USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. II > Part 19
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Having the foundation of a church, measures to separate from Charlestown naturally followed ; and, " loving terms of agreement " having been happily made, the Court of Assistants passed, May 2, 1649, O. S., the following vote of incorporation : " Upon the petition of Mistick-side men, they are
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granted to be a distinct towne, and the name thereof to be called Mauldon."
It is not known who signed the petition as " Mistick-side men"; but a document in relation to the church, written in 1648, may be supposed to contain the names of the leading men of Mal- den. They were Joseph Hills, Ralph Sprague, Edward Carrington, Thomas Squire, John Wayte, James Greene, Abraham Hill, Thomas Osborne, John Lewis, and Thomas Caule.
Joseph Hills, who, as we have seen, was an early settler here, 'was a man of ability and was honored in the colony. He had been engaged in important commissions with the leading men of the government, and in 1647 had been speaker of the house of deputies. He had just completed the famous revision of the Massachusetts laws which was printed in 1648, and which was the first code of laws established by authority in New England. He came, with his wife Rose, from Maldon, in Essex, England, and in compliment to him Mystic- Side is supposed to have received its new name. The present incorrect form of the word was not generally used until near the middle of the last century ; and, until that time, the usage of the best- informed persons, both in written and printed doc- uments, shows that the town was, during its first century of existence, known as Maldon.
The line between Charlestown and the new town appears to have been that laid down "at the head of the five-acre lots " in 1638, running from near Powder-Horn Hill, in a northwesterly direction, to the North River ; and Stephen Fosdick, Thomas Whittemore, William Sargeant, and Richard Pratt are mentioned as abuttors thereon. This division left to Charlestown the southwestern portion of the present town of Everett, which retained the old name of Mystic-Side ; and its inhabitants are known to us as "our Charlestown neighbors." Charlestown retained a right in the burying-place at Sandy Bank and the landing-place near by, and exempted the inhabitants of Mystic-Side from church charges for three years.
The first records of the town are lost, and the antiquary must gather from widely scattered sources the story of its birth and early years of growth. The authorities are documents and rec- ords, indefinite and unsatisfactory, - papers made for a purpose soon past, and not intended to con- vey information to a distant age; but, in the vagueness and uncertainty of the light they shed, we may see a sparse and sturdy population over-
coming a wilderness and laying deep the founda- tions of the institutions we enjoy. Of the doings of the town in its first essays at self-government we know but little. Joseph Hills was chosen its first deputy, which position he filled until his removal to Newbury in 1665, with the exception of five years when the town was not represented in the General Court. John Wayte was the first town- clerk ; and Thomas Squire, William Brackenbury, John Upham, John Wayte, and Thomas Canle were selectmen. Richard Adams was constable.
As the desire to establish and maintain church privileges was a leading cause of the separation from Charlestown, so that establishment and main- tenance became' prominent, and fills an important place in the story of the early days. Closely inter- woven as was the religious idea with the secular life of the people, we shall find it coloring and in- flucncing all their doings, and shall perceive the history of the church and that of the town to be inseparable.
Hardly had the men and women of Malden be- gun to enjoy their new privileges, before troubles came from the blessings for which they had labored. This affliction was brought about by the unfortu- nate settlement of Marmaduke Matthews, a clergy- man who, for aught that can be discovered, was a man of piety and ability. Certain words, which savor of transcendentalism rather than of ungodli- ness, and give evidence of a spiritual rather than of a material theology, which did not appeal in its subtle meaning to the popular mind of that age, brought upon him the censure of the civil power ; and the independent action of the church in his ordination exposed it, likewise, to the wrath of authority. In the proceedings which followed, which concerned both the right of individual thought and expression, and the independence of the churches, - rights which more than any others had been stoutly upheld in England by the Puri- tans, -the people of Malden showed a spirit of self- reliance and strength which proved them worthy champions of freedom. Though many were found in the churches and colony to uphold, in some measure, the Malden church, yet, practically, it stood alone in the contest, and was forced by the power of the state to submit. The principle of state authority in church government and in matters of doctrine was fixed beyond dispute; and the court completed the work by the passage, in 1653, of an act "against preaching without approbation." Against this act the Salem church issued a fervent remonstrance ;
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but it was too late, and thenceforth, for many years, the civil magistrate ordered the things of God.
