USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. I > Part 67
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THE ANNIVERSARIES.
FROM 1820 to 1850 may justly be called a period of ancestral and patriotic remembrances. Lafayette visited Concord September 2, 1824. He was received at the boundary of Lexington by a cavalcade of forty horsemen under John Keyes, escorted to the public square by the military, and saluted by a discharge of cannon from the hill, where, in 1775, the liberty-pole stood. Samuel Hoar made an address; Lafayette replied ; and a collation was served in a bower erected on the church green, and over which was placed the in- scription, "In 1775 the people of Concord met the enemies of liberty. In 1824 they welcome the bold assertor of the rights of man, Lafayette." On the 7th of March, 1825, the town voted unan- imously " to celebrate " the semi-centennial of the Concord Fight. In April a committee was ap- pointed to co-operate with the Bunker Hill Monu- ment Association in the erection of monuments at Charlestown and Concord. On the 19th of April
the corner-stone of such a monument was laid in the public square, Edward Everett delivering an oration second to none of his addresses in elo- quence and power. On this occasion Mr. Emerson gave that toast so often remembered, -"The little bush that marks the spot where Captain Davis fell: 't is the burning bush where God spake for his people." The monument was never built on this corner-stone. Of the funds collected by the Bunker Hill Monument Association Con- cord received very little. The foundation stood until it became an object of ridicule. One day a monument of hogsheads and barrels was raised upon it by some idle people, and the next night, being the 4th of July, it was burned, to the ruin of the stones beneath.
Perhaps the most interesting of the anniversaries was that kept at the close of the two-hundredth year of the town's life, - September 12, 1835. On the morning of that day, at eleven o'clock, the children of the town - five hundred in number - were arranged on both sides of the Common, and between them a civic and military procession "marched to the meeting-house, which it crowded to overflowing. Dr. Ripley, then in the eighty-fifth year of his age and the fifty-seventh of his minis- try, read the Scriptures and offered prayer. The 107th Psalm, from the old New England version, was "deaconed" line by line by Rufus Hosmer of Stow, and sung to the tune of St. Martin's by the whole congregation. One can imagine with what solemn gratitude the fathers might have sung the homely strains of the third and fifth verses : -
" In desert strayed, in untrod way, No dwelling town they find, They huugry were, and thirsty they, Their souls within them pined.
"Iu such a way as was most right He led them forth also, That to a city which they might Inhabit, they should go."
Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered his incompara- ble historical address, reprinted in 1875. Then followed the dinner and speeches in a tent in a field on Sudbury Street, at its intersection with Main Street; and the day ended with a collation, prepared by the ladies, in the court-room. This was largely a home celebration, and full of real interest. The report of John Keyes, in which he states that the whole cost of the celebration was $168.79, that the town gave $75.00, that indi- viduals have subscribed $45.50, and that the com-
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mittee have paid the balance, is a curiosity and a | sidering : the Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance pattern of economy.
The long-delayed monument was now taken in hand. Dr. Ripley gave a strip of land from the road to the place of the old North Bridge. The town appointed a committee to build on this strip near the river. The funds received from the Monument Association - now accumulated to several hundreds of dollars, with some later sub- scriptions - were used for that purpose. July 4, 1837, the monument was dedicated, Samuel Hoar delivering the address. The hymn, now household words,
" By the rude bridge which arched the flood,"
was written for this occasion. The next 19th of April the towns-people turned out and planted the trees which shade the quiet path to the battle- ground.
The seventy-fifth anniversary of the contest of the 19th of April, 1775, was observed by a union celebration of all the towns engaged in the original battle. Concord furnished the president of the day, E. R. Hoar ; Lexington the chief marshal, Isaac H. Wright ; Acton the chaplain, Rev. J. F. Woodbury; and Beverly the orator, Robert Rantoul, Jr .; while Acton, Lexington, Carlisle, Sudbury, and Bedford were each represented by three vice-presidents, and the more distant towns by delegates. Ou the ground opposite the station of the Fitchburg Rail- road there was a dinner-tent, where Governor Briggs, Edward Everett, Rufus Choate, and others spoke. The building of the Fitchburg Railroad had greatly increased the means of communication, and there was a large attendance.
