USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Chelmsford > History of Chelmsford, Massachusetts > Part 68
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Spiranthes gracilis (Bigel.) Beck. Ranunculus fascicularis Muhl. Potentilla arguta Pursh. Geum strictum Ait. Linum medium (Planch.) Britton. Hypericum punctatum Lam. Viola sep- tentrionalis Greene. Ligustrum vulgare L. Myosotis virginica (L.) BSP. Lobelia spicata Lam. Aster dumosus L. Aster laevis L. Aster patens Ait. Aster vimineus Lam. Krigia virginica (L.) Willd. Solidago rugosa Mill.
653
GEOLOGY, BOTANY
The sand-plains look so barren that it is hard to realize that they support a considerable number of species, some of which grow also on the dry upland. The gray birch and the pitch pine are the chief trees when the plains are wooded, and there is often much white pine. Other woody plants are two dwarf willows, two kinds of scrub oak, sweet fern and bayberry. In several places the beach plum (Prunus maritima Wang.) is abundant, and the bullet-like fruit is often used to make a fine preserve. There are several characteristic grasses, two or three of which are rightly called "poverty-grass." One of these (Andropogon scoparius Michx.) is reddish and coarse, about two feet tall, and a certain sign of poor soil. Even in winter, it waves above the snow and betrays lack of fertility below. There are very few spring flowers in the sand, the bearberry and the birdfoot violets being the most conspicuous. Lupines are occasional, and in midsummer the red Philadelphia lily with its upturned cup. In early autumn comes the blazing-star, a long wand with three to seven beautiful purple flowers scattered near its tip. In the most barren places there blossoms in mid-September a delicate, wiry annual with very slender racemes of delicate little white or pinkish flowers, the Polygonella. Then come dwarf asters, and several golden-rods.
Aristida dichotoma Michx. Aristida purpurascens Poir. Digitaria filiformis (L.) Keeler. Eragrostis pectinacea (Michx.) Steud. Panicum dichotomum L. Panicum Scribnerianum Nash. Sporobolus neglectus Nash. Salix humilis Marsh. Salix tristis Ait. Quercus ilicifolia Wang. Quercus prinoides Willd. Coman- dra umbellata (L.) Nutt. Crotalaria sagittalis L. Oenothera muricata L. Lechea maritima Leggett. Trichostema dichoto- mum L. Asclepias amplexicaulis Sm. Aster linariifolius L. Aster multiflorus Ait. Solidago juncea Ait. Solidago puberula Nutt.
In the wet woods the dominant tree is the red maple. There are numerous trees of the very scraggly swamp white oak, and occasional elms and ashes. The tupelo or black gum is a very odd tree in such places, with a great many parallel drooping or horizontal slender branches and smooth, shining leaves. There are tangles of horsebrier and long festoons of wild grape, bitter- sweet and clematis. In the spring comes the first flower of all the season, the unsavory skunk-cabbage, soon followed by the brilliant yellow marsh marigold or cowslip. The yellow spice- bush gives way to the shad-bushes, and a succession of other flowering shrubs, closing in August with the sweet alders and their fragrant spikes of cream-colored flowers. There are few summer herbaceous flowers, for the shade is usually dense, but here and there the ghostly Indian pipes rise pallid from the decaying vegetation below. At Heart pond, South Chelmsford, there is a spruce swamp, filled with trees of black spruce, not a common tree in eastern Massachusetts.
654
HISTORY OF CHELMSFORD
The strip of alluvium along the Merrimack is rather narrow, but it supports occasional trees of red ash, and, in some places, the ragged-barked red birch. The lower Merrimack region is the only place in New England where this peculiar tree is native.
Leersia virginica Willd. Peltandra virginica (L.) Kunth. Calla palustris L. Allium canadense L. Clintonia borealis (Ait.) Raf. Trillium cernuum L. Epipactis pubescens (Willd.) A. A. Eaton. Carpinus caroliniana Walt. Impatiens biflora Walt. Aralia racemosa L. Rhododendron viscosum (L.) Torr. Oro- banche uniflora L. Rhus Vernix L.
The meadows and open swamps have a very large number of species. For woody plants, there are alders and willows, with rhodora and many straggling shrubs from the wet woods. In the wettest places there are great clumps of ferns, with the royal fern and its kindred dominating, and in midsummer great masses of native grasses and sedge. Here grow the white violets, and the long-stemmed blue violets, the early yellow parsnip and the pale magenta geraniums. There are anemones and yellow star- grass, and later, two kinds of iris-the common blue flag and the slender, grass-leaved iris from the coast. But the rarest meadow flower is the scarlet painted-cup, which blooms about May 30. This was reported by Rev. J. L. Russell in an article published in 1841, as "very common in meadows."
