History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. III, Part 44

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 44

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Dr. Learned's intention is entirely clear. He had no thought of founding a library which should not belong to the town, or the management of which in years to come should be in any way restricted or taken out of the hands of the town. He wanted to be sure that the books bought with his bequest should be well selected, and hence he appointed those who, from their position in the community, might be as- sumed to be trustworthy men. After his legacy had been expended, the duties of his nominees would end, the library would belong to the town, and he evi- dently believed that the town would cheerfully bear the small expense of managing it, as he left nothing for that purpose. For its increase he relied upon the fees that adults might pay under the town's direction, as his will provides.

The selectmen, ministers and physicians met No- vember 30, 1835, and voted that the books selected for the library should be such as were directed by the will of the donor,-" the same not being of a sec- tarian character " -- and then proceeded to spend more than four-fifths of the legacy for books. When

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this was done, however, instead of handing over the collection of volumes to the town, that it might take whatever action it saw fit in regard to the future management of the library, the selectmen, ministers and physicians continued to control it, and, in fact, remained in charge of it till 1878. This came about naturally enough, as the library was small for many years and could be as well managed in this way as in any other. So, without any formal act on the part of the town, this arrangement was acquiesced in by com- mon consent. Although the managers styled them- selves "Trustees of the West Cambridge Juvenile Library," yet they recognized in their accounts and in their frequent reports to the town that they were simply agents of the town and not an independent body-a fact also recognized by the town, which, at one time, added the School Committee to their num- ber.

In 1836 the West Cambridge Sewing Circle gave the sum of sixty dollars to the library, and in return were granted the privilege of taking books for a nom- inal yearly fee. A more important thing happened in 1837, when the town voted at the March meeting that thirty dollars he appropriated annually for the increase of the Juvenile Library. The trustees passed a vote at their next meeting "that, in consideration of thirty dollars annually appropriated by the town for the increase of the Library, that each family in the town shall have the right to take books from the library while the appropriation is continued." In 1837, tben, the library became a free town library- owned and managed by the town, and open without charge to all its people. I have stated these facts in some detail, as it is no small honor to a town to have founded the first free public library in Massachu- setts.

The library for some time increased but slowly. Its only regular resource was the town appropriation of thirty dollars. Once or twice this was omitted at the proper time, but the arrears were made up by the payment of two or three years' appropriations at once. From time to time there were gifts of money or books. Most of the books of the old Social Library came finally into the collection. In 1854 a bequest of $100 was received from the estate of Dr. Timothy Welling- ton, for half a century an honored and beloved phy- sician of the town. He had been clerk of the trus- tees from the beginning and was a warm and devoted supporter of the library. His gift was invested and its income is used each year in buying books. In 1860 the town appropriation was increased to $100 and a few years later to $200. The library was at first kept in the house of Mr. Jonathan Dexter. After a time it was placed in the basement of the First Parish Church and later in the Town House.

In 1824 William Cutter died, leaving his property after the death of his wife to the town for the benefit of the public schools. His widow, Mary, died in 1836 and the gift then became available. Mary Cutter,

with the same public spirit that her husband had shown, bequeathed to the town $200 for the benefit of the poor widows of the place. The " William Cutter School Fund " amounted when received to $5019. It was somewhat increased in the settlement of accounts between Charlestown and West Cambridge in 1842, and is now $5354. The donor wisely placed no narrow restrictions upon his gitt-its income was to be appro- priated " for the maintenance and support of schools." The " Poor Widows' Fund " has also been added to from time to time, and now amounts to $613.11, held for the benefit of the poor widows of the town. The town, appreciating these gifts of a childless couple, whose only motive could have been the hope of doing good, instructed the selectmen to contribute to the erection of the monument that marks their graves in the old cemetery.

