USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Spencer > Historical sketches relating to Spencer, Mass., Volume IV > Part 4
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These gracious values and attractions had not prevailed against the steady drift of families, as well as individuals, from all the neighborhoods whence the friends of the church came. Even the quickening of the spirit in the awakening and conversion of those who gave large promise of beneficent life failed to change the tendencies that presently brought a
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SKETCHES OF SPENCER HISTORY.
rapid lessening of the congregation and of the membership. The common needs pressed the most faithful to removal of residence and the choice of other church relations and activi- ties.
It is not easy to discern at this distance the pathos at- tendant on the ever-lessening group of those who stayed unto the end. They must have missed in those days the loved and sainted who had gone to the heavenly sanctuary, missed too the able helpers, men and women, removed to other churches, though needed there more and more, missed singer and song, the Sunday school teacher, the ready speaker and the open hand and purse, missed the greeting and the smile, the silent presence and the look of peace and amity.
So the weeks went by, and still the thinning of the ranks continued. The vacant chair, the empty seats are eloquent. The silence of pew on pew where none sit is profound. Slowly and sadly came the admission of necessity, sentiment could silence wisdom no longer. Society and church reached the unwelcome conclusion, the property must be sold, while yet there are a few able to devise and execute what may be essen- tial to an honorable closing of a half-century of interesting, useful, blessed, ecclesiastical life. A joint committee of church and society carried out faithfully the matured plans. Joshua Cole, Hiram P. Bemis and Calvin P. Woodbury acted for the society and the first two for the church also.
Action was harmonious. The meeting house was sold to Mr. Daniel Green, although nothing is given on this point in the report of the committee. That report is as follows : Spencer, September 4, 1877.
The undersigned, a committee chosen by the North Spen- cer Baptist church and society to sell and convey the property belonging to the said church and society, report as follows, viz :
Amount of property sold
$269.20
Received from L. Sewing Society
6.00
$275.20
Paid pew holders
81.00
Paid Baptist Home Missions
132.00
Paid for advertising, appraising pews and committee services
62.25
$275.25
Sent the communion service, Bible and hymn book, the Sabbath school library, and singing books, the Baptismal robcs and contribution boxes to the Baptist Home Mission society.
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BAPTIST CHURCH.
The said committee respectfully submits the above report to the clerks of said church and society.
JOSHUA COLE HI. P. BEMIS CALVIN P. WOODBURY,
Committee.
Mr. Green, who thus became the proprietor of the meeting house, was an eccentric man. He probably had only good motives in making such a purchase. It is said he essayed to have meetings and that some were held. Later he sold the house to the late Mr. John Norton in whose possession it served for storage of farm products. More recently it passed to the hands of Mr. Barclay, who razed the ancient building, moved the material to his farm and rebuilt it in place of his farm barn, which had been burned. Haply it may now completa its century and more.
Its earlier history was one of honor
in the service of man. The later is not dishonorable. A barn is by no means ignoble. Barns have served as temples
of divine worship. It has been said that some of the early meetings of the First Baptist church were held in Jonathan Cunningham's barn. There can be no unmeasured regret at this transformation of the meeting house, which came after it was no longer needed as a house of praise and prayer.
Still the sunlight falls on the hill at Jocktown. But the glory has departed. It might now be named Ichabod. The region as well as the meeting house hill seems desolate. Yet those who know the days that have been may still find the hill populous. To them the sacred doors swing wide again. The saintly company sit in the pew as of yore. Under the high pulpit Elder Cutler with solemn mein breaks the bread, and pours the ruddy wine for the Lord's supper, reads the Pas- sion words of the Gospel and invokes the hallowing presence of the crucified. The deacons reverently bear plate and cup to those who in sweet, meditative silence enjoy again the Holy Sacrament of the Christian church.
In side pew and gallery sit also the sobered youth of the old time homes. They look on the solemn scene and wonder. Wonder, and question when they may share the sacred mystery on which they gaze. Nay, the vision fades. The hill is deserted. Not even the dust of the dead is there. No burials were ever in that churchyard. Desolation broods the hill- top. The mind alone holds the past and counts its treasures. This sketch shows only in part a worthy history. The First Baptist church in Spencer is of the past. Its records are preserved by the present Baptist church of the town. Copies of the records of church and society have been sent to the rooms of the Antiquarian Society at Worcester.
