History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 22

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co
Number of Pages: 1034

USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I > Part 22

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Our fathers confined themselves so much to Scrip- ture knowledge and discussion that one would hardly have expected them to open the gates of classical learning to their children. One would suppose that the ungodly miscellany of the heathen mythology would have been as obnoxious to them as the cross in the colors. Perhaps they curtailed that portion of literature. But Latin was the Lingua Franca of theology ; Greek was the language of the New Testa- ment and Hebrew of the Old. Their first object was to raise up a body of learned ministers who should defend and preserve their theological opinions to the latest generation. To do this a knowledge of the language was deemed necessary.

We who view the college and country now well ap- preciate the interest of that first commencement. The university of to-day, with its 1200 students and its 150 or so of instructors. casts a kindly look back on its alter ego of 1642. The tide of youth has now flowed through it for two and a half centuries, run- ning free and strong and ever increasing in volume.

It is a pleasant feature of the college that grim Time within its precincts assumes his nearest to a cheerful and beneficent aspect. He dispenses very much with his scythe, and is content to show his hour-glass to the young men to remind them of the disintegrating tendency of the hour and the minute.

One turns from the tumultuous succession of ob- jects and sounds in the outside world to rest his eyes on the calm of the college precincts, where the com- merce is all in ideas and all the working day is "High Change."

The "scholars," as they used to be styled, have always made an amicable society among themselves, the personal relations of the individual being mostly confined to his class, in which every good fellow, whatever his circumstances, was cordially regarded by all.

The college and the town grew up from infancy to- gether, and have always maintained pleasant relations with each other.

This book is designed to give a minute view of

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CAMBRIDGE.

each town, as well as a history of the collective county. We think a topographic sketch of our town as it was seventy years since would be interest- ing, to the elder inhabitants at least, who do not en- joy so large a retrospective privilege as ourselves. Cambridge, with its numerous in-dwellers from all parts of the country, who contract associations with the town, is somewhat cosmopolitan, and has many more than its citizens to be interested in its history. The Cambridge of our childhood seventy years since must have very much resembled itself of seventy years earlier. It had been, like other inland places, a farming town until its growth in the neighborhood of the college precluded that occupation there. We of that neighborhood spoke of going to Harvard Square as going "down in town ; " those more remote, as going " down to the village." In the now Harvard Square stood " Willard's Hotel," the same building in which now (May, 1890) the passenger-room of the railroad is. " Willard's" was the resort of the mod- erns-i. e., the less "advanced " people-men whose memories were of General Bonaparte, of the Embargo and the last war. Porter's tavern was the presu- mable resort of the ancients, whose remembrance might reach back to Bunker Hill, or possibly to the massacre at Fort William Henry.

This building was of two stories, gambrel roofed and of hospitable aspect, with a more modern hall for dancing attached, the great place for public gayeties in our boyhood. This building is still standing, devoted to new purposes. On the left of Willard's, and on the corner of Dunster Street, was our principal grocer ; on the right another grocer's shop, with the post- office in the rear ; then a passage way, and then our only effective dry-goods shop, at the corner of Brighton Street. All these buildings are still stand- ing. At the easterly corner of Dunster Street, facing ·on Main, was a house of some antiquity, where our first regular apothecary's shop made its appearance. Thence to Holyoke Street was vacaney. On the east- erly corner of Holyoke, facing on Harvard Street, stood onr book-store, with a printing-office on the second floor, and wooden stairs on the outside on Holyoke Street-a thin, long, three-story building ; next, east of that, a very old red house, with a tradi- tional flavor about it of Bradish, a famons pirate of our colonial times. We have some notion that Cap- tain Kidd was mentioned as a fellow-lodger. If evi- dence is asked for, we can add that there have been rumors of an iron pot of coin discovered in the cellar. This all will allow to be corroborative. But tradition alone, being vox populi, is sufficient for our purpose. This incident imparts a fine aroma of maritime ad- venture to Harvard Street.

Next to the red house was a small bake-house, and at the westerly corner of Linden Street a three-story wooden house. Passing Linden Street, the whole square next, we think, may have been occupied by the quite stately Borland house, which stands far

back from Harvard Street. Passing Plympton Street, there was a piece of land running from a point one or two hundred feet down Plympton Street, round to and a little distance down Bow Street. It contained pear and mulberry trees only.