In 1838 a new division of school districts was made. The larger part of the Centre and East Districts be- came the Union District ; the Northwest District was somewhat enlarged and the Southwest District re- mained unchanged. In the Union and Northwest Districts the old school-houses were sold and new ones built-each two stories in height and containing two school-rooms. The expense was in part defrayed from a windfall that had come to the town during the preceding year. It was then that the surplus revenue of the United States was distributed among the States. Massachusetts divided its share among its towns. At first West Cambridge thriftily voted to lend the fund thus acquired on the security of real estate mortgages, giving a preference to its own citizens as borrowers ; but when the school-houses had to be built the temp- tation was strong to use this money rather than to raise the necessary sum by taxation, and the treasurer was accordingly authorized to call it it again. In 1842 a new school-house was built in the South Dis- triet. With new buildings a rough grading of the schools became practicable, and the system then es- tablished lasted for some years with little variation. In each district was a grammar school taught by a man and a primary school taught by a woman. Be- sides these, there was a little primary school in what was called the Wyman District. This district was in the old limits of Charlestown and most of it was in- cluded in Winchester in 1850, the part left within the borders of West Cambridge being then joined to the Union District. Then for a few years the Gardner School existed, which came to an end when Somer- ville was separated from Charlestown. Both of these schools were within the boundaries of Charlestown and were never large. In 1850 a school-house was erected in the East District-a part of the Uuion Dis- trict-and a primary school established.

There were two terms in the school year, known as the summer and winter terms. The summer term be- gan about the middle of April and lasted till Thanks- giving, with a break of three weeks in August. After the Thanksgiving vacation of a week, the winter term

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began and continued till about the end of March, when two weeks of vacation brought round the sum- mer term again. At the end of each term came an examination by the School Committee, and frequent- ly public exercises were held. Of the teachers of these schools, the late Daniel C. Brown, for many years master of the Centre School is perhaps now the best remembered.

In 1861 the Russell School-a four-room wooden building-was erected on the piece of land where its successor now stands, and was named after one of the oldest and most prominent families in town. Two years later a similar school-house was built in the Northwest District and received the name of the Cut- ter School, after another well-known family, with perhaps a special reference to the donor of the Wil- liam Cutter School Fund. This building stood but three years before it was burned. Another building, still standing, was erected in its place in 1867. With this increase in schools, consequent upon the growth of the town, an improved system of grading became practicable.

In 1864 a High School was established. Six years earlier, William Cotting, an old resident of the town, who owned a large piece of land, through which Academy Street now runs, gave to four trustees a lot of land to be held by them for the use and maintenance of a high school or academy. The plan of estab- lishing such an academy had been for some time in contemplation among several leading citizens, who desired that their children might be educated at home, and Mr. Cotting's gift enabled them to proceed at once to carry out their intention. A school-house was built and the Cotting Academy opened. In order to secure the maintenance of a school of high charac- ter, Mr. Cotting made it a condition of his gift that no school kept on the premises should be of lower grade than a high school, " to the end that any pupil thereof, so desiring, shall at all times have opportuni- ty of being thoroughly educated in such school in any and all the branches of learning required for admis- sion into Harvard University at Cambridge and other American colleges." As the academy went success- fully on, a desire naturally arose among many of the people of the town that it should become a public high school, so that its advantages might be more widely enjoyed. This was no new notion. As far back as 1838 the proposition had been made in town- meeting to establish such a school, and although the movement would have been premature then and for some time thereafter, many were looking forward to the time when such a step could wisely be taken. The population of the town was far below the number required by law to make the establishment of a high school compulsory, but nevertheless it was decided in 1864 that the Cotting Academy should be transferred to the town and become the Cotting High School. Mr. Cotting had foreseen that this change was likely to come to pass, and provided for it in his original

deed of gift. The High School was opened in De- cember, 1864.

Its first principal was the late Charles O. Thomp- son, who remained three years at its head. His re- markable gifts as a teacher and organizer, exhibited afterwards on larger fields of duty, gave to the school a character that has lasted. His later career as prin- cipal of the Worcester Free Institute and of the Rose Polytechnic School, at Terre Haute, Ind., is well known. That it should have been cut short by death, while he was yet in his prime, is a matter of enduring regret, not only to the many who saw in it merely a serious loss to the cause of scientific education in the United States, but especially to those who knew him as teacher or as friend.

