USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. I > Part 65
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was the time of " the great awakening." White- field came to America in 1740. He denounced Harvard College as destitute of true godliness, and spoke with no little severity of the ministers and the churches. Mr. Bliss espoused Mr. White- field's cause with all the fire of his ardent nature, invited him to preach, and in all ways helped him. The parish was divided ; and after councils for and councils against him, in 1745 forty-seven persons were exempted from parish charges, and permitted to maintain public worship. This they did for fourteen years in the hall of a tavern, which, hav- ing the sign of a black horse, gave the gathering the title of " Black Horse Church." As Rev. Mr. Whiting was a regular attendant, we may suspect that the old difference was woven in with the new. Mr. Bliss died in 1764, and Rev. William Emerson took the vacant pulpit January 1, 1766. The embers still glowed. Upon the refusal of the new minister to receive a prominent citizen into the church they flamed again, but faded out before the intenser excitements of the opening Revolution. The meeting-house, now standing on the church green, was built in 1712, though then it was en- tirely destitute of porch, pillars, or spire.
As the first fifty years was a period of territo- rial expansion, so the next hundred was one of more than equal territorial contraction. In 1715 what Concord owned in Nashobah helped to make Lit- tleton. In 1729 Bedford took a large piece from the parent town. Concord Village, in 1735, became Acton. While in 1754 Lincoln, ont of Concord, Weston, and Lexington, carved a township ; Carlisle which separated in 1754 was re-annexed in 1757, and permanently set off in 1780. So before the close of the Revolutionary War the town assumed the shape which it has retained to our day.
THE PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION. 1763 - 1783.
THE long succession of wars had ended in the expulsion of France from the region east of the Mississippi. Two results followed. On the one hand England, oppressed by the debts which those wars had created, magnified her prerogatives, that she might wring money from her unwilling sub- jects. On the other hand, the colonists, relieved from their fear of the savage, and by that very relief growing to power with unprecedented rapid- ity., were less disposed to bear 'usurpations, and more disposed to appreciate their owu constitu- tional rights.
In the coming struggle, both from its position and the temper of its people, Concord was sure to take an early and not unimportant part. It was the first inland settlement in the state, one of the largest, and the true geographical centre of Mid- dlesex County. As a shire-town it had felt that great quickening of thought and life which was inevitable when many times a year judges and juries, counsel and clients, came thither to try im- portant questions, making the place their home for days and weeks. It boasted the oldest military organization in the state, if we except the Ancient and Honorable Artillery, and had been in the wars a place of military gathering. As a result, Con- cord was then the heart of Middlesex, as no town ever can be again. Did the people desire to change the bounds of the county, they called a convention at Concord. Would they protest against the un- lawful acts of the king, they sent delegates to the same spot. The temper of its people was eminently patriotic. They instructed their representative to protest against the Stamp Act. They resolved not to use foreign commodities, and declared that tea should not be brought within their limits. In 1772, in answer to the Boston Address, they said that they would not submit to any infringement of their liberties. The meeting of the court under the new and, as they held, unconstitutional method was prevented by a display of force. Some of their most prominent citizens were compelled pub- licly to express their sorrow for their unpatriotic language. In September, 1774, the town voted to buy powder and ball, and to name a Committee of Correspondence.
That was a most striking occasion, when, on August 30 and 31, 1774, Middlesex, in conven- tion assembled at Concord, first of all the coun- ties, recommended that a provincial congress should meet at Concord the second Tuesday in October. What followed is matter of history. Ninety members of the General Court went to Salem October 5, and waited for General Gage; waited two days in vain ; then resolved themselves into a provincial congress, to be joined by such others as the towns might appoint, and adjourned to meet on the 11th at Concord court-house. On that day three hundred came, chose John Hancock president, and Benjamin Lincoln secretary, and, to secure more room, adjourned to the meeting- house. This body was in Concord in the months of March and April, 1775, and left only four days before the encounter at North Bridge. Important
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
business was there transacted. A vote, advising town collectors not to pay taxes to Harrison Gray, seized the purse. The passage of "Rules and Regulations for the Massachusetts Army " drew the sword. The proclamation for a fast, every word of which was an appeal to God against op- pression, enlisted on the side of freedom the relig- ious sentiment. In that old meeting-house, still standing, what words to fire men's souls were spo- ken ; what policy to shape-the destiny of the state enacted ! Scarcely Independence Hall itself has more venerable associations.
