USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Brookline > Historical sketches of Brookline, Mass. > Part 14
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
"He had a great fondness for the study of natural history, especially conchology. He discovered a number of new varie- ties of shells, hitherto unknown, and left one of the finest and most complete collections in New England.
" He was also a devoted horticulturist, and succeeded in add- ing to the list of known pears, a large number of new kinds, some of them of great value. In middle life he was a member, and for some time vice-president, of the Horticultural Society, and took an active part in the proceedings.
" His life in later years has been uneventful, but he had a mind full of resources, and intelligent to the last, and his time was always usefully and pleasantly occupied.
" His final illness was of short duration, and after a few rest- less hours he quietly passed to that better life, for which he has long been prepared, and to which he looked forward in perfect confidence and peace."
BRADLEY'S HILL.
Bradley's Hill, formerly called Walley's Hill, was bought of Mr. Thomas Walley, who lived on the present Bird place, about the year 1820, by Benjamin Bradley.
This individual was as much a part of Brookline as Dr. Pierce, or the old stone school-house ; and no account of
195
BRADLEY'S HILL.
the town could reproduce it " as it was," without Ben. Bradley in it.
Mr. Bradley came to this town in his youth, and learned his trade (a carpenter) of Mr. Nathaniel Murdock. He was soon hired as sexton of the Unitarian Church, and served in that capacity for thirty years. For several years he held the office of town constable. He was also captain of the Brookline militia about ten years, and was thenceforth known as Captain Bradley.
We think it was Sydney Smith, who once said that if a woman were obliged to give a military company the order to " Halt !" she would do it on this wise, "Now soldiers, what I want of you is, that you should all stop, and stand still right where you are and not stir another step till I tell you to." One of Captain Bradley's first military orders was about as verbose, "Now fellow sol- diers, let's all see if we can't form a straight line ; "- quite a necessary arrangement, one would suppose from descriptions, given by witnesses, of the company that marched behind him to the music of the drum and fife.
Soon after Mr. Bradley bought the hill, he purchased a very old gambrel-roofed one-story house of Mr. John Warren on Warren Street, and moved it to the west side of the hill. This was the beginning of the settlement which became so notorious. From time to time other houses were built, or bought and moved to the hill, till it was covered. For many years it was a cheap and com- fortable place for poor but respectable American mechan- ics and laborers to live. Mr. Bradley is said to have been a kind landlord, very reasonable in his charges for rent, and lenient with those who through sickness or mis- fortune were unable to pay, and had a friendly way of leaving a turkey at every tenant's door the night before Thanksgiving.
196
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF BROOKLINE.
What animosities and small revenges he chose to show toward those whom he had occasion, or thought he had, to dislike, generally embodied themselves in little mean- looking houses stuck up on the nearest piece of land, to the object of his aversion, which he could obtain. Several such remain to keep his memory green.
The most conspicuous building upon his hill will long be remembered as " Ben Bradley's Meeting-house." This was a caricature of a church produced by the transfer of a large old barn to the top of the hill. A gothic or arched window, such as usually is placed in the end of a church building, was placed conspicuously in the middle of the side, a belfry and tower surmounted by a painted weath- ercock graced the front, and the old and time-honored pulpit, once almost hallowed by the prayers and sermons of the venerable Father Grafton of Newton, adorned the inside.
A part of this structure he finished off for tenements and let them to Irish families ; the rest he used for a car- penter's shop. In this shop, by way of keeping life cheerful, he had a coffin which he used to try occasion- ally, to see if it fitted him, but growing too corpulent, long before he needed such an indispensable article, he had a larger one made. He made the old coffin ser- viceable for some time by placing it on end, putting in one or two shelves and using it as a closet for his liquors. It was finally sold to one of his tenants.
On Sundays he sometimes gathered around him a crowd of " the baser sort," and mounting the old pulpit, he held forth in harangues more profane and ludicrous than wise or useful, ending with a treat to his audience.
The old building surrounded by little houses was so conspicuous an object that strangers coming to town almost invariably asked what denomination occupied that hill.
197
BEN BRADLEY.