In order to put the account of the library and the schools in a more intelligible way, I have departed, somewhat, from the chronological order of events. Returning to the decade between 1830 and 1840, we find a considerable increase in the means of protec- tion against fire. Beside the "Friendship," which was then kept in an engine-house situated by the brook in the burying-ground, near the road, the town possessed the "Good Intent," bought before 1832, and kept in the northwest part of the town. To these were soon added two more engines-the "Olive Branch," in 1835, and the " Enterprise," in 1836. The "Olive Branch " belonged in the upper end of the town, and the " Enterprise " in the southern part. Each machine was manned by a company appointed by the selectmen. The companies of the two older engines usually comprised about twenty men, while the newer ones had over thirty. The cost of the en- gines was paid in part by the town and in part by in- dividuals. To these four succeeded the "Eureka" and the "Howard," in 1851. The "Howard" was kept in what is now Belmont, and became the prop- erty of the new town.

Sidewalks were coming into fashion in 1834, in which year the town authorized abutters to build sidewalks at their own expense, and to protect them by posts and ornamental trees. In 1835 an appropri- ation was made to pay for ringing of the church bell, half an hour before sunrise, at noon and at nine in the evening. A facetious person, acting apparently on the principle that there could not be too much of a good thing, managed to get a vote through the meeting that the bell should be rung also at midnight, an improvement that proved fatal to the original plan, as all the votes were reconsidered. Two years later the proposition reappeared in a form less alarm- ing to late risers, and the custom that still exists was established of having the bell rung at noon and at nine o'clock at night. In 1839 a vote was passed, authorizing the people to dig wells in the highways where they would not impede travel.

On February 25, 1842, the town received a con- siderable accession of territory from the addition of all that part of Charlestown that lay northwest of

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Alewife Brook. The people of this tract were joined by many ties to their West Cambridge neighbors, and it is only surprising that so obviously desirable a union did not take place long before. This annexation gave the town the largest area it ever had. A few years later, in 1850, it lost, much against its will, a portion of its extreme northern corner when the town of Winchester was formed.

In 1843 land was bought on the Medford Road for a new cemetery, which soon after received the name of Mt. Pleasant. Since its establishment compara- tively few interments have been made in the old burial-ground.

In 1846 an event took place which was to have a profound effect upon the fortunes of the town-the opening of the railroad. Hitherto the public means of conveyance to Boston had been by stage-coach. For many years, on three days of the week, the stage which carried the New Hampshire mail afforded a means of reaching Boston, It passed through West Cambridge late in the afternoon and did not come back until the next morning, when it again rolled heavily through the streets of the town on its long return journey. More frequent trips were made by the Concord coach, which was established at a later date. This conveyance ran daily to the city. Whoever desired to go in it left his name beforehand at the tavern at the corner of the Medford road, and the coach called at his door. The journey was too ex- pensive to be often indulged in, for the fare was fifty cents; and the few persons whose business called them frequently to Boston traveled in their own chaises. A later and formidable rival to the Concord stage-coach was the omnibus, which ran no farther than West Cambridge. This conveyance gave the public great accommodation, for it went to Boston and returned twice every week-day, and passengers had to pay but twenty-five cents a trip. But omnibus and stage-coach alike were destined to disappear before the locomotive engine.

It was in 1844 that the first serious movement to introduce a railroad into West Cambridge had its be- ginuing. The plan then was to construct a branch track from the Fitchburg or Fresh Pond Road in Cam- bridge to a point near the centre of West Cambridge. A public meeting was held, committees were ap- pointed and surveys were made. Before any definite action was taken, however, people in Lexington began to move to bring about the building of a road to their town. The citizens of both places united finally in a compromise, according to which one road was to be built, to run through West Cambridge to Lexington. This arrangement was sanctioned by the Legislature, and the Lexington and West Cambridge Branch Rail- road became incorporated March 24, 1845. It was opened for public travel in August, 1846.

