USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. I > Part 9
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86
The opportune arrival of Rev. Mr. Shepard and his companions at Newtown has been mentioned.
64
HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
Two days after landing at Boston, which was on the 3d of October, 1635, they went to Newtown, where they found everything in the confusion in- cident to the departure of Ilooker's congregation. As many houses were empty, the new-comers were soon accommodated in the dwellings of their de- parting brethren. It appears that neither Shepard nor his friends meant Newtown to be their perma- nent home, but after some trial of the place it was decided inexpedient to remove. In February a new church was gathered with all the solemnity characteristic of such occasions. Mr. Shepard was chosen pastor, Mr. Cotton gave the right hand of fellowship, and then after a most edify- ing season of prayer and exhortation the grave as- semblage broke up. We note in this connection that Jonathan Mitchell, the successor of Shepard, arrived in August, 1635, in the same ship with Rev. Richard Mather, the celebrated minister of Dorchester.
At the court of election in May, 1636, Vane was chosen governor. His administration was destined to be anything but a succession of triumphs. The mutterings of discontent at home soon mingled with the alarms of war from abroad. The prelude to what is known as the Pequot War was the kill- ing of that John Oldham whose expulsion from Plymouth will be remembered. Oldham appears to have led, after this event, a sober and industrious life. He was one of the earliest settlers of Water- town, and one of its first deputies to the General Court. He was one of the pioneers who, in 1634, traversed the wilderness to the Connecticut River, thus leading the way for the settlement at Windsor. He was a man of indomitable spirit ; for neither his ignominions treatment at Plymouth,1 nor the dis- appointment, not to say wrong, he endured at the hands of the Massachusetts Company, seems to have crushed him. His murder was traced to the Block Island Indians, on whom the Massachusetts authori- ties determined to inflict exemplary chastisement.
With this object, which public sentiment fully approved, four companies of about twenty-five offi- cers and men cach were raised, and placed under the command of Endicott. The captains were Underhill, Turner, Jennison, and Davenport. The men all volunteered for the expedition, receiving their subsistence, but no pay from the colony.
The English forces arrived at Block Island dur- ing the last of August. On attempting to land they were stoutly assailed by the islanders, who as yet possessed no firearms, but plied the invaders with arrows from the shore. At length, the troops having landed, the natives fled and hid themselves so effectually that the English were able, after two days' search, to execute the sanguinary order, to kill all the men found on the island, upon only fourteen. They, however, destroyed the cornfields, burnt all the wigwams, and then re-embarked.
Endicott's instructions were to procced from Block Island to the Pequot country, there to demand the murderers of Captain Stone, an indemnity of a thousand fathoms of wampum, and hostages for future good behavior. If these de- mands were refused, he was to use force in order to bring the Pequots to terms. Endicott landed his troops on both banks of Pequot, now Thames, River, and, having failed in negotiating, destroyed some wigwams and killed two of the enemy. He then returned to Boston.
The little injury inflicted on the Pequots served only to exasperate them, and they immediately began hostilities against the feeble settlements on the Connecticut. The gravity of the situation now forced itself upon the attention of all the English ; upon the three or four weak plantations on the Connecticut ; upon the handful Roger Williams had only just gathered about him at Providence ; upon the more remote but foolish instigators of this outbreak, who now realized the impolicy of their conduct in letting loose this nest of wasps upon themselves and their countrymen. Alarm spread through all the plantations. The Pequots had naturally begun the work of massacre and revenge upon those nearest them. Now it was feared that Pequots and Narragansetts, though hereditary enemies, might combine to destroy the English. Governor Vane acted with promptitude in the emergency. He invited Miantonomoh, the Narragansett sagamore, to Boston, and the chief- tain came, in savage pomp, attended by twenty of his warriors. He was easily induced to sign a treaty of alliance, but the English, between fear and distrust, put so little faith in it that they at once de- spatched messengers to Roger Williams entreating his aid in preventing a peace between the two great rivals. Notwithstanding Pequot emissaries were already at work among the Narragansetts, Williams succeeded, at the risk of his life, in frustrating the al- liance, and in deciding the Narragansetts to keep their
1 Having presumed to return to Plymouth after his banish- ment, he was compelled to run a sort of gauntlet between a double file of musketeers, each of whom struek the culprit with the breech of his piece as he passed.
