USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. II > Part 54
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In their march to, and retreat from Concord, April 19, 1775, the British passed through the territory of Somerville. Landing on the marshes, they struck the path leading from the house on Phips' farm to Ballard's bridge, the only house then upon the point, and located on the site of houses now on the northern side of Spring Street, between Third and Fourth streets, East Cambridge, and at about two o'clock waded Willis' Creek, emerged from the marshes at Bullard's bridge, and entered the Cambridge and Milk Row roads. Tra- dition informs us that several residents of Milk Row were awakened by their onward passage. They were heard to call Piper's Tavern by name as they passed. It is also said that Samuel Tufts was running bullets with his negro in a small hut back of the house, and did not hear them; but the Widow Rand, who did, and was alarmed by seeing them march by, ran in her night-clothes to his house, when, instantly saddling his horse, he galloped across his farm to Cambridge to spread the news.
The Hunnewell brothers were deaf, and could not hear them, but Mrs. Tufts was aroused, and saw from the bed the gun-barrels glistening in the light of the risen moon. She awakened her hus- band, and they beheld the soldiers halt, hasten up the yard, and, after drinking from the well under the window, resume their march.
It was about six o'clock in the afternoon when the retreating expedition re-entered Somerville, almost upon the run. Here a body of Americans opened a murderous fire upon them from a grove of trees. A halt was made at Timothy Tufts', and a cannon planted on the high ground behind the house. Leaving a few dead, who now lie buried in Mr. Tufts' lot, they soon resumed their march, with a rear-guard, it is stated, to protect their retreat,
and a detachment in advance, which pillaged the houses as far as the rapidity of their march would allow. The inhabitants had left their dwellings at the sound of the distant firing, and taken refuge upon the hills. "It had been a wonder of a winter, so moderate and unfreezing," and the day was un- usually warm, so that the thickly clothed British soldiers wellnigh sank with exhaustion. Some threw themselves into the old pond at the foot of Laurel Street, and drank like dogs. Several dead and wounded were left in the house mentioned as being near the corner of Prospect Street. Lord Percy received his hottest fire along the base of Prospect Hill, and the field-pieces were again un- limbered. A British soldier, while ransacking a chest of drawers in the senior Samuel Shed's house, was shot in the act, and fell over the open drawer.1 The jaded troops had now nearly reached the end of their disastrous expedition ; but there was yet to oppose them, and deliberately lay his life upon his country's altar, Somerville's only martyr in the Revolution. Some ten rods in front of the resi- dence of Mrs. Gilson, on Prospect Hill, on the grassy slope that looks toward the south, is a spot hallowed by inspiring and undying memories. James Miller, who had known the century from its first decade, took his gun and went fortli to do his might against his country's oppressors. With a companion he stationed himself behind a stone wall ; and they used the old Queen's Arm with such effect upon the passing soldiery that a platoon was detached to drive them back. As they advanced up the hillside, his comrade said, " Come, Miller, we've got to go." But Miller, with a fortitude worthy of the best days of Sparta, replied, " I am too old to run," and kept his face toward the enemy until, almost at the setting of the sun, he fell, pierced by thirteen balls, - a fitting and glori- ous seal to set upon a ripened life and an immortal day !
During the siege of Boston, Somerville bore as prominent a part as any of her neighbors. Nearly all her hills were fortified, and alive with men. Greene and other generals had their headquarters at Samuel Tufts' house. General Lee, for a time, lived at Oliver Tufts'. Nothing more than guards were posted within the Somerville limits before June 17, and those were on Prospect and Winter hills. On the evening of the battle of Bunker
1 This interesting relie, with the marks of the blood and bullets still upon it, is preserved at the house of Mrs. Tufts, in Medford Street.
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Hill, having passed over the Cambridge Road be- tween nine and ten o'clock on the previous night, the Americans retreated to these heights, and soon afterwards began the erection of a line of defences in and about them, which finally made the former almost impregnable, and the latter even more strongly protected. The forces occupying the hills of Somerville constituted the left wing of the army besieging Boston. The first of the line of fortifi- cations were earthworks in the vicinity of Everett Street. Patterson was at that time at the fort in- dicated as No. 3. There were other defences on the opposite side of the Cambridge Road connected with the citadel on Prospect Hill. This hill, " Mount Pisgah," as it was sometimes styled, embraced two eminences, the eastern being what is now called Prospect Hill, the western being the present Central Hill. Both were fortified, -the former with a strong citadel, and the latter with a redoubt near the present High-School building. The two heights were connected by a rampart and fosse. Greene's command of three or four thousand Rhode Island troops was stationed at these de- fences. Here Putnam, July 18, 1775, raised the flag bearing on one side " An Appeal to Heaven," and on the other, three vines and the motto, " Qui transtulit sustinet," now upon the Connecticut state seal. The new union flag of the colonies, with its thirteen stripes, was first flung to the breeze from this height, January 1, 1776. There were works in the valley between Central and Winter hills, but all traces of them have long since disappeared. The principal defence on the latter eminence was in the form of an irregular pentagon, situated just at the junction of the Medford and Arlington roads. It was provided with bastions and a deep fosse, and was further protected with earthworks a hun- dred yards to the front.
A breastwork, nearly on the line of Central Street, joined the main work at the northwest an- gle. The intrenchments on Winter Hill, begun by Stark on the 18th of June were more extensive than those of any other position of the American army. Sullivan was stationed here with his New Hamp- shire troops. A smaller work was placed beyond the main fort, a short distance down the northerly slope of the hill ; and another, on a rocky eminence northwest of the bend of Temple Street, in a posi- tion to command the Mystic River as it narrows and bends toward the west of Ploughed Hill, was occupied on the night of August 26. The fort on Cobble Hill, where the McLean Asylum stands, was
so perfectly built as to be known as " Putnam's impregnable fortress." It was armed with eigh- teen and twenty-four pounders, and commanded the ferry between Charlestown and Boston. It was not occupied till November 22. History records very little damage done to the fortifications by the enemy's cannon. One thirteen-inch shell burst within the citadel on Prospect Hill, but without damage to life or property. The works on Ploughed Hill received the hottest fire, three hundred bombs having been thrown into them previous to Christmas.
Upon the historical remains of the siege of Bos- ton and of earlier scenes time and the necessities of man have worked their usual irreverent changes ; a few dwellings, the old Powder-House, and iso- lated pieces of intrenchment between Walnut and Pleasant streets and Vinal and Highland avenues, being nearly all that now remain, and Prospect Hill has given to Miller's River, for sanitary require- ments, a part of her historic crest.
After the evacuation of Boston, March 17, 1776, and the removal of the seat of war to New York, the residents of the territory of Somerville, ex- empted from draft as an indemnification for the losses they had sustained, enjoyed a season of quiet undisturbed by the distracting scenes of war. From November 7, 1777, for nearly a year, the greater part of Burgoyne's army were quartered as prisoners of war on Winter, Prospect, and Cobble hills. Germans to the number of nineteen hun- dred occupied the first-named height, and twenty- three hundred British were held on Prospect Hill.
From the Revolutionary era till the time of its incorporation as a town, the present city of Somer- ville was merely a farming suburb of Charlestown. For the first twenty-five years no changes oc- curred, except a slight growth in population. The next quarter of a century was marked by greater advances.
The Middlesex Canal, chartered in 1793, and made navigable from the Charles River to the Merrimack in 1803, pursued its sinuous course through Somerville. First making its appearance and crossing the extreme northern limits of the town, it reappeared where the Mystic River, after flowing south, bends towards the east. Following the course of the river and the Medford turnpike for a short distance, it crossed the Ten Hills Farm, and skirting the base of Mount Benedict to avoid the marshes, it passed under the turnpike and entered Charlestown Neck, cutting nearly in halves the little
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strip of land belonging to Somerville east of the Bos- ton and Maine and Eastern railroads. The tally-ho of the morning boat aroused few passengers from Somerville, neither did the boats bring to or carry away from the town much merchandise, nor was the population perceptibly increased by this new pathway of travel. With the opening of steam railroads the prosperity of the canal gradually de- clined until its discontinuance in 1843. At pres- ent few traces of it remain within the city limits, a short section of grass-grown bed just east of its intersection with Mystic Avenue and near the old toll-house being nearly all that now exists.
In 1804 the Medford Turnpike, now known as Mystie Avenue, was opened. Medford Street was constructed about the year 1812, after the comple- tion of Craigie's Bridge.
In 1820 there were three school-houses within the limits of Somerville, - the Milk Row school-house, built in the last century in the southern corner of the lot consecrated as a cemetery in the early years of the century, the Medford Street school-house, at the junction of Medford, Shawmut, and Cross streets, and one in the Walnut Hill district.
For many years in the early part of the century Captain Josepli Miller, who carried on a black- smith's shop at the eastern corner of Washington Street and Asylum Avenue, was the only assessor in this part of Charlestown. He would take the property returns and statements of sales from the farmers, as they came to him with work, -for lie numbered nearly the whole district as his patrons, - and then would take a day to drive in Inis chaise to the upper limits of the town to finish the work of assessment.
During the seventeen years preceding 1842 be- gimmings were made which were the sources of much of the growth of the future city. The com- mencement of this era was marked by the opening of Milk Street, now Somerville Avenue, from the west end of Bow Street, - first to Medford Street, and a few years later to East Cambridge, -for the better accommodation of travel over Craigie's Bridge through Somerville.
In 1830 the Boston and Lowell Railroad Com- pany procured a charter, and shortly afterwards be- gan surveying the land and laying the track for their road. This innovation upon the established methods of travel encountered much opposition from the inhabitants of Somerville. Many were incred- ulous of its utility, and others thought it would de- stroy the brick-carrying trade. The workmen break-
ing ground were first opposed with arms, but the road was finally successfully laid, and cars began to run June 25, 1835. The Charlestown Branch Railroad Company a few years later constructed a road to Waltham, which was subsequently bought by the Fitchburg Railroad Company.
The citizens now began to awaken to a sense of the importance of this appendage of Charlestown. They felt that their territory was neglected by the town government, and their wishes disregarded ; that they were taxed for supporting institutions, and making improvements in the benefits of which they did not participate, and that they did not re- ceive returns at all commensurate with the amount of money they contributed. In 1828 an attempt was made to obtain separation from the mother town. A petition was sent to the legislature praying for an act of incorporation for a new town, to be called Warren, and counsel was retained. The petitioners were given leave to withdraw, however, and although the subject was kept fresh in the minds of the peo- ple, no further attempt was made to secure a sepa- rate existence for thirteen years. The grievances previously complained of had not been abated at the end of this period, and the town was under indietment by the grand jury for the dangerons condition of Broadway, Medford Street, and Milk Row ; when, one day in November, 1841, Colonel Asa Pritchard, who lived on Washington Street, between Medford and Boston streets, stepped into the freight-office of the Lowell Railroad, where Messrs. Charles E. Gilman and Hiram Hackett were employed, and declared he would pay no more taxes into the Charlestown treasury. His house was in the fields, and unsalable merely be- cause it was in Charlestown outside of the neck. It was proposed, in pleasantry, to make a new town, where affairs could be managed more in accordance with the wishes of the residents. The proposition was received in earnestness. Notices were im- mediately prepared, and posted in conspicuous places in the district, calling a meeting, Novem- ber 22, at the Prospect Hill School-house, to ascer- tain the minds of the residents in regard to the establishment of a new town with the division line at the neck. Captain Joseph Miller was elected chairman, and Edwin Munroe, Jr., secretary of the meeting ; and a committee, consisting of Messrs. Francis Bowman, Asa Pritchard, Edward Cutter, Robert G. Tenney, Benjamin Hadley, and John S. Edgerly, was appointed to notify the citizens more generally, and to obtain their views more definitely
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concerning the matter at issue. Subsequently Caleb W. Leland and Joseph Clark were added to the committee. The mecting was adjourned for one week, when a committee was appointed : namely, Francis Bowman, John S. Edgerly, Clark Bennett, and James Hill, Jr., with the later addi- tion of Oliver Tufts and S. S. Runey, " to examine the affairs of the town, and to ascertain the amount of taxes paid by the inhabitants above the Canal Bridge, and also the amount expended in that por- tion of the town." December 3, the committee reported that the expenses of the town of Charles- town for the year 1840 were $50,000; that of the $34,093.76 raised by taxation, $5,687.78 were gathered in the disaffected region ; that a large sum was expended for the poor, nearly all of whom dwell within the peninsula ; and the affairs of a separate town might be at least as well maintained for the sum of $5,500. This report was accepted, and a committee, consisting of Charles E. Gilman, Hiram Allen, Edwin Munroe, Jr., Caleb W. Le- land, John C. Magonn, Oliver Tufts, Henry Gard- ner, Charles Miller, Samuel Thompson, and Robert G. Tenney, was chosen to distribute copies of the report, obtain signatures, and use all honorable means to effect a division of the town through the legislature, then in session, employing counsel if necessary. This committee organized by choice of C. E. Gilman, chairman, and Edwin Munroe, Jr., secretary. At an adjourned meeting of the com- mittee it was reported that Ephraim Buttrick had been retained as counsel. It was voted to call the new town Walford, in honor of the first white set- tler of Charlestown. But at an adjourned meeting, December 13, it was voted, on motion of Charles Miller, to change the name to Somerville, - a name selected solely on account of its rarity in the United States. A petition was signed by Guy C. Hawkins and others, praying for a separation from the town of Charlestown at the neck, and for the incorporation of a new municipality. The petition was opposed by the citizens of the main part of the town, by the inhabitants just outside the neck, by those in the extreme upper part of the dissatisfied district, and in general by the Democrats, who saw, in the success of the movement, the birth of a new Whig town.