Mr. Matthews did not remain long in Malden, but returned with several of his church to England. He became vicar of St. John's in his native Swan- sea, where he remained until the Restoration, when he again gave proof of his sincerity and independ- ence by leaving his living rather than to subscribe to the tyrannical Act of Uniformity. He remained at Swansea, where he lived by the bounty of his friends and with the love of the people, and died, having attained a ripe old age, about the year 1683.
Having a church of their own, and a town gov- ernment, the people of Malden waited not long for another concomitant of English populations ; and early in 1651 a petition was made by the select- men and the constable, Richard Adams, for the appointment of Thomas Skinner as keeper of an ordinary " for the Accomodacon of Travellers and such like occasions." John Hawthorne, how- ever, received the favor of the court and the ap- pointment ; but, having apparently incurred the displeasure of his neighbors for certain testimony against Mr. Matthews, the court afterwards licensed " Thomas Skinner to keepe an ordinary there in the roome and stead of John Hawthorne." Later the selectmen asked a broader license for " our Bro" Thomas Skiner," that he might " sell Strong- waters And wine to Supplie the necessitys of the Towne and Travellers." In 1657 the town was without an inn ; and " A Bro" of the Church there namely Abraham Hill " was allowed " to keep an Ordinarie there, As Allso to draw wine for the better Accomodating both the church and countrie." The house of Abraham Hill was the precursor of a line of taverns. kept by the Hill family, the last of which, venerable in years but not in its appearance, is still in existence. For more than a century it occupied the site of the town-house, and was known, in its palmy days, as the Rising Eagle. Its rival, the Half-Moon, for a lifetime kept by Daniel Newhall, and lastly by James Kettell, stood near by. A relic of the latter days of the seventeenth century, it was razed many years ago ; but its well, at which generations of men and beasts have drunk, is that, so well known, at the corner of Main and Salem streets.
After the departure of Mr. Matthews, Malden received a minister who was · destined to spend a long life with hier people. This was Michael Wig- glesworth, who was then about twenty-two years
of age, and who had been graduated at Harvard College, at the head of his class, in 1651. He is supposed to have preached here in 1654; but he supplied the pulpit nearly two years before he ac- cepted the call to become the teacher of Malden and was ordained. The custom of the New Eng- land churches recognized both pastors and teach- ers ; and, although the colleagues of Mr. Wiggles- worth were pastors, the title was not applied to him until the later years of his ministry, and it is probable that he never assumed it. Soon after his ordination a sickly constitution, which had mani- fested itself while he was at college, so prevailed upon him that for a long period, variously supposed to have been from twenty-one to twenty-eight years, he was unable regularly to attend his pulpit duties. Shut out from the more active affairs of his office, he turned his attention to literary labors ; and his poems, The Day of Doom, and Meat out of the Eater, those " grim utterances of the past," now known only as literary curiosities of an age of thought and belief now departed, attained a popu- larity which we of the present, with more generous views of God and man, can hardly understand. A modern writer says of his muse: "Homely and coarse of speech as she is, her voice probably sunk into the hearts of those who listened to her rude melody, leaving there an impression deeper than any which the numbers of some of our modern bards may ever produce "; and his biographer says : " There are passages in his writings which are truly poetical, both in thought and expression, and which show that he was capable of attaining a higher position as a poet than can now be claimed for him."
