USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. I > Part 59
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This was the embargo proclaimed by President Jefferson in 1807, which arrested American com- merce, and put an end to all schemes like those in which Royal Makepeace had been a leader. The bubble which had been expanding so glitteringly at the mouth of the Charles River burst, and the prospects of Cambridgeport as a " port " faded away. The War of 1812 gave another blow to
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CAMBRIDGE.
the prosperity of both Cambridgeport and East Cambridge, and the character of each was materi- ally affected if not permanently changed.
These drawbacks to the outward prosperity of the town had their parallel in the important divi- sive changes which were taking place in the relig- ious organization of the town. To the two parishes, the First Congregational and Christ, Episcopal, which had occupied the field jointly since immedi- ately before the Revolution, was added amicably, in 1808, a third, the Cambridgeport Parish, the constitution of which was one of the natural inci- dents of the rapid development of that part of the town, and the growth of which was in the Unita- rian direction. The meeting-house corporation here was formed in 1805, the parish in 1808, and the church in 1809. An event of a very different sort was the rending of the First Parish, after a united and harmonious life of nearly two centuries, by theological causes. Under the ministry of the Rev. Abiel Holmes, who had succeeded to the pas- torate in 1792, the differences between the Trini- tarians and Unitarians took such decided form and direction as to provoke controversy, and lead to long and unhappy ecclesiastical litigation. By 1815 the issue was fairly joined, and in 1829, after two councils had delivered conflicting judgments, the majority of the parisli, acting with a minority of the church, excluded Mr. Holmes and his ad- herents from the meeting-house ; whereupon Mr. Holmes and a majority of the church, including the deacons, with a minority of the old parish, which organized itself anew under the name of thie Shepard Congregational Society, transferred their services to the court-house until a new sanc- tuary could be built, namely, that on the northwest corner of Holyoke and Mount Auburn streets ; which was completed and dedicated in 1831.
The First Church in Cambridge having pre- served its organization intact from 1636 to the present time, and being the mother of a large and honorable family around her, seems entitled to the record of the succession of her pastors here : Thomas Shepard, 1636-1649; Jonathan Mitchell, 1650-1668; Urian Oakes, 1671-1681; Nathan- iel Gookin, 1682-1692 ; William Brattle, 1696- 1717; Nathaniel Appleton, 1717-1784; Timothy Hilliard, 1783-1790; Abiel Holmes, 1792-1831; Nehemiah Adams, 1829-1834; John A. Albro, 1835-1965 ; Alexander McKenzie (present pas- tor), 1967-
The First Parish, retaining in connection with
it the minority of the church, remained in pos- session of the meeting-house in the Square, and Rev. William Newell was called to the pastorate, which he held till 1868, Rev. F. G. Peabody suc- ceeding to the position in 1874. The old meeting- house was replaced by the present house on the corner of Church Street in 1833.
'The First Baptist Church in Cambridge was or- ganized in the Port in 1817; followed by the Second Baptist in East Cambridge in 1827; the Old Cambridge Baptist in 1844; the North Cam- bridge Baptist in 1854 ; the Broadway Baptist, in the Port, in 1865 ; and the Charles River Baptist, also in the Port, in 1876. Of the Methodist churches or societies, the First, in East Cambridge, was organized in 1818; the Harvard Street, Cam- bridgeport, in, or about, 1841; the Third, in Old Cambridge, in 1868; the Cottage Street, in Cam- bridgeport, in 1871. Three Universalist societies have been successively organized : the First, in the Port, in 1822; the Second, in East Cambridge, in 1823; the Third, in North Cambridge, in 1851 .. The oldest of the Roman Catholic parishes is that of St. John's, East Cambridge, whose church was built in 1841; after which followed St. Peter's, Old Cambridge, 1849 ; St. Mary's, Cambridgeport, 1866; St. Paul's, Old Cambridge, 1874; and the Church of the Sacred Heart, East Cambridge, in the same year.
