USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Needham > History of Needham, Massachusetts, 1711-1911 : including West Needham, now the town of Wellesley, to its separation from Needham in 1881, with some reference to its affairs to 1911 > Part 25
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Wellesley > History of Needham, Massachusetts, 1711-1911 : including West Needham, now the town of Wellesley, to its separation from Needham in 1881, with some reference to its affairs to 1911 > Part 25
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Capt. Ebenezer Fisher, who lived in the old house on the corner of Central Avenue and Charles River Street, made the coffins for more than one generation, and prior to the depreciation of the currency charged the town from six shillings to 7s., 4d. for the coffin of an adult, and some- times not more than Is., 9d. for that of a child. In 1781 he was granted £80 in currency for making the coffins for two widows, who had long been on the town, and who died in 1780. Amos Fuller was allowed £24 of the same kind of money for digging their graves. From 1783 to 1800 the town paid from $2 to 13s., 6d. for the coffins of grown people, and Joseph Mudge, John Tolman and John Clark made coffins during this period.
It is difficult to judge of the cost of the funerals of the well- to-do from prices paid by the town, but from an old bill it appears that in 1802 Amos Fuller charged John Tolman
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only $6 "for his mothers Coffin, diging the Grave and attendance".
The sextons of the West Precinct, Luther Smith, 2d, 1815-32, and Dea. Hezekiah Fuller, 1833-50, often furnished coffins, but William Eaton, Jr., and his sons, evidently made most of the coffins for the town from about 1825 until it became the custom to buy them ready made. The ven- erable Augustus Eaton said that it was often necessary to work at night and on Sunday in order to have the coffin ready in season, and there were instances when it was made before the death of a person fatally ill. Richard Boynton, well remembered by some of our citizens, also made coffins. The town paid $3 to $4 for the coffin for an adult and $2, or less, for that of a child during the first half of the last century.
When a certain man died at a great age, who had been prominent in Needham, but in his last days obliged to ask aid, the town expended more than usual in order that the coffin might have "trimings".
From 1890 to 1895 Charles Curtis Greenwood contributed to the Dedham Historical Register "EPITAPHS FROM THE OLD BURYING GROUND, NEEDHAM, MASSACHUSETTS. With Notes." After Mr. Greenwood's decease in 1897 George Kuhn Clarke edited the balance of the manuscript contain- ing two hundred and thirty epitaphs, which appeared in the Dedham Historical Register in 1897 and 1898. The latter year a reprint edition of sixty-five copies was issued, con- taining six hundred and twenty-five epitaphs and including nearly all of the inscriptions to the year 1861; also the dates of upward of five hundred births, baptisms, marriages and deaths, not found upon the stones.
SEXTONS AND SUPERINTENDENTS OF THE CEMETERY IN EAST NEEDHAM
Timothy Smith 1800, Capt. John Tolman 1801-4 (four years), Royal McIntosh 1805-7 (three years), Capt. Jona- than Gay 1808-1I, '13, '17-25, '28, probably also in 1826
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(sixteen years), Israel Whitney, Esq., 1812, '14-16, '29, '31-9, probably also in 1830 (fifteen years), Capt. Abijah Greenwood 1827, Dea. Thomas Kingsbury 1840-50 (eleven years), George E. Eaton 1851-73 (twenty-three years), Charles Willard Morton 1873, as associate of Mr. Eaton, 1874-82 alone (ten years), John F. Mills January 8, 1883- . The election was held in March until 1874. At the parish meeting on December 28, 1874, the office of superintendent was created, and that of sexton discontinued. For nearly two years the title of superintendent had been used by Mr. Morton.
Officers of the Needham Cemetery Association :- Tempo- rary president Edgar H. Bowers, treasurer William Moseley, resigned November 22, 1902, clerk George Willard Tisdale; all chosen on January 16, 1900.
Trustees: - William Carter 1903- , chosen president by the trustees on January 19, Dea. William Moseley 1903- April, 1904 (resigned), George Willard Tisdale 1903- , Edgar H. Bowers 1903- , Emery Grover 1903- , George K. Clarke 1904 (April 26)-September 8, 1910 (resigned), Joseph B. Thorpe, April 1911- .
Treasurers :- Emery Grover, temporary, succeeding Mr. Moseley on November 29, 1902, George Lyman Kingsbury January, 1903-April, 1904, Harrie S. Whittemore 1904- June, 1906 (resigned), clerk 1903-6, Thomas Sutton June 2, 1906- , also clerk.
The first election of officers after the purchase of the ceme- tery was on January 5, 1903, when trustees were chosen.
