USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Milton > History of Milton > Part 2
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Various laws were passed to protect the rights of the Indians. A white man was not allowed to purchase lands from them without obtaining a li- cense from the General Court, and their wrongs were redressed in so far as was practicable. In 1652 the Town of Dorchester paid three shillings dam- age "for trespas done in the Indians' corne by the towne bull". As far as it is possible to determine, our local Indians became Christianized, at least in theory, caused no trouble during King Philip's War, and continued to exist as harmless and rather helpless beings alongside a civilization into which they could never really fit, until ultimately they ceased to exist as a race. The Dorchester and Milton settlers did their best for the remnants of the Neponset Indians, tried to help them, and employed them as servants and field laborers, but it was only after their blood had merged into that of
11
History of Milton
another race that they were able to find their place in our civilization.
There is an amusing entry in the official records of the Massachusetts Bay Colony which, I think, typifies the attitude of the Indian. Five chieftains were being solemnly catechized by the General Court in 1643, and they were asked among other things to promise to do no unnecessary work on the Sab- bath. They answered that that "was easy to them: they had not much to do any day. . . . "
In 1636 Kitchamakin, brother of Chickataubut, who had died of smallpox three years before, deeded to Richard Collecot, as agent of the Town of Dorchester, all of the Indian lands south of the Neponset, and within the es- tablished boundaries of the Town, reserving only forty acres for himself and his people, and another forty which he had already given to Collecot per- sonally. The consideration was twenty fathoms of wampum.
Charles Josiah, grandson of Chickataubut, executed another deed in June of 1684, which confirmed the grant to the proprietors of Dorchester and Milton of all the lands within the two towns, except for the Reservation at Ponkapoag. This was at the time when the charter of the Bay Colony was in the process of being abrogated by King Charles, and with it, in a technical sense at least, all existing land grants in Massachusetts would be voided. Hence the Towns of Milton and Dorchester believed it wise to obtain a new deed from the Indians.
There are various records which give us a reasonably good idea of what Mil- ton was like in the earliest days. It was far from the primeval forest of the lat- er frontier, for parts of it had been cleared and cultivated by the Indians for many years. Just west of Wollaston, and probably extending into parts of East Milton, were "the Massachusetts Fields", the cornfields of the Nepon- set Indians. "Mount Wollaston, a very fertile soil ... there being great store of plain ground without trees .... ", thus William Wood described it in 1633. Part of these fields were early cultivated by the Dorchester settlers, but the Wollaston lands themselves were annexed to Boston in 1634. There was another so-called "Indian Field" in Unquity, comprising most of the land from the top of Milton Hill north to the Neponset River and bordered
12
The Story of the Town
to the west approximately by School Street. These open fields had been burned by the Indians twice each year, in the spring and in the fall, and were kept entirely free from shrubbery and small trees. This was fortunate, for the early settlers had yet to learn how to clear virgin forest and to make it into farm land. Thus we can think of this area as generally forest land but interspersed with large stretches of open fields. Larger trees survived the grass and brush fires and flourished. Morton wrote that these open fields with some large trees scattered about looked much like the parks of well-to- do Englishmen at home. There also were swamps and many little brooks and rivers to impede the traveller. It was evidently mostly in Milton and Braintree that a man named Alderman of Bear Cove (Hingham) was lost for . three days and two nights in 1634 without seeing a house or wigwam, or a single man, either white or red. He finally came out of the wilderness at Scituate, badly torn and scratched by cedar swamps and briar patches. Thomas Morton of Merrymount, who loved the place, describes our area with great enthusiasm, ". .. so many goodly groves of trees, dainty fine round rising hillucks, delicate large plaines, sweete cristall fountaines, and cleare running streames that twine in fine meanders through the meads, making so sweete a murmuring noise to heare as would lull the sences with delight a sleepe, so pleasantly do they glide upon the pebble stones. . . . "4 Another early writer noted: " ... good water to drink till wine or beer can be made . . . ""5
Without going into the matter in detail it can be said that the varieties of forest trees which existed in 1630 were essentially those that we have today, with the exception of the chestnut, lost some forty years ago through a fun- gus disease. Elm, on the other hand, was somewhat rare, according to Mor- ton. Sassafras was then common in New England, and presumably here, but it was much sought after commercially in the early days, and today it is very scarce. Fruit trees were brought over from England, apparently as seed rather than as seedlings.
4. Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan, Prince Society edition.
5. Dudley's letter to the Countess of Lincoln in Young's Chronicles of First Planters of Massachu- setts Bay (Boston, 1846).
