USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Danvers > Danvers, Massachusetts : a resume of her past history and progress, together with a condensed summary of her industrial advantages and development : biographies of prominent Danvers men, 1899 > Part 2
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DANVERS.
west of Swinnerton ; Jacob Barney and oth- ers, the land covering the north part of Leach's hill, or Browne's hill, and territory north of that, in East Danvers ; Lawrence, Richard and John Leach, immediately south of Barney ; Charles Gott and others, the " Burley Farm," now owned and oc- cupied by George Augustus Peabody, Esq., whose handsome residence com- mands a beautiful prospect ; Allen Ken- niston, John Porter and Thomas Smith, east of Putnamville and as far north as Smith hill on the Topsfield line ; Emanuel Downing again, east and southeast of Smith's hill, the land being afterward sold to John Porter, whose son Joseph settled
PORTER-BRADSTREET HOUSE
upon it and made the old house of today the home of his family and of four or five generations of his descendants of the Por- ter and Bradstreet names.
In connection with this list may be mentioned, also, William Nichols, whose grant of 1638 was located in North Sa- lem, but who bought the present Ferncroft district in Danvers (whence the name of Nichols Brook), and bequeathed it to his son John, whose descendants of our own century, Dr. Andrew Nichols and his brothers, John and Abel, were born on the estate ; William Haynes, who jointly with his father-in-law, Richard Ingersoll, purchased the Weston grant, and then, with his own brother Richard, a part of the Bishop farm; Joseph Houlton, who owned and lived near the First Church and south of it, and near also to the spot where his eminent and noble descendant, Dr. and Judge Samuel Holten, passed his extended, useful life in a house still stand- ing ; Thomas Preston, whose distinguished line of descendants has long and notably
given its name to the neighborhood of the Harris (formerly Massey's) estate, and some of whose representatives are yet to be mentioned ; and Joseph Pope, who established his home south of the Danvers and Peabody line, where, long afterward, a fair maiden of the family name and
JUDGE HOLTEN HOUSE.
stock, Hannah Pope, won the heart and became the wife of the hero of Bunker Hill. These, or such as these, with their sons and daughters, were the first settlers of Danvers and they stamped their impress on its character and life for centuries to come. Says Upham : " There never was a community composed of better material, or better trained in all good usages."
For obvious reasons, the early settlers of Danvers, as they grew in numbers, more and more desired to be, in some de- gree at least, an independent community. Hence the vote of the town, Dec. 31, 1638, " that there should be a village graunted to Mr. Phillips and his company uppon such condition as the 7 men ap- pointed for the towne affaires should agree on." This is supposed to have been the origin of the name, "Salem Village." The plantation was also familiarly called " The Farms," and the inhabitants were known as " The Farmers"; or, as Mr. Upham states, these designations often had a wider application, being used with reference to the region north of Waters River, as it stretched from Reading at the west to the sea at the east. The Mr. Phillips above mentioned is said to have been the Rev. John Phillips, who was re- ceived as a townsman in 1640 and who returned to England in 1642. No marked results appear to have followed his brief leadership or the municipal vote.
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For many years afterward the villagers doubtless held religious meetings at one or more private houses in the neighbor- hood, meanwhile often debating among themselves the increasing need of a paro- chial organization and other privileges of their own, that they might not be too de- pendent upon the church or people at Salem. In 1670, they asked to be set off as a separate parish, and the request was complied with, however reluctantly, in March, 1672, the General Court confirm- ing, Oct. 8th, of the same year, the action of the town. The eighth of October, 1672, was thus the birthday of the First Parish of Danvers, whose two hundredth anniversary was fitly celebrated on the same day, in 1872, and whose history for the two centuries, as carefully written by Dr. Rice, himself one of its noted line of ministers and its pastor at the time, was published two years later in connection with the Proceedings of that memorable occasion and constitutes a very important part of the general history of Danvers.
