USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. I > Part 68
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trains, crowded to their utmost capacity, and the lines of vehicles coming from all directions, showed that the attendance was to be beyond all precedent ; and, by eleven o'clock, not less than fifty thousand people filled the streets. The national government was represented by President Grant and his Cabinet, by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, by senators and judges, by famous soldiers and sailors. Each New England state sent its governor, with a military organization. Every one of the towns which sprang to arms on the eventful day had its dele- gation. The centennial at Concord was no mere pageant, but an occasion full of living interest. The men who took part in it were not selected simply as great names to lend lustre to the hour, bnt because they had had some vital relations with the town or the occasion. The president of the day, the chaplain, Mr. Emerson, and a majority of the committee of arrangements were descendants of the men who fought a hundred years before, and the ranks of the procession were filled with people who had come back from the East and the West to their early home. The sobriety, the good behavior, the manifest interest of fifty thousand people, dropped in the streets of a little village,
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furnished striking evidence of the elevating influ- ence of free institutions. By half-past six o'clock the crowd had disappeared, and the town resumed its ordinary quiet. The centennial closed with a ball in the evening at the Agricultural Ilall, whose walls were bright with flags, whose pillars flashed with stars and shields wrought of bayonets and sword-blades, and whose whole space was filled with a cheerful, animated company.
In the summer of 1873 the Lexington Branch Railroad, under the name of the Middlesex Central, was extended to Concord, giving to the village another way of communication with Boston. This road in the month of February, 1879, began a still farther extension, to enable it to connect with the Acton and Nashua Road. The Framingham and Lowell Railroad was built in 1871, and crossed the Fitchburg Railroad two miles above the village, making the Concord Junction, which two years later became the real terminus of the Acton and Nashua Road. The establishment of this junetion, from which communication with all parts of the state was easy, was probably one of the reasons why Concord was selected as the site of the new state- prison. The Cook farm, a little estate of fifty or sixty acres of dry, sandy land, lying between the Assabet River and Pail-factory Brook, was pur- chased by the state, and extensive buildings erected, to which in June, 1878, the convicts were re- moved.
The last hundred years have wrought a great change. A hundred years ago the farmer lived more within himself. He raised his own flax and wool, and his wife spun and wove them. His beef, pork, corn, rye, oats, were the products of his own farm. His fuel came from his woodlands. The articles which he sent to Boston now come from towns farther back. The Fitchburg Railroad reached Concord in 1844. It left its mark on agri- culture as upon everything else. Joseph D. Brown began the next year to run a milk-car. At first the farmers held back. . But the tendency was irresist- ible, and in twenty years the daily supply had risen to more than eight hundred cans, bringing back a return to the town of nearly $ 100,000 a year. The vast enlargement of Boston, and the great improve- ment in railroad transportation, began fifteen years ago to produce another change. Early vegetables and small fruits were more largely raised ; so that in 1875, while retaining three quarters of the milk business, Concord sent to market more asparagus, cucumbers, and grapes than any other town in
the state, and more strawberries than any except Dighton.
A hundred years has made a great change in the mode of caring for the poor. For forty- five years of that period they were, in accord- ance with a barbarous custom, let to the lowest bidder; although for twenty years of that time the Cargill farm, left for the benefit of the poor, had been in the possession of the town. From 1821-27, for the use of this farm and a specified snm, Messrs. Stows and Merriam took charge of them. Since then they have been kept by the town under the care of a suitable person. A comfortable building was erected for a poor-house a few years ago. One of the most interesting things connected with the care of the poor is what is called the Silent Poor Fund. In 1718 Perez Wright, weaver, died. He ordered that his little estate, upon the death of his wife and his cousin Elizabeth Hartwell, should go to the poor of Concord. This estate produced a fund of $300. To this fund at various times, and chiefly by bequests, Abel Barrett, John Beaton, Jolın Cummings, Jonathan Wheeler, Ephraim Merriam, Peter Blood, Charles Merriam, Reuben Hunt, Samuel Barrett, Ebenezer Hubbard, and Abel Hunt have added, until the principal now amounts to $8,100. The interest of this fund is annually divided just before Thanksgiving. The recipients are deserving persons, who from age or other cause are able to earn only a partial support, and who are thus kept from coming upon the town.
