USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. I > Part 6
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44
HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
children sought for their dumb playmates, or gazed with wondering eyes upon some painted and be- wildered savage. It was like an encampment of gypsies, or a long picnic, or the inhabitants of a moderate-sized town made suddenly homeless, - this thousand or more English men and women sleeping under the stars, snatching their slender mcals where, when, and how they mnight, with neither wall, moat, nor gate for a bulwark or a defence, but only trust in God and in each other to guard and keep them.1
So passed the first weeks, until at length the peninsula presented the appearance of a settlement. True, there was neither turret nor spire, but some order began to come out of the chaos. And now, having leisure to think of organization, the first step taken was the gathering of a church, as has been related in the preceding pages.
But the house in which they met was not made with hands. The Great House which afterwards became their place of meeting must have been given up to the sick and helpless, and, remembering that
" The groves were God's first temples,"
they worshipped abroad, under the spreading branches of a tree, where, says Roger Clap, “ I have heard Mr. Wilson and Mr. Phillips preach many a good sermon."
This step, so pregnant of results, not only to this plantation but to all New England, being consummated, the colonists were suddenly called upon to meet an unforeseen peril. By some newly arrived ships news was received of hostile prepara- tions by the French for a descent upon the weak New England colonies. This intelligence created such alarm at Charlestown that it was hastily decided to disperse the colonists among several plantations rather than attempt the building of a fortified town in any one place, as was first resolved upon. Some confusion exists as to the order in which the new settlements were made ; but that at Watertown scems entitled to precedence, as it was in existence before the last week of August. Cer- tainly none other, that at Dorchester excepted, had been begun at this time.
Sir Richard Saltonstall was the founder of the
1 "Samuel Green, the famous printer of Cambridge, arrived with Governor Winthrop in 1630. Ile came in the same ship with the Ilon. Thomas Dudley, Esq., and used to tell his children that upon their first coming ashore both he and several others were for some time glad to lodge in an empty eask to shelter them from the weather, for want of housing." - Boston News- Letter, January 4, 1733.
settlement at Watertown. Johnson says that, hav- ing brought over cattle and servants, he wintered there. This charming and attractive location seems to have favorably impressed the colonists from the first. The Dorchester men had, as we have seen, prepared the way, and it was doubtless this situ- ation to which Dudley refers when he says the second party sent out from Salem found a place they liked better three leagues up Charles River; for Dr. Fuller of Plymouth writes from Charles- town on the 28th of June to Governor Bradford, " The gentlemen here lately come over are resolved to sit down at the head of Charles River ; and they of Mattapan purpose to go and plant with them." Hubbard does not know why the name of Water- town was given to this plantation. Farmer sup- poses it to have been derived from a small place in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where some of the ancestors of Sir Richard Saltoustall originated. Others refer it to the natural features of the place, which the scarcity of good water at Charlestown brought prominently into view.
The two settlements of Charlestown and Water- town being commenced, a curious incident, one which has given rise to much speculation, occurred. For reasons which have not been satisfactorily explained, an election for the principal officers of government was held on the 23d of August, at which Winthrop was chosen governor, Dudley deputy, and Simon Bradstreet secretary. Edward Johnson is the authority for this statement, and he says the court of election was held on board the Arbella; but according to the colony records the court held August 23d was the Court of Assistants, which had no power under the charter to elect officers. That authority was exclusively in the General Court, and the records do not mention the meeting of a General Court until September. Winthrop simply mentions under the first date that a court was held. His silence as to any elec- tion has led Prince and others to doubt Johnson's statement : 1 yet considering that the charter pre- scribed holding an election on the last Wednesday in Easter term yearly, and that the colonists were then at sea, his account is consistent with the view that this lapse might have been held to affect the validity of the charter. Hence an election. may have occurred; but as the day could not be that fixed by law the act was omitted from the record.
1 The History of New England, or, as it is usually quoted, Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's Saviour, was printed in London in 1654. Its authorship is attributed to Edward John-
45
THE GREAT EMIGRATION.
