USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. II > Part 32
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The next summer old Waban died, his last words attesting a Christian's trust. To-day a placid lake, whose surface his canoe oft cleft, bears his name.
Here is Natick in 1685 as sketched by Jolın Dunton of London, who visited New England on a bookselling speculation. Calling on Rev. Mr. Eliot at Roxbury, he received twelve Bibles just from the press. They would be a fortune to our booksellers. But we quote : " On horseback about twenty miles to Natick. We tied up our horses in two old barns almost in ruins. We had no place where we could bestow ourselves, unless upon greensward until the lecture began. We were in- formed that the sachem and queen were there, and went immediately to visit them. When we had made our visit, we went to the meeting-place, where the lecture was preached by Mr. Gookins. The poor Indians were very much affected, and seemed to hang upon his lips. The Natick Lec- ture was done about four in the afternoon, and we had twenty miles to Boston, so that we were obliged to mount immediately and make the best of our way."
March 19, 1687, died Major Gookin, whose gravestone is yet in the ancient cemetery at Cam- bridge. Near this time Eliot's wife, his companion for more than fifty years, a person remarkably fitted for lier position, died. Her husband's sim- ple eulogy has a tender pathos : " Here lies my dear, faithful, pious, prudent, prayerful wife."
From Judge Sewall's recently published diary we glean these facts : " Wednesday, May 21, 1690, about one in the morning Mr. Eliot died. This
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
puts our Election into Mourning." His death was referred to by Mr. Walter in the Thursday lecture with reference to 2 Kings ii. His funeral was attended on Friday by the magistrates and ministers, six of the latter serving as bearers. The burial-spot, since then the tomb of the pastors of the First Church of Roxbury, is in the cemetery, on the corner of Washington and Eustis streets. The Natick church mourned their spiritual father many a day, for no Elisha caught the mantle of the ascending prophet. In amiability of character he was our New England St. John; in abundant labors for an outside race our apostle to the In- dians was a very St. Paul. Cotton Mather's ana- gram on his name reveals his earnest spirit, for " Eliot," reversed, reads " toile." Three places in Massachusetts shall ever honor his holy memory, - Roxbury, Newton, and Natick.
The cloud which Eliot in his later years saw resting over his cherished work did not lift, but rather darkened, after his decease. In 1693 one writes, " Since blessed Eliot's death the Natick church is much dwindled." Daniel Takawampbait had been ordained as their teacher, probably when Eliot's age took him from active service. Judge Sewall's interleaved almanac, under date of July 29, 1683, says : "The first Ind ordeyned Minest was Daniel of Natick."
But the light was waning. In 1698 two pas- tors were chosen by the legislature to visit all the native plantations and report their state. Here they found a church of seven men and three women, "their pastor Dan' Takawampbait (or- dained by the Rev and holy man of God, John Eliot deceased) who is a person of great knowl- edge. Here are fifty-nine men, and fifty-one wo- men, and seventy children under sixteen." In 1699 they inform the legislature. that their house was fallen down, and ask leave to assign Jolin Collar, Jr., a little nook of land in their plantation, in recompense for his building another meeting-house. Two hundred acres, after some delay, were granted him. Takawampbait died September 17, 1716, aged sixty-four, as his humble stone on the side- walk informs us. Two Indians preached tran- siently after him ; the last record of such was in 1719. The ten members of 1698, as the church probably added none, may all have passed away in the next twenty years.
Natick had been a purely Indian settlement. The town records were written at one time in their language by Thomas Waban, son of Eliot's first
convert. Besides acting as village clerk, he was a justice of the peace. One of his arrest-warrants reads : ---
" You you big constable ; quick you catchum Jeremiah Offscow ; strong you holdum ; safe you bringum afore me,
" THOS WABAN, Justice peace."
At a public meeting, May 4, 1719, certain per- sons, twenty in all, of those six Speens, and an- other, a woman, were declared to be " the Only and True Proprietors of Natick."
In 1720 John Sawin erected a saw-mill first on the river, but soon removed it to the brook named after him. His father, Thomas of Sherborn, made a grist-mill for the Indians as early as 1686.
Some time later the dam just above the bridge was made. The little island was then the south bank of the stream, but a freshet once found a short cut, and to-day the new channel is rather the wider of the two.