If we turn from material to higher interests we shall find an equal change. The new school- houses, which in 1799 were thought to be so good, have been replaced again and again; each gen- eration seeking to improve upon the work of its predecessor, while the methods of education have kept pace with the times. The Cummings and Beaton fund, left for the benefit of the schools, reaches about $1,300; Cyrus Stow having given a lot of land and $200 towards the erection of a high-school house, left at his death $3,000 for the benefit of the high school ; and the library has re- ceived legacies from Charles Merriamn, William Whiting, Ebenezer Hubbard, Cyrus Stow, and others. Before 1835 Concord sent to college sev- enty-one persons, and she has sent forty since.
From graduates, born in a little cluster of half- a-dozen houses on the main street of the village, Massachusetts has chosen four members of Con- gress. Of later years Concord has attracted many literary and professional people. In 1835 Mr.
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
Emerson, then in his early manhood, made his home in the town in which his father was born and where his grandfather preached, and here wrote the essays by which his name is known wherever the English tongue is spoken. Henry D). Thoreau was born in Boston, but came to Con- cord in boyhood, and lived and died here, and found, in its quiet rivers, lakes, and woods, inspi- ration for works which are full of the flavor of Nature. Channing, the poet, has lived in Concord thirty or forty years. George William Curtis was here in early manhood. Nathaniel Hawthorne found the seclusion he loved in the Old Manse and at the Wayside, and at these places wrote sev- eral of his powerful romances. A. Bronson Alcott, whose conversations have inade his ideas and pres- ence so widely known, has been a resident since 1857. Warrington (William S. Robinson), the
trenchant correspondent of the Springfield Repub- lican, began in Concord his newspaper experience as editor of the Yeoman's Gazette. Frank B. San- born, his successor, has his home on the banks of the quiet river. Frederic Hudson, an editor of the New York Herald and author of the History of Journalism, ended his days in the town. Mrs. Samuel Ripley, who was chosen as one of five to represent " the worthy women of the first century of the Republic," and who was said to have been the most learned woman in America, came in 1845 to live in the Old Manse. Miss Elizabeth P. Pea- body, the earnest advocate .of the Kindergarten system, has come to Concord ; while Miss Louisa M. Alcott, the author of the most fascinating books for the young which have appeared in our generation, lives with her father and sister in the Thoreau house. This list might be greatly
"The Wayside." Hawthorne's Residence.
enlarged. Fifteen members of the bar, five of whom have occupied judicial positions, also live at Concord.
For nearly two centuries -if we except the brief period of secession in the time of Mr. Bliss- Concord had but one church organization. But June 5, 1826, the Trinitarian Congregational Church was gathered, and the following December dedicated a place of worship. The First Univer- salist Society was formed December 29, 1838, and had a meeting-house on Bedford Street, but ceased
to maintain worship in the year 1852. The Ro- man Catholics held occasional meetings in private houses as early as 1857. But by the purchase of the Universalist meeting-house they came into possession of a church edifice, which they moved so as to face upon the public square. Fathers Flood, ()'Brien, Bresnehan, and McCall have had charge of this society.
On the 21st of September, 1841, in his ninety- first year, dicd Ezra Ripley, who for sixty-three years had been minister, at first of the town and
THE OLD MANSE
BOSTON PUBLIC HARY
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then of the First Parish. He died while the meet- ing-house in which he had so long ministered was in process of repair and alteration. He died just before that great change in manners, ways of liv- ing, and methods of industry had taken place, which the coming of the railroad with its swifter communications made inevitable. In his personal appearance, in his modes of thinking, and in the relations which he cherished to the town and par- ish, he preserved the traditions of a stalwart past. As was well said of him, " He and his coevals seemed the rear-guard of the great camp and army of the Puritans." Not until the weight of more than seventy years pressed upon him did he seek relief from the sole care of pulpit and parish ; when, February 17, 1829, at his request, Hersey Bradford Goodwin was settled as his colleague. Mr. Good- win was a man of amiable character and persuasive eloquence, who died after a brief ministry of seven years, July 9, 1836. Seven months after, Febru- ary 1, 1837, Barzillia Frost succeeded to his work, and remained over twenty years, when, on account of failing health, he requested a dismission. He visited Fayal, with no benefit, and came home to die where he had lived and labored, December S, 1858. Mr. Frost was a man of strong character, firm in his opinions, and deeply interested, not only in the welfare of his parish, but also in all the higher needs of the town. The present min- ister of the parish is Grindall Reynolds, who was settled July 9, 1858.