The principal part of the settlement near Jamaica Pond, known as "Grab Village," "Dublin," "New Ireland," etc., was built by Mr. Bradley. He purchased the land and put up a little red house in full view of Mr. Thomas Lee's residence, and then went to Mr. Lee and desired him to buy it at a great price. Mr. Lee would do no such thing ; whereupon Mr. Bradley proceeded to cover it with little houses. Mr. Lee set out shade trees along his own lawn, on the edge of the hill, and serenely sat down in their shadow, too independent to be annoyed by so small dealing a neighbor.
The two little houses opposite the Philbrick place on Walnut Street are specimens of his handiwork in a good neighborhood ; and there was a time when he owned or held mortgages upon considerable property in the vil- lage. Though not dependent upon his trade he went about with a tool-box on his arm, in garments that made him look poorer than his poorest tenant. Mr. Bradley was married twice if not more, but left no heirs nearer than cousins. The hill was sold before his death to Mr. Hart.
Captain Bradley died July 31, 1856.
In his will he left five hundred dollars for the poor of the town, but it could not be made available. There were strange contradictions in the character of this singu- lar man. He was genial and kindly with the poor, and old people and little children ; and with all his faults he had many redeeming qualities. His keen sense of the ludicrous and his innate lack of reverence, made him turn to ridicule much that others held sacred ; yet there were times when the better impulses in his nature seemed strug- gling for the mastery ; and there are people still living to whom he frankly confessed his faults, and owned his struggles after a better life. He had an opportunity to
198
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF BROOKLINE.
make himself a beloved and respected landlord ; and the hill, so beautiful for its prospect and fine air, might be to-day covered with the neat and well-kept dwellings of a respectable class of mechanics and laborers, had he used his means as he might have done, and left a memory to be honored.
Perhaps a slight difference in the training of his boy- hood might have prevented the moral kink which twisted his finer traits awry ; and might have made him a bless- ing to the community instead of what he was.
Let us leave him with " Him who seeth not as man seeth," and who alone knows the heart .*
* The hill was sold again in 1871 to the Goddard heirs, and the houses moved to Sewall Street, a locality which has since been known as " Hart's Content."
199
BRIGHTON STREET.
CHAPTER XI.
BOYLSTON AND BRIGHTON STREETS. - WALNUT STREET. - HOUSES ALONG THE LOWER PART. - THE WALLEY OR BIRD HOUSES. - THE CLARK HOUSE. - THE CEMETERY.
P ERHAPS we owe our readers an apology for detain- ing them so long on Bradley's Hill, but the summer winds have swept over its now houseless summit, and the winter snows have spread their purest mantle over it. Moreover, the prospect from it is very beautiful, so we will take a look and pass on. All the interesting old places from Bradley's Hill to the points of divergence, at Brighton Street and Heath Street, are properly a part of the history of " the old road," and as such we shall leave them till we write of that. Above this point the Wor- cester Turnpike begins again ; and consequently there are no houses upon it which date back to a very early period. Most of the land through which this section of the turn- pike passes, has been for the last fifty years the property of the Pennimans, Heaths, Sandersons, and Lymans.
Brighton Street was laid out as a road-way from the " old Sherburne road " to Brighton, more than a hundred and fifty years ago.
The first house on this street stood on the east side, nearly opposite the present residence of Mr. J. Loring. In it lived Addington Gardner, once a prominent citizen of the town, and whose signature, not unlike John Han- cock's of Revolutionary fame, in its appearance, is famil-
£
£
200
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF BROOKLINE.
iar to those who have seen many old legal documents of the town. He married a sister of Rev. Mr. Allen, the first minister of this town, and removed to Sherborn. He was a justice of the peace.
The next house was that of Isaac Gardner, first deacon of the First Church in the town. He died in 1767, aged eighty-three years.
His son Isaac inherited the house, and was in little more than a year after his father's death rendered home- less by fire. The family was very large, consisting of eighteen persons, and nearly all their household goods were destroyed. The loss was estimated, as appears by the " Massachusetts Gazette " of September 8, 1768, at from four to five thousand pounds, O. T. The people of the town met on the following Monday (the fire was on Friday), and though there were at that time but fifty families in the town, they contributed one hundred pounds, toward helping Mr. Gardner to rebuild his liouse. When it is remembered that this was when the country was comparatively new, that the people of Brookline were nearly all farmers, and that it was also at the time when the colonies were groaning and impoverished under Brit- ish taxation, it will be seen that the Brookline of those days was generous and prompt to relieve distress as well as the richer and more prosperous Brookline of the present.
The new house was built upon the old site. Mr. Isaac Gardner was educated at Harvard College, but he chose to follow the agricultural pursuit of his father. He was a justice of the peace, and in every capacity, civil, social, and religious, was a popular and much beloved citizen.
The slowly-brewing troubles of the coming Revolution fired his patriotic blood, and the people of the town made him captain of their militia.
201
CAPTAIN ISAAC GARDNER.
On the morning of the battle of Lexington the minute- men of Brookline assembled in front of the church. Their captain, always before so bright and cheerful, was under the shadow of a great oppression. As he took leave of his wife and his eight children, his impression that it was his final leave-taking so overpowered him that he could not conceal it, and he told his wife that he should never return to her alive. Before he reached the church he met the wife of Deacon Davis, who with her little chil- dren in a chaise, was hastening for safety to the upper part of the town. He stopped and spoke to her, asking her to call on her way and try to console his wife whom he had left weeping at the gate.
The brave and handsome captain was in the prime of life and " every inch a soldier," but his war-record was brief indeed. Before night he fell, pierced by six British bullets while drinking at a well in Cambridge, about a mile above the College on the Lexington road.
Dr. Aspinwall and Mr. Ebenezer Davis cared for the body as well as they could that night. The sad news was brought home to Brookline, and the next morning Mr. Heath, his neighbor, went to Cambridge with his wagon and brought home to the afflicted family all that remained of the beloved husband and father. The whole town was plunged into grief at the loss of so beloved and respected a citizen.
His age was forty-nine years. His son, General Isaac Sparhawk Gardner, was the next owner of the house. He was an unusually fine singer, and for many years was leader of the choir of the First Church. Dr. Pierce in his Jubilee Address speaks of him as " the sweet singer of our Israel." He died in 1818.
General Gardner had ten children. At the birth of each he planted a tree within his land beside the road. · 14
202
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF BROOKLINE.
The whole row had grown to ample size and beauty, but were destroyed at the recent widening of the street .* The descendants of the Gardners, bearing other names, still live in our community.
The house was at one time owned by Mr. Elisha Penni- man, and afterwards by Deacon Daniel Sanderson. Mr. Sanderson, though not a native of Brookline, lived here many years, held various town offices, and was a promi- nent member of the Baptist Church. He built two houses on the west side of Brighton Street.
On the east side of the street, there formerly stood north of the Gardner house, a house owned and occupied by John Seaver, who died before the Revolutionary war. His house was torn down on account of its great age, early in the present century.
WALNUT STREET.
This street, known for years as "the old Sherburne road," is the oldest in the town, and was probably one of the first roads in the colony of Massachusetts Bay. When it was extended as far as Framingham, then the outmost frontier of civilization, it was considered the ne plus ultra of Colonial necessity in that direction, as it was not probable that white people would ever penetrate further west into the wilderness. And it was little better at first than an Indian trail, winding as it did from the humble abode of one settler to another, between high, thick forests, out of which might echo at any moment the cry of the prowling wolf or the more dreaded war whoop of the red man.
* There is a local tradition that at the time of the battle of Lexington, Isaac Gardner's family was living in the ancient Gardner house now occupied by George W. Stearns, but his descendants have no evidence that he ever lived there, and Dr. Pierce, who received his information from persons who remem- bered all the circumstances, locates him at the Brighton Street house, where his son set out the trees. See Appendix, house 26, Town Hall Address.
£
203
-
WALNUT STREET.
Yet less than twenty years had passed after William Blackstone had settled in Shawmut, and called it Tri- mountain, before Muddy River Hamlet had three high- ways leading through it, and our Walnut Street began to be called " the old road."
The land from the lower end, or entrance of the street, on the right side as far up as the alley now known as " Cat Alley," and on the left or south side, nearly or quite to Sewall Street, was probably "the great lott," which was granted to Thomas Leverett, and was after- wards for many years the property of Governor Leverett and was used by him for pasture lots for his cattle and sheep. Northward it was bounded by the lands of the Cottons. How far southward this " great lott " extended we cannot learn, but there were one hundred and seventy- five acres of it and somewhere upon it stood a house. The Governor, John Leverett, inherited it from his father, Thomas. He was Governor from 1671 to 1673.
Sometime, but at what date we cannot learn, a part of this land came into possession of the Whites. It is so often necessary to allude to this once numerous family that perhaps it is proper to explain that the common an- cestor of the Brookline families of this name, whichever way it is spelled, was John White, born in England and who is traced to Dorchester, to Watertown, and thence to Brookline. From him descended Major Edward White, and all the rest, some of the family having gone back to the original spelling of the name as ascertained in English records to be Whyte.
All the early settlements on this road were from about the head of Cypress Street and so on westward, for many years. The whole history of the lower part of the road is comparatively modern. The garrison-house for the set- tlement, when it was so small and so exposed as to need a
204
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF T.ROOKLINE.
garrison-house, was just behind the present house of the Clark family on the left of the entrance to Chestnut Street.
As some of our younger readers may not have met with a description of this sort of house we will briefly de- scribe it in passing. It was a log-house, with one door but no windows in the lower story. The upper story projected over the lower, three or four feet on all sides. This was fort and storehouse for the whole settlement, and into it were huddled the women and children in all cases of alarm from the Indians. In the projecting floor of the upper story were loop-holes, from which the boards could be taken up, and through which the women could pour down boiling water upon the savages in case they came close to the building to set it on fire.
Whether the Brookline garrison-house was ever thus attacked and defended, we have unfortunately no histori- cal records in existence to tell us. Of the wild animals which made personal defense necessary, there is sufficient evidence, in the fact that a premium of twenty shillings was paid to Philip Curtis for killing a wolf, in November, 1657.
It needs therefore no great stretch of imagination to picture to the mind one of the ancient Whites, Goddards, Aspinwalls, or Griggses, riding on horseback on a Sun- day morning, with his wife on a pillion behind, and his musket strapped across his shoulders, winding along the narrow and thickly wooded road to Roxbury meeting- house to hear the Apostle Eliot preach ; or. returning at nightfall along the same way, with a furtive glance toward the darkening shades of the stone-quarries then unbroken by the hammer, lest the sly panther in the boughs of some overhanging oak might pounce upon him from its dusky retreat ; or a pack of wolves baying with hunger
205
MR. THOMAS ASPINWALL.
in the wilds of Parker's Hill, or the Ward farm, should scent human prey and come out upon its trail.
But though, as we have said, the lower end of Walnut Street was not built upon till many years later than the upper part of it, there are some houses which have ac- quired age enough to need mention and we therefore re- turn to the beginning of the street.
The house now used as the Infant Asylum was built early in the present century for a man named Eliphalet Spurr, who owned the line of coaches which in those days . made daily trips to Boston.
The coaches ran from the " Punch Bowl." Mr. Spurr sold out to Azariah Fuller after a while, but whether Mr. Fuller ever occupied the house or not we are not informed, nor of anything further in its history till it became the property of Thomas and Elizabeth Aspinwall, children of Colonel Thomas 'Aspinwall who lived in the house on Sewall Avenue which was at last burnt, and who was commander at the fort on Sewall's Point.
" Mr. Thomas and Miss Eliza," as they were commonly called, lived for many years in the house on Walnut Street. Mr. Thomas was deaf and dumb, but like many others thus afflicted, his other faculties seemed sharpened to unusual acuteness. He was for years thoroughly iden- tified with the village and its surroundings, learned all the news, and every morning walked up to the house of his elder sister, Mrs. Holden (who lived where Mr. Panter now lives), and told her upon his fingers all the items of interest which he had collected.
Mr. Aspinwall loved his garden and cultivated it with his own hands with much success, and evident enjoyment of flowers, fruits, and vegetables. He had quite a genius for mechanical employments and was very skillful in the use of tools. Mr. Aspinwall inherited from his father
206
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF BROOKLINE.
some land where Longwood Station now stands. About the time the Brookline Branch Railroad was projected, this land was purchased for one hundred and fifty dollars an acre. It has since been sold for seventy-five cents a foot.