With the growth of these denominations, that of the others earlier planted in the town has fully kept pace. Of the Orthodox Congregational churches, the First Evangelical, Cambridgeport, came into being in 1827, largely under the agency of Dr. Lyman Beecher, then pastor of the Hanover Street Church, Boston ; the Second Evangelical, also in the Port, in 1842; the Evangelical, East Cam- bridge, now defunct, in 1842; the North Avenue Congregational, Nortlı Cambridge, in 1857; the Stearns Chapel Church, in the Port, now the Pil- grim Church, in 1865; and the Chapel Congre- gational, formed out of a residue of the Pilgrim Church, after the latter's removal to a new house of worship on Magazine Street, in 1872. Christ Churchi, for eighty years, was the only Episcopal parish in the town, and its material fortunes re- mained in a sadly dilapidated condition for a long time after the war; but in the early part of the present century it was revived. As offshoots from it, St. Peter's parislı, Cambridgeport, was organized in 1842; and St. James's, North Cambridge, in 1864; while St. John's Memorial Chapel, Old
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ILISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
Cambridge, built for the newly founded Episcopal Theological School, was consecrated in 1869; and since 1875 the Church of the Ascension has carried on a useful mission work at East Cambridge.
Of Congregational societies holding the Unita- rian faith, the Third, East Cambridge, was incor- porated in 1827 : and the Lee Street, Cambridge- port, in 1816.
The erection of Cambridge into a city was the result of a curious chain of circumstances, origi- nating in the treatment of the Common, and dating back to 1823. The Common, which originally extended to Linnæan Street, and which was not reduced within the boundary of Waterhouse Street until 1724, had continued to be the property of the " Proprietors of Common Lands " until 1769, when it was granted to the town on certain terms and conditions for public use forever, though the vested rights of the town were not completed till 1828. As early as 1823 a movement was under way for the embellishment of the Common, and in 1830 legislative authority was obtained for that purpose ; but to the detail of fencing in the area a strenuous opposition was manifested. Upon this issue a town-meeting was called, and the old court- house proving too strait for the numbers that con- vened, adjournment was had to the meeting-house. This was in October, 1830. In course of time the enclosing of the Common was effected, but the very natural objections of some of the meeting-house proprietors to the use of their edifice for stormy town-meetings led the way to a project for a new town-house, and one was built at the corner of Harvard and Norfolk streets in Cambridgeport. This was a wooden structure, and was occupied from 1832 to 1833, in which latter year it was burned.
Such a removal of the municipal centre as this was, of course, of great material advantage to Cam- bridgeport, and secondarily so to East Cambridge; and accordingly, in 1812, a petition was started in Old Cambridge asking of the legislature a division of the town, and an incorporation of all that part lying west of Lee Street into a separate munici- pality. Long agitation ensued over this plan, in the midst of which the prevailing sentiment of the town, which was opposed to division, conceived of a city charter as the one measure to efface sec- tional feeling and to bind all parts of the commu- nity into a homogeneous and harmonious whole. The advocates of division, whose efforts were ener- getic and repeated, opposed a city charter ; but the
scheme won the favor of a majority of the voters, and in 1846 a charter was granted and accepted. From that time to the present Cambridge has had mayors as follows : James D. Green, 1846, 1847, 1853, 1860, 1861; Sidney Willard, 1848-1850; George Stevens, 1851, 1852 ; Abraham Edwards, 1854; Zebina L. Raymond, 1855, 1864; John Sargent, 1856-1859; Charles T. Russell, 1861, 1862; George C. Richardson, 1863; J. Warren Merrill, 1865, 1866; Ezra Parmenter, 1867; Charles H. Saunders, 1868, 1869; Hamlin R. Harding, 1870, 1871; Henry O. Houghton, 1872; Isaac Bradford, 1873-1876; Frank A. Allen, 1877; Samuel L. Montague, 1878, 1879.
The topographical suggestions of the propriety of a town division were much stronger thirty or forty years ago than they are now. At that time East Cambridge particularly, and Cambridgeport in large measure, were isolated villages, or precincts, the former surrounded by uninhabitable and des- olate marshes, the latter separated from Old Cain- bridge by a wide tract of unimproved land, corre- sponding in general terms with Dana Hill. Here, on what was known as the Old Field and the Small-Lot Hill of primitive " Newtowne," the con- spicuous landmark through the early part of the present century was the mansion of Chief Jus- tice Dana, destroyed by fire in 1839. From his windows Judge Dana looked out over broad pos- sessions occupying much of the territory south of Main Street and east of Putnam Avenue, an invest- ment which gave him great interest in the develop- ment of that part of the town until his death in 1811. He was the founder of the Dana Library, and the hill on which he lived, previously known as Butler's Hill, took the name it now bears fron him. After the burning of the mansion he had occupied, the tract around was cut up by his heirs into streets and laid out in lots, and a few years witnessed the closing up by population of the gap that had hitherto existed between Old Cambridge and Cambridgeport. Similar improvements in later years have done much to bring East Cambridge into closer visible connection with the other parts of the city, which, though still spread over a wide area, and unavoidably accented by Nature, is never- theless steadily acquiring compactness and unity.