GLIMPSES OF NORTH SPENCER LIFE.
The Baptist meeting-house at Jocktown, as long as it was the home of a church, served also as the center of the social, not civic, life of many families, especially of those whose in- dustrial center was at Bumskit. To note some phases and in- cidents of that life, which has almost wholly ceased to be, may not be an idle task. Bumskit was more than the little group of dwellings inclusive of a tavern, a store and a boot factory, appeared to a stranger. The ferment of real vitality was there. The name has an aboriginal flavor. Mr. Tower, after inquiry, became satisfied that this name was primal for the place now generally known as North Spencer. The latter was given, probably, by action of the government when it estab- lished a postoffice at this part of the town. The name Bum- skit is evidently an abbreviated form of Asnebumskit, a name given by the Indians to the hill in Paxton, lately purchased for a public park by Senator George F. Hoar, and said to be the second highest land in Worcester County. Bumskit is on the old county road from Worcester to Hardwick, an historic road made famous because built through the instrumentality of the celebrated General Timothy Ruggles of Hardwick. It was once a much traveled road, and known as the "cheese route, " because the best cheese of the county passed to market from New Braintree and Barre by this highway. Besides the heavy teaming in each direction, large droves of cattle, sheep, pigs, turkeys and other live stock went over this road to Boston market. A daily stage coach passed to and from Worcester.
Among my earliest memories these olden stages have a share. For a brief time there were three coaches a day. Their arrival was an event. The burly drivers turned their four-in-hands to the door of the hostelry with lordly flourish as though the work of a coachman was fine as aught on earth. The bustling grooms caught the falling reins and directly led the smoking steeds stableward and put fresh horses in their płace. Meanwhile passenger and driver snatched a hasty meal in the tavern dining hall and soon the stage was off over the hills for the next halting.
NORTH SPENCER
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ihe tavern at Bumskit, as I knew it in my boyhood, was kept by the late Jonas Wilson. He was a stirring, talkative man of pleasing address and no little ready business force. Ilis widow -- second wife-is living, active in mind, but much enfeebled in body, and full of memories of North Spencer, though of a later day than the stage coaches. One of the drivers of those days is now resident at South Spencer, Charles D. Gale. He drove over the "cheese route" when drinking customs were seldom questioned, yet it is affirmed that he was never intoxicated and used no tobacco. At ninety- three, hale and vigorous, he reaps the high reward of tem- perate habits.
The old tavern still stands, fast going to decay. The vil- lage sign and post disappeared long, long, ago. The store
PRESENT SCHOOLHOUSE AT NORTH SPENCER.
which joined the tavern at the north end, making a continuous and somewhat imposing front, was moved away or taken down, perhaps forty years since, possibly after it ceased to serve Captain Isaac Prouty as annex to his boot shop when his grow- ing business, in which his sons, Lewis W. and George P., my schoolmates, were partners, was transferred to the new
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SKETCHES OF SPENCER HISTORY.
quarters at the center, which, in turn, was later left for more capacious housing at the present "big shop."
In this now missing extension of the old tavern, Mr. Wil- son for many years kept a country store. There the neighbors found dry and West India goods, hardware, candies, notions and general family supplies. This business went on after the doors of the tavern were closed. The store, instead of the bar-room was the gathering place, the news center of the vil- lage life. There stories were told, there gossip was fresh and forceful. Opposite the tavern stood the rangy stage barn with its long, open shed, and roadside yard in front with its old fashioned wooden pump showing ever its stiff, awkward handle. I well remember one of the hostlers, a youth known as Lewis Newton. now living in age and weakness at East Brookfield. One day a gentleman stopped for dinner, driving his fine horse direct to the stable yard where I, an eager boy, watched the movement of the hour. "Mine host" Wilson, intent and fluent, proffered hospitality and noting his guest's solicitude for his horse, said heartily: "the boy will give him good care," then sharply calling "the boy" to his work, led the way to the house. I see now the play of Newton's face as the landlord's courteous "mister" to his guest came over the street to us and I heard the hostler saying to himself, "I wonder if anybody will ever call me, mister !" Such ferments have place in youthful minds. By them ambition is awakened and hardship and hindrance become helps to nobler living.
At the north end of the stage barn was a slaughter house. This was mostly used for dressing veal for the Boston
market. Mr. Wilson gathered the calves from the farms all
about. As was customary then, the calves were twice bled before being killed. White veal was demanded. Cruelty
to animals had slight consideration. Mr. Wilson simply fol- fowed the custom of the times when he freely bled the un- offending calves and then bound their four legs together s) they could do no other than lie on the floor of his wagon as he bore them to the place where they yielded their lives. The
world does move towards the light. Optimism is warrantable. Some cruelties have ceased under the sun. The above abomini- ations are of the past, not of today. Other cruelties must fol- low them.
The veal went to Boston in a huge wagon. This wagon was covered in all its length by cotton cloth supported by stout wood bows. Any original white of the cloth had given place to a rusty brown, enriched by mud stains from the road and various other contributions received on the frequent trips from Bumskit to Boston.
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NORTH SPENCER.
Returning the freight was goods for the store and liquors for the tavern. Each Tuesday came thus to the village a hogs- head of New England rum. This, it is said, "was high proof rum" to be diluted with water at Bumskit, the landlord shrewd- ly saving the cartage on water. "Thirty-three gallons" could be drawn from the hogshead and the like amount of water turned in and then the standard required by law be main- tained. At first the mixture would not be clear, but milky in appearance. Left for about a week it would become clear
enough for sale at the bar. The thirty-three gallons drawa
could. of course. be treated in like manner. The hogshead of rum thus extended was, it is said, a week's supply for the patrons of that bar, the traveling public and the people of the surrounding country in the radius of a few miles.
Much might be noted of the material and moral ruin con- sequent on such generous distribution of N. E. rum. Names of topers, inveterate, hard drinkers, might be given. Families were broken and scattered. Forceful young men drank up their patrimony and ended life in the poorhouse or were found dead in some hiding-place, with an empty jug beside them. But if one tried putting aside due respect for names once honorable, it would be impossible to tell the miseries resultant from the misuse of a hogshead of rum a week. Alas, in how many places has there been occasion for the bitter cry :
"Rum ! rum ! What hast thou done ?
Murdered father and husband, brother and son."
Yet it may not be inferred that few sober, thrifty people were to be found in Bumskit and its environment. Nay, the church was there with its seen and unseen forces as well as the tavern. The church resisted, fought against the drink cus- toms and tried to save men from the ruin of intemperance. The passing of the stage lines and the ceasing of heavy teaming through Bumskit brought an end of the demand for liquors by travelers. The Washingtonian Movement reached Spencer. Hon. James Draper and one or two other leading citizens were made a committee to visit the dramsellers and by moral suasion induce them to give up the traffic in liquors. Mr. Wilson listened kindly to their appeal and determined to make an end of rumselling. I remember when his open bar gave place to a locker which in turn was soon closed and the sale of intoxicants over the tavern bar was no more. Indeed, the tavern itself was closed about the same time as there was little demand for a public house at Bumskit after the day of the stage coach was over.
Prior to all this, "topers" were not a few in the village. Some were crabbed and cross, a terror to children as they
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SKETCHES OF SPENCER HISTORY
walked uncertainly and essayed to speak to the boys and girls that failed to avoid them. One, however, is kindly remem- bered, Bela Barnes. He was ever genial when full. His step was usually firm, while some special mental elation seemed to follow a dram. Children did not fear his approach. But his bad habit grew upon him. In later years I saw him drink essence of peppermint and Thompson's Hot Drops, fiery medi- cines, emptying the bottles without pause for breath or sign of difficulty in swallowing such unusual drinks. All in all he was one of the most unique characters known among the Spencer men of a century. Had he been in the right environ- ment and been a sober man he might have filled positions that- few men reach. He was adroit, witty and full of practical jokes. His most intimate acquaintances, when in his presence were ever alert and watchful of him, albeit, he was never known to do a mean act.
It is related of him that becoming hungry at a cattle show, he walked up to a stand loaded with eatables and addressed the proprietor as follows : "Will you give me as much ginger- bread as you can afford to sell for ten cents." The man said "yes" and handed him the requisite amount. £
Mr. Barnes took the bread, turned his back and commenced eating. In a short time the proprietor said to him "Are you not going to pay me ?" "Pay you ?" said Bela looking astonished and speaking in a slow, deep monotone, "didn't you hear what I said ?" "Yes," said the man. "Well, then," said Bela according to the contract this bread belongs to me, you think it over and see," which the man did and found on second thought a brand new reason for quick wit in his business.
