History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 221

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1672

USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II > Part 221

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Alice Edmunds Ward died at Haverhill, March 24, 1680. John Ward, seventy-four years old and deeply stricken by the loss of his companion in exile, made his will on the 27th of May following. Said the aged minister :

" O Lord, into thy hands commit I my spirit. Credo languida fide, sed tamen fide. 1 give to my beloved son, Benja. Woodbridge, and to my beloved daughter, Mary, his wife, one parcell of land, containing thirty acres, more or less, lying att the norwest end of the towne of Haverhill, in N. England. . . I give to my beloved son, Nath1. Saltunstall, and to my beloved daughter Elizabeth, his wife, my house and land adjoining thereto, commonly called the house lott, lying in the town of Haverhill. . . . Lastly, 1 constitute and appoynt my beloved son, Saltonstall, the Executor of this, my last will and testament."

The instrument, however, was not apparently exe- cuted till a few months before his death.

" Signed and sealed in the presence of us,

" WILLIAM WHITE. " THOMAS EATON. " BENJA. ROLFE.

" Jan. 23, 92-3, owned before John White."

Rev. Benjamin Rolfe, of Newbury, the colleague and successor of Mr. Ward in the ministry, came to Haverhill in the latter part of 1689, having been chaplain to the forces sent to Falmouth, Me., from July 14 to November 14 in that year.

Cotton Mather loved to color his characters highly, for good or evil. But John Ward, of Haverhill, was undoubtedly a pious, prudent, exemplary clergyman. He retained the respect and affection of the people during his long pastorate of more than fifty years, and his learning, virtues and sacrifices became to them a standard of what a Christian minister should be and sutler, if need were. The town records, if read between the lines, would indicate that Mr. Ward was capable of certain demonstrations of high spirit in his old age, when arrangements were in progress about the settlement to be made for Mr. Rolfe. Cotton Mather would have regarded them as only the proper expression of dignity inhering in the priesthood. Mr. Rolfe, on the day of his ordination, could say of his deceased predecessor: " These four years past have been the happiest and most profitable to me of my whole life. I have had the counsels of wisdom and experience, the admonitions of a father and friend, and an example constantly before me of undissembled virtue, ardent piety and burning zeal."

1896

HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

And so we may well permit the author of the " Mag- nalin" to conclude his panegyric : "This diligent servant of the Lord Jesus Christ continued, under and against many temptations, watching over his flock at Haverhill more than thrice as long as Jacob continued with his unkle-yea, for as many years as there are Sabbaths in the year. On November 19, 1693, he preached an excellent sermon, entering the eighty-eighth year of his age, the only one that ever was, and perhaps ever will be, preached in this country at such an age. On December 27th he went off, bringing up the rear of our first generation." Had Cotton Mather personally known the patriarch of Haverhill ? He might easily have done so, for he was about thirty-one years of age when Mr. Ward died, and had been for more than eight years joint pastor with his father, Increase Mather, of the North Church in Boston.

Samuel Sewall, who, a few months before, had entered in his diary comforting news about Mr. Ward's health, received from "Son Saltonstall," at the Council chamber in Boston, now recorded, under date of " December 28, 1693-4, Mr. Ward, of Haver- hill, is buried, 87 years old."

That loyal and beloved son of Haverhill, John G. Whittier, in his "Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal," describes a supposed journey of his heroine with her relatives, the Rawsons, of Newbury, to make a visit at the house of Nathaniel Saltonstall in Haver- hill, where they are entertained in a manner indi- cating not only refined hospitality, but a condition of high comfort, if not affluence. There is a glimpse of the venerable minister, John Ward, Such a visit, in the world of actual events, must have been made earlier than 1679, if at all, for on the Ist of July in that year the unfortunate Rebecca Rawson was mar- ried in Boston to the pretended Sir Thomas Hale, and undertook her unfortunate voyage to England.