These notices of anniversaries may well include the pleasant visit of Kossuth on May 11, 1852. The Hungarian patriot on that day rode over the ground traversed by the contending parties April 19, 1775. Stopping at West Cambridge and Lexington, lie reached Concord about noon. Having visited the battle-ground, he dined with John S. Keyes, passed through a procession of the children of the town, and at half past four o'clock entered the town-hall. A young lady, on behalf of the high school, pre- sented him with a bouquet; Mr. Emerson, on behalf of the town, welcomed him, to which he replied in an eloquent and wonderfully fitting address. At a quarter-past six, amidst hearty cheers, he entered a decorated car furnished by the Fitchburg Railroad, and a pleasant day closed.
Several organizations of a permanent character came into existence during the period we are con-
Company, chartered March 29, 1826, and which, under wise management, has grown to great strength ; the Concord Bank, now the Concord National Bank, incorporated March 3, 1832, of which it was said that for more than thirty years no share was sold at public sale; the Middlesex Institution for Savings, chartered March 4, 1830. To which may be added the Concord Lyceum, which for fifty years has had a permanent life and work.
THE ADVENT OF THE RAILROAD.
THE Fitchburg Railroad came to Concord June 17, 1844. It wrought great changes. Up to that time many of the primitive ways yet lingered. There was no construction of sidewalks by the town. Such as existed were chiefly narrow paths by the roadside, winding in and out, as they had been made by human feet. The great wood-fire and wide settle were still seen in many a farmer's house, where the time-honored tallow dip, reinforced by the glow of the fire, was the only evening light. The carpets were few, the pictures rare, the furni- ture plain. Scarcely a generation before, the spin- ning-wheel and loom had passed from the fireside to the attic. Concord had been itself a little metrop- olis. There were seven stores, doing business in all the neighboring towns, and making large pur- chases of cheese and butter and pork far up into the country. There were three hotels in the centre, and good ones. A writer in the Boston Post in 1843 says that the Middlesex Hotel was the most liberally conducted country hotel he ever saw. There were three or four more in the outer districts or on the borders of neighboring towns. The great baggage-wagons, the freight-cars of their day, drawn by six and even eight horses, came lumber- ing in to be put up for the night. The trade of store and tavern was jealously watched. Some person, not properly mindful of Concord interests, in 1824 put up a guide-board at the division of roads at the Groton ridges, stating that the road to Lexington through Concord was two miles longer than that through Carlisle. Straightway the store and tavern keepers published a statement, saying that the Concord road had been measured by sworn surveyors, and that it was only two hundred and thirty-six rods longer, and that, to compensate for this, there were five more hotels on the Concord route. The very articles raised upon the farms
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were what, to-day, Vermont and New York fur- nish, - butter, cheese, eggs, potatoes, to which may be added wood, carried to the city in mountainous loads of two or three cords. The railroad changed all this. Sidewalks, better roads, easier ways of living, more richly furnished homes, larger barns, followed. But everything tended to the centre, and the town lost much of its metropolitan char- acter. Most of the hotels closed. The stores did only a local business. The newspapers died, and finally the courts left. Still the town grew in size and wealth.
In 1849 the court-honse was burned. For a time it was doubtful whether it would be rebuilt. But in a year or two a new one was erected. The fire made the building of a town-hall a necessity. The town had given the land and £100 towards the court-house of 1794, on condition that town- meetings should be held in the court-room. Ef- forts had already been made to cancel this privi- lege ; and it was not renewed in the new building, though $8,000 were offered by the town for such a renewal. Immediate steps were taken to build a town-house, and the result was the sightly building which now faces the public square.
