History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. III, Part 4

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co
Number of Pages: 1278

USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. III > Part 4

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An effort was made at Nonantum to bind the peo- ple together under a civil government. Many Eng- lish customs were adopted by the Indians. Their clothing became more seemly, and they gave them- selves more to the cultivation of the soil as their dependence for the means of subsisteuce. There were doubtless many true couverts among them, but never an Indian church in Newton. It was after their removal to Natick that a church was first formed, and the institutions of religion and a civilized life first took root.

The success of missionary effort among the Indians created a strong sensation in England. The British Parliament passed an act, July 27, 1649, ordering a collection to be taken up in all the churches of Eng- land for the advancement of the work. The Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge was formed in 1698, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Indiaus and Others in North America in 1701, and the Scottish Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge in 1709-all of which grew out of Mr. Eliot's efforts in behalf of the Indians. "Most of the Indians," says Mr. Shepard, "set up family prayer and grace before meat, and seemed in earnest in their devotions."

The new Indian town in Natick, to which they removed, was commenced iu 1651, with a day of fast-

ing and prayer, and the preparations for forming the church by another day of prayer and confession, October 13, 1652. Under the superintendence of Mr. Eliot the Indians built a foot-bridge in Natick, across Charles River, securing to them communication with other Indians as far south as Pegan Hill, in Dover, near which many traces of dwellings remain, and many traces of their civilization have survived in the rose-bushes and fruits growing around their homes. A fire-proof building, for a free library, now stands in South Natick, on the site of this central point of Indian civilization and church life. A single head- stone remains here, the memorial of the Indian pas- tor, Daniel Takawambait, who died September 17, 1716. In 1670 there were two teachers and between 40 and 50 communicants. In 1763 there were only 37 Indians; in 1797 not more than 20; and in 1843 but a single individual known to be living in whose veins flowed Indian blood.

In 1687 Cotton Mather wrote, " There are six regular churches of baptized Indians in New England and 18 assemblies of catechumeus, professing the name of Christ. Of the Indians there are twenty-four preach- ers of the word. There are also four English preach- ers who preach the gospel in the Indian tongue." In the year 1671 Mr. Eliot recognized missionary sta- tions in places now known as Natick, Stoughton, Graf- ton (between Natick and Grafton), Marlboro', Littleton, Tewksbury and Pawtucket Falls, near Lowell. Sev- eral of them had regular worship and a native preacher. At Natick the meetings were assembled by beat of drum.

Mr. Eliot's evangelistic efforts bore fruit on the other side of the globe. Dr. Leusden wrote to Cotton Mather that the example of New England had awak- ened the Dutch to attempt the evangelization of the heathen in Ceylon and their other Indian possessions, and that multitudes there had been converted to Chris- tianity. This is another star in Newton's crown.

The most remarkable service performed by Mr. Eliot for the Indians was the translation of the whole Bible into their tongue. To prepare himself for this work, as well as for preaching to the people, he took into his family an Indian who could speak both lan- gnages. Mr. Eliot's early training fitted him specially for the work. He was proficient in linguistic studies, .. as well as in Hebrew and Greek. 1Ie is said to have written out the entire translation with one pen. The New Testament was printed at Cambridge in 1661, and the whole Bible, with the Psalms in metre, in 1663. It was the first Bible printed in America. A thousand dollars in gold has been refused, of late, for a copy. An Indian who had been taught the art of printing was employed in the work. A second edi- tion was printed in 1685. There were 2000 copies of each edition.

During Philip's War the Indian converts mani- fested unshaken fidelity to the English, and often served as guides and otherwise. The English, how-

HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

ever, were so sensitive, and so suspicious of every red man, that the General Court, on the breaking out of the war, ordered them to be removed, 200 in number, to Deer Island, in Boston harbor.

