USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. I > Part 11
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In May, 1655, the tract of land on the Merri- mack, hitherto known by the Indian name of Shaw- shine,1 was made a town and called Billerica. It had been granted to Cambridge as early as June, 1641, on condition of erecting a village within three years, and again, in 1643-44, the grant was con- firmed without any condition of settlement, in order to prevent the intended removal from Cambridge of Shepard and his people. English settlement began at Shawshine about 1653. Rev. Samuel Whiting was the first ordained pastor. The town subsequently parted with portions of its territory to Tewksbury, Bedford, Carlisle, and Lowell.
This year also Chelmsford became a town, having been granted in 1653 to inhabitants of Woburn and Concord. Its Indian name was Pawtucket. Rev. John Fiske, author of a curious tract entitled Watering of the Plant in Christ's Garden ; or, A Short Catechism for the Entrance of Our Chelms- ford Children, was the first minister. Westford and a part of Lowell were included in Old Chelmsford.
1 Said to mean, in the Indian vocabulary, it is smooth, glossy.
Whipping Quakers at the Cart's Tail.
BRARY
015
NOJE
79
THIRTY YEARS OF PEACE.
Groton was also founded in May of this year, having been granted to Deane Winthrop, son of Governor Winthrop, and others. The tract was called by the Indians Petapawag. Its English name is presumed to commemorate the seat of the Winthrops in old England. Parts of Dunstable, Westford, Littleton, Harvard, Shirley, Ayer, and Pepperell are taken from this ancient township, for which eight miles square were granted in order that the settlers might have room enough for a "comfortable plantation." Four years later, four or five families had taken up their abode at Groton. The first minister was the Rev. John Miller; the second, Rev. Samuel Willard, afterwards pastor of the South Church in Boston, a man emi- nent for piety and learning. Willard stands next to the Mathers in the number of his printed works.
The next year, 1660, still another was added to the number of Middlesex towns by the incorpora- tion of Marlborough. The Indians called the place Okommakamesit, from the hill where they planted ; it was known to the English by the name of Whipsufferage. The Indian village, which was one of those under Eliot's care, was first settled, six thousand acres having been granted, in 1657, and located the next year. A few English had also obtained grants. The plantation, being on the trail to the Connecticut, assumed high mili- tary importance in subsequent years.
The restoration of Charles II. occurred in 1660. In July Colonels Edward Whalley and William Goffe, two of the judges of Charles I., arrived at Boston, where they were courteonsly received by Governor Endicott and welcomed by the principal inhabitants. They fixed their residence at Cam- bridge until news of the Restoration reached New England, when, considering it no longer expedient to remain where not only their personal safety was in peril but their presence a canse of embarrass- ment to the authorities, they went to New Haven. Neither Goffe nor Whalley was included in the Act of Indemnity, and only a few days after their departure an order arrived to apprehend them. Their steadfast friend, Captain Daniel Gookin of Cambridge, is believed to have aided their escape.
King Charles gave early attention to the affairs of Massachusetts. The complaints of those toward whom the rulers had exercised such unpardonable tyranny had reached the throne. A summons was forthwith sent to the colony to appear, by its agents, and answer to these complaints. The requisition cansed great agitation in the General
Court, and it was with great difficulty persons of sufficient standing could be found willing to under- take so unpromising a commission. Simon Brad- street and Rev. John Norton were at length sent to England.
The intercession of powerful friends saved the charter ; but the king commanded that the colony laws should be reviewed, and that all such as were contrary to the laws of England should be ex- punged. He also required that the oath of alle- giance should be administered, and that the ad- ministration of justice should hereafter be in the king's name. What was perhaps more grievous than all else, he commanded that full liberty should be given to all who desired to use the Book of Common Prayer. Though the dose was indeed bitter, there was no alternative but to submit. Long ago, from the very founding of the colony, the rulers had left the name of the king out of judicial processes, had shaped their legislation on their grand idea of sovereignty. Now, the fact that they were subjects thrust itself most inconven- iently, most inopportunely, into view. Woburn refused to publish the king's proclamation, and there being little disposition to punish the offending officers, only a faint show of doing so was made.
