USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Historic homes and places and genealogical and personal memoirs relating to the families of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Volume I > Part 11
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OLDEST HOUSE IN ASHBY, BUILT 1764.
The old meeting-house of the church organized in 1776 was moved from its original site and is still standing, the lower part being used as the town hall and the upper part as a grange hall. The Unitarian church occupy the house erected by the town in 1809. It is a fine old building, containing many of the features, such as box pews, which were in use when it was built. The Historical Society of the town occupy the building which was formerly the town
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school house. There is one house considered to be the oldest house in town, of the pattern designated as of the "two stories in front, and one in the rear," which was built previously to the Revolution, which was known in former times as the Deacon Jonas Barrett house. Deacon Barrett wrote a valuable historical sketch of the town, which in the vicissitudes often accom- panying such manuscripts, was destroyed by fire when in the charge of a stranger. The Wil- lard house is a grand old mansion, and the famous Willard clockmakers' shop is still stand- ing. Mrs. Ida Damon's house is very old, and the large elm near it is seven to nine feet in diameter. The Gould house is an old structure refitted by Mr. Gould, a storekeeper, who gave the clock on the Unitarian church. The Wellington houses, two in number, are old, but are now occupied by foreigners. The Oliver Kendall house is another old one, and the old hotel at the centre is a very old building, entirely refitted. The Congregational meeting-house, once occupied by the famous Ashby Academy, was dedicated in 1820. The inhabitants of this town are noted for their industry, frugality, and hospitality, and the majority are engaged in agri- culture.
CARLISLE
Carlisle existed as a district for about two years, and then ceased to exist as a district for nearly twenty-four years, when by an act of the General Court it was allowed to again become a district for nearly twenty-five years, when it was incorporated as a town. Its territory was taken from Concord. Its settlers occupied an outpost on the frontier of that period and were remote from the town meeting-house.
Thus began the usual story of an attempt to meet conditions of public worship on their own territory. They began in 1732 by signing an agreement to support meetings for religious pur- poses in a private house. The subscribers also organized as a society, and chose a clerk and held meetings for prudential affairs. Soon afterwards a petition was sent to the General Court to erect the inhabitants into a separate precinct. The opposition on the part of the town of Con- cord prevailed, and the petition was dismissed. The grounds for separation, as stated in the words of the petitioners, were "in order to their more convenient coming to the public worship of God, from which they are many times hindered by the difficulty of passing the river in times of flood, and by the great distance of their abode from the place where the public worship of God is now upheld."
In 1754 the inhabitants were erected by an act of the General Court into a separate dis- trict by the name of Carlisle. The district was vested with all the powers and privileges of a town, except in choosing a representative to the General Court. The inhabitants having failed to decide upon locating the place for their meeting-house, they decided later to petition the court to return the whole of the district to the town of Concord again, and in 1756 the inhabi- tants and their estates were annexed to the town of Concord. In 1772 the General Court was again petitioned by certain inhabitants of Concord, Billerica, Chelmsford, and Acton, living near together, and far distant from the place of public worship in their respective towns, that they might be erected into a separate town or district. Six years afterward a second petition of similar import followed, which was favorably reported upon and the district of Carlisle was established for the second time in 1780.
By an act of the General Court passed in 1776, all existing districts in the Colony were made towns, Carlisle, therefore, being the first district to be incorporated after the passage of the above act. It was not, however, incorporated as a town until the year 1805 when, by act of the General Court, the district of Carlisle was incorporated as a town by the name of Carlisle.
