USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Newton > History of Newton, Massachusetts : town and city, from its earliest settlement to the present time, 1630-1880 > Part 80
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" But his great and crowning act of beneficence was the provision made for the treatment and cure of nervous diseases. So much was his sympathy enlisted for the sufferings of weak, nervous and debilitated people, that a large residue of his property, after the bequests to his family and friends, was devoted to the object. The chief curative principle relied on is to be the ' movement cure,' hot and cold bathing, good air, gymnastic and other exercises, with great attention to diet, genial association and religious exer- cises. The architectural style of the buildings of said institution is to be plain, substantial and simple, and great attention is to be paid to convenience, comfort, good-sized rooms and good air."
The will is dated February 15, 1872, and has a codicil of six days later. According to the provisions of the will, an act incorporating the " Adams
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Nervine Asylum " was passed by the Legislature of 1877, and full organiza- tion made according to law.
At the date of the last report, the trustees held stocks, bonds, etc., valued at $472,628.05, and real estate assessed at $83,900, besides which there is an accrued ineome in the hands of the treasurer of about $40,000. The annual income from the property is now about $20,000. Arrangements have been made for the purchase of the estate of the late J. Gardner Weld at West Roxbury. It comprises seventeen acres, has a large number of trees, and is a quiet, retired place, for the class of patients who will be received into the asylum. There is on the grounds a large residence, with many rooms, which is expected to have ample accommodations for the number of patients who will be received at first. It will be very convenient to make additions, when necessary. The estate is near the well-known Bussey property, and will cost the asylum corporation $32,500.
BEGINNING OF THE SAMUEL HYDE NURSERY .- The beginning of the nur- sery business by Mr. Hyde is interesting. Travelling one day through Brighton, he noticed a cherry-tree, bearing luscious fruit, whose branches extended over the highway. Taking a few of the cherries to eat, he care- lessly dropped the stones in his vest pocket, till they numbered forty, which, on reaching home, he planted. Thirty-nine came up, and grew thriftily. In due time he budded or grafted the young plants, and they became the nucleus of the nursery, which has since had so wide a reputation.
MORUS MULTICAULIS. - There was a period, after the establishment of Kenrick's Nursery, when a few of the citizens of Newton conceived the idea that the raising of silk worms and silk promised to be a remunerative indus- try. Mr. Kenriek purchased and stored in his cellar a large number of mul- berry trees, on whose leaves the silