History of Bristol County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 53

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1818

USA > Massachusetts > Bristol County > History of Bristol County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 53

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" It was also voted by us of the South Purchase to allow Joseph Pool, Thomas Jones, and Matthew Briggs sixteen pounds and ten shillings for seting (seating) at the meeting-house."

One would like to have a photograph of that meet-

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ing-house, as well as photographs of the preacher and his flock. Yet, while their dress was somewhat dif- ferent, the farmers and their families of that day probably looked very much like the people we see around us. In looking at old portraits and statues the same types of features are recognized that are seen every day in the streets, and one is reminded of Hawthorn's remark that the heads of the old Roman emperors look like those of Yankee politicians. Even in the oldest antiques, like the Cesnola statues from Cyprus in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, we see faces that recall those of people we have known, although these portrait-statues ante- date by hundreds of years the Christian era. The constancy of human nature to itself throughout the ages is one of the marvels of existence.

Not much is known of Nathaniel Fisher, whom the people of the South Purchase called to be their first spiritual shepherd, but from the meagre information we have he appears to have been, if not a brilliant preacher, at least a worthy and conscientious man and a faithful minister. He was born about the year 1686, where is not certainly known, but probably in one of the towns of Norfolk County. He graduated at Harvard College in 1706; was ordained in 1710, when he commenced preaching in the Taunton South Purchase, and he continued in office until his death, which occurred Aug. 30, 1777, at the age of ninety- one. He had four children, -Elizabeth, Abigail, Jeremiah, and Nathaniel. His wife, Elizabeth, died Sept. 23, 1765, in her seventieth year.

A story has been handed down concerning his daughter Elizabeth, which is as follows. It seems that she had an admirer named Pitts, who dropped in frequently to spend the evening, and sometimes stayed till a late hour. It is probable that his visits were not altogether unacceptable to the presumably fair Betty, as she was called; but having a fun-loving disposition, she played him a practical joke that put an end to his attentions to herself and caused a good deal of gossip in the neighborhood. The lovers were sitting up together one Sunday evening in the front room, after the family had retired, and as the court- ship was pretty well along, Betty was sitting in her admirer's lap. While in this interesting situation, young Pitts was ungallant enough to fall asleep. Whether he was naturally of a somnolent habit, or whether he was fatigued by the labors of the week, can only be conjectured. At all events he fell into a deep slumber, which Elizabeth perceiving, she gently disengaged herself from her sleeping beau's arms and very carefully put a churn, which stood in the room, in the place she had vacated. Then she softly went up-stairs to her little bed and awaited the result of her practical joke. She did not have to wait long, for soon there was a surprising racket in the room below as the heavy churn fell from the astonished sleeper's arms and rolled over the floor. Her rey- erend father hastily got up and, in scanty raiment, | of the Unitarian Society.

came out to see what all the noise was about. Pitts made such explanation as his naturally bewildered condition permitted, and with scant ceremony left the house never to enter it again.

This story of the beau and the churn was published in a local newspaper many years ago, but the scene was laid in another locality and with different dra- matis persone. As the writer had the story from one of Mr. Fisher's great-grandchildren, who vouched for its truth, there is no doubt that the affair happened in this town, and in the house of the Rev. Nathaniel Fisher, and that his daughter Betty was the chief actor in the little comedy. Whether she found the result of her practical joking as amusing in the end, when her lover did not come back, is questionable.1

The following report of the committee chosen to make an agreement with Mr. Fisher in regard to the amount of his salary, will show the manner of paying the ministers in colonial days :

"TAUNTON, South Precinct, June 28, 1710. " Wee, whose names are underwritten, being a committy chosen by the inhabitants of the Taunton South Precinct, to treat with and make proposals to Mr. Nathaniel Fisher, for his encouragement to settle amongst us in ye sacred employ of ye ministry, have held a treaty with him, and have made the following proposals to him (viz.) that wee will give him for the first three years forty-five pounds, and then to raise to fifty pounds, and to continne it three years, and then to raise it to sixty pounds, and to continue three years, and after that as heads and estates increase to rise till it comes to seventy pounds, and then stop, which proposals Mr. Fisher will take up withal.

" JARED TALBOT. " RICHARD HOPKINS.

" JOSEPH DEANE. " JOHN CRANE. " EBENEZER PITTS."

