USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. II > Part 78
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Even the clergy were carried away by the war- like spirit that pervaded the people. The annual convention of ministers, held in the Watertown church, June 1, 1775, of which Rev. Amos Adams, of Roxbury, was the scribe, recommended to the people to take up arms, and offered their services, with the consent of their several congregations, to officiate by rotation as chaplains in the army.
Before the final assault of the British at Bunker Hill Gardner's Middlesex regiment, in which was Abner Crafts' Watertown company, was ordered to the field. Its brave commander received his death-wound while leading on his men. Under its major, Michael Jackson, it pressed forward, and pouring a well-directed fire upon the advancing Britons, gallantly covered the retreat. Lieutenant- Colonel William Bond, of Watertown, succeeded to the command, and led his regiment during the siege of Boston and the invasion of Canada.
In an old dilapidated building that stood until recently within the foundry-yard of Miles Pratt & Co., near the bridge, The Boston Guzette and Coun- try Journal, the leading organ of the patriots, was published from June 5, 1775, to October 2S, 1776, when it was removed to Boston, its original place of issue. Edes, its proprietor, had escaped from Boston in a boat by night, taking with him a press and a few types, with which the Gazette was continued, and was made printer to congress and to the assembly. His paper was distinguished by its spirited and fearless advocacy of the American cause, and obtained a wide popularity.
Washington, then on his way to Cambridge to take command of the army, was met at Springfield by a deputation from the Provincial Congress, who
attended him, escorted by volunteer companies and cavalcades of gentlemen. July 2, he arrived at Watertown, where he was greeted by congress with a congratulatory address.
The inhabitants of Boston who had taken refuge in Watertown held here several meetings for the transaction of their public business. The anniver- sary of the 5th of March was duly celebrated by them in 1776, and an oration was delivered by Rev. Peter Thatcher, of Milton.
Captain Edward Harrington died in the service at Ticonderoga, in September, 1776, and during the war many other Watertown men, among whom was Colonel William Bond, died either from dis- ease inf camp, or on the field of battle. Soldiers were raised, to whom liberal bounties were paid, and in general the town co-operated heartily in measures for the common defence. Her citizens, May 20, 1776, unanimously approved the Dec- laration of Independence, declaring they would " stand by and defend the same with their lives and estates "; and on January 17, 1778, her rep- resentative was instructed to signify her concur- rence in the Articles of Confederation. . On ac- count of the prevalence of small-pox in Boston, the legislative session of 1778 was held in Water- town. At a town-meeting, held May 24, 1779, a large majority voted against the proposed form of state government ; but it had a majority of the votes of the state, and the convention that met in September following framed the present state con- stitution.
A depreciated currency, the inevitable result of the over-issue of irredeemable paper, caused gen- eral aların and embarrassment, and was errone- ously attributed to monopolists. A town-meeting, held July 7, 1779, to remedy the evil, adopted fixed prices for labor and all the important articles of traffic. This was also done in other towns, thus ag- gravating an evil already sufficiently alarming. The price of labor was fixed at 60s. per day ; shoes, £ 6 per pair ; a coat, £8; candles, 8s. per pound ; milk, 2 s. per quart ; barley, £4 10s. per bushel ; shav- ing, 3s. ; soap, 10s. per pound. Those who sold at higher rates were deemed enemies to the coun- try, and were to be " cryed " as such by the town- clerk for six months, at every public meeting of the town. In 1781 a poor-house was first estab- lished, upon the south bank of the river, above the bridge.
The completion of the second century of the town was celebrated by the inhabitants, September
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17, 1830. The address delivered by Rev. Convers Francis on this occasion was embodied in his his- tory of the town, published soon afterward. A centennial celebration was held, July 4, 1876, at White's Hill Grove, and an address was delivered by William H. Ingraham, Esq., president of the day. The oration by Rev. J. F. Lovering contained many interesting passages from the early records of the town.
Between the hours of one and two in the after- noon of July 21, 1841, occurred the most destruc- tive fire ever known in Watertown. Originating in the stable of the Spring IIotel, a strong south- west wind communicated the flames to nearly every building in its range to leeward for nearly a mile. The new and beautiful meeting-house, erected by the First Parish in 1836, the interior of which was elegantly fitted up, took fire from some sparks that lodged in the upper part of the building, and, together with its valuable organ, was entirely con- sumed. Besides injuring the hotel (which was of brick), the fire destroyed the grocery store of John Clark, the bakery and dwelling of Francis Leathe, John Lenox's barber-shop, and the dwellings of Messrs. Loud, Dana, Stratton, William Sherwin, and Colonel Livermore.
