USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Middleborough > Celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of Middleborough, Massachusetts, October 3, 1869 > Part 2
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Between these excursions came the memorable expedition of Standish, which has been so vividly brought before our eyes today. Corbitant, a rebel against his King, and an ene- my of the whites, sought to ruin both. The faithful Hobbo- mock and Squanto hasten to Nemasket to watch the traitor. After a violent scene, Hobbomock escapes to Plymouth, and Capt. Standish is sent at once to Nemasket. With little bloodshed, and without the loss of life, the rebellion is put down. There is little pomp or show in the affair. Histori- ans differ as to whether the army consisted of ten or of four- teen. . But in its results, that day's adventure of a dozen pil- grins may have been as important as the grand march of Sherman from the mountains to the sea.
The settlement of Nemasket was long delayed by the num- bers of Indians living here. This was the dwelling-place of more than one great chief, and the fishing-place of others. Even now the thickly peopled graveyards show something of their numbers. It is said that for many years after the settle- ment of the town, the proportion of Indians to whites was as five to one. It is well known that the aborigines selected the best situations for their settlements. But the true son of
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Middleborough, whether born at the " Corners," in Nemasket, or among the fertile fields of Titicut, or beyond your present limits, in the lake country, whether he lives by the river or the pond, needs neither Indian taste nor Indian tradition to teach him that for him the fairest spot on earth is his own sweet home. The ancient fertility of this region was well known to the early settlers at Plymouth. Again and again the fruitful fields of Nemasket supplied the hungry pilgrims, and but for these rich supplies it seems that the little band must have perished of hunger. No, I am wrong. It was decreed that they should not perish, and if need had been, a flight of quails, a shower of manna would, as of old, have preserved the lives of God's people in the wilderness.
In 1662 was made the first great purchase from IVampetuck by " the 26 men." Among them are many familiar names of the first settlers, or of their immediate descendants, such as Howland, Mullens, Soule, Sprague, Cook, William Brewster, son of the famous Elder, and Peter Brown, ancestor of the famous John Brown. It will interest some of you to know that John Brown took great pride in his pilgrim origin, and that his last evening in Boston was spent in the Old South chapel, at a meeting in behalf of the Memorial church at Southwark. The ancestor and the descendant were both fa- naties, but God makes great use of fanatics in advancing his reign on earth.
Additional purchases were made of Tispaquin and others, and the town grew till it contained thirty families. These are the names of the first settlers : John Thompson, Isaac Howland, Francis Coombs, Samuel Fuller, John Morton, Moses Simmons, Samuel Barrows, Samuel Eaton, Francis Billington, George Soule, Nathaniel Southworth, Ephraim Tinkham, Henry Wood, William Nelson, David Thomas, John Cobb, Jabez Warren, Edward Bump, Samuel Eddy, Samuel Pratt, George Vaughan, John Shaw, Jacob Thompson, Francis Miller, John Howland, John Alden. Those names are here still. They are all around me. Many of these men
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till the same farms that their fathers tilled. All of them, so far as I know, walk in the same ways in which their fathers trod.
The first deputy to the General Court was Johs Morton, a son of George Morton, who came over in the ship Ann. Traditions differ as to the fact whether the venerable house which we have admired today, and which is still held by a descendant of Morton, was the first which he built, or whether his first house was half a mile to the south. For one, I can- not believe that any dwelling-house in Middleborough re- mained through 1675 and 1676. And I believe that the coals and dust, which may still be seen, are the only relics of Mor- ton's first house. For now the clouds of war darkened all the sky. The terrible year 1675 had come. This town was the scene of its first great cvent. Sausaman, a convert of Eliot, said to have been for a time a student at Harvard Col- lege, became secretary to King Philip, and revealed his de- signs. In revenge, he was murdered by three Indians on the shores of Assawampset lake, and his body was hidden under the ice. But the waters refused to conceal the crime, and the murderers were tried and executed at Plymouth. What a scene, if we could reproduce that court ; the jury half whites, half Indians ; the judge pronouncing a sentence which was to thrill the new world as few state trials have ever thrilled the old world. Then we should like to see the old meeting-house at Taunton, where Philip and his friends occupied one side, while the other was filled by the commissioners of the colo- nies, with their armed guard. Then, if we could restore the " Morton house " and that other block-house to their old pro- portions, and fill them with trembling fugitives, and place a marksman at each port-hole, watching, waiting for the attack that might come at any minute, - if we could do this, we should begin to feel what the days of our fathers really were. It has been said that there was no romance in that time. If danger braved, and hardship borne, and horrors seen and un- seen, defied by faith, - if these are full of romance, of poetry,
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of sublimity, then did our fathers live in an heroic age, and live like true heroes.