The accommodation afforded by the new railroad would hardly in these days excite more than a moder- ate amount of gratitude. However, it was a great ad-

vance on anything that had existed before, towards making the town accessible from the neighboring city. From that time West Cambridge began notice- ably to take on the character of a place of residence for those whose daily work lay outside its borders.

In 1846 a committee was appointed to name the various streets, which had, up to that time, gone by the old names that had been given them by popular usage. The committee showed excellent taste and judgment in the performance of that work and the names thus given them-as Medford and Mystic, Warren and Pleasant-still designate most of our older streets.

At about this time some indications appear that there was the same difficulty in the enforcement of laws against the illegal sale of liquor that has been found elsewhere and at other times. We find a special committee appointed in 1843 to enforce the laws as to the sale of liquors, and three years later the select- men are authorized to prosecute those who might ille- gally sell ardent spirits and other intoxicating liquors.

Dogs come into the foreground in 1849 as objects of public disapproval. At a meeting held January Ist it was voted to petition the Legislature to protect the inhabitants of the Commonwealth "from the an- noyance and danger now experienced by the great and alarming increase of dogs," and by way of aiding in the cause an ordinance was passed providing for the licensing and muzzling of these animals.

1851 was the year of the tornado,-an event which deserves to be described in some detail. It occurred on Friday, the 22d day of August. Its track was from southwest to northeast, curving gradually to eastward. It began its course in Wayland, and then passed over Weston, Waltham, West Cambridge, Medford, Malden, Saugus, Swampscott and Lynn, and thence to the sea. In all these places some dam- age was done, but Medford and West Cambridge bore the brunt of the storm. Those who saw it described it as a dark cloud sweeping over the surface of the country with frightful speed ; its base now touching the earth and now bounding up for a little, to return again farther on. Its shape was variously compared to a spreading elm, to an upright column, to an hour- glass, and to an inverted cone-discrepancies proba- hly to be attributed to the different positions of the observers, to the excitement of the moment and per- haps to actual changes of shape. One eye-witness vividly compared it to an elephant's trunk, waving a little from side to side and sucking up everything that came in its way. Its path was straight for the most part, with curious eddies and turns here and there. It left behind it in West Cambridge a devas- tated swath which was, in most places, from thirty to fifty rods wide, although the track was at some points wider and at some narrower than this.

The storm occurred at about half-past five o'clock on a hot, sultry summer afternoon. There had been during the day a light southwest wind, but for an

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hour before the tornado there was an almost perfect calm. Without any warning the storm struck West Cambridge at the premises of Mr. James Brown, on the Waltham line, and swept across the town, tearing its way through woods, orchards and corn-fields. It crossed Pleasant Street near what is now the Belmont boundary, and went straight on across the land of Captain Hopkins, of Dr. Wellington, and of the other residents on the eastern side of the street, then over the northwest corner of Spy Pond, demolishing the ice-houses at the water's edge, then across the high- way at a point near the present line of Franklin Street, wreaking destruction on store, school-house and dwellings, and so on till it crossed Mystic River, about fifty rods below the Medford Street bridge. The tornado lasted a very few moments, but in that time it did damage in West Cambridge to the extent of nearly twenty-five thousand dollars. Happily no lives were lost and no serious personal injuries in- flicted.

This storm had several noticeable features much commented on at the time. As it crossed the pond it took up a good deal of water ; and this, mingled with the sand and gravel of the railway embankment and the dust of the highway, splashed everything with a liberal coating of gravelly mnd. When there was any vertical motion it was a lifting motion-things were taken up into the air, not beaten down to the earth. Trees generally resisted the disintegrating force of the wind, but buildings were racked or shat- tered. In Medford, where very careful observations were made, few traces of rotary motion were found, but in one place in West Cambridge, where a cornfield was flattened before the blast, the corn lay with the tops pointed in and to windward, on both sides of the central line of the track, as if two enormous wheels with vertical axes, turning in opposite directions and playing into each other like cog-wheels, had passed summer of 1889.

through the field. The people gathered in a public meeting three days afterward and raised a substantial sum to help the sufferers from the storm.