February 16, 1851, has a memory of peculiar interest. On the afternoon of the 15th, Shadrack, a colored waiter in Boston, was arrested under the Fugitive Slave Act. While his counsel was con- ferring with the United States commissioner, lie was rescued by a body of colored people, and un- noticed walked to Cambridge with Lewis Hayden, the leader of the rescuers. From thence he was brought to Concord, at three o'clock in the morn- ing of the 16th reaching the house of Francis E. Bigelow, by whom he was sheltered, fed, and be- fore dawn driven a stage on his way to Canada. In May, 1854, the Missouri Compromise Act was repealed, and the scenes of violence began by which it was proposed to force slavery upon un- willing Kansas. Indignation rose to fever heat in Concord, and $2,500 were subscribed to help the New England Emigrant Aid Society in its meas- ures to baffle those purposes. On the evening of April 3, 1860, occurred one of the most remark- able scenes which ever broke the quiet of village life. In the preceding October John Brown had failed in his attempt to ronse the colored people, and been captured at Harper's Ferry ; and, on the 2d of December, had paid the penalty of failure by a death whose simple heroism excited the ad- miration even of his enemies. Mr. Mason of Vir-
ginia, at the ensuing session of Congress, obtained the appointment of a committee of investigation. Mr. Frank B. Sanborn of Concord, a friend of John Brown, refused to appear before this com- mittee to testify. An attempt was made to abduct him, and carry him by force to Washington. A son of the United States marshal, with three others, came in a hack to Concord on the aforementioned evening. The young man called Mr. Sanborn to the door on pretence of poverty. As Mr. Sanborn listened to his plea, the confederates rushed for- ward, handcuffed him, and dragged him to the door of the hack. Mr. Sanborn's sister and a friend, hearing the noise, hurried ont and soon created an aların. In a few minutes an excited crowd surrounded the officers and prevented their escape. In a few minutes more a writ of habeas corpus was obtained from Judge Hoar and served by Deputy-Sheriff Moore. The abductors, having given up their prisoner, were permitted to depart. Legal action followed. But the deep excitement of the Civil War swallowed up all lesser ones, and nothing came of it. These scenes revealed the strong antislavery feeling which early grew up in Concord, opposed in the beginning by many of its high-minded and conservative people, but growing stronger with every aggression of the slave-power, until in 1861 the great majority of the town was ranged on the side of freedom. Among the first, Concord had an antislavery society, and for many years it had also a well-organized station on what has come to be called the Underground Rail- road.
The temperance movement in Concord began earlier than the anti-slavery agitation. The first action was taken to restrain the use of liquor at funerals. The usages of three quarters of a cen- tury ago look to-day simply incredible. As soon as the minister appeared, toddy was passed round in pails, and then left in a convenient place for those who wished further to partake of it. Thus a solemn occasion had often most disgraceful aspects. A society was formed in 1814, not to abolish but to modify drinking habits; and it was not until fifteen or twenty years later that the total absti- mence feature was introduced. In 1867 the Wal- den Lodge of Good Templars was formed. Of all efforts to limit or suppress intemperance, Dr. Josiah Bartlett was an earnest supporter for more than fifty years, often, at the cost of his popularity, opposing the drinking habits of society. Dr. Bart- lett was a striking specimen of a village doctor of
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the best type. In his profession clear, prompt, and skilful ; in town affairs full of public spirit ; in philanthropic enterprises self-sacrificing ; inca- pable of fear, insensible to fatigue, he kept beneath the ashes of fourscore years the fire of youth, and died in the harness, at eighty-one years. He lived to see the canse whose interest he had so much at heart greatly successful. For when he died, not one fifth as much ardent spirits were used in the town as when he began his labors.
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR AND THE LATER HIS- TORY. 1861- 1879.
THE attack upon Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, opened the War of the Rebellion. By the forecast of Governor Andrew, the Massachusetts militia were prepared for the emergency. . And, when President Lincoln called for troops, the Con- cord Artillery, un. Lieutenant George L. Pres -. cott, started at once for Washington. Of this company, fifty were from Concord and the rest from the immediate r shorhood. By one of those strange coincidences which sometimes startle us, these Concord men left their homes April 19, 1861, just eighty-six years from the time their fathers stood in arms at the old North Bridge, and twice eighty-six years from the time that Lieuten- ant John Heald led their fathers' fathers to Bos- ton to assist in the overthrow of Governor Andros. This company was stationed at Washington, was in the disastrous affair of Bull Run, and in the ret.ent four Concord mer were captured. In No- vember of the same year Captain Prescott enlisted a new company. This, with three others, made a battalion, which for a time was at Fort Warren. Six companies were afterwards added, one under Captain Charles Bowers of Concord, and the whole made the 32d regiment. This regiment had thirty- one Concord soldiers in it. It took part in the severe campaigns in Virginia and Maryland, was at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and was with General Grant in that long wrestle which began at the Wilderness and ended at Appomattox Court-House. Before P' burg, Colonel George L. Prescott, who had been in service from the beginning, - one of those manly spirits of which every town lost its own, - received a fatal wound.
