USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Billerica > Celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of Billerica, Massachusetts, May 29th, 1855 > Part 3
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If your patience will bear with me, I will go on to mention some other things, which, if already known, I trust we need not blush to repeat to-day ; occur- rences of a later period.
In less than half a century after the incursions of
* Bancroft's History, Vol. 1, p. 398.
t Col. John Farmer's unpublished notes.
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the Indians in this vicinity, the spirit of the colonists was aroused by British encroachments, menacing them with oppression, they had crossed a stormy ocean and suffered the horrors of a savage wilderness to escape.
With a spirit unsubdued, undismayed, in answer to a letter received from the town of Boston, aggrieved by the operation of the Boston Port Bill, the town held a meeting and made this reply. " We consider the blow struck at Boston as aimed at the province in general, and as a prelude to something further, equally vindictive, yet in store for this and the other colonies. We do hereby promise and declare our readiness to support and strengthen our brethren in any measures that shall be judged expedient for our common safety and defence ; for defeating every vengeful machination of those, who would punish us for shewing ourselves men, and would dragoon us into slavery, because we disdain patiently to take the yoke upon our necks at their bidding. It would be an indelible disgrace, and a violation of the sacred obligations we are under to God and our country, to ourselves and to posterity, for us tamely and pusillanimously to give up those inval- uable liberties and privileges, which our worthy an- cestors purchased at such vast expense of blood and treasure."* We have the pleasure to know that throughout the revolution this town withheld no sac- rifices the cause demanded. From the commencement to the close, if not unrivalled by other towns, by few was this excelled in devotion to the common cause.
" Town Records.
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Such sires have left to their descendants, shall we not say, a land,
" A hope, a fame, They too will rather die than shame ?"
As early as May 23, 1776, at a legal town meeting of the freeholders and other inhabitants of Billerica, Doctor Timothy Danforth moderator, the question was put, " Whether said town will, in conformity to a re- solve of the Honorable House of Representatives of this colony, advise our representatives, that if the Hon- orable Congress shall, for the safety of the colonies, declare them independent of Great Britain, they, the inhabitants, will engage with their lives and fortunes to support them in the measure." The vote passed unanimously in the affirmative. That was the freely expressed will of the people, deliberately determined to meet the consequences.
To the Convention at Cambridge in 1779, to form a State Constitution, a delegate was sent from this town. Colonel William Thompson was the town's delegate to the Convention when the Constitution of the United States was adopted. It is worthy of men- tion, that from 1642, a period of more than a century, this town, as required by law, was constantly repre- sented in the General Court of the colony.
Events and transactions occurred in the early part of the second century of the town, it would seem un- grateful for me to pass without further notice-the achievement of American Independence, in which our fathers bore an honorable part. I have found on the rolls of the militia of the colony, and of the continen- tal army, in the office of our Secretary of State, that
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on the memorable 19th of April, 1775, Captain Jona- than Stickney commanded a company of 54 minute men ; Captain Edward Farmer commanded a company of 35 men, and Lieutenant Oliver Crosby a company of 12 men, who were on duty that day, either in the engagement at Concord, or hotly pursuing the foe back through his path of blood to his refuge. John Nickles and Timothy Blanchard were wounded by the enemy.
After the constitution of the state was formed, Cap- tain Edward Farmer was the first, and a number of years the representative of the town. He was engag- ed in the capture of Burgoyne's army, took an active part in the suppression of the Shay's insurrection in 1786, and was deputed to receive the oath of alle- giance from the insurgents. If time permitted I would call the names of a multitude, now we trust, in the world of light and glory, high above this little shad- owy region ; of those of the medical and legal pro- fessions, and those who filled places of honor and trust in the church, the town and the republic, and in re- tired walks, " to fame unknown." We are bound to think of them to-day ; how, many of our blessings are fruits of their toils and sacrifices, and to remember that they have made us debtors to those who shall live after us. At the next centennial, may our deeds, our virtues confer as rich blessings upon our successors as theirs have conferred upon us. We may predict that it will be celebrated - that your example to-day will be followed, as long as a race exists here to delight in duties of gratitude to God and to good men. Let this be, to the youth of this town, a day of manly, high
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resolve, and its prosperity is sure. The greater enter- prize and population of other places rivalling this can- not impoverish the soil here, nor shut out the kindly influence of the heavens ever propitious to industry. If this town has not increased in population, wealth, or celebrity, as some others have, neither has it, like some others, grown in pauperism, nor, we would trust in vices and follies that so often make populous pla- ces " great sores," where families quickly degenerate and ultimately all valuable interests decline."