Late summer brings out a large array of coarse flowers, conspicuous among them the tall swamp coneflower, from which the "Golden Glow" developed. There are wild lettuces, beggar- ticks, the parasitic dodder, thoroughwort, nettles, vervain and loosestrife, with occasional plants of the brilliant cardinal-flower. There are many swamp asters and golden-rods, and numerous vigorous growers which help to make dense masses of vegetation in every place where moisture is abundant and the black mucky soil furnishes plant food.
Woodwardia virginica (L.) Sm. Ophioglossum vulgatum L. Leersia oryzoides (L.) Sw. Panicum agrostoides Spreng. Pani- cum clandestinum L. Carex folliculata L. Smilax herbacea L. Myrica Gale L. Salix pedicellaris Pursh, var. hypoglauca Fernald. Thalictrum polygamum Muhl. Sarracenia purpurea L. Drosera rotundifolia L. Viola lanceolata L. Viola pallens (Banks) Brainerd. Viola primulifolia L. Viola cucullata Ait. Rhexia virginica L. Cicuta bulbifera L. Cicuta maculata L. Vaccinium corymbosum L. Gentiana Andrewsii Griseb. Gen- tiana crinita Froel. Menyanthes trifoliata L. Chelone glabra L. Gerardia paupercula (Gray) Britton. Aster novae-angliae L. Aster novi-belgii L. Aster paniculatus Lam. Bidens laevis (L.) BSP. Senecio aureus L. Solidago neglecta T. & G. Solidago rugosa Mill.
655
GEOLOGY, BOTANY
There are a great number and variety of weeds in eastern Massachusetts, as every farmer and gardener well knows, and Chelmsford has no shortage of these troublesome plants. The broadest definition for a weed is "a plant out of place," but certain plants are so habitually out of place that, in cultivated ground, they are always classed as weeds. Such are the witch-grass and several annual grasses; the nettles, smartweeds, docks and pig- weeds; the chickweeds, purslane and the mustards; the ragweeds, daisies, thistles, burdocks and dandelions. The buttercups, of which Chelmsford has at least three kinds, seem to belong in this class, too. One rare weed which fills at least one field in South Chelms- ford is the ragged robin. It is as tall as the grass, with a delicate pink flower, the petals curiously ragged. The elecampane is a big, sturdy weed, with large leaves and a round, yellow head, at least two inches across.
Most of the weeds came from the Old World, where, from centuries of resistance against agriculture, they seem to have developed qualities which insure their success. Some of them are so fleshy that they die very slowly; many of them grow close to the ground where they are not easily disturbed, and almost all of them produce thousands and thousands of seeds.
In addition to these cosmopolitan weeds, a large number of strange waifs have appeared from time to time. Some have come up in the waste of the city, as the canary grass and millet have frequently done, but the strangest plants have come to the North Chelmsford woolen mills. Separated from the foreign wool, the seeds have sprung up when the wool-waste was spread on the land. Rev. W. P. Alcott reported a large number of these aliens in the Middlesex Flora, and Miss Emily Fletcher of Westford has also studied them more recently. These plants do not seem to have liked our soil and climate, and, so far as I know, only two species have really spread enough to be considered a permanent part of the flora. These are a prostrate grass with prickly burs, and the beautiful purple loosestrife (Lythrum Salicaria L.) along Stony brook and the Merrimack. Other weeds of some interest are the following:
Eragrostis megastachya (Koeler) Link. Eragrostis minor L. Cenchrus carolinianus Walt. Mollugo verticillata L. Berteroa incana (L.) DC. Solanum nigrum L. Centaurea nigra L.
CHAPTER XV.
MANUFACTURING.
A PAPER on "Early Mining Operations near Lowell," by Alfred P. Sawyer, Esq., published in Vol. I of the Contributions of the Lowell Historical Society, is of special interest, as being closely related to the subject of this chapter. After describing the first blast-furnace in this country at Saugus, and the early iron-works at Concord and elsewhere, he says: "The ore used in all these early iron-works was the hydrate oxide of iron, which was found as a deposit in many of the ponds, and also in the swamps and meadows in eastern Massachusetts. It is known as limonite, from the Greek word for meadow, and its common designation as bog ore or bog iron ore accurately describes it. The early settlers discovered that if the deposit was removed, the iron-bearing springs or streams would form a new deposit within twenty or thirty years. Sea-shells furnished a sufficient flux for smelting it with charcoal, and the product was a fairly good iron, although on account of the phosphorus present it was generally only fit for castings.