The Committees of Safety and Supplies, to whom were intrusted the preparations for defence, were frequently at Concord. They were there, John Hancock at their head, on the 17th of April, not thirty-six hours before brave men were massacred, almost before his eyes, on Lexington Green. Very early they ordered that there be deposited at Worcester two hundred barrels of pork, four hun- dred of flour, and one hundred and fifteen bushels of pease ; and at Concord, one hundred and thirty- five barrels of pork, three hundred of flour, one hundred and fifty bushels of pease, and forty-five
The Old Jail.
tierces of rice. Later it was voted that all the cannon, mortars, cannon-balls, and shells be de- posited in Worcester and Concord "in the same proportion that the provisions are deposited." These votes, as respects Worcester, seem never to have been carried into effect. But Concord be- came a great storehouse. The old jail, the farmers' barns, the town-house, the court-house, the tavern- shed, the miller's loft, were extempore depots for provisions and munitions of war. No doubt Con- cord was chosen because it was near, but not too near, the scene of action, and because it had four military companies. The trustworthy character of Colonel Barrett, the eustodian of these treasures, must have had its weight. The committee knew the importance of the charge. Colonel Barrett was told to keep wateh night and day, always to have teams ready, " not so much as to mention powder, lest our enemies take advantage of it." But sueh
a secret could not be kept. Tories stole to Boston and told it. British officers, disguised, came to mark and report the places of deposit.
So it happened that there was no other spot where General Gage could strike to any purpose. For success at Concord meant a disabling blow ; and when Revere knew that a military expedition had started, he did not have to ask to what point. There was but one point.
" Last night, between ten and eleven o'clock," writes Lieutenant John Barker in his diary,1 " all of the Grenadiers and Light Infantry, under Colonel Smith and Major Pitcairn, embarked and were landed upon the opposite shore on Cambridge Marsh. Few but the commanding officers knew what expedition we were going upon." They had a hard time, wading through the marsh, " wet to their
1 Manuscript of a British officer found in Philadelphia in 1876, and now deposited with the Massachusetts Historical Society.
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knees," until they came to a dirty road. Here they waited until two o'clock for provisions, which " most of the men threw away." A fatal delay, without which it is doubtful whether enough men
Pine-Tree Flag.
could have been gathered to defeat them ! Com- mencing afresh the march, " wading through a very long ford up to our middles," the troops reached Lexington about five, there to commit cruel and
needless slaughter. " After an inexplicable delay," continues Lieutenant Barker, " we proceeded on our way to Concord, which we then learnt was our des- tination, in order to destroy a magazine of stores col- lected there. We met no interruption until within a mile or two of the town, where the country people had occupied a hill which commanded the road."
Turn now to the other side. " 1775, 19 April. This morning," writes the patriotic Concord minis- ter,1 " between one and two o'clock, we were alarmed by the ringing of the bell, and, upon examining, found that troops, to the number of eight hundred, had stolen their march from Boston in boats and barges from the bottom of the Common over to a point in Cambridge, near to Inman's farm. This in- telligence was brought by Dr. Samuel Prescott, who narrowly escaped the guard that were sent before." " He, by help of a very fleet horse, crossing several walls and fences, arrived at Concord at the time aforementioned ; when several posts returning con- firmed the account of the regulars arriving at Lex- ington, and that they were on the way to Concord." It was probably three o'clock before the town fully
The British at Colonel Barrett's.
comprehended its danger. The hurry, the confu- ; sion, the alarm, which must have filled the village during the four hours in which it awaited the com- ing of eight hundred mercenary soldiers, can hardly be imagined. Every available team was impressed to carry away or hide the stores. The minute-men and members of the old military companies, who could be spared from this work, prepared for in- stant service. Women and children fled to the woods. Tradition preserves some simple anec- dotes. One good lady, hearing that the regulars are coming, goes straight to the adjoining meet- ing-house, takes the Communion silver, and buries
it in her.soap-barrel, in an arch under a great chim- ney still standing. Another, getting ready to take her children into the woods, goes to her drawer and puts on a checkered apron, the proper adorn- ment in those days on state occasions. This she unconsciously did over and over again, until, when in her hiding-place she recovered her wits, she found that she had on seven checkered aprons.