In 1663, while Mr. Wigglesworth was absent in Bermuda, Rev. Benjamin Bunker was ordained as " Pastor in Maldon." As Mr. Wigglesworth's colleague he gained the Malden teacher's love and esteem ; and the friendship which a companionship of six years in the ministry had cemented was cele- brated by the poet in an elegy which rebuked the sins of " Maldon " while it praised the departed saint. After the death of Mr. Bunker, there is no record of any other than Mr. Wigglesworth having preached at Malden until 1674, when Rev. Benja- min Blackman began to preach. He continued here four years, and then removed to the banks of the Saco River, where he became a large land- proprietor and a prominent man. He is supposed to have died in the vicinity of Boston. The next colleague of Mr. Wigglesworth, and the third pas-
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tor of Malden, was Rev. Thomas Cheever, who be- gan to preach in 1680. He was a son of Ezekiel Cheever, the celebrated New England schoolmas- ter, who had been urged years before to come to Malden as its first pastor. He had recently been graduated at Harvard College, like Mr. Wiggles- worth, at the head of his class, and, after preaching about a year and a half, was ordained, July 27, 1681. In 1686 a charge was brought against him concerning certain scandalous words, the char- acter of which is not now known, but which are supposed to have been of a theological nature. So much strife ensued that, at the desire of the church, a council assembled which, at its final meeting, advised the church to grant Mr. Cheever " a loving dismission," it seeming probable that his continuance would not "tend to ye peace of that place, or to ye edification of ye church, nor to his own comfort." Mr. Cheever retired to a pleasant farm, overlooking the sea at Rumney Marsh, which was in the possession of his de- scendants many years. Here he often preached to the sparse population gathered around him ; and in 1715 he was settled as the first pastor of the church at Rumney Marsh, afterwards Chelsea. Here he remained during a long pastorate of over thirty-four years, and died beloved and honored, after having served his Master to the last, at the mellow age of ninety-one years. Of the long line of ministers, descendants of him alone remain in Malden.
Much division and many troubles appear to have occurred after this time. Perhaps some embers of the fire kindled in the time of Mr. Matthews still remained ; and there are indications that Mr. Wigglesworth was considered as one having no claim npon the town and church. Although a salary was regularly voted to Mr. Cheever, and a provision made for his wife in the event of lis death, yet no action is recorded for many years in behalf of the teacher ; and it was not until 1694 that a salary was voted to him, and that he was given the use of the parsonage. The other clergy- men had resided in the " ministry-house"; and Mr. Wigglesworth in the mean time lived in his own house, which stood in an. eastely direction from the parsonage, and the location of which could a few years ago be readily found. It was burned in 1730, while Mr. Emerson was preaching the last sermon delivered in the old meeting-house, having been fired by a negro who was hung at Cambridge in consequence of the act.
The parsonage, standing upon four acres set apart for that purpose in 1651, had been occupied by Mr. Wigglesworth in the early years of his ministry. After his death his widow continued to reside here a short time; and it was occupied by the succeeding pastors, David Parsons and Joseph Emerson. During the occupancy of the latter it was burned, with a large part of his substance. A new house was built, eight or ten rods north of the old site, which was inhabited by the successive ministers of the First Parish until the close of the pastorate of Rev. Sylvanus Cobb in 1837. In this house the celebrated and noble Burman missionary, Adoniram Judson, was born in 1788. It is now in the possession of George W. Wilson, who care- fully cherishes it as an heirloom of the past to the present age.
Mr. Wigglesworth preached at his first coming in the building in which Mr. Matthews had uttered his " inconvenient " words, and in which the church was probably originally gathered. It stood on the southerly slope of Bailey's Hill, perhaps a little to the westward of Bell Rock, and near the site upon which Job Lane contracted in 1658 to build the second meeting-house. This " Artificial meeting House," which had not been completed in June, 1660, was thirty-three feet square, and cost about one hundred and fifty pounds. The contract speci- fied a turret in which the bell, which then hung in a frame on Bell Rock, was to be placed; but it probably was not built for thirty years, as a vote was passed in 1693 to hang the bell " one the top of ye meting-house." In the course of forty years the congregation became straitened in the house which they had built, and an addition of fourteen feet was made upon the south side of the building. The "Charlestown neighbors " contributed thirty pounds towards the cost of the addition, and re- ceived in return "free liberty to com jnto ye sª metinghous to heare ye word of god." Colonel Nicholas Paige, who, with others of Winnisimmet and Rumney Marsh, appears to have attended divine service in Malden, gave six pounds to the same object.