The salary arranged for the future by the rules of arithmetical progression, according to the probable increase of heads and estates, was paid one-third in money and two-thirds in "merchantable pay, equiva- lent to money." A part of this merchantable pay consisted of rum and lumber. Mr. Fisher having with his growing family more use for provisions than for rum and lumber, succeeded finally in getting pro- visions substituted therefor.

1 As a sequel to this little romance the following entry in the town- record of marriages may be interesting, at least, to the lady readers of this sketch :

"September ye 29th, 1743, Jobe Winslow and Elizabeth Fisher were married by Rev. Nathaniel Fisher." The Job Winslow that married Elizabeth was afterwards lieutenant-colonel in the Second Regiment, Second Brigade of the Bristol County militia. He had previously been In active service as a captain, and also as a major in the French and In- dian war. They had four children. Their son Job was a colonel in the militia.

Elizabeth Fisher's first lover, George Pitts, the hero of the churn, also married and had children. He was afterwards one of the selection of the town, and held other offices. He appears to have been a capable, worthy man.

On the theatrical stage, tragedy is sometimes followed by a comedy or a farce, Int on the stage of life the order is usually reversed, and the tragic lags not far behind the comic. Capt. George l'itts died of small- pox. Dec. 10, 1763, in his forty-ninth year. His wife, Elizabeth, died during the following March, of the same dreadful disease, as did also an infant daughter. They were all buried in an out-of-the-way spot, on the western border of the pine swamp. Within a few years the old slate stones marking their graves have been removed to the burying-ground

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HISTORY OF BRISTOL COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

Hiring a minister for life, as was the custom in those days, was a very serious business, and the people of the South Precinct no doubt gave the matter a great deal of consideration. It was almost like choosing a king to rule over them. The ministers then were the most influential men in their precincts. They were not only arbiters in things spiritual and ecclesiastical, but they were frequently men of affairs, engaged in large business transactions, like the Rev. Hugh Peters, of Salem, in commerce, and the Rev. George Shove, of Taunton, in real estate; they were, besides, sometimes the only physicians, lawyers, and teachers in their precincts, so that each local town government in the colonies might well be termed a hierocracy, tempered by the town-meeting. With the lapse of years and the mental emancipation they have brought the hierocracy has, in secular matters at least, taken a back seat, and the town-meeting, as the embodiment of the common sense of each com- munity, is the chief arbiter under the law of local affairs outside of the cities.

Nathaniel Fisher was the sole minister of the town for more than half a century, and in his declining years was furnished with an assistant. His name will occur hereafter in the course of this sketch.

The town in 1713 was fairly started upon its corpo- The cost of living could not have been high at that time, when ten pounds would board the schoolmaster for a year. The salary of a schoolmaster was from twenty to thirty pounds a year. Some of the school- masters were men of good education, and could teach Latin and Greek if occasion required, and most of them had firm faith in the truth of the Solomonic dictum that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. rate history. At that time it was divided into two parts by Taunton River, which was a great incon- venience in many ways, for as yet a bridge was hardly thought of. On the east side of the river the town included the whole of Assonet Neck, and extended northerly as far as the present site of the old meet- ing-honse on Berkley Common. It having become necessary to make provision for the impounding of : If the master gave satisfaction-and the people were stray cattle and for the punishment of offenders against the laws, the following vote was passed at a town-meeting held Dec. 21, 1713 :

" Voted to make two pounds; that on the west side of the river Capt. Talbot gives the land to set it on, joyning to the road, near the meeting-house ; the one on the east side of the river, Edward Paull gives the land to set it on. Voted also that the Selectmen should exact (i.e., survey) the lines of the township, set up stocks and whipping-post, and make the pounds."

There has been an advance in the methods of pun- ishing criminals since that vote was passed. If stocks and whipping-post were to be set up now in front of the town hall, they would not probably remain there very long. There was a public ferry at that time be- tween the two sections of the town. It was located about half a mile below the present site of Berkley and Dighton bridge. In 1715 it was voted to put the ferry-boat into the hands of Capt. Jared Talbot and Deacon Abraham Hathaway for three years, "the boat to be free for the use of the inhabitants on all public days, the said Talbot and Hathaway agreeing to keep said ferry-boat in good repair all said time at their own cost." Afterwards another ferry was es-

tablished about a mile farther down the river, at a narrow place opposite the lower wharves in Dighton. The point of land on the Berkley side is still known as the Ferry Point, and is a part of the fishing-ground of Shove & Nichols.