It is not difficult to trace the way in which the ter- ritory of Newton was distributed among its early in- habitants. A map drawn in 1700 marks the bounda- ries of the first settlers. Charles River at first bounded three sides of Newton, except the small por- tion denominated the " Watertown weirs," and deter- mined mainly the location of its several villages. Wherever the falls or the river indicated a water- power, and the possibility of a profitable manufactory, there a village sprang into existence. Such was the origin of Newton, long called Angier's Corner and Newton Corner, being at the northeast corner of the town, and adjacent to the Watertown fisheries, New- ton Upper and Lower Falls, and Bemis' Factories, since called North Newton and Nonantum. In later times, the stations of the Boston and Albany Rail- road, and the New York and New England, now all included in the Newton Circuit Railroad, determined the villages of Newtonville, West Newton, Auburn- dale and Riverside, and Chestnut Hill, Newton Cen- tre, Highlands, and the younger stations, Waban, Eliot and Woodland. The cession of a small terri- tory to Waltham sacrificed a part of this water limit. The first settlers of Newton were in the northeast corner of the town, John and Edward Jackson, Holly, Bush and Radson, reached to the river. William ('lement name next to Edward Jackson, and the lat- ter owned all the remainder to Centre Street. Cross- ing Centre Street, westwardly, eame Gregory Cook ; next him the large estate of 600 acres of Richard Park ; then JJohn Fuller, extending west, to the river. South of Fuller was Capt. Isaac Williams. South of Gregory l'ook, on the west side of Centre Street, was the great farm of Thomas Mayhew, of 500 aeres, sokl to Gov. Bradstreet in 1638, and by the latter, in 1646, to Edward Jackson, including mneh of Newtonville. Returning to Centre Street, on the east side were some smaller estates, and south of them Deacon Sam- uel Hyde, on both sides of the street, still bearing his name. South of this, on the west side, Rev. John Eliot, Jr., afterwards Rev. John Cotton, John Spring, and then the large holdings of Jonathan Hyde, reach- ing to the Baptist Pond. South of Samuel Hyde, on the east side of Centre Street, were Col. Ward, Rob- ert Prentice and Henry Gibbs (the Rice estate), and a little farther south, Wiswall, John Clark and the great estate of Governor Haynes. East of tibbs was Joseph Bartlett, and east of Bartlett, Thomas Ham- mond, including Hammond's Pond and reaching nearly to the limit of Newton in that direction. John Parker and Ebenezer Stone were west and southwest of Thomas Hammond. Thomas Prentice was on Waverly Avenue, and south of him the Wards and (Hark. The larger farms soon began to be divided 1875-76, and member of Congress eight years. Still among many proprietors. John and Elijah Kenrick

settled near the river at the south part of the town, and John Kenrick on Waverly Avenue. As the northeast corner of Newton was the first to be set- tled, the southeast, in later times, seems nearly the last. Vincent Druce was there at first, whose name was spelled six different ways. Could Erosamon Drew, whose saw-mill hummed there on a little brook, be a kinsman of Druce, under this kindred name ? This large tract of land, lying, till lately, in a nearly wild state, was in early times in the hands of Tories, who, it is said. hid in the thick woods some of King George's cannon, intending to use them, when cir- cumstances should favor, in behalf of the Royal cause. The Tories, however, were forced to flee to the British Provinces, and their property was confiscated and sold, and divided among many proprietors. Erosa- mon Drew's honse was called " the Huckleberry Tavern," because the tenant then occupying it was remarkably successful in making a kind of wine from the huekleberries of the neighboring pastures, which the scattered residents of the neighboring portions of Newton and Brookline were fond of quaffing when they visited the locality on election days and other festive occasions.

In West Newton beyond the meeting-house was Miller, Bartlett, the Segers and John Barbour, who set out the great elm-tree by "the Tavern House," and, in the progress of years and in the transitional period from the old to the new, was Seth Davis, who first taught geography and astronomy in his private academy, and was blamed for it, and who set out most of the trees on the older public streets of West Newton ; the Greenoughs, Stores and Fullers, and Samuel llastings, with his tan-yard near the meet- ing-house. In what is now Auburndale, the estate of John Pigeon, the sturdy patriot whose donation of two field-pieces to the town sounded the alarm of the Revolutionary War; Thomas Greenwood, Alexander Shepard, Daniel Jackson and William Robinsou; ou the road to the Lower Falls, the Murdock and Dix estates; still farther south, John Staples, the first school-master, also deacon and town elerk, who gave to the town " seventeen acres of woodland for the support of the ministerial fire from year to year annually ;" the Collins families. At the Lower Falls we find the names of Jonathan Willard, the iron-worker, Wales, Curtis, Crehore, Hagar and Rice, the latter extensive paper manufacturers,-one of them, Thomas, selectman eighteen years, repre- sentative three years, twice clected to the Senate and two years member of the Executive Council, at whose mill the paper was manufactured for the Boston Daily Transcript forty years, and who, in the days of the War of the Rebellion, was to Newton what John A. Andrew, the war Governor, was to Massachusetts ; and his younger brother, Alexander K., mayor of Boston in 1856 57, and Governor of Massachusetts in farther south and southeast were the estates of Cap-