A committee was appointed by Charlestown to give assistance to the petitioners, but they proved themselves traitors to the cause which they had been elected to further, and gave no assistance. When the matter came before the legislature, to-
ward the close of the session, it was found that the act could not be secured with the boundaries as they were designated in the petition. The Rev. James D. Green, member from Cambridge, a mo- ment before the vote was to be put, declared nothing could be effected at the present session unless the line was drawn outside the neck, as it now exists, and a narrow strip in the northerly part of the town extending nearly to Mystic Pond was ceded to Cambridge. Only two of the committee of the petitioners were present; but Mr. Hawkins declared he would assume the responsibility of the conces- sions, and the act thus modified passed the legisla- ture and was approved by the governor, March 3, 1842. March 5, Ephraim Buttrick issued a warrant to Charles E. Gilman, commanding him to notify and warn all qualified voters in the new town to meet in the Prospect Hill School-house, March 14, to elect such officers as the law pro- vided. A preliminary meeting, of which Colum- bus Tyler was moderator and Nathan Tufts, Jr., secretary, was held four days previously, and a board of town officers nominated. At the meeting on the 14th, Francis Bowman was chosen modera- tor, and the following officers, nominated at the preliminary meeting, were duly elected : Selectmen, Nathan Tufts, John S. Edgerly, Caleb W. Le- land, Luther Mitchell, and Levi Russell. The last- named gentleman having declined to serve, Francis Bowman was elected in his stead. Nathan Tufts was chosen chairman, Charles E. Gilman was elected town-clerk, and Edmund Tufts treasurer and collector.
This was for Somerville a day of small things. She began her career as a sparsely populated farm- ing district, with less than two hundred dwellings scattered over her whole territory. She numbered but a thousand and thirteen inhabitants, with a school population of two hundred and ninety-three, distributed in six schools, -the Prospect Hill gram- mar and primary, the Milk Row primary, on the site of the cemetery, the upper Winter Hill primary, in Central Street, the lower Winter Hill primary, in Broadway, near Franklin Street, and the Russell District School, kept in a private house in the Walnut Hill neighborhood. A single dilapidated globe and two blackboards, three feet square, com- prised the entire apparatus of hier schools.
Land seldom changed hands, and had never been of sufficient value to be calculated by the foot. The highways were merely country roads, with grassy borders and in poor repair. Many of the
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old range-ways, previously described, had been enclosed by private parties. Highland Avenue was still a cart-path, lined with barberry-bushes and surrounded by open lands. It was impassable at night. Franklin Street could ouly be traversed on foot. East Somerville was in the fields. Spring Hill, which took its name in 1841 from the fine spring upon its summit, was just receiving its first streets, There were not a half-dozen houses in West Somerville between the junction of Elm and Milk streets and the Powder-House ; and the location which is now dignified by the name of Union Square was at that time merely a " coun- try cross-road." There was no cluster of dwell- ings anywhere of sufficient importance to be designated a village. The total valuation of the town was $988,513, and she could boast of no rich men, scarcely any one paying a tax of a hun- dred dollars.
The town had no public hall other than the little school-house on Medford Street. There was no church, place of worship, or organized society, no stores, 110 minister, lawyer, or physician within her limits. Protection from fires was afforded by one small tub-engine.
Under these unpromising auspices Somerville began her municipal existence. The first meeting, after the organization, was held April 4, 1842, and the following appropriations were made : Support of schools, $1,800; highways, $2,000; county tax, $450; poor, $200; contingencies, $300; total appropriation, $4,750.
