USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Historic homes and places and genealogical and personal memoirs relating to the families of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Volume I > Part 20
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88
IN BOSTON .- In Boston he was placed as an apprentice clerk with a Mr. Hopestill Capen, a dry-goods dealer. This was in the autumn of 1769. Here he attended a French evening school for the purpose of learning that language, but his stay in Boston was short, owing to the falling off in business caused by the depression of the times. Dr. Ellis gives a number of instances of Rum- ford's precocity during the period of his stay in Salem and Boston, but they are mostly of a character of which Rumford would be ashamed in his after life .*
AT CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE .- An im- mature lad of nineteen, Rumford married a wealthy widow of thirty-three. She had been married when about thirty to an elderly bachelor of. about sixty. She was the daughter of a clergyman, and the facts of their union have been given in the genealogy preceding this article. The widow's husband died December 21, 1771. The date of her second marriage is said to have been about November, 1772, and it is also related that his mother's consent was obtained in the course of a rather sensational journey on the part of the couple to her abode in Woburn. But this is a matter of tradition. Something more definite is this: His friend Baldwin writes of him at this period as a person of a "fine manly make and figure, nearly six feet in height, of handsome features, bright blue eyes, and dark auburn hair." He seems to have been satisfactory to his Concord friends as a teacher, and in a letter from there to his mother in Auburn he writes, "I have had 106 scholars at my school, but only have seventy at once."
Owing to the influence and activity of his wife, Rumford soon shone in New Hamp- shire colonial society, and at a military review
*These incidents are also related with even more fullness of detail by Renwick. The most important was his narrow escape from serious injury and the loss of his life in an explosion of gunpowder with which he was preparing some fireworks for a cele- bration.
29
MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
at Dover, ten miles from Portsmouth, at which both were present, on the 13th of November, 1772, he attracted the attention of the royal governor, to whom he was introduced, and on the following day was a guest at his table. The result was a commission as major in the militia, conferred by the governor on the fu- ture Count. This commission was bestowed on Rumford over the heads of men in the line of promotion, and resulted, for political and military reasons, in his becoming the subject of jealous feeling and hostile criticism. So far as is known he was at that time devoid of both military knowledge and experience. It was not so afterwards. And whatever may be said, it was the opinion of the men of that day that Rumford from the outset of his military career was at heart a loyalist; and Went- worth, the governor to whom he was indebted for his rise to military rank, was the last royal governor of New Hampshire. How much (and doubtless it was much) feminine influ- ence may have helped to secure his elevation to office is not determined. It is evident to the most superficial observer that his wife's influence was a potent factor in bringing about the result. Her father and brother were staunch supporters of the American side in the Revolution, and it is likely her notions afterwards were never again urged either on one side or the other of the controversy.
For a time, about 1773, Rumford became a gentleman farmer on his wife's estate. He had broad acres to till and employed many laborers. To Baldwin he wrote in the middle of July, 1773, " I am engaged in husbandry." In August, 1774, he wrote: "I have been ex- tremely busy this summer, or I should have given myself the pleasure of coming to see you."
At Concord, New Hampshire, where his family connections were the most powerful set among the inhabitants, Rumford was pro- tected for a time by their influence. However, by the people at large he was distrusted. He was summoned before a committee at Concord in the summer of 1774 to answer to the sus- picion of "being unfriendly to the cause of Liberty," and he positively denied the charge, and challenged proof. No proceeding ensued against him, and he was discharged. In No- vember, 1774, a mob gathered round his dwel- ling and demanded his appearance. Had Rumford been within he would have been foully dealt with. But he had secretly left Concord just before. His wife and her brother, Colonel Walker, came forth and as-
sured the mob that her husband was not in town, and the gathering dispersed.
Rumford thought it was to be only a tem- porary separation from the place. His wife and infant child were with him afterwards at Woburn and Boston, but his separation from Concord was perpetual. He found himself unsafe at Woburn, and next sought safety in Charlestown, and on his own admission he boarded in Boston (the seat of a British army) until a few days before the 19th of April, 1775. These facts are obtained from an interesting letter of Rumford's, in which, seek- ing for his goods, he gives incidentally an account of his movements at the beginning of the Revolution. Separating these facts. from the vagaries of tradition, one gets a much clearer idea of the truth.