In order to secure obedience to his commands, Charles, in 1664, sent over commissioners who were empowered to hear and determine all matters of complaint and to see his behests executed. They were thwarted at every step. Compliance with the king's commands was yielded to save appearances, but recognize the commissioners' au- thority as being superior to their charter privileges the stubborn magistrates would not. They went even farther, and petitioned the king to recall his commis- sioners, whose authority they at last openly defied.
The death of Governor Endicott took place while the commissioners were in New England. During their sojourn the silenced Anabaptists plucked up courage to attempt the formation of a church at Charlestown, only to be persecuted anew. In 1668 the pions Wilson died, in his seventy- ninth year. The following year witnessed the organization at Charlestown of the Third Church ' of Boston, now known as the Old South.
During the years 1673 and 1674 the towns of Dunstable and Sherburne, now Sherborn, received legal recognition from the General Court, the for- mer in October of the year first named, the latter in May of the last.
The original grant of Old Dunstable included
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
within its boundaries Tyngsborough, parts of Dunstable and Pepperell, in Massachusetts, and in New Hampshire the town of Litchfield, parts of Hudson, Londonderry, and Pelham, nearly all of Nashua and Hollis, and parts of Amherst, Merri- mack, Brookline, and Milford. Its area was not much less than two hundred square miles, sufficient for a good-sized county. Through this broad do- main flowed the beautiful Merrimack, while rivers of less volume coursed along its northern and southern boundary. The incorporation of Dunstable goes farther back than that of any town in New Hamp- shire west of the Merrimack. Its scattered farms were on the extreme verge of English settlement, which year by year had steadily encroached upon the wilds of the north.
This extensive tract continued to be considered and treated as a part of Middlesex until the dis- puted boundary between Massachusetts and New Hampshire was in 1740 definitely fixed. Indeed, Massachusetts had incorporated two new towns, Nottingham and Litchfield, within the limits of ancient Dunstable, before the decision swept away all she claimed now lying north of the state line. In its inception, settlement, and character Old Dunstable was the legitimate offspring of Massa- chusetts and of Middlesex, many of whose citizens were among her original settlers. The town of Tyngsborongh derived its name from Jonathan Tyng, one of the early inhabitants of that part of Dunstable which now bears his name.
X. KING PHILIP'S WAR.
MIDDLESEX had now attained a high degree of In celerity of movement, ability to encounter and prosperity. Nearly half a century had elapsed resist hardship, craftiness in planning surprises, and in general knowledge of the country, they far surpassed the whites, whose tactics compelled them to act in a few large bodies, while the numerous small parties of the enemy spread devastation among the scattered frontier settlements, and by their appearance in some unexpected quarter con- founded their assailants and their plans. Fortu- nately for them, perhaps, Philip was unable to accomplish his grand design of an Indian con- federacy against the English to the extent he meditated. since the landing at Charlestown. The handful of original settlements were already old; a new generation, native to the soil, was replacing the first comers ; in population, resources, and influence the old shire had steadily advanced, and with that progress as constantly maintained her high charac- ter as one of the soundest and stanchest constitu- ents of the commonwealth. But at this period the colony was called upon to meet a new danger, and to encounter reverses in which Middlesex bore a heavy share.
What is known as Philip's War may be regarded as a most determined attempt to destroy the Eng- lish, made by a chieftain able to grasp the idea that either they or his own nation and race must disappear. The hauglity Philip had been made to feel that he was a mere vassal of the English. His unconquerable spirit revolted at the yoke. His endeavor to unite the New England nations in one desperate effort to free themselves from this galling subjection was the work of a great mind. The English had themselves furnished the idea of combination. They had confederated against the Indians, why not the Indians against the English? Moreover, the natives were no longer the despicable foes the English had found them forty years before. They had firearms, and knew how to use them.
The war broke out in June, 1675. It was at first chiefly confined to Plymouth Colony. In the first encounters the English everywhere met with defeat. They became more and more alive to the danger which menaced them. Extraordinary levies were made. Gookin's Praying Indians were called upon, and furnished a contingent; notwithstanding which, such was the universal distrust of their race, that those Indians were soon forbidden to go from their villages unless accompanied by an English- man. A treacherous peace was hastily patched np with the Narragansetts. Uncas, the Mohegan chief, sent sixty warriors. By the end of a disastrous summer the two colonies of Plymouth and Massa- chusetts had about six hundred fighting men in the field.