Patriotic as Cambridge was in the Revolution, her national sympathies were sluggish in 1812; but when the War of the Rebellion burst, she sprang to arms with old-time fervor. She organ- ized " the first company of militia in the United
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CAMBRIDGE.
States which was enlisted expressly for the defence of the Government ; " 1 and it is an interesting cir- cumstance that the founder of this company, James P. Richardson, whose appeal to his fellow-citizens bears date January 5, 1861, was a great-grandson of Moses Richardson, one of the slain of the 19th of April, 1775. "Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children." Captain Richardson reported with his company, 95 strong, at the State House on the 17th of April, 1861, and on the expiration of its three-months term of service, nearly all its members re-enlisted. In all, Cambridge furnished to the army of the United States during the Rebel- lion 4,135 men, and to the navy 453, or about one sixth of its population ; while the memory of the 30 officers and the 310 non-commissioned officers and enlisted men who laid down their lives in the service is perpetuated in an imposing monument, by the brothers Cobb, erected on the Common by the city, and dedicated July 13, 1870.
The last fifty years have witnessed rapid im- provement in what may be called the personnel of Cambridge, conducing greatly to the comfort and ease of living, in many respects, but so increasing its cost by taxation as to add an almost counter- balancing burden. Of old, " municipal affairs were very economically administered. The school- houses and other public buildings were few and inexpensive; the streets and sidewalks were neg- lected and unlighted; thorough sewerage was un- known ; the members of the fire department were volunteers ; and the police consisted of one consta- ble in each of the three principal villages." In 1830 the town tax was only at the rate of $2.26 on $1,000, the polls being 1,514, and the valua- tion $3,061,570. Ten years later, the rate had advanced only to $ 2.77. But the march of " imn- provement " had set in, and a beginning of debt had been made; and the "advance " along both lines of development has been rapid ever since. The summer of 1846 saw the organization of a police department, and in the summer of 1847 the volunteer fire companies existing under the old town organization were superseded by a paid fire department. The Gaslight Company was incor- porated in 1852, and the first order for the lighting of the streets with gas was taken in December of that year. The Cambridge Water-Works Com- pany, incorporated in May, 1852, was organized in May, 1553, and began at that time the laying of its pipes ; but the city purchased the works in 1865.
The building of the first sewer, by assessment, was under the town, in 1845; the ordinance in rela- tion to common sewers, establishing a sewer sys- tem, was passed in 1852. In 1853 the Cambridge Railroad Company was incorporated for the con- struction of a horse-railroad to Boston, and in 1854 its track was located ; the Union Railway Company being incorporated in 1855 for the pur- pose of operating the road. The first paving was done in 1856, at the easterly end of Cambridge Street, East Cambridge; the first laying of brick sidewalks under assessment was in 1869.1
The meeting-house, the court-house, the town- pump, and the spreading elm are not the only features of the old Harvard Square which have dis- appeared from view. In 1812 a market-house was built on the westerly side of the Square, some thirty-four feet long and twenty-five feet wide, consisting of a roof supported by posts, and ap- parently more or less open at the sides, and pro- vided with the usual appurtenances of such an establishment. This building stood till 1830, when it was removed as a cumberer of the ground.
The first and second poor-houses of the town, which had stood respectively on the corner of Brighton and South streets till 1786, and on the corner of North Avenue and Cedar streets till 1818, were replaced in the latter year by a brick building erected expressly for the purpose on Nor- folk Street, opposite Worcester, Cambridgeport, which was burned in 1836, one of the inmates perishing in the flames. A new establishment was then provided on Charles River, between Western Avenue and River Street, which continued in use till 1851, when it was exchanged for the present imposing almshouse, off North Avenue, in the northwestern part of the town. The Riverside property was first sold to Little & Brown for a book-factory, and then passed to H. O. Houghton & Co., and the present extensive and elaborate printing-house known as the Riverside Press now marks the spot.
