History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 126

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed. n 85042884-1
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1538

USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I > Part 126

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About a mile northwest of the training-field is the high hill, upon which is situated the Danvers Luna- tic Hospital, ten great buildings in one, whose roofs and pinnacles and central tower are seen for miles around, and form a landmark for fishermen far out in the harbor. This hill was in the midst of a grant to Captain William Hathorne, soldier, lawyer, judge, legislator, whose " many imployments for towne and countrie " were publicly recognized. A well-pre- served old house in which Francis Dodge lived, when he sold the farm to the State, stood just south of the main building. Two hundred years ago it was the home of Joshua Rea. The hill retains the name of Hathorne.

Thus the line of original grants swept inward from the Orchard Farm. Still to the westward three hundred acres near the crossing of the two turnpikes were owned as early as 1650, by Job Swinerton, whose brother was a physician in Salem town. Job Swiner- ton had formerly lived on the place now owned by Andrew Nichols, Jr .; he sold this to John Martin, and Martin to Dale. From the latter, who was the ancestor of Surgeon General Dale and of those of the name in Danvers, came the name "Dale's Hill." Swinerton died in 1689, nearly ninety years old. One of the old Swinerton homesteads stood where Daniel

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P. Pope lives, and some parts of the original estate are still owned and occupied by Swinertons. The tract between the Swinerton grant and the Ipswich River, on both sides of the Andover turnpike, was granted in 1648 to Captain George Corwin, a rich merchant of Salem. William Cantlebury purchased three-quarters of this land. "Buxton's Lane" per- petuates the name of John Buxton, a son-in-law of Cantlebury, and a man whose name appears with Nathaniel Ingersoll's and a few others, on a bond which saved the Rev. George Burroughs from unjust imprisonment. Some five hundred acres south of Corwin's grant, and covering much of West Peabody, came, by numerous conveyances, to be owned by Robert Goodell, some of which is still owned by de- scendants of the same name.

The present residence of Rev. Willard Spaulding, in West Peabody, stands on the site of the first Pope homestead. The land about it was first granted in 1640, to another man of the cloth, the Rev. Edward Norris, pastor of the First Church of Salem. It was bought by Joseph Pope in 1664, and his homestead, which remained in the family until 1793, when it was sold to Nathaniel Ropes, of Salem, was standing thirty years ago.

Joseph Pope came over in the " Mary and John," in 1634. He and his wife Gertrude were both in sym- pathy with the Quakers, and were excommunicated. He died about 1667, leaving nine children. Three sons founded families,-Joseph, Benjamin and Sam- uel. Samuel married Exercise Smith, whose parents were persecuted Quakers in Governor Endicott's time. It is through Joseph that most of the Popes in this vicinity trace their ancestry. Joseph's wife, Abiah Folger, of Nantucket, was an aunt of Benja- min Franklin. They had four sons to grow up. Three of them,-Enos, "clothier ;" Eleazer, "cord- wainer ; " and Nathaniel, "blacksmith," went to Sa- lem. In 1813 the third Enos, who followed the busi- ness which the first began, died at the age of ninety- two, the oldest man in Salem. Joseph, oldest of the four sons of the second Joseph, was born in 1687, married Mehitable Putnam, and died in 1755. While he was in occupation of the homestead young Israel Putnam, afterwards major general, came and married his daughter Hannah. Israel Putnam went to Pom- fret, Conn., and so did his wife's oldest brother, Jo- seph. The sons of another brother, Ebenezer, were of Salem, while Eleazer's descendants are found principally in Vermont. Another brother, Na- thaniel, kept alive the family name at the village. He lived from about 1724 to 1800, married first, a daughter of Jasper Swinerton ; second, a daughter of Peter Clark, the minister. Among his children were Mehitable, wife of Caleb Oakes, and mother of the distinguished botanist, William Oakes; Amos Pope, the father of Zephaniah ; and Elijah. Elijah died in 1846, eighty years old; the last of his sons, Jasper, died while yet these notes are unfinished, June, 1887,

having reached an age some five years greater than his father's. Jasper leaves no children living. The Popes now living here are the children and grand- children of the late Nathaniel and of the late Eli- jah.