In 1760 a meeting-house was built for the town on land given for the purpose by a liberal citizen. The church and town were then identical, and the church was supported by a tax levied upon all the inhabitants. Here persons living on the outskirts of several towns found
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a central place of worship, and these persons were subsequently included within the bounds of the district. The location of the meeting-house, erected by voluntary contributions, finally determined the centre of the present town of Carlisle. In 1780, when the district was again incorporated, the house became virtually public property by consent of a committee of the so- ciety. The church was organized in 1781, and the first minister elected held the office for forty- six years, until his death in 1827. The first meeting-house was struck by lightning and burnt · to the ground in 1810, and the town voted to build a second meeting-house near where the former one stood. This house was dedicated in 1811. After the death of the first minister, discontent arose among those who had worshipped in the town, and a number withdrew to out- of-town societies, and "signed off", as it was called, from the parish. They thus considered themselves as disconnected from the church and released from pecuniary obligation to support religious worship in the town. The spirit of discord increased until the former relations be- tween town and church were ended by law in 1833; after that time each was conducted as a separate institution. Those of the town who were orthodox seceded from the majority of the town, who were liberal or Unitarian, by signing off to a Trinitarian Society in Concord. The town in 1830 chose a committee to take all of the property belonging to the church into their possession. The separates then formed themselves into a religious society called the Union Colonistic Society.
In the town of Carlisle there are ten houses formerly owned by families by the name of Green. All are at least one hundred years old, with one exception. That one was built in 1811, and a stone in the cellar bears that date. The first owner of the Zaccheus Green farm, which is about two miles from Carlisle centre, on the old Concord road, was Zaccheus Green. On the road by this house Thoreau used to walk, and where he said "everything grew." This farm has been in the Green family ever since Zaccheus Green came to that part of Concord which is now called Carlisle, and he was among those who petitioned to be set off as a separate town in 1756. His son Isaiah inherited the place, and the latter's two daughters (unmarried) came into possession. Hannah, one of the daughters, lived to be ninety years old On her death Thomas A. Green, great-grandson of Zaccheus, bought the farm, and it was sold later to Alvah Carr, great-great-grandson of the first owner.
Isaiah added an upper and a lower room to the house, and Hannah built two bay windows and a piazza. The house is in a good state of preservation. In another Green house, Acadians or Nova Scotians were kept for some time, and "perhaps some Evangeline there sat longing for her lost Gabriel." The Litchfield house on the road to Lowell is a large two-story house, and was the home of Rev. Paul Litchfield, the first minister of Carlisle. He was settled No- vember 7, 1781, and was minister of the parish for forty-six years, and died at the age of seventy- six. Three generations have occupied the house. The name of the present owner is Lahm. The Zebulon Spaulding house in the northern part of the town is the largest old house in Carlisle. "From the front hall one descends to the cellar by means of a flight of stairs formed by a series of beams, cut with their faces so that their ends are in the shape of triangles." The Spauld- ing family was a family "of means, education, and sterling qualities."
The first parish church in Carlisle was built in 1811. It is of a common form in use at that period in the country towns of New England. There are two stories of small windows, a porch, a clock tower, and above that a steeple.
Authority: Mrs. T. A. Green, of Carlisle.
WAYLAND
Wayland was originally a part of Sudbury, and set apart as a town by the name of East Sudbury in 1780, and took its present name in 1835. It is mostly on the easterly side of Sud-
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bury river. Here the settlement of Sudbury was first located. Its territory was cut up into grants called farms, which were owned by persons who never became settlers. The actual settlers were agriculturists, and many of their houses were on spots where only depressions in the ground remain to show their sites. These groups of house-lots were near together for do- . mestic convenience and protection. They are supposed to date as far back as 1638. The first houses are supposed to have been very small, the largest thirty feet long, sixteen feet wide, and ten feet high, with two rooms. Corn was laid in the story overhead. A grist-mill was erected in 1639.
In 1640 a church was organized. Nothing now remains to mark the site of the parsonage. Shortly after the formation of the church the meeting-house was built. The building stood in the westerly part of the old burying-ground. It was agreed that every inhabitant that hath a house-lot shall attend the raising of the new meeting-house, or send a suitable man to help raise it.
At the time of Philip's War the minister's house had been fortified by himself with a stock- ade and two flankers. On the 21st of April, 1676, the day of the battle of Green Hill, a detach- ment of the Indian enemy crossed the town bridge and began to devastate on the East Side. The inhabitants fell upon them with fury; beat them from the very thresholds of their humble houses, and snatched the spoil from their clutch. They even forced them to flee on the run and seek a place of safety. While the work of beating back the enemy was going on, a com- pany of reinforcements arrived from Watertown. The attack had begun about daybreak, and took the inhabitants somewhat by surprise, and the reinforcements arrived before noon. There were about two hundred Indians on the east side of the river when help arrived, and the company of town's people at the stockade was not large enough to spare men sufficient to drive the enemy over the other side of the river. The united forces compelled the foe to make a general retreat. A reinforcement of twelve men from Concord was not so fortunate. They were attacked and killed on the river meadow. Their bodies were found and buried the next day.