The prestige of the old " printery " of Stephen Daye's and Samuel Green's time has been more than preserved by the similar establishments of the modern city. The University Press and Wilson's Press, now united, and the Riverside Press, have constituted a distinguished trio of printing-houses and binderies, not only vying with the mammoth
1 For these data the author is under obligations to Justin A. Jacobs, City Clerk of Cambridge since 1857.
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
workshops of the metropolis in the amount of their productions, but turning out work which, for qual- ity, it is safe to say, has not been surpassed any- where in the country. More of the best books have probably been printed and bound (though not published) during the century by these Cam- bridge establishments than by all the rest of the American printing-houses put together. This state- ment may sound extravagant, but it cannot be far from the truth. Journalism, which is the right hand of the press, at least in America, has had a measurably flourishing career ; no less than four weekly newspapers being regularly published in the city in 1879. These, in the order of their age, are the Cambridge Chronicle, the Cambridge Press, the Cambridge Tribune, and the Cambridge News.
But " printeries," though representing perhaps the leading industry of the city, represent only one. If it were not for the college, and if the Riverside Press had never risen out of the old poor-house, Cambridge might almost deserve the name of a city of manufactures. There are of its products which have gone out into all the earth, and the fame of some of them is likely to endure to the end of the world. At Fresh Pond, in the early years of the present century, began the harvesting of ice, not for home consumption alone, but for exportation to foreign lands. On the shaded shores of this pretty lakelet the Fresh Pond Hotel had been already built by one of those Wyeths whose pos- sessions lay all around ; but it was Frederick Tudor who first launched his capital in the ice traffic. This was about 1805; and, though the venture was accounted a mad one at first, it has resulted in a permanent business of great impor- tance and large profits. Fresh Pond ice now has a reputation around the globe. By 1815 the manufacture of glass was fairly under way at East Cambridge, and the eruption of soap-factories had begun. These last-named institutions, and several immense establishments for the slaughter- ing of swine and the rendering of their carcasses into provisions and various articles of commerce, have grown into a prominent feature of the eastern precincts of the city. Along the water-fronts in Cambridgeport have sprung up a group of rolling- mills, foundries, boiler-works, and machine-shops ; and around the cemeteries at the western end of the town are to be found the granite and marble cut- ting yards incident to every large place of sepulture. The manufacture of cigars, and especially of plain
and fancy crackers for export, is carried on at sev- eral establishments of wide reputation ; the works of two of the largest makers of cabinet organs in the country are located in the Port ; and the telescopes constructed by Alvan Clark & Sons, whose shops and observatories constitute a picturesque group of buildings at the extreme southerly point of Cambridgeport, near the Brookline bridge, have a fame unsurpassed by any instruments in the world. Many of the largest, finest, and most effective tele- scopes now in use have come from here.
With all this general public improvement the college, of course, has kept full pace. The period of nearly half a century which has elapsed since the bi-centennial celebration of the founding of the institution has been marked by rapid enlargement of grounds, funds, faculty, buildings, system of instruction, appliances, and students, - keeping Harvard, where it has always been, at the head of all institutions of learning in the country. This more recent evolution has been most decided and obvious under the administration of President Eliot, who has proved himself, by intelligence, energy, and skill, to be amply worthy of a place in that distinguished line of great scholars and executants in which he is the immediate figure. The entire succession of presidents may properly be given here : -
Henry Dunster 1640-1654 | Samuel Langdon1774- 1780 Charles Chauncy
1654-1672
Joseph Willard 1781 - 1804 Samuel Webber 1806-1810 John Thornton
Leonard Hoar 1672-1675
Urian Oakes 1675-1682
John Rogers 1682 - 1684
Inerease Mather 1685 - 1701
Edward Everett 1846 - 1849
Samuel Willard 1701 -1707 Jared Sparks 1849-1853
John Leverett 1708-1724
James Walker 1853-1860
Benjamin Wads- worth 1725-1737
Cornelius Con-
way Felton 1860-1862
Edward Holyoke 1737-1769
Thomas Hill 1862-1868
Charles William
Samuel Locke 1770-1773
Eliot 1868
The most important of the changes in the organic life of the university have been the disso- lution of the governmental tie with the common- wealth, which was effected in 1865, and the sub- stantial bestowment of control upon the whole body of the alumni, exclusive of the five youngest classes, which, since 1866, has elected the board of overseers. The university lands in Cambridge comprise about sixty acres, of which some fifteen constitute the college "yard." The principal buildings have grown to number about thirty,
Kirkland 1810-1828
Josiah Quincy 1829-1845
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CAMBRIDGE.