The purpose of settling any doubt as to the respec- tive powers of Winthrop and Endicott may also have had weight in determining an election. Sa- lem might still have continued to be the seat of government had the principal men not disliked its situation, as Dudley relates.
At this court1 the first formal act of the new gov- ernment took place. There were present Governor Winthrop, Deputy-Governor Dudley, Sir Richard Saltoustall, Roger Ludlow, Edward Rossiter, In- crease Nowell, Thomas Sharp, William Pynchon, and Simon Bradstreet. This first assumption of political power on the soil signalizing, as it did, the formal erection of a new political community whose future not even the imagination of those nine legislators could forecast, is worthy to be tran- scribed here, if for no other reason than to show what public business was the subject of delibera- tion, and what, in the estimation of the colonists, its importance. The record follows : -
" Imprimis it was propounded how the min- isters should be maintained, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Phillips only propounded ; ordered that houses be built for them with convenient speed at the public charge. Sir R. Saltonstall undertook to see it done at his plantation for Mr. Phillips ; and the
son, who, having emigrated from Kent, England, is styled a " Kentish captain." His narrative begins with the settlement of 1628, and is bronght down to the year 1652. The author is believed to have been one of the colonists of 1630, who came over with Winthrop. He settled first at Charlestown and later at Woburn, of which town he was the putative father. Captain Johnson is therefore very early identified with the history of Middlesex, aud his narrative takes us back to the humble begin- nings of the colony of Massachusetts Bay. He died at Woburn in 1672. The reader is referred to the history of that town, in this volume, for a more extended notice of his active connec- · tion with its founding and early growth. The Wonder-Working Providence contains notices more or less minute of all the towns then settled, and gives the names of magistrates and ministers. Indeed, the churches given in their order of formation constitute the basis of the work, a little topographical information being added, with some chapters on the general history of New Eng- land, its civil polity, wars with the Indians, religious contentions, and remarkable occurrences. The work is plentifully interspersed with labored panegyries of eminent public characters, chiefly divines, written in verse ; but the author courted the muses with too iudifferent success for us to reproduce specimens of his gran- diose, monotonous style. Notwithstanding its errors, Johnson's History of New England is valuable as the work of a contempo- rary historian who writes of what he saw and of what he was himself a part. His narrative is liberally used by Rev. Thomas Prince, in his Chronological History of New England, printed at Boston, 1736.
1 Johnson says that many of the first planters attended this court and were made freemen by it. The whole number this year he estimates at one hundred and ten. After this only snch were admitted as joined the churches.
governor at the other plantation for Mr. Wilson ; Mr. Phillips to have forty pounds a year, begin- ning at the first of September next; Mr. Wil- son to have twenty pounds a year till his wife come over, beginning at 10 July last ; all this at the common charge, those of Mattapan and Salem excepted. Ordered that Morton of Mount Wol- laston be sent for presently ; and that carpenters, joiners, bricklayers, sawyers, and thatchers take no more than two shillings a day, under pain of ten shillings to giver and taker."
The maintenance of their ministers as a matter of public duty, and the regulation of labor so that no man might make his neighbor's necessity the occasion for exorbitant demands, seem thus to have been the paramount questions of the moment. Having disposed of them by legislative enactment, the colonists set to work making themselves per- manent homes.
The founders of the new settlements were to meet still greater trials, to undergo still greater hardships. Sickness daily increased. The want of proper shelter and food fostered disease and aggra- vated suffering. Death was soon reaping a fearful harvest on the hillsides of Mishawum. The most useful and honored among the men, the most beloved and accomplished among the women, were daily gathered to unknown graves. " Many per- ished and died, and were buried about the Town Hill," say the ancient records, "and although the people were generally very loving and pitiful, yet the sickness did so prevail that the whole were not able to tend the sick." Many volumes of suffering are condensed in this sad history.