One of the ablest historians,* not accused of undue partiality, bears this testimony to the early character of New England, in whose honor it is our right to share, that " the purity of morals completed the pic- ture of colonial felicity. One might dwell there from year to year and not see a drunkard, or hear an oath, or meet a beggar. I have dwelt," adds this historian, " the longer on the character of the early Puritans of New England, for they are the parents of one-third of the whole white population of the United States. Their descendants (in 1834) were not far from four millions. Each family has multiplied, on the average, to one thousand souls." According to this estimate the first twelve families who settled in this town had then multiplied to twelve thousand families. The de- scendants of the Puritans of New England, history as- serts, constitute half the population of the great states of New York and Ohio.t We heartily wish we could count here to-day a still greater number of descend- ants the town has contributed to adorn this broad land. It is a beautiful remark of a fine writer,
* Bancroft, Vol. 1, p. 167.
t Bancroft, Vol. 1 , p. 468.
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and as true as it is beautiful, that " as the river is born from the springs of heaven, so are the life and the fate of a people born from the hidden life of the home."*
Why was the success of the first colonies of New England so different from that of the Virginia and Maryland colonies ? Ilistory tells us that Virginia was first attempted to be colonized by " noblemen, gentlemen and merchants, in and about London." A second attempt was made by " knights, gentlemen, and merchants in the west." It was said of that new country, Virginia, that heaven and earth seemed never to have agreed better to frame a place for man's com- modious and delightful habitation."+ Yet one disas- ter followed another, until the colonists in despair ex- claimed,-" This plantation has undergone the re- proofs of the base world; our own brethren laugh us to scorn, and papists and players, the scum and dregs of the earth, mock such as help to build up the walls of Jerusalem." But different was the character of those who first planted this colony and this town with Christian homes, Christian churches and schools. " We (they said) are knit together as a body, in a most sacred covenant of the Lord, and by virtue whereof we hold ourselves straitly bound to all care of each other's good, and of the whole. It is not with us as with men whom small things can discourage." There was a divine power, in the institutions here planted, to give
" Beauty to this sun and pleasure to this day."
It has often been asserted, and is too true to be
* Bremer. t Smith, Vol. 1, p. 114.
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forgotten, that in the laws establishing Common Schools, lies the grand secret of the success and char- acter of New England. No other than a Christian people would have established such schools. These made the New England climate salubrious, and all the elements propitious.
The Common School System was chiefly, if not en- tirely, an invention of the Puritans. My own memo- ry of it can go back more than seventy years, when the schoolmaster brought in and read the-Bible, and a few psalters were the only books read by the upper class, others being furnished here and there with a few time-worn, shabby primers, adorned with coarse, frightful pictures. Fresh in my memory are the long, hard benches, from which if the hanging, naked, ach- ing feet of the urchins were not kept still, they must feel the hickory ; and when the various accommoda- tions were equally favorable to good progress in learn- ing. And yet, poor as they were, who can doubt that those schools were of more value to the people than the whole land would have been without them, though glittering with gems and masses of purest gold ? In ยท them was acquired some knowledge of letters, and correct first principles, good morals, habits of order and religious reverence. Every child, by the laws of the colony, by the church, and the town, was taken into the arms of tender affection to be blest as an im- mortal being. Well do I remember with what care and devotedness the venerated Cumings visited the schools, attending to their various exercises, giving them his kind counsels and lifting up to God for them his fervent prayers. As the town has progressed in
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general improvement, with commendable liberality the schools have been sustained.