In the month of August, 1862, Sylvester Love- joy and eleven others joined the 40th regiment. At a later period they were armed with repeating rifles and did excellent service. Captain Richard
Barrett, with a company of which fifty-three were from Concord, joined the 47th regiment of nine- months men on November 7, 1862. The regi- ment during its term of service was in Louisiana, and gained an honorable name for steadiness and good conduct. Nine men were in the 5th regiment of hundred-days men under Captain Whitcomb of Acton. No other considerable body joined any one regiment ; but singly or by twos or threes Concord people were to be found in many regiments. So that, when the war was ended, the record was that two hundred anu twenty-nine men had served, a surplus of twelve over all demands. And when, on the 19th of April, 1867, the citizens came to- gether to dedicate that simple, strong shaft which stands in the public square, they chiselled on it these impressive words : -
" The town of Concord builds this monument in honor of the brave men whose names it bears, and records with grateful pride that they found here a birthplace, home, or grave."
To that description thirty-three men, sleeping in honored graves, answered, - the price one little town paid to uphold freedom under the law. Those at home did not forget the absent. When the first company was called into service, $5,000 were sub- scribed to aid the company and the families of its members. As other exigencies arose, other sub- scriptions were started or voluntary taxation made, until the sums thus contributed reached $17,500. The women of the town were not less patriotic than the men. On the first day of May, 1861, they organized a soldiers' aid society, which, to the end of the war, met once, and often twice and sometimes three and even four times a week, to prepare articles for the sick and wounded. They raised and spent in materials over five thousand dol- lars, while donations of cloth, jellies, dried fruits, pickles, etc., of greater money value were received. Forty thousand articles were sent forward, mainly through the Sanitary Commission. Bandages were a specialty. None were permitted to go which were not both strong and soft, and which had not in each roll three of the best pins which could be procured. Nearly twenty thousand were made.
At the close of the war in many households there was hardly an article, made of cotton, as old as the war itself, so thorough had been the glean- ing. We scarcely comprehend what twenty thou- sand bandages mean. A homely statement may help us. Twenty thousand bandages put together would reach in continnous line fifty uniles. After
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Sheridan's great victory in the Shenandoah Valley, for many hours all, or nearly all, the bandages procurable were two thousand of the best, sent from Concord ten days before. The special relief agent of the commission writes : " We arrived at Winchester about eleven o'clock at night, and be- fore daylight I presume not less than a thousand wounds were dressed with what you supplied. The next day surgeons kept coming in, saying, 'Can you give us some of the Concord ? they are the best we ever laid hand on.' A few weeks after, a surgeon, having charge of a hospital ship from City Point, sent his warm thanks 'for that box of soft Concord bandages, which replaced the stiff new cloth which was all the government was able to furnish,' and especially noticing ' what a bless- ing those good pins were.'"
The first event of considerable importance after the war was the removal of the courts. Where the courts should meet had long been in discus- sion. When, in 1812, the county buildings in Cambridge needed to be replaced, there was an unsuccessful effort to make Concord the only shire- town. On the other hand, when the Concord court-house, in 1849, was burned, an equally un- successful effort was made to prevent its restora- tion. But on May 24, 1867, with the consent of all parties, the county property was conveyed, for a nominal consideration, to the town, and the courts left. This was really one result of the building of the railroad. Before that time cases of great importance were tried, and able men came and lived for weeks in the town, bringing with them fresh life and interest. The famous Phoenix Bank trial is remembered quite as much because of the remarkable men - Webster, Choate, Dex- ter, Bartlett - who figured in it, as from its own importance. But when the trains took men up in the morning and away at night, the social interest was gone, especially as the large cases gravitated to Cambridge and Lowell, and the town easily consented to the removal.