The first minister of the Trinitarian Congrega- tional Church was Daniel S. Southmayd, a gradu- ate of Andover, who remained from April 25, 1827, until June 8, 1832. John Wilder succeeded him in 1833, remaining six years. James Means was settled in January, 1540, and was over the parish four years. "To an unusual degree he won the respect of the community and the affection of his own people." After his resignation, for a time he
taught Groton Academy, and died a chaplain in the army at Newbern, N. C., in 1863, at the age of fifty. William L. Mather was minister from 1844 to 1848, and Luther H. Angier from 1851 to 1858. Since 1858 the ministers have been Charles B. Smith, Edward S. Potter, Frank Halcy, N. S. Folsom, C. H. S. Williams, and A. J. Rogers. The present minister, Henry M. Grout, was settled in June, 1872.
The only person ever settled over the Universa- list society was Addison G. Fay, who was ordained in 1842, and preached about four years. He was a man of great native vigor, and as a speaker had that power which a strong man, saying what he thinks, just as he thinks it, always has. After his four years' ministry he engaged in business, first as a pencil-maker, and afterwards as treasurer of the American Powder Company, and was killed by an explosion at the mills March 23, 1873. The pul- pit of the Universalist society was at various times supplied by Messrs. Greenwood, Beckwith, Skinner, and others.
The growth of Concord from 1800 to 1860 was slow. It had no great manufactories to attract and support labor, and under the old modes of trans- portation its distance from Boston, in time quite as much as in miles, was too great to enable peo- ple doing business in the city to make it their home. In 1860 it numbered only 2,232. But in the next ten years it gained 180. Five years later it had 2,676 people. And in 1879 its population, not including the reluctant inhabitants of the state-prison, cannot be much less than three thousand. The valuation has increased quite as rapidly as the population, and is now nearly three millions of dollars. The average of life has per- ceptibly increased, and for health and longevity the town takes its place in the upper and favored quarter of the towns of the commonwealth.
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
DRACUT. 2
BY REV. ELIAS NASON.
D RACUT is pleasantly situated on the left bank of the Merrimack River, and contains 1,875 in- habitants, most of whom are engaged in agricultural pur- snits. The town is about three miles in width, and extends from Tyngsborough ou the west about eight miles to Methuen on the east. Pelham, New Hampshire, forms its northern boundary. The land is finely diversified by hill and valley, and the soil is generally productive. The principal streams are the Merrimack River and the Beaver Brook, the latter of which affords considerable motive-power. The town has two Congregational churches, nine public schools, a post-office, and three or four cemeteries. The underlying rock is Merrimack schist and granite; a mine of zinc in the easterly part of the town is now worked to good advantage. The scenic aspect of the town is unusually beautiful.
Originally the lands in this region were in pos- session of the Pawtucket tribe of Indians, whose favorite resorts were at the Pawtucket Falls in the Merrimack River and at the Wamesit Falls in the Concord River; the famous powwow, Passacon- away, was the chieftain. His son, Wannalancet, succeeded him and was, like his father, always friendly to the English.
As early as 1647 the celebrated John Eliot com- menced his missionary labors among these Indians, and continued his visits to this region until the War of King Philip, by which the tribe was broken up and Wannalancet forced to fly into the distant wilderness. During that war, and subsequently, the English settlers were obliged to live in garrison houses, and to carry weapons when travelling or working on their farms. One of the garrison honscs, with its solid walls and projecting stories, still remains, reminding the present generation of the dangers and privations of the forefathers of the town. A fort was erected at Pawtucket Falls, in
April, 1676, and placed under the charge of Lieu- tenant James Richardson, which served, both under his command and that of Thomas Henchman, to defend the new settlement against its wily foe.