"The quantity of bog ore in and around Chelmsford early attracted attention, and the Town Records show that "At a Gen'11 Town meeting, march the 4th, 1706-7, Jonathan Richardson and John Richardson had granted the Liberty of erecting Iron works upon Stony brook with the conveniency of flowing provided it Damnifies none of the inhabetants."
"The location of this iron-works is unknown, but, if the valley of Stony brook between North Chelmsford and Forge Village was once a lake, as has been claimed, the presence of the bog ore in the valley is easily explained.
"Probably the Chelmsford grant was nearly contemporaneous with the furnace or forge started by Jonas Prescott at the outlet of Stony Brook pond, which became known as Forge pond, and the settlement as Forge Village, now in Westford. He was the grandson of John Prescott, who, with four others, settled Lan- caster in 1647, naming the town after their native county in England. John Prescott was a blacksmith and millwright. A grist-mill built by him in 1653, and a sawmill which he built in 1659 and operated, stood on the site of the Bigelow Carpet Company's mill in Clinton, and another mill which he built in Harvard in 1667, he gave to his son Jonas.
PART OF NORTH CHELMSFORD, FROM THE WATER TOWER, SHOWING MERRIMACK RIVER
No. 39
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MANUFACTURING
"The word blacksmith in those days was a broad term descrip- tive of a worker in the baser metals. As John Prescott brought with him from England his coat of mail, helmet and armor, which he used in the early wars, it is entirely probable that, whether cavalier or puritan, he was an armorer as well as blacksmith, and could make and repair armor, tools, and weapons, as well as perform the humble occupations of his calling. He was one of the petitioners for colonial license to erect iron-works in Lancaster and Concord, and, according to Nourse, in his Annals of Lancaster (1884), he planned a bloomery in connection with his sawmill at Clinton. Slag and cinders, such as accumulate at a forge, were to be found at this place, bounded, as described in the grant to him in 1657, "by the east end of a ledge of Iron Stone Rocks southards," but, as this was so near the date of the construction of the Concord iron-works before referred to, it is probable that this pioneer made use of the bog ore which was used in these early furnaces.
"His son Jonas built a mill at Forge pond by vote of the Town of Groton passed June 15, 1680, after the resettlement of the town following its destruction by the Indians in 1676. It was near the "warre" (wier) purchased by the Town for twenty shillings from Andrew the Indian. As Jonas Prescott followed his father's craft, he undoubtedly had a forge and used the bog ore found below his location on Stony brook. The property passed to his son of the same name, the above grandson of John Prescott, who enlarged the works and erected forges for manufacturing iron from the bog ore which he brought from the northern part of Groton. The product of this forge was known as "Groton iron," and was brittle and not of good quality. This iron-works con- tinued in operation until 1865 under the control of the descendants of the first Jonas Prescott. The last of that name who carried on the business, Jonas Prescott, who died in 1870, was the owner, in 1863, of forty shares of the Forge Company. The Forge Village Horse Nail Company, organized January 5, 1865, purchased the property and put in machinery for making nails. Its capital stock was $30,000, which was increased in 1868 to $100,000. The officers were John T. Daly, president, John F. Haskins, secretary, and Alexander H. Coryl, treasurer. The business was carried on successfully for several years, but was closed in 1877. In October, 1879, the buildings and water power were purchased by Abbot & Company, of Westford, who conveyed the same, in 1900, to the Abbot Worsted Company.
"About the year 1823, William Adams, who owned much of the land in the Newfield section of Chelmsford, including the bed of Newfield pond, brought these deposits to the attention of General Sheperd Leach, who was then carrying on an iron and foundry business in Easton, where he owned seven furnaces, as shown by the tax lists for that year.
658
HISTORY OF CHELMSFORD
"This pond originally contained nearly one hundred acres, and its surface was about thirty feet above the level of Stony brook, although it discharged its water into Deep brook through an outlet at the north end of the pond. Mr. John Richardson owned a mill on Stony brook, and at a Town Meeting held May 25, 1709, it was voted, "That John Richardson shall have the Liberty of Drawing of the pond called New-field pond to suply his mill with Water; and shall have the benefit of said pond to the high-water mark." Acting presumably under this authority, although Allen in his History gives the date of the incident as in the year 1700, Richardson commenced the construction of a canal through the sandy embankment which separated the waters of the pond from the valley of Stony brook. The workmen had completed about two-thirds of the excavation, when the waters of the pond burst through the bank, sweeping away a negro workman named "Jack," whose body was never recovered. The pond became a swamp partly covered in time with a heavy growth of wood, and producing a long meadow grass which was cut and used in packing the products of the Chelmsford Glass Works, which were estab- lished at Middlesex Village nearly a century later.