Since my remembrance the excellent Dr. Pember- ton, assisted by the excellent Deacon Samuel Whiting, kept in the town an Academy of high order, in which many youth from abroad, and a very considerable number of this town, enjoyed invaluable instruction. Other schools have conferred upon the youth of this town privileges to be gratefully remembered. With- in a few years the noble bequest of the Howe School has been given, an institution which, we trust, shall long continue to confer upon the youth of this town eminent advantages of education .* Many years since a liberal bequest was given by the beloved and vener- ated Deacon Joshua Abbot for the promotion of Sa- cred Music. Let devout gratitude embalm the names of each and all whose generous bequests were design- ed to confer blessings upon you and yours.
"May the green turf lie lightly o'er their breast !"
We wish that here were some beautiful central city of the dead to commemorate the names and the virtues of the multitude departed. Affection, reverence for religion and freedom would delight to prepare monu- ments where the tribute of a consoling tear might be paid to their dust.
Do we extol too highly the virtues, the character of our ancestors of Billerica,- of New England ?- With themselves they were rigid, severe. Conscience they held sacred when they could see that its claims
* This school was founded and liberally endowed by Doctor ZADOCK IIOWE, of Billerica, many years a highly respected physician of B.
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were just and equal. But they were unwilling that the individual should overrule the public conscience. An instance of the first governor of the Plymouth Colony illustrates the general sentiment. He had some young men employed to labor on the public ac- count. They refused to work on a Christmas day, under pretence that it was "against their conscience." The governor finding them at play in the street, told them that "it was against his conscience to allow them to play while others were at work, and that if they had any religious regard to the day they should show it in the exercise of devotion at home." Such was the spirit of our ancestors. They were too truly republican and Christian to allow private claims to subvert the public good. Their principle was right. Their penalties for offences against the public good, doubtless, may sometimes have been too severe.
The revealed will of God was the acknowledged supreme law of the Puritans. But who, when the public interest was concerned, was to be the interpre- ter of that will ? They said, the majority of the peo- ple. We may wonder at their rigorous measures to guard against innovations. They felt like men, as they expressed themselves, " driven to the outside of the world, banished to the wilderness. Is it a great cruelty (said they) to expel from our abode the ene- mies of our peace, or even the doubtful friends ? The world can not call this persecution." Who can won- der that they strenuously defended themselves against every thing that threatened them with defeat, they dreaded more than death ? Sometimes they had been " compelled to burrow for their first shelter under a
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hill-side, with every disadvantage subduing the forest, their herds sickening on the wild fodder, their flocks destroyed by wolves, the storms beating, day and night, through their half covered huts." Still, as his- tory adds, " the forest rang with their psalms ; and the poorest people of God in the whole world, they were resolved to excel in holiness."# Such was the infancy of a New England village.
There have been, we know, unwearied exertions to brand with obloquy the character of our ancestors. They have not yet been forgiven for their inviolable love and triumphant defence of the cause of freedom. In superstition and intolerance did they go beyond the most enlightened and civilized parts of Christen-, dom ? Let the facts of history answer. "In the years in which Scotland sacrificed hecatombs to a de- lusion, there were three victims in New England. Hardly a nation of Europe has as yet made its law so humane as that of early New England."+
More than a century before the Declaration of In- dependence its great, vital principles had been adopt- ed and acted upon by our Billerica ancestors. On what other ground did they so early take measures to secure equally to all, the blessings of religion, of uni- versal education and of protection in the pursuit of happiness ? Their laws were indeed levelling,- but they levelled upwards. They required all the people to attend public worship, and all the children to be educated in the schools, and the poor man's vote to be counted the same as the rich man's in elections of rulers, and in deciding great questions of public inter-
* Bancroft, Vol. 1, pp. 366, 382. t Bancroft, p. 465.
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est. Fresh in my memory is the old meeting-house of the last century, where the wealthiest and the most honored, as frequently as others, were seated on the side aisles and in the wall pews. They lived in the delightful unity of the same spirit, all assembling to be refreshed from " the unfalsified wells of truth and beauty." Within a few rods of this spot stood " that central church of affection and good deeds," in which by diligently and faithfully worshipping, we hope none ever lost heaven.