The tax-rate was probably of more general interest among the necessarily frugal people of the colonial period than at present, when wealth and the means of getting wealth have so largely increased, and the following bill of charges for the first year after the town's incorporation was undoubtedly closely scru- tinized by the tax-payers in town-meeting assembled :

" BILL OF CHARGES FOR 1712.

€

8. d.

Mr. Fisher's salary this present year.

0 0

Capt. Talbot, obtaining precinct and township.

17 18

Edward Paull, dieting schoolmaster for 1711.

Thomas Jones, dieting schoolmaster same year.

Constant Pitts, dieting schoolmaster same year

Edward Shove, making rate for 1711 .. Samnel Waldron, making rate for same year.

Joseph Wood, making rate for same year

Constant Pitts, making rate for same year

Constable Matthew Briggs, gathering Mr. Fisher's rates.

Samuel Whitmarsh, making rate same year

Richard Hoskins, making rate same year.

The whole amounting to. £87 12

For building the ferry-boat. 5 0

easily satisfied-he was almost as much of a fixture in the community as was the minister, teaching in the same little school-house year after year. The curriculum of the common schools was made up of much fewer studies than at present. To be able to read, write, cipher, and spell in a passable manner, and to know a little about the countries of the globe, was about all that was expected of a boy when he left off going to school and began his battle with the material forces of nature, whether on the land or on the sea. There are those who think that the schools of that time turned out young men and women having more force, earnestness, and probity of character than is shown by the young men and women of the present day when they leave school, although they may have obtained a smattering of many studies that their great-great-grandfathers and mothers knew nothing of,-physiology, drawing, book-keeping, algebra, music, and the like. But schools, although an im- portant factor, are not wholly responsible for the formation of the characters of young men and women. The mode of life and the example and teaching of the parents have quite as much influence in the formation of the characters of children as the school they attend. The people of the colonies were a

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serious, industrious, earnest people, thoroughly in- pressed, through their religious teachings, that this life is but the prelude to either endless joy or endless torment ; hence even the children had much of the earnestness and staidness of their elders.

Whether the people enjoyed life as much then as peo- ple do now is a question that has been often discussed. It is argued that cultivated perceptions of the beautiful in nature and art are one of the chief aids to rational enjoyment of life, and that such cultivated percep- tions being lacking in colonial times, the people then were deprived of a great source of enjoyment; and, furthermore, that, having few books, and those chiefly dreary homilies or tedious disquisitions on the doc- trinal points of their gloomy religion, while news- papers and magazines were almost unknown, they knew but little of the enjoyment to be derived from a healthy love of reading.

On the other hand, it may be said that, living a simpler and more physically active life, those who survived the perils of infancy had better health than the majority of people have now. They knew but little of nervous disorders or of dyspepsia, which make life a torment to so many people nowadays, and if having plenty of work to do is a chief source of happiness, as Carlyle and other philosophers have taught, they found labor enough to do at hand in clearing the wilderness and finding food and cloth- ing for themselves and their large families. Ou the whole, it is to be doubted whether existence is more enjoyable to their descendants than it was to them.

Most of the dwellings of that period have disap- peared long ago, and the few that remain have, with rare exceptions, been altered and modernized until it is difficult to tell how they originally looked.

The most striking feature of the architecture of one of these old houses is the huge chimney, around which the house was apparently built. The kitchen fireplace was usually an enormous chasm, in which cord-wood was burnt without sawing, and in which one could sit and look up the sooty cavern to the sky. On cold winter evenings the huge high-backed settle was drawn up in front of the fire to keep off draughts. The mug of cider was brought up from the cellar, and perhaps a dish of apples or nuts passed around, or oysters were roasted on the coals. While the fire blazed up brightly there was little need of the tallow candles which flared and sputtered and sent minia- ture eruptions of melted grease down the candle- sticks. Punctually at nine o'clock the family retired to their four-post bedsteads and feather-beds, to be up in the morning at break of day or earlier.