In 1679 the first meeting-house of Haverhill, a very small and rude building, was standing in the burial- ground now more pretentiously called Pentueket Cemetery. Mr. Ward and his son-in-law, Saltonstall, lived in the immediate vicinity and possibly in the same house. There was the estate, " commonly called the house-lott," which Mr. Ward gave to his daughter Elizabeth and her husband by will, and which had been granted to Mr. Ward by the town of Haverhill. For something like a century after, generous hospital- ity was administered there by his prosperous aud somewhat aristocratic descendants. The estate was long known as "The Buttonwoods," and is still minch admired for its sightliness and beauty of prospect. Between the burial-ground and "The Buttonwoods," on Eastern Avenue, there stands (1887) a small build- ing, which, it is suggested with a certain semblance of plausibility, was the dwelling-house of John Ward. It was doubtless erected either by him or his immedi- ate successors in the enjoyment of the estate. But it is certainly a very different structure from the homes

of the well-benefieed clergy of the Church of Eng- land, even two hundred and fifty years ago.

CHAPTER CXLIX.

HAVERHILL-(Continued).

What Scientists sny of the Geology of the Region-The Fauna and the Flora of Haverhill.

WHAT has been written by an eminent geologist of another locality may be aptly applied to Haverhill. Says Professor Shaler, of Harvard University, in the "Memorial History of Boston : "

" The topography, the soils and other physical conditions of the region about Boston depend, in a very intimate way, upon the geological his- tory of the district in which they lie. The physical history of the dis- triet is closely bound up with that of all Eastern New England. At successive times, and especially just before the human period, aod possi- bly during its first stages in this country, the land was deeply buried beneath a sheet of ice. During the last glacial period, and perhaps fre- gently in the recurrent ice times, of which we find traces in the record of the rocks, the ice sheet for long periods overtopped the highest of our existing hille, and ground away the rock-surface of the country as it crept onward to the sea. During the first stage of the last ice-period, this ire-sheet was certainly over two thousand feet thick in Eastern Massachusetts, and its front lay in the sea at least fifty miles to the east of Boston. At this time the glacial border stretched from New York to the far North, in an ice-wall that lay far to the eastward of the present shores, hiding all traces of the land beneath its muass.

" These successive ice-sheets rested on a surface of rock, already much varied by the metamorphism and dislocatioos to which it had been sub- jected. Owing to the fact that ice cuts more powerfully in the valleys than on the ridges, and more effectually on the soft than on the hard rocks, these ice-sheets curved this surface into an amazing variety of valleys, pits and depressione We get some idea of the irregularity of these rock-carvings from the fretted nature of the sen-coast over which the ice-sheets rode. When the last ice-sheet melted away, it left on the surface it had worn H layer of rubbish often a hundred feet or more ili depth. As its retreat was not H rout, but was made in a measured way, it often built long irregular walls of waste along the lices where ite march was delayed. .

" The lower part of the Merrimac Valley is a mountain trough that has been similarly carved out, and there are others traceable still further to the northward.

" After the ice lind lain for an unknown period over this region, cli- matal changes caused it to shrink away slowly and by stages, until it disappeared altogether. As it disappeared it left a very deep mass of waste, which was distributed in an irregular way over the service, ut some places much deeper than at others. At many points this depth ex- ceeded one hundred feet."

In a recent lecture delivered in Boston, in the Lowell Institute series, on the "Ice Age in North America," Prof. G. Frederick Wright is reported as saying in substance :

"In connection with the lines of drainage of New England, we can best iliseuss the Kantes. This is a Scotch word which is applied to the peculiur gravel ridges found in many regions and in New England in abundance. Their formation is a matter of much discussion. There are no largo barriers soparating many adjacent water-sheds in Now Eng- land to-day, and ice-barriers must have caused great changes in the river-beds and lines of drainage. But for ice-barriers the Merrimac would enter the Atlantic noar Boston at this time. The Kames often extend across valleys, following down the slope on one side and up tho other, and also have been ingeniously traced across lake bottoms.

" Beside the glacial terraces of our present stronm, we have in the so- called Kame system still further evidence of the existence of temporary lines of drainage, determined by ice-barriers during the continuance of

1897

HAVERHILL.

the glacial period. New England is gridironed by a system of gravel ridges deposited by glacial streams, to a great extent independent of the minor features of the present topography. In these and in the terminel moraines we study the skeleton of the continental ice-sheet as intelli- gently as the anatomist can etudy the skeleton of a dissected animal."

In writing of "Pre-historic . Andover," in Bailey's " History of North Andover," the same learned obser- ver (presumably) says :

"The marks of the glacial epoch io Andover are open to inspection before every man's door.