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KING PHILIP'S WAR.
In this alarming conjuncture a flash of intelli- gence illuminated the councils of the English. The commissioners of the United Colonies, sitting at Boston in November, determined on a winter cam- paign. A thousand men, in addition to those already under arms, were immediately levied, and as the bad faith of the Narragansetts rendered it no longer doubtful that they must be treated as enemies, a force of which Governor Josiah Wins- low1 of Plymouth was made commander was or- ganized to march against them. On the 10th of December the Massachusetts contingent, five hun- dred strong, consisting of seven companies of foot and one of horse, marched from Dedham for the appointed rendezvous, under command of that stout soldier, Major Samuel Appleton. By the 18th they had joined the forces of the other colonies. A deep snow impeded the march towards the Narragansett stronghold, which was situated on an island in the midst of a deep morass. Here the Narragansetts had gathered the flower of their nation. Their rude but effective work was built of palisades surrounded by a thick abatis of brush- wood. From the breastwork to the ground out- side a tree had been so felled as to form the only communication, but this way was completely en- filaded by the fire of a block-house. Over this bridge of death the English charged. A murderous fire mowed them down, but they pressed on, gained the parapet, and after a sanguinary struggle pos- sessed themselves of the fort. Seventy of the Eng- lish were slain and a hundred and fifty wounded. The loss of the Narragansetts is vaguely estimated at a thousand, exclusive of the unknown number who subsequently perished of cold and starvation. The English lost an unusual number of officers. Three Massachusetts and three Connecticut cap- tains were killed while bravely leading on their men to the assault; Captain Bradford of Plymouth was severely wounded, and Captain Gorham of Barnstable died of fever contracted in the expe- dition. Of the total number of casualties the Massachusetts troops sustained nearly one half.
In Massachusetts Colony not only the first on- slaught, but nearly the whole weight of hostilities, fell upon Middlesex County. In 1667 the planta- tion of Quonshapage was made a town by the name of Mendon, and joined to Middlesex. The same year all the farms abont Chelmsford were included in her jurisdiction. Lancaster had been rated in
1 Winslow was the first native-horn governor of any New Eng- land colony.
Middlesex since 1653 ; as were also Hatfield and Westfield 1 at the beginning of the war. Mid- dlesex thus extended her jurisdiction beyond the Connecticut, and was, as we have said, the scene of Philip's operations in the Bay Colony.
While the war was progressing in Philip's own country, the Nipmucks began to show numistakable symptoms of rebellion. About the middle of July Mendon was suddenly attacked while the men were at work in the fields. Six or seven are said by Hubbard to have been killed. The other inhabi- tants, being thus awakened to the danger of living in the heart of the enemy's country, deserted their houses, which were afterwards burned to ashes.
The English continued to hunt the Narragan- setts, with their horse, through the winter, the de- feated Indians flying before them. The English believed their enemies too badly crippled for ag- gressive war, and the Indians, the better to conceal their real designs, pretended to listen to overtures of peace. It soon became apparent that the Narragansetts were retiring into that part of the Nipmuck country, so called, lying between the Eng- lish settlements on the Connecticut and the fron- tier towns of Middlesex. This manœuvre enabled them to isolate those settlements; it gave them a secure vantage-ground from which they might strike either ; and it gave them the active aid of the tribes inhabiting this wild and romantic region through which only a single road then passed. The Nipmuck Indians immediately made common canse with the Narragansetts.
Our forces pursued the fugitive Narragansetts into the woods lying between Marlborough and Brookfield, when, instead of forming strong can- tonments within striking distance of the enemy, they returned to Boston early in February for supplies.
This fatal blunder was immediately followed by a series of crushing disasters. Having no longer a strong, well-equipped, movable force between them and their destined prey, the savages began the work of wiping out the more exposed settlements with terrible earnestness and ferocity. On the 1st of February Netus, a Nipmuck captain, with a few followers, attacked the house of Thomas Eames, in what was called Framingham plantation. Eames's
1 Hampshire County, as constituted in 1662, included the towns of Springfield, Northampton, and Hadley. IIadley was divided into two towns in 1670, that on the west side of the Connectieut taking the name of Hatfield. Worcester County was not incorporated until April, 1731, when Lancaster and Men- don were comprised within its limits.