In 1662 Joseph Hills and other inhabitants, complaining that " the Bounds of our Town are Exceeding streight," petitioned for a tract of land " About fowre Miles Square at A place Called Penycooke," on the Merrimack River. This peti- tion was not granted, as the General Court had other views in relation to Penacook, and had re- served it as a township for actual settlers ; and a
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MALDEN.
grant of one thousand acres had just been made for the benefit of the Malden ministry. This grant was laid out in the present towns of Shrewsbury, Boylston, and Holden ; and it was a fruitful source of lawsuits and troubles for near a century, not only with the towns in which the land was located, but also between the precincts into which Malden was afterwards divided.
In common with all towns of the colony, the people of Malden had early attended to the matter of a regular military organization ; and, at the time of the incorporation of the town, we are informed that " the Band of Malden, being as yet a Young · Town, who have not chosen their Officers, are led by Mr. Joseph Hills." Joseph Hills appears to have commanded this company until his removal to Newbury about 1665, when his son-in-law, John Wayte, who had been lieutenant since 1654, snc- ceeded him in that office. Not all the available military force of the town was enrolled in the foot company, as a portion of the men, probably tliose of the better class, were members of a company of cavalry known as the Three County Troop. This company consisted of " Troopers Belonging to the Townes of Malden, Redding, Rumney marsh and Linn," and was formed in 1659. Its standard of crimson damask displayed a naked arm bearing aloft a sword. It furnished its quota during King Philip's War, and was in existence under Captain William Green in 1689. Of its latter history nothing is known, save that dissensions existed iu its ranks, and it probably dissolved not far from the beginning of the last century.
The military power of the colony, which had not seen service since the Pequot War, began, about the year 1667, to receive more attention, and was soon to be called into action. It was then that the fears " concerning Philip and his Indians," which were so terribly realized eight years later, began to be general. Portents were not wanting to add to the general alarm; and, on a clear, still morning " diverse Persons in Maldon " heard in the air the sound of a great gun, and "the report of small Guns like musket shott, discharging very thick," and the flying of bullets over their heads ; " and, after this, they heard drums passing by them and going Westward." In the bloody war which pre- ceded the death of King Philip, the men of Malden performed their duty, both in service and by con- tribution of their substance. In October, 1675, seven country rates were ordered, in consideration of " the great and dayly growing charge of the pres-
ent warr against the Indians." Of this levy the proportion of Malden was £15 10s. for a single rate ; and this was no small burden to the farmers of that day, whose currency often consisted only of the products of the soil. During the summer and fall of that year soldiers of the town were in active service ; several as troopers under Lieutenant William Hasey of Rumney Marslı, the commander of the Three County Troop. Early in December seven Malden men marchied with the company un- der Captain Samuel Mosely for the Narragansett country. In the battle known as the Narragansett Fight, which soon followed, and where nearly seven hundred Indians are said to have perished, this company was the first to enter the enemy's fort ; and two of the nineteen men which it lost in slain and wounded were of Malden, - Edmund Chamber- lain among the former, and James Chadwick among the latter. At the same time another Malden sol- dier, Lieutenant Phineas Upham of Captain Isaac Johnson's company, received a wound from the effects of which he died in a few months. During the next year Malden soldiers served under several captains ; and in a settlement made in August of that year the town was credited with the services of twenty-nine men. This war, which came to a close in the fall, was productive of much suffering in all parts of the colony, but not to so great an extent in Malden as in towns nearer the frontiers. There are extant petitions which portray cases of individual hardships ; and fourteen families, com- prising fifty-two persons, received aid in Malden from the Irish Charity, a contribution sent from Ireland for the relief of those who had suffered by the war. After the war the records indicate that, in common with the other towns of the colony, Malden gradually gained in strength, and added to her intellectual and moral power as well as to her material stature in the season of general recupera- tion into which the country entered.
