History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 139

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 139

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The school-house stood for a number of years in melancholy emptiness, and was finally moved to the Plains, where it was used first as a shoe manufactory, and was then changed to a fine-looking dwelling, as innocent of anything like neighborhood quarrels as is its respected owner and occupant, Deacon Eben Peabody, of the Maple Street Church.

It was during the ephemeral existence of this No. 8, that the annexation of territory, east of Porter's River and Frost Fish Brook, from Beverly to Danvers took place. This new territory was, February 1, 1858, established as School-district No. 9. But at the March meeting of 1859, there being no longer a District No. 8, it was voted to change the new terri- tory from No. 9 to No. 8, and thus without further change the districts have since remained : No. 1, Plains ; 2, Port ; 3, Putnamville; 4, Centre ; 5, Bea- ver Brook ; 6, Collin's House; 7, Tapleyville; 8, East Danvers.

In 1795 the total appropriation made by the town for schools was four hundred dollars; the propor- tion received by each district is interesting as showing their relative numerical importance : No. 1, $111.11; 2, 850.90; 5, $46.92; 3, $43.95 ; 7, $43.90; 6, $43.85; 4, $33.33; 8, $15.50; 9, $10.64.

In 1810 the appropriation had increased to $1250; 1820, $1800; 1830, $2500; 1835, $3000; 1840, $3500; 1845, $3 for cach scholar between four and sixteen years ; 1855, $5.50 for each scholar, four to sixteen, $1 of which amount for each scholar was devoted to high schools,-estimated, 2,400 scholars.

After South Danvers was set off, the first appro- priation of Danvers, 1856, for schools was $3800 for common schools, $1200 for the Holten High School. In 1865, $5000 for common, $1300 for high; in 1875, $10,000 for common, $2100 for high; in 1880, $10,- 000 for common, $1750 for high; in 1887, $15,600 in all. The income on the Massachusetts School Fund and the dog tax have been added, and are not in- cluded in these figures.

At the annual election of 1880, next after the pass- age of the law enabling women to vote for school com- mittee, twenty-seven Danvers women availed them- selves of the right. Mrs. Andrew Nichols was the first woman to vote.

At the last annual meeting, 1887, the town voted

an appropriation for evening schools. The first and only previous instance of similar action was in 1850, when some provision was made for evening schools for the poor from the State school fund.

The first school-house at the Plains was brought from Middleton the first part of this century by priv- ate enterprise, for the use of primary scholars. Older scholars went to New Mills until the Plains district was established, in 1816. The first district sehool- house was a small building erected under contract by Stephen Whipple, carpenter, near the spot occupied hy the bakery.

The present grammar-school building at the Port was finished in 1849, and was dedicated July 25th, with considerable ceremony. There were addresses by the presiding officer, S. P. Fowler, by Charles Northend, then a teacher in Salem, by J. W. Proctor, Rev. Messrs. Appleton, Fletcher and Braman, Mr. Rust, commissioner ofschools for New Hampshire, and "Mr. R. Putnam, an experienced teacher of Salem." The immediate predecessor of this building was the " old brick school," situated on a part of the same lot but much nearer the street. Hon. James D. Black has furnished the writer with some reminiscences of the brick house: "With my brothers and sisters my school days were spent in the district school-house at the Port till we attained the age of fifteen or sixteen years. Andrew Wallace taught most of the time of my earlier school days. I recall among my school- mates Henry and Augustus Fowler; Jeremiah and Timothy Page; John, William and Parker B. Fran- cis; Samuel and Josiah Pender; Warren M. and John Jacobs ; William B. and Augustus Read; Wil- liam and Joseph Lamson ; Benjamin, Charles and William B. Chaplin; William Cheever, Edward Stimpson, William Endicott, George Kent, Philip Smith and Seth Stetson. Our schools were not graded ; all ages attended the same school, from children in A B C to those in studies now confined to the high school. Quills were used in writing, steel pens came later. Most of Mr. Wallace's pupils made good penmen. He was succeeded by Richard Phil- lips, of Topsfield."

There was another smaller building called the "green door school-house," near the present railroad station, which was in use some eighty years ago, and was long ago moved by Peter Wait's father to Ash Street, where it has since been used as a dwelling ; and of still carlier date was a school-house, close by the First Baptist Meeting-house.