Though this territory of Salem Village was substantially the same as that of North Danvers at a later time, or of Danvers in our own, yet the boundaries of the two were quite different. Thus Danvers now includes, as the Village did not, Endicott's Orchard Farm, Skelton's Neck or Dan- versport, and a considerable tract on the Beverly side of Porter's River, while a re- mote northwestern portion of the Village area, formerly known as the " Bellingham Grant" and constituting a large, square and somewhat isolated projection, was af- terward set off to Topsfield. Moreover, a certain section of the southwestern part of the Village was subsequently included in the town of South Danvers and now belongs to Peabody. At this time the Village population probably numbered somewhat more than five hundred.
At a meeting of the Farmers, held Dec. 10, 1672, it was voted to build a meeting- house. It was completed only after much delay, and stood on the flat, at a little dis- tance east of the more elevated site of its successors on Watchhouse hill. The thir- ty years of its existence were to witness sore troubles for the villagers. They had not been strangers to trial in earlier years.
The old log-house on Watch hill reminded them of dangers, past and present, from the savage foe. Ever and anon were tales of fresh barbarities, near and far, that gave them a constant sense of insecurity. But from the first the Farmers were ready to bear their part in the common de- fence, however distant the scene ; as when
OLD MEETING HOUSE ROAD.
Richard Davenport, Thomas Read and William Trask were the three commis- sioned officers in Endicott's expedition of 1636, against the Manisseans of Block Island for their murder of John Oldham and party from Boston ; or, as when the same Davenport, with numerous volun- teers from the neighborhood, again marched to battle the Indian, now joining the Massachusetts troops sent under Israel Stoughton to aid Connecticut in the Pe- quot war of 1637. But a far greater peril threatened the settlements of New England, when, in 1675, while Rev. James Bayley was the first minister of the Village church, King Philip's war broke forth in all its fury and made the wide frontier for three hundred miles the scene of dreadful atrocities. The wholesale massacre of the brave Capt. Thomas Loth- rop, of Beverly, and his company-the " Flower of Essex "-at Bloody Brook, near Deerfield, on the 18th of September of that year, only aroused Massachusetts more than ever to a sense of the peril and duty of the hour. Nine men from the Village are said to have shared in the aw- ful sacrifice. But a far greater number from within the parish limits went forth with the thousand Massachusetts soldiers who, in the following bitterly cold Decem- ber, marched through snow and amidst nameless hardships into the swamps of Rhode Island, and there, on the 19th, fiercely attacked the Narragansetts at their islanded stronghold, killing a thousand of
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the warriors and wounding and taking prisoners hundreds of others. " The pride of the Narragansetts," says a histo- rian, " perished in a day." Of the three officers who gloriously fell in the strife, two were from Salem Village, or the Dan- vers that was to be : Capt. Joseph Gard- ner and Capt. Nathaniel Davenport, sons, respectively, of Thomas Gardner and Richard Davenport, already referred to as of honorable distinction. Of the two captains, the former raised his company in his own neighborhood, and Joseph Houl.
The town of Danvers, in the summer of 1894, set a huge boulder on the green, and dedicated it, June 30th, with a suita- ble inscription and with public ceremon- ies, to the memory of the thoughtful and patriotic donor, and of the valiant men who, during two hundred years, had " gone hence to protect their homes and to serve their country."
Mr. Upham's comprehensive and mas- terly treatment of the witchcraft delusion of 1692, with numerous more or less pop- ular books or pamphlets on the same
OLD TRAINING FIELD.
ton, Jr., Thomas Flint and many other familiar names occur in the list.