It may be supposed that a school was early es- tablished here; and in 1663 one William Godden, after sundry individual bequests, left the residue of his estate for schooling poor children of Charles- town and Malden. In 1671 a school was main- tained at the charge of the town, and Captain Jolin Wayte appeared in court and declared that " Maldon " was " provided with a schoolmaster according to law." No other reference to schools has been found prior to April 1, 1691, when the simple entry, " Ezekiel Jenkins continuing to be the Townes Scoule master," proves that the school
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had not ceased to exist. In 1693 John Sprague was chosen master, which position he filled, at times, for nearly twenty years. In 1703 Ezekiel Jenkins resumed the rod, and taught until his death in 1705. His gravestone informs us that " Maul- dens Late School Master From a Painfull Life is Gone to Take His Rest His Lord Hath Called Him Whome." Nathaniel Wayte also taught sev- eral years, and was at times " Improued " as a moderator of town-meetings. The salary of the inaster in 1701 was fifteen pounds, and he was afterwards granted a nominal sum and the " Bene- fit of the Scolars." In 1703 the school was kept "jn ye watch-hous," and under Ezekiel Jenkins it was convened " at his one hous." Later, it was held in houses in different parts of the town. In 1710 the town was presented " for not haueing a gramar School as the Law directs "; but, it ap- pearing that the inhabitants were " many of them needy rather than Capable of Supporting a gramar School," the complaint was dismissed " as to a grammar School," and the selectmen were ordered "to provide them selues of a good able sufficient Schoolmaster to teach their Children to write and Read." In consequence of this order the town finally engaged Samuel Wigglesworth, a son of the Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, who, during his two years' residence here, practised medicine and studied divinity in addition to his school labors. He was afterwards settled as the minister at Ipswich Ham- let, where he died after fifty-four years of service. His diary, covering the period of his residence in Malden, is still in existence. The first school- house, an edifice twenty feet long and sixteen feet wide, was built in 1712; and the next year the town voted to use it " for a wach hous when ther js an ocasion And nott To disoblige ye school jn sª house at aney time." After this there was much trouble in keeping the teacher's place filled by a suitable person, and the town was several times ar- raigned for its neglect. For nearly forty years the roll of masters is filled with the names of many persons, who in their brief seasons probably taught with varying success, until, in 1781, the shoe- maker, Nathaniel Jenkins, who had prepared for the situation by a year's study at the parson- age, assumed with hesitancy the honors of the school-house. This was the " Master Jenkins " of yore, who taught the youth of Malden for nearly a quarter of a century, and whose vigorous methods of enforcing discipline led one who had suffered under him to write in his old age, " The
afflictions of my childhood were neither few nor far between."
In the latter years of the seventeenth century the town appears to have been free from the dis- turbing influences which had embroiled and har- assed its inhabitants in the early days of their ex- istence as an independent church and municipality. After the dismission of Mr. Cheever from the pas- torate, and the recovery of Mr. Wigglesworth's health, a period of peace ensued ; and the quaint records of the time are full of entries which indicate a general advance in the prosperity which the sturdy yeomanry were shaping out of the wilderness. Roads were laid out or made more definite, com- mons were surveyed and divided, church supplies were voted, and regulations for the preservation and advancement of morals and property were con- sidered and fixed. Moreover, the people of Malden were not wholly engrossed by the work which they found to do within their own borders, but they cheerfully assumed and bore their share of the bur- den which the common weal imposed upon them. In the differences which at that early day existed with the mother country, they were with the party of liberty ; and the name of their representative, Captain John Wayte, soon after speaker of the house of deputies, stands on the roll of honor among those patriots who were denounced by the infamous Edward Randolph in his " Articles of high misdemeanour." Later, in 1689, the men of Malden were not unrepresented in the crowds which, pouring from the country into the streets of Boston, overthrew the government of Andros and the authority of the Stuarts in New England. Returning, they met in town-meeting; and, call- ing upon the charter officers, who had been dis- placed by Andros in 1686, to resume their powers, they promised and engaged to "aid and assist them to the utmost of our Power with our Persons and estates."
In the gloom and terror of the days of 1692, when the delusion and insanity which reached its strongest development in Salem threatened to spread over New England, the town, in the per- sons of its inhabitants; did not wholly escape. Elizabeth Fosdick'of Malden and Elizabeth Paine of Mystic-Side were arrested and placed in Salem jail on a charge of witchcraft practised on the bodies of those much-bewitched young reprobates, Mercy Lewis and Mary Warren of Salem Village. Peter Tufts of Mystic-Side, who many times dur- ing a long life appears in the court records as a
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