USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. II > Part 57
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The Powder-House. - This venerable structure, associated equally with the appliances of war and the occupations of peace, was erected in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, and for several years was a windmill, to which the settlers for many miles around brought their corn to be ground.
For some twenty years before the Revolution, and till 1822, it was in use as a public store-house for powder. Again becoming private property, it has since remained idle, resting on the distinction of being the only ancient ruin in Massachusetts.
Standing on an eminence, formerly called Quarry Hill, with its round tower surmounted by a conical cap, it is a conspicuous object for miles in many directions.
It is built of slate-stone, such as occurs in the neighboring quarry. There are three stories, di- vided by heavy floors, and supported by large oaken joists. In height it is nearly forty feet, and nine- teen feet in diameter. The walls are two and a half feet in thickness at the base. The door was for- merly on the southwest side, the present entrance, on the northeast, being of modern origin. The age of the old mill is not now accurately known, but records exist which fix the time of its erection
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between the years 1703 and 1720, and make it probable the former date is nearer the true one. In 1703-4 ten acres, so described as to make it clear that the land on which the ruin now stands was indicated, were deeded by Jonathan Fosket to John Mallet, a French Huguenot. From the fact of there being no mention of buildings upon the property, and from its being designated merely as a part of the stinted pasture " near the quarries," the deduction is made that the tower was not in existence at that time.
John Mallet died in 1722, and by his will, dated August 30, 1720, wherein he bequeaths half of his grist-mill to each of his sons, Andrew and Lewis, it is shown to have been then in active operation. Andrew bought his brother's part in 1733, and continued in possession of the property till his death in 1744.
Three years later the structure, with a quarter of an acre of land. around it, and the right of way to and from the county road, was sold by Isaac, son of Andrew, to the province of Massachusetts, for " £250 in bills of public credit on the prov- ince of the old tenor." It- had then ceased to be used for its original purpose, as it is spoken of in the deed as the stone edifice formerly a wind- mill. It was then remodelled into a magazine for holding the powder of the province and of the towns.
It was used for this purpose by the American forces during the siege of Boston, and by the State of Massachusetts till 1822, a few years after the magazine at Cambridgeport was completed.
The Powder-House is connected with one of the opening scenes of the Revolution, which led to the first armed gathering of the yeomanry of Middlesex.
In the summer of 1774 the colonists, appre- hensive of the coming conflict, gradually withdrew the powder belonging to the towns. Governor Gage, being informed of this action, resolved to save the remainder. Accordingly, at sunrise, Sep- tember 1, Lieutenant-Colonel Maddison, with two hundred and sixty men, embarked in thirteen boats from Long Wharf, and was rowed to Ten Hills Farm, where he landed. One detachment marched to Cambridge, where it seized two cannon ; another proceeded to the Powder-House, and removed to their boats the two hundred and fifty half-barrels of powder there remaining, whence it was carried to Castle William in Boston Harbor.
The old Powder-House passed into the hands of the heirs of the late Mr. Nathan Tufts, of Charles-
town, in 1836, and has since remained in posses- sion of the family.
The McLean Asylum. - The McLean Asylum for the Insane is located in Somerville, on an emi- nence known during the Revolution and earlier as Cobble Hill, mentioned in this sketch. It is a branch of the Massachusetts General Hospital, and, like its sister charity, was erected by the united liberality of the commonwealth and of private in- dividuals. The newly formed corporation pur- chased the residence and grounds of Joseph Barrell for the establishment of their asylum. The lot procured was five hundred feet wide by sixteen hundred feet deep, and extended to the water. The mansion-house was occupied by the officers of the institution, and two buildings were erected on either side of it, each adapted for thirty patients.
Dr. Rufus Wyman was chosen the first physi- cian and superintendent, March 23, 1818, and in the following autumn, after visiting Philadelphia and New York to examine the only lunatic hospi- tals then existing in the country, entered upon his. duties. Difficulties incident to the opening of a new charity beset him on every side. The build- ings had been constructed with an imperfect knowl- edge of the requirements of such an institution, and many alterations were necessary to adapt them to the style of treatment proposed by Dr. Wyman, - a treatment requiring more minute classification, allowing greater freedom to the patients, and de- manding more moral agencies than had been here- tofore customary in similar institutions.
The first patient was admitted October 6, 1818. His father believed he was possessed of a devil, and said that whipping had been one of the reme- dial agents employed upon him. Thirteen patients entered before the close of the year.
In 1819 Samuel Eliot donated $10,000 to the Asylum. Each year brought an increasing number of patients, especially of males, and it became neces- sary to enlarge the accommodations in this depart- ment. Consequently in 1826 an extensive wing surmounted by a dome was joined to the male wards. During this year the institution took the name of McLean Asylum, in honor of John McLean, who a few years previous had made to the institu- tion a donation of $25,000, and the residue of his property after the payment of certain bequests, - a sum estimated at the time at $90,000. In 1830 Joseph Lee, recognizing the usefulness of this branch of the hospital, and grateful for the oppor- tunities it had offered for the care of his deceased
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McLean Asylum.
son, donated $20,000 to it. In 1832 the asylum was still further enriched by the will of Miss Mary Belknap, who made the institution her residuary devisee. This devise was valued at $88,602, and crowned the munificence of a family which had always shown unstinted liberality in this cause.
In August, 1832, Dr. Wyman resigned. But the trustees, feeling that they could ill be deprived of his services, temporarily separated, in the fol- lowing month, the offices of physician and super- intendent, and continued him in the medical directorship; and these duties he fulfilled till his final resignation, May 1, 1835. During the super- intendency of Dr. Wyman more than eleven hun- dred patients were received under treatment, and the annual admissions had begun to exceed one hundred. The prejudices of the community were gradually becoming dissipated, and the common- wealth had recognized the necessity of such charity by the erection of a state hospital at Worcester.
It was fortunate for the McLean Asylum that it secured for its first superintendent the services of a man so fitted by his intellectual and moral endowments to become the pioneer among the hospital superintendents of New England. The highly curable nature of insanity was not then widely recognized. Stories, often not without
foundation, of the abuses of the private mad- houses of England were rife iu the community. People were loath to allow their unfortunate rela- tives to be taken to an institution where physical punishment and violence were supposed to enter into the means of treatment. To overcome this wide-spread feeling of distrust and aversion, and to exhibit the advantages arising from a kind, intelligent treatment, required a director of spotless moral character; and to lay the foundations of a comparatively new charity wisely and successfully, demanded a physician skilled in his profession, and possessing, in more than ordinary degree, inventive faculty and executive ability. Such qualities were united in the first superintendent.
Dr. Rufus Wyman was born in Woburn in 1778. He graduated with honor at Harvard Col- lege in 1799, and studying medicine under direc- tion of Dr. John Jeffries, took his degree in 1804. He sought to correct a naturally delicate constitu- tion by a country life, and settled in Chelmsford, where he remained, notwithstanding a flattering call from the citizens of Concord, until chosen physician and superintendent of the McLean Asy- lum. Resigning in 1835, he retired to private life, and died at Roxbury in 1842.
Dr. Wyman had the genius of inventing and
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of putting in operation needed mechanical appli- ances. He early gave attention to the heating and ventilating of the buildings, and devised wood- burning furnaces, by which the desired temperature was obtained from small volumes of highly heated air. His plan was put in successful operation, and was shortly afterwards used in the Capitol at Wash- ington. To good natural endowments Dr. Wyman had added an academic education, a training of many years in the general practice of his profession, and a judgment formed from a close and varied acquaintance with other minds ; and at the begin- Hing of his connection with the Asylum his life had been matured by the experience of forty years. To his wisdom and skill he united unwearied de- votion to all the interests and requirements of the institution, and a fidelity which extended to the lesser as well as to the greater and more showy duties of his station. For fourteen years, or till his health broke down, he had been absent but five nights from his charge. He was averse to ostentation, and to such a degree that it is doubtful whether he gave due publicity to the results of his experience, which might have strengthened the hands of others about entering this field of labor, and served to increase the reputation and usefulness of the insti- tution. Chief among his attributes was a sterling integrity and a moral grandeur before which the charges and assaults to which such institutions are ever unavoidably liable fell harmless. The same qualities which enabled him to proceed patiently day by day, laying the foundations of an intelligent and humane treatment of lunacy in New England, that did not permit him to build or alter without a wise forethought, or to act without a well-matured and, as experience has shown, generally a just rea- son, will preserve his name fresh in the list of those who have rendered invaluable services for the amelioration of the insane in this country.