October 1, 1775. "I came out of Boston a few days before the affair at Lexington on the 19th April, and have since not been able to. return. When I left the town I little imagined that a return would be thus difficult, or, rather impossible, and therefore took no care to pro- vide for such a contingency. I can- not conclude without informing you that since I left Boston I have enjoyed but a very in- different share of health. Since the 12th of August I have been confined to my room the greatest part of the time, and this is the nineteenth day since I have had a settled fever upon me, which I fear is not come to a. crisis yet. I have not been out of the Province of Massachusetts Bay since I saw you. Mrs. Thompson and little Sally* were with me during the month of May, since which time I have not had the pleasure of seeing either of them."
The events in Rumford's life after the few days before the 19th of April, 1775, when the struggle actually began which separated the United States of America from the English government are continued under the heading "Woburn" in this article.
GREAT BRITAIN .- After boarding a British frigate in the harbor of Newport, Rumford sailed in her to Boston, and remained there until the evacuation of that town by the British forces, of which event he was the bearer of tidings to England. Henceforward to the end of the war he was in the service of the British government. The intelligence of the evacua- tion was made public in London in May, 1776, but it is supposed that through Rumford's agency the event had been known to the gov-
*For more about this daughter, see beyond.
more rtant d the with cele-
hat the the ırn. ling wir feet blue ; to nds his 106 nty his mp- view
S d e
d 1e
ch 0,0 as Ss
d
0
as ill
ne
m- ay of be
m- a ad rly the of gy ind her out
30
MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
ernment before. There will be no further attempt in this article to trace minutely his future movements or to palliate his motives. On the occasion of his arrival, "by the clear- ness of his details and the gracefulness of his manners, he insinuated himself so far into the graces of Lord George Germaine that he took him into his employment." In 1779 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1780 he was made "Under Secretary of State for the Northern Department," and the oversight of all the practical details for recruiting, equip- ping, transporting and victualling the British forces, and many other incidental arrange- ments, was committed to him. He held this office about a year. He next sought active service in the British army, and he was on the American side of the ocean in 1782, and he was honored at the age of twenty-eight with the commission in the British army of a lieu- tenant-colonel. He provided for himself by raising a regiment among the loyal Americans, or Tories, of his native land. He himself said, he "went to America to command a regiment of cavalry which he had raised in that country for the King's service." He disembarked at Charleston, South Carolina, passed the winter there, led his corps often against the enemy, and was always successful in his enterprises. Here he had the reputation of defeating the famous Marion's brigade, when its com- mander was absent, who, however, came in season to take part in the action, but had the mortification of witnessing the discomfiture of his little band. In the spring of 1782 Rum- ford sailed from Charleston to New York, and took command of his regiment there awaiting him, and passed the winter with his command at Huntington, Long Island. It has been as- serted, and apparently with truth, that he was merely quartered there from having nothing to do elsewhere. Cornwallis had already sur- rendered, and Rumford, by leave of absence dated April II, 1783, returned direct to Eng- land, where he was advanced to a colonelcy, and thus secured half-pay on the British estab- lishment for the remainder of his life.