Among the earliest settlers in what is now, or was afterwards, Dracut, were Edward Colburn and Samuel Varnum. Both came from Ipswich, and the former purchased for £200 a tract of 1,600 acres of land of Jolin Everett, on the Merrimack River, September 30, 1688, and on the 3d of April, 1671, he bought a large tract of land of Thomas Henchman in the same locality. A part of this land has continued in the Colburn family to the present time. Samuel Varnum took up lands in the same neighborhood, which still remain in the Varnum family. The Indian title to these estates, as also to that of Hannah Richardson, a widow, was relinquished April 7, 1701, for £300 in silver by John Thomas, sagamore of Natick. They embraced a large portion of what was subse- quently the town of Dracut.
Mr. Samuel Varnum first resided on the right bank of the Merrimack River above the falls ; and while crossing the stream one morning in 1676, with three children in a boat to inilk his cows, two sons were shot by Indians lying in ambush : they were buried in the field of Mr. Howard, near the river. The other sons of Mr. Varnum were Thomas, John, and Joseph, all of whom settled on land purchased by their father. The present Mr. Thomas Varnum is of the fifth generation from the above-named Thomas, all having the Christian name of Thomas and all occupying the same homestead.1
As the land was fertile, and the shad and salmon 1 Some of the land originally purchased of the Indians by Samuel Varnum is now owned by Major A. C. Varnum, - a law- yer by profession, and a paymaster in the United States army dur- ing the late war, - which he inherited, and which has remained in the family for more than two hundred years, it having descended through each successive generation. The late Samuel Varnum, who died February 6, 1879, lived and died on the identical spot, as it is supposed, where the bullet-proof house was ereeted by the original settler for a protection against the Indians. A con- siderable portion of this territory was annexed to Lowell by an act of the legislature, which took effect August 1, 1874.
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DRACUT.
fishing good, many settlers soon came in from Salem, Ipswich, Chelmsford, and other places, so that at the commencement of the eighteenth ceu- tury the settlement numbered about twenty-five families; and in 1701 a petition, signed by Samnel Sewall, Ephraim Ilunt, Benjamin Walker, John Hunt, and Jonathan Belcher, proprietors, together with Samuel Varnum and several other inhabitants and proprietors, was presented to the General Court, asking for an act of incorporation as a town- ship under the name of Dracut,1 this being the name of a parish from which Mr. Varnum emi- grated. The petition having been accepted, it was, on the 26th of February, 1701 - 1702, -
" Resolved, That the prayers of said petitioners be granted, and that the tract, of land therein described be made a township and to be called by the name of Dracut; provided that the bounds specified intrench not upon any former grant, or grants of townships ; that the inhabitants of said land assist in maintenance of the Ministry at the town of Chelmsford as at present they do, until they be provided with a Minister as ye Law directs; that the Gen- cral plat of said land taken by a sworn Surveyor be laid before this Court at their Session beginning at May next, and that if any land shall happen to fall within the bounds above mentioned that hath not been heretofore granted, it shall be reserved to be disposed of by this government."
The following is the survey of the town as then laid before the General Court : "It begins at the Island lying in Merrimack river called Wekasook and takes about half of it, and is bounded by Captain Scarlet and Dunstable line on the North- west as farre as Kimballs farme at Jerimer Hill which is about six miles in a crooked line, - then it is bounded by Dunstable line on the West about four miles, - It is bounded southerly by Merri- mack River in a straight line from Wekasook where we began. The South East Corner is a white oak marked with D, -a little from the river and from thence it runs due North six miles, which line is paralell with Dunstable line, on that side. Then by a North West line it again closeth to Dunstable line. This North West line is four miles long-then on the West is bounded by Dunstable line four miles. Laid out and bounded by Jonathan Danforth, Surveyr.
" Additional, -Dracut township contains 22,334 acres, attests, Jo : Danforth, Surveyr.
"On the 6th of June, 1702, it was ordered by
the General Court that Dracut be rated with Chelms- ford, as formerly, in the tax to be raised that ses- sion, and that Dracut might choose one assessor to act with those of Chelmsford."
The land of Dracut was at this period, for the most part, wild and uncultivated. The deer, the wolf, the wildcat, the beaver, and the bear still frequented the deep recesses of the wilderness and the only lines of travel were by Indian trails and bridle-paths, or by boats and rafts along the streams. It was a frontier settlement, and the Indians were held in check only by the warlike attitude of the inhabitants, by the soldiers under Major Thomas Henchman, or by those under the brave Jonathan Tyng at Dunstable.