" A later glacial deposit (now known in scientific circles as Kames) is represented in Andover by such formations as 'Todian Ridge.' Kame is a Scottish word, meaning sharp ridge." 2 -

Hills about Great Pond (Lake Cochichawick) are not, as might be expected, rocky elevations, but are vast heaps of unstratified, compact clay, containing scratched pebbles and gravel, and littered over with angular boulders, transported from the north. These elevations have been named by Prof. Hitchcock, " Lenticular Hills," from their peculiar lens-shaped outline as seen upon the distant horizon. This series of hills continues to the northeast, as far as Portsmouth, N. H.

Dr. Hitchcock wrote in 1842 :

"Our moraines form ridges and hills of almost every possible shape. It is not common to find straight ridges for a considerable distance. But the most common and remarkable aspect assumed by these eleva- tions is that of a collection of tortuons ridges and rounded and even conical hills, with corresponding depressions between them. These de- pressioos are not valleys, which might have been produced by runoiug water, but were holes, not nufrequently occupied by a pond.

"In 1874 the writer ascertained that this helt of ridges extended through the whole length of the towy of Andover. Kames frequently pass over the leoticular hills where their height is less than two huo- dred feet, and descend into shallow depressions, crossing river valleys without ceremony. Still later investigations brought to light a parallel belt of gravel ridges reaching the sea at Beverly, and continuing north through Topsfield, Boxford and Haverhill, far into New Hampshire.

"In passing from Andover to New Brunswick, the traveller crosses more than thirty Kames.

" These are all, however, less clearly defined and more subject to iu- terruption than the Andover or Haverhill series.

" The most probable theory of the origin of these remarkable ridgee is that they are somewhat of the character of medial moraines and mark the conrsee of the surface flow of water during the last stages of the melting ice-slicet.

" The ice had doubtless been thousands of feet in depth, and when the material composing the Kames was deposited, still filled most of the de- pressions and lingered in such transverse valleys as that which the Mer- rimack follows in the lower part of its course. Superficial streams, Bwollen by the action of the summer sun, would at that period flow with great violence, during the hot season, and their course would be marked by vast accumulations of coarse gravel, which would in some places be lodged in the changel, in others spread out over masses of ice. Finally as the last masses of the lower stratum of ice melted, the gravel thereon would settle down from the ice (as dirt does from snow-drifts in the spring) into the irregular forms io which we find these ridges.

" ITagget's Pond (Audover) doubtless marks a depression where the ice lingered while a Kame-stream deposited in a temporary lake the sand- plaine in the South towards Tewksbury. Pomp's Pond was preserved from filling up hy a similar mass of ice. . . . The basin of Great Pond, in North Andover, was formed in a different manner. In this case the lake is hemmed io by lenticular hills, one of which partially dams its natural outlet. Lenticular hills have also io many places below North Andover determined the course of the Merrimack River."

A moraine is defined to be "A line of rock and gravel extending along the sides of separate glaciers, and along the middle part of glaciers formed by the union of one or more separate ones."

1193

Even the unlearned can apply these observations to that portion of the Merrimac Valley in which Haverhill is situated, and expecially to the lake region in the easterly part of the town, in the vicin- ity of Saltoustall and Kenoza.

It has been written by a competent observer :

"The changes in the fanna of the region immediately surrounding Boston, wrought by civilization, are merely such as would be expected to occur in the transformation of a forest wilderness into a thickly popu- lated district, namely, the extirpation of all the larger indigenous mammals aud birds, the partial extinction of many others, end the great reduction in numbers of nearly ull forms of animal life, both terrestrial and aquatic, as well se the introduction of various domesticated species and those universal pests of civilization, the house-rats and mice. The only other introduced species of importance are the European house- sparrow and a few species of noxions insects."

The early chroniclers enumerate among the animals of this region, the " Lyon " (catamount or panther), the bear, moose, deer, porcupines, raccoons, beaver, marten and otter. Wood said of the moose : " There be not many of these in Massachusetts Bay, but forty miles to the Northeast there be great store of them." All these animals mostly have disappeared, although rumors occasionally float down from New Hampshire of great sport in " coon hunts," aud abundance of deer are still to be found in certain seasons in the south- eastern counties of Massachusetts. "Smaller species occur in greatly reduced numbers, like the muskrat, mink, weasels, shrews, moles, squirrels and the vari- ous species of field mice."