Reuben Brown and Deacon Parkman, well- mounted, were sent to alarm adjacent towns. The old Carlisle lieutenant used to tell his grand- son, now living, that the people of the neighbor-
1 Diary of Rev. William Emerson.
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
hood were summoned by Timothy Wilkins with his drum and James Kent with his horn ; and that under an old Indian fighter, James Russell, they marched twenty-one strong to Hildreth's Corner, where they met Captain Davis and the Acton men, and accompanied them to the bridge. A little after sunrise two hundred men had come together. Three-quarters of them were from Concord, a few from Acton, and the rest from Lincoln. Their advance-guard was stationed a mile and a quarter towards Lexington, at the end of that steep ridge which skirts the village on the north. The main body occupied, " as the most advantageous situa- tiou," the high point of the same ridge directly opposite the old meeting-house. A little before seven the advance came hurrying back, saying that the enemy were at hand, " and their numbers treble ours." A second position was taken, " back of the town on an eminence." This must have been somewhere on the high land which borders Monument Street. "Scarcely had we formed,"
says Mr. Emerson's diary, " before we saw the British troops, glittering in arms, advancing to- wards us with greatest celerity." Many, the min- ister among them, were for standing their ground. As they hesitated, Colonel Barrett, who had been engaged in securing the stores, rode up, and or- dered them to fall baek over the bridge to Punka- tasset, a hill which overlooks the village, and wait for reinforcements. This order was obeyed, as were all rightful orders given that day. By half-past nine two small companies from Bedford, two from Lincoln, and individuals from Westford, Chelmsford, and other neighboring towns, had joined them. They now numbered possibly three hundred and fifty men. Meanwhile a few British occupied South Bridge; a hundred held North Bridge ; a hundred more went by the river road to Colonel Barrett's, to search for munitions of war supposed to be hidden there. The main body remained in the village, searching to very little purpose for the stores.
The Provincials at Punkatasset.
At this time smoke from a fire made from the flag-staff and some cannon-wheels attracted the attention of the Americans. There were painful doubts. Were the enemy setting fire to their homes ? At last the question of Adjutant Hos- mer, " Will you let them burn the town down ?" decided them. They descended to Buttrick's Hill, just above the bridge. Here Captain Davis joined them. A hurried debate ensued. What they ought to do seemed uncertain. There was no sure
knowledge that the British had committed hostile acts. To go forward might precipitate a civil war. A difficult question, indeed, for militia colonels and captains and plain farmers to settle! Most of them favored an advance. Captain Davis said he had not a man who was afraid to go. Captain Smith was ready to attack with his single company. Finally Colonel Barrett gave them orders to marel to the bridge, but not to fire unless fired upon. The relative position of the different companies has
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never been fully settled, and it is not important that it should be. Major John Buttrick was at the head, and Colonel Robinson of Westford, who served that day as a volunteer, walked by his side. Whether Captain Davis's company led or marched side by side with that of Captain David Brown must always remain in doubt. The rest followed in close order. "Near the bridge," writes the English lieutenant, " the rebels halted, filling the road from top to bottom." As the Americans advanced, three or four shots were fired by the British into the river. The militia continued to advance until they were within a few rods of the bridge, witholding their fire according to orders. Then came a shot or two, wounding Luther Blan- chard of Acton and Jonas Brown of Concord. Theu a volley, and Captain Davis and Abner Hosmer of Acton fell. The reply was deadly ; for Major Buttrick, leaping with the excitement into the air, cried out, "Fire, fellow soldiers ! for God's sake, fire !" Out of the one hundred British, three were killed and nine wounded. Of the killed, one died immediately ; one expired before his comrades reached the village, and was
buried in the old graveyard ; 1 and one, mortally wounded, was cloven through the skull by a lad at whom he had made a thrust with his bayonet. From the window of the house now occupied by Hon. John S. Keyes a little girl of four years was looking out. She never forgot how pleased she was to see the British soldiers march by in perfect order, with their bright weapons and scarlet coats, or how terrified she was to see them come back in disorder, muddy, and a great many of them with limbs tied up and bloody. The British fell back. The Americans pursued until a reinforcement ap- peared. Then they climbed the hill back of Mr. Keyes's house, from which they probably descended iu the morning.