The very first schoolmaster at the New Mills was Caleb Clark, who kept his school in the house of farmer Porter. His writing desks were boards laid upon barrels. Of his discipline, Deacon Fowler has written :

" He was in the habit of whittling a shingle in school and for small offences compelling the disobedient to pile the whittlings in the middle of the room ; when this was accomplished ho would kick them over, to be picked up again. He would sometimes require them to watch a wire, enspended in the room, and inform him when a fly lighted on it. For

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greater offences be would sometimes attempt to frighten them into obe- dience by putting his shoulder under the mantel piece and threaten to throw the house down upon them. It is said of the worthy pedagogue, when deeply engaged in a mathematical problem that he became so ab- sorbed in the work as to be wholly unconscious of anything transpiring around him, and the boys taking advantage of this habit would creep out of school and skate and slide by the hour together."

At a meeting held in District No. 3, Putnamville, July 6, 1812, a vote was passed to build a new school- house after the plan of the brick house at the New Mills and also "voted to purchase a piece of land of Rufus and Simeon Putnam in this district, being on the northwest corner of the school-house pasture, so called, adjoining the road and Zadoc Wilkins land, and the same land on which the old school-house stood before the present school-house was built."

The " present school-house " was built in 1787, under this vote passed at a meeting of "School ward No. 3," at the house of Zerubable Porter, namely : " voted that there be a school-house erected for the education of children on or near the spot where the old one formerly stood if the ground could be obtained."

Both the original building, the building of 1787, and the brick building of 1812 stood farther up the Topsfield road than the present Putnamville school- house, namely, at the head of North Street.

The second one of these buildings is still in useful existence, having been bought and moved, some half a century ago, by Perley Tapley, to become part and parcel of the little village which bears his name. It forms a portion of the house next west of the late residence of Gilbert Tapley. Among those who taught in this building were Master Andrews, a famous teacher, college educated, Jonathan and Benja- min Porter, Thomas Savage, Charles Wheeler, Charles Kimball, probably Clarissa Endicott, and surely Esther Forsaith, to secure whom Jonathan Porter went up to Chester, N. H. It was in this building, too, that Universalist meetings were first held. Elias Putnam taught the first winter school in the brick house in 1812-13, and his youngest son, Arthur, tanght the last in 1851-52. Between them were, among others, Philemon Putnam, Oliver Woodbury, Edwin Josselyn; ladies, Clarissa Endicott (Porter), Nancy Putnam (Boardman), Sarah Rea (Bradstreet), Sally Shillaber.

The old school-house which preceded the present one in No. 5, the Village, both being in the line of succession to that first school-house of Parson Green, has been thus described by a former pupil: "The old brown house stood on a small barren, unfenced, un- attractive triangle at the corner of Centre and Day- ton Streets. There were three rows of benches on each side of the house, one side for the girls, the other for the boys. At one end there was a large open fire-place, and opposite it stood the master's lofty desk, to which he ascended by two or three steps. The windows were so high that scholars could not look out from the seats, and outsiders could not look in without climbing. No paint or ornament of

any kind was indulged in. My earliest recollection goes back about sixty years, when Miss Edith Swi- nerton (Mrs. Aaron Tapley) was the teacher.

"The only other lady teachers to whom I went were Hannah and Betsey Putnam. They were sis- ters, 'solemn sisters.' They always taught together. Though very unlike in temper, they were devotedly attached to each other, and would consent to no other arrangement, no matter if they together received no more than enough for one, as was generally the case. Each had a chair and table, and sat facing each other. Both were very pious. Betsey read the Bible ; Hannah opened with prayer. Betsey heard the les- son. She was of a very sweet and gentle spirit, and much beloved by her scholars. Hannah was more fiery and quick, and a terror to evil-doers. They al- ways spoke with punctilious accuracy and dignity. A little girl was sent one day into the clothes-room to get the teacher's hose. Not knowing what was meant, and yet not daring to ask, the messenger brought in, perhaps, a shawl. 'I sent you for my hose, not my shawl.' Again the timid messenger re- tired and brought in a bonnet, when the exasperated teacher, in a sort of desperation, spoke, in unmistak- able terms, ' Well, if I must so speak, bring in my stockings.'