The great auk was found along the Lower Merri- mac when the fathers came, and its bones occur in the Indian shell-heaps at Ipswich and along the coast. Swans and cranes are said to have been abundant. Of the former, Morton said, " there are of them in Merrimac River and in other parts of the country, great store at the season of the year." For- merly there were great quantities of sea-fowl, as far from the coast as Haverhill, and the cry of the bit- tern and other water birds is still to be heard about the lakes in the eastern part of the town. Geese, ducks and especially pigeons, were in vast profusion in the early day.

Of reptiles, a competent writer says, in reference to this vicinity :

"The antipathy to snakes, which so generally impels their destruc. tion at every opportunity, has left few of them in comparison with their former number. The rattlesnake, the only dangerone species, found now only at a few localities, was formerly much more generally dis- persed. The draining of ponds and marshy lande has greatly circum- scribed the haunts of frogs, salamanders and tortoises, which at many localities have become nearly extirpated."

These observations are certainly correct of Haver- hill in the main; but the voice of the batrachian has not yet wholly died out of the land.

The waters of the town were full of fish two centu- ries and a half ago. Codfish, bass and mackerel could be had at the mouth of the river. Morton said of the " Basse :"

"There are such maltitudes that I have Been stopped into the river (Merrimack) close adjining to my house with sand at one time, sc many as will load a ship of one hundred tonnes."

1898

HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

The same writer talks about mackerel "18 and 19 inches in length and seaven in breadth."

"There is a fish (by some called shadds, by some allizes) that at the spring of the yeare pass up the rivers to spawne in the ponds : and are taken in such mnaltitudes in every river, that hath a pond at the hed, that the inhabitants doung their grounds with them. You may see in one towneship a hundred acres together, set with these fish, every acre taking a thousand of them."

Another old writer says:

"In two tydes they have gotten one hundred thousand of these fish (meaning shad and alewives) in a wayre to catch fish."

This was written of the River Charles; but the same report might have been given of the Merrimack River at Haverhill. Was not East Haverhill known as " Shad Parish?" And was it not often stipulated in the indentures of apprentices, through the humane thoughtfulness of parents and guardians, that they should not be obliged to eat salmon oftener than six times a week? Wood wrote, from his observations as early as 1633 :

" Much sturgeon is taken on the banks of the Merrimack, twelve, four- teen, eighteen feet long, pickled and sent to England."

The Indians called the river, "Monomack," or the River of Sturgeons, The fall of the stream at Pen- tuckett (Haverhill), Pawtucket (Lowell), Namoskeag (Manchester) and l'ennycook (Concord) were favor- ite resorts at the fishing season for the different com- mnnities or tribes of Indians. From them the whites learned the use of fish for manure, or, as they ex- pressed it, to "fish corn."

The towns lower down the river seem to have monopolized the sturgeon fishery; but the curing and exportation of salmon and alewives was long a Haverhill industry. Before the days of bridges and dams, the falls of the Merrimac were famous for salmon, and its tributary streams for alewives. Hav- erhill, from its favorable situation at the head of sloop navigation and tide-water, and at the first falls of the river, was not only one of the earliest and latest engaged in the fisheries, but also the largest. In the year 1654 the town granted liberty to Stephen Kent "to place a wear in Little River, to catch ale- wives or any other fish." At the town-meeting of March 6, 1657, John Hutchins, of Newbury, was granted liberty to set a wear in the Merrimac, "at the little island above the town by the falls." He was to have the use of the island and the flats to dry his fish. In return, he was "to sell fish to the inhab- itants of the town for such pay as the town can make,"-that is, by way of barter for their products,- and was to supply them for their own use, at market prices, in preference to others, IIis fish-works were to be finished within two years.

Salmon were formerly sold habitually in the town for four or five cents a pound, and were often unsala- ble at that price in the height of the fishing season. These fish were of the finest; but as the streams and outlets of the ponds became obstructed, and their waters defiled, by dams, mills and bridges, the sup-

ply of salmon rapidly diminished till, at the present time, notwithstanding all the care of the State's fish commissioners, but few are taken in the Merri- mac, and those sadly inferior.

It is not thought that shad were much used as food in the early day, being principally employed for manure. The New Hampshire Gazette of May 13, 1760, an- nounced :

" Shad -One day last week was drawn by a net at one draft Two Thousand Five hundred and odd Shad Fish out of the River Merri- mack near Bedford in this Province. Thought remarkable by some people."