There was a lull. But the field was won. The British were irresolute. They marched and coun- termarched, but at twelve began to retreat. “ Be- fore the whole had quitted the town " they " were fired on from houses and behind trees, and before they had gone a half mile " they " were fired on from all sides." 2 Meanwhile a detachment hurried from the hill across the great fields, and at Mer- riam's Corner joined the men of Billerica and
The Regulars at Elisha Jones's House.
Bedford in a fresh attack. Half a mile on, the Sudbury forces came up, and there was a new con- flict. On the edge of Lincoln there was one of the severest encounters of the day. So Concord Fight was merged into that persistent attack and pursuit from all quarters, through Lincoln, through Lex- ington, through Arlington, through Charlestown, almost to the water's edge, and to the protection of the ships of war. In Lincoln Captain Wilson of Bedford, through a too adventurous spirit, died. And during the pursuit three of the four Concord captains were wounded.
The expedition had failed. It was sent out to destroy the provincial stores. But so careful had been the preparation of Colonel Barrett, and so unremitting his efforts that morning, that but a small portion of them was discovered. The expe- dition more than failed. For it sent such a mighty thrill of indignation through the land that, in less than a week, nearly twenty thousand men were on the hills around Boston, which from a British port was changed to a British prisou.
1 See Chaplain Thaxter's account, in Concord Yeoman of 1825.
2 Lieutenant John Barker's Diary.
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
The distinguishing quality of the fight at the | Old North Bridge is, that in no sense was it a tumultuous encounter. There the movements of the militia were made by command of those legiti- mately in authority. There by military order British fire was returned by American volleys ; and there, especially, the invader was turned back defeated. It was not a riot. It was not a thoughit- less rising of exasperated people. . It was an act of war, deliberately prepared for, and to the letter carried out according to the enactments of the Provincial Congress. Within the bounds of the original thirteen states there is no spot more in-
teresting than the two secluded green slopes, with the quiet river flowing between, where the soldiers of the king and the soldiers of the people met in military array and exchanged fatal volleys. Em- phatically, too, the encounter at North Bridge was a Concord Fight. Not one of the organized com- panies which shared with the old town her danger and her glory, but came from villages which, with- in fifty years, bad in whole or part been included within her ancient limits. So it was Concord, - not the Concord of the narrow boundaries of to- day, but the Concord which the Puritans planted, and which once found its place of religious and
The Combat at North Bridge, Concord.
of political gatherings in the very meeting-house which saw the invader advance and retreat, - that original Concord, which met the invader with effi- cient resistance and turned him back with steady courage.
In the war which the 19th of April opened, Concord furnished its share of men and resources. On the day after the fight two companies were raised, and joined a regiment of which John But- trick was major. They were at Bunker Hill, and there two of their number were killed and several wounded, while before the expiration of their time of service two more died of disease. When they returned home another company took their place ; and in March, 1776, nearly the whole of the town
militia turned out to fortify and hold Dorchester Heights. Charles Miles, one of the captains at the North Bridge, commanded a company which, in the succeeding June, went to reinforce the misera- ble remnant of an army which General Sullivan had brought out of Canada. One loss should of it- self make this enlistment to be remembered. Wil- liam Emerson, the patriotic minister of the town, went to Ticonderoga as chaplain, contracted the fever then raging in the army, and died at Rutland on his way home, October 20, at the age of thirty- three. An examination of the list which Shat- tuck has compiled shows that the town kept in the field during the whole period of the Revolution not less than an average of seventy-five men, -a
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great draft upon a town not numbering over fif- teen hundred ! Nor were the pecuniary burdens less heavy. The records show that eighty-two of the poor of Boston were supported by the town in the years 1775 and 1776; that wood, hay, stock- ings, and beef were furnished in large quantities for the army; and that the taxes rose to eight times their former amount.