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tains Clark, Hyde and Woodward, in whose house, still standing, family worship has been maintained for nine generations; at the Upper Falls, Cheney, Gibbs, Bixby, Elliott and Pettee, a man of infinite ingenuity and perseverance, whose machine-shops and factories built up the village, and who, more than any other, secured the building of the first railroad from Needham, through Newton Centre to Boston ; on the southern extension of Centre Street, Mitchell's tavern, the Winchesters; at Oak Hill, the Richard- sons, Stones, Wiswalls, Deacon King, Hall, Richards, Wilson, Rand, Kingsbury and Goody Mary Davis, the widow, who died aged 116 years, and cultivated her garden with her own hands in her old age, and whose portrait hangs on the walls of the Massachu- setts Historical Society in Boston.

HISTORICAL ITEMS .- In the early periods of New England history the parish and the town were co- extensive. The laws of Massachusetts did not recog- nize the church as distinguished from the parish ; hence parish business was town business and eccles- iastical legislation was only town legislation. The town called and settled the minister, and provided for his support. The town also paid the funeral ex- penses of the pastors when they were dead. When Mr. Meriam, the fourth pastor, died, in August, 1780, the town appointed a committee to make provision for the funeral. Colonel Benjamin Hammond lent £195 towards these expenses, " which included £60 to Deacon Bowles, for making a coffin," and £31 paid to Joshua Murdoch " for half barrel of beer and half a cord of wood for the funeral." The town also regu- lated the exercises of worship. About 1770 a peti- tion was offered for a committee " to consider respect- ing the introduction of the version of the Psalms by Tate and Brady, with the Hymns annexed." The report was favorable, and adopted. About the same time it was voted in town-meeting " that trees be set out to shade the meeting-house, if any persons will be so generously-minded as to do it."

The first five ministers of the town were called and settled under this system. The first church was prop- erly a colony of the First Church in Cambridge. The records of the church were burned with the house of Mr. Meriam, the fourth pastor, March 18, 1770. King Philip's War broke out soon after the set- tlement of the second pastor, Mr. Hobart. Had the Nonantum Indians remained unchristianized and un- civilized, and joined with the other Indian tribes to exterminate the English settlers, humanly speaking the latter would have been forced to leave the coun- try. But, remaining faithful to their friends, they saved the situation, and New England was preserved from destruction, almost in its inception, through the influence of Christian missions to the heathen.

In 1779 six new pews were built in the First Parish meeting-house, slips or long benches being removed to make room for them. These pews were leased at auction annually at the March meeting, "the rent to be

paid in Indian corn, not less than half a peck to be accepted as a bid, and delivered to the Treasurer." The first year twenty-two bushels were received, and at the next annual meeting " sold in lots to suit pur- chasers." After eight years the custom was discon- tinued, and pew rents were ever afterwards paid in money.

Near the ancient meeting-house were erected the stocks, for the punishment of those who misbehaved at church or in town-meeting. We do not know pre- cisely where they stood, or at what date they were erected. But in the Town Records of 1773 it is stated that "a committee was chosen to examine the church stocks." The office of constable of Newton, we may infer, was not eagerly sought after. One part of his duty was to collect the annual taxes. In 1728 Mr. Joseph Jackson was elected constable, but declin- ed the office, and "did immediately pay his fine, as the law requires." The amount was £5. The pay of the Representative to the General Court in 1729 was €45 6s. A new pound for the confinement of stray cattle was built of stone near the site of the Unitarian Church, Newton Centre in 1755, where it remained about 110 years. Cypress Street, on which it stood, was hence called Pound Lane until a recent period. In 1755 it was voted to provide a cotton velvet pall for nse at funerals, and in 1763 to " let the velvet pall to other towns," when not in use iu Newton, "the persons hiring it to pay half a dollar every time it is hired." 1n 1799 it was voted to buy two hearses for the use of the town, when the money could be spared out of the treasury. Also in 1760, "that persons working out their highway taxes on the road should be paid three pence per hour, and each team that is able to carry a ton weight, the same sum."