"Betsey's way of showing her regard for a favorite pupil was by calling him out occasionally to read for her entertainment 'The Bears and the Bees,' 'The Beggar's Petition,' 'Procrastination' or some other choice selection from the ' English Reader.' Han- nah's attentions were commonly bestowed in a some- what different way when correction was needed. A reverend gentleman recalls an occasion of this sort, when his young form bent, at an ungraceful angle, over Hannah's knee, and the room reverberated more or less with the emphatic correction applied to that portion of a boy's body by nature designed to receive it. Their prized 'rewards of merit' consisted of lit- tle oblong bits of paper with yellow borders, and mottoes written thereon in their own hands. On Saturdays hymns and Bible verses .were repeated as a sort of special exercise."

This present summer of 1887 a number of the sur- vivors of the pupils of these estimable sisters have taken steps to erect a memorial over their hitherto unmarked graves in Wadsworth Cemetery.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

DANVERS-(Continued).

VILLAGES OF THE TOWN.

DANVERS is notably a town of many villages. There are in all eight railroad stations, not counting the junction, within its limits and five post-offices.

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

The first post-offices in Danvers, it may here be men- tioned, were established as the result of a town-meet- ing held in 1828, when Dr. Nichols, Jonathan Shove, Nathaniel Putnam and Samuel and John Preston were chosen " to devise or digest any scheme relative to the Establishment of Post-offices in this Town." The action of the meeting is thus recorded :

"Voted, That there be but one post-office in this Town.

"Voted, That there be one more post-office added in this Town.

"Voted, To reconsider the last, 65 votes for and 65 votes against, the moderator decided the vote."

The committee's report was, however, adopted, in which it was recommended that the town have two post-offices, one between the old South Meeting- house and Pool's Bridge, to be called the South Dan- vers Post-office, and one at the New Mills, to be called the North Danvers Post-office, and this action was communicated to the Postmaster-General. For many years this office at New Mills or Danversport re- mained the only one within the present limits of the town. Mail addressed "Danvers " now comes to the Plains. The other offices are Danvers Centre, Tap- leyville and Asylum. The latter, established chiefly for the convenience of the hospital, accommodates that locality in the midst of which is the General Putnam homestead, the home of the Prestons, Nich- ols, Verrys and other well-known names, commonly spoken of as "Number Four." While there is no central village there, the community has always maintained a distinctive identity, and has borne an enviable reputation for the character of its inhabit- ants. The name Danvers Centre is misleading; its only appropriateness is in the way of reminiscence and lies in the fact that the locality to which it is applied is the seat of the church which was the relig- ious and political center, not only of Salem Village, but, for many years after the incorporation of the town, of all the northern portion thereof.

It is often called " the Village," a name altogether better, inasmuch as it is suggestive of the historie asso- ciations with which the locality abounds. Though by the destruction of the Mudge shoe-factory the Village no longer has any manufacturing business of its own, its people are full of life and public spirit. They keep up their end in public affairs, turn out to cau- euses and town-meetings, and exercise a strong in- fluence usually on the safe and conservative side of things. The history of this community, most inter- esting of all the villages of the town, has been given somewhat in the sketch of the early settlers and in that of its church.

Forty or fifty years ago, perhaps more, Putnam- ville, the name given to school district number three, extending from Porter's Hill to the Topsfield and Wenham lines, was the centre of much wealth and culture ; of its people, Rev. Dr. A. P. Putnam has written in a series of very interesting letters. Con- cerning the Plains, the Port and Tapleyville, some- thing remains to be said here.

THE PLAINS .- About the time Elder Sharpe sold his grant, which included nearly all of this present principal village of the town, to John Porter, the General Court formally laid out, as a great highway connecting the lower and upper settlements of the Colony, "the Ipswich Road." It crossed Farmer Porter's lands at their greatest width,-entering them at some point on Ash Street, and continuing through Elm and Conant Streets to Frost-fish Brook,-and it often served as a fixed boundary in the many subse- quent divisions of the Porter estate. Almost exactly midway between the limits of "Porter's Plains," so these level lands were soon called, as measured on the Ipswich Road, another road or path was at a very early date opened northward, which, in due course, became the highway to Topsfield along the line of the present Maple and Locust Streets. The point at which the Topsfield road left the Ipswich road is the present " Square."

This meeting of roads had no immediate effect in the formation of anything like a village. As late as 1692 there was but one house in all the region, and that was the original Porter homestead, near the Unitarian Church. More than a full century had passed, when, in 1755, another road, High Street, was pushed down to the embryo settlement at New Mills and across the river to Salem, and even then the Square was scarcely more than a country cross-roads.