Rev. Oliver Peabody (Harvard, 1721) was en- gaged as an Indian missionary by the same society that assisted Eliot. He took a mission service which eleven men, it is said, had declined. His first sermon was preached August 6, 1721. A meeting-house must have been built, as a proprie- tors' meeting in September granted Moses Smith of Needham forty acres on the southwesterly side of Pegan Hill for finishing the meeting-house.
Mr. Peabody found the original church extinct, and no records preserved. Therefore, December 3, 1729, a new church of three Indians and five whites was formed, Rev. Mr. Baxter of Medfield, whose daughter, Hannah, Mr. Peabody had mar- ried, preaching the sermon. And our Indian mis- sionary was ordained a fortnight later at Cambridge. He built his house on the Sherborn road, on a knoll commanding a fine river-view. Traces of the cellar may yet be seen. The Indians brought two young elms, and planted them as friendship trees in his front yard. They stood about a cen- tury.
In 1728 the proprietors had voted " that Rev. Mr. Peabody, during his continuance in the work of the ministry in Natick, have the sole use and improvement of the Ministerial Lot," a hundred- acre tract on Pegan Plain, the very heart and busi- ness centre of Natick to-day ; also " that there be a Contribution for ye Rev. Mr. Peabody the last Sabbath in every month, Lieut. Wamsquan to hold the box."
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NATICK.
Our Indian pastor must have been a good preacher, for in 1732 he preached the Artillery Election Sermon, which was printed at Boston by T. Fleet.
Thomas Sawin had a mill in Natick, and may have sojourned here awhile ; his son John has been thought to be the first white resident, though others had lands from the natives before him. Mr. Pea- body, in 1726, speaks of his lonesome life, as his nearest English neighbor was a mile away.
Captain David Morse, son of Captain Joseph, of Sherborn, moved to Natick, and built upon the site where now Mr. Asa Caswell resides. This was about the year 1727. He became first captain of the white military company. Jonathan Carver, who has given name to the hill back of the hotel, was among the early settlers. Ebenezer Felch lived in the north part of the town. He was an active citizen, filling various offices acceptably, suclı as schoolmaster, surveyor, proprietors' clerk, and the first English deacon of the church.
The village officers until 1733 were all Indians, the first whites, elected being John Sawin, consta- ble, and Thomas Ellis, tithing-man. No Indian held a town office after Natick became a parish.
In 1698 the plantation had no schoolmaster ; and only one child, out of seventy under sixteen years of age, could read. But in 1731-32 Eben- ezer Felch received six pounds for teaching, and four pounds the 'next year. Four years later the town sold one hundred and fifty pounds' worth of common lands, " the income and yearly interest whereof to be toward the maintenance of a school in Natick." In 1746 it was voted not to have a school, but they spent eighty-five pounds for parish ammunition. Two years after the inhabitants grew wiser, and appropriated forty pounds, Old Tenor, for a reading and writing school.
In 1743 the church felt the wave of Whitefield's influence in New England. Their pastor wrote that within two years about fifty persons, Indians as well as whites, were added to the church.
As the white population increased, Natick plan- tation became by legislative act a precinct or par- ish, January 3, 1745. But the Indians lost their citizenship, and were henceforth under guardians. They could not sell their land withont permission of the General Court. Many a petition for that object is on the state files.
A tax list, in 1746, about church affairs con- tains thirty-three Natick names, whites only ; seven Framingham, and two Sudbury men. The
document reads : "An assessment of £12 10s. being a tax granted and agreed upon by ye inhabi- tants of Natick, regularly assembled, to give to the Rev. Mr. Peabody, as a Gift Money, by the sub- scribers, January ye 21st, 1746-47, each person's proportion to said Rate."
We have a complete list of the Indian families in 1749, adults and children in each household, --- one hundred and sixty-six in all : forty-two on the south side of the river by Dedham, sixty-four south of Saw-pit Hill on Pegan Plain ; sixteen west of Saw-pit Hill, and twenty-six southeast of Pegan Plain. This census was taken on account of the endeavor of some dissatisfied white people to change the location of the church. Beneath the names we read, " All these are accommodated as the meeting house now stands."
Another valuable paper is entitled, "This is a Plan of the Roads, and the Situation of the houses in the Parish of Natick. The red spots are Eng- lish houses, and the black spots are Indian houses or wigwams, Aug. 1st 1749, Samuel Livermore Surveyor." There are about forty black spots and fifty red ones.