NEWTON UPPER FALLS,-The beginning of New- ton Upper Falls was a saw-mill erected by John Clark about 1688, on Charles River, where the water falls twenty feet perpendicularly, and then descends about thirty-five feet in half a mile. There was an eel-weir above the falls which John Clark bought of the Indians, together with all the water power, for £3 lawful money. The river was called by the Indians Quinobequin, and the Indian who signed the deed of conveyance of the water privilege was William Nehoiden or Nahaton. The eel-weir was a dam built by the Indians near the upper bridge, and the yard of the present cotton-mill. Its foundation stones can still be seen in the bed of the river. General Elliott erected snuff-mills at that point later, on the Newton «hore. In 1720 this busy spot included a saw-mill, fulling-mill, grist-mill and eel-weir, and Noah Parker became the sole owner. The property afterwards fell to Thomas Parker, and was sold later on to Simon Elliott, a tobacconist from Boston, a man of much enterprise. In the first decade of the nineteenth century he was the owner of one of the only three "family carriages " in Newton.

The first dwelling-house in the village of the

HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

Upper Falls was erected about 1800 and still stands. any one his purpose in rearing the structure. It stood Some of the timber used in building the cotton factory unused for years, and then part of it was utilized for a common stable. It is a singular fact that, after more than half a century, the silk manufacture is actually established at last as a feature of the industry of Newton Upper Falls. The weather-beaten brick mills, once a cotton factory, employ 130 operatives, engaged in spinning silks, silk yarns, filoselles, em- broidery-silk and other goods of like character, the raw material in the original packages being brought from France, Italy, China and Japan. on the Needham side was taken from a prize at sea, during the War of 1812, and carried into Boston and sokl at anction. About 1829 a hotel was built at the Falls, and kept as a house of entertainment twenty years. It became afterwards a private dwelling. A stage-coach for Boston, until near 1850, left New- ton Upper Falls every morning at 9 o'clock, going through Newton Centre and Brighton, and left Boston on its returnat 3 P.M. ; fare, fifty cents. It was through the energy of a Mr. Whiting, of Dover, Massachusetts, In 1639 certain parties in Dedham dug a canal de- signed to divert the waters of Charles River into East Brook, a tributary of the Neponset, and actually se- cured to themselves one-third of the water of the Charles. In 1777 a petition to the Governor and Council, and another in 1807, by General Elliott, invoking the aid of the town of Newton in behalf of its own citizens, saved the remainder of the water to its rightful proprietors. The settlement caused much litigation. who for ten years courted fortune in the gold-mines of Mexico, that cotton manufacturing was first intro- duced into Tepic, a city near the western coast of that republic. The cotton machinery was built by Mr. l'ettee at the Upper Falls, and sent to Mexico in 1837, in charge of workmen employed for three years to go thither and set np the machinery and instruct the native workmen, till they could manage the business themselves. Other factories followed, and were estab- lished with satisfactory results in Durango, Tunai, Colima, Santiago, Curaçoa, Mazatlan and other places.

The Worcester Turnpike (Boylston Street) was chartered March 7, 1806, and the road constructed through Newton in 1808. Of the 600 shares of stock, valued at $250 each, sixteen were held by citizens of Newton. The road paid but few dividends, and finally the stockholders lost their entire capital. In 1833 the county commissioners laid out the portion in Newton as a public highway, and in 1841 the pro- prietors surrendered their charter.

The village of Newton Upper Falls lies outside of the Newton Circuit Railroad, on the line of the Woonsocket Branch of the New York and New Eng- land Railroad. It has the appearance of an old vil- lage, built more for utility than beauty, althongh the natural scenery is not equaled by that of any part of Newton. The river Charles here cuts its way between the hills, and in some places, as in the rear of the Baptist meeting-house, the landscape has strik- ing charms. The first owner, Nahaton, a sagamore of the l'unkapoag tribe, sold a part of it to John Man- gus for a gun. It was bought of him by the English colonists. In 1700 the rest of it was sold to Robert Cooke, of Dorchester, for £12.

The large " stone barn," so-called, on Oak St., a con- spicuous feature of the Upper Falls, was built by Mr. Otis Pettee, Sr., in the period of the silk excitement in Eastern Massachusetts, when Mr. John Kenrick, nurseryman, living on Waverly Street, had for sale many thousands of Morus Multicanlis trees, deeming that the raising of silk-worms and the manufacture of silk was likely to become an important industry , shops, etc. But for the last half-century the manu- of Newton. It was generally conjectured among the villagers that the "stone barn " was designed for a nursery of silk worms and a depot for the manufac- ture of silk. But Mr. l'ettee would never reveal to

It is said that salmon, shad and alewives used to find their way, before dams were built, as far as this point.