The town was allowed one representative at the General Court, and Caleb W. Leland was elected for the year 1842.
The religious needs of Somerville received their earliest attention from Miss Elizabeth Page Whit- tredge, daughter of Livermore Whittredge, of Beverly, a teacher in the public schools, who, though in frail health, sought, out of the fulness of her religious nature, to supply the want of Christian teaching in the community. June 1, 1842, she gathered the Union Sabbath School in the little public building on Medford Street. Sixty pupils and twelve teachers assembled the first Sab- bath. George Tapley was chosen superintendent, Miss Whittredge assistant, Miss E. A. Bonner secretary, and Jeremiah Thorpe librarian. Miss Whittredge continued her work in fast failing health till April 4, 1844, when she relinquished it to Mr. Farrington McIntire. She returned to Beverly, and passed away, "with a beautifully
resigned spirit, August 28, 1845." She was born February 4, 1812. This was the first religious institution in Somerville, and it formed the nucleus of the first church.
About this time the Rev. Richard Manning Hodges, an unsettled minister in Cambridge, feeling convinced that it was his duty to supply the want of Christian ministrations then existing, with the concurrence of the Rev. George E. Ellis, of Charles- town, within whose parochial charge much of the new municipality lay, supplied the first Christian preaching in town.
The first meeting for public worship was held in an upper room of the engine-house, on the third Sunday of March, 1844. Some thirty families were represented. Services were continued by Mr. Hodges and the students of the Harvard Divinity School till within a short period of the building of a church edifice. August 22, 1844, the First Congregational Society was legally or- ganized, and the church erected on the site of the present house on Highland Avenue. It was dedi- cated September 3, 1845.
Rev. John T. Sargent was installed pastor Feb- ruary 8, 1846, and, resigning March 4, 1848, was succeeded by the Rev. A. R. Pope, who continued in office until his deatlı, May 24, 1858. Mr. Pope, an earnest and public-spirited man, identi- fied himself with the educational interests of the town, particularly in the establishment of the high school, to which he gave a part of its philosophical apparatus. The Rev. Charles Lowe was installed May 8, 1859, and resigned, in consequence of fee- ble health, June 18, 1865. He was afterwards the honored secretary of the American Unitarian Asso- ciation. His death occurred in June, 1874. Mr. Lowe, an able, universally beloved man, was a member of the school board, and at the time of his death a trustee of the public library.
The Rev. Henry H. Barber, the present pastor, was installed December 2, 1866. Mr. Barber is one of the editors of The Unitarian Review, has been one of the school committee, and is a trustee of the public library. This society has suffered the loss of two church-buildings by fire, - one, July 22, 1852, and the second, dedicated April 28, 1854, burned October 8, 1867.
No other church existed in town for nearly ten years. A few residents of the East Village, how- ever, uniting with their neighbors of Charlestown at the house of the Rev. William Stow, in Mt. Pleasant Street, May 4, 1845, organized a Baptist
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society, which held its meetings in an edifice at the neck. In 1853 the building was moved to Som- erville, enlarged, and called the Perkins Street Baptist Church. It was destroyed by fire Janu- ary 8, 1866. June 26, 1867, the present costly and commodious house of worship was dedicated. The Rev. Mr. Stow was chairman of the school board for the years 1848 and 1849. The Rev. J. Judson Miller, the present pastor, was installed September 17, 1861, and under his ministry the church has greatly flourished, - the membership having increased from seventy-five to nearly six hundred.
During this decade Somerville made no rapid strides, but advanced with a steady and encourag- ing growth. In 1843 the population had increased to 1,445, and real estate had nearly doubled in value. The high rate of toll on the bridges hin- dered travel and settlement, but facilities for reach- ing Boston were constantly improving. The Fitchburg Railroad Company, having bought the road of the Charlestown Branch Railroad Com- pany, began running trains December 20, 1843, and the Boston and Maine extension, chartered in 1844, began a few years later to promote the colo- nization of East Somerville. During the year 1846 two new school-buildings were erected, in which were contained the Franklin grammar and Prescott grammar and primary. In 1848 the Somerville schools took the first rank in the county, and the third in the state, in amount of money expended upon them in proportion to the wealth and population of the town. The annual expenditures had increased to $18,397.60 for the year 1848.
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