We find, in 1746, a town vote, the forerunner of many stormy debates upon the question " to see if the Town will agree upon a place to set the Meeting-house, and to see if the Town will vote, that the Indians of Natick shall have an equal privilege with them, according to their number in a new meeting-house, when they shall build one, if they will meet with them." Soon follows this record : " Foted to have Mr. Peabody for minister if he will come to the centre of the town"; which opened an unpleasant difference of opinion that embittered Natick history for the next fifty years. Our good minister, however, was to be taken from the evil to come. He spent a season on a mission to the Mohegans in Connecticut. About this time a new meeting-house was under way. In a private diary we read : " June 8, 1749. Natick meeting- house raised." We have seen the bills for money paid to sundry Indians for labor and material for the meeting-house. But it was not proceeded with, on account of divided desires as to its location.
Returning with enfeebled health, Mr. Peabody fell into a decline, and died on Sunday, February 2, 1752. His gravestone, as was then customary for ministers, bears a Latin epitaph. His widow married Deacon John Eliot of Boston, and died in 1796, aged ninety-two. As a preacher, his ser- mons were plain, direct, and yet tender. His in-
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
fluence over the Indians was excellent in leading them to intelligence and habits of temperance and industry. Governor Belcher was a personal friend who often welcomed him to his house. Besides the discourse already named, a sermon of Mr. Peabody's was published, delivered at the evening lecture at the New North Church in Boston, June 8, 1742. He had twelve children. With the servants and visit- ors his family frequently numbered twenty around his hospitable board. The oldest son, Oliver, Jr., graduated at Harvard, was ordained pastor of the church in Roxbury, Mr. Eliot's fourth successor, but died after a brief ministry. He built a resi- dence nearly opposite the church, which for eighty years was the parsonage. It is now owned and occupied by that eminent scholar and antiquarian, C. K. Dillaway, Esq.
A meeting of the parish of Natick was called in 1754, " To see if the inhabitants accept the school that was kept at Joseph Travis' as a school for that Squadrian "; and some years later, " To see if the Parish will Imploy School-Dames to school their children." A list of the soldiers in Natick under Captain John Coolidge names forty-two, and the alarm-men were twenty-one more. Rev. Stephen Badger's name heads the last company, April 19, 1757. We find returns of men enlisted or im- pressed for his Majesty's service. They were at the lakes in the French and Indian War, and learned a soldier's duty, useful hereafter, when not in his Majesty's service. A number of Indians went in these campaigns. But in 1759 a distemper carried off some score of Indians, only two who were attacked recovering, while of the English who took care of the sick natives but one caught the disease and died. Nantucket chronicles a similar story about the same time.
On the town records stands this early emancipa- tion proclamation : -
" Know all men whome these Presents may Con- cern, that we Samuel Taylor and Hannalı Taylor his wife; In Consideration of the Good Servis our Negroe Man Servant, Named Plato, hath Done and may Do for us During our Life, and Considering the trouble he the said Plato May be brought to After our Deceas : we Do by these Presents att our Decease, Absolutely and fully Free and Aquit him, the said Plato from being sold or being any Slave Servant to any Person whoom soever : but he shall have his full Liberty to serve with whome he will, and his wages Shall be for his well-maintenance,
and the Remainder to those that shall take the best Care of him During his life.
" Given under our Hands in Natick, in the County of Middlesex, this twenty-first Day of June, Anno Domini 1764.
"SAM'L TAYLOR. " HANNAH TAYLOR.
" Signed in Presence of " NATH. MANN. " THOS. STANFORD. " A Trew Record of his Freedom."
Just before this time died Joseph Ephraim, the Indian deacon. At his election all the whites gave him their votes, and he held the office from the organization of the church through Mr. Peabody's ministry, and probably till his death, about 1761. He was a man of good parts, and highly respected. Having been asked why young Indians when living with the whites kept sober and industrious, but returning to their own kindred soon grew lazy, in- temperate, and shiftless, he replied, in his broken English, "Tucks (ducks) will be tucks for all old hen he hatch um." He had a descendant, John, who inherited his acres, but not his virtues.
Rev. Stephen Badger, in 1753, was appointed Indian missionary at Natick. The white inhabi- tants agreed to give £ 13.6s. 8d. towards his salary, and build him a house with timber from the minis- terial lot, and draw him thirty cords of wood yearly. He was born at Charlestown; graduated at Harvard College, 1747 ; and was ordained March 27, 1753, President Appleton, of Cambridge, preaching the sermon.