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
house was seven miles from Old Sudbury. The Indians made their descent in the night, while Eames was absent ; burnt house, barns, and cattle, and killed or carried into captivity his whole family of ten persons : four children subsequently returned.
On the 10th, only five days after our troops marched, the enemy fell upon Lancaster,1 then a village of fifty or sixty families. Fifty people were killed or taken, and nearly the whole town laid in ashes. On the 12th Abraham and Isaac Shepherd were killed near Nashobah, in Concord, while threshing in a barn. On the 21st Philip burst into Medfield, killing twenty inhabitants and buru- ing half the town. He then, after meeting a re- pulse in attacking a garrison in Sherburne, resumed his march southward, leaving his Nipmuck allies to continue the war in this quarter, while he should strike the English of the Old Colony, and thus divide the forces that were moving against himself and his confederates.
Groton and Sudbury had been attacked on the 10th of March, at which time several of the English lost their lives. On the same day some barns at Bil- lerica were fired. On the 13th the attack on Groton was renewed and about forty houses consumed.
The catastrophe at Lancaster had caused the in- habitants of Groton to take refuge in five garrisons,2 four of which stood near enough to each other for mutual protection. The fifth was nearly a mile distant from the others. The inhabitants had driven their cattle into the fields adjoining the gar- risons, and were awaiting, with anxious forebodings, the onslaught which the near approach of the enemy hourly threatened. While the village was envel- oped in the darkness of night four hundred war- riors stole silently into it, and placed themselves in ambush near the unsuspecting garrisons. In the morning the Indians, by a clever stratagem, obtained possession of one of the fonr garrisons. With the first volley the torch was applied to the abandoned houses. Soon the entire village was in flames ; while the yells of the savages, the bellowing of cattle, the incessant discharges of musketry, com- bined to render the scene an appalling one to the besieged. The Indians remained in the town until
1 Mendon, Hatfield, Westfield, and Lancaster were considered to be in Middlesex. Mendon had been assaulted the previous summer.
2 These garrisons were in most cases only ordinary dwelling- houses, selerted with regard to their position and capability for defence. They were usually surrounded by a palisade ; the walls were loopholed, aud in time of wur a few soldiers were assigned to them.
the following morning, when, finding it impos- sible to dislodge the heroic defenders, they re- tired. Groton was a picture of desolation. Forty dwellings were in ashes. The meeting-house had not escaped the conflagration. While it was blaz- ing, the incendiaries shouted their taunts in the hearing of Willard, the beloved pastor, whose house was garrisoned. " What will you do for a house to pray in now ?" they howled in demo- miacal glee. The town being thus destroyed, the houseless, impoverished inhabitants sadly abandoned its smouldering ruins.
On the 26th of March, 1676,1 the red devils rushed down from their lairs upon Marlborough. It was the Sabbath. The people were gathered together in their meeting-house, when the appall- ing cry of "Indians!" startled them from their devotions. Fortunately the alarm was seasonable enough to allow the congregation to gain the shel- ter of their garrisons, from which they beheld the conflagration of the town. The minister's was the first house fired ; the meeting-house went next. Everything was destroyed. This plantation was soon after deserted.
A daring deed of arms, performed by the men of Sudbury, is preserved in the old chronicles of Mather and Hubbard. After the destruction of Marlborough the Indians bivouacked for the night within half a mile of the town. While huddled around their camp-fires a gallant little band of forty, led by Lieutenant Richard Jacobs, surprised them. The English poured in volley upon volley with destructive effect, killing and wounding a number nearly equal to their own force, without losing a man. This bold attack probably saved Sudbury for the time. Netus, who had led the attack in February on Eames, was shot dead 'in this affair.
The exposed situation of Chelmsford rendered it an early object of the enemy's attention. John Monoco, who destroyed Groton, boasted there that he would next burn Chelmsford, Concord, Water- town, Cambridge, Charlestown, Roxbury, and Bos- ton. A small garrison had been kept in Chelms- ford since the previous August. In the beginning of April several deserted houses here, belonging to Edward Colburn and Samuel Varnum, were burned, and two sons of the latter killed in the attempt to escape across the river.