If the religion of the present age be truer, better, happier, than that of the past, may God give it pros- perity and perpetuity. Parties in religion and poli- tics, in this state of imperfection, ever have been. WVe would not blindly worship the glory of the past, nor be dazzled by the splendor of the present age. As descendants of honored fathers it may well be- come us to remember the caution of Plutarch to Trajan, that " the faults of the child be not unjustly imputed to the master, or the parent." And yet there are hereditary evils, or at least sins and vices transmissible by education, more surely than by blood. "Seneca, the wise teacher, was reproached, and his fame suffered for the vices of Nero." The fame of Quintilian was injured by the bad conduct of his scholars, " and even Socrates was accused of negli- gence in the education of Alcibiades." If our ances- tors had faults,- by excelling them in virtue let us do honor to the glorious inheritance they left us. This is the glory of our lineage, that we may trace it up to one all-perfect Father. As we are soon to part from this consecrated scene of sweet and hallowed
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memories, and of many tender and sacred associa- tions, let it be as those to be separated only by dis- tance of place, and not in affectionate remembrance and interest. Let us go as rays of the sun, as ele- ments from heaven to give life, and fresh vigor and beauty to the scenes where our various lot is cast, and to think often of meeting again in pleasures more ex- alted than are known to the children of earth.
We may, I trust, without invidious boasting, many of us, unite in rendering thanks to God that in this town the light of heaven first shone upon us ; - that here the early ministries of parental love first cherish- ed our powers of thought ;- and here may we all bring to delighted memory the holy and beautiful spirits who watched around our cradle, and toiled, and wept, and prayed, that we might become good, true and happy men and women.
Never may a son or a daughter of this good old town stay in it, or go from it, but with high principles of duty, and wise examples to confer worth and hap- piness upon others. If the next centennial shall not be more blest and happy than this, let not the re- proach be ours. The moment of parting may suita- bly remind us of that well known, beautiful device of two lovers, about to be separated by distance, for an unknown length of time. " They agreed, that at a given hour of every day they would turn their eyes towards one of the great luminaries of heaven, that they might have the pleasure each of thinking, that the eyes of the other at the same moment, were di- rected to the same object." No less just or beautiful was the device of Lycurgus, near the close of life, in
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assembling the Spartans, after having given them ex- cellent laws to promote their virtue and happiness, requiring of them a solemn pledge, that they would inviolably observe them. They were so far faithful to that pledge, that they and their children were su- perior to all Greece in government at home, and in reputation abroad, during the space of five hundred years. Let me ask you, with me, to give, before this presence, our solemn pledge,- that we will be true to the great principles of religion and of freedom, in which our Billerica ancestors, in perils, and prayers, and sacrifices, founded the institutions, which have made this town most valuable in possession, most dear to the memory of their descendants ; - most worthy to adorn a page in the world's history, and to be gratefully celebrated at every centennial of those who shall live after us.
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POEM
BY DANIEL PARKER, M. D.
I.
When called upon to speak to-day,
I hesitated some to say I would. But presently I thought
I might, and could, and would, and ought, To try the thing at any rate,
Though it might prove no very great
Affair. The matter over some
I thought, but could not make. it come
To suit. How warp and woof to weave, I could not readily conceive. My poor Pegasus which had been Whip'd into racking now and then,
Had been so long so lame and lazy, And thought by some a little crazy ; I feared I could not safely ride, Or in a proper manner guide, For this occasion.
I brushed him down and led him out, But found he had the halt and gout. I leaped astride the creature's back But could not move him sheet or tack ; He stood stock still, nor priek nor pinch, Would make the rascal budge an inch.
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Well, what to do I did not know, I vowed I'd not be cheated so, I'd borrow first, and have it shown, I had none trusty of my own.
II.
I set me in my old arm chair,
To see what I could think of there.
I fell to musing high and deep, But presently fell fast asleep ; Or into some like blessed state, Where pains and grievances abate ;
Where dreams bridge o'er the streams of toil and strife,
Between the inner and the outer life. These angels traverse on their journies here With messages of love from kindred dear.
III.
