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 3

Author: Moynahan, Frank E., 1865-1917. 4n
Publication date: 1899
Publisher: [Danvers, Mass.] : Published in the interest of the town by the Danvers Mirror
Number of Pages: 224


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 3


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Danvers was also conspicuous at the Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775. Gen. Israel Putnam, who commanded the American forces, was a native of the town, though he came to the seat of war


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DANVERS.


from his home in Connecticut. Israel Hutchinson was not in the actual fight, but was on duty ne ir at hand, faithful to his post, and ready as always for whatever service might be required of him. Asa Prince, who was a son of Dr. Jonathan Prince, said to have been the first resident physician of the town, was the same good soldier of liberty on Charles- town Heights as when he led his company on the day of Lexington. Major Ezra Putnam, whom we have met before and shall meet still again, w is also of the host. And Moses Por- ter, at the age of nineteen, here first won his spurs, only to go hence and for nearly half a century to de- fend his country in all parts of its territory, rise to exalted rank, and win the honor of being the prince of artillerists. and disciplin a r i a n s, and the hero of forts and fron- tiers. But if Dan- vers had such of- ficers or com- manders as these in the battle by which Englan I " lost her colonies forever," who shall tell of the far greater number of her braves, titled and untitled, who served under them and were there to con- tend for freedom to the death; or shall adequately tell of the deeds of her more multitudinous sons who went forth from Bunker Hill or fresh from their homes, after that great conflict, to peril all for the glorious cause and say with Capt. Samuel Flint, soon to lay down his life at Stillwater, " Where the enemy is, there you will find me?" More than 300 Dan vers men, as we have seen, marched to meet the foe, April 19, 1775, and it is es-


GEN. ISRAEL PUTNAM.


timated that not less than 300 men from the town were in the war of the Revolu- tion on and after the still more eventful seventeenth of June that so quickly fol- lowed. The figure is somewhat short of one seventh of the population of Danvers at that time.


As the " Soldiers' Record " relates : During the next twenty years many of these veterans obtained commissions in the militia as colonels, majors, captains, lieutenants, etc. : Gideon Foster, Eben- ezer Goodale, Jethro Putnam, Andrew Nichols, Daniel King, Andrew Monroe, Jonathan Porter, Johnson Proctor, Sylvester Osborne, Daniel Preston, and many others, a large number of them being afterward promoted. 'The first two became Major-Generals.


Mr. Proctor, in his Centennial Address, while re- counting the names of the most prominent Revo- lutionary heroes of the old town, made mention of General Putnam, General Moses Porter, Col. Jere- miah Page, Col. Israel Hutchinson, Col. Enoch Put- nam, Capt. Jere- miah Putnam, Capt. Samuel Page and Capt. Levi Preston, all of North Danvers ; and General Gideon Foster, Major Caleb Lowe, Major Sylvester Osborn, Capt. Samuel Eppes, Capt. Samuel Flint, Capt. Dennison Wallis, and Capt. Johnson Proc- tor, all of South Dinvers. Several of the entire list had served in the French and Indian war, and several others were to live to take part in another war with Eng- land, in 1812. No better service was rendered in the great struggle for Liberty


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and independence than that of these Dan- vers soldiers and their Danvers comrades.


" When Freedom, on her natal day,


Within her war-rocked cradle lay,


An iron race around her stood, Baptized her infant brow with blood,


And through the storm that round her swept, Their constant ward and watching kept."


For some years after the Revolutionary war, the times were hard and there was much discontent, especially in Western Massachusetts. Large numbers of men in that section grew insubordinate and rebellious, and for- midable military forces, under Shay and other desper- ate leaders, were at length in defiant array against the con- stituted authori- ties and alarming- ly menaced the order and peace of society. The insurgents having concentrated their strength at Spring- field, the state government, early in 1787, sent thither a strong body of troops, under the com- mand of Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, to crush the dan- gerous movement. The enemy, de- feated in the en- gagement that followed, fled to Pelham, where they were again routed and whence they betook themselves to Petersham, at which place they were finally dispersed by their pursu- ers and the trouble was brought to an end. The only reference to this chapter of events which we find in Hanson's His- tory, is the simple statement : "Col. Benj. Tupper raised a company the same year (1786), in Beverly and Danvers, to suppress Shay's Rebellion." It was not however, Col. Benjamin Tupper, but John


GEN. MOSES PORTER.