Opposite this land, on the present Harvard Street (which in our boyhood was called from there the Middle Road), stood the old parsonage, and next this, easterly, the modern Dana honse, built in our hoy- hood. There was no building in sight beyond this on Harvard Street, and on Main Street from Bow Street there was no dwelling visible but the Judge Dana house between the present Dana and Ellery Streets. Beyond this there was one house on the left; none on the right hefore reaching the present Inman Street.

The open ground extending from Church Street to Waterhouse Street was called, except the part occu- pied by roads, the Common. Agriculture lingered in the neighborhood of the college. Jarvis Field was still occupied as farm land. We have seen Indian corn growing where the Scientific School, and Gym- nasium now stand.

There were no street lamps save, for a few years, four, on the walk in front of the college buildings. People walked at night by faith-that is, such confi- dence as they might have in their knowledge of the ups and downs that lay in theirinvisible path. There were no names of streets ; people in giving a direc- tion, approximated as well as they conld : " Down by the ' meetinus,'" "Down hy the Hayscales," "Down by the Mash " (marsh), " Up by Miss Jarvis's."

The present Kirkland Street was built up abont 1821. There was then standing there, a little below Oxford Street, a dilapidated, untenantable "Fox- croft" house. The present Cambridge Street, then "Craigie's Road," had one house, visible from the Delta, on it. The road presented then quite a forest vista to those looking down it. At the end of the Delta was what was called the Swamp. This extend- ed some little distance till it met the woods on the left side of the road.

On Brattle Street, from Ash Street, there was but one honse, the Vassal house, on the sontherly side, as far as Elmwood Avenue, and considerably beyond ; on the northerly side there were six or seven. Monnt Auburn Street from the present police station, to Elmwood Avenue was a solitude.

We had a true old Puritan " meeting-house," which did credit to our artificers of 1756. We recollect those who were men in our childhood with much respect as excellent workmen and citizens. Since the introduc- tion of machinery the skill required, of the carpenter at least, is very much diminished. Within our " meet- inns," as it was usually called, all was creditable to the workmen employed and to the liberal zeal of the parish. The pulpit was quite elaborate and in good taste. The pews had their panels and mouldings (if that is the right term). The spire was perhaps a

HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

little wanting in bulk, but as an emblem of man dwindling as he approaches the celestial regions it was good. The pews were left to the proprietor to paint, or not, as he pleased. The "Boys' Gallery" which perhaps was somewhat akin to a penal colony, was unpainted.

The Massachusetts colonists early established a trade with the West Indies, exchanging their fish and lumber for sugar and molasses. Their abundant wood enabled them to turn the latter article into rum. This became a very cheap commodity ; if we remem- ber rightly a quart of new rum could be bought for six cents in our young days. We all know the evils that rum brought with it and the gradual awakening of the country to appreciation of them.

In our town, rum (considering that as the repre- sentative liquor) gave rise to a set of philosophers, who preferred desultory labor, with frequent intervals for reflection and contemplation. They were gener- ally good-natured and pleasantly disposed, and per- haps somewhat relieved the picture of steady industry in town and eollege. They had a strong social bent, considering society as the most obvious and easy means of enlarging the mind.

One incident will show their genial and hospita- ble turn. A young man, a neighbor of ours, on a summer evening met another young man at one of their gatherings, who professed himself a stranger in town. After a long and hilarious session our neigh- bor asked him if he would not come and lodge with him that night. He accepted the offer gratefully and they set out. When they came into the Common our neighbor stopped, took his coat and hat off and threw them down. "Hello! what are you up to .? " said his friend. "Why this is where I sleep," said our neighbor. The very broad philanthropy of the act strikes one. This man was a stranger ; it was enough, he shared his bed with him.

Our friend undoubtedly frequented a three-cent place of entertainment. At Willard's a " drink " was six cents, at the stores three ; at Willard's, too, " soda water" was sold, then something phenomenal, which as boys we only heard of.