Going back to Skelton's Neck, the territory just north thereof, aptly called the Plain, or, more commonly, the Plains, was originally granted to Samuel Sharp, "the godly Mr. Sharp who was ruling elder of the church of Salem." It will later appear what became of this and other lands reaching toward the Topsfield line. East of the Topsfield road, one hundred and sixty acres, of which Augustus Fowler's farm is a part, was granted to Daniel Rea, who first came to Plymouth and then to Salem. He died in 1662, and his only son, Joshua, founded an influen- tial and widely connected family, though the name has passed out of the voting lists. Daniel Rea, son of Joshua, was living in Mr. Fowler's house two hun- dred years ago. To the eastward of the Reas, the Birch Plain region, the Rev. Hugh Peters had a grant of two hundred acres, which, after his execution, was sold by Captain John Corwin's widow to "Henry Brown, Jr., of Salisbury, yeoman." Browns are still living on a part of the estate. Far to the east, in what is now North Beverly, the land including Cher- ry Hill was one of the first grants. It was given to William Alford in 1636, and the hill was long called after his name. He sold to Henry Herrick, a younger son of Sir William Herrick, of Bean Manor Park, and the good blood of the ancestors showed itself in the sterling character of many of the descendants. The land between Cherry Hill and the Burley Farm, originally granted to John Holgrave, was later occu- pied by two Reas, two Bishops, a Watts and Captain Thomas Raymond. The latter was of a family of military renown; Colonel J. W. Raymond, now one of the County Commissioners, is a descendant. Three Raymonds were in the Narragansett fight, and one, John, was the first to enter the narrow pass to King Phillip's redoubt, which proved fatal to so many who went ont from this vicinity, among others to Captain Joseph Gardner, son-in-law of Emanuel Downing, and to Charles Knight, Thomas Flint and Joseph Houlton, Jr., members of his company.

Covering the Burley Farm, east of Frostfish Brook, were some two hundred and fifty acres originally be- longing to Charles Gott, Jeffrey Massey and others, a neighborhood for some time called "Gott's Cor- ner." To the southward of the Ipswich road were the farms of the Barneys and Leaches, through which runs the road to Beverly town. Folly Hill was then Leach's Hill, and its length was bisected by the division line between the farms of the two fami- lies. Both names have passed away from the locality ; in the little burying-ground by the high- way in which doubtless are nameless graves, one is marked with the name of Martha, wife of Richard Leach, who died in 1756.

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From the head of canoe navigation at Frostfish Brook, by the way, there began a well-defined Indian trail, leading, Mr. Nichols says, as far north as Cana- da. A glance at the county map shows that the lo- cation was well-chosen as a terminus of such a trail.

All of this region from Beverly to Reading was known in very early times as "Salem Farms," and the early settlers and their descendants were com- monly called " the Farmers." The settlement which grew up along the brooks, which come together near Peabody Square, was at first called Brooksby, later as the Middle Precinct, and became the South Parish of Danvers. Since 1855 it has been a separate town, and an account of its early settlers and growth be- Jongs to the history of Peabody, and will there be found.

Hints of the character of some of the Farmers have been given. As a whole they were a sturdy, intelli- gent set of men, with the energy and vigor requisite to convert the wilderness into pleasant homes, jeal- ous of their rights, too prone to lawsuits, fair types of New England yeomanry.

Presently, children who had been born upon the lands, intermarried, established themselves on farms, carved out of the ancestral acres, and took the places of the aged fathers. A feeling grew that they were separated, alike by distance and by manner of life, from the dwellers in the town. It was far to go to church over rough roads and in all weathers, and the church was the centre of all things. They wanted to be a parish by themselves and provide their own minister. In 1670 this desire was expressed in a pe- tition to the town, and some two years later the town's consent was ratified by an act of the General Court. October 8, 1672, the parish known as Salem Village was established; October 8, 1872, the first church of Danvers observed the two hundredth anni- versary of that event.

" All farmers," so ran the vote of the town, "that now are or hereafter shall be willing to join together for providing a minister among themselves whose hab- itations are above Ipswich Highway, from the horse bridge to the wooden bridge at the hither end of Mr. Endicott's Plain, and from thence on a west line shall have liberty to have a minister by themselves and when they shall provide and pay him in a maintain- ance, that then they shall be discharged from their part of Salem minister's maintainance." The bounds of Salem Village, though a source of grievous dispute, especially between the farmers and "the Topsfield men," sub-tantially included all of the present town except the two necks of Danversport, a part of North Beverly, considerable of West Peabody and much of the town of Middleton.

This Middleton land was an original grant of seven hundred acres to Governor Richard Bellingham, made by the General Court in 1639. It was bought for two hundred and fifty pounds by two poor men, Bray

Wilkins and John Gingle, who paid down a ton of iron and one pound in money, in all twenty-five pounds, and gave a mortgage back for the balance. They paid off the debt, Wilkins and his sons bought up the Gingle interest, and, in 1702, Wilkins died at great age, a patriarchal land-owner, in the midst of the farms and homes of his descendants. Thongh beyond the six mile limit, these lands were by special act of the General Court, in 1661, made a part of Salem.