The storm of war burst upon Swanzey. On a quiet Sab- bath morning an attack was made, and it was renewed until the town was consumed, and many of the people were stain. Next, Dartmouth is in flames. The peaceful lives of its Quaker inhabitants could not save them from cruel tortures. Middleborough is assailed. The men, women and children flee to the garrison house. The miller hangs up his leather apron as a mark to be riddled by balls, and makes good his escape. An Indian appears on the rock across the river, and taunts the whites with insulting gestures, until Isaac Howland borrows Sergeant Thompson's long gun, and fires at the long range of a hundred and fifty rods. Then, in the language of your honored President's father, "the insulting savage fell as did that heathen giant who defied the armies of the living God." It is a good thing that you have preserved this relie, and it was a good sight to see it borne today by a descendant of its former owner, - gun and man well matched. In that family, as well as in that gun, the stock remains sound.
Repeated encounters took place within the limits of the town. In one, the Indians were driven across the narrows at Assawampsett, by the gallant Capt. Church. In another, they were overpowered in a swamp at "Thomastown." But the danger was too great; the settlement was too weak. If by day the men could guard their families, how could they bear the terrors of the night, when every tree might hide a savage enemy, and every sound seemed like a war-whoop? The people wisely withdrew to Plymouth, having lost but one man, Robert Dawson by name. The remaining houses of the little town were burned. And thus, in the language of that day, "one more candle-stick was removed from the land."
When the war was over, the General Court ordered that Dartmouth and Middleborough should both be built more compactly, so that they might better be defended against the enemy, and so that public worship might be more generally
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attended, the neglect of which, as they feared, had contrib- uted to the recent disasters. These two motives for compact building are on a large scale praying and keeping the powder dry. This method of building aided, also, the free schools of New England, which flourish in her villages as they never could have done in scattered settlements like those in other portions of the land.
But the war was not yet over. It raged throughout the colonies. Mendon and Brookfield were attacked. Hadley was saved by the grand old regieide, who came forth from his hiding-place to win one victory more for the cause of the saints. Springfield was in flames. The meadows of Deer- field drank the blood of the "flower of Essex." Even after the great victory at Narragansett fort, Lancaster, Sudbury, and Medfield, were assailed ; Marlborough was abandoned ; a bloody massacre occurred even in Plymouth ; and the disas- trous expedition of Capt. Pierce almost decimated the young men of the Old Colony. Not till Capt. Church had tracked King Philip to his last hiding-place in the swamp, where he was slain by an Indian, who thus revenged the death of his own brother, did the land have rest.
And now, how did our fathers endure these horrors and dangers? Alone, on a strip of half reclaimed land upon the edge of a boundless forest, filled with demoniac enemies ; outnumbered by these enemies, who surpassed them in skill as marksmen and as warriors ; unaided by one dollar, one kind word from the English government, only checred by a contribution from a few saints in Ireland, (which in the Irish famine was repaid with interest) ; suspecting, even, that they were betrayed by Sir Edmund Andros, who was supposed to have supplied the Indians with ammunition from a neighbor- ing province, - alone in the presence of visible and invisible dangers, how could they remain? How could they endure to leave their wives and children exposed every night to name- less tortures and outrages? Read the story of Ann Rowland- son's captivity, with her wounded infant, nourished for nine
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days on water alone, till on the ninth day " the poor babe died like a lamb." Remember, too, her account of that fellow- captive, who, with her new-born child, was surrounded by a circle of yelling fiends, that dashed out the brains of mother and infant, and thrust the little one into the fire. "The chil- dren said she never shed a tear, but prayed all the time,"- with grief too deep for tears, with faith above all human reli- ance. "What brought them thus afar?" asks Mrs. Hemans. " What kept them here?" we well may ask, when every mo- ment their dear ones were exposed to cruel dangers and more cruel fears.