The second striking event was the gift by Wil- liam Munroe, a native of Concord, of a library building for the use of the town. Mr. Munroe, having accumulated a fortune, chose with rare wisdom to superintend the execution of his own beneficent designs. 'The unique building, which stands at the junction of Main and Sudbury streets, is a monument to his judgment, taste, and liber- ality. With. the building Mr. Munroe gave a fund of $10,000 to keep it in repair, and at his death
left bequests for the benefit of the library to the amount of $43,000. Library history began early in Concord; for in 1672 this record was made, " That care be takeu of the Book of Marters, and other bookes, that belong to the Towne, that they be kept from abusive usage, and not be lent to persons more than one month at one time." In 1786 a library was formed, which apparently in 1795 was merged in the Charitable Library Com- pany, which in 1821 became the Concord Social Library, which was conveyed to the town in 1851, and which finally, in 1873, was put in charge of the trustees of the Concord Free Public Library, in accordance with an act of the legislature ac- cepted by the town. The library contained, on March 1, 1879, over 14,000 volumes, and has a yearly circulation of 26,000 volumes.
In 1874, in accordance with a vote of the town at its annual mectir3; 'à , a work of great value was begun and completed, - the introduction of water from Sandy Pond in Lincoln. The projector of this enterprise, warm advocate, and the chair- man of the board of commissioners who carried it into execution, was Mr. John S. Keyes. Sandy Pond is a body of singularly pure water of. one hundred and sixty or one hundred and seventy acres, situated about two miles from the village, with a surface a hundred feet above the base of the soldiers' monument. On the 15th of June, 1874, the town entered into a contract with the American Water and Gas-Pipe Company of Jersey City for $39,000, to do all "he work and to furnish all the material necessary for the introduction of the water. Work was immediately commenced. Some diffi- culties were encountered, owing to the quicksand in the bottom of the pond, and to the peculiarly intractable character of the rocky rim which con- fines it. But they were finally overcome, and on the second day of December the water was let into the pipes. Thus the town obtained an ample supply of pure water, with so great a head that it can, in case of fire; be thrown from the hydrants over any building in the village, and at so moder- ate a price that a fost from the beginning the water-rates have paid the interest on the cost of construction. William Wheeler, a native of the town,-then just · `ered upon his profession as en- gineer, but now president of a college in Japan, - made the surveys, furnished the plans and specifi- cations, and superintended the work.
One morning in October, 1871, Ebenezer Hub- bard, an old citizen of the town, was found sitting
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
in his chair, dead, in the house which his father and grandfather had occupied before him. By will he left one thousand dollars to aid in the construc- tion of a monument on that side of the river on which the Americans had stood in arms on April 19, 1775 ; and before his death he had placed six hun- dred dollars in the hands of the town treasurer to help rebuild the Old North Bridge on its original
site. The town accepted the bequest, and decided to procure and erect a statue of a continental min- ute-man, to rebuild the bridge, and to complete and dedicate the statue on the hundredth anniver- sary of Concord Fight. Reuben N. Rice took charge of the bridge, adding some adornment at his own cost. A committee, with John S. Keyes as chairman, was appointed to obtain and place
The two Monuments.
the statue. Daniel C. French, a young artist, a | rose clear and cold. At an early hour the long resident of the town, furnished an admirable model. The government gave ten condemned brass cannon, and at the appointed time all was completed.
Meanwhile the town had appointed a committee of thirty, of which George Keyes was chairman, to arrange for the centennial. E. R. Hoar was ap- pointed president for the day, and Grindall Rey- nolds chaplain. Mr. Emerson consented to deliver the address at the unveiling of the statne. George William Curtis gave the oration, James Russell Lowell recited an ode, and General Francis C. Barlow acted as chief marshal. These three gen- tlemen had all been residents for a longer or shorter period in the town.
The Concord centennial was a striking occasion. " To a New England man the 19th of April is the birthday of the nation," and its hundredth anni- versary called forth the greatest enthusiasm. The celebration really began on Sunday, the 1Sth, when the President and his Cabinet, governors of states with their military escorts, and a great crowd of interested worshippers, gathered in the old church, where the Provincial Congress first met, and where the measures which made resistance possible had been passed. The morning of the 19th of April
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