One interesting episode of Concord Revolution- ary history remains to be told. The Provincial Congress, November 7, 1775, resolved, " That the President and Fellows of Harvard College be, and hereby are, directed to remove the Library and ap- paratus belonging to the said College, or such part as they shall judge immediately necessary to the present instruction of the students, from the place where they are now deposited, by order of the late Congress, to Concord." The students had pre- ceded by more than a month the library and appa- ratus. The president lived at Dr. Minot's, where the Middlesex Hotel now stands. The professors were scattered in various parts of the town. Many students boarded in " the mansion " built by Simon Willard near the foot of Lee's Hill. The library occupied a house at Merriam's Corner. The col- lege remained until the 21st of June of the follow- ing year. College Road, the name of a secluded by-path, remains as a permanent memorial of this brief visit of our oldest institution of learning. The letter of thanks to the town from President Langdon is preserved, and the delicate manner in which he hints at any possible improprieties of the students proves him to have been a master of the art of putting things. The number of men distin- guished in all walks of life, who graduated in the class of 1776, indicates that the somewhat migra- tory system of instruction which they enjoyed was not on the whole unfavorable to mental culture. That Dr. Ripley, who for more than sixty years was minister in the town, and Dr. Hurd, who for more than fifty years was its physician, and Jonathan Fay, who for more than thirty years was its lawyer, were all members of the college during its stay in Con- cord is certainly remarkable.
SHAYS' REBELLION. 1783-1787.
THE peace of 1783 brought universal joy. As the tidings spread, faces brightened, neighbors grasped each other's hands, the bells rang, the pulpits uttered the general thanksgiving, an intol- erable load seemed to have dropped off. Less than 1
four years after, two thousand men, desperate, armed, and under experienced military leaders, stood on Pelham hills in organized rebellion.
The causes of Shays' Rebellion are not hard to find. Job Shattuck told his neighbors "that it was time to abolish debts and begint anew." Gen- eral Knox felt sure that two sevenths of the people of the state were ready to say the same thing. That is, there had come with political liberty hopes of impossible deliverance from personal burdens. Then great jealousy had sprung up between the city and the country. The rural towns were poor, their young men dead, their farms neglected, their buildings gone to decay. Concord had more people in 1791 than ten years before, but it had not so many houses by five, or barns by thirty-two, or horned cattle by one hundred and seventy-seven, and it cultivated four hundred and nineteen fewer acres. But the seaboard towns had prospered. A whole class had grown rich by the war. As early as 1779 Boston merchants told a convention met at Concord " with what pain they saw jealousy growing up between the maritime and rural towns." The persistent effort to remove the capital from Boston, so nearly successful that in 1787 a com- mittee of the house of representatives reported that Concord was a suitable place, was one symptom of this jealousy. For a brief period the town ac- tually did become the seat of government. Owing to the prevalence of small-pox in Boston, by proc- lamation of Governor Hancock the legislature met in November, 1792, at Concord, heard the gover- nor's address in the meeting-house, appointed Dr. Ripley chaplain, transacted the usual business, and adjourned. Hopeless insolvency was the great breeder of discontent. When no kind of property could be sold at a fair price, even honest men failed to pay their debts. But imprisonment followed insolvency ; and imprisonment to which tenfold bitterness was sometimes added, when, as actually happened at Concord, an old soldier was confined by a tory creditor who had lived at ease in Eng- land during the war. Besides, the monetary system had gone to wreck. Paper-money was nearly worth- less ; and as for silver and gold, like the apostle, the community had none. The straits to which men were reduced were ludicrous. The ancient account-book of the village doctor has been pre- served. For his moderate charge of two and six- pence a visit, medicines included, he took every thing known to mortals, money excepted. Even the state had to fix a rate at which it would receive
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
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