At the first town-meeting in Watertown to act upon matters relating to the War of the Rebellion, held April 22, 1861, several patriotic speeches were made by the clergymen of the town and others, and $5,000 were appropriated to aid in formning a new military organization. The company thus ini- tiated had its full complement of men in one week's time, went into camp at Cambridge July 2, and served through the war as Company K, 16th Regi- ment Massachusetts Volunteers. It left camp August 17, 1861, under Colonel Powell T. Wy- man; it was in the campaign before Richmond (losing its colonel at Glendale), Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and Petersburg, and has inscribed upon its banner the names of twenty- nine battle-fields.
Watertown furnished three hundred and ninety- two men for the war, fifteen of whom were com- missioned officers, -a surplus over and above all demands. Its appropriations for the war amounted to $41,200. Her women were not behind their sisters in other towns in working for the benefit of the soldiers. They held weekly meetings during the continuance of the contest, and furnished great quantities of garments and useful hospital stores.
A copy of an autograph letter from President Lincoln, acknowledging their receipt and assuring them of his grateful appreciation of their efforts for the health and comfort of the soldiers, was in- scribed upon the records of the town.
Ecclesiastical. - The first work of the settlers after providing for themselves a temporary shelter was to combine into church fellowship. On ac- count of the great sickness and mortality prevail- ing in Charlestown, July 30, 1630, was observed throughout the colony as a day of fasting and prayer. After the close of these exercises at Water- town, as we are told by Rev. Cotton Mather, "about forty men, whereof the first was that excellent Knight, Sir Richard Saltonstall, then subscribed this instrument (a church covenant), in order unto their coalescence into a church estate," and its date, coeval with that of the organization of the Boston church at Charlestown, entitles the Watertown church to rank next after those of Salem and Dorchester.
At the first Court of Assistants, held at Charles- town, priority was given to the question of pro- viding for the ministers. Sir Richard Saltonstall undertook to have a house built at his plantation for Mr. Phillips, and the governor at the other plantation for Mr. Wilson, and a stipend of £30 a year was assigned to each.
A house of worship was probably constructed very soon after the settlement of the town, certainly before 1634. It is supposed to have stood east of Mount Auburn, where Saltonstall, Rev. Mr. Phil- lips, Elder Richard Browne, and most of the free- men of that date resided. August 7, 1635, a rate of £80 was ordered to be levied for the charges of the new meeting-house, which, it is conjectured, was on meeting-house common, near the old grave- yard. Dr. Francis says, " It stood on rising ground between the houses of Deacon Coolidge and Daniel Sawin, on the north side of the road to Cambridge. There was a common before it which was used as a training-field." It had a bell as early as 1648-49, and in the following September a levy was made to provide it with a gallery. Another, built on or near the same spot in 1656, after the pattern of the Cambridge meeting-house, contiuned in use for the whole town, including Waltham and Weston, until after the resignation of Mr. Bailey, when a controversy as to the inconvenience of its location resulted in a division of the church and the building of a meeting-house at the southeast corner of what are now Belmont and Lexington streets.
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In 1720, soon after the decease of Rev. Mr. Angier, the town, which before the incorporation of Weston had been divided into three precincts, was re-divided into two, with independent ecclesias- tical organizations, each society building its own house. The West Precinct (Mr. Angier's) purchased the old Newton meeting-house in 1721, which they set up a little north of Waltham Plain, near the old Livermore homestead, since known as the Ly- inan Place. The Eastern Precinct (Mr. Gibbs's) in 1723 built their house on School-house Hill, afterwards known as Meeting-house Hill, the an- cient Strawberry Hill. This structure gave place to that built at the corner of Mount Auburn and Common streets. In May, 1754, before its com- pletion, the new house was burned to the ground. The historic edifice in which were held the sessions of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, built on the same spot, was completed in February, 1755. Until 1827 this was the only meeting-house in Watertown. It was enlarged in 1819, but was taken down in 1837, a new edifice having been completed and dedicated September 7, 1836. This was destroyed by the great fire of 1841. The present house, erected on the site of the latter, was dedicated August 3, 1842.