1 The reader is reminded that according to the Old Style the year ended on the 24th of March. After Philip's War it became the custom to designate the time between January Ist and March 25th by a double date, as 1675 - 76.
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KING PHILIP'S WAR.
On the 10th of April Woburn was visited by a small war-party of the enemy. They killed Mrs. Hannah Richardson and two children, one of them a babe only a week old. It would be difficult to exaggerate the consternation which this succession of tragedies spread throughout the length and breadth of the county.
The war was by no means confined to the seetion to which our narration is more particularly directed. It was fiercely raging among the western settle- ments, in the Old Colony, and in Connecticut, with results generally unfavorable to the English arms. Town after town had been destroyed, hundreds of the best and bravest soldiers had been killed or disabled, numbers of women and children led into captivity, and an amount of property, enormous for the time, swept from the face of the earth. In this exigeney it was deemed expedient to employ the Praying Indians, as Eliot's converts were called, who were then under the supervision of General Daniel Gookin of Cambridge. As these Indians are nearly connected with the county, their share in the events of Philip's War becomes a part of its history.
The seven villages of the Praying Indians were Natick, of which we have given a brief account, Magunkaqnog, formerly in Hopkinton, Nashobah, formerly in Concord, now in Littleton, Wamesit, now chiefly in Lowell, Okommakamesit, in Marl- borough, Hassanamesit, in Grafton, and Punka- pog, in Stoughton.1 These villages had grown up under the fostering care of Eliot and Gookin, and by the aid of the Society for Propagating the Gos- pel were become prosperous and happy. In a military view they formed a chain of outposts on the exposed line of English settlement towards the Nipmuck country. The villages numbered three or four hundred fighting men, fully equal in mar- tial spirit and prowess to Philip's Wampanoags or Canonchet's Narragansetts.
Had these natural allies been treated with the confidence their loyalty merited, many of the dis- asters with which the Middlesex frontier was over- whelmed would doubtless have been averted. Properly armed and efficiently supported, their villages would have constituted a barrier through which the enemy would not have forced his way with impunity. Marlborough, Sudbury, and Gro- ton might have been saved. A different policy,
1 Besides these there were seven villages, newly formed in the Nipmnek country, lying chiefly within what is now Worcester County. They should not be confonnded with the old Praying Towns, as they had been tampered with by Philip. The whole number of Praying Indians in the colony was computed at 1,100.
however, prevailed at Boston. The people in gen- eral regarded the Christian Indians with evil eyes, and the authorities shared in the prevailing distrust.1 At first these unoffending and unsuspicious people were ordered, on peril of their lives, to remain in their villages. In August, 1675, a number of the. Marlborough village were seized and sent to Bos- ton to answer a groundless charge ; and presently, by a strange fatuity, that village was broken up. In October a troop of horse was despatched to Wamesit with order to bring away all of that vil- lage, which command was finally modified so as to allow the old men, women, and children, who were already on the road to Boston, to return to their village ; but in the following November, in conse- quence of some depredations by hostile Indians in the neighborhood, a brutal attack was made upon the Wamesit people, by which five women and children were wounded, and a boy slain. The poor distressed objects of this cruel attack imme- diately fled to the woods. Besides the Wamesit men, those of Natick and of the other villages were hurried to Boston, and then to Deer Island, in the harbor, where they passed the winter. The whole number collected on the island was about five hun- dred. Here Eliot and Gookin found them suffer- ing, but bearing their trials with the patience and fortitude characteristic of their race.
The importunity of Eliot and Gookin, above-all the need of men, in this most alarming erisis of the war, at last induced the governor and council to enroll a company from among the Indians at Deer Island, which was put under command of Captain Samuel Hunting of Charlestown, and at once ordered into active service at Sudbury. This com- pany, recruited to the number of eighty, rendered invaluable services during the remainder of the war. General Gookin claims that this small band captured and slew upwards of four hundred of the enemy. The General Court subsequently gave its permission to the Praying Indians to return to their villages, but they never recovered from the blow inflicted upon them. Their story is one which the historian would gladly pass by in silence, did not truth and justice demand its impartial rela- tion.
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