and their names and dates of erection are as fol- lows :-
Massachusetts
1718 Observatory 1846-1851
President Wadsworth's
Lawrenee Scientific 1848
House
1726
Boylston
1857
Holden Chapel
1744
Appleton Chapel
1858
Hollis
1763
Museum of Compara-
Harvard
1765
tive Zoology
1859
Stoughton 1S05 Old Gymnasium 1860
Botanic Garden 1810-1871
Gray
IS63
Holworthy
1812
Bussey Institution
University
1815
[Jamaica Plain]
1870
Divinity
1826
Thayer
1870
Dane
1832
Holyoke
1871
Gore
1841
Weld
1872
College House
1846 Matthews 1872
Medical College
Memorial Hall 1874- 1876
[Boston ]
1846 Peabody Museum 1877
In addition to the foregoing a new gymnasium is on the point of completion, and a new hall (Sever) has been begun as these sheets pass through the
Louis Agassiz.
press. Beck Hall (1876) and Felton Hall (1877) are college dormitories, adjacent to the main group, but built as an investment by private parties, and not belonging to the college. The Peabody Mu- seum and the Museum of Comparative Zoology are sections of one grand building, the completion of which is a matter of the future. Gore Hall, the college library, received an important extension in 1876 - 77.
The total number of students in the university has come to range in the vicinity of 1,300, varying
slightly from year to year, of whom fully 800 are in the college proper ; while during the existence of the institution it has conferred upwards of 13,000 degrees. Its faculty of instruction and administration embraces about one hundred and fifty persons, and its scholarships and other bene- ficiary funds alone have grown to yield something like $ 40,000 a year.
A very important movement in connection with the college in the winter of 1878-79 was the perfecting of a plan, under private auspiccs, and involving no responsibility on the part of the government whatever, whereby the privileges of systematic instruction by members of the col- lege faculty are to be secured to women. A full university course of study will be provided, with every advantage and appliance possible under the circumstances ; and some form of certificate, suita- bly authorized and authenticated, will assure to those pursuing the course the credit of the honors they may have won.
The architectural emphasis which the college has given to the town has had its effect upon the buildings around, especially the church buildings, and among those, notably, that of the First Con- gregational Church, fronting the Washington Elin, and that of the First Baptist Church, on Main Street, near the junction of Harvard; but most conspicuously, perhaps, in the group of buildings of the Episcopal Theological School, on Brattle Street, just west of Mason. This flourishing in- stitution was founded in 1867, by the endowment of Benjamin T. Reed of Boston; and its Reed Hall, its beautiful Memorial Chapel, built by the late Robert M. Mason in 1869, its Lawrence Hall, the gift of Amos A. Lawrence in 1873, its Refectory, the gift of John A. Burnham, and the Dean's resi- dence, form an academic cluster of rare attractive- ness. Additional buildings are to be erected as needed.
The old town "burying-place," fronting the Common, possesses an historic interest second to that of few American graveyards ; but Cambridge's Mount Auburn, one of the loveliest of rural ceme- teries, was the pioneer in this country of all such cities of the dead. In 1811 the town opened the burial-ground in Cambridgeport, between Broad- way and Norfolk and Harvard streets, since appro- priated for a public square ; but the idea of Mount Auburn originated outside of Cambridge, that is to say, with Dr. Jacob Bigelow of Boston, and was carried into effect by the Massachusetts Horticul-
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
tural Society. It was solemnly consecrated in 1831. The similar Cambridge Cemetery, near by, was opened in 1854.
The present organization of the public schools in all its details dates only from 1868, when a
| superintendent of schools was for the first time appointed ; bnt the town was provided with a school committee as early as 1795, and in 1834 the district system was changed to one of graded schools by wards, a change which, it is claimed,
Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge.
Cambridge was the first town in the state to intro- duce. The thirteen school-houses of 1845, cost- ing $ 32,646.67 of public money, have multiplied into twenty-six, the cost of which has been up- wards of $ 500,000. These schools accommodate from 7,500 to 8,000 pupils, employ nearly 200 teachers, and are operated at a total annual expense of something like $ 200,000.
The population of Cambridge in 1875 was 47,838 ; the number of polls, 11,983; the valua- tion, $ 66,623,415 ; the city debt, $ 4,676,360.73; the city tax for the year, $ 1,060,396.52, and the rate $ 17 per $1,000. The debt, a considerable portion of which is a water loan, has since been somewhat reduced ; but it remains large enough to entail in itself an annual cost of nearly $ 350,000, or more than $5 on each $1,000 of the city valnation.
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