"Mr. Adams conceived the idea of filling this breach in the bank of the old pond, and by bringing the waters of Stony brook to it by a canal from West Chelmsford, to fill it to its original capacity, and by means of a canal from this reservoir, to utilize the whole fall. In 1824, General Leach purchased about nineteen acres of land in the village of North Chelmsford from Mr. Adams, together with the bed of Newfield pond and the land necessary for the construction of the canals. The canal from West Chelms- ford was made, the pond, then known as Leach's pond and now called Crystal lake, was filled, and its waters conducted through a canal which he dug to his land in North Chelmsford. There he erected a blast-furnace near the present location of Moore's mills, and obtained the power to operate his works and the pumps which supplied the air for the blast-furnace, from two breast- wheels forty feet in diameter which were fed by the water from his canal. The first iron was produced at this furnace in 1825. Much of the bog ore used in the beginning of this enterprise was obtained in Chelmsford and the neighboring towns, and was brought in by the farmers with their own teams. Some of it is known to have been found in the Redshire meadows near North Chelmsford, and some of it came from Dunstable and Groton. Nason, in his History of Dunstable, (1887), says: "Good bog- iron ore is found on the farm of the late Jasper P. Proctor, about one-half mile southeast of the center of the town. About half a century ago this ore was carried to Chelmsford and worked up to advantage." Shattuck's History of Concord, (1835), states that, "Bog iron ore is found in abundance. . . . .Several tons of this ore have recently been carried in boats from this town to the furnace in Chelmsford, and it is said to produce good castings."
659
MANUFACTURING
"Limestone from the quarries near Robin's hill served as a flux, and the charcoal used in smelting this bog ore was made by General Leach in four circular kilns, which were in existence until the number two Moore mill was erected, and large tracts of land were stripped of their wood which was converted into charcoal for this use. Many castings, especially heavy gears, were made at these works for the mills in Lowell and other manufacturing cities.
"After the death of General Leach in 1832, the property passed into the hands of his brother-in-law, Captain Lincoln Drake, of Easton. He added a cupola furnace about 1842, and carried on the business until 1849. He was succeeded by Williams, Bird & Company, and in 1858, George T. Sheldon, who was a brother- in-law of Charles T. Bird of that firm, purchased the property and organized the Chelmsford Foundry Company which still (1908) conducts the business.
"As the deposits of native ore became exhausted, the works used iron from other sources, some of which came from the Katahdin iron works in Maine, and, with the red molding-sand from New Jersey and other supplies, was brought up the Middlesex canal. Under the management of Captain Drake, the works employed about forty men.
"It is somewhat noteworthy that all the successive owners of this plant, General Leach, Captain Drake, and Messrs. Bird and Sheldon, were from Easton, then an important iron town, where it is claimed the first attempt in America to manufacture steel was made by Eliphalet Leonard, about 1775, in making firearms.
"These early iron works, which drew their supplies of ore from Nature's laboratories in our Massachusetts ponds and swamps, served well the needs of the early colonists, and stand as monu- ments to the energy, ingenuity, and resourcefulness of those pioneers of the great iron industry of today."
After an extended account of the Dracut Nickel Mine, and reference to the Carlisle Copper Mine, Mr. Sawyer continues: "Another early mining enterprise was the "Copperas Mine," as it was called, in Chelmsford. It was located on the southerly slope of Robin's hill, and is said to have been worked to a depth of over fifty feet. Very little can be learned about it, as the mine probably has not been worked for over one hundred years, and it is now filled with stones and other refuse matter. It is said to have yielded a dark, rotten rock of greenish hue, from which copperas was obtained, which was locally used in the tanning and manufacture of leather. There were eight or ten tanning vats by the small brook on Bartlett street, in Chelmsford, a larger number in Westford, and several vats in Acton, which created a demand for the product of this mine. The material taken out, if we may judge of it from the name given to the mine, was probably partially decomposed or weathered iron pyrites, which by oxidation and other natural processes produced copperas.
660
HISTORY OF CHELMSFORD
By simple artificial imitative processes, this mineral would yield the ferrous sulphate commercially known as green vitriol or copperas.