But the whole story is wonderful. Who laid waste the land, and strewed it with the whitened bones of its inhabi- tants? Why were those two Indians stolen and instructed in English and returned to their homes? How came Miles Standish among the pilgrims, - a man without a drop of Pu- ritan blood in his veins, - a soldier, who did not join the church, - who could not have voted in Massachusetts Bay, although the more liberal views of Plymouth allowed him to hold office there? Who soothed the savage heart of Massa- soit, and sent rain in the day of need ?
"We have heard with our cars, oh God; our fathers have told us what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old ; how thou didst cast out the people, and plantedst them ; how thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out. For they got not the land in possession by their own hand; neither did their own arm save them, but thine arm, and thy right hand, and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst a favor unto them."
Again I answer in the spirit of the pilgrims, but in words which they would not have chosen : "For it was thy will to destroy, by the hands of our fathers, both those old inhabi- tants of thy holy land, whom thou hatedst for doing most odious works of witchcrafts and wicked sacrifices ; and those merciless murderers of children, and devourers of men's flesh,
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that the land which thou esteemest above all other might receive a worthy colony of God's children."
Yes, an arm mightier than that of Standish, or of Church, of Winslow or Bradford, of Mason or Willard, guarded the homes of our fathers, and their triumphs were the victories of faith.
And now let me say a word of the conduct of our fathers toward the carly settlers. And that word is, that never in the history of colonization was there such forbearance, such honest and kindly dealing, as that which the early settlers ex- ercised toward the natives. Fair purchase of their lands, equal justice in dealing with offenders -three white men ex- ecuted for the murder of one Indian - faith kept at all haz- ards, with constant efforts to civilize and christianize, - this was the policy of the Pilgrim Fathers. The names of Eliot, Mayhew, and Norton, suggest anything but harshness in deal- ing with the savages of New England. Voltaire has said, and even juvenile histories have repeated, that the treaty of William Penn was the first treaty ever made without an oath, and the only one never broken. (He said it not so much be- cause he loved Quakers, but because he hated the name which gives sanction to an oath.) But on the hill beyond Town Brook, in Plymouth, our fathers made a treaty with Massa- soit, not confirmed by an oath, and never violated. For not till Massasoit had been laid in his grave was a hostile move- ment made against the whites by any Indian, who was not either a stranger or a rebel to his jurisdiction.
True it is, that when our fathers were maddened by the horrors of " King Philip's war," their treatment of their cap- tives was such as shocks every feeling of humanity. But even this reproach does not apply to the pilgrim fathers, who had long since passed from earth. And we must remember that while our fathers in America were guilty of selling cap- tives into bondage, they only did to the savages what the King of England did to his own countrymen. Even these outrages upon enemies fall short of those committed at a later
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period upon the friendly Indians of castern Pennsylvania. The East Indian mutiny was followed by more horrible' retri- butions than any which was mneted out to the savage murder- ers of King Philip's time ; and even now our own dealings with the Indians of the far west should make us pause before we utterly condemn our fathers. They have been reproached because the body of Philip was barbarously mutilated. Such a mutilation, indeed, shocks our sensibilities ; but we may pardon the fugitives from Middleborough if they looked with exultation upon the severed head of their enemy as it was borne through the streets of Plymouth, and thanked God that this scourge of humanity had ceased to atlliet the earth.
Although the war still raged with fury along the coasts of Maine, the colony of Plymouth was at peace after the death of Philip, and the exiles were free to return. The growth of the town was rapid, -increased, at one period, by fugitives from the bloody soil of Massachusetts Bay, where the witch- craft delusion had caused a reign of terror, for which men in their ignorance often condemn the pilgrim fathers of Plymouth. Whatever may be urged to excuse that delirium of good men, we love to recall the fact that no witch was ever convicted in Plymouth colony ; that whenever complaints were brought before the magistrates the complainant was made to suffer, and that when a Plymouth sea-captain was ar- rested in Boston, charged with this crime, Plymouth demand- ed and obtained his liberty. We are proud of the fact, also, that the weaker and gentler colony hanged no Quaker, and dealt gently with the Baptists, and for three years furnished a refuge to the great-hearted Roger Williams.
Your town did its full share in the old French and Indian wars, sending to the war of 1755, among others, Abraham Peirce, who in the revolution was chosen captain of a militia company in place of a tory. When the Lexington summons rang through the land, three companies of minute men marched from this town to Boston. These, and such as these, are the men to whom we owe our independence. Most of you
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remember many survivors of that war, prominent among them the last surviving Indian of pure blood. But no Mid- dleborough name is so well known in America as that of Deb- orah 'Sampson, who enlisted under the name of Robert SShurt- leff and served two years under the flag of freedom.