In one aspect of their lives the colonists were in- tensely practical and seemingly devoted to material interests, but when we think how their religious be- lief dominated over their lives, and what sacrifices they were ready to make for the support of the church, we perceive that they led dual lives ; with

most of them the spiritual life was of far greater importance than the life of the senses.1

The town officers chosen for 1712, the first year of the town government, were as follows : Town Clerk, Joseph Deane ; Col. Ebenezer Pitts, Edward Paull, and James Tisdale were chosen selectmen; John Burt and David Walker, constables; Samuel Waldron, Daniel Axtel, and Abraham Shaw, assessors ; Ensign John Crane, town treasurer ; John Wood and Isaac Hathaway, tithingmen ; Abraham Hathaway and John Wood, surveyors for ways; Thomas Burt and Isaac Pool, fence-viewers; John White and Richard Wood, field-drivers ; Joseph Maxfield, flax-culler.

The pay for doing the town's business was very moderate, as were the prices for other kinds of work. The town clerk and the selectmen charged at the rate of three shillings a day, and land surveyors had the same pay. Town-meetings were held in the meeting- house. This saved the expense of a town hall, and was appropriate enongh, as much of the town busi- ness related to church matters. It was the town that built the meeting-house, hired the minister, and col- lected his rates.

The records of town-meetings for many years after the town was incorporated contain but little that would interest the general reader. They are mostly brief entries, poorly written and worse spelled, of the election of town officers and representatives to the General Court, varied by transcripts of bills paid by the treasurer. Some of the town offices that were an- nually filled then have long since been abolished. Such were the cullers of flax, clerk of the market, tithing men, and hog-reeves. What were the duties of clerk of the market in a farming community, such as Dighton was then, I have not been able to find out. The tithingman was required by law to be selected from the "most prudent and discreet inhabitants," and he was a sort of inspector-general of the town- ship. He was required "to inspect all licensed or unlicensed houses where they shall have notice or have grounds to suspect that any person or persons doe spend their tyme or estates by night or day in tippling, gaming, or otherwise unprofitably, or doe sell or retayle strong drink, wine, eider, rumm, brandey, jerry, or methylin without a license." They were also required " to inspect the manners of all disorderly persons, and to present to the magis- trate the names of all single persons who live from under family government, stubborn and disorderly children and servants, night-walkers, tipplers, and Sabbathı-breakers, by night or day, and such as ab- sent themselves from the worship of God on the Lord's dayes." The tithingman was required to be provided, at the expense of the town, with "a black staff, two feet long, tipt at one end with brass about

1 Emerson somewhere hyperbolically remarks that the Puritans and their immediate descendants were so righteous that They had to hold on to The huckleberry bushes to prevent being translated.

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HISTORY OF BRISTOL COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

three inches." It has been handed down that these black batons were sometimes tipped at the other end with a rabbit's foot or a turkey's tail feather, where- with to tickle the eyes or noses of the sleeping saints in the congregation, while sinners who wandered in the land of Nod during the services were smartly rapped on the head with the brass end of the staff. Snch were the important duties of the tithingmen, and it is needless to say that they were regarded with a wholesome fear by evil-disposed persons.1

The duties of the hog-reeve, as might be inferred from his title, were of a very different nature. It was customary to allow hogs to run in the streets, and the hog-reeve was required to provide them with yokes around their necks to keep them out of fenced in- closures, and to put rings into their noses to prevent their rooting. The hog-reeve was paid for his ser- vices by the owner of the animals.

In 1733 the following vote was passed (it is given verbatim et literatum) :

"In Dighton, at the Annuel Town meeting in march ye 20, anno 1733, the Inhabitanes of said Town did uanumosley vote that thare Reprasanta- tive, Mr Edward Shove, should Exhibit a pettion to the great and genral court for so much un propriated Lands as thay in thare great Wisdom shall think fit to be for the supporting the scool in said Dighton."

There was certainly need of a liberal grant of land by the Great and General Court for the support of a "scool" in this town, if the orthography of the town clerk is to be taken as a sample of the literary quali- fications of the people.

It was customary then to establish by a vote of the town the prices at which farm produce and other merchandise should be sold at. The following are some of the prices fixed by vote in 1727: Winter wheat, six shillings and sixpence per bushel ; Indian corn, two shillings and sixpence; oats, one shilling and five pence; bayberry (this was vegetable wax, tried from the berries of the bayberry, or wax-myrtle), fourteen pence per pound; butter, ten pence per pound ; bar-iron, two pounds three shillings per hun- dred ; tobacco, three pence per pound. (Think of that, ye slaves of the weed, and sighi for the good old times !)