"The Chelmsford limestone quarries before referred to are worthy of mention in this connection, for the caves and tunnels from which the limestone was removed warrant treatment of the subject as a mining enterprise of olden days.
"Massachusetts possesses large deposits of limestone in the western portion of the state, but many small deposits of good quality have been found in this vicinity. The lime used in early colonial building was made from sea-shells, and, being the carbonate of lime, was free from impurities. In 1697, limestone was dis- covered at Newbury by Ensign James Noyes, and caused great excitement. As many as thirty teams in a day came to carry it away, until a town meeting was called to prevent the spoliation, and it was stopped by the sheriff. This may have been the first attempt in this country at conservation of our natural resources.
"The Bolton limestone was discovered about 1736, but it is not known when limestone was first found in Chelmsford. The lichen covered walls of schist and gneiss, the trees which have grown in the partially filled excavations, and the general appear- ance of the surroundings would indicate that the Chelmsford deposits were worked at as early a date as those at Bolton. It is said that the "pigs" of limerock turned up by the plow in the cultivation of the land, led to the discovery of these deposits in Chelmsford. The principal quarries were on the westerly slope of Robin's hill, and on the other side of the valley of Beaver brook, westerly of the Littleton road. The caves and grottoes from which the limestone was taken in the latter locality and the ruins of the old lime-kilns are still objects of interest. It took a week or ten days to burn a kiln of lime, and required much skill and care. The making of lime added much to the business of the town, as the kilns used a large amount of fuel, and the coopers were kept busy making casks and barrels for the transportation of the lime. In Allen's History of Chelmsford (1820), it is said that 'in the southwest part of the town, is a bed of limestone, of an excellent quality, extending two miles northeast. It has five kilns upon it, and from which are annually drawn, about a thousand hogsheads, which may be estimated at $5 per hogshead.'
"Professor Edward Hitchcock, in his Geology of Massachusetts, written in 1839, groups the beds of limestone in Acton, Bolton, Boxborough, Carlisle, Chelmsford, and Littleton together, because of their similar mineral characteristics, and describes them as white crystalline limestones, highly magnesian, and almost destitute of stratification, placed between highly inclined strata of gneiss. He even classes them as dolomite, and believes them to be among the oldest on the globe. He says the rock is usually very much mixed with foreign minerals, such as scapolite, serpen-
661
MANUFACTURING
tine, compact feldspar, etc., and that none of the beds are of any great extent in the direction of their strata, nor is their width more than a few yards in any case.
"He gives the following analysis of the Chelmsford limestone:
Carbonate of Lime
56.52
Carbonate of Magnesia
39.38
Peroxide of Iron
.90
Silica, Alumina, etc.
3.20
100.00
"He states the specific gravity as 2.85, and the per cent. of quicklime, 31.65. On account of the large percentage of magnesia, the mortar made with this lime was harder and whiter than that made from lime which was purer. It was of good quality, and was used in the construction of many buildings in Chelmsford and early Lowell. It is said that the mortar made with it is so strong and clings so tenaciously, that bricks laid in it are not worth cleaning. Part of a ceiling made with this lime recently fell to the floor in an old Chelmsford house without fracture. The woods in the vicinity of the kilns were in time so cut off as to greatly increase the cost of burning the lime, and the low priced lime from Thomaston, Maine, was brought up the Middlesex canal and undersold the Chelmsford product in its home market. Mr. Henry S. Perham, who was engaged in writing the history of Chelmsford at the time of his decease, states in the History of Middlesex County, that David Perham, who was his grand- father, operated the largest lime-kiln in Chelmsford and continued the business until 1832. The manufacture of lime at Bolton was carried on as late as 1861.
"Although most of these limestone deposits have been exhausted, and none of the quarries have been worked for many years, they are well worth visiting to study the geological story they so plainly reveal, and to acquire a fuller realization of the value of these deposits to the colonists. Lime was a very import- ant article in their day, when the only source of supply was in the shells to be found on the seashore, and their search for lime- stone was exceedingly thorough. Professor George H. Barton says that in all his geological explorations and field-work in eastern Massachusetts, he has never found a limestone deposit of any size which had not been worked in former days.
"These old quarries are rich in the variety of minerals which they contain. At Bolton may be found actinolite, allanite, apatite, boltonite, calcite, chondrodite, petalite, phlogopite, pyroxene, sahlite, scapolite, spinel, and titanite, and other rarer minerals. Many of these may be found in Chelmsford, which also possesses a mineral of its own, a variety of wernerite called chelmsfordite, and amianthus is also found there. Some geologists
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