capt. Childs has preserved of Nathaniel Dickinson, a Deerfield man, who owned land . and often attended meeting in Conway. He " thought himself a little above the . common level," and occupied for several Sabbaths an arm chair which he had pro- vided and placed near the deacon's seat and " directly by the side of Madame Em- erson's chair." One day, coming late, " he found his seat among the missing, " and much to his own disgust and to the satisfaction of the audience, he had to take a seat " side by side with the common people." A few years after his chair was found " on the top of Dr. Hamilton's bill hanging in a hemlock."
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Here we may suppose our fathers and mothers had their Sun- day noon conversations, always on befitting topics. This house was built as early, at the latest, as 1769. How long it stood I have no means of knowing.
The first action of the town with respect to schools appears in the record of a meeting held in September, 1767, at which it was voted "yt they will hire a Dame to keep school 5 months, and yt Messrs. Nathaniel Field, Ebenezer Allis and Benjamin Pulsifer be a committee to provide said Dame, and appoint where said school shall be kept." The schools were held in private houses. The first school-house was begun in 1773, and finished the next year. Its dimensions were 25 feet by 22 feet. It stood a few rods northeast of the old meeting house, near the middle, but somewhat toward the eastern side of the common, on a spot which would be crossed by a line from the shop. lately and long occupied by Phineas Bartlit, Esq., passing over the common to the house of Jabez Newhall. The site of this house, which through comparison of various dates, has been with difficulty recovered to knowl- edge, is to be marked by a century elm this morning planted upon it. A living memorial, which unlike anything else of all the life of the present generation, may possibly carry its remembrances across the coming century the next hundreth return of the day we now commemorate.
For a few years the sum of money raised for schooling did not exceed twelve pounds, but in 1774 it was increased to thirty pounds. Once only since has the annual appropriation been omitted. This was in 1775, and was owing to the great apprehension that prevailed in view of the approaching hos- tilities with Great Britain. The amount raised for schools the current year is twenty-seven hundred dollars. The earlier sums were not small in comparison when we consider the poverty of a population of farmers, few of whom, as yet, owned a horse, or a cart or a plough. Some rudiments of a district system begin to appear in 1776, and in 1778 the town was formally "squadroned out " for schooling. . The districts as we now know them are of much later date,
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For about ten years this first school house was the only one in town. Schools were held to some extent in the outer parts of the town. But this was the principal school. Here, whenever it was in session, the older children came from all parts, boys and girls, young men and women. It thus became, by force of circumstances, a town high school. The branches taught were reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic .* An effort was made in 1791 to introduce "grammar," a term which seems then partly, perhaps, from its legal use in the name " Grammar School," to have been confined to the study of the classical tongues. It was voted that the Latin and Greek languages should be taught. But the reason of this was "Greek " to our fathers; and the next year it was re- scinded.
' Private "select schools " have been held for many years. One such was kept 29 terms, to his own credit, and to the great and lasting benefit of the town, by Dea. John Clary.t
* The remark is often made, with a design to reflect on the present school sys- tem, that the children of those times learned these things well, and were especially better spellers than the children now are. We are not to admit this view of the matter. The children then did as well as could be expected, no doubt. But, as the publie documents of the time show, they did not become as a elass good spellers. The earliest of these documents, to be sure, were written by men whose childhood was not spent in this "town. But they had been children somewhere. No one tracing the record need fail to see that there has been steady improvement down to recent times. It is not to be believed that there was ever a time when the young people of Conway could spell more correctly than they can now. Certainly
. there was no such time in the last century. The town records contain among many others of the like sort, such specimens as " minits," "menehaned," " tran- chent:(transient)," "vew," "missus " or "miss " for Messrs. "Butments " which is solid and will stand, and "sewing " for suing. We find also for the first word of our national name, " Unighted." But the achievements in this direction of man -. kind in any age are astounding. Many of us now here have seen in an official war- rant for a [town meeting, that same word rendered "Younighted." Benighted sons of a benighted ancestry! It ought however to be added that inaccuracies in spelling one hundred years ago stood for less than they do now ;- there being in general less care even with well taught people, to conform to a fixed standard.
t Mr. Clary's school began in 1831, and extended through 12 years. The average attendance was 36. The number of different scholars was 463, one third of them from other towns. A very large number of these scholars became teachers in their turn, and a considerable proportion have also been found in the several learned pro- fessions. Mr. Clary, living 2 1-2 miles from the school, traveled in attendance upon
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In 1853 the Conway Academy was incorporated. The build- ing then erected with money voluntarily contributed, was destroyed by fire in 1863, and the present structure was raised on the same spot (on the hill opposite the Congregational meeting house) in the next year. Within the past two years arrangements have been made by which there is here kept a High School free for all the children of the town.