To the above incident, furnished by Mr. Tower, I will add the story of
A Free Sleighride
enjoyed by Mr. Barnes at the expense of the tavern keeper.
Mr. Wilson with his fellow-townsmen had given a day to the town meeting. It was a rough, wintry day. The wind swept the hills and madly piled the snow in the highways. The day waned, but the cold increased as night drew near and snow flurries filled the air. Bela, less attentive to the duties of citizenship, put in a part of the day at the tavern at Bumskit. The present highway by the brick schoolhouse leading to Spencer was not at that time. Then you went by the Oakham road to the Morse place (I think a cellar and a well still mark the site), then up the slope to the Jonathan Monroe farm and so on to the center. This bit of road was closed when the new way by the schoolhouse was opened. As
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NORTH SPENCER
Mr. Wilson was returning he passed along from the Monroe place down the hill, and suddenly saw a human form partly covered by the drifting snow just at the edge of the road. Halting he found it was Bela Barnes. Apparently he was stupid with intoxication. To leave him in the snow would probably be death. The tavern would suffer in reputation if one of its patrons thus perished on a winter's night. Though impatient to reach shelter himself Landlord Wilson turned about in the heavy drifts and with no little effort, for Mr. Barnes was much the heavier man, succeeded in loading his imperilled patron into the sleigh. Then through the driving snow and the full road he pushed back to the Pliny Allen home, his man showing no sign of lessening stupor. Mrs. Allen was a sister of Mr. Barnes and this farm was for years much of the time his home. As Mr. Wilson drove up to the door his sup- posedly drunken man suddenly leaped from the cutter to the door stone, and, bowing with stately courtesy, said, "I thank you Mr. Wilson." Then, before speech came to the astounded landlord Mr. Barnes entered the house, leaving "mine host" to recover his wits and drive home, reflecting mayhap on some of the peculiar involvings of rumselling to men made in the image of God and by drink made unfit to live or die.
An Evening in the Bar Room.
When some six or seven years old Aaron Segar, a faithful patron of Mr. Wilson's bar, came to my father's to fit wood for the stove. This was late in March. After supper one day Mr. Segar asked me to go with him. He took me to the bar room which presently had all its chairs filled. I was not allowed such visits and this one was clandestine. Drinks were freely taken by nearly all present. Some paid at once. Others had a score. Indeed, this Mr. Segar in due time drank up his patrimony, a good farm. He often helped in work at our home. I remember one year when he came to fit wood for
the year's supply. He left in evident wrath at close of the first day. At noon he was so far intoxicated as to barely miss sitting on the floor as he essaved a chair at the dinner table. After his troubling deportment at dinner he went to a neighbor's where cider had not been banished from the
household stores. During his absence father found his jug about the woodpile, drew the cork, and left it upside down to drain. Later Mr. Segar seeking added comfort in his "little brown jug" was indignant and hastily departed. After a few days he thought better of the matter, came and finished the work, receiving his pay without comment from either side.
But I was telling of the night in the bar room. The
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SKETCHES OF SPENCER HISTORY.
place seemed uncanny to me. The impression has stayed through the years. Though thus ill at ease I waited till Mr. Segar led me home at nine o'clock. During the day the moving of a negro family had attracted much attention in the village, as the various nondescript teams and loads passed by. Late in the evening two black men, evidently the last of the family, came in, paid for something at the bar and then asked entertainment for themselves and their horses for the night. The scene is before me now. The landlord inside the bar, smiling and loquacious, the full chairs encircling the dimly lighted room, the tall, well-formed negroes, one turning grey, the other a stalwart, young man, father and son, doubtless, facing the host and waiting his decision. Mr. Wilson ran his eye about the circle and said, "My house is full tonight, I can't give you a bed." Yet all his guests were for the evening only. The negroes evidently understood the situation. Their need was real, so begged stoutly, men and beasts were weary, the night was dark and chill. they could not go on to Paxton, they were clean, had money and would pay generously, still they were denied. Then they craved a lodging on the hay in the barn, would willingly share with their jaded animals. This was severely denied also. Sadly they turned to the door and went out into the gloom of the night to push somewhere for shelter and rest. Who was white ?