At the head of High Street there is standing a well preserved gambrel-roofed house, which was built about the time the street was laid out. It is the homestead of a family which, though not numer- ous, has been honorably prominent in the town's his- tory. About the middle of the last century, an An- drews, then living on the Shillaber farm at Putnam- ville, wanted some bricks, and had to go to Medford for them. Andrews told the brickmaker that there was excellent clay in Danvers, and asked him to send some one to commence working it. "Here's my son," the brickmaker said, "just turned twenty-one, he can go if he wants to." The son came, boarded with Andrews, married his daughter, started the brick business here and built the house just referred to. His name was Jeremiah Page. He died June 8, 1806, in his eighty-fifth year, and is always spoken of as Colonel Jeremiah. At the breaking out of the Revolution he took a very active part, and commanded a company of militia at the fight on the retreat from Lexington, and throughout his useful life he was one of the leaders in town affairs. He had twelve children, three of whom were by a second marriage. His old- est son, Samuel, went with his father to respond to the Lexington alarm, and was where bullets were thickest. Subsequently he joined Washington's army about Boston, with a captain's commission. He was at the crossing of the Delaware, at White Plains and Monmouth, and shared the sufferings of Valley Forge. He was with Wayne at the storming of Stony Point, and to insure success to the bayonet

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charge his company were ordered to remove the flints from their muskets. After the war he became a successful merchant at New Mills, Danversport. In the following sketch of that village, which, for a half century atter the Revolution, was the commercial centre of the town, Captain Page must be again mentioned, and as a matter of convenience, some further reference to the family will there be made. Capt. Page died September 2, 1814, aged sixty-onc, and with his father is buried in the High Street Cemetery. He held many public offices, and repre- sented the town many years in the General Court.

At the beginning of this century there were but twelve dwellings in all the Plains, including two taverns, one store, one blacksmith's shop, one butch- ery and two brick yards. Until 1816 there was no public school here, and children had to go to New Mills. That year, on the basis of sixteen houses and one hundred and thirty inhabitants, a new school district was formed, as told elsewhere.

Several years before this, however, an effort had been made to educate the smaller children near home, and Deacon Gideon Putnam, Ezra Batchelder and Timothy Putnam bought asmall school-house in Mid- dleton and moved it here. Ezra Batchelder's house stood where the Maple Street School-honse stands ; "Uncle Timmy's" stood where his grandson, Otis F. Putnam, now lives. Deacon Gideon kept tavern and store at Richards' Corner. Deacon Gideon was the father of the courtly Judge Putnam, as has been said, and it is related that when the son was home on a vacation from college, and was obliged to play host to a stranger, he was chagrined at the meagre fare-it was probably washing-day-and paid the price of the meal to the guest "for picking the bones." In 1820 there were but twenty-one houses from the square along the whole line of the Centre horse-car route. The only house on the easterly side of Maple Street between the store at the corner of Conant Street and the Perry farm was the Captain Eben Putnam's house, which was once a part of the mansion on Folly Hill.

The butchery stood on Conant Street beyond Al- fred Trask's residence, and was carried on by James Sleeper, who lived in a three-story brick building, which stood on the corner of Maple and Elm Streets, but projected far into the present widened location of Maple Street. This brick building was where the bank was first located. An "ell" fronting on Elm Street was long since moved some distance west, and is now owned by H. M. Merrill. In this " ell " Porter Kettelle did a small store-keeping business. The principal storekeepers then were Jonas Warren, who had bought out the Putnam's, but did not keep tavern, and "Johnny Perley," at Perley's Corner. Great was the rivalry of these two, and great was the business they did. For fair and liberal dealing Uncle Johnny's reputation suffered somewhat in comparison with Mr. Warren's. The former was a

bachelor, of modest and soft speech, but sharp to keep the half cents on his side of the bargain. Amus- ing stories are told of the way war was waged be- tween the two corners. The amount of goods sold and bartered was enormous. Heavy teams from far back in the country came in loaded with produce, as many as forty in a single day, and generally they went no farther than Danvers Plains, but exchanged their produce here for a long supply of fish, salt, molasses and other staples, including, of course, New England rum. Clerks were sometimes busy till midnight loading for the return trips.