The first church of Watertown, organized July 30, 1630, was the only one in the town for sixty-six years. It was the first to adopt independency, to which it adhered for a long time more strictly than did either of the other churches, standing alone, in this respect at least, until after the arrival of Rev. John Cotton. For more than ten years, and until the ordination as his colleague of Mr. John Knowles, December 9, 1640, Rev. George Phillips was its sole pastor.
Trouble soon arose in the congregation. In 1631 Elder Richard Browne, the same who after- wards opposed arbitrary taxation, avowed and defended the opinion that the churches of Rome were true churches, a view in which Pastor Phillips concurred. An idea more repugnant to the zealous Puritan could hardly be imagined, although it seems entirely consistent with the enlarged and liberal mind of Mr. Browne. Governor Winthrop, Deputy- Governor Dudley, and Elder Nowell visited Water- town on two different occasions, to discuss the startling proposition, and it was declared to be an error. A temporary reconciliation was effected, but Browne was dismissed from office in 1632. Rich- ard Browne had been an officer in a church of Separatists in London. He was one of the first
settlers, and was the first ruling elder in the Watertown church. After his dismission his fellow- citizens manifested their esteem by sending him as a commissioner to Wethersfield to heal the dis- traction in that colony. He was their representa- tive in the first court in 1634, and in most of the subsequent ones until 1657, when he removed to Charlestown, where he died in 1659. He was a man of more than ordinary ability and of marked independence of character. It was Browne's com- plaint to the assistants that caused them to write to England in disapproval of Endicott's act in cutting the cross from the king's colors, which he argued would be regarded in England as an act of rebellion that would draw down the royal displeas- ure upon the colony.
In 1642 Nathaniel Briscoe, a rich tanner of Watertown, wrote and privately circulated a pam- phlet against supporting the ministry by taxation. For this grave offence he was summoned before the court, and, acknowledging his fault, was fined £10. A letter of Briscoe, who had returned in disgust to England, dated London, September 7, 1652, in which he says, "I am partly promised a place in the Tower of £50 per annum, but had we liberty of conscience with you I had rather be there with £20 per annum," fell into the hands of the colo- nial government. As this letter freely censured the course of parliament, and as it was at once sent to the speaker of that body with an indorsement by Secretary Rawson and Rev. John Wilson, it is not unlikely that Briscoe's " place in the Tower" was promptly provided. Another example of the means then supposed to be efficacious in the sup- pression of heresy was afforded in the case of John Stowers, of Watertown, who in 1643 was fined for reading an Anabaptist book. From all these facts - from the independence of its church, from its opposition to arbitrary taxation, from Salton- stall's manly rebuke of the Boston ministers, and from the outspoken criticisms of Rev. Mr. Phillips, Elder Browne, and others, upon the course of the Puritan government -it is evident that an un- usually catholic spirit, as well as just ideas of civil and religious liberty, prevailed among the first settlers of Watertown.
Rev. George Phillips, " a godly man, especially gifted, and very peaceful in his place," was a native of Rainham, in Norfolk, England, and was edu- cated at Cambridge, where he received the degree of A. M. in 1617. At the university he was dis- tinguished for piety, talent, and remarkable pro-
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1
ficiency in his studies. He was settled in the ministry at Boxted, in Essex, when persecution drove him to New England, where his wife died soon after their arrival. Mr. Phillips was an able controversialist, and was familiar with the original languages of the Scriptures, which he is said to have read through six times every year. Johnson says, " He was mighty in the Scriptures, and very diligent to search out the mind of Christ therein contained." His views of the Congregational or- der and discipline, soon universally adopted by that' church, were for a time regarded as novel and ex- treme, and met with much opposition. Possessing great independence and firmness, he was conscien- tious in forming and fearless in maintaining his opinions. His opposition, with that of Richard Browne, to a tax levied by the governor and assist- ants, produced a result no less important than the institution of a representative body in the govern- inent of the colony. He died July 1, 1644, at the age of fifty-one. There is a tradition that he lived in the house, yet standing, opposite the old bury- ing-ground. This old house, whose solid oaken frame is said to have been brought over by Sir R. Saltonstall, has a projecting second story, partly concealed by a modern piazza, and stands well back from the street. Externally there is nothing to in- dicate great age, but its interior retains many marks of antiquity. It formerly had three porticos, which have been removed from its front, and a steep roof, which has given place to one of much less altitude. Mr. Phillips' first residence was burnt in 1630, and this was perhaps the second house built on the parsonage lot. Mr. Phillips's son Samuel was the minister of Rowley. Most of the name in New England are believed to have descended from the minister of Watertown; among them William Phillips, Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, Samuel and Jolin, founders of the academies of Andover and Exeter, John, the first mayor of Boston, and Wendell Phillips, the philanthropist and orator.