He was already quite far advanced in life when the Hartford Institution. for such unfortunates was founded, yet having heard of it he desired to receive its benefits. He stayed but a little while and then returned, and when met by a look of inquiry from any of his friends, he shook his head sorrowfully and touched the wrinkles upon his forehead. Yet he was a cheerful man, and always espe- cially kind to children and interested in them ; " Uncle Thomas," many of them called him, and so indeed did many who were past childhood. New inventions and im- provements awakened his keen interest. The writer re- members in her childhood meeting " Uncle Thomas," near the door of Lyceum Hall building, which was then nearly finished ; the stairway at that time went up through a commodious entry which has since been turned into a shop. The old gentleman instantly began to ges- ticulate with delight ; he had discovered something new to him, and he would have us share his pleasure. He took us into the entry and pointed out the hole in the floor, at which the furnace pipe was to come through, and with all the animation of a boy, described with his nim- ble fingers the fire that was to burn in the unseen depths below, and the heat that was to come up and be diffused through the building.
He saw that he was understood, and with a gesture of . satisfaction put back the board that covered the hole, and bowing, walked away with his hands behind him.
He was very religious, and greatly interested in all the missionary and other benevolent enterprises of the church.
207
THE HUNDREDTH HOUSE.
He had one spot where he knelt to pray, year after year, two or three times every day, till the floor was worn thin where the toes of his shoes rested. What secret wrest- lings with sorrow and pain, what humble confessions or heaven-born aspirations were wafted upwards in those silent communings none ever knew or will know; but that they were heard in " the secret places of the Most High," while many a sounding and wordy prayer falls baffled by the way, none but the irreverent can doubt.
Miss Eliza, his constant companion, sank in consump- tion and died in the year 1842, aged 64. Her silent brother survived her but little more than a year, and died of the same disease in December, 1843, aged 74. His benevolent face and affable manners had won for him a niche in the tender memories of all who knew him. Since the Aspinwalls passed away, the house has had many different occupants, and has been modernized and greatly improved within a few years.
The old-fashioned, white English roses, with their pe- culiar fragrance, are somehow always associated in our memory with Mr. Thomas Aspinwall and his sister, and the same bushes which he trained beside the door were very recently growing there and may be still.
The next house standing upon the lower part of Wal- nut Street was upon the Philbrick place. It was built by John Tappan in 1821, and was the one hundredth house built in Brookline. Mr. Tappan was not long a resident here, and was succeeded by Mr. William Ropes who lived here eight or ten years, and was succeeded by Mr. Samuel Philbrick, who identified himself with the interests of the town. He held various offices at differ- ent times, being an Assessor, a member of the Board of Selectmen, and also of the School Committee.
The next house upon the same side of the street,
208
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF BROOKLINE.
though built a year earlier, was that now occupied by Mr. Cobb. It was built by Rev. Henry Colman, who studied theology with Dr. Pierce, was afterwards settled for several years over a church in Hingham, and then returned to Brookline.
During several years of his residence here, he was principal of a select school for young ladies in Boston. He was afterwards pastor of the Barton Square Church in Salem, and died there.
After Mr. Colman it was occupied by Captain Oxnard, Henry J. Oliver, Hezekiah Kendall (a son of Deacon Thomas Kendall), and since then by various others.
The large stone house next beyond it, was built by Joseph Sewall, a descendant of Judge Sewall, whose history was given earlier in the course of these sketches. The grounds belonging to this place were quite exten- sive. Mr. Sewall lived here ten or twelve years, and his wife and three daughters died here.
Sewall Street, as the upper part of Cypress Street was called, until the recent widening and extension, was but a narrow lane leading from Walnut Street to the back part of the Sewall place, and the wooded lands in the rear, and did not become a public way until within the last quarter of a century. It was a part of the " great lott of land " assigned to Governor Leverett, and after- wards became the property of a branch of the White family. Mr. Thomas White's heirs were the last of this family who owned any portion of it. It was accessible (within the memory of middle aged persons) by one of the most picturesque and beautiful of lanes, which led into a wild and tangled woodland. There was a path leading up the hill from where the lane ended, to the fence on the boundary of the estate of the late Thomas Lee. Through this there was an opening of which many
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.