13
History of Milton
Wild game abounded. Moose were found a little to the north and west, but deer were everywhere. Bears were very common and as late as 1725 twenty were reported killed in one week within two6 miles of Boston. They were much sought for their fat and their skins. Wolves roamed the area in large numbers and carried a bounty on their heads, but despite this they existed in Milton at least as late as 1693, when John Fenno collected twenty shil- lings for killing a full-grown wolf. Wolf hooks are referred to in the early records, and were some sort of large fish hooks or small grapnels which were embedded in fat or spoiled meat, and left in places where wolves might find and swallow them. I have found early references to their use, but no descrip- tion. Dorchester drew twenty-five of these hooks from William Pynchon, the Treasurer of the Colony, in 1636, and several other towns each received a similar number. Wolf pits were also dug to trap the animals. Steel traps did not come into use until nearly a hundred years later. At this time wolves, even when in packs, would usually run away from a man. It is re- corded that the small spaniel of a Plymouth man was chased between his master's legs by a pair of wolves. The man belabored them with a fence post until they backed off a little and sat on their haunches grinning at him for a bit, finally running away. In 1632 Indians were rewarded with a coat worth twelve shillings for killing a wolf, while white settlers got f1 or, in at least one case, f2, a considerable sum in those days. Oddly enough, a simple post and rail fence was found to act as a barrier which wolves would not pass, and cattle surrounded by a plain rail fence were reported to be entirely safe from them. I imagine that the wolves later learned better, and that more complete fencing was required.
Again I fall back on Thomas Morton, who admittedly was a rascal and a scalawag, but not quite as bad as he was painted by the Pilgrims and by the Puritans of Boston Bay. I confess to a sneaking liking for the man. "Turkies there are, which divers times in great flocks have sallied by our doores; and then a gunne, being commonly in readinesse, salutes them with such cour- tesie, as makes them take a turne in the cooke roome." Great inroads were soon made on these birds, and by 1670 they were reported to have become 6. I believe that this two is a mistake for twenty or some other figure, but the record says "two".
14
The Story of the Town
very rare. Some were very large, weights of over forty pounds being on rec- ord. Ducks, geese, and swans fed in myriads in the Neponset salt marshes, and in the "fowle meadows" farther upstream beyond Brush Hill. Morton said that it was the custom at his house at Merrymount to give a whole duck to each guest at meals. The passenger pigeons flew overhead in vast flocks, sometimes taking two or more hours to pass, and blotting out the light like a thundercloud.
The heath hen, which finally became extinct within the last few years, was then very common, and was usually found in the more open areas. The ruffed grouse, however, was then as now a bird of the deeper woods.
When Israel Stoughton built Neponset Mill in 1634 he received permis- sion to set up a weir to trap alewives, which he was to sell at five shillings a thousand. These were the fish that Squanto taught the Pilgrims to use to fertilize their corn fields, but they also were smoked and eaten by the set- tlers. The Neponset was full of fish of all sorts in those days, striped bass and shad, and sometimes mackerel, as well as the more lowly flounder, and the settlers depended upon them for a considerable part of their food.
Samuel Pierce, who lived in Dorchester a little north of where Adams Street7 now joins Granite Avenue and crosses the Old Colony Boulevard, and was a colonel in the Revolution, kept a diary for many years. In it there are records of crops, weather, and fishing, and he also tells of making a seine which he later put to good use in the Neponset.
"6 June 1769 Caught 1500 shad at Pine Neck with a sein at one time. 25 June 1772 We made the largest haul of fish, catched 6000 shad, mainhadden and bass.
14 June 1773 Made a large haul of shad; caught 4000; sent 40 barrels to Boston.
13 June 1774 Stopped Pine Neck Creek; caught 200 shad and 14 bass."
A hundred years ago Edmund J. Baker wrote in The History of the Town of Dorchester8 that as late as the early 1800's striped bass were still being taken
7. The old Pierce house, built about 1640, still stands on Oakton St., Dorchester, owned and occu- pied by direct descendants of the original builder, probably a unique record for this continent. 8. Boston : Dorchester Antiquarian Soc., 1859.