It is not known who was the first school-teacher in the town. The first master whose memory has been preserved to us was Master Cole. A teacher was famous in those days ac- cording as he lifted up switches upon his unruly boys. The name of Master Cole still sprouts fresh among us, like a twig from a green birch tree .*
Another necessity engaged the early attention of our fathers. At the same second town meeting, held in Sept. 1767, at which provision was made for the services of religion, there was also secured a ground for burial. Previous .to this time Mrs. Cyrus Rice had been buried in Deerfield ; and an infant child of Silas Rawson and a child of John Thwing, three years old, at a spot, not marked, a little south of Mr. Emerson's house. The first ground then laid out for burying was that now known as the Emerson Yard, on the slope of the hill east of Mr. Emerson's house. The place is spoken of as lying near " the saw mill " which then stood below, upon the river, where the mill dam now is. Here was brought, in December follow- ing, a son of Israel Rice, one year old, drowned while his father and mother forded South River on horseback by night, and, after an interval of fifteen months, John Thwing, the first adult person buried in Conway. .
In 1772 land was purchased of Elias Dickinson for a second burial yard westward, in the rear of the meeting-house, which had then been placed and built. This ground has been long unused; only the ancient grave stones are on it. In 1845
it a distance of 9000 miles. "The five most literary names in those days," he says, "as appears from the records, stood in the order of Clarke, Rice, Arms, Bartlett and Howland."
* He was an Irishman and a soldier, stiff and pompous; and he carried his sword with him into the school-room.
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there was laid out, one and a half miles north. of the center of the town, the Pine Grove cemetery, where, since that time, the most of our dead have been buried. There are also other burial places in the remoter parts of the town.
Into these, the villages of the dead, which began at first to be so slowly occupied, have been gathered since, sometimes by rapid and ever by sure accessions, a population outnum- bering that which is still found in the houses of the living.
The number of deaths recorded since 1770-to which time the account has already been brought, is in each year as fol- lows :
Year.|No.|Year. No .: Year. |No.|Year. No. Year. No.| Year.|No.|Year.|No.
1770
2
1785
18 1800
19 1815
23 1830
14 1845
12 1860
36
1771
4
11786
7 1801
13 1816
21:1831
34 1846
28 1861
31
1772
7
1787
35 1802
20 1817
14 1832
12|1847
12 186
36
1773
5
1788
15.1803
84 1818
15 1833
27 1848
19|1863
43
1774
9
1789
17:1804
13|
1819
20 1834
22.1849
16|1864
28
1775
19 1790
17 1805
14
1820
12 1835
20 1850
32 1865
35
1776
25 1791
17 1806
13
1821
22 1836
24 1851
56 1866
37
1777
75|1792
20 1807
5
1822
24 1837
16 1852
20
1778
13 1793
20 1808
18 1823
17:1838
24 1853
36
1779
11 1794
27|1809
10 1824
25|1839
13:1854
36
1780
14,1795
40,1810
16 1825
27,1840
21 1855
35
1781
10 1796
16 1811
20|1826
18 1841
13 1856
36
1782
23,1797
21|1812
19 1827
21 1842
15 1857
30
1783
17 1798
22:1813
28|1828
28 1843
25 1858
28
1784
14 1799
15 1814
21 1829
19 1844
31|1859
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Adding for the years previous to 1770 and for the part of the current year now past, the total of deaths recorded is 2183. The yearly average for the century is thus 21 83-100. Passing by the first 13 years, the average of 30 years from 1775 was 22 86-100. The average for the last 30 years, to the beginning of 1867, has been 27 63-100. While for the last 10 years it has been 33 2-10. It will thus be seen that the rate of mortality has increased toward the latter part of this period. This increase is due partly to the fact that the town was occupied at first mostly by people who were young. And like all emigrants they were doubtless more robust and vigorous than the average of the population from which they came. The same causes withal are now reversed in opera- tion ; taking away from us the young and leaving the old.
Some allowance should also be made for omissions in the registration, which was less carefully made in former years
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than at present. And moreover it may be observed that even the greatest rate of mortality is not relatively large, being only one in fifty annually of the population.