We might tell of the wages paid in our boyhood, as, for instance, ten or twelve dollars a month (with board) to first-rate young men from the country, for care of barn and wood-house, with occasional farm work. A dollar a week to young women of the same quality, of our Spanish silver currency of four-pences (or fo'pen- ces) 6} cents, nine-pences 12}, pistareens 20 and dollars, besides our own bank-notes and cents, and it may be some silver. We might speak of the heredi- tary household economies, of the salt-fish, sternly ntil- itarian, the brown bread, the Indian pudding (which we respect, but do not love) and other articles suggest- ing the necessary frugality of earlier times. For prices, we think we recollect Java coffee at fourteen cents the pound, beef and mutton at twelve and a half (i. e. nine-pence); but let us remind the householder

that money was but a third as plenty as to-day, or less. Meanwhile the fare in the four-horse stage-coach that went twice a day to Boston was twenty-five cents.

We ought to mention the dame school, where very little children, sat on wooden blocks and larger ones on benches, where virtue was rewarded by a tinsel bow pinned (temporarily) on shoulder ; and her froward sis- ter naughtiness, with head down, a tear in the eye and a finger in the mouth, was obliged to stand a certain time with a black one attached in the same way. It was here that we read in Miss Hannah Adams' History of the Duc d'Anville's unfortunate naval expedition, and how the admiral of the fleet "fell on his sword," and saw as we read, from time to time, the mast of the college sloop looking over the opposite house; thus associat- ing the Duke and the College Sloop in our memory.

We have said nothing of our navigation. It consist- ed entirely of the above-mentioned college sloop.

She was a good, honest, innocent craft, and lies pleasantly at anehor in our memory.

We have said nothing of our nearest neighbor, Cam- bridgeport, whom we ought to mention as having fur- nished a very good private school for our and her own boys, which has left many friendly memories.

CHAPTER II.

CAMBRIDGE-(Continued).

THE INDIANS OF CAMBRIDGE AND VICINITY.

BY REV. GEORGE M. BODGE.

AN account of the Indians of Cambridge must nec- essarily involve a partial history of the Massachusetts tribe, since the Indians of all this region were known generally under that name; and hecause the arbitrary limits of patents, grants and plantations were all un- known to them, and they had no idea of town, county or colony lines. Moreover, the Indians seldom had any permanent dwelling-place, and were accustomed to move at different seasons and in different years into various parts of the country. We begin then with a brief account of the Massachusetts tribe or di- vision of the New England Indians. For the present purpose we need not go baek further than 1604-5, when Sieur Samuel de Champlain, with his captain, Sieur de Monts, sailed along the coast from the St. Croix River as far as Eastham harbor, upon Cape Cod. It was Champlain who named Mont Désert, because, unlike most of the islands and headlands along the coast, it was "destitute of trees." He lo- cated "Norumbegue " as our Penobscot River, and upon this the Indians who swarmed along the shores told him lived their great "King," Bessabez (the Englishi called this "King" Bashaba). The Indians hereabouts lic called the " Etechemins," (and the name

CAMBRIDGE.

included the Indians of the Kennebec at the same time). These Indians conducted him to the falls of "Norumbegue," and there " Bessabez" came to visit him, the place of their meeting being doubtless the site of the present city of Bangor. The interest of this voyage to us -now is the record of the numerous crowds of Indians all along the shores. Champlain describes the natives of the Maine coasts as "swarthy, dressed in beaver-skins, etc.," of large stature and, in general, intelligent and friendly, until after Wey- month's sojourn in their vicinity and his capture of some of their people, after which they were suspi- cious and timid. It was in June, 1605, that they passed beyond the Kennebec and along the lower part of Maiue to Massachusetts. Champlain calls the inhabitants the Almouchiquois. Everywhere the shores seemed full of natives hunting, fishing and paddling out in canoes to trade with the strangers. From his descriptions and maps the course of his voyage may be traced quite accurately, although the names he gave have mostly passed away. His ship anchored inside "Richmond Island," as it was after- wards called, and the Indians came down upon the shore on the mainland and built a huge bonfire and danced and shouted to attract their attention. Cham- plain gives a very minute account of this locality, from Black Point to beyond the river which he wrote Choïacoet, as he understood the Indian name, but which the English called Saco. They mingled freely with the natives and traded with them. The Indians are described as , yosperous and well-favored, with many plantations upon which they were engaged in cultivating the soil. He says they had not before noticed any tilling or cultivating by the Indians. Their method, as he marked and described it here, ap- plies, doubtless, to that of the Massachusetts Indians.