NO
PUBLIC LIBRA
Slaughter of Pequots.
67
FROM 1634 TO THE CLOSE OF THE PEQUOT WAR.
treaty with the English. Had he failed, the history of the Pequot War might have had a very different reading. Time brings its revenges. Williams ban- ished, fleeing from the oppression of those who now so earnestly besought his help, was become their mediator and their savior.
Notwithstanding they had been baffled in their purpose of effecting at least a truce with the Nar- ragansetts, the Pequots continued their efforts to destroy the settlements at Saybrook and at Weth- ersfield. Intercourse between the plantations was almost cut off by roving bands of the enemy.
In the following spring the loyal Narragansetts took the field against the Pequots, inflicting some losses upon them. In May the settlements on the Connecticut held a general court at Hartford, at which war was formally declared against the Pequots. Ninety men were enrolled under the orders of Captain John Mason. Eighty Mohegan warriors were also joined to this force. Massa- chusetts Colony had previously sent a few men to Saybrook under command of Captain Underhill. Plymouth did not co-operate in the war when in- vited by Massachusetts to do so. She had been the first established on the Connecticut, and felt herself badly treated in that quarter by her more powerful neighbor.
With these forces Mason proceeded by water to Narragansett Bay, where he was well received by Miantonomoh, who furnished a reinforcement of four hundred warriors. Mason then began his march for the Pequot stronghold at Mystic. He arrived before the fort on the night of the 26th of May. The Pequots, deceived by Mason's long détour, when they had expected him to land in the Thames, were lulled in fatal security. They had passed half the night in joyous festivity, and were now stretched upon their mats in deep slumber.
Mason formed his men by the light of a splendid moon, and gave the order to advance with caution. When the English had reached the foot of the hill, on the summit of which the fort was situated, they perceived that their Indian allies had deserted them. Nothing daunted, Mason gave the final signal, when the English rushed on to the assault. A horrible scene of carnage ensued, the English being, as Underhill says, " bereaved of pity.". When it was over the power of the Pequots was forever broken. Between six and seven hundred perished by fire and sword. The conquerors took only seven prisoners. But two Englishmen were killed. The surprise was complete; the slaughter horrible.
Before Mason marched from Narragansett Cap- tain Daniel Patrick of Watertown notified him of his arrival, with forty Massachusetts soldiers, at Roger Williams's plantation. Mason marched with- out him. Patrick afterwards joined Mason at Pequot harbor, and moved with him to Saybrook. These forty men were part of two hundred which Massachusetts was levying for the war. The emer- gency having thus happily passed, a day of thanks- giving was kept throughout Massachusetts for the signal victory over the Indian enemy. Cap- tain Israel Stoughton of Dorchester was then de- spatched, with a hundred and twenty additional soldiers, for the scene of action. In conjunction with the other troops, he captured or destroyed the remnant of this once dreaded nation. The Pequot women and children were parcelled out among the conquerors as servants, Stoughton himself stipu- lating for the fairest one he saw among them. Thus the war which began with a fatal blunder ended gloriously for the English arms. Connecti- cut was saved; Plymouth and Massachusetts had forty years in which to prepare for their deadly struggle with the Narragansetts.
68
HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
VIII.
FROM THE PEQUOT WAR TO THE FORMATION OF THE COUNTY.
WHILE the war which threatened to decide the | duced something like open rupture between them. very existence of the English was progressing, the Each represented a faction bitterly hostile to the other. The struggle for the control of this court resulted in the defeat of Vane and his friends, who attempted to obtain a revocation of Wheelwright's sentence without success. Party spirit ran so high that it is related of Rev. Mr. Wilson of Boston, that he harangued the multitude from the limb of a tree, the first recorded instance we find of stump- speaking in the colony. Vane soon left Boston for England, where he became an actor in the great drama of the Civil War. government, ministers, elders, and people of Bos- ton were engaged in a bitter wrangle over questions of religious opinion, - questions that now astound us to think they could cver cause serious division. The other plantations were more or less affected by what is known as the Antinomian controversy, but Boston was the hotbed, the centre, of this ex- traordinary affair. Here the entire community was arrayed in two factions ; a state of anarchy, almost impossible to describe, prevailed. Universal mad- ness seems to have seized upon the whole people. Mrs. Anne Hutchinson and Rev. John Wheel- wright led the crusade against the Old Theology. In Boston public opinion was so excited that the General Court -and, later, an ecclesiastical coun- cil for the examination of the new heretical doc- trines and their advocates - was held at Newtown ; the public stores of arms were also removed from Boston to Roxbury and Newtown as a measure of precaution. Both Mrs. Hutchinson and Wheel- wright were banished, the former going to Rhode Island, the latter to what is now Exeter, N. H., of which he was the founder. Wheelwright appealed to the king's majesty, but his judges refused to entertain his appeal. Many persons of note and condition were disfranchised, a large number dis- armed; and some very worthy citizens left the colony in disgust, never to return. Among them may be mentioned Coggeshall and Coddington, both of whom became honorably identified with the early history of Rhode Island.