It is pleasant to dwell among the traditions of olden time, but they are all familiar to your ears. The names of Fuller, Thacher, Conant, Barker, Cotton and Briggs, are still fra- grant among the churches of New England. You have read of the minister who was supposed to have waylaid a parish- ioner that tarried too long at the wine-cup, and to have given him a sound beating near the tavern-door, a circumstance which might cause doubts whether it were better to have a stringent liquor law not enforced, or no law enforced strictly. It is recorded that Rev. Mr. Barker, when called to settle here, requested that the votes of the sisters might be taken, - a record which places him among the pioneers of woman's rights. Still more pleasing is it to hear of those whose great age spans generations, and connects distant periods. That is a wonderful story of Luke Short, who was born about 1630, and who died in 1746. This man in his hundredth year was converted to the Christian faith, while working in his corn- field, by his recollection of a powerful phrase of the famous John Flavel. Such is the power of a word rightly spoken. The speaker dies and is gathered to his fathers ; new dynas- ties succeed each other ; new nations are founded ; and when . generations have passed away, an old man working in the fields of a new world is smitten by that word and falls to the earth, and rises a new creature. This worthy saw Oliver · Cromwell, and witnessed the execution of Charles I. Some of your fathers may have seen the man who looked upon that great act of justice.
John Alden, the grandson of the last Mayflower pilgrim, died here at the age of 102, leaving alive 172 descendants, seven being great-great-grandsons. With a few more such citizens, you might have had a city celebration today. Among
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the venerable saints of former days was Joanna Paddock, whose father, Elder Faunce, died in 1745, having known many of the carly settlers at Plymouth. It is recorded of Mrs. Mercy Bennett that after the great snow of 1717, she being eighteen years old, walked thirteen miles to Plymouth and back that she might attend " meeting on the Lord's day." In one sense she has left few descendants. This excellent woman lived to be a century old, dying in 1799. She often said that she had seen Peregrine White in her house. There may be aged persons here who have seen a lady who enter- tained the first-born son of the pilgrims.
But I must not linger among these traditions. This is a day sacred not only to local pride, but to pilgrim memories. The glories of your fathers date not from 1669 or 1662. Those fathers met in the cabin of the Mayflower; they knelt upon the sands with Brewster, and joined in his thanksgiving for the frugal fare with which God's people were nourished : they stood by the graves of Governor Carver and of Rose Standish to find not despair, but hope and courage. I love to trace cach step of their progress. We see them leaving England in their zeal for their pure form of worship ; quitting Holland in their scrupulous devotion to good morals ; volun- tarily submitting themselves to written law before they left the cabin of the Mayflower; keeping the sabbath holy on that memorable day before the landing at Plymouth ; giving the day to rest and worship before the first tree had been cut down for the first log-cabin. What other company of adven- turers would so have rested on that day? But those who dif- fer from the pilgrims most widely may see that its hours were not lost. New England gave the first fruits of her time to God. Richly has he showered blessings on her children. Woe to New England if ever she forgets to pay this tithe of time.
The church of the pilgrims was the source of. our republi- can form of government; and the founders of that govern- ment were the fathers of the church. It has been repeated
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till the remark is commonplace, that the town system is the foundation of our successful democratic rule. Sir Edmund Andros knew this when he forbade town-meetings to do any- thing but choose officers. The voting of taxes for the poor, for roads, for schools, the open discussion between all citizens as equals, - this was self-government, from which a tyrant shrank with instinctive alarm. We know it, and it is one reason for our interest in a town celebration like this. But the truth is not so familiar, that the church is the foundation of each town. The first church of all came fully organized across the sea. Its earliest records bear date, not Plymouth, 1620, but Leyden, 1612. And as I lay my hand upon those yellow leaves, it seems to me that I am touching the founda- tions of empire. Yes, the town is the seed of the state ; but the church is the germ of that seed, and the very life of that germ was the godly preacher who had left his home that he might feed the exiles in the wilderness.
A self-governing church was the best pattern for a self-gov- erned state. Democracy, in the form of independency, leaped on Plymouth rock, and claimed the western continent as its heritage. Delay must intervene ; violence would interpose ; but republicanism was assured. It was all there, -town, state, union, the declaration of independence, Bunker Hill, Yorktown, the proclamation of emancipation, Gettysburg, the surrender of Lee, the greater glories yet to dawn upon America - all were decreed when a handful of earnest men stood on the shores of a vacant world and claimed that in the most important affairs of life they had the right to govern themselves.