15
History of Milton
in the Neponset by setting a net across the outlet of Gulliver's or Sagamore Creek at high water. As the tide ebbed, the fish were trapped and scooped up in dip nets. Two or three excited Puritans dashing around in a shallow tidal creek trying to net a very lively ten or fifteen pound fish must have pre- sented a spirited sight. I can easily imagine one of them involuntarily sitting down in the mud, and expressing himself in words of which his pastor would not at all have approved. By 1850 the bass had long disappeared, and even shad and alewives were seldom seen in the river. A hundred and fifty years ago, tom cod could be caught with a dip net at the head of tidewater below the lower falls. Great quantities were sold at five or six cents a bushel, and mostly used as fertilizer. Today we still have smelts in the river, but the shad and the striped bass are entirely gone, as are the oysters. Governor Hutchinson imported a boatload of these last from Virginia, and tried to stock the Neponset, but the oysters failed to take hold. They had existed here in earlier years, for recent dredging operations have brought up great quantities of shells much larger than those we see today, some of them over ten inches long. "The oisters be great ones in form of a shoo horne, some be a foote long, these breede on certaine bankes that are bare every spring tide. This fish without the shell is so big that must admit of a division before you can well get it into your mouth."9 Edmund J. Baker wrote of having occa- sionally seen some as long as twelve or fourteen inches near the present Rapid Transit bridge in Milton Village, but that was back in about 1820, when he was a boy.
In England at the time of the Puritan migration mussels were considered something of a delicacy, and they were welcomed as a source of food over here. Clams were often used as feed for swine, and there are references in the Dorchester records which show that the pigs were driven to the clam flats at low tide, and allowed to grub for clams. It evidently was sometimes a problem to get them out of the sticky mud before the rising tide caught them.
Lobsters were extremely common at the time of the first settlements, and were picked up in quantities along the beaches at low tide. Morton said that he soon tired of eating them and only used them for fishbait.
9. William Wood, "New England Prospect", in Young's Chronicles.
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PEAK HOUSE, MEDFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
The best known example of the first type of permanent housing built by the earliest settlers. The very sharp roof indicates that it probably was originally thatched. (Soc. Pres. N. E. Antiquities)
STRIKE
.......
OYSTER SHELL DREDGED FROM NEPONSET RIVER "The oisters be great ones in form of a shoo horn-"
The Story of the Town
During the first year or two of the settlement wild game, as well as fish, lobsters, clams, mussels and oysters, eked out by the remains of the provi- sions which they had brought over, kept the settlers alive, but soon the In- dian corn and pumpkins became plentiful. Capt. Johnson, in his Wonder Working Providence, said ". .. and let no man make a jest at pumkins, for with this fruit the Lord was pleased to feed his people to their good content, till corne and cattell were increased." Tradition at Plymouth has handed down a little ditty along these same lines.
"Pompions at morning, pompions at noon, Were it not for pompions we would all be undone."
Once the cornfields were established and the dairy herds became of fair size, the diet of the settlers would have been not unlike that which they had known in England. The one major exception was the bread. Wheat did not grow well here, and Indian corn was the staple cereal, eaten as mush and Indian Pudding. Rye was grown, and the standard bread was composed of two parts of corn meal to one of rye flour. It probably was not unlike our present brown bread, but without molasses.
We find some complaints that the weather was both hotter and colder than in England, but the major annoyances seem to have been three in num- ber, wolves, rattlesnakes, and mosquitoes. The first two are gone, but the mosquitoes still are with us, and it is difficult to imagine what life would be like without window screens.
The first settlers of Dorchester came over as an organized company. Each £50 share entitled the holder to two hundred acres of land and a town house lot, with an additional fifty acres for each member of his family. Initially only the land along Boston Bay between South Boston Neck and the Nepon- set was occupied. The early boundaries of the Town of Dorchester seem to have been a little vague, but the General Court soon enlarged and defined the area, and by 1637 it included the present towns of Milton, Canton, Stoughton, Sharon, Foxboro, and parts of Wrentham, thus extending almost to the Rhode Island border.
17
History of Milton
For a few short years the Neponset River was practically the southern limit of the Boston Bay settlements. Thomas Morton's plantation at Merry- mount had been burned by order of Governor Winthrop in 1630, but the set- tlement at Wessagusset (Fore River) continued, and in 1635 became the Town of Weymouth, although it still remained a very small town. The open fields at Wollaston were a great attraction, and by 1632 we find grants south of the river being made to Dorchester settlers. It seems probable that at first these lands were used as fields only, the farmers returning to Dorchester af- ter the day's work. In 1634 Wollaston, the area from the present eastern limits of Milton to the sea, was annexed to Boston, and a settlement com- menced. Later this was to become Braintree, the north precinct of which is now Quincy. It was probably in this same year that the first house was built in what today is Milton. "It is ordered that Rich : Callecott shall set up an house, without the pale. . . . "10 He was an important settler, who apparently had preceded the Dorchester Company, and he was involved in trading with the Indians for furs, and later in land speculations on Cape Cod and in Maine. Collecot's name appears many times in the records of the Massachu- setts Bay Colony. In 1637 he was appointed supply officer for the expedition against the Pequot Indians, responsible for provision of all requirements of food and transport. Three years later he got into a spot of trouble, and was fined £10 for having repairs made on guns owned by two Indians, a most heinous offense under Colony laws. By pleading that he had forgotten the law he got off by paying only ten shillings. A year later Collecot, his neigh- bor John Holman, of Unquity, and Lieut. Willard, probably of Concord, were granted a monopoly of the fur trade, provided that they would take a few more into partnership, and would pay one-twentieth of their receipts to the Colony.