Rev. John Knowles, who was a native of Lin- colnshire, became a student at Magdalen College, Cambridge, and was chosen a fellow of Katharine Ilall in 1625. He had here at one time forty pupils, many of whom were subsequently distin- guished as members of parliament or as preachers. Afterwards, when a lecturer at Colchester, he incurred the enmity of Archbishop Laud, who revoked his license, and in 1639 he came to New England. Governor Winthrop, speaking of his
ordination, and referring to the strict independency of the Watertown church, says: "The church of Watertown ordained Mr. Knowles, a good man and a prime scholar pastor, and so they had now two pastors and no teacher, differing from the practice of the other churches, as also they did in their privacy, not giving notice thereof to the neigh- boring churches, nor to the magistrates, as the com- mon practice was." After a pastorate of about ten years Mr. Knowles returned to England, and preached in the cathedral at Bristol until silenced in 1662 by the Act of Uniformity. From Octo- ber, 1642, to June, 1643, he had performed mis- sionary labor in Virginia. He was privately preaching in London when the plague broke out in 1665, and rendered great service in that terrible exigency. In 1672 he became colleague to Rev. Thomas Kentish, at St. Katharine's, and died April 10, 1685, at an advanced age.
Few of our early divines were so eminently dis- tinguished for intellectual gifts and Christian graces as the Rev. John Sherman, born in Dedham, Essex, England, December 26, 1613. His deep religious impressions were derived from the ministry of Rev. John Rogers. Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, he came, in 1634, to New England, where he acquired a very high reputation, his elo- quence earning for him the title of "the golden- mouthed preacher." Mather says that on a Thanksgiving day, in Watertown, Mr. Sherman preached his first sermon as an assistant to Mr. Phillips, in the presence of many other divines, who " wondered exceedingly " at this early display of his ability. After two or three years' service as a magistrate of New Haven colony, he became Mr. Knowles' colleague in 1647, and was sole pastor from 1650 until his death, August 8, 1685. After his settlement he was chosen a fellow of Har- vard College, and for thirty years gave lectures once a fortnight, which were attended by the stu- dents, who walked from Cambridge to hear him. His favorite studies were astronomy and mathe- matics, in which he was the foremost man of his time in this country. For many years he pub- lished an almanac, to which he added pious reflec- tions. He was one of the moderators of the Reforming Synod at Boston, in September, 1679, and in 1682 preached before the convention of ministers in Massachusetts. Mr. Sherman is said to have had twenty-six children, twenty of whom were by his second wife, a granddaughter of the Earl of Rivers.
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WATERTOWN.
Perhaps the first instance of an installation in the colony was that of Rev. John Bailey, at Water- town, October 6, 1686, the usual method of in- duction to clerical office being by ordination. He was so popular that people flocked to the com- munion in such numbers that " the neighborhood could not supply elements enough." Born near Blackbourne, Lancashire, England, in 1643, he had been for fourteen years a preacher in Limerick, Ireland, but, having been silenced and thrown into prison for non-conformity, came to Boston in 1684. Ill health and melancholy caused his return to that place in 1692, where he was assistant minister of the First Church from 1693 until his death, December 12, 1697. His brother, Rev. Thomas Bailey, " a painful preacher," was his colleague in Watertown from November 2, 1687, until his death, January 21, 1689; to whom Mr. Henry Gibbs succeeded November 3, 1690. Mather, alluding to the success of Mr. Bailey's ministry, says, " He seemed rather to fish with a net than with an hook for the Kingdom of God "; and John Dunton, who visited the brothers, thus refers to them : "These are two popular preachers, and are very generous to strangers. I heard Mr. John upon these words, 'Looking unto Jesus,' and I thought he spake. like an angel."