New England loves her churches more dearly because they have been temples of liberty. She honors liberty more high- ly because its home and birthplace was the church.
" Then let it live unfading, The memory of the dead,
Long as the pale anemone Springs where their tears were shed ;
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Or raining in the Summer wind, In flakes of burning red, The wild rose sprinkles with its leaves The turf where once they bled."
But the great question to-day is, whether the children have been worthy of their fathers. All around us are proofs of thrift, and comfort, and liberality. A visible blessing rests upon this beautiful village. Your elegant church edifices show that religion is honored among you. The churches themselves have ever been firm in the faith and true to free- dom. Your schools, two of them at least, are remarkable even in this land of schools. And for your patriotism, Mid- dleborough points to her well-filled quotas, and to her list of sixty-two martyrs for liberty and union. Lakeville, too, has her list of honored dead, - nine good men and truc. And little Halifax is here. Her Light Infantry, together with com- panies that bear the great names of Carver and Standish, have honored and graced this occasion. It was once the boast of the Halifax Light Infantry, that they received their charter from the hands of John Hancock. It is now their prouder boast, that on the midnight call of John A. Andrew they mustered with full ranks at the dawn of day. Many an Old Colony town shared the glory of that night and day. I dare not say how many towns Capt. Harlow visited to summon his men, but I do dare to say that when the tramp of his horse roused the slumbering villages of Plymouth county, Bradford and Carver, Brewster, Standish and Winslow looked down and rejoiced over the approaching triumph of liberty. With a population of 738, Halifax points to a roll of twenty-two heroic dead, - a record equalled by no town in the state. The descendants of the pilgrims have been true to their an- cestors.
Men of Middleborough, you have a goodly heritage, a grand record. It will be your glory to transmit them to your sons unimpaired, improved, ennobled, so that when a hundred years have passed away, your descendants may look back to
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you and say, with pride and gratitude, "These men were our fathers."
The oration was listened to with the greatest interest throughout by the large audience that filled the tent, and was frequently inter- rupted by bursts of applause. At its conclusion, the audience united in singing the one hundredth psalm and the doxology, after which the company adjourned to the dinner tables.
Among those occupying the platform and attracting particular notice, was the Rev. Thomas Williams, of Providence, that vener- able man now just entering the ninetieth year of his age.
THE DINNER.
Nearly nine hundred sat down to a bountiful dinner provided by Thomas Cook, of Boston. A blessing was asked by Rev. Mr. Fair- banks, of the Central Baptist church. After about a half hour had been devoted to the dinner itself, the speaking was recommenced. C. D. Kingman was introduced as toast-master, and read as the first sentiment :
Boston - We rejoice in her greatness and prosperity, and we honor those who guide her destiny.
Responded to by Mayor Shurtleff, of Boston, who said :
· Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, - For your kind sentiment, so re- spectful to the place of my birth, I cannot but be very grateful. Although I am a Bostonian, I have nevertheless the greatest regard for all that per- tains to the Old Colony, within whose bounds not only both my parents, but also all my American ancestry had their origin and were reared. What- ever there may be connected with your associations, the same belongs equally to me in common with you; for, whether my blood may be good or bad, I am sure of this, that all of it flows from the veins of the New Eng- land forefathers, the first-comers to the Old Colony, of which your town forms a considerable and very important part. Therefore when my mind recurs to the early days of the pilgrim fathers of New England, I cannot but recall the self-sacrificing spirit of that noble body of men who, leaving all that they held dear in the home of their birth, and flying from the ty- ranny that constrained them in the old country, sought new abodes, where they could worship their God according to their own predilections and the dictates of their own consciences, uninfluenced by dogmas, uncontrolled by blasting hierarchies, and governed only by themselves, guided by their own truth and natural instincts of right for themselves, and of justice, lib- erality and equity for all other. I am even now forced to go back with them in imagination to their ancient abodes near the joining borders of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, and there view them in their every-day walk of life, - industrious and frugal, prayerful and painstaking, suffering contumely and reproach for religion's sake, and finally embarking for foreign shores, when abuse and intolerance could be no longer borne. I follow them to their intermediate dwelling place in Holland, and also pass
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