There were within the village, twenty years after its establishment, some hundred and fifty houses. Among the farmers not already mentioned were Dan- iel Andrew, himself sometimes a school-master, and founder of a family in which a number have followed that calling; the Flints, some of whom. remain on the lands of their ancestors in West Peabody ; Joseph Houlton, the honored head of a fine family, most conspicnous among whom is Samuel Holten, whose name will often appear in these annals ; the Kettels, a name now extinct here; the Needhams, whose farms were divided by the village line, are still represented in West Peabody by descendants of the family name ; Robert Prince, of whom the late Moses Priuce was a descendant in the fifth generation, the latter a man who was eminently distinguished for the extent and accuracy of his knowledge of local history. The Prince farm contained about one hundred and fifty acres and the house which Robert occupied and probably built, is still standing on the estate of J. E. Spring. The widow of Robert married Alexander Osborne, and under that name she was one of the first three arrested for witchcraft, and was taken from this very house to Boston jail, where she died May 10, 1692.

Lying partly within the Village limits and partly in Topsfield, was the land of William Nichols, a large farm which he had bought about 1650, of Henry Bartholemew. "Nichols Brook " which flows through these lands perpetuates his name. He lived to be very old and from his only son, John, came an exten- sive family. One of the most prominent figures in our local history during the first half of this century was Dr. Andrew Nichols, a son of Andrew of the sixth generation, and were it not for the fact that a notice of his life from the pen of his son Andrew will be found accompanying the engraving at the close of this sketch, it would be fitting at this point to pay a trib- nte to his worth. Andrew Nichols, civil engineer, son of the doctor, whose home is not far south of the old Nichols farm and whose land includes a part of the Prince land, of which latter family he is a descendant through the marriage of John Nichols and Elizabeth Prince, has written a genealogy of the Nichols family and has collected a rich store of material for local history. Abel Nichols, a brother of the doctor, was the father of the late Abel Nichols, artist, father of Mrs. William E. Putnam and Lewis A. Nichols, and brother of the late Mrs. E. G. Berry.

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In the extreme southeastern corner of the town. pleasantly situated on the southern bank of the river below the confluence of its three branches, is a very old and interesting house. It has always remained in the Jacobs family, whose ancestor, George Jacobs, was another of the victims of the witchcraft delusion, and, according to tradition, was hung on an oak tree on his own land and there also buried. It was his great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Jacobs, who married John Endicott and spoke out loud to Colonel Picker- ing as before related. She lived to be over ninety and died in 1809. Her ancestor had received from Salem a grant of a few acres and six "cow leases," on Rial Side, and it is recorded that the old lady used to tell how, before her marriage, she nsed to paddle a canoe across the river to milk the cows on this very land, and when the tide was out she would go across the flats on stepping-stones and wade the channel. It must be explained that the channel was much less deep then than now, and, although years ago it was written that " the stones are to be seen to this day," they are out of sight now beneath the mud.

One of the sons-in-law of Francis Nourse was Thomas Preston, the ancestor of a family which has always had representatives prominent in local affairs. Much more space deserves to be here given them than can be afforded. The present Massey estate was long in the Preston family. There, a hundred years ago, lived Levi Preston, who married Mehitable Nichols, and was the father of eleven children. One of these, Levi, built the present meeting-house of the First Church ; Mehitable married Ebenezer Berry, inn-keeper; Polly married Nathaniel Felton ; Sukey and Eliza, the brothers Asa and Nathan Tap- ley ; Daniel was the father of Major D. J. Preston, deputy sheriff and tax collector, recently deceased ; Abel, Hiram, William, John and Samuel-not in the order of their birth-all of these went out from the house on the hill. John went not far. He married Clarissa, the only daughter of Joseph Putnam, the next neighbor, and building an addition to her father's place, they lived there. John Preston died May 28, 1876, in his eighty-sixth year. He was the oldest Free-Mason in town ; was many years a select- man; representative to the General Court; for many years chorister at the First Church in the days of 'cello and double-bass; was one of the early shoe manufacturers, and, after he gave up that business, a good farmer. His widow still survives, and her great age is mentioned in connection with the Putnams. His son, Charles P. Preston, resides on the site of the old house in which his father and grandfather, it might be carried farther, lived. According to the Directory of 1887, but three men in Danvers to-day bear this family name, two of whom are C. P. Pres- ton, just mentioned, and his son.