At the northeast corner of Boylston and Chestnut Streets, Upper Falls, is a large, wooden house, which, from 1808 to 1850, bore the name of the " Manufac- turers' Hotel," a place of considerable business, where merchants from Boston and the manufacturers of the village held frequent sessions to discuss their mutual interests.

THE LOWER FALLS ON CHARLES RIVER are two miles below the Upper Falls. In 1703 John Lever- ett, of Boston, conveyed to John Hubbard, also of Boston, four acres of land at the Lower Falls, bound- ed on one side by a forty-acre lot, then belonging to Harvard University. This land has since been the site of all the mills on the Newton side of the river. In 1705 John Hubbard conveyed to his son, Nathan- iel, one-half of this lot, with half the iron works thereon, and half the dam, flume, stream and run- ning-gear belonging to the forge. Jonathan Willard erected here, in 1704, iron works, forge and trip-ham- mer, which was the beginning of business at the Lower Falls. In 1722 Mr. Willard became sole owner of the entire plant, and was the principal man of the iron works and of the village for nearly half a century. He was the first Baptist in Newton, and a member of the First Baptist Church in Boston; and for many years he and his daughter were the only professors of that faith. Many kinds of business requiring water-power have been carried on here, as iron works, saw, grist, snuff, leather and paper-mills, calico-printing, machine- facture of paper has been the leading industry. Eight or ten paper-mills, in constant operation, have supplied the traders and newspaper presses of Boston and other cities and towns. The names of ex-Gov-

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ernor Rice and Hon. Thomas Rice, an influential and patriotic citizen, are prominent in this manufacture. The first paper-mill was erected by Mr. John Ware, son of Professor Ware, Sr., of Harvard College, in 1790, and father of Mrs. Eb nezer Starr, whose hus- band was the physician of the Lower Falls. The business was afterward enlarged under the manage- ment of the Curtises, Crehores and Rices. The work was at first done by hand; but after the invention of the Fourdrinier press, in England, the capacity of manufacture was greatly enhanced. The first ma- chine of this kind in use in the United States was placed in a mill at the Lower Falls.

In 1800 there were only thirteen houses in the vil- lage. The only post-office in Newton, previous to 1820, was at the Lower Falls. A stage-coach ran from the Lower Falls to Boston three times a week. The old Cataract Engine Company, at the Lower Falls, is the oldest fire organization in Newton. Their first tub was of wood, afterwards replaced by copper. Stringent rules were adopted to prevent the members from using spirituous liquors to an immod- erate extent. The members paid an admission fee of $5.00. The organization lasted from 1813 to 1846.

Paper-making has been carried on here for much more than a century. The Crehore Mill, still in op- eration, as well as others, has proved a henefit to the whole country. Silk and hosiery manufactories and machine-shops have also been among the industries of the village. Mr. Isaac Hagar, of the Lower Falls, was a member of the School Committee thirty years.

WEST NEWTON .- Early in the present century West Newton became a kind of centre of several lines of stage-coaches; at one period as many as thirty made it a regular stopping-place daily. The private academy of Master Seth Davis, and his pub- lic spirit, enterprise and taste, probably did more than anything else in the first quarter of this century to bring the village into prominence. The fixing of a station of the Boston and Albany Railroad here was among the important elements of its prosperity in modern times. The Normal School removed hither from Lexington, and the presence of those rare edu- cators, Rev. Cyrus Pierce and Mr. Eben Stearns, the head masters of it, and the influence of Horace Mann, the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Edu- cation, who lived in his estate on Chestnut Street while he held that office, and the academy of the Al- lens afterwards, and the educating influences of the town-meetings held there, at one period, alternating with sessions at Newton Centre, completed the circle of elements which gave the village fame and distinc- tion. As early as 1661 Thomas Parker, John Fuller and Isaac Williams were probably the only settlers in this part of Newton. The house of Isaac Williams stood about thirty rods northeast of the site of the present meeting-house. The old Shepard house was near by, and, not far away, Peter Durell. The names of Fuller, Park, Craft, Jackson and Captain Isaac 2-iii

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History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. III, Part 4

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1890 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co Number of Pages: 1278

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co
Number of Pages: 1278