IN GERMANY .- Rumford, on his return from America, readily obtained leave of the king to visit the continent. He accordingly left England in September, 1783. He arrived at Strasburg, where the Prince Maximilian of Deux Ponts, then field-marshal in the service of France and later Elector of Bavaria, was in garrison, who, when commanding on par- ade, saw among the spectators an officer in a foreign uniform, mounted on a fine English horse, whom he addressed. The officer was
Rumford, and thus began an acquaintance which had a decisive influence on his future career. The Elector of Bavaria, Charles Theodore, uncle to the above Prince Maxi- milian, gave Rumford an earnest invitation to enter into his service in a joint military and civil capacity. The English king granted Rumford the permission desired, and also con- ferred on him the honor of knighthood. He therefore entered, at Munich, in 1784, on the service of the Elector. His labors ranged from subjects of the homeliest nature in rela- tion to the common people, up to the severest tests and experiments in the interests of prac- tical science. On his arrival the Elector ap- pointed him colonel of a regiment of cavalry and general aide-de-camp. He soon learned that the development of resources and the re- form of abuses were the emergent needs of the Electorate. He made reforms in the army and for the removal of mendicity. The manner of their accomplishment has been a "household tale" for a century and a quarter .*
In 1788 the Elector made him a major- general of cavalry and privy councillor of state. He was put at the head of the war department. He was raised in 1791 to the rank of a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, and selected as his title the former name of the village in his own native country, where he had first enjoyed the favors of fortune,-that is, Rumford; and, criticize as one may, this distinction was won by merit. In 1796 he published his Essays-altogether on scientific subjects-in London. He had by 1797, "by his own exertions acquired a sufficiency" not only for his own "comfortable support" dur- ing his life, but also to enable him to make a handsome provision for his daughter. He was therefore willing to renounce all claims he might have on his late wife's estate, and engage his daughter to do so. He insisted, however, on the exchange of receipts. His fame was also by this time well established in America. The property of his deceased wife came for the most part from her former husband, and would go mainly to her son by him. A por- tion of the widow's dower which she had enjoyed as Mrs. Thompson, would legally de- scend to Rumford's daughter by her. On the event of a satisfactory arrangement with her relatives the Count agreed to assume the whole responsibility of her maintenance thereafter, and of provision for her survival, and that he would influence her to make a will in which
*His career was greatly popularized, particularly in America, by an article in "Chambers Miscellany," which appeared in the year 1847.
3I
MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
in the event of her death all she received from these relatives would be returned to them or to their heirs. Her grandfather Walker left her a legacy of £140, to be received when she was married or when she was eighteen years of age. It is understood that all these matters were adjusted in a satisfactory manner. Rum- ford's foreign duties, however, and his obliga- tions to the Elector, debarred him from serv- ing in certain positions in England, and especi- ally in the position of Minister Plenipotentiary from Bavaria to the Court of Great Britain, to which he had been appointed, it being con- trary to the rules to receive in that capacity from another country a British subject. At the age of forty-five Count Rumford had at- tained the climax of his political services.
CONCLUSION .- From 1800 to the date of his death in a suburb of Paris, August 21, 1814, Count Rumford's career furnishes less inter- est for Americans. He was engaged in 1799 in the establishment of a new scientific institu- tion in London, called the Royal Institution of Great Britain, on a plan regarded exclusively as his own. He had reasons for believing that his official position in Bavaria would no longer yield the fruits it had previously enjoyed, and so he turned his attention more strictly to the pursuits of science. It is not our intention to enlarge on this, as there is plenty of published material at hand for any one who is interested to investigate it. A significant incident in connection with the name of his American birthplace, was his visit with his friend Pictet to Woburn Abbey, England, in the year 1801. He was in Paris before 1807. Previously, in 1805, he contracted a marriage with the rich widow of a celebrated French chemist. The money settled upon him by his second wife, or its remainder, he left by will to different institutions ; the reversion of half his Bavarian pension he left to his daughter. Owing to in- compatibility of dispositions the couple separ- ated by mutual agreement in 1809. The state of war in Europe aggravated his troubles and those of his second wife by preventing their contemplated travels for pleasure.
The subject with which, as a physicist, he was chiefly engaged was the nature and effects of heat. A superb bronze statute of him was set up in 1867, in one of the public squares of Munich, and a replica, the gift of a private citizen, was in 1899 erected in Woburn.