The house that Collecot built was, so far as can be determined, the first in Milton, and it was located in the near vicinity of Algerine Corner,11 the junc-
10. Dorchester Records, 1 September 1634.
11. One day in the early 1800's when our country was having trouble with the Algerian pirates, Edward H. Robbins told one resident of the area near the junction of Adams, Centre and Pleas- ant Streets whom he found stealing his firewood that he and his friends were a "set of Algerines". The place ever after was called "Algerine Corner", although the Town in the 1880's attempted to give it the prosaic name of "Union Square".
18
The Story of the Town
tion of Adams, Centre, and Pleasant Streets, possibly in the narrow strip between Adams and Centre a short distance west of the Corner. It is my be- lief that this house was built for a hired farmer, and that Collecot never ac- tually lived there until much later. His activities were too varied and wide- spread to be controlled from Unquity, and we know that he also owned an- other house in Dorchester, as well as one in Boston.
The first bridge across the Neponset at Unquity was built by Israel Stoughton at the same time as his mill. In 1635 a ferry was operated for a year or two at the mouth of the river from today's Commercial Point. Three years later Bray Wilkins was licensed to build an inn and operate a ferry at a point about halfway between the present Neponset and Granite Avenue bridges. The charge was a penny a person, but the undertaking was not a success. The record tells us that in 1652 the bridge at Unquity was gone, but that the ford was a good one, passable for both horses and carts. Four years later a new bridge was built, a little downstream from and more ob- lique than that of today, and this structure lasted for a hundred and nine years. Until well into the 1700's this was the only bridge across the Nepon- set, although there was a ford at today's Mattapan.12
It is difficult to determine just how the land was allotted to the settlers. Members of the original company were entitled to certain specific amounts based upon their investment and the size of their families. Later comers to Dorchester seem to have had land meted out to them in accordance with their ability to utilize it properly. The early Dorchester records are full of grants of relatively small pieces of land, usually only a few acres in size. Ad- ditional land sometimes was apportioned in relation to the taxes paid. Be- fore Milton became a separate town all the land, except for the four hundred acres reserved for the support of the Church, had been allocated to individ- uals and in many cases already subdivided and sold. A very old map of the land grants in the eastern portions of Milton as they existed at an early but indeterminate date was discovered in 1838 by Edmund J. Baker. I include a copy of it to which I have added the names of a few later owners and have
12. Mattapan originally was the Indian place name for the area between Savin Hill and South Boston Neck.
19
14
15
122-0-0 |102-1-17
16
'1656 36-3-30 # 18 TH LOT 10-1-16;
19TH LOT
107-2-26
MILL
FENCE
1656
:- (Robt. Badcock)
101 ACRES (Israel Stoughton).
Adams St.).
EARLY LAND GRANTS
(Andrew Pitcher?)
(Brook Rd.)
16 Acres
(Canton
Drawn by John Oliver probably about 1645 Copied by Joshua Fisher 1661 Traced by Edmund J. Baker 1838 Redrawn by E. P. Hamilton 1956
MRS GLOVER 176 ACRES (Robert Vose 1654)
(Canton Ave)
1
>
PART OF THE Ist LOTT 129 ACRES
MARSH
(John Greenway)": (Edw. Bullock) (Robt. Pierce) (Wm. Daniels)
MRS BOURNE
58 ACRES
(Centre St.)
(John &
Tho. Wiswall) et al.
-
MR.HUTCHINSON
St.)
Ave.
(Pleasant St.)
(Benj. Badcock), MR HOLMAN, 1682 43-2-0 1 1
(Anthony Gulliver) (John Kinsley)
1
I
1
.12
I
11
96-1-3,4111-3-01
10
84-1-18
76-0-0
6, 7, & 8th LOTS
221-3-0
1
SARG
-
4th LOT
COLLICOTTI ENSIGN
62-1-24
I
HOLMAN 75-1-23
LOT!