The settlers at Charlestown, too, were, in this time of sore distress, troubled by the want of good water. They could find but one brackish spring, and this scanty supply was accessible only when the tide was out.1 This increased the general dis- content with their present place of abode. Hear- ing of their distress, William Blackstone, the solitary settler on the opposite peninsula of Shaw- mut, came and informed Governor Winthrop that an excellent spring existed on his side of the river. This good man entreated the governor to remove to Shawmut, and some of the settlers did remove there. Others located themselves on Saugus River, others on the Mystic, and still others on the main-
1 The records.say the peninsula abounded in good water which from want of sufficient search the settlers failed to find. The spring they used is believed to have been located near the old state-prison.
46
HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
land, nearest Shawmut, calling their settlement Rox- bury.
Meanwhile mortality made rapid strides. Among those who died were Mrs. Pynchon, wife of Wil- liam Pynchon, Mrs. Coddington, wife of William Coddington, Mrs. Phillips, wife of the Rev. George Phillips, first minister of Watertown, Mrs. Alcock, sister of Mrs. Hooker, Lady Arbella, wife of Isaac Johnson, and many others. It may well be im- agined that these rapidly succeeding misfortunes cast a gloom over the infant colony, filling the weak-hearted with dismay, the strong with heavy affliction. Consternation, disappointment, or dis- affection so worked upon those who were left that a hundred or more went back to England in the same ship that brought them over. Others went to Piscataqua.1 Dudley computes the whole num- ber of deaths, from April to December, at two hundred, closing the mournful catalogue with the exclamation, "So lowe hath the Lord brought us ! "
Four days after the first court a public fast was kept, when Mr. Wilson was ordained pastor of the church by imposition of hands, this ceremony being used, as Winthrop hastens to aver, only as a sign of election and confirmation, and not of any intent that Mr. Wilson should renounce his min- istry in the Church of England. On the 7th of September a second court, called the Court of Assistants, was held at Charlestown, which ordered the sending of Thomas Morton2 of Mount Wollas- ton a prisoner to England. It was also ordered that no one should be permitted to plant within the limits of the patent except by consent of the governor and assistants, or a majority of them; and it was finally voted that the settlement at Trimountain, on the other side of the river, should be called Boston, Mattapan, Dorchester, and the town upon Charles River, Watertown. This action decisively fixes the number of settlements then ex- isting which were deemed considerable enough to receive public recognition. The name of Boston was intended to be conferred upon the principal town the colonists might build, and as that place seems now, by general consent, to have become the capital, the more picturesque and first Eng- lish name it had received was replaced by that of
1 Since Portsmonth. " We accounted ourselves nothing weak- ened by their departure," remarks Dudley.
2 For an account of this singular personage see Savage in Win- throp's Journal, I. 41 ; Drake's Boston, 37 et seq. He did not go to Eogland until the December following.
a town of Lincolnshire, England. In designat- ing the names of towns, rivers, and other waters the new-comers always express their love and attachment for the motherland, as if the domi- nant idea with them was really to erect a NEW ENGLAND, wherein old associations, old ties, and old memories should be forever preserved. These were bonds they never meant to shake off; and if their nomenclature shows nothing else, it certifies a love of country which survived oppression, a yearning which no tyranny could extinguish in their breasts. Names more appropriate, more ex- pressive, and to-day more historical might have been found; but the original settlers had not begun to eradicate the idea that they were them- selves part and parcel of Old England. The names they gave were at least an echo from home.
Before the departure of their fleet from New England the adventurers despatched the ship Lion to England for the needful fresh supplies. John Revell, one of the five resident undertakers, William Vassall, one of the assistants, with his family, and the minister, Francis Bright,1 who has been men- tioned in connection with the beginnings of Charles- town, sailed in this ship.
During September the deaths of several persons of distinction occurred, - William Gager, a skilful chirurgeon, and one of the deacons of the church of Charlestown, Rev. Francis Higginson of Salem, and lastly Isaac Johnson, who has been called father of the settlement at Boston. The death of this latter gentleman inflicted the most serious loss of any that had taken place. Dudley says he was the greatest promoter of the plantation, and that he had the best estate of any man in it. He died at Boston and was buried, according to tradition, . in what is now known as King's Chapel Ground. It is remarked that none of the founders of Boston, - Blackstone, Johnson, or Winthrop, - have been honored in any substantial way ; but our descend- ants will doubtless repair the neglect.