In 1728 a town-meeting was called "to consider what to do, and send such instructions to our repre- sentative, Mr. Edward Shove, as the inhabitants of the said town of Dighton shall think fit under our difficult circumstances, by reason of His Excellency the Governor, his long and vehemently insisting on a fixed and stated salary, which we humbly conceive, if it should be granted that a Governor should have a fixed or stated salary granted him in this province, contrary to the former custom and practice of this

our General Court in granting allowances to our for- mer worthy Governors in time past, it would greatly infringe on the privileges and freedoms granted to us by their Majesties' royal charter." The town there- upon instructed its representative to oppose this dan- gerous innovation and infringement of the people's rights, not seeming to consider that the Governor had any rights in the matter of his own salary. The Ed- ward Shove who represented the town at that time was a son of the Rev. George Shove, of Taunton. He lived on the east side of the river, and was a prominent man in town affairs. The Rev. George Shove was much opposed to the Quakers, and it is a little singular that most of his descendants belonged to the broad-brimmed fraternity.

It was the custom in those days for the selectmen to warn out of town any new-comers whom they thought might become a charge to the town; their warrants to the constable to this effect frequently occur in the records. The following is a sample of one of these warrants :

" BRISTOL SS. DIGHTON, October the 2d. " You are in His Majesty's name forthwith required to warn the fol- lowing persons out of town as the law directs, they being not lawful inhabitants of said town. The names of said persons is (as) followeth : The man's name is Stephen Huchinson, and his wife's Abigail Huchin- son, and seven children, whose names are Daniel, Stephen, Richard, Joseph, Lemuel, Abigail, and Lydia, who are now in the house of Thomas Joslin, as we are informed, in Dighton. Fail not, and make return of your doings to us, or one of us, quick as may be.

" To Ebenezer Pool, Constable of Dighton.

" Attest : NATHAN WALKER, " Town Clerk. " Selectmen."

" ELNATHAN WALKER, " GEORGE PITTS,

Here is another entry, which shows a laudable zeal in the cause of education :

"At the above said meeting (in 1734) the town vote that the selectmeu should hier a scoolmaster to teach children to Reed and Wright and sifer."

In 1751 the population had increased to such an extent that it was voted to build three school-houses, one near Mr. Jonathan Burt's house, one near Col. Richmond's, to be under the care of Josiah Talbot, Esq., and one near the house of Robert Vickery, to be under the care of Mr. George Gooding. Two of these houses were sixteen feet square, and one was twenty feet. They were probably painted red, as that was the favorite color for the district school- house. At almost every town-meeting the bills for boarding the schoolmaster were voted to be paid, but only once was there mention of that functionary's name; in 1755 one John Richmond is mentioned as the schoolmaster.

Another singular omission of the records is that no mention is made of either of the wars between Great Britain and France, although in Queen Anne's war, as it is called, which lasted more than a dozen years, in the early part of the eighteenth century, men from this town must have served ; while in George the Second's war, towards the middle of the century, a number of men from Dighton were enlisted. The

1 The last tithingmen chosen in this town were Anthony Reed, Joseplı Briggs, and Thomas Porter, who were elected at the annual meeting in 1834.

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DIGHTON.

Bristol County regiment which went with the expe- dition that captured the fortress of Louisburg, on Cape Breton Island, in 1745, was commanded by a Dighton man, Col. Sylvester Richmond, who was born in 1698, so that he was forty-seven years old when he went on the expedition mentioned.1 How he acquitted himself as colonel we do not know, but his military conduct might have surpassed that of his associate officers or of his commander and yet not have been worthy of special commendation. There was no lack of bravery, but there was very little judgment shown in the conduct of the siege, and not much discipline among the troops. Only the mutinous condition of the garrison in the fortress made its capture possible. The siege was conducted in a most unsoldier-like manner, the rear of the besieging army being a scene of disgraceful confusion, the men being chiefly en- gaged in the unmilitary occupation of skylarking, running races, pitching quoits, wrestling, shooting birds, or chasing the balls shot from the fort, a bounty being paid for each one brought into camp. A well- conducted sortie from the fortress would have de- stroyed the undisciplined besiegers. On the 17th of June, however, the Dunkirk of America, as Louisburg was sometimes called, surrendered to the New Eng- land troops. " If any one circumstance," says a his- torian of that time, " had taken a wrong turn on our side, and if any one circumstance had not taken a wrong turn on the French side, the expedition must have miscarried."

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History of Bristol County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 53

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1818

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1818