We have not the space and little disposition to pursue the history of this controversy, which, but for its disastrous consequences, might be compared to a tempest in a teapot. The country towns seem to have been generally united against the heretical opinions of the capital, as we find only two persons in Charlestown who were disarmed. At the first court this year, 1637, which was held at Newtown, Winthrop was again elected governor. The dislike he felt for Vane seems to have pro-
In October, 1636, during the height of the Pe- quot war, the court "agreed to give 400 Z. towards a school or colledge whereof 200 l. to be paid the next year and 200 l. when the work is finished and the next court to appoint when and what building." This was the foundation of Harvard College. The next year, in November, 1637, while religious strife was blazing fiercely in the capital, -so fiercely that the court held its own sessions at Newtown, - the college was ordered to be at that place because, as Shepard says, it was free from the contagion of Antinomian opinions. A committee consisting of Winthrop, Dudley, Bellingham, Humphrey, Harla- kenden, Stoughton, Cotton, Wilson, Davenport, Welde, Shepard, and Peters was appointed to carry the order into effect. Into the hands of these twelve eminent magistrates and ministers was con- signed this most important educational trust ; and thus in the midst of an emergency which threatened the very existence of their structure of religious government the life of their religious seminary began.
In the following year the name of Newtown was changed to Cambridge, thus establishing an identity of name and purpose between college and town. Peters, Welde, Wilson, Shepard, and Cot- ton, who had all been educated at Cambridge, were, no doubt, influential in causing the change to be made. In March, 1639, the institution was or- dered to be called Harvard College, out of respect to Rev. John Harvard of Charlestown, who at his
69
FROM THE PEQUOT WAR TO THE FORMATION OF THE COUNTY.
death, in the previous year, bequeathed half his estate, which was estimated at about .£ 1,600, and his library of three hundred volumes to it. The next year the ferry at Charlestown was granted to the college.
The example of the pious Harvard bore imme- diate fruit. His bequest was followed by one of £ 200 from the magistrates for the library, and by donations of smaller sums from others. The desire to help forward the enterprise was thus communicated to the people. Those who had money to give, gave it; and those who had not, sent sheep, cotton cloth, pewter flagons, and such articles as they supposed might be of use or con- vertible into money. Such gifts as a fruit-dish, a silver-tipped jug, one great salt, a sugar-spoon, and a small trencher-salt, which the records faith- fully preserve in connection with the names of the givers, may perhaps excite a smile, but cannot be otherwise regarded than as constituting one of the most interesting pages in the annals of the univer- sity, -one which presents in the strongest light the contrast between its humble origin, when be- ginning its high mission, and its commanding atti- tude of to-day. The more lowly that origin, the grander the development ; the more obstacles to be surmounted, the greater the achievement in over- coming them.
Notwithstanding these evidences of public and private favor, the college was, at the outset of its career, singularly unfortunate in its first master. The choice fell upon Nathaniel Eaton, a member of the church at Cambridge, who was also intrusted with the receipt of donations and superintendence of the building to be erected. By a vote of the town, May 11, 1638, two and two-thirds acres of land were set aside " to the town's use forever, for a public school or college; and to the use of Mr. Nathaniel Eaton " as long as he should be employed in that work. This tract, though not directly conveyed to the colony, is considered to be the town's contribution to the college, and its rec- ognition of the act fixing its location at Cambridge. Holworthy, Stoughton, and Hollis are supposed to stand on the ground originally conveyed. The colony subsequently granted Eaton five hundred acres of land, to be confirmed if he continued in his appointment for life.