WEST NEEDHAM
About 1774 a graveyard was commenced south of the location selected for the new meeting-house in the West, but the earliest interment there represented by a grave- stone is that of Ebenezer Huntting, who died June 22, 1777, aged twenty-two years, a victim to disease contracted in the army. The burying-ground was later enlarged, and
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Miss Betsey Brown, who died in 1855, left a bequest, from which the Church realized about $6000, for its further exten- sion, and in 1858 land was purchased west of the grave- yard, but in 1871 this was sold, and land bought on Welles- ley Avenue. This old graveyard was sadly neglected for years and suffered from vandalism, although a benefactor of Wellesley College is buried there, and interments have been made within a few years. In 1898, at the time of the Centennial of the Church, there was some attempt to clear up, and in 1906 a Village Improvement Society did effective work, and without offending those who reverence "God's acre". In the past there has been much done in this yard that was objectionable to the antiquary. The roads through the graveyard were constructed years ago, and it is not clear what happened then, but there are graves under these roads.
WOODLAWN CEMETERY
On May 2, 1871, the town granted to the Wellesley Con- gregational Society the right to use for a cemetery "any land that they may buy of Jonathan and Edwin Fuller and James Welsh, either or all of them"; an Act of the General Court had been obtained March 24, 1871. This land, which is on Wellesley Avenue, was purchased in 1871, but was sold, and land on Brook Street acquired, which became Woodlawn Cemetery in 1877. This exchange was ratified by vote of the town on April 1, 1878. The remains of more than two hundred persons have been removed from the graveyard in Wellesley to this one, and the Wellesley Con- gregational Society owns a series of lots in the northern section, where are about forty ancient slate stones brought from the old yard, with the bones of those that they com- memorate. In many instances the foot-stones are said to have been left in the old graves. In 1882 the Wellesley Congregational Society sold the cemetery to a corporation for $1800 and $1000 in stock, and later a portion of this
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stock was transferred in exchange for the lots in Woodlawn Cemetery, which are credited to the Betsey Brown Fund.
GRAVEYARD IN NORTH NATICK
The old graveyard on Main Street, North Natick, is the burial place of many early inhabitants of Needham, some of their gravestones bearing dates prior to 1750. Since 1812 some residents of the Lower Falls, Needham side, have been laid to rest in the yard of Saint Mary's Church. For an elaborate account of these graveyards see
EPITAPHS FROM GRAVEYARDS IN WELLESLEY (FORMERLY WEST NEEDHAM), NORTH NATICK, AND SAINT MARY'S CHURCHYARD IN NEWTON LOWER FALLS, MASSACHUSETTS, with Genealogical and Biographical Notes by GEORGE KUHN CLARKE, LL.B., 1900.
This book contains five hundred and forty-five dates of births, baptisms, marriages and deaths not found upon the stones.
SAINT MARY'S CEMETERY
The greater part of the land now this cemetery was sold at auction on December 15, 1873, by Samuel E. Sewall of Melrose, guardian of Amasa Winchester, the ward owning over two hundred acres in Needham. The property was bought for $2873.73 on behalf of Archbishop Williams, and the deed stated that the area was thirty-five acres and 21,916 square feet.
In March, 1879, the town consented that the Turner lot, which is one half acre between Wellesley Avenue and Cedar Street, should be used for a cemetery. It had been pur- chased the previous June of Mrs. Eliza Morgan, formerly Mrs. John Turner, who had married Henry B. Morgan of Newton.
Mrs. Bridget Egan, wife of Patrick Egan, died September 7, 1878, aged sixty-five years, and was the first to be buried in this cemetery, which in 1911 has many tenants, and contains some fine monuments.
Schools
Until 1795 the school-houses were owned by proprietors, and there is but little reference to them in the town records. On May 12, 1714, the town voted that "Matthew Tamling & John Fisher Should teach Children to read and wright". Both men were residents of the town, and Mr. Fisher was a prominent member of a prominent family. On January 14, 1718/19, the town voted to have a "moving Schoole and Keept at three places in the Town", and appropriated £6, which Jeremiah Woodcock, Benjamin Mills, Jr., and John Smith, Jr., were to expend in carrying out the vote. In October, 1719, Mr. Woodcock had an order for £2 for taking care of the school one month, which probably in- cluded procuring and paying a teacher, and in March, 1719/20, John Smith, Jr., had £1 "for taking ye care of ye Scholle" for two months. At the annual meeting on March 21, 1720/1, the town directed the selectmen to take "pru- dent Care" to have a school "for the good of the town & advantag of Childran", and appropriated £6 "for ye Charg of ye Schoole". On December 1I Ensign Thomas Fuller and John Fisher were appointed "to treat with mr Danill Fuller to keep Schoole", and he was paid £8 for teaching fifteen weeks, probably in different parts of the town. Mr. Fuller was born April 20, 1699, son of Thomas and Esther (Fisher) Fuller, graduated from Yale College in 1721 (A.M.), and became a minister. The foregoing is all the information contained in the records of Needham as to its schools and teachers during the first decade of its existence as a town. A school is supposed to have been kept on our side of the river for a time before the incorporation.