"Alas for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun ?"
Directly after I was taken home, charged not to tell my parents of the things seen and heard. The evening had not been of wild carousal, the talk not wholly bad, but the evil habit of dram-drinking had been directly strengthened and the love of home correspondingly weakened. Evidence of the hardening incident to dramselling and drinking appeared in the hard usage of the black men. Indignation thereat burns in me yet. Besides the negro still waits the day of just treat- ment. His hardship and sorrow have not ceased. Neverthe- less his day will dawn. Christianity wins its battles. De- lays and seeming defeats hinder, yet Christianity moves ever forward. It conquers, slowly, but surely. The negro, some
day, will have due recognition as a man. Also the hoary in- iquity of the drink traffic will find its end. The night will pass, the day come.
Not long after the above incident dramselling ceased at Bumskit, as already noted. The evil work done in the years remained in evidence. Some men failed to reform. Some
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NORTH SPENCER.
noble types of manhood had been ruined. As I recall things, Aunt Sally Cunningham's house seemed to be a shelter for such bruised and broken men. Perhaps a genuine womanly regard for those in misfortune. a real motherliness for those in sore need of such ministry, was hers.
The Morse brothers, remnant of a North Spencer family of vigor and thrift, found home with her. There also Thomas Sargent. Aaron Segar and others in need often found housing and care. Long, long years ago the busy, care-taking woman passed from mortal sight. Gladly I pen this tribute to a good woman, who ever seemed busy for some one besides herself. She had a nephew, Lewis Cunningham. He was called one of the bright men of the town. The promise of his youth was
broken by drink. Probably the unhealthy environment of dram-selling, the drinking habit was potent for his ruin. Na- tive force was broken and the bright light dimmed. Instead of the prosperous farmer, the useful citizen, the noble man he might have been, he failed of all and spent the later years of an impoverished life at the town farm. With full respect for the family name and for the man himself, I write this word of soberness. The unwise choices and the wrong habits of youth are sobering things. The Sally Cunningham farm later passed to our sometime inn and store keeper, Jonas Wilson. .He proved a good farmer and passed many years upon the farm with the general respect and confidence of his neighbors.
Mr. Wilson also served as postmaster. I think he had the office from the date of its establishment until it was discon- tinued many years after he gave up his store and had moved to the Sally Cunningham place. At first the postoffice was the bar- room. I recall the heavy postage of the time. My father
used to have mail from northern New Hampshire. I saw him pay eighteen and three-fourth cents for a letter. Postage was
not prepaid then. Neither in the bar-room nor at the store after the office was removed there, when the tavern closed, was there anything like the modern postoffice boxes. When the
service was later rendered at his dwelling house the mail was delivered from a table in the sitting room or at the door.
Nevertheless. I remember no complaint of loss or of unfaith- fulness during all the years of Mr. Wilson's long term of office. This primitive mail service was a great boon to North Spencer.
The Washingtonian temperance meetings at the school- house are remembered with interest. Many signed the pledge, the children being welcomed to such honorable enrollment. I remember a night when William ("Bill Than") Bemis was present and sang a temperance song in his well-known elephan- tine style. It had one line something like this: "We'll kick
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SKETCHES OF SPENCER HISTORY
King Alcohol from the land." He emphasized that with a vigorous show of leg-power and the display of a huge cowhide boot.
The Isaac Prouty Boot Shop.
Of the foundation and development of the great manu- facturing plant of Isaac Prouty and Co., now the Isaac Prouty & Co., incoporated, some other pen will write. I only call at- tention to the shop as one of the centers, later really the center, of life at Bumskit. As Wilson's store ceased to be and the postoffice was taken to his residence the boot shop became the one village resort. There the current gossip was aired. There social plans were outlined, discussed and determined. From that all the industry of the village and the vicinity was nourished. Boys carried boot backs home to stitch seams and sew on the leathern leg-straps of those days. Men took home uppers and soles for the work of a bottomer. In the Alden Prouty shop, small one at head of the village in those days, "crimping" was done, "siding" also. With every house a shop was connected, or some room assigned for like service. From all these after supper, and on holidays men, young and old, poured forth to play "round ball." The game went on at the four cross roads, just by the blacksmith shop. Game
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