His daughter, Sarah Rumford, sailed from Boston for London in the winter of 1796, to see her father, who had come from Munich to meet her there. She went with him to Ba- varia, and remained abroad a little more than
three years. The particulars of her stay are given in Ellis' Life. She received the title of Countess in 1797 from the Elector of Bavaria, and a pension which lasted during her life. She made a second visit to her father in 181I, and remained in France and England many years after her father's death. The Countess says, in her memoranda, that while her father was a great favorite with the ladies, some of them sharply censured him for the four fol- lowing faults: "First, for living so short a time with his wives, considering him, from it, a bad husband; second, for taking sides against his country ; third, letting his daugh- ter get on as she could, he revelling at the time in the city of Paris; fourth, that he should pitch on Paris as a permanent resi- dence, when both in Munich and in London he had made himself so useful, had won such honors, and had such distinguished associates and friends." This, it should be understood, was the judgment of European women of his acquaintance, and Sarah displayed more wis- dom than she is usually accredited with when she made a record of it. Her attractions and ability were in no degree remarkable. In 1835 she came to America and again went abroad in 1838. In 1844 she came back. She died in the chamber in which she was born, De- cember 2, 1852, and her remains lie buried in the old burial-ground at Concord, New Hampshire. By inheritance and otherwise she left a handsome estate. She devised her homestead and fifteen thousand dollars in money to trustees to found an institution in Concord to be called "The Rolfe and Rumford Asylum" for young female orphans. The funds were allowed to accumulate. This in- stitution was opened for use about 1882, and has been in successful operation since.
A translation of part of Count Rumford's epitaph at Paris (the original is in the French language) is here inserted as an admirable tribute to his worth :
"Celebrated Physicist! Enlightened Philan- thropist ! His Discoveries on Light and Heat have made His Name Famous. His Labors for the Bettering the Condition of the Poor will Cause Him to be Forever Cherished by the Friends of Humanity."
"In Bavaria,
Lieutenant-General,
Head of the State, Leader of the Realm, Major-General,
rly in lany."
of rar the re, the he hat his he tific "by not lur- re a He she rage ver was rica for and por- had z de- the her whole after, at he which
he nd of ld
y ed
e e d
st
d
32
MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
State Councillor,
Minister of War."
"In France, Member of the Institute.
and of The Academy of Sciences."
The following significant opinion of Rum- ford's life was written in the year 1847, and forms the conclusion of the sketch in "Chambers Miscellany" :
"Rumford, whose memoirs we have now detailed, was not a faultless character, or a person in every respect exemplary; but mak- ing due allowances for circumstances in which he was at the outset unfortunately placed, and keeping in mind that every man is less or more the creature of the age in which he lives, we arrive at the conclusion that few individuals occupying a public posi- tion have been so thoroughly deserving of esteem. The practical, calm, and compre- hensive nature of his mind, his resolute and methodical habits, the benevolence and use- fulness of his projects, all excite our admira- tion. Cuvier speaks of Rumford as 'having been the benefactor of his species without loving or esteeming them, as well as of hold- ing the opinion, that the mass of mankind ought to be treated as mere machines"-a remark which is applicable to not a few men who have been eminent for labors of a humane description, and which naturally gives rise to this other remark-that a good intellectual method, directed to practical ends, is often of more value to mankind than what is called a good heart."
Cuvier's remarks, above referred to, were more fully as follows: "But it must be con- fessed that he exhibited in conversation and intercourse, and in all his demeanor, a feel- ing which would seem most extraordinary in a man who was always so well treated by others, and who had himself done so much good to others. It was as if while he had been rendering all these services to his fel- low-men he had no real love or regard for them. It would appear as if the vile pas- sions which he had observed in the misera- ble objects committed to his care, or those other passions, not less vile, which his suc- cess and fame had excited among his rivals, had imbittered him towards human nature. So he thought it was not wise or good to intrust to men in the mass the care of their
own well-being. The right, which seems so natural to them, of judging whether they are wisely governed, appeared to him to be a fictitious fancy born of false notions of en- lightenment. His views of slavery were nearly the same as those of a plantation- owner. He regarded the government of China as coming nearest to perfection, be- cause in giving over the people to the abso- lute control of their only intelligent men, and in lifting each of those who belonged to this hierarchy on the scale according to the degree of his intelligence, it made, so to speak, so many millions of arms the passive organs of the will of a few sound heads-a notion which I state without pretending in the slightest degree to approve it, and which, as we know, would be poorly calculated to find prevalence among European nations.