1
1
YWads 1
worth?)
1
P+ TIME BETWEEN MARCHESFER & RRAINTREE
E. P. H. 1056
-
SALT
NOTES All heavy lines from original map. Original map names : MRS BOURNE Later owners added by E. P. H .: (John Gill) Original survey was not entirely correct but modern roads shown thus ==
-
-
are approximately sketched in to give bearings.
(Highland St.)
(Richard Mather), SARG (George Badcock) /COLLICOTTI 56 ACRES/
(Squantum
NARROW " RIDGE
(Rar
1 (Edge Hill Rd.)
1
SWAMP
.
13
2 LOT
9
170-2-21
5 LOT 69-3-0 I (Wm. Sumner) (Rich. Collecott) 1652
(Adams St.)
PART OF THE IST LOTY ACRES
Ave-)
(Thos Leurs)
(Roger Billings) (John Gall):, 1656
NEPONSET
MR STOUTON 61 ACRES
RIVER
(Dorchester Church Land)
(Robt. Badcock}
(Robt. Badcock) 17
(Eliot St.)
OR PALES'
22-0-20
(Central Ave.)
MR STOWTONS
BRAY WILKENS ,"
1652
The Story of the Town
sketched in a road net so that one can better visualize and locate the various grants.
In 1636 John Glover secured thirty acres in the general area just south of Turner's Pond and soon added many more. He was a man of very considerable wealth and high standing in Dorchester. On this land he established a farm, which may have been only pasturage for his cattle.13 When he died in 1653 the farm was operated by Nicholas Wood, who in 1638 had been one of the herders of the Dorchester cows. The cowherds, between the middle of April and November, would blow their horns at five in the morning, starting at a designated point and working towards the pasture. The settlers would bring out their cows, and the cowherds would shoo them into the herd, and drive all on to the pasture. At night the herd would be brought back, and each would collect his own cattle. The Dorchester settlers paid an annual fee of a bit over five shillings per cow for this service.
It is evident from the early records that the cattle were a very important part of the economy. In 1634 it was reported that the estimated four thou- sand population of the entire Bay area possessed fifteen hundred head of cattle, besides four thousand goats and innumerable swine. The native grasses, except for the excellent salt hay of the tidal marshes, were not good for fodder, but English grass was imported and spread rapidly, and the cat- tle multiplied and flourished. The first cattle brought over were, I think, the red Devons, but as early as about 1635 some cows arrived from the Nether- lands. Danish cattle were sent to New Hampshire at about the same period, and may well also have come here.
The Dorchester herd that was under the charge of the cowherds then numbered about one hundred and twenty, and four hundred and eighty acres were allowed as pasturage for them. By 1652 the herd of cows and ox- en had grown to four hundred and fifty, but some were probably pastured on home lots rather than being driven out with the herd. At this time the pastures were across the Neponset at Unquity, those for the oxen just south of the river at Mattapan, where the ox pens were, and those for the cows farther down the river in the Eliot Street-Central Avenue area.
13. At the time of Glover's death 8 oxen, 2 horses and 3 cows were all the livestock on this farm.
21
History of Milton
The early Dorchester records contain many references to fences, both on private and on common lands. In 1633 a post fence was prescribed with double rails mortised into posts not over ten feet apart. Fences were to be provided by the owners of the cattle at the rate of twenty feet of fence for each cow owned. Another early order required that the posts should be six feet long, but this probably included the buried portion, for a later rule said that the fence must be at least four feet high. Another interesting note in connection with the cattle was the marking of certain large trees with an "S", which meant that they could not be cut, but were to be preserved to furnish shade for the cows in summer.
A road was laid out over Milton Hill in 1654 from Braintree (Quincy) to Dorchester and on to Roxbury. South of the Neponset this followed the line of the old trail and an earlier road which had existed well before this date, at least as far as the Braintree line. All of the first settlement at Unquity was along this trail, and most of it was close to Algerine Corner. By 1650 there were at least eight or nine houses south of the river, but the greater part of the present area of Milton was still largely wilderness, except for the culti- vated Indian Fields and the cattle pastures along the south side of the Ne- ponset. A number of settlers were farmers who worked holdings of absentee landlords, but others owned their land and bore names that would long re- main in Milton, such as Badcock, Vose, Gill, Gulliver, and Swift. Unquity at this time was only another sparsely settled part of the great township of Dorchester, with no Church, no school, and no entity of its own. Much wa- ter would flow by Neponset Mill before Milton was ready to become a town.
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