The division of the town of Sudbury into an East and West Precinct occurred about 1723. In 1780 the town of Sudbury was divided, and the east side became East Sudbury. In 1835 the town took the name of Wayland, after Francis Wayland, the president of Brown University.
Authorities: Hudson, A. S., "The Annals of Sudbury, Wayland and Maynard," 1891. Sudbury, "Quarter-millenial", 1891.
BOXBOROUGH
Boxborough is a town formed of parts of three older towns-Stow, Littleton and Harvard. Its inhabitants who first settled on its territory found themselves inconvenienced by their re- moteness from any place of public worship. Therefore they proceeded to form a society among themselves, purchased the old meeting-house in Harvard in 1775, and petitioned the General Court to be set off as a separate town. The Harvard meeting-house was bought at auction, taken down, and moved to the place it was to occupy. 'It was not until 1783 that the district became incorporated by the name of Boxborough, with all the privileges of a town except that of sending a representative. A disinclination on the part of certain farmers of Littleton to include their estates in the new district caused trouble regarding boundaries, and in 1791 the district invited all within the bounds of Boxborough who had not joined with the said town to do so. Thus, one farm joined in 1807 and others joined until 1838, leaving two farms only after that date who continued to pay their taxes to Littleton. Town meetings were held in the first meeting-house until 1835. The old church organization of one hundred years was divided in 1829, the Universalist Society retaining possession of the old edifice. Boxborough
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remained a district until 1836, when it became a town under a clause of the revised statutes of 1836.
A division similar to that which occurred in other towns regarding religious belief, raised the sectarian banner here, and caused a separation between the evangelical body and the par- ish. The former seceded and formed a new society. The community is agricultural, and no business except that of ordinary farming has obtained a foothold for a number of years.
Authorities: Mrs. L. C. Hager enlarged her sketch of Boxborough in Hurd's "Middlesex County", to a book, entitled, "Boxborough: a New England Town and its People", 1891.
TYNGSBOROUGH
Tyngsborough was a part of Dunstable until its incorporation as a town in 1789. The terrible experience of this section of Dunstable during the Indian Wars has already been told with some particularity under the history of that town. The cause of the disintegration of this large township was that the new settlements within its borders needed "greater conven- ience of public worship." The location of the meeting-house was the cause of the separation of the present town of Dunstable from Tyngsborough. From 1755 to 1789 Tyngsborough was known as the First Parish of Dunstable, and in 1789 it was incorporated as a district by the name of Tyngsborough, from the name of the influential Tyng family. It became an incor- porated town in 1809.
Mrs. Sarah Winslow, whose death occurred in 1791, aged seventy-two, was the last sur- viving child of Colonel Eleazer Tyng (who died in 1782, aged ninety-two). Mrs. Winslow was "the truly benfactress of the Church of Christ and Grammar School in this place, in honor of whose name and family it is called Tyngsborough." Shortly after the death of her husband in 1788 she made a donation to the town upon conditions which, instead of uniting the town in peace, as she intended, only strengthened the spirit of dissention. She gave the income of £1333 to the town to promote learning and piety and to unite "the town in peace." The conditions related to a meeting-house and grammar school house to be erected in the East part of the town, or the First Parish, and they could not be accepted by the Second Parish, and she next ten- dered the donation to the First Parish, instead of the town. The next move in the case was to incorporate the parish as a district by the name of Tyngsborough, in 1789, which became a town in 1809. A church was formed in 1790, and the first pastorate was remarkable for having continued forty-nine years. In 1815 the town contained two taverns, two stores, one public grammar school, and a library of 140 well selected volumes. The income of Mrs. Winslow's fund was about £80 per year. Population about 704.