In 1852 a Town House was built, the first and only one that the town has possessed. Before 1840 town- meetings were usually held in the meeting-house of the First Parish. In that year a new meeting-house was built, the vestry of which was known as Parish Hall and here the town held its meetings for a dozen years. In 1849 there was a movement for the erection of a Town House, but no results immediately followed. The proposition met with a more favorable reception in 1852, when a committee of leading citizens was chosen to select a site and erect a building. The Town House was completed in time for the March meeting in 1853. Outside it presented substantially the same appearance that it does now, except that its brick walls were covered with a stucco which, until it began to wear away with time, moderately resembled stone. A broad flight of stairs ran directly up from the front door to the entrance of the hall, the ante-

rooms of which served to accommodate the town officers and the Juvenile Library. The lower floor was leased for business purposes.

The Belmont controversy began in 1854, and was by far the most important business that the town had to deal with for the next five years. The details of the movement that resulted in the formation of a new town from portions of three old ones belongs properly to the history of Belmont. To West Cambridge the plan meant the loss of about one-third of its territory, one-fifth of its population and a quarter of its taxable property, and it naturally met with a vigorous resist- ance. Committees were chosen each year to oppose the scheme before the General Court. The case is famous among Massachusetts town divisions. Legis- lature after Legislature rejected the bill, and year after year the Belmont petitioners appeared at the State House, to be met by the remonstrants from West Cambridge, Watertown and Waltham. At last, on March 18, 1859, the bill incorporating the town of Belmont became a law, and West Cambridge had to submit to dismemberment with as good a grace as it might. The lapse of thirty years has made the bitter- ness of the controversy only a memory, but it is diffi- cult not to feel a certain regret that those fertile farms are not still a part of our town.

Gas was introduced into the town at this time-the West Cambridge Gas-Light Company being incor- porated and allowed to lay its pipes in the streets in 1854, although the town did not assume the expense of street-lighting until 1859. In 1857 the town voted to petition the Legislature for the establishment of a horse railroad. In consequence of this desire the West Cambridge Horse Railroad Company was incor- porated May 28th of the same year, and its cars soon began their hourly trips to Boston. Electricity was introduced as a motive-power on this railway in the

In 1856 a clock was placed in the tower of the new meeting-house of the First Parish. April 5, 1860, the West Cambridge Savings Bank was incorporated.

When the war broke out West Cambridge was not untrue to its past. A great popular meeting was held on Sunday, April 21, 1861, at which the citizens pledged themselves to support the Government-a pledge that their behavior in the succeeding years did not belie. A company was organized under command of Capt. Albert S. Ingalls. Unfortunately no place could be found for it in a Massachusetts regiment, and, unwilling to wait, many of the men enlisted in the Fortieth New York-the Mozart regi- ment. This was the only considerable body of West Cambridge men who served together. The other soldiers who went from the town during the war were scattered through many organizations. It is difficult to give the exact number of men who went into the war from West Cambridge. Under the loose system that prevailed, some recruits, who were in reality residents here, were credited to other towns, and, in

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like manner, citizens of other places were set down as spread among the people, although they reccived no countenance from the pastor. Steadily the breach widened until at last Dr. Fiske was so far out of touch coming from West Cambridge. Again, it is hard to distinguish between residents and non-residents in the lists of men furnished by the town to the service, with many of his prominent parishioners that it be- and different enumerators might easily disagree. came clear that the only course was to sever his rela- Every quota called for was filled, and more than ! tion with his people. He accordingly resigned his office May 8, 1828. The language of the church records shows with what strong feelings of respect and affection the parish regarded the minister whom duty impelled to lay down a trust that he conld no longer properly hold. Dr. Fiske continued to live for many years thereafter in the honse that he had built in the early days of his ministry very near the present Fiske Place. filled. Counting the soldiers supplied by the town in all ways, to the service, the number certainly con- siderably exceeds three hundred. To mention names among the living would be invidious-the list of the thirty-three dead inscribed on the column that keeps alive their memory is enough to show that West Cam- bridge paid her part of the price of the redemption of the United States of America.

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History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. III, Part 44

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