In place of ploughs the Indians used a sort of wooden spade. They dropped three or four kernels of corn in a place, and then piled about a quantity of loose earth mixed with the shells of the " Signoc," or what we call the " Horsefoot-crab," of which there were immense numbers along the shores. These hills were about three feet apart. In the."hill" with the corn they also dropped a few beans. They planted squashes and pumpkins also among the "hills," and this method has been but little changed since their day. They planted in May and gathered in Septem- ber. Coasting southward along the lands which he describes, his vessel at last enters Boston harbor, and is anchored, probably, nearly opposite Charles- town Navy Yard, and near the East Boston shore. From this anchorage they observed many fires all along the surrounding shores, and many of the In- dians coming down to the shores to see them. Some of their crew were sent on shore with presents and with the Penobscot Indian, Panounias, and his wife ; but these Indians could not understand the natives, who were of the same tongue as those at Saco. They did not therefore find out the name of their chief.

All around the shores there was " a great deal of land cleared up and planted with Indian corn." He says : "The country is very pleasant and agrceable, and there is no lack of fine trees. The Indians here had the 'dug-out' wooden boats instead of the birch-bark canoes ; they had not seen any of these before, and he says, they were constructed by the slow process of burning out the trunk of a tree from one side with hot stones. They used stone hatchets and axes to cut down the trees ; and their weapons were pikes, clubs, bows and arrows. Continuing southward, crowds of Indians came to the shores at all points, showing that at the time the country was populous and, as it seemed, the natives were prosperous and at peace. It was midsummer, 1605, when Champlain visited Massachusetts. He did not at this time explore the rivers of the Bay, but mentions the Charles, which he named the "Du Guast," in honor of Pierre du Guast, commander of the expedition, whose title was "Sieur de Monts." The English named it for their King. Champlain supposed this river flowed from the West, from the country of the Iroquois. Such, in brief, was the general condition of the Indians along the coast in 1605. We pass now to a more par- ticular account of their condition, as the English set- tlers found them in 1620, and onward. It will be remembered that Champlain called all the Indians, from the Kennebec to the South, as far as he went, by the general name, " Almouchiquois."

The earliest definite accounts we have of the In- dians, who lived upon the peninsula between the Mystic and Charles Rivers are somewhat meagre and unsatisfactory. They belonged to, and seem to have been the central portion of the formerly large and powerful tribe of the Massachusetts. Some of their old men told our earliest settlers that the dominion of their great Sachem had once extended as far as the Wampanoags and Narragansetts on the south, to the Connecticut River on the west, and to the Penna- cooks on the north. Nothing, however, as to the limits, is certain. There is a tradition, apparently supported by evidences which will appear further on, that upon the peninsula between the Mystic and Charles was situated the rendezvous of this formerly great tribe. It was here that they used to gather from the south, bringing their products of the land and water; from the north, with the barter of beaver and other furs, and from the interior, where the people were called, by those living on the coast, Nipmucks, or "fresh-water" Indians. All the Bay, from Nahant to Cohasset, seems to have been a sort of capital, with many considerable sub-tribes and sagamores, subject to this great Sachem of the Massachusetts, whose chief seat is said, by one tradition, to have been within the limits of Dorchester, upon a hill near the place now called Squantum.

But the strength and glory of this great tribe had departed long before the English came in contact with them, and even before that terrible plague of

HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

1615-17, which swept away by far the greater part of the coast Indians, from the Kennebec to Rhode Island. Of that devastating scourge we have many corroborating accounts, among which one of the most vivid is given by Mr. Thomas Morton, of "Merry Mount" fame, in that curious book of his, entitled "New English Canaan." It will be seen that, like all accounts of that period, it is mixed with strange and crude superstitions. He relates the destruction of the crew of a French ship, by the Wampanoags, and tells that one of the Frenchmen, who was spared, rebuked them for their wickedness, and told them that God would punish and destroy them ; whereupon the Indians answered that "they were so many that God could not kill them." "In a short time after," says Morton,-

"The hand of God fell heavily upon them with such a mortall stroake that they died on heaps, as they lay in their houses, and the living that were able to shift for themselves, would runne nway and let them dy, and let their carkases ly above the ground withont burial. For in a place where many inhabited there hath been but one left alive, to tell what became of the rest; the living being (as it seems) not allo to bury the dead. They were left for crowes, kites, and vermin to pray upon. And the hopes aod skulls upon the severall places of their habi- tations made such a spectacle after my comming into these parts, that as I travailed in that forrest nere the Massachussets, it seemed to me a new-found Golgotha."