One peculiarity of the situation in Tyngsborough was that, when the present town became a parish in 1755, it proceeded to erect a house of worship, but for many years it had no church organization or settled minister. Its first pastor was of the Orthodox order, and its second a Unitarian, of which denomination the church has been since that time.
Authorities: Lawrence, Nathaniel, "Historical Sketch", 1815. Tyngsboro' Young People's League, "Centennial Record", 1876.
BURLINGTON
Burlington was originally a part of Woburn. It was incorporated as a separate town in 1799. From 1730 to that date it was known as the Second Parish of Woburn, and it also bore the names of the West Parish of that town, and Woburn Precinct, and it then included in ad- dition to its present limits a small section of territory which was afterwards set off to Lexington. The parish was incorporated September 16, 1730, and the meeting-house now standing was
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built originally in 1732, though it has been subjected to several alterations of its shape. The community has always been agricultural, and farms then, as now, were the principal property. In 1777 near half the roof of the meeting-house was blown off by a hurricane. The old parish burial-ground was the gift of an early citizen. In 1798 all the houses were built of wood. The total number above the value of one hundred dollars was eighty-three. The population of the town in 1800 was 525. Houses, according to this enumeration, 74. The exact date of the in- corporation of the town was February 28, 1799. The first town meeting was held March 11, 1799, and on March 18 following a celebration of the event occurred, being described by a writer of the day as a "general meeting of men and their wives, a rejoicing on account of this Parish being incorporated into a Town." In 1850 the population was 545. It was to this town that Hancock and Adams retreated on the morning of the nineteenth of April, 1775. The two houses in which they tarried have both disappeared from the vision of man; one was burned in recent years; the other was demolished before the memory of anyone now living.
Like other towns in the eighteenth century, this town owed its origin as a parish to its distance from the mother church in the older town. As the church records in this town have been destroyed by fire, brief notice will here be made of some events connected with the church. There has never been but one church in Burlington, although a few families have always at- tended the churches of their choice in adjoining towns. The church was organized October 29, 1735, or November 8, 1735, according to modern reckoning. It consisted, when organ- ized, of ten male members, including the pastor. From 1735 to 1800, 943 persons were bap- tized.
Just previous to King Philip's War a white maid servant was murdered in the, limits of this town by a drunken Indian, who was afterwards executed. This was the only blood that was shed as a result of Indian vengeance in any of the savage wars of the colonial and provin- cial period on the soil of Burlington.
The oldest house now standing in Burlington is the one known as Francis Wyman's farm house, near the Billerica line. The house was originally built about 1666. Documents are extant which prove that it was used as a garrison at the time of King Philip's War, 1675-76. It has lately been repaired and remodelled, and is the property of the Wyman Historical As- sociation.
The Sewall house, famous in history as the resort to which Hancock and Adams fled on the morning of the eventful nineteenth of April, 1775, was built before 1733 by a member of the Johnson family, then numerous in Burlington, and after being occupied by several successive generations of ministers settled over the church of Christ in Burlington, it was burned to the ground on April 23, 1897.
The tavern of Captain John Wood, still standing in an excellent state of preservation at the centre of the town, contained in 1799 a hall, called, in the parlance of the citizens of that day, "Captain John Wood, Jr.'s, Social Hall," and here on a very cold, windy, and snowy night in March, 1799, a general meeting of the men and their wives of this town was held, with a sump- tuous dinner, "to rejoice on account of this Parish being Incorporated into a Town." The social hall has since been made into chambers. The elder Captain Wood began his military life as a private soldier in the French War, and held the office of captain in Colonel Loammi Baldwin's regiment in the American Revolution.
The meeting-house, yet standing in a much altered shape, was built in 1732. A hurricane swept off near half its roof in 1777. At the same time the wind destroyed some buildings in the neighborhood and tore up by the roots many large and strong trees. On October 1, 1798, a list of the occupants or possessors of dwelling-houses in this Parish, above the value of one hundred dollars, was made, and of the names in this list the houses of the following are sup- posed to be extant, either in their original or in an altered form: William Abbott, John Rad-
HISTORIC HOMES AND PLACES.