After mills began to be built, the town found it ne- cessary to adopt regulations, so that fish might have an opportunity of passing up the streams to spawn. In 1722 and for more than a hundred years after, per- sons were chosen at the town-meeting to see that the " fish conrses " were kept clear. In 1801 twelve fish wardens were chosen-the first officers under that name-for the purpose of regulating the fisheries and preventing the obstruction of the fish courses. In 1802 the town petitioned the General Court to regu- late the alewife fishery. They declare the present mode of catching the fish to be very destructive and that but little advantage accrues to the inhabitants from it. They asked that the exclusive right to the fisheries within its limits may be given to the town. Their petition was granted.

In 1809 the town sold the right to fish in its several streams at auction, and this continued the custom so long as the privilege was thought worth buying. In 1814 there were four privileges sold,-i. e., at Hale's Mills, at Thomas Duston's Meadow, at Enoch Brad- ley's mill-pond and a privilege near John Carleton, Jr.'s. The amount paid for all was fifty-four dollars. But the town-people were to be supplied for their own use at twenty-five cents per hundred. In 1815 the privileges sold for $91.35; but after that the value and bids began to dwindle.

The bodies of fresh water within the limits of Haverhill were originally filled with fish. The larg- est of them, for instance, once abounded with white and red perch, and pickerel of the largest size were frequently caught there. Of late years, as the popu- lation has much increased and extended itself from the centre, the angles, have grown more numerous and the fish have correspondingly diminished. But still, numerous boys range the shores in the season with extemporized fishing-rods and enjoy as unalloyed pleasure as their great-grandfathers, who, indeed, were mostly too busy to go fishing for fun. Shoemakers, if not skillful, are eager sportsmen, and the borders of Great Pond still shelter " Chowder " parties. In 1859, indeed, that fine body of water was formally re- christened by the name which, to the aboriginal visitors, indicated the abundance of its finny occu- pants :

" Lake of the Pickerel! let no more

The echoes answer back Great Pond,

g a

be tb ar

1899

HAVERHILL.

But, sweet Kenoza, from thy shore, And watching hills beyond :

And, Indian ghosts, if Buch there be, Who ply, unseen, their shadowy lines, Call back the dear old name to thee, As with the voice of pines.

The paths we trod when careless boys With manhood'e ehodden feet we trace."

It was a happy thought to invite the "barefoot boy," whose dreams of beauty had been so often in- dulged along its margin, to act as sponsor and im- press the moral of the place and hour.

" And, Beauty's priestess, thou shalt teach The truth, so dimly understood, That He who made thee fair, for each And All designeth good."

The four lakes of Haverhill have exercised an in- calculable influence for good upon the health and taste of its inhabitants.

As the hand traces this line (December 10, 1887), joyous cries attract the ear, and the eye involuntari- ly wanders over the adjoining sheet of water, where flying figures prove that the schoolboys have not for- gotten how to improve the Saturday holiday by " go- ing up to Plug Pond, skating."

Game-birds abounded in the Haverhill woods when the Puritans took possession. The wild turkey was in great abundance; but in 1672 one wrote: "The English and the Indians having now so destroyed the breed, so that 'tis very rare to meet with a Turkie in the woods." However that may have been, a young soldier in camp, under General Washington, at Cam- bridge, who afterwards was a famous Haverhill mer- chant, entered in his diary, under date of January 26, 1776, "We bought a wild Turcy that weight 174 lbs., and had it for supper."

The earliest historian of Haverhill wrote: "In these woods (of Great Pond) the coy partridge is found, and various other kinds of game, which affords a pleasant amusement and healthy exercise to those who are skilled in gunnery ; " and, in later days, to some whom the widest charity could hardly comprise in that class. There are, in the great cities, some who delight to recall the days when they shot woodcock in the thickets about Plug Pond.

In the East Parish, game has thriven as well as poetry. Indeed, there can scarcely be imagined a re- gion better adapted to be the haunt of the sportsman and the poet alike than that which may be called " Whittier's Country." There are the old homestead aud "Country Bridge," and the "Countess' Grave," and many another spot which the reader of the most beautiful of American idyls loves to recognize. From the river to Brandy Brow and the Newton road there are unfrequented woodland paths, groves pathetic with the melancholy sough of the pine trees ; great, lonesome hills; streams, sometimes running clear and smiling in the open forest and again hidden in im- penetrable thickets. In the more desolate days of

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 221

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1672

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1672