The following are lists of persons who have lived past the age of ninety years ; and of such as have met their death by casualties. Both these lists were prepared in part by Capt. Childs :
AGED PEOPLE.
Age. Age.
Joseph Chilson,
99 Widow Hartwell,
92
Widow Alexander,
99 Mrs. Newhall,
92
Widow Stebbins,
90 Timothy Thwing, 90
Widow Marble,
'92 Widow Thwing, 91
Wm. Allen,
96 John Broderick,
91
Widow Allen,
98 Widow Benjamin Rice,
91
Widow Brewer,
94 Widow Joel Rice,
91
Widow Buchanan,
96 Anna Brooks,
90
Deacon Root,
92 Mrs. Hamilton,
98
Widow Parker,
92 Jonathan Adams,
92
Widow Farnsworth, 100 years, 1 mo. and 4 days.
Amariah Tobey,
91
John Wing,
90 Medad Crittenden.
92
Widow Neal,
94 John Boyden,
93
Widow Look,
90 Lois Baker,
92
Aaron Billings,
91|Stephen Thompson,
95
James Dickinson,
93 Timothy Maynard,
99
Widow Murphy,
94 Daniel Rice,
91
Widow Tobey,
90 Anna (Dickinson) Allis,
90
Widow Dinsmore,
92 Anna (Hosmer) Bement,
92
Widow Leonard,
97 Micah Hamilton, 94
Israel Rice,
90 Content (Dickinson) Sanderson,
93
Hiel Kelsey,
941 Total, 48.
UNUSUAL DEATHS.
1767. Child of Israel Rice, drowned.
1777 or 1778. Michael Turpey, drowned in Deerfield river.
1778. Child of Wm. Farnsworth, scalded.
1779. Child of Wm. Pearson, drowned in a well.
1782. Benoin Brunson, kick of a horse,
1783. Child of Capt. Arms, scalded.
1788. Isaac Daniels, killed by a door in the great storm.
1794. Thomas Miles, killed by a tree.
1796. Clark Beals, killed by a log.
1798. Ira Nims, killed in raising a building.
1799. Son of John Wheat, scalded.
1800. Mr. Tolinan, run over by a wagon.
1800. Child of Mr. Halloway, killed by a horse.
1803. Captain Dinsmore, fall from a horse.
Benjamin Bond,
93
Jonas Rice,
92| Widow Noah Dickinson, 90
Lilles Dickinson,
90 Beulah B. Avery, 91
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180៛. Elijah Clary, fall from scaffolding.
1808. James Wright, well caving in on him.
1811. Child of John Boyden, scalded.
1813. Jeremiah Booth, drowned.
1814. Israel Brown, killed by a sled.
1817. Increase Briggs and Consider Wilder, drowned while crossing Deerfield river.
1818. Child of Samuel Haxford, drowned.
1827. Edward Thayer, killed by a tree.
1828. Wife of Rodolphus Wells, fall on stairs.
1828. Rodolphus Wells, fall from a tree.
1829. Simeon Merrit, fall in barn.
1829. Charles Baker and Oliver Warner, killed by lightning.
1830. Adolphus Bacon, kick of a horse.
1831.
David Boyden, drowned.
1832. Ebenezer Clark, fall from a tree.
1839. John Broderick, drowned.
1841. Sally M. Murphy, burned to death.
1844. Child of Zebulon Paine, scalded.
1849. Son of Jas. Packard, scalded.
1850. Mrs. Joseph Towne, burned.
1850. Child of Austin Hopkins, scalded.
1852. James Groom, caught in machinery.
1854. Christian Summers, drowned.
1854. Albert Barber, drowned.
1857.
Child of Walter Guildford, drowned.
1857. John, son of Lemuel L. Boies, killed by lightning.
1862. Charles Adams, drowned.
1864.
Child of Thomas Groom, drowned.
1864. Henry J. Wilder, died of wound received in battle.
1866. Child of Martin Riley, drowned.
1867. Wm. Bigelow, kick of a horse.
There have also been seven cases of suicide.
In 1776 four men died in the army, Moses Childs and Isaac Nelson, and a son each of Nath'l Marble and Wm. Gates. In 1777 Isaac Amsden lost four children in eight days, and his brother Elisha lost four in July. Elijah Billings also lost four. Gersham Farnsworth also lost three in ten days. In . 1803 three children of Job Howland died within eight days. And in 1798, between Oct. 26th, and Dec. 24th, there died of one family Gamaliel Glover, his wife and five children.
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