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ford, John Caldwell, Nathaniel Cutler, Jr., William Carter, Reuben Johnson, Josiah Locke' Ishmael Munroe, Isaac Marion, Joseph McIntire, Josiah Parker, Jacob Reed, James Reed, Samuel Reed, Samuel Shedd, John Wood, Abel Wyman, Ezra Wyman, Josiah Walker, Joseph Winn, James Walker, Samuel Walker, Philemon Wright, Edward Walker, Rebecca Wilson, David Winn, Timothy Winn. Some of these houses were located on the center of the farms, and many were situated on the public road. The total number included in the enumeration was eighty-three. As the Woburn Precinct, or Burlington, then included within its limits all the territory in the present westerly part of Woburn and Winchester, the names in the above list marked with a star refer to houses now located in one or the other of those towns.
The above selection doubtless does not include all the houses entitled to a place in the list, but it gives some idea of the proportion of houses remaining in this and similar quiet farm- ing towns that have survived the vicissitudes of a century. Fire has been their great enemy, as well as the weather and the hand of time. The use of fireplaces, so general in the country in the former days, caused not only conflagrations of the houses, but in many instances the death of their inmates as well.
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Francis Wyman House; erected 1666; repaired 1900.
On a road plan dated about 1797, certain house owners named in the above list are men- tioned, and the approximate location of their houses is given. For example: Joseph Winn, Deacon Timothy Winn, William Abbott,-the late Elijah Marion place; Samuel Walker, Cap- tain John Wood, father and son, Ezra Wyman, and the meeting-house, (still standing).
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The house of Captain James Reed, where the first prisoners captured from the British in the battle of the nineteenth of April, 1775, were confined, is still owned by his descendants. The house owned by Deacon Samuel Reed, where a portion of the library and public records of Harvard College were stored in those troublous times, was standing in 1890.
The William Winn house, formerly known as the Captain Timothy Winn house, is a fine specimen of the best architecture in this vicinity one hundred and fifty years ago, and it is still in excellent preservation. The Lieutenant Joseph Winn house, its neighbor, the property of the family of the late John Winn, was built in 1734, and comes down to its present estate through many generations of the family of Winn, as we have shown elsewhere in this work.
The house known as the Josiah Walker place, in the southerly portion of the town, is an ancient structure standing on an old estate, whose history is traced back to the time of the first settlement of this section. Nicholas Davis, one of the signers of the Woburn Town Orders of 1640, sold these premises in 1648 to William Reed, the ancestor of the Woburn Reeds. In time William Reed sold the premises to Samuel Walker, Senior, who in turn sold them in 1674 to his son Samuel Walker. On the place at that time was a house in which the son dwelt. The Walker line of ownership then followed in this order: John, Edward (died 1787, aged ninety- three), Josiah, died 1804, Josiah. The place remained in the Walker name until 1847. The present house dates back to 1699.
The Samuel Winn house near the school-house in this neighborhood is an old structure. It was once the residence of Jeremiah Winn, 1797. The John Kendall place and the Jennison, Cummings, the Caldwell and Skilton places in this vicinity, all represent ancient estates, and the present houses upon them were extant in 1831 and 1841. The Deacon Blanchard place of 1831 was the original Nicholas Trarice estate of 1640 to 1646. Trarice or Travice was a master mariner. In 1651 this homestead was bought by George Reed, and occupied by him and his descendants. This George Reed was a native of England. The dwelling-house of Travice disappeared many years since. The Samuel Shedd house, near the Billerica line, was standing in 1798, and a number of other houses standing in its vicinity are old :- the N. Hunt place and the I. Reed place of 1831-41, the Nevers place, the J. McIntire place, the D. Skilton place, the .. Nichols Tavern, and the Osgood house, all standing in 1831, were every one old places long be- fore that time. So also were the houses on Carter Row, of which there were six in the eighteen hundred thirties. Likewise, nearer Woburn, were the Deacon Marion (former Joshua Jones), the Captain J. Cutler, the Cutler houses on the Wood Hill road, and others in that neighbor- hood, whose disappearance has occurred within the past fifty years.
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