There is, also, in Captain John Smith's account of New England (written in England in 1630), a pass- age giving a similar story of the great plague, and adding the particulars that the pestilence carried off "all the Massachusetts, some five or six hundred in number, leaving only thirty living, of whom their enemies killed all but two." Captain Smith says he cannot vouch for the truth of this, but that "it is most certaine that there was an exceeding great plague amongst them, for where I have seene two or three hundred, within three years after remained scarce thirty." His first visit was in 1614, his second iu 1617. We learn, also, from the writings of Sir Ferdinando Gorges (whose agent, Richard Vines, with a comrade, spent the winter of 1615-16, prob- ably, at Winter Harbor, and lodged in the wigwams with the natives who died by scores of the plague, while these two were unaffected by it), that pre- vious to this plague the Indian tribes along the coast had been greatly decimated by some powerful tribes who had fallen upou them, plundering and destroying, from Casco Bay to Plymouth and the country beyond. These fieree invaders came along the coast from the east, and were known to the Massa- chusetts as Tarratines, and were said to have as their great Sachem that mystical personage whom the East- ward Indians called the " Bashaba," whose chief seat was upon the Penobseot River, whom Champlain called Bessabez, as above noted ; and the Indians who met the first explorers of the coast of Maine declared that this "Bashaba" was the great king of the whole country, as far as they knew. There are some evi- dences that the Mohawks had been appealed to by the tribes of Massachusetts, and had helped them to beat

baek the Tarratines, but, in their turn, had fallen upon their allies and injured them more even than the enemies had done. Alter that came the great plague, and again, after that had passed, it is proba- hle that the Tarratines or Mohawks, or both, invaded the remnants of the tribes, who, perhaps, for safety, allied themselves with the Wampanoags, as, at the coming of the Pilgrims in 1620, their Saehem, Massa- soit, seems to have been the acknowledged head of the tribes as far north as the Merrimack.

The territory embracing the parts to the north and west of Boston was, during the years preceding the coming of the Pilgrims, owned by the Sachem Nane- pashemet, to whom also the local tribes were in sub- jection, while the inland tribes, the Nipmucks-prob- ably their kindred-were in friendly. alliance. While each chief of a tribe seems to have been independent in the control and discipline of his own people, there was always an authority referred to by most of the Sachems.

Massasoit seems to have owned no such authority himself, nor did any of his people refer to any higher than his. The same is true of Philip, his son, after the death of his father and brother. Miantonomah and his son Canonchet, Sachems of the Narragansetts, acknowledged no higher rulers. Passaconaway, of the Pennacooks, seems to have been of like rank ; and the indications are that Nanepashemet, in his day, had held a like position before pestilence and war had wasted his people.

It is said that, before the war with the Tarratines, Nanepashemet had lived at Lynn, and after that re- tired to the peninsula formed by the Mystic and Charles Rivers, and there fortified a hill against the approach of his enemies. The Pilgrim, Bradford, in his journal, says that the Eastern Indians came at harvest time to plunder the Massachusetts of their corn. Mr. Hubbard, of Ipswich, writing fifty years later, said that the Tarratines made war upon these Western Indians " upon the account of some treachery of the latter .? '

The first authentie reference we have to the Massa- chusetts, as a tribe, is found in the early anuals of the Pilgrims, in a work published in England in 1622 by G. Mourt, and popularly known since as "Mourt's Relation." G. Mourt was probably George Morton, one of the Plymouth Company, and an associate of Bradford and Winslow, who doubtless furnished the items of his "Relation " from their journals.

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History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 22

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed Publication date: 1890 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co Number of Pages: 1034

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co
Number of Pages: 1034