After the death of Johnson the governor, Mr. Wilson, and the greater part of the people at Charlestown removed to Boston. The frame of the governor's house, which was being made ready, was also carried thither ; the Bostonians fell to work building new homes ere winter should overtake them. The few people remaining at Charlestown viewed these proceedings with discontent, especially the removal of the governor's residence and the
1 In the Charlestown records he is called " Minister to the Company's servants."
47
THE GREAT EMIGRATION.
loss of distinction it implied. By the departure of the pastor and great body of the church they were compelled to go over to Boston on the Sabbath until a church of their own was, in November, 1632, gathered together, and a covenant entered into. Hitherto the Boston settlers had been obliged to come to them, but now the case was reversed.
A list of those who remained and became in- habitants of the town in this year is given as fol- lows : Increase Nowell, Esq., Mr. William Aspin- wall, Mr. Richard Palsgrave, Edward Convers, William Penn, William Hudson, Mr. John Glover, William Brackenbury, Rice Cole, Hugh Garrett, Ezekiel Richeson, John Baker, John Sales, Captain Norton, Mr. Edward Gibbons, Mr. William Jen- nings, John Wignall. The four last went and built on the mainland " on the northeast side of the northwest creek of this town." It is thought that these were not all the inhabitants, but on this point the records are obscure. The settlers of 1629 accounted for are Ralph Sprague, Walter Palmer, Abraham Palmer, Nicholas Stowers, John Stick- line or Stickland, and Thomas Graves.
Having brought our relation down to the settle- ment of Boston, it is instructive to observe that, notwithstanding the superior numbers, wealth, and preparation of our colonists, they encountered the same experiences, were beset by the same diffi- culties, and were near succumbing to the same calamities that befell their brethren at Plymouth and Salem. Notwithstanding the favorable season of the year for prosecuting their explorations and their labors, they were scourged by disease and nearly threatened by famine. Dudley tells us there
was hardly a house in which one or more did not lay dead, and it is apparent that had not the Lion brought seasonable relief, the story of the ensuing winter would have been a mournful one. Still, all these vicissitudes served more firmly to unite the settlers, as men who had proved each other. Even the new-made graves served to bind the survivors more closely to the land of their adoption, --- to ad- monish them not to abandon the work of reclaiming the wilderness in which so many useful lives had been spent, but to regard it as a sacred bequest whose fruits History and the Future should demand of them. We know how nobly the mission was fulfilled.
The effect of the great emigration upon Old Eng- land was very marked. So soon as the colony had proved its ability to maintain itself, great numbers passed over to New England every summer. Four thousand is the number fixed by Mather who emi- grated in the ten or twelve years succeeding the settlement, carrying with them in materials, money, merchandise, and animals the value of nearly two hundred thousand pounds, withont computing merchandise sent over for traffic with the Indians. " Upon the whole," says our authority, "it has been computed that the four settlements of Plym- outh, the Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven, all of which were accomplished before the beginning of the civil wars, drained England of four or five hundred thousand pounds in money (a very great sum in those days), and if the perse- cntion of the Puritans had continued twelve years longer, it is thought that a fourth part of the riches of the kingdom would have passed out of it through this channel."
48
HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
VI.
PROGRESS IN THE COLONY.
A THIRD conrt assembled on the 28th of Septem- ber at Charlestown. Only nine of the original assist- ants were now left at the head of affairs, and but three of the resident undertakers. Before the end of October the number of assistants was still further reduced by the decease of Ros- siter. Death had made no distinction between leader or follower, gentle or lowly born; the former supporting all the privations which the lat- ter endured, and by the example infusing new courage among the faint-hearted. Five settlements already existed ; others were beginning at Medford and Roxbury. Of these, the former was probably the earlier commenced ; it has, moreover, a special interest of its own, which brings it into intimate association with the infancy of the colony, and to some extent with a personage who exerted an im- portant influence upon its fortunes.