These soldiers, with others from the Farms, had drilled on the field or common at Danvers Centre, which, down to our own day, has served the same purpose, especially as subsequent wars have required the needed military discipline; for in 1694, Nathaniel Ingersoll, son of Richard Ingersoll and magnate of the Village, made the lot of land a free gift to the inhabi- tants as "A Training Place forever."
subject by other authors, makes unneces- sary any extended account of it here. The first outbreak of the strange phenom- ena occurred in the family of Samuel Parris, then minister of the Village church, and successor of James Bayley, George Burroughs, and Deodat Lawson. Of the awful tragedy, Parris was the one persecut- ing demon, from the beginning to the end. But the house in which he lived ; the mansion of Nathaniel Ingersoll, which stood just north of the present church and
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immediately west of the parsonage of to- day, and in front of which the arrested parties, suspected or accused of being in
REBECCA NURSE HOUSE.
league with Satan, were brought by grim officers and amidst great excitement, as a preliminary to more cruel scenes ; the modest meeting-house that witnessed their further shameful examinations ; and some of the scattered homes from which they were so ruthlessly torn away for their menaced doom,-have long since dis- appeared. Only the dwellings of Rebecca Nurse, George Jacobs, Sen., and Sarah Osburn remain within the present town of Danvers. That of Ann Putnam, one of
SARAH OSBURN HOUSE.
the accusers, is also standing. Of the large number of men and women who were condemned and who were executed on Gallows Hill, between Peabody and Salem, the Village victims, or those who lived in what was afterward " old Dan- vers," were Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, John Proctor, George Jacobs, Sen., John Willard, and Martha Corey. Rev. George Burroughs, who perished with them, had been, about twenty years before, minister of the Village church. Giles Corey, hus- band of Martha, was pressed to death,
while firmly mute to the wicked accusa- tions against him ; and John Proctor, who from first to last exposed and denounced the whole terrible business, fearless- ly went to meet his doom. There on the mount, Christ had his mar- tyrs, as well as his murderers. But the reaction came apace. The year of 1692 saw the beginning and the end of the great delusion and ini- quity, and there has since been no more peaceful, industrious, intelli- gent and christian community or parish, than the one within whose ancient bounds the evil first ap- peared and was most rampant and destructive.
ANN PUTNAM HOUSE.
During most of the period we have thus far passed in review, the early settlements of what was called the " Middle Precinct " (Peabody), also once known as “ Brooks- by," from the convergence of Goldth- waite's and Proctor's brooks, had steadily increased in population. In March, 1709- 10, the inhabitants petitioned Salem for a lot on which to erect a meeting-house of their own, and, the appeal having been successful, they voted, Nov. 28, 1710, to
GEORGE JACOBS HOUSE.
proceed to build. The work was com- pleted in October, 1711, and Rev. Ben- jamin Prescott was settled in February,
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1712, as the first minister of the new church or parish. An entire separation of the Village and the Midlde Precinct from Salem proper, so as to unite them in a new and distinct township, was a matter that long continued to be agitated. Af- ter much appeal from the two parishes and much delay on the part of Salem, the latter finally consented to the proposed plan, Oct. 23, 1751, provided it should meet with the approval of the Legislature. The Legislature, however, on the 28th of January, 1752, incorporated the two par- ishes, under the name of Danvers, as a district, rather than as a town, royal in- structions having been sent to the Gov- ernor to restrain thus the increase of the popular branch of the Government. But the District still pressed its rightful claim, and on the 19th of June, 1757, the bill was passed which erected Danvers into a town and entitled it to its own deputy, Hutchinson, who was now a member of the Council, and afterward Governor, en- tering his earnest protest, and saying that " the action was unnecessary for the pub- lic good." The name of Danvers, he should have regarded as a better omen. It seems to have come, originally, from Anvers, or Antwerp, the name of a famous city in Belgium, which, as Dr. Braman pointed out in his very interesting re- marks at the Centennial Celebration of 1852, means, etymologically, " addition, accession, progress." Mr. Felt says that it was given to Danvers " through the in- fluence of Lieut. Gov. Phips, from grati- tude to one of his patrons." This friend is supposed to have been Sir Danvers Osborne, Bart., of England, who was ap- pointed Governor of New York, in 1753, and died shortly after his arrival in this country, and who was probably a descen- dant of Roland D'Anvers, companion in arms of William the Conqueror. But the name of Danvers was legally given to the District the year before Sir Danvers Os- borne was appointed Governor, and we are told that the inhabitants had freely applied it to the tract as far back as 1745. Per- haps a better explanation of the matter is Hanson's : " Among the original settlers of Danvers, the Osborne family was conspic- uous, as it has been in the subsequent
annals of the town. This, coupled with the fact recorded above, that the Osborne and Danvers families had intermarried, seems to account for our name. Doubt- less the Osbornes suggested the name out of love for their cousins across the seas." Mr. Eben Putnam, however, dissents from this view, in an instructive article, entitled " How Danvers became a Town " and con- tained in his " Putnam's Historical Maga- zine," Oct. 1897. He expresses the opin- ion that the Governor conferred the name at the instance of his friend, Capt. John Osborne of Boston, who was a member of the Council from 1731 to 1763 and prob- ably knew about the intermarriages of the Osborne and Danvers families.