It may be seen, by the following extracts from the records, that efforts were early made to secure the service of a minister of the gospel for the settle- ment. At a general meeting of the town, April 4, 1712, it was voted " Mr. Cheevers for to come to be our gospel minister if he will come on the terms we have formerly offered to him." It was also voted that "Thomas Colburn and Joseph Colburn be the committee to treat with him in the way for a settlement; also that Mr. Wigglesworth should come to preach for a time in a way to mak- ing a settlement after Mr. Cheevers has been treated with and don't come to preach in a way to making a settlement."
On the 20th of June following the town voted that " Mr. Wiggleworth should be our gospel minister to preach the gospel of Christ with us and if he will spend his days with us then we have granted to him fifty pounds in current money of New-England and as the town grows abler then to add to his salary. Also granted 80 pounds in current money of New-England for his settlement and we have three years to pay this money which is twenty six pounds thirteen shillings and four pence a year, - also voted that Joseph Varnum, John Varuum, and Sargent Hildreth should be the committee to treat with Mr. Wiggleworth con- cerning his settling with us and to receive his answer, and bring it to the town this day month."
Mr. Wigglesworth did not accept this call, but was subsequently settled over the church at the hamlet in Ipswich.
Measures were taken by the town in 1714 for the building of a meeting-house which " should be 30 feet longe and 25 feet wide." Thomas Coburn, Ezra Coburn, Joseph Coburn, Thomas Varnum, and John Varnum were appointed trustees for
1 Several places in England have a similar name, as Drayeott Moor in Berkshire, Draycott-in-the-moors in Staffordshire, and Drayeot-orne and Draycot Foliat in Wiltshire. It may be that Samuel Varnum emigrated from one of these places. In his diary, Sewall spells the word "Dracol."
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
building the house, and were to get the "work done as cheap as they can." It was voted, April 11 of the year ensuing, to set the house "on a peice of land near the south side of a hill called by the name of ' Flag Meadow Hill' on Thomas Varnum's land "; also to grant "one barrel of cider and such a quantity of rum as the trustees shall think needful for the raising of said meeting- house." The meeting-honse stood on the south- erly side of what is now " Varnum Avenue," about half a mile above Pawtucket Bridge, and was dedicated, though then incomplete, September 29, 1716.
The people now listened to as many as fifteen candidates, among whom was the Rev. David McGregor, subsequently settled at Londonderry, N. H. The call extended to him is in the following quaint language : " Dracutt, October ye 15, 1718 Mad Choice of Mr. Mackggor to settel in Dra- cutt to prech the Gospel and to do the Whole Work of a Settled ministor; and likewise Voted to give to Mr. Macgreger Sixty five pounds a year for his salary for the first four years and then Seaventy pound a year till there Be fifty families in the town of Dracutt, and then it Shall Be Eighty pounds a year; and likewise voted for a settlement fifty pounds the one half the Next June inseying and the other half the next June in the year 1720."
This young clergyman did not accept the invi- tation ; when a call was extended to the Rev. Thomas Parker of Chelmsford, which was accepted, and he was installed as pastor on the 29th of March, 1721; his salary being eighty pounds per annum and his settlement one hundred pounds. A church was organized on the same day. The income of the fishing-grounds at Pawtucket Falls was appropriated towards the payment of the salary of Mr. Parker.
Much of the territory was held as " common land," and laid out to the original settlers by a committee appointed by the proprietors for that purpose. The first book of the proprietors is ex- tant, and serves to supply some of the deficiencies in the town records. The quaint orthography in- dicates that the spelling-book and dictionary had not then reached the settlement, and that the lead- ing men had but little time while laying the foun- dations of the town to bestow on grammar or penmanship. The earliest entry in this eurious book bears the date of 1710, and from it may be learned the names, as well as something of the
cstates, of the principal settlers at that time. The first record herein made is this : -
" We do Except of ye parsons within named to be Proprietors of the Reserved Land in the Town- ship of Dracutt and do order thir Loots and thir Nams to be Entered in the Book of records for Dracutt accordingly, Jonathan Tyng, John Lane, John Stearns.
" This is a trew Coppy of the Generall Corts order. Wittnas ouer Hands. Joseph Varnum, Ezekiel Cheever, James Fales.
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