WEST END SCHOOL-HOUSE
1922
JONATHAN BACON'S HOUSE
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THE HISTORY OF NEEDHAM
On February 27, 1722/3, the selectmen received £5 from the executors of Samuel Aldridge, a gift from Mr. Aldridge for the maintenance of the school, and on November 29 the town voted to have "a Stated Schoole", and granted £6 for it. On January II, 1725, £15 were appropriated, and the inhabitants of the West End, The Leg, were to have their share of the money to maintain "a Schoole amongst them". It was also voted "that their Should be a Schoole Keept in four parts of the town", viz., one near the house of John Smith, another near the home of Ephraim Ware, who apparently lived close to the Rosemary Brook, where a dam later formed Longfellow's Pond, the third near the house of Deacon Woodcock, and the fourth near Joshua Smith's. Stephen Bacon was to receive the money "Belonging to the Weft End of the Town for thare benefit of a school for the yeare 1725". There were three school- houses in the West End prior to 1800, and the first one is said to have stood on land now owned by Dea. Willard Amory Wight, the second on the estate of the heirs of Edmund M. Wood, and the third, a well-remembered building, stood close by the road, at the foot of the hill, on the west side of Bacon Street. The site of the latter is owned by the heirs of John Bacon, 3d. One of the school-houses was of brick, presumably the second, as the earliest was a "moving school" and hauled about by oxen, and is said to have been drawn as far as Wellesley Hills. On May 16, 1726, the town considered a proposition to build a school-house, and the following March the need of a "chool houfe or houfen" engaged attention, but without immediate results in either instance. On October 3, 1726, the town had voted to peti- tion the General Court that the unimproved lands of non- residents might "be Rated for the use of the Chool". Other quotations from our quaint old records indicate that for some years "Chool" was a favorite spelling of "School".
On May 17, 1727, two petitions were before the town, the first, dated May 13, was signed by Jonathan Dewing
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and ten other men, and stated that the westerly inhabitants had been to the expense of purchasing and moving a school- house, and requested the town to establish a place for it "Neare the place where it Now ftandeth". The town consented, provided the petitioners would pay for the land. This quaint petition is printed verbatim in the book known as Clarke's Wellesley Epitaphs, pages 126 and 127. The location of the building was probably the one near Widow "Orgiles." (Orgills), which the town voted on May 20, 1728, to "Difalow". The other petition was signed by Ebenezer Ware and twenty-six others, and asked the town to build a school-house "att the Meetting Houfe", and the yeas "had it". At the annual meeting in 1743/4 there was an article in the warrant to annul this vote of May 17, 1727, and on March II, 1754, the town declined to build a school- house near the meeting-house. At the same May meeting in 1727 it was voted that inhabitants that subscribed for no place for a school should pay "to the School Neareft there Dwellings". On May 6, 1728, a petition of Josiah Kingsbery and twenty-four other men living in the west part of the town was presented, and they pledged them- selves to pay William Chub if he would build a school-house between the houses of Nathaniel Bullard and Henry Pratt. On June 24 the same men took measures to obtain a school- house, as their plan to build one near the house of Daniel Pratt had been approved by the town on May 20, when £12 were appropriated for the schools. The subscription to pay Mr. Chub amounted to £31, IOs., and apparently by 1732 a school-house was located on Linden Street, Wel- lesley Hills, near Mrs. John W. Shaw's house which was oc- cupied in 1905 by the Livermore family. The Rev. Daniel Kimball in his valuable series of historical papers, given before the Lyceum in the winter of 1841/2, said that there was such a school-house, and mentions 1732 as the date.