Deacon Samnel Preston, brother of John, was one of the most distinctive figures, especially in the history of the First Church, of the past half-century. In his later

years, as he came regularly to the ancient place of wor- ship, there was coupled with a venerable form and ap- pearance a youthful, elasticstep. "There was no good service which he was not prompt, eager and faithful to render. He was of robust mind, of pure tastes, and he had a firm grasp of spiritual and eternal things." He read much and the best books, and it is not strange that in his family there is to be found a highly developed taste for literature. Miss Harriet W. Preston, the well-known authoress and magazine contributor, is his daughter. Something more of him in connection with the shoe businsss.

Present space permits only this brief and incom- plete mention of the first settlers. Until 1752, when the district of Danvers was incorporated, the history of the parish of Salem Village is practically the his- tory of that part of the town which still retains the name of Danvers, and its outline will be found in the chapter of church history. In the mean time some families thus far purposely omitted in the men- tion of the early settlers will here be somewhat more fully noticed.

THE PUTNAMS .- One of the most beautiful estates in Danvers is that known as Oak Knoll, which owes much of its attractiveness to the taste of its former owner, William A. Lander, Esq., of Salem. It is in the midst of pleasant surroundings, a mile's drive from the Plains, and passers-by peer through the trees to the unostentatious but comfortable mansion which will ever be memorable as the home of one who now for a number of years has been a member of the fami- ly of its present owners-the poet Whittier. But this very estate is, in itself, of deeper historical interest. It is the home of the first Putnam, the ancestor of that family which not only is to-day the largest and most distinctive of Danvers, but has its representatives far and wide, and has illuminated our national history with the names of many of its illustrious individuals.

John Putnam, this progenitor, came from Buck- inghamshire, England, when well along in years. The land upon which he settled lay just north of Elder Sharpe's grant. This'latter, resting on Skelton's Neck, and covering the whole of the present central village of the Plains, ran northwesterly to a point at the little pond at Beaver Dam. Putnam's land, including his own grant of a hundred acres, made in 1641, and previons grants to Ralph Fogg, Thomas Lathrop and Ann Scarlett spread out easterly from this point, so as to cover nearly the whole territory west of the Tops- field road from Lindall Hill to beyond the Putnam- ville school-house.

John Putnam had three sons, all born in the old country. Thomas, the oldest, was a young man of twenty-six at the time of his father's grant in Salem farms ; he seems to have first struck out for himself in Lynn, where his character and good education quali- fied him to act as magistrate, and where he married Ann Holyoke, sister to the grandfather of President Holyoke of Harvard College. Nathaniel who was

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just then arriving at his majority, and John, a lad of fifteen, probably came with their father to the new home at Beaver Dam. The father was one of the most energetic and successful of the pioneers, and be- came a very large land-owner. A few months before he died he bought, in company with John Hathorne, Richard Hutchinson and Daniel Rea, two very large tracts, the one including Hathorne's Hill and the sur- rounding territory ; the other Davenport's, afterwards Putnam's Hill, and the surrounding territory. It would seem as though the lion's share of these lands fell to the Putnams.

John, the youngest son of the pioneer, married Re- becca Prince, and remained on the father's home- stead.

Thomas, who had moved from Lynn to Salem town and married, some four years after his father's death, for his second wife, the rich widow of Nathaniel Veren, receiving as his double inheritance a portion of the original grant to Captain William Hathorne, built at the foot of the easterly slope of the bill which perpetuates the grantees' name, a house which, with subsequent additions, still remains, not only in per- fect preservation, but in the hands and occupation of Putnams, who are lineal descendants of the builder, and who cherish, with fond interest, the history and traditions of their family. This house is about a mile due west from Oak Knoll, and, according to the location of modern roads, is at the intersection of the highway to Middleton and the Newburyport turn- pike, and is directly opposite a fine avenue, which at this point begins its winding climb of Hathorne's Hill to the new, lunatic hospital.