As Dr. Rice says : Danvers, as thus constituted, embraced, along with the Village, the territory which lay towards the south and southeast and extended to the present northern boundary of Salem, and which was then known as the " Middle Precinct." And he adds, " It should be borne in mind, however, that not all of the territory now belonging to Peabody was embraced in the former Middle Pre- cinct, since a large section in the north- western part of the present town of Pea- body was included within the original limits of the Village Parish." Danvers now had an area of about 17,000 acres and a population of probably more than I 700 inhabitants.
In 1754 began the early history of the village of Danversport, when, near the site of the store of the late Messrs. War- ren and at the head of tide-water of Crane river, Archelaus Putnam located for himself the first house in that immedi- ate vicinity. Here the next year was born to him the first white child, native to the place ; while about the same time he and his brother John, built, close at hand, a wheat mill which was the beginning of a needed and profitable business for the fu- ture town. To this point a road from the Plains (the present square) was laid out in 1755, and in 1760 it was extended from Crane river across the Endicott grant and over Waters river, and so on to the North Bridge in Salem. More wheat mills were built in 1674 and after- ward, one of them being situated at the
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neighboring bridge across Porter's river, where also were located the Danvers and Beverly Iron Works, incorporated in 1803. As early as the year 1798 the Salem Iron Company established its works at the bridge across Waters river, and here, as at the head of Crane river, there grew up a considerable commerce, so that, as Mr. Hanson tells us in 1847, there were, during 1846, thirty arrivals at the former place, with cargoes of coal, wood and lumber, etc., and one hundred and twenty-seven arrivals at the latter, with the same importations, and with flour and corn and a great variety of other commodities. From April 15 to Novem- ber 30, 1848, there were at this point as many as 172 arrivals, and in the year 1876, there were about 250. Here, more- over, many vessels were constructed at different times, especially privateers and gun-ships during the Revolution. What with these varied and vital interests, and the subsequent morocco factories of Major Moses Black and sons, the tanner- ies of Samuel Fowler and sons, and other kinds of business that ere long appeared in the village, New Mills or Danversport became a very notable part of the town. The names of some of its leading families were Black, Fowler, Pindar, Page, Endi- cott, Putnam, Cheever, Porter, Bates, Hutchinson, Breed, Hunt, Kent, Jacobs, Hood, and Warren.