" Some of us settled upon Mistic, which we named Medford," says Dudley, without assigning a date for the event. Regretting the omission, we recollect that he was writing a letter, in which things were related, not in their order, but as he remembered them. The Charlestown records are equally unsatisfactory in this respect. Recounting the exploration made by the Spragues, in 1628, they say of the peninsula of Mishawum, " upon surveying, they found it was a neck of land, gen- erally full of stately timber, as was the main, and the land lying on the east side of the river called Mistick river (from the farm Mr. Cradock's ser- vants had planted, called Mistick, which this river led up into) and indeed generally all the country round about was an uncouth wilderness, full of timber."
If the account given by these records be accepted as true, not only were Mr. Cradock's servants already seated upon the Mystic, but the river itself derived its name from this plantation. We are compelled to reject both statements. It is not believed that any one sent out by the Massachusetts Company had settled within the limits of the dis-
puted patents up to the time when the Company instructed Endicott to take possession by sending " forty or fifty persons to Massachusetts Bay to inhabit there." It is clear that the Company meant to enforce its rights with numbers sufficient not only to maintain possession, but to expel in- truders. These instructions are dated April 17, 1629. They embody directions as to the policy Endicott was to observe towards the old planters, who might then be resident within the disputed territory. It is nowhere assumed that the Com- pany was then in possession. The last paragraph of the Company's letter of instructions, in which Endicott is further advised to defeat Oldham's claim by " causing some to take possession " of his tract, is generally accredited to Governor Cra- dock. If Governor Cradock's men were then es- tablished on the Mystic, this end was already gained. It is needless to observe that Governor Cradock would certainly have been apprized if such were the fact.
In this letter, and in a subsequent one, written in May, Governor Cradock's own active partici- pation in the affairs of the colony, as an individual, first appears. By the vessels then getting ready to sail he was sending over shipwrights, fishermen, cattle, etc., to be employed for the joint account of himself and the Company. In their second letter the Company say that all the cattle sent over, ex- cept three mares, had been provided by Governor Cradock. His name occurs on every page of its records, as uniting his own resources with those of the Company for the common good. Indeed, Matthew Cradock, governor, or Matthew Cradock, the individual, appear, up to this time, as bear- ing much the greater proportion of the burdens of the enterprise.
As his plantation at Mystic was certainly begun before September 28, 1630, it is not unlikely that on the arrival of the second embarkation some of Cradock's men may have accompanied Graves's party to Charlestown, and extended their explo-
49
PROGRESS IN THE COLONY.
rations farther up the Mystic River ; but our read- ing of Dudley's letter does not justify the assump- tion that any definite settlement took place upon this stream until after the general dispersion, late in the summer of 1630, mentioned by him. No mention is made by Winthrop of the existence of such settlement when he ascended the river, on the 17th of July.
It is a matter of surprise that not only is the exact relation borne by Medford to the colony at this time in doubt, but its very location is un- settled. The names Medford and Mystic have usually been understood as referring to the same plantation, although Wood, in 1633, enumerates them as distinct settlements. Up to the year 1634 the colony records mention only Medford in the apportionment of money or men for the public ser- vice. At the same time it does not appear to have had a settled minister, and it was not entitled to representation in the General Court ; nevertheless, we find a tax levied upon " Meadford " so early as the court referred to at the beginning of this chapter, and for this reason September 28, 1630, is usually fixed as the date of its incorporation. Medford is also taxed the following year for the palisade at Newtown, and is henceforth a quasi member of the body politic, enjoying taxation without representation for a certain term of years.
This condition of semi-organization favors the inference that Medford and Governor Cradock's plantation were the same. Hutchinson concludes such to be the fact. In 1632 a ship of a hundred tons was built here, which was an affair of magni- tude for that early day, and goes to confirm the opinion that a considerable number of Cradock's men were employed in and about his plantation. Wood's description, to be hereafter given in his own language, is unfortunately worthless in eluci- dating the question. His printed account of Med- ford would locate it on the banks of Willis' Creek, or Miller's River, a tributary of the Charles; while his map designates it as being north of the Mystic. This first is, of course, an error. Dudley says Med- ford was on the Mystic.
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