Ever since Mr. Phillips' time there had been " an earnest contending " about the place of meeting, which was remote from the centre of the territory and population of the town. The controversy cul- minated when Mr. Bailey removed to Boston in 1692, and the erection of a new house was pro- posed. The matter was referred to the governor and council, who, May 18, 1693, advised the building of a meeting-house for the whole town on the knoll, between the house of Widow Stearns and Whitney's Hill. The opposition to this plan by the east part of the town was so fierce that a town-meeting, held October 2, 1694, was obliged to be adjourned, " to prevent such inconvenience as might justly be feared by reason of the heat of spirit that then seemed to prevail." Notwith- standing the strong opposition, eighty-two resi- dents of the eastern and thirty-three of the western portions of the town uniting in a protest against it, a levy was made and a house built on the south- east corner of Lexington and Belmont streets, in which a town-meeting was held December 20, 1695, and February 4, 1696, it was accepted by the town as the place of public worship. In March the town voted that town-meetings should in future
be held in it. Mr. Samuel Angier, son of Edmund Angier, of Cambridge, where he was born March 17, 1655, was called to preach in the new house August 28, 1696, and ordained May 25, 1697. Descended maternally from the famous Dr. Wil- liam Ames, he was graduated at Harvard Col- lege in 1673, was ordained at Rehoboth, October 19, 1679, and died in Watertown, January 21, 1719. When the town was divided, Mr. Angier's society built their meeting-house in the West Pre- cinct, and it became the church of Waltham. Mr. Angier's successor (1723 -1751) was Rev. Warham Williams, son of Rev. John, of Deerfield, who with his family was carried away into captivity by the Indians in 1704.
Mr. Gibbs, who had declined the offers of the western party, and who was fully in sympathy with the people at the east end of the town, to whom he had preached in the old house for nearly seven years, was ordained over the new society, organ- ized here October 6, 1697. So much ill-feeling had grown out of this quarrel that, though the day was cold, the cercmony, which took place in the afternoon, was obliged to be performed in the open air. The western party, having the sclectmen on their side, got possession of the meeting-house, and would not suffer the assembly to enter there. Henry, son of Robert Gibbs, a wealthy and promi- nent merchant of Boston, graduated at Harvard College in 1685, and died October 21, 1723, aged fifty-five. His sound sense and discretion is seen in the fact that, in the difficult position in which he was placed, and amid the angry discussion and strife that prevailed in the town during his min- istry, he was held in the highest respect, and re- ceived no word of censure from either faction. He possessed warm piety, real kindness, and a well- directed zeal in doing good. Though his habit was to write his sermons on the bellows in the chimney-corner, it should not be inferred that they were at all inflated thereby, his pulpit ministrations being highly esteemed both by his own and neigh- boring parishes. His society, embracing the whole of the Eastern Precinct, continued to occupy the old meeting-house.
A Mr. Robert Sturgcon, having, "without due advice and direction, gone on to the public actions of a pastonr " to a small number of brethren, who had attempted the formation of a third church, soon found himself in troubled waters. A council of fourteen churches, convened at Watertown, May 1, 1722, with Rev. Cotton Mather for moderator,
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declared that he had no right to the office of pastor among them ; that he ought no longer to preach nor exercise any part of the ministry there; and judged him unworthy to be employed until he made "a public satisfaction." The brethren were at the same time admonished " to repent of and depart from their disorderly and schismaticall pro- ceedings, as they would avoid a further and more awful censure upon their offences." Mr. Sturgeon was also indicted by the grand jury for " continu- ing his wicked and malicious inclinations to over- throw, ruin, and subvert, as well the churches of said Watertown as the other churches of this prov- ince," and was found guilty and fined £20 and costs. All this terrible outcry was owing to the fact that those best accommodated by the Angier meeting-house where it was were not disposed to comply with the advice of the committee, and de- termined to maintain worship where for twenty- five years they had gathered for that purpose, and had employed Mr. Sturgeon as their pastor. Though the persons principally complained of declined to attend the council, they heeded its admonitions. Mr. Sturgeon's friends gradually withdrew, and the meeting-house, which for thirty years had been a bone of contention, was closed, and has long siuce disappeared.
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