There does not appear to have been any school in what is
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THE HISTORY OF NEEDHAM
now Wellesley Hills at the time of the War of the Revolution, or for seventy-five years after, and the fate of the building of 1732 is not revealed. John Smith was paid £3 for keep- ing school in January, 1726/7, and Samuel Wilson, also a Needham man, a like sum for teaching the following month in the same winter. Mr. Smith had a school in April and May, 1731. Joseph Pynchon, A.M., Harvard 1726, was paid £12, 15s. for keeping school in 1727. On July 4, 1729, the selectmen appointed Abigail Parker "Single woman", to keep school "one month or two this year". She taught two months that summer, apparently in the West, and was paid £3, 4s. by the hands of Henry Pratt, who in December was chosen "to treat with Mr Robert pepper for to Keep a School amongst us" for "one Month or two this winter". Miss Parker taught in Needham terms of two months in the summers of 1730 and 1733, and is the first female teacher of whom we have any record. In those days the teacher rarely remained more than four weeks in the same part of the town, for its territory was too large for one school, and the children of the West had to share with those of the East. In the spring of 1729/30 John Goodenow receipted for seventeen shillings allowed the families west of Natick Brook for a school, and that section subsequently had its share of the appropriation.
In the summer of 1730 Miss Jemima Littlefield kept school in Needham for two months, and for thirty years she continued our "School Dame", with the occasional omission of a summer. It is possible that she taught every summer, and that the selectmen's records are incomplete. There seems to be a more connected story of the schools in the West, where she often taught, than of those in the East. Apparently her last term was in 1760. She was a daughter of Ebenezer and Lydia Littlefield of Newton Lower Falls, and was born August 19, 1697, and died in I773.
The only other woman who taught in Needham for many
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years, when Massachusetts was a Province, was Mrs. Hannah Coller, who was the widow of Mr. Horton when she married Joseph Coller on November 10, 1732, and in 1762, or earlier, she was again a widow. She taught in all of the districts, with the possible exception of the West End, and was often the mistress of the Great Plain school. Her first term, the place not stated, was in the summer of 1745, and her last in that of 1773, when she taught the Brick school twelve weeks. She died in 1800 or 1801.
In 1729 twelve shillings were paid to William Ockinton, East, for the use of his house for a school. In the summer of 1730 Captain Cook, John Smith, Robert Fuller, Josiah Kings- bery and Andrew Dewing were chosen to answer the peti- tion for a school which the Westerly inhabitants had pre- sented to the General Court, and this petition may have led to an appropriation of £20 made at this time, with the further result that in September the selectmen "agreed for to Hier a Gramer Schoole Mafter" for two months. Captain Cook and Henry Pratt, who had a good deal to do with the schools, were to "agree" with a master, and to provide a place for his "Entertainment". Robert Cook, the younger, was engaged for that winter, the next year for five months, and at intervals to 1751.
In May, 1731, John Smith and Henry Pratt were "to Treat with and agree with a Schoole Dame or Miftris to Keep a School at the Schoole Houfe for the space of Three months next Coming in"; evidently a departure in the direction of more education. A petition of the "Most Easterly or South Easterly Inhabitants", dated January 17, 1731/2, was granted on March I, and the town approved the location which the petitioners, Joseph Boyden, who lived on the Blackman place, and twenty-nine others had obtained for a school-house, - "a Corner of Land Belonging to Samuel Bacon at the Crofs ways Near the Houfe of Caleb Smith". Early in 1733 the town treasurer paid twelve shillings for the use of a house to keep school in.
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There were years when the town neglected to maintain a school as required by law, and was presented at the Court of Quarter Sessions and fined £1, 17s. Dea. Timothy Kings- bery paid the fines, and in 1734 and again in 1736 he was reimbursed by the town.
The Dedham Historical Register for 1903 contains an exhaustive account of the schools and teachers in Needham to 1775, with the exception of some of the teachers for the years 1771-5, and only a few of the more conspicuous teachers from 1731 to the present time will be mentioned in this history, as there have been several hundred employed by the town. Mr. Clarke also contributed to the same publication in 1900 and 1901 articles giving particulars as to the schools and teachers from the spring of 1841 to that of 1843, and from 1851 to 1859.
In the spring of 1741, and subsequently, there was a school in the house of Jeremiah Fisher, on Charles River Street. The house was later known as the "Liddy Fisher House". In February, 1747/8, the selectmen gave an order of £6 to Dea. Eleazer Kingsbery and to Josiah Newell, Jr., "for their Going to Bofton upon the account of the Town Being profeuted for not Keeping a Schoole". At the March meeting in 1752 the town considered the question of build- ing school-houses, but it went over to the May meeting, and there was no result. In 1765 the town dismissed a petition of Samuel Daniell and others in reference to a school-house, and also refused to allow the building located by a vote of the town near the house of Joseph Mudge to be sold. This school-house that certain men wished to sell was probably the one in what is now Wellesley Hills, and which dated from 1732. There were school-houses on the Great Plain and in the south part of the town in 1763, and in what is now the village of Wellesley in 1765. The school for the Centre, as it was later known, was kept in 1766 at the Capt. Robert Fuller house, still standing, but in 1769 there was a brick school-house. In 1768 and 1772 there was
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a school in Eliphalet Kingsbery's house, which probably was on Oakland Street, and in the latter year there was one for four weeks at Samuel Daggett's.