Nathaniel, the other son of the pioneer, married Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Hutchinson, the man who bought the original grant covering the whole re- gion of Tapleyville, from Walnut Grove Cemetery to the site of the first village church. It was on a part of this tract which came to him by this marriage that Nathaniel built his home. Though not itself standing, another house of respectable age stands on or near its site. Mr. Nichols thinks the original house stood near the town gravel-pit, on Hobart Street. Not- withstanding the laying out of streets and house-lots in the most thickly settled portion of the town, in- cluding the grounds of the town-house, the Peabody Institute and the cemetery, some of the original farm remains about the house which, long the home of Judge Samuel Putnam, a lineal descendant of Na- thaniel, has of late years been owned by other Put- nams collateral to the Judge, but running back to the same ancestor. This Putnam estate, also very familiar, is on the main thoroughfare from the Plains to Tapleyville, something over a mile in a straight line, nearly south of Oak Knoll. It is on the banks of the stream which drains the meadows of Beaver Dam, and a short distance below the house the stream is met by another which drains the meadows far to the west and south. This confluence takes place in a

natural basin easily and effectively dammed for water- power, and from very ancient times these Putnams have utilized this power for milling, just where Otis F. Putnam is to-day sawing, grinding and storing ice at the old stand.

From these three homes, then,-of Thomas, near Hathorne's hill ; of Nathaniel, near the mill-pond ; of John, at Oak Knoll,-came the three great families of Putnams.

a. The family of Thomas .- Thomas had three sons who became heads of families, - Sergeant Thomas, Deacon Edward and Joseph. The two for- mer pushed up a mile toward Middleton, and estah- lished themselves close together on what is now Day- ton Street, near the railroad station at Howe's cross- ing. Joseph remained on the home place.

No male descendants of Sergeant Thomas are left here. A short time ago William Putnam, an old man, died in his ninetieth year, in the old farm-house on the lower hill, directly in front of the hospital. He was the son of Deacon Eben Putnam, and grand- son with three " greats " of Deacon Edward; and of the two living sons of this old man, one, James War- ren, keeps the place, and, rare in these days, has a fine family of eight children, six of whom are boys, to keep the good deacon's name alive at home. The brother of William, Deacou Ebenezer, was the father of Rev. Hiram R. Putnam, now at Derby, N. H., and of Harriet Putnam. One of Deacon Edward's sons, Elisha, moved away to Sutton, Mass., and thus Danvers claims some of the honor which belongs to the name of General Rufus Putnam, son of Elisha, and a native of that town.

No history of this town will be complete without a full account of the part which Danvers took in the settlement of the Northwest Territory. The earliest wagon-train, under command of Captain Haffield White, a Danvers man, started on its long journey from here. Invitations have just been received by descendants of these pioneers to join in the great centennial celebration, to take place at Marietta in 1888.

General Rufus Putnam, Washington's friend, a fa- mous engineer of the Revolution, presided at the convention in Boston, March 1, 1786, at which the Ohio Company was formed, and April 7, 1788, he laid out at Marietta the first permanent settlement in Ohio. Major Ezra Putnam, his cousin, also a grand- son of Deacon Edward, was another of the Ohio pioneers. Nearer home, another descendant of Dea- con Edward, Oliver Putnam, honored the family- name by establishing at Newburyport the Putnam Free School. Another descendant was the late la- mented Professor John N. Putnam, of Dartmouth College.

Both the second and third generations, and, indeed, at least one of the fourth generation of Putnams, played prominent parts, and some of them very unfor- tunate ones, in the terrible witchcraft tragedy which

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spread over this neighborhood. Nearly all of them were deluded. Howotherwise, when one of the worst afflict- ed of the "afflicted children " was the daughter of Sergeant Thomas Putnam, recorder of the parish, and oldest son of the richest man in the village? It struck the proud and powerful family to the centre, and they were not so superior to the unreason of the age as to see that spanking was much more needed than hanging. The sad, dark days of 1692! None who have grasped from the wonderful monograph of Mr. Upham anything of their reality will speak in jest of Salem witches. They were taken, most of them, from Danvers homes, homes still standing in our midst, and, condemned by blind terror in the name of Law, after mockeries of trial their necks were broken on the gibbet. The Putnams had a hand in this business, save one. Against the black back- ground there stands one grand stirring picture. It is of a young man twenty-two years of age standing at his farm-house door, with loaded firelock and saddled horse, ready to resist arrest or flee from overpowering force. It is Joseph Putnam, youngest of the sons of the first Thomas, who, iu the face of brothers and uncles, from the first denounced the proceedings through and through. Snch a course was almost sure death, and for six months gun and horse had been ready day and night. He had been married but a year to a young bride of less than seventeen, a granddaughter hoth of old John Porter and Major William Hathorne, and she was a worthy wife of a noble husband. It was this son who remained on his father's place, the one opposite the entrance to the hospital.

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 126

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed. n 85042884-1 Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1538

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed. n 85042884-1
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1538