So far from justifying the trust reposed in him, Eaton was brought before the General Court in 1639 on the charge of assaulting and cruelly beat- ing Nathaniel Briscoe, his usher, " with a walnut-
tree plant, big enough to have killed a horse, and a yard in length." 1 The examination further showed Eaton and his wife to be guilty of gross cruelty and neglect towards the students under their charge. Its disclosures concerning the prepara- tion of food for the scholars are revolting, and difficult to believe. Eaton was heavily fined, and debarred from exercising his calling within the jurisdiction. It excites a smile to read that after being sentenced Eaton greatly disappointed, sur- prised, and pained his judges by not breaking out in praises to God for the magnanimity and justice of the verdict.
The church of Cambridge now proposed to take Eaton iu hand, but before it could " deal with him " he ran away, - first to Piscataqua, where he was again apprehended, but by a clever ruse escaped to a ship bound for Virginia, - and finally reached England, leaving his debts in the colony unpaid. The church then cast him out.
After the dismissal of Eaton his functions were transferred to Samuel Shepard, by whom they were performed until the appointment, in August, 1640, of Henry Dunster, with the title of President of the college. Dunster is mentioned by Lechford (probably in 1641) as having a class of about twenty young men.
In 1642 a government for the college was organized. It was composed of the governor, deputy-governor, and magistrates, together with the ministers of the six next adjacent towns, who with the president constituted a corporation for regulating its affairs. At a public commencement this year nine young gentlemen received the de- gree of Bachelor of Arts. Hutchinson says most of them went to England soon afterward. Several became celebrated ; George Downing, soldier, nego- tiator, traitor, and Rev. William Hubbard, min- ister and historian, are the most eminent. The thesis of the first class of graduates may be found in New England's First Fruits, printed in Lon- don in 1643.
The next year, 1643, the college organization was further perfected by the choice of Herbert Pelham to be its treasurer, and by the adoption of a seal having for its device three open books on the pages of which was the word " Veritas." Harvard continued to be an object of attention throughout the New England colonies. The com- missioners of the confederacy urged their constitu- ents to aid it by voluntary offerings. Connecticut 1 Winthrop's Journal, I. p. 372.
70
HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
made contributions of money and produce, and may be considered to have acquired a title to some share in the fame of the university. Seven years later the government of the college was made a corporate body, and received a charter, under the colony seal, which remained in force until the colony charter was itself vacated.
The building first erected was of wood. Edward Johnson quaintly says it was "thought by some to be too gorgeous for a wilderness, and yet too mean in others' apprehensions for a college." He says, further, that it had a fine hall, comfort- able studies, and a good library. When he wrote, it was being enlarged by the purchase of some neighboring houses. The author of New Eng- land's First Fruits, published in London in 1643, whose account precedes that of Johnson, describes the college building in much the same terms; men- tioning in addition that a fair grammar school stood by its side in which young scholars were pre- pared to enter the college by Master (Elijah) Corlett.
Not long after Johnson's account was written, the subject of Indian education being revived, a brick building of two stories was erected in 1665, near the college, chiefly at the cost of the Society for Propagating the Gospel. Master Corlett seems also to have had charge of this Indian school, which, however, never realized the hopes of its founders that it would prove instrumental in diffusing knowledge among the aborigines. The number of pupils was never large, and the name of only one Indian stands on the list of college graduates. The well-wishers and active promoters of the enterprise, among whom Eliot and Gookin are prominent, were compelled to acknowledge the experiment a failure. The building was soon converted into a printing-office, and Green's press set up there.1
Early in 1638 Winthrop and Dudley, then in their old places of governor and deputy, went to- gether to Concord, in order to make choice of land which had been granted them for farms. Each offered the other the first choice, and after some friendly contention about it Dudley yielded. In testimony of reconciliation they named two great stones which marked the deputy's boundary the "Two Brothers," a name which received legal sanction from the General Court.
Among others a new plantation was begun this year at what is now Sudbury, although its incor- poration did not take place until the following
year. The question of boundary between Massa- chusetts and Plymouth now came up for the first time, and became a matter of frequent controversy. Connecticut, too, had her grievance. She wished to be independent of Massachusetts ; while Massa- chusetts desired to retain some sort of control as the head of a confederation which she was now proposing to the other colonies.