I passed them o'er and saw a sight, That filled me with supreme delight. Impressions strange came over me, And quickly I could hear and see. A glorious vision then I had, Which made me happy, free and glad. The air was clear, serene and mild, And hills and valleys sweetly smiled. A host of men approached me near, And spoke, and bid me nothing fear. In shining robes they stood around, On what, to me, looked holy ground. I saw familiar faces too, Of old, and young, I thought I knew. But three came forward of the crowd, And stood upon a shining cloud, Which moved towards me slowly near, Till quite distinctly I could hear Their rich-toned pleasant voices.
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IV.
Two of the three, strange faces wore ; But one, I thought, I'd seen before. One looked just like a Puritan,- Another, like an Indian,-
The last, a clergyman of note, Who long here godly sermons wrote. The first a little nearer came, And Cotton Mather called his name. He said they'd come to talk with me, About our coming Jubilee.
" We'll now instruct you what to say, On your centennial festal day.
We know some things to you unknown, So take your pen and write them down : 'Twill save your fame and credit much, What little there is due of such." I told him what he'd better do, Be civil to acquaintance new ; That his theology and mine,
Would not by any means combine.
But I got paper, pen and ink, Right glad I'd found some one to think, And tell me what to do and say, Acceptable to you to-day.
V.
I told him first he must agree, To keep of his old nonsense free ; And none of his witch stories tell, For we could do without as well. Of stumbling blocks he'd piled enough, To make all paths to heaven rough. And, also, if he still held on To what he once relied upon, That he should not compose a line, For me to write as his or mine. He said " that's now an old affair, I'm nearer you than you're aware.
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Death took me out of my old fog, And gave my intellect a jog. My old opinions you should know, Were all discarded long ago. Of my witch-hangings I'm ashamed, I wonder I'm so little blamed.
What I did then, full well I know, Gave my theology a blow, Which made it totter, reel and moan, And crippled it for life half grown. My bug-bear devils that once loomed so high, I've seen all vanish and to nothing, die.
My errors are forsaken and forgiven, Yet very tight the squeeze was into heaven. Now say no more, but hark awhile to me, Be quick and write just what I speak to thec." And now I'll try to give you word for word, The truthful sayings I clairandiant heard.
VI.
" Two hundred years ! two hundred years away ! What thought and speech have they for you to-day ? Two hundred times have winter snows been drear, So many times have harvest-homes been dear. Two hundred times have birds returned to sing Their gleesome songs, and word of seed-time bring. So many times has come the flowery May, And scattered fragrant blossoms since the day Your brave forefathers settled on that spot, And thought their portion there a pleasant lot. Those stern stout-hearted puritans subdued, That, then, uncultivated solitude.
Upon that hill the woodlands first were cleared, And there, to God, their first rude church was reared. Just two long centuries ago they came Together there, and took their corporate name, Which ever since respectable has been, For grace and godliness and worthy men."
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VII.
" Time's restless wheels have rolled your landscape o'er, Since congregated there your fathers knelt To God (six generations past, or more,) And spoke such prayers as souls of pilgrims felt. Yet fair and beautiful we see it bloom,- Each year of progress has its beauties strown.
On gentle breezes borne o'er fragrant meads,
The echoes of the Past move still along ;
And from old graves come whisperings of deeds, Long-ages lasting in immortal song.
Yes ! those old graves your fathers' dust contain,
But not their souls,- they did not sink, but rose,
A higher life and liberty to gain,
Where angels bright in spirit realms repose."
VIII. " These spirits here - this white-robed band, Who scorned the bigot's blow, You see here now around me stand, Their love for you to show. They cherish what they loved, When in the flesh they moved,
And high the banner of their faith unfurled, To float in radiance from the spirit world."
" Here Pastors are from realms of light, Where once they taught you, robed in white, The just, more perfect made, would rest, And by the Holy One be blest. Here are some worthies of the May Flower crew, To mind you of the Pilgrims, when they drew Their bark ashore, when winter clouds let down The drifting snow ; and storms in fiercest frown Had all the face of nature dressed, To meet the mariner distressed,
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