The next year a new meeting-house, the fourth on the spot, was built, largely at the cost of the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians. The mutual influence of the whites and Indians worked badly on many of each race, who took each other's evil qualities. Natick, as a parislı, voted money toward galleries in the meeting-house, and the preacher's salary was voted by the town, often reluctantly, the trouble growing out of the location of the church.
Mr. Badger built a manse which is still inhabited. It well preserved its character of respectable age, and was the residence of Oliver Bacon, founder of the free library ; but since his death it has been modernized.
An old diary states : "March 21st 53; Mr. Badger's church was gathered."
Let us sketch the life of John Jones, born in
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Weston, 1716, who married Hannah Morse in 1742. | Gardner's company, in Colonel Brooks' regiment, Though residing over the river, and so in another has eleven names from this town. A recruit needed a suit of clothes. Tradition avers that the sheep were sheared, and twelve maidens spun, wove, cut, and made it, in twenty-four hours. Natick had her sons at Bunker Hill. The British can- monade could have been heard in her peaceful homes, and the smoke of burning Charlestown that Saturday afternoon was to be seen from her hill- tops. Rev. Mr. Badger met with serious pecuniary loss, for Charlestown had been his home. town and county, his public life is connected with Natick. His house, finely placed on a gentle swell of land upon the river-bank, was removed only four years ago, when Mr. Benjamin P. Cheney built his beautiful mansion on the very spot. Esquire Jones was an influential citizen ; justice of the peace under royal and republican jurisdic- tion, a colonel in the militia, considered conserva- tive in his politics about the Revolutionary period. He filled the office of proprietors' clerk, and was an excellent surveyor. His plans of surveys at Mt. Desert in 1762 have been presented to the Maine Historical Society by his grandson, Elijah Perry, Esq. Some amusing extracts from his journal as justice of the peace have been in print recently. Mr. Jones was for many years deacon in Mr. Badger's church. His second wife was Tabitha Battle. He died in 1802.
In the troubles with the mother country pre- ceding the Revolution Natick, like other New Eng- land towns, was deeply moved. Crispus Attucks, - that stalwart mulatto who with three others fell in the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770, - though he had been servant to William Brown of Framing- ham, used to live just over the line in Natick. The site of his hut is well known. There flowed in his veins a tinge of Indian blood. At the time of his death he was a sailor.
A company of minute-men had been formed here March, 1775, and on the eventful 19th of April a company under Captain Joseph Morse marched, on the Lexington alarm, to harass the retreat of the redcoats. A muster-roll in the state archives registers seventy-six men, out of a population of five hundred and thirty-five. Some of them were veterans of the French and Indian wars. They were leading men in the place, - the Morses, Bacons, Broads, Sawins, and Manns.
The Natick men brought several prisoners who settled in Dover.
These companies belonged to Colonel Samuel Bullard's regiment. The town voted, May 12, to dismiss "Captain Joseph Morse, Lieutenant Wil- liam Boden, and Lieutenant Abel Perry from being selectmen, as they are going into the Massachusetts service." Captain Morse's company was with the army at Cambridge, in Colonel Patterson's regi- ment, until August 1, 1775 ; other Natick soldiers were in Captain Mellen's company, of Colonel Ward's regiment. The next year Captain Aaron
A town-meeting was called, June 20, 1776, "to see whether the inhabitants will vote to stand by the Continental Congress with their lives and fortunes ; in Case the Continental Congress shall in their Wisdom, Declare for Independence of the King- dom of Great Britain." After reaching the article they adjourned two and a half hours to await the report of their committee, - Rev. Stephen Badger, Captain John Coolidge, and Daniel Morse. These presented a well-written, patriotic resolution, which the town adopted. An extract will show the spirit of the day : " We will with our lives and fortunes Join with the other inhabitants of this Colony, and with those of the other Colonies, in supporting them in said measure, and which, if we may be permitted to suggest our opinion, the sooner it is Come into we shall have fewer Difficulties to Conflict, and the grand objects of peace, Liberty, and Safety will be more likely Speedily to be Restored, and Estab- lished in our once happy land."
July 3, 1776, Samuel Welles being moderator, the town voted " seven pounds additional to the bounty of seven pounds, that the colony gives to those that Inlest into the Canada Expedition." A number went with Arnold on that toilsome march through the Maine forests, ending in the brave but unsuccessful assault upon Quebec.