An event of importance was the establishment by Stephen Daye, in 1639, of a printing-honse at Cambridge. It is probable that its want had been seriously felt in the great increase of public and private business ; but especially for the multipli- cation of public documents of every description, which until now had been done by professional scriveners. Thus, the first thing printed was the " Freeman's Oath," the next an almanac made by William Peirce, mariner, and the next, the Psalms " newly turned into metre." 1 Samuel Green, the successor of Daye, is sometimes erroneously called the first printer in the colonies, but this honor belongs to Daye. Green's most important work was the Bible, translated into the Indian tongue, which issued from his press in 1661 and 1663; the New Testament being published in the first and the Old Testament in the last named year. This stupendous task of translation, on which Eliot's heart had been set since 1649, was achieved under the patronage and at the expense of the So- ciety for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians, first established in England in 1649. The Society sent over a printer to assist Green, named Marma- duke Johnson, an idle, dissolute fellow, of whom the commissioners of the United Colonies made serious complaint to his employers. A copy of the Indian Bible being presented to Charles II., to whom it was dedicated, caused the learned Baxter to declare it " such a work and fruit of a planta- tion as was never before presented to a king."
1 The Bay Psalm Book, as it is called, is of such excessive rarity, that eopies have been sold in Boston at $ 1000. A copy belonging to the late George Brinley recently sold for $ 1200. Prinec, in his Preface to the revised edition of 1758, gives the following account of its origin : "By 1636, there were come over thither, near thirty learned and pious ministers, educated in the universities of England, and from the exalted principles of Scripture purity in religions worship, they set themselves to translate the Psalms and other Scripture songs into English metre as near as possible to the inspired original. They com- mitted this work especially to the Rev. Mr. Welde and the Rev. John Eliot of Roxbury, well acquainted with the Hebrew and Greek also. They finished the Psalms in 1640, which were first printed by Mr. Daye, that year and had the honour of being the first hook printed in North America, and, as far as I find in the whole new world."
1 Captain Samuel Green, printer, of Cambridge, father of Bar- tholomew Green of Cambridge and Boston.
71
FROM THE PEQUOT WAR TO THE FORMATION OF THE COUNTY.
The two regiments of militia in the Bay, that is, of | the towns near Boston, were mustered this year for exercise at Boston, probably on the training-field, sinee called the Common. They together num- bered a thousand men, and were commanded by the governor and deputy. Winthrop says they were-well armed and offieered. The Pequot War had doubtless infused a martial spirit among the people, which the very equivocal attitude of the colony towards the mother country taught the authorities to foster and encourage. This thou- sand men represented the number that might be ealled together in an emergency, but by no means the whole military strength of the colony.
The representative body, having increased to thirty-three deputies under the old apportionment, was reduced by restricting the number to two from each town. The old, unsettled question of a body or code of laws, which had so often been agitated, likewise approached solution. The people earnestly desired such a code. The rulers on the contrary, being conseious that many usages which already had the force of laws in the colony were repugnant to the laws of England, and therefore in violation of their charter, interposed delays rather than enaet a code which might be used as eonelu- sive evidence against them. They preferred a civil and judicial administration resting upon customs which should be as fully recognized and take the form of laws ; but, meaning to obey the statutes of England only in so far as those statutes were not repugnant to their own ideas, they had judiciously refrained from putting their condemnation on record. It was, however, no longer possible to pursue such a poliey. The people insisted upon having a body of fundamental laws; the work was put into the hands of two ministers, Mr. Cotton of Boston and Mr. Nathaniel Ward of Ipswich, each of whom was to frame a code to be submitted to the next court. In 1641 the code prepared by Ward, who had been bred to the law in England, was accepted by the General Court, and called the " Body of Liberties." Even then the court did not enact, but called upon the peo- ple to consider and obey its provisions as if they were laws. The tide of emigration to New England had now ceased to flow. Hutchinson estimates the number of emigrants during the twelve years ending in 1640 at 21,200 souls ; and the number of ships employed in bringing them at two hundred and ninety-eight. The English Puritans no longer looked to New England for an asylum, but were
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.