"M. de Rumford had cause for learning by his own experience that it is not so easy in the West as it is in China to induce other people to consent to be only arms; and that no one is so well prepared to turn these arms of others to his own service as is one who has reduced them to subjection to himself. An empire such as he conceived would not have been more difficult for him to manage than were his barracks and poorhouses. He relied wholly. on the principle of rigid system and order. He called order the necessary auxiliary of genius, the only possible instru- ment for securing any substantial good, and, in fact, almost a subordinate deity, for the government of this lower world."
De Candolle, the Swiss botanist, said of Rumford's personal appearance in later life: "The sight of him very much reduced our enthusiasm. We found him a dry, precise man, who spoke of beneficence as a sort of discipline, and of the poor as we had never dared to speak of vagabonds." Speaking of Rumford's second wife, he said: "I had re- lations with each of them, and never saw a more bizarre connection. Rumford was cold, calm, obstinate, egotistic, prodigiously occu- pied with the material element of life and the very smallest inventions of detail. He wanted his chimneys, lamps, coffee pots, win- dows, made after a certain pattern, and he contradicted his wife a thousand times a day about the household management." Here we draw the veil. Another has said: "We enter into labors of Count Rumford every day of our lives, without knowing it or think- ing of him." Professor John Tyndall said: "Men find pleasure in exercising the powers they possess, and Rumford possessed, in its
33
MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
highest and strongest form, the power of or- ganization."
Baldwin says of his friend: "He laudably resolved not to sacrifice his bright talents to the monotonous occupations of domestic life. The world had higher charms for him. This ambition was to rise in the estimation of mankind by his usefulness. With a mind sus- ceptible to impressions from every quarter, he could not fix his attention upon any uni- form line of conduct when young, and from this cause alone, a want of regularity in his behavior, impressions unfavorable to his character as a patriot were made upon the minds of his acquaintance at Concord. The people in their zeal for the American cause were too apt to construe indifference into a determined attachment to the British inter- est. Believing that the benevolent plans which he afterwards adopted could never be executed but under the fostering hand of well-directed power, he sought a field for the exercise of his goodness and ingenuity where they could be executed, and where there was the most obvious demand."
Count Rumford says himself in one of his essays: "It certainly required some courage and perhaps no small share of enthusiasm, to stand forth the voluntary champion of the public good." Again he says: "I am not unacquainted with the manners of the age. I have lived much in the world, and have studied mankind attentively. I am fully aware of all the difficulties I have to en- counter in the pursuit of the great object to which I have devoted myself."
Count Rumford, at the beginning of one of his Essays entitled "An Account of an Es- tablishment for the Poor at Munich," says of himself: "Among the vicissitudes of a life checkered by a great variety of incidents, and in which I have been called upon to act in many interesting scenes, I have had an op- portunity of employing my attention upon a subject of great importance-a subject inti- mately and inseparably connected with the happiness and well-being of all civil societies, and which from its nature cannot fail to in- terest every benevolent mind: it is the pro- viding for the wants of the poor, and secur- ing their happiness and comfort by the intro- duction of order and industry among them."
Robert Bullard, the immi- BULLARD grant ancestor, was born in England in 1599. He set- tled in Watertown before 1639, the year of his death. He seems to be one of four 1-3
brothers who settled in Watertown and Ded- ham before 1640. George Bullard, of Water- town, born in England in 1608, died January 14, 1688-89, married Margaret, who died February 8, 1639-40 (second), April 30, 1655, Widow Mary Maplehead. John Bullard, of Dedham, was proprietor in 1638, admitted to the church with wife, Magdalen, July 2, 1639; died at Medfield, October 27, 1678. William Bullard, of Dedham, born in Eng- land in 1601 was a proprietor in 1638; was admitted to the church December 13, 1639; removed to Charlestown, where he was also a proprietor; died at Dedham December 24, 1786, aged about eighty-five years; will dated July 5, 1679, with codicil dated May 22, 1684, proved at Boston March 17, I686-87; had sons Nathaniel and Isaac, named by Morse as immigrants.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.