The Declaration of Independence is recorded on the town-book, in the handwriting of the clerk, a true patriot and gallant soldier, Ensign Daniel Morse. Soldiers enlisted, or " did a turn," as the expression was, at Dorchester, Canada, New York, and Rhode Island. Some citizens paid their sub- stitutes. Captain Joseph Morse, who had risen to the rank of major, returned in poor health, and died December 16, 1779. Ensign Sawin, the father of her who founded Sawin Academy, served in the Revolution. His cap and gun are still pre- served in the family. Asa Drury became captain, and lived respected years after the peace. Heze- kiah Broad won a major's commission. He had
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
been a delegate to the Provincial Congress of 1774 | at Concord, and after the war was a member of the Constitutional Convention in Boston. A gen- tleman of the old school, he long continued to dress in the Continental costume. Lieutenant William Boden did good service in the army, and was a public-spirited citizen. He gave land for a school-house and cemetery. His monument in the West Cemetery was erected in 1855 by the town, for the ungrateful adopted son who received his property had not raised the simplest stone to the memory of his honored foster-father. Benjamin Smith outlived all his fellow-pensioners. He was musician to the minute-men who went to Lexing- ton, was at Monmouth, and in his old age delighted to furnish martial music on public occasions. At the last Cornwallis celebration in Natick, 1857, he was present, a robust man of ninety-eight years. He died at Grafton, at the age of nearly one hun- dred and one.
The negroes of Natick joined in the patriotic struggle. Out of an hundred and twenty who en- listed, some twenty had been slaves. Cæsar Ferrit and his son John were in the ranks nearly all the war, beginning at Lexington. Cæsar came from the West Indies, and used to say that the blood of four nations flowed in his veins; for he had a French and also a Dutch grandfather, and one of his grandmothers was an Indian, the other an Afri- can. Plato Lambert, whose emancipation was noticed, deserves further mention. Years after peace was ratified he took to roaming around the country with his great dog. But man and dog strangely were missing at last. A large skeleton corresponding to Plato's size was found near the lake a long time after his disappearance. He had been murdered, it was said, but by whom was never known.
Natick became an incorporated town in 1781. A tract of land called Necdham Leg, reaching nearly to Lake Cochituate, and containing 1,600 acres, was in 1797 annexed to Natick. Its loca- tion was a source of debate, and several times its inhabitants had sought to be set on or off during the last fifty years. In exchange Natick ceded to Needham about four hundred acres, between Waban Brook and the present town line. The land thus transferred included the Welles farm, whence the name Wellesley comes, widely known as the place of the much-visited park-like grounds of H. H. Hun- newell, Esq. The barren field, cultivated for years with judicious expense and the best taste, is changed
into a garden of rare beauty ; azaleas and rhodo- dendrons delight the lover of flowers; there are broad velvety lawns, trees grouped or massed, paths revealing beautiful vistas, terraces com- manding charming lake-views.
The Welles family of Boston had here their country home. Mr. Samuel Welles was active in church and town affairs in Mr. Badger's time, and offered to advance funds for finishing the meeting- house at the time when the town was uncertain what to do. Two houses the family formerly lived in are tenanted still. One retains the pictured tiles round the fireplace. Lake Waban in the last century lay chiefly in Natick, and was called Saw- Mill Pond, then Bullard's Pond. Samuel Welles, the famous banker of Paris, was born in Natick, going hence in 1815 to win celebrity and a fortune abroad. He died in 1841, and his widow, a native of Watertown, became afterward a titled lady, Marchioness de la Valette ; and their son, Samuel Welles, married a daughter of M. Rouher, Prime Minister under Napoleon III.
In the later years of his life Rev. Mr. Badger wrote a valuable communication on Natick his- tory.1 When the new meeting-house at the Cen- tre, where the cross-roads met, was completed, he was requested to preach the first sermon there in 1799, but declined on account of his health ; and there was no preaching in the old church after 1798. He died in 1803, after a stormy pastorate of fifty years, and lies buried in his family lot, where one stone records all the family epitaphs. His personal appearance and character as a man and preacher are portrayed in Biglow's History of Natick by one who knew him well. A double sermon on Drunkenness, preached October, 1773, was published at the time, and reprinted in 1829. He has also some philosophical essays in the Co- lumbian Centinel. He was the Parson Lothrop in Oldtown Folks. His widow survived him twenty years, and the settlement of her estate involved a famous lawsuit, in which Daniel Webster pleaded.
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