Of the teachers in the Provincial period the following should perhaps be mentioned: Francis Very began a two months' term in December, 1733, and taught in Needham, from time to time, till 1747. On December 3, 1735, he was engaged to teach four weeks in the West, "Omitting Satter- day ", for £4, and on the 18th was secured for another four weeks. He taught in a school-house, perhaps the one on Linden Street, or possibly the first four weeks at the West End, and late in January he contracted for a third term of four weeks, this time in the East if the "Neighbour Hood" provided a proper house for him to teach in, otherwise he was to continue in the West. Peter Vialas of Hopkinton taught in Needham for eighteen years, until his death, which occurred in our town April 21, 1756. He is referred to in the records as "our School Mafter", and presumably was successful, as he usually received the highest wages then paid by the town. Among the numerous undergraduates from Harvard College, most of them minors, who taught winter terms in Needham were :- Jonathan Townsend, Jr., A.M., Harvard 1741, afterward the minister at Medfield, and Jonas Clark, A.M., Harvard 1752, later the noted min- ister at Lexington during the Revolution. Mr. Clark was here in 1750/1, and there were others who became ministers. The Rev. Mr. Townsend's younger son, Lieut. Samuel, kept school in 1757-63, and Capt. John Jones taught here. He was later a well-known magistrate, surveyor, colonel of militia, and the owner of the fine estate, just across the river in Dover, now the property of the Cheney family. Of the young men belonging to the town who were esteemed com- petent to keep school were several Fullers and Kingsberys, and also Jonathan Newell, A.M., who graduated at Harvard in 1770, and was the minister at Stow from October 11, 1774, to his death, October 4, 1830, at the age of eighty-one years.
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He was a son of Josiah Newell, Jr. Practically all of the women teachers belonged in town.
Beginning in 1763 Robert Fuller taught in Needham most of the winters until 1795, usually at the Brick school-house near his home, but several seasons at the Great Plain, and more than one term at the Lower Falls. In February and March, 1774, he had the South school. Mr. Fuller was prom- inent in town, as were other members of his family. When he was master of the winter school at the Great Plain in 1784/5 the school was at the house of Aaron Smith, Jr. ("Hawk Aaron"), on South Street. The summer school had been at the same house in 1780, when Mr. Smith's aunt, Widow Martha Smith, a most estimable woman, lived there. At times it had been at other houses on South Street; as early as 1774 at Elisha Mills's, and in 1784 at Solomon Fuller's. These facts rather corroborate the tradition that a school-house once stood on the east corner of Great Plain Avenue and Webster Street (not the north corner), and that it was burned about 1780. Why the school- house was not used in 1774 does not appear.
Joseph and John Haven of Dedham, both undergraduates of Harvard, were teachers in Needham shortly before the Revolution. Joseph was subsequently for many years the minister at Rochester, N. H., then a wilderness, where he did much missionary work, and was interested in the wel- fare of the Indians. John became a surgeon, and was lost at sea. Another teacher at this period was Zedekiah Sanger, Harvard 1771, an eminent divine in later life. Of the male teachers resident in Needham, who had schools for a series of years, were :- Isaac Shepard, schoolmaster from 1770 to 1792, Jonathan Kingsbery, Jr., afterward a colonel, who occasionally had a school from 1772 to 1796, Joseph Kings- bery, Jr., from 1773 to 1795, and Joseph Mudge, Jr., from I773 to 1793.
Of the women Mrs. Esther Newell, Great Plain school- mistress from 1773 to 1784, is worthy of mention.
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Until modern times women rarely, if ever, taught a winter term in Needham, and men were not employed in the summer. Readers of this history may remember what the district schools were in the winter, when there were pupils nearly twenty-one years old, stalwart fellows who worked out-of-doors all of the year, and yet many of them painfully backward as scholars, and often mutinous. The writer has seen his teacher, an undergraduate of Harvard Univer- sity, obliged to strike many vigorous blows with a heavy ruler before it was an accepted fact that an attempted rebellion was a failure, and that the master was competent to keep that school, and that the well-disposed pupils were to have a chance to avail themselves of their rather limited opportunities. This experience with a district school in the winter, however, was not in Needham, but in Worcester County.
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