The old hotel on the site of the present one was owned by Ebenezer Berry, who bought it of Jethro and Timothy Putnam in 1804. Mr. Berry came from Andover, and married a daughter of Captain Levi Pres- ton. His two children,-Eben G. Berry and Mrs. Sperry are living, a sketch and portrait of the former appearing in subsequent pages. The building was sold at auction in three sections, 1838, and these were removed to make room for the erection of the pres- ent hotel. One of these sections has long been the home of Benjamin Henderson on Elm Street; a second sojourned for a while on Cherry Street, and was finally settled near the soap factory, while the hall was removed to a lot on Maple Street, owned by Amos Brown, was there occupied by Amos Proctor Perley as a dry-goods store, and burned in the fire of 1845. This hall had been originally a part of the mansion on Folly Hill, referred to in the opening lines of this sketch. Its floor was painted to repre- sent mosaic work and its finish was thorough and costly. It was so annexed to the hotel that its length ran parallel to High Street, and the nses to which it was put were many and various. Here the Danvers militia congregated, with their burnished flint-locks and the paraphernalia of destruction, awaiting officers' inspection. Here the North Dan- vers Lyceum met, as chronicled where other literary societies are spoken of. Here the selectmen and as- sessors met. Here was the lodge-room of Jordan Lodge of Masons, and here, by no means last to be mentioned, were held those dancing parties at the mention of which old eyes kindle, and limbs, no longer sprightly, beat time to the echoes of the darkey Harry's fiddle, which linger still in their ears.

At both Warreu's and Perley's corners grocery bus- iness is still carried on. Both are decidedly " old stands." Samuel Preston succeeded " Uncle Johnny" and kept store awhile in connection with the shoe business, then Amos Proctor Perley took it, and sub- sequently formed a partnership with his brother-in- law, Moses J. Currier, under the name of Perley and Currier. Mr. Currier survives ; Mr. Perley, known and respected far and wide as "Uncle Proc," a man of sterling integrity, died a few years ago ; his son, Charles N. Perley, present post-master, carries on the store.

Mr. Warren sold out his property at the Plains in

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

1841, and thenceforth carried on a wholesale business at the Port. Frederick Perley was the purchaser, perhaps a nominal one, for he very soon re-conveyed the whole to Elias Putnam. There were nine acres in all, on which Mr. Putnam built his shoe factory and the house in which he died, and through which le laid out Park Street. One acre on the corner, in- cluding the old store buildings, he sold for three thousand dollars to Daniel Richards. Mr. Richards was a native of Atkinson, N. H., who came here as a clerk to Mr. Warren in 1828, two months before he was twenty-one. " It was hard work to be a grocery clerk then,"-these are his own words-"but I weighed one hundred and seventy-five pounds and was pretty strong."

In 1833 the temperance-reform movement was working. The old store-keepers were unwilling to be " driven " to give up the time-honored custom of sell- ing spirits and, as a consequence, Mr. Richards start- ed a new "temperance store" in a building which stood where Beal and Abbott's store now is, and was well supported.

After Mr. Richards' purchase of the old corner, he sold the buildings and built the present store. A part of the old store-tavern is the Dougherty house on School Street, and another part is the Abbott house, corner of Elm and Park Streets. Mr. Rich- ards died last November, 1886, in his eightieth year. He was for thirty years president of the National Bank, was a life trustee of Peabody Institute, and, in addition to the grocery business which is still carried on by his sons, he bought the Fowler mill property at Liberty Bridge, and built the grist-mill, now used for grinding rubber, using as many as one hundred thous- and bushels of grain a year.

The open level land at the Plains made it a favor- ite place for military musters. In 1809 the brigade of General Eben Goodale formed a line nearly a mile long, from Perley's corner to the old house owned by Augustus Fowler. Twenty-five hundred troops, in- fantry, cavalry, bands, Governor Christopher Gore, a big dinner and a sham fight,-it was something of a day.

In 1813, during the war, another brigade of three thousand men mustered on the same ground, and Lindall Hill was covered with spectators, who never- theless took themselves out of the way when a fort, which had been constructed on the hill, was stormed and burned, The Plains, too, was the place of cele- bration on "'Lection Day," the last Wednesday in May, when the Legislature used to first mect. "Who does not remember," wrote Dr. Osgood in his little pamphlet, "how thousands upon thousands congre- gated on Danvers Plains to see the horses run, the mountebanks tumble, the fandango whirl around and the drinking of egg-pop, punch, and something a little stronger ? And then what lots of 'lection eake, buns, and molasses ginger-bread, rolling marbles and nine-pins, running and wrestling !" A colored man,

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 139

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