In the year 1754, also, the people of Danvers were called,like their predecessors of the same and the former century, to consider the more serious matter of war. After the Narragansett fight, some of the Farmers had been soldiers in King Wil- liam's war of 1689-97, Queen Anne's war of 1702-13, and King George's war of 1744-48 ; but it was what we know as the French and Indian war of 1754-63 that enlisted a much greater interest and ser- vice on the part of the District, there be- ing five companies, at least, in which it was represented. The five captains were W. Flint of Reading, Andrew Fuller of Middleton, Israel Herrick of Boxford, John Tapley of Salem, and Israel Davis of Danvers,-all familiar family names. Davis and his men engaged in the expedi- tion to Louisburg, and the others marched
to meet the foe at Crown Point and Fort William Henry, and "in and about Maine." . Israel Hutchinson, Samuel Flint and Ezra Putnam, of whom we shall hear again, were in the war, and so were nearly 140 others from the old " Training Place," while two sons of Danvers served as surgeons in the army, Dr. Amos Putnam, a noted citizen, and Dr. Caleb Rea, the latter in the expedi- tion against Ticonderoga in 1758. Con- cerning the Danvers company, just men- tioned, Dea. Samuel P. Fowler, in some excellent remarks which he made at the Centennial Celebration, in 1852, on the service which the women of the town had rendered in connection with the Revolu- tionary and other wars, related the follow- ing : " When their sons were called upon by Governor Shirley, in 1755, to form a company of volunteers to reduce the forts of Nova Scotia, they cheerfully furnished them with clothing and other articles nec- essary for their comfort. After they were equipped, and about to join their regiment at Boston, these patriotic women of Dan- vers accompanied the volunteers to the Vil- lage church, where a long and interesting sermon was delivered by Rev. Peter Clark. His subject upon this occasion was : 'A word in season to soldiers.'" From Dr. Rice's amusing account of Mr. Clark's usual Sunday deliverances, it may well be supposed that his discourse to the soldiers on this occasion was sufficiently " long." His pastorate, it may be added, was also of great length, covering fifty-one years. Dr. Wadsworth, who immediately suc- ceeded him, was minister for the still more protracted term of fifty-four years. He was followed by Dr. Braman, whose pulpit ministrations for nearly thirty-five years were the ablest and most impressive known to the history of Danvers. Thus, it is seen, the well nigh continuous service of these three eminent clergymen ex- tended over about 140 years.
But another momentous struggle was not distant ; and in no town of Massachu- setts or the colonies did the arbitrary and oppressive measures by which England was soon seeking to crush out the spirit of liberty and the rights of the people on these western shores meet with a braver
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or sterner resistance than in Danvers. When her citizens heard of the infamous Stamp Act of 1765, they assembled them- selves together and enjoined Thomas Por- ter, their member of the General Court, to do all in his power to obtain its repeal, and declared that taxation and represen- tation must go together ; and when Par- liament levied a tax on tea and other articles that should be imported, and even after it was obliged materially to modify the law, they voted overwhelmingly that neither they nor their families would pur- chase or use any such goods, brought from Great Britain, and pronounced any one who should do it an enemy of his coun-
ters, thinking to overawe and suppress the rising and "rebellious " spirit of the in- habitants ; but finding his stay useless and uncomfortable, he returned to Boston with his soldiers early in the following Septem- ber. Alarm lists, or companies of minute men were organized for whatever emer- gency might next appear. Gun-carriages were lodged on Gardner's farm in North Salem and some were later taken to New Mills and to Lindall's hill in Danvers. This soon became known in Boston, and on Sunday, Feb. 26th, 1775, a detach- ment of British troops, sent in a transport, and commanded by Col. Leslie, landed at Marblehead and marched through Salem to
THE LINDENS, RESIDENCE OF FRANCIS PEABODY.
try. As time went on and outrages con- tinued, patriotic feeling grew more intense. 'Town meetings were held, flaming speeches were made, and strong committees were appointed to direct the popular will. All the signs betokened that a crisis was near. In June, 1774, Gen. Thomas Gage, the royal Governor of Massachusetts, attended by two compa- nies of British troops, came from Boston to Danvers and made the fine old " King " Hooper House (built in 1754 and long known also as the " Collins House ;" now " The Lindens," the elegant residence of Francis Peabody, Esq.), his head-quar-
the North Bridge, on their way to cap- ture the secreted cannon. The alarm was given far and near, and as they reached the river, they found themselves con- fronted by a sturdy crowd of patriots of Salem and Danvers, who, after much par- ley and various demonstrations, compelled them to return and go their way, so far compromising the matter as to allow them to cross the bridge, but to recross it as quickly ; and thus ended the quite " blood- less battle," in which, however, there were examples of true American heroism, even as there were examples of "the wisdom that is from above."
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DANVERS.
" Through Salem straight, without delay, The bold battalion took its way; Marched o'er a bridge, in open sight Of several Yankees armed for fight ; Then, without loss of time or men, Veered round for Boston back again, And found so well their projects thrive That every soul got home alive."
The greater opening event of the Rev- olution was less than two months later. In the night of April 18th, 1775, a de- tatchment of 800 British soldiers, com- manded by Lieut. Col. Smith, set out from Boston for Concord, to destroy certain military stores supposed to be there, all unmindful of the baf- fled ventures of Gage and Leslie. Advanced troops, having ar- rived at Lexington early the next morn- ing, and there on the village green at- tacked and dispersed the brave yeomanry summoned to meet and oppose them, confidently pressed on about six miles further, to a more humiliating encount- er at their destina- tion. The news of the sally from Bos- ton reached Danvers about 9 o'clock that morning; and in- stantly, as it were, eight companies of the minute men and militia of the town, numbering about 330 men, and led by Captains Samuel Flint, Samuel Eppes, Jeremiah Page, Israel Hutchinson, Caleb Lowe, Asa Prince, John Putnam and Edmund Putnam, hur- ried across the country to face the foe, those who received the alarm soonest starting first, " running half the way," and arriving, at the end of four hours and six- teen miles, in time to intercept the re- treating " Red-coats " at West Cambridge, now Arlington. In the battle which here ensued, Danvers made her great sacrifice, others of her troops probably coming up in season to harass the enemy in their
ISRAEL HUTCHINSON 1727-191j
SERVED HIS COUNTRY AS SEACT. CO. OF RANCERS 1757
LT. LAKE GEORGE ANO TICONDEROCA 1768
CAPT. QUEBEC 1759
CAPT. BATTLE OF LEXINGTON 17TS
COL. SIECE OF BOSTON
- NEW YORK-NEW JERSEY
- CROSSING OF THE DELAWARE
HIS MEN MANNED BOATS IN METREAT FROM LONG ISLAND
REPRESENTATIVE ANO COUNCILLON
AN HONORED CITIZEN AND LOYAL SOLDIER
ISRAEL HUTCHINSON MONUMENT.
flight to Charlestown. The names of her fallen heroes are these : Samuel Cook, Benjamin Daland, George Southwick, Jotham: Webb, Henry Jacobs, Ebenezer Goldthwaite, and Perley Putnam. In 1835, a proud and gratefui people erected an appropriate monument to the honor of these men in the main thoroughfare of the present town of Peabody, dedicating it to their memory with fitting ceremon- ies on the 20th of April of the same year. Hon. Daniel P. King, one of the most distinguished and revered of all the sons of Danvers, delivered on the occasion a most eloquent ad- dress, accompaniep by very interesting remarks from the brave old veteran, Gen. Gideon Foster, who was also in the fight at West Cam- bridge, as a Captain of a company of minute men, taken, it is said, from the THENTON company of Capt. Eppes. Israel Hutch- 21 YRS. inson, who had gal- lantly served in the French and Indian war and rose to high military distinction during the Revolu- tion, and who was afterward greatly honored in civic life, had his home at New Mills ; and hither the bodies of some of the Danvers soldiers, slain in the battle, were brought fresh from the scene of their death, to await the care of mourning kindred. On this sacred site the town, in 1896, likewise placed and dedicated a chaste and beau- tiful monolith, commemorative of his no- ble character and deeds, and of the young and blood-stained patriots who rested here awhile on their way to the grave.
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