On the retirement of Dr. Wyman, Dr. Phineas G. Lee, who had been the assistant for a year, was elected to the superintendency, and at once began a course of treatment in some respects opposite to that previously pursued. Dr. Wyman had re- garded insanity as an inflammation. Dr. Lee believed it to be an irritation, and curable in all cases. Ile brought into greater prominence the moral agencies begun by his predecessor. Idleness was deemed a great evil, and all the inmates were sought to be provided with some occupation, if not of a useful, then of a diverting, nature. All the known varj- eties of amusement were adopted, which should
effectually shut out all trains of diseased thought. In the midst of this experiment Dr. Lee died. Although the indulgence in rational amusements and the establishment of cheerful surroundings are relied upon at the present day as the chief items of treatment, under the light of added experi- ence it is doubtful whether the extreme measures adopted by Dr. Lee could have been long carried out unmodified.
Dr. Lee was born in New Britain, Connecticut, in 1808. After a service under Dr. Todd at the retreat at Hartford, in 1834 he became the assist- ant of Dr. Wyman, and at the expiration of a faithful and active service of two years at the Asy- lum he yielded his life in the midst of his chosen work, dying October 29, 1836, of nervous exhaus- tion brought on by his constant and fatiguing labors. Dr. Lee was of a cheerful temperament, devoted and enthusiastic in the pursuit of his call- ing, and possessed a wonderful control over his patients. The purity of his character and the strength and fervor of his religious convictions endeared him to his many friends, and the energy and skill displayed in the care for his unfortunate charge made his decease - at the early age of twenty-eight - an event universally to be deplored by the friends of the institution. Under the di- rection of Dr. Lee one hundred and eighty-nine patients were received.
Dr. Luther V. Bell, of Derry, New Hampshire, was elected his successor in December, 1836, and pursued with some modifications the treatment of his predecessor. In 1836 the grounds were enlarged by the addition of six acres, and work was begun to extend the female wing by a similar addition to that upon the east side. The new wards, com- pleted in 1838, were erected with the money of Miss Belknap, and perpetuated the memory of this benefactress. In 1851 Cochituate water was in- troduced into the Asylum along the line of the Lowell Railroad. In 1850 William Appleton donated $20,000 for the erection of two buildings for the accommodation of a class of patients who had been accustomed to a more luxurious style of living than could be furnished in the older apart- ments. During the administration of Dr. Bell the class of occupants at the Asylum gradually be- came changed, by the tacit demand of the public, for an institution more particularly devoted to the care of the wealthier class. This change had come about naturally by the more general provision for the insane made by the erection of state institutions,
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Dr. Bell resigned in 1856, after a service of nine- teen years, leaving the institution in a highly pros- perous condition. Twenty-five hundred patients had been admitted under his charge. The number of institutions for the insane had increased in these two decades from half a dozen to more than forty. Dr. Bell left the McLean Asylum standing in the front rank of these curative establishments, and enjoying the confidence of the community to a rare degree. No great change had been adopted in the medicinal means, but the agents of moral treat- ment, so called, had become more perfect, and many experiments and means of treatment had been tried, to be accepted or discarded as expe- rience directed. Important improvements in ven- tilation and warming had been devised. Some phases of disease hitherto undescribed had been detected, all of which added not a little to the stock of knowledge in this specialty, and estab- lished for their author a world-wide reputation.
For twenty years Dr. Luther V. Bell was a citi- zen of this city, and during his residence as phy- sician and superintendent of the McLean Asylum, identified himself with the interests of the town and its inhabitants, as he did with the larger in- terests of the community in all public questions and in matters pertaining to his special vocation.
His reports as chairman of the school committee for the years 1845-46 and 1846-47 are un- usually long and minute, and show an earnest and jealous regard for the welfare of our schools, and a warm desire that they should attain that excel- lence for which they have been in later years con- spicuous.
Luther V. Bell was born in Francistown, New Hampshire, December 20, 1806. His ancestors, of Scotch-Irish stock, were among the earliest set- tlers of New Hampshire, and the name of Bell has been in continual prominence in the annals of the state. The subject of this sketch-son of one governor, nephew of another, the brother of a sen- ator and a chief justice - was graduated at Bow- doin College in 1823, and at the Medical School at Ilanover three years later, while still in his minor- ity. He began the practice of medicine in Derry in 1831, married in 1834, and continued in the general practice of his profession till he was called to the special service to which he gave the best years of his life.
Becoming interested in the project of providing public accommodations for the insane, he allowed himself to be elected to the state legislature for the
furtherance of this object, and in 1837, while thus engaged in his legislative duties, received a call to undertake the superintendence of the oldest and most prosperous institution for the insane in New England, - the McLean Asylum, where for nearly twenty years he was prominently before the eyes of the town, the state, and the country.
He was for five years president and a leading spirit of the Association of Superintendents of North American Institutions for the Insane. In 1857 he was elected president of the Massachusetts Medical Society. In 1850 he was a member of the governor's council.
Resigning the superintendency of the Asylum in 1856, not old in years, but in delicate health, he returned to private life, fixing his residence in Charlestown. But, important and useful as his life had been, it was not destined to go out without a further and crowning service. At the begin- ning of the Rebellion he promptly responded to the call of his country ; was commissioned surgeon of the 11th Massachusetts Regiment, June 10, 1861, made brigadier-surgeon in August, and medical director of division when Hooker became major- general. He was in the path of promotion to still higher fields of usefulness, when, at Camp Baker, near Budd's Ferry, he was stricken down with pericarditis, which terminated fatally on the sev- enth day, -February 11, 1862.
Dr. Bell achieved his greatest success in the specialty which was the principal occupation of his life, and upon the full and able performance of the various duties incideut to the many branches of this calling his most enduring reputation will un- doubtedly rest. When he assumed charge of the McLean Asylum there were not more than half a dozen such institutions in the country, and he was frequently called upon to give the aid of his ex- perience in the construction of new hospitals. The system of moral treatment of the insane was rec- ognized at this time, but the means for accom- plishing this end were far from being perfect, and it was under the administration of Dr. Bell that many of the appliances and adjuncts for carrying out this higher treatment were adopted. Many experiments were tried, some of which were aban- doned, others continued. All the results of his nine- teen years' experience were given to the public in an interesting and elaborate series of annual re- ports, which did much to increase the efficiency of similar institutions in the country, and to maintain and advance the reputation of that which he had
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in charge. Dr. Bell had a taste for the legal aspects of insanity, and his full learning, his ready and suggestive memory and self-command, fitted liim for medico-legal duties. For twenty-five years he was constantly before the courts as an expert in the vexed questions pertaining to his calling. No man had performed these duties oftener, more con- scientiously, or with a higher degree of success. As a writer, Dr. Bell excelled ; but he left few prodnets of his pen behind him. Essays on the external exploration of disease, on small-pox, and on a vegetable diet, his asylum reports, a work on ventilation, a eulogy on President Taylor, and an exhaustive and very able opinion on the Parrish Will case constitute nearly all of his literary re- mains. But his life was spent as an observer, and the results of his experience were imparted more frequently by speaking than by writing.
Dr. Bell possessed considerable skill and interest in mechanical arts. The exterior of the Unitarian Church was modelled after his plans. A machine for the manufacture of flax has been in successful use abroad. He claimed to have been the first to send communication over the telegraphic wire, and petitioned Congress for remuneration. Having an even temperament, he had disciplined himself to bear with dignity the petty annoyances of his sta- tion, and the aspersions of the malevolent. His character and life were pure and simple. Though a member of no religious sect, he had deeply pon- dered the Scriptures, and in life and death was a consistent Christian man.
March 16, 1856, Dr. Chauncey Booth, who had been assistant physician for thirteen years, was elected physician and superintendent ; but he lived to make but one report, and to occupy the position a little less than two years. He died, in the midst of much promise, January, 1858. No important changes were made in this period. Dr. Booth was born in Coventry, Connecticut, in 1816. After a residence of two years at Amherst College, he be- gan in 1837 the study of medicine with his uncle, Dr. W. H. Rockwell, who had just assumed the charge of the newly opened Vermont Asylum for the Insane at Brattleboro'. Taking his medical degree at Pittsfield, he was elected assistant at Brattleboro', and in 1840 was chosen to the same position at the new Hospital for the Insane at Augusta, Maine, where he remained till his elec- tion to the McLean Asylum, two years later. Dr. Booth possessed an unusual faculty for dealing with the insane, and so closely identified himself
with his charge as universally to gain their con- fidence and love. His death occurred at the Asy- lum, January 12, 1858.
Dr. John E. Tyler was elected superintendent February 12, 1858, and continued in office till ill healthı compelled him to resign, February 17, 1871. During this period two model buildings were erected for the more violent insane, and the estate was extended by the purchase of five acres of land. The library for the use of the patients was largely inereased, greater opportunities for amusement aud for exercise were offered, and the Asylum, then as now, frequently enjoyed the performances and works of artists in the various branches of art and music.
John E. Tyler was born in Boston, December 9, 1819. After leaving school he entered upon a business life, which he shortly after abandoned to fit himself for a profession. Graduating at Dartmouth in 1842, he soon turned to the study of medicine, and took his degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1846. He established himself in Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, where he prac- tised his profession six years. During this period he represented the town in the legislature two terms. The position of superintendent of the New Hampshire Asylum for the Insane being vacant, he received the appointment October 15, 1852. Here lie remained five years, radically improving the condition of the insane in that state. When about to return to general practice, he was elected physician and superintendent of the McLean Asy- lum. Resigning, with shattered health, after a service of thirteen years, he retired to the private practice of his specialty in the city of his birth. He held a professorship in the Harvard Medical School, and continued to be frequently called in consultation and in courts till his death, April, 1878. Dr. Tyler was a man of uncommon energy and personal power. He not only had an unusual personal magnetism in dealing with patients, but possessed the faculty of gaining the confidence of their friends and the public at large more gen- erally than is wont to fall to the lot of hospital directors.
Early in the administration of Dr. Tyler the asylum was deprived of the services of its steward and matron. for thirty years, - Mr. and Mrs. Co- lumbus Tyler. The fact that they are still living in their adopted city deters the writer from offer- ing that tribute to the recognized fidelity and wis- dom with which they conducted the affairs of the
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institution during so many years, and which such important services demand. Suffice it to say that the records of the trustees show frequent evidence that to their devoted work the success and standing of the Asylum in no slight degree belong.
By the simultaneous retirement of Dr. Tyler and the first assistant, Dr. J. H. Whittemore, the man- agement devolved on Dr. George F. Jelly, who was chosen superintendent October 13, 1871. Dr. Jelly resigned June 1, 1878, after an administra- tion of seven years, in which the Asylum continued prosperous. No particular changes were made in the methods of treatment during this period, but the agencies for moral treatment have been con- stantly extended, rendering the institution more home-like in its character.
Dr. Jelly was born in Salem, in 1842, graduated at Brown University in 1864, and took the degree of M. D. at the Harvard Medical School in 1868. Establishing himself in general practice in Spring- field, he remained in that city fifteen months, till his appointment to the Asylum. The present super- intendent is Dr. Cowles.
The Ursuline Convent. - Ploughed Hill lost its Revolutionary title and rested in obscurity until the erection upon it of the Ursuline Convent, the de- struction of which by a mob in 1834 was a notable event.
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