Francis, of Beverly, who raised the com- pany, and who, as E. M. Stone's history of that town further tells us, marched in Col. Wade's Regiment. Fourteen sol- diers, at least, of the company, belonged to Danvers, though Mr. Stone does not name them, or give the number. They were Daniel Needham, lieutenant ; Dan- iel Bell, drummer ; Josiah White, sergeant ; Moses Thomas, corporal; Isaac Demp- sey, and nine others.


About the same time there was anoth- er enterprise, of a far different character, in which not a few of the people of Danvers were interested. At various times in the history of the town her children have shown a marked spirit of emigration and colonization ; as when, in 1724, Joseph Houlton, grandson of the original settler of that name, re- moved with others of Salem Village to Franklin coun- ty in Western Massachusetts and there founded New Salem, with its Academy; whence, long af- terward, a goodly number of their descendants and others, led by a la- ter Joseph Houlton, wandered to the wilds of Maine and there formed a settlement to which they fittingly gave the name of Houlton, and which is now the flourishing shire town of Aroostook County. So, too, in 1738, several families of the names of Putnam and Dale migrated to New Hamp- shire and there planted a settlement, which became the town of Wilton. Thus it was, also, that the first division of the pioneer band that originally colonized the great Northwest, at Marietta, O., started


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DANVERS.


from their rendezvous at Danvers, Dec. 1787, under the lead of Major Haf- field White, and, having crossed the win- try wastes and mountains, met the other division of twenty-six men who had left Hartford, Conn., Jan. 1, 1788, at Sumrill's Ferry on the Youghiogheny, where all proceeded to build their boats, and then in April sailed down the rivers until they reached the junction of the Muskingum with the Ohio and there landed to found the future city, named in honor of the ill- fated Marie Antoinette, friend of America. Major White was himself a Danvers man, and among the twenty-two members of his party (the whole company numbering forty-eight), were Amos Porter, Allen Putnam, and Capt. William Gray, all from his own town. The list also includes Capt. Jethro Putnam and Josiah White, familiar Danvers names ; and the same might be said of others. Hildreth's " Early Settlers of Ohio," referring to Capt. Gray, says : " His family was left in Danvers, and did not come out until 1790, in company with Major Ezra Putnam, from the same place." The war veteran, Major Putnam, is said to have lived in Mid- dleton, near the Danvers line, but Marietta authorities generally claim him as of Dan- vers and his belongings seem to have been chiefly there. Col. Israel Putnam, a native of Danvers, like his father, Gen. Israel Putnam, went from his Connecti- cut home with his two sons and settled at Belpre, near Marietta, where he bought a large farm and became a leading and in- fluential man, his descendants of our own century and to-day being promi- nent and honored, not only at the parent colony, but in many parts of the west and south besides. Of like distinc- tion have been the descendants of Gen. Rufus Putnam, the "Father of Ohio," who was also of Danvers stock, and who, when the Ohio company, of Boston, pur- chased of the Government 5,000,000 or more of acres of territory on which these emigrants settled with himself and others, was appointed the general Superintendent for colonizing the region, being the prime mover and soul of the great enterprise. Senator Hoar, in his recent remarkably in- teresting sketch of the life, character and


services of this soldier, statesman, and patriot, has said : " If there be in the an- nals of this republic, save Washington and Lincoln alone, a benefactor whose deeds surpass those of Rufus Putnam, I have read American history in vain." In view of the founding of Marietta and of its re- sults, and in view of the connection which Danvers had with it as thus indica- ted, it is not too much to say, that, aside from manifold other and similar contributions during the century, the town has done no mean part in helping to de- velop the mighty West.


But other matters invite attention. Next to agriculture, several kinds of manufac- turing industry have been of chief interest and profit to the town. Its shoe business began as early as 1786, if not earlier, in what for a long time has been called Put- namville, from the name of many of the former inhabitants of the district. The first to engage in it was Zorobabel Porter, whose house and home-the birthplace of his brother, Gen. Moses Porter-is still standing near the northern line of the Plains, and whose shop stood very near to it, on the old stage road leading from Sa- lem to Topsfield, while, also, a tannery


GEN. PORTER'S BIRTHPLACE.


belonging to the estate was not far away. The brick basement of the shop was used for currying leather, and the rooms above for the "gentle craft " and for the sale of the shoes they made. Here, it has been said, was the " first shoe manufactory in the United States." However that may be, it was certainly the first in Danvers. Ac- count books, still preserved, show that Zorobabel, who was a prominent and in- telligent citizen, was quite briskly engaged in the business in 1786, and afterward ; and it was in that same year that his cousin, Jonathan Porter, also of Putnam- ville, came to learn of him there the Cris-


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pin art, accompanied or followed by Samuel Fisk, Caleb Oakes of New Mills, Moses Putnam and others. Thomas Meady became an adept and somewhat later taught the trade to Elias Putnam and Nathaniel Boardman in the same place. For the first year, the proprietor sold shoes to the people of Danvers and neigh- boring towns alone, but from about 1792 he sent his wares in barrels to more dis- tant points also. Ere long his apprentices and some others began the business on their own account and shipped their goods afar, as Porter had done before them ; Moses Putnam from 1797, and Caleb Oakes, for whom Putnam had worked for a year, probably a little earli- er ; Elias Endicott, about the year 1800 ;


chases, Putnamville, during most of the first half of the century, was a busy and noted part of the town as regards these in- terests, little as one might credit it now in view of its present changed and quiet aspects and condition. Late in the thir- ties and early in the forties, Joshua Sil- vester and Elias Putnam removed to the Plains, where they built larger factories and homes, and where Samuel Preston, Capt. Eben Putnam and others had been in the business for some or many years. Mr. Preston had invented a machine for pegging shoes, and Elias Putnam several for cutting and splitting leather, both re- ceiving patents therefor. These inven- tions were the first beginnings of the far more wonderful machinery and processes


FIRST SHOE MANUFACTORY.


Elias Putnam in 1812-13; Nathaniel Boardman in 1816; Samuel Putnam per- haps about the same time; and Joshua Silvester, Aaron Putnam, Daniel F. Put- nam, Joseph Black, Elbridge Trask, George A. Putnam and others, later ; all, except Mr. Oakes, having their shops or factories at intervals along the Danvers and Topsfield highway in the old school district, No. 3, for a distance of two miles. What with these establishments and Sam- uel Fowle's shop for the making of shoe boxes, together with the frequent visits of dealers from Boston, New York, Philadel- phia, Baltimore, and other remote cities, and the regular rumble of the big cov- ered wagons for the transportation of pur-


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which have since changed and increased, so astonishingly, the whole system of shoe manufacture and trade. Among the ear- lier representatives of the business in Danvers were Daniel Putnam, John Pres- ton, James Goodale and Otis Mudge, at or near the Centre ; and for a time it was carried on at Tapleyville by Col. Gilbert Tapley, who afterward established there a carpet factory, by means of which, with other ventures of his ever industrious and enterprising spirit, he gave employment to many persons and built up the village that bears his honored name. Otis Mudge commenced operations about the year 1835, and the skilled work and extensive traffic of Messrs. Edwin and Augustus


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DANVERS.


Mudge, and Edward Hutchinson (E. & A. Mudge & Co.), at the Centre and in Bos- ton, in our own generation, as well as va- rious other contemporaneous or subse- quent shops and stores of Danvers men, in town or city, like those of John R. Langley and William E. Putnam, have further shown how largely this interest has contributed to the growth and prosperity of the town. The Village Bank, now the First National Bank, of Danvers, was es- tablished in 1836, and its existence for 63 years, with Elias Putnam, Moses Putnam, Daniel Richards and Gilbert Augustus Tapley as its successive presidents, has been a great means of encouraging and aiding continuously these and other local, industrial developments. Perhaps the quarter of a century that immediately fol- lowed the year 1836, witnessed the high- est degree of success in this particular department of practical pursuits. Dr. Rice's book states that, in 1854, there were as many as thirty-five firms that were here engaged in the manufacture of shoes, making, during the year, 1,562,000 pairs, valued at $1,072,258, and giving employment to about 2,500 persons. The tanneries and factories of South Danvers or Peabody, which have been such a source of wealth to citizens or families of that town, have likewise been benefited by its Danvers Bank, incorporated in 1825, and by its Warren Bank of 1831.


Interesting, also, is the history of the pottery art and trade, so long known to South Danvers, and to some extent, in early times, to North Danvers. The busi- ness seems to have been introduced in the " Middle Precinct " by the Osbornes, Southwicks and others of the first settlers ; and this manufacture of many varieties of earthern ware appears to have been a thriving and spreading form of industry in that locality, until a comparatively re- cent period .- Another important occupa- tion to be mentioned in this connection is that of brick-making. Dr. George Os- good, formerly and for a long time a well known physician of Danvers, with wide practice, wrote in 1855 : " For more than eighty years the manufacture of bricks has been successfully and profitably car- ried on at Danvers Plains ; " and he adds


that Deacon Joseph Putnam, and Israel, his brother, nephews of Gen. Israel Put- nam, made bricks in the pasture east of the centre of the village, toward Frost- fish brook. Along this brook, and Por- ter's river which receives its waters, are various traces of the work that was there done at an early period. Yet the well- informed doctor believed that Col. Jere- miah Page, who was in the Revolutionary war and lived until 1806, was " the first person that manufactured bricks in Dan- vers." After his decease, his son, John Page, Esq., " continued the business with great profit to himself, and benefit to the community, to near the close of his life, and accumulated a handsome indepen- dence." He is said to have been the first in Massachusetts to make what were called clapped bricks ; and his trade, we are told, extended to all the principal cities and towns in New England, and to New York and even as far as Florida, the ma- terial thus supplied being much used for the construction of forts as well as for more common purposes. The Page yards were principally situated midway between the Plains and New Mills, on the western side of the road that connects the two vil- lages, while opposite was that of Nathan- iel Webb, who also found the occupation a lucrative one. Various yards have since been opened from time to time, and later brickmakers have continued to supply, with their products, the steady and grow- ing need .- The lumber business, particu- larly the extensive operations of Mr. Calvin Putnam and his successors for many years past, and other establishments for box- making and for the manufacture of leath- er and articles of wear, and also attractive gardens and greenhouses for the growth of vegetables and fruits and flowers for the markets-may well receive a passing no- tice here, whatever fuller accounts of them may or may not appear in later pages of this volume.


The war of 1812 encountered a vehe- ment opposition in Danvers. At a town meeting, held in the summer of that year, the inhabitants vigorously denounced it, for various reasons which they set forth, as " dangerous to the union, liberty, and independence of the United States." Yet


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DANVERS.


alleged wrongs of the mother country against our own people, but particularly the frequent, undeniable, and outrageous impressment of our seamen into the Brit- ish naval service year after year, had aroused in many citizens a spirit that de- manded satisfaction and that was ready for hostilities. At all events, military companies were formed in the town for the common defence. One of them was organized at New Mills, and was com- manded by Capt. Samuel Page, a hero of the Revolution. Another was raised in South Danvers and was under the indomi- table Gideon Foster. There was also a company of artillery, of which Jesse Put- nam was captain and Warren Porter was sergeant, and which was stationed at Sa- lem. Putnam and Porter were both af- terward promoted to be colonels. These officers and men saw but little active service, but were. surely ready for it, whenever or wher- ever was the need ; and Kossuth once said that they who are ready are as good as they who fight. But among those who were charged with sterner duty was Gen- eral Moses Porter, mentioned before, who was uncle of Warren, and who, during the three years' war, won undying laurels on the Niagara, and at Fort Norfolk, in Virginia. And to this it may be added that many other Danvers men enlisted elsewhere and served in various scattered scenes.


Before and after the Revolution the evil of African slavery was on the wane at the South, but especially at the North, where natural conditions and other cir- cumstances were so unfavorable to its ex- istence. In 1758, there were but 25 slaves in Danvers. By the adoption of the new Constitution in 1780, Massachu- setts abolished the institution throughout the state in a single day, and then of course there were none. The subsequent revival of the African slave trade aroused the North to a sense of fresh dangers


JESSE PUTNAM HOUSE.


which threatened the country and of the duty of the American people to let the oppressed go free. In 1819 Danvers ad- dressed a noble letter on the subject to Hon. Nathaniel Silsbee, then member of Congress from Essex County, urging emancipation by congressional action. The men who signed the letter should not be forgotten. They were : Edward South- wick, William Sutton, Thomas Putnam, Andrew Nichols, and John W. Proctor. Soon after William Lloyd Garrison entered upon his great abolition crusade, he found many ardent sympathizers with his work, and also subscribers for his " Lib- erator," in North and South Danvers. At New Mills an Anti-Slavery society was or- ganized as early as 1833-34, and among its members were Richard Hood, Joseph Merrill, Hathorne Porter, John Cutler, William Endicott, James D. Black, and Dr. Ebenezer Hunt. It was about the same time that the first three remembered lectures on the great subject were given in the neighborhood,one by Oliver Johnson at the First church (Dr. Braman's), and the other two by James


D. Black, and Rev. Cyrus P. Grosvenor, in the Baptish church, where also an ad- dress was delivered in the same interest, in 1835, by the celebrated George Thompson, of England. The ranks of the reformers soon grew in numbers, both men and women uniting in urging on the cause. In 1838 the society was reorgan- ized and received a large additional list of members. For many years meetings for discussion or lectures-not seldom the scenes of much excitement-were held in the old engine house at the Port and in various school-houses, vestries and church- es of the vicinity, and were addressed by such peerless champions of the slave as Mr. Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Parker Pillsbury, Stephen S. Foster, Abby Kelly, the Misses Grimke, of South Carolina, Charles Lennox Remond, Nathaniel P. Rogers, of Concord, N. H., Frederick


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DANVERS.


Douglass, and other noted leaders of the movement. Many of the New Mills abolitionists withdrew their connection with the churches on account of the gen- eral pro-slavery spirit of the members and were stigmatized as " Come-outers " or were called by more opprobrious names. Yet to the end they courageously bore their faithful testimony to the right as they saw the right and asked not the fa- vors or honors of the world. The town has never seen higher or more heroic moral purpose and fidelity than theirs.


The same may be said of their co- laborers in South Danvers, where also, in 1833-34, first appeared a very earnest and singularly estimable and unselfish band of emancipationists-the Southwicks and Winslows, Abner Sanger, Dr. Andrew Nichols, Andrew Porter, Alonzo P. Phil- lips, and many more. In 1837, a “ Dan- vers Female Anti-Slavery Society " was formed for the whole town, with Mrs. Isaac Winslow as president ; Mrs. Richard Loring as vice president ; Miss Harriet N. Webster as corresponding secretary ; Miss Emily W. Taylor as recording secre- tary and Mrs. Elijah Upton as treasurer ; and with Mrs. Abel Nichols and others as councillors. Many of the abolitionists of both parts of the old town afterward joined the Liberty Party, which ere long was to swell the ranks of the Free-soil Party, until the mustered hosts of Free- dom from all the parties, with Abraham Lincoln at their head, should cut up the overshadowing upas tree by the roots and destroy it forever. The older political organizations, whatever their past, were to prove unworthy the lead and must needs give way before the march of progress. The Liberty Party, like its legitimate suc- cessors, was a power in Danvers, and such members of it as Dr. Nichols, Mr. Phil- lips, Abner Sanger, and others like them, in South Danvers, and Dea. Frederick Howe, Col. Jesse Putnam, John A. Lea- royd, Francis P. Putnam, Winthrop An- drews and many more, in North Danvers, no longer relying on moral teaching alone, as the Garrisonians had done, but now also on the strong hand of govern- ment, had caught the secret by which the the vast problem was to be solved and the


nation was to be delivered of its direst curse.


Yet it was not without desperate strug- gles or measures of the South to stem the tide and prevent the consummation. The war with Mexico (1845-48) was waged to gain new territory for the spread and growth of slavery. Its success was its failure. Man meant it for evil, but a higher power defeated its purpose. Ac- cording to Hanson, five men of Danvers enlisted in the service. The " Soldiers' Record " mentions eight in all, four of whom belonged to Capt. Charles B. Crowninshield's company, in Col. Caleb Cushing's regiment of Massachusetts vol- unteers. But the citizens of the old town condemned the war in unmistakable terms.


The Massachusetts Society for the Sup- pression of Intemperance, formed in 1812, and consisting of about 125 members, among whom were Joseph Torrey, Dr. Sam- uel Holten and Rev. Dr. Benjamin Wads- worth, is said to have been the first or- ganization of the kind in America, if not in the world. In the town itself, the first


DR. WADSWORTH HOUSE.


was the " Danvers Moral Society," of 1814. Dr. Holten was chosen its presi- dent, and associated with him, as its oth- er officers, was a numerous array of well- known and most worthy citizens. Their earnest work had such a salutary effect upon the community, that by and by the names of drunkards were posted in con- spicuous places and offenders against the license laws were prosecuted, till it was finally voted, in 1833, that no license should be granted at all, so that in 1848 it was somewhat significantly stated that " no intemperance has been manufactured by law for fifteen years." In 1836, eight hundred females of the town petitioned the legal voters "to act as well as to


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DANVERS.


think," and the next year John W. Proc- tor requested the authorities of Salem "not to locate their dram shops on the immediate borders of Danvers." The popular movement of the " Washington- ians " followed, in 1842, when large and crowded assemblies in Danvers were ad- dressed by reformed inebriates and by the famous Dr. Jewett and others, and songs of gladness and the gospel of " moral suasion " filled the air. Later societies and meetings, particularly the Catholic Total Abstinence Society and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and other kindred organizations of the town, have also been marked by deepest earnestness and untiring activity in the service of the tempted and fallen. Nor should we fail to state in this connection what constant and efficient aid has been rendered to this sacred cause by the very able, earnest and consecrated minister of the Maple street church, Rev. E. C. Ewing, and indeed by all the clergymen of the town, of whatever denomination. Whatever their varying creeds, these faith- ful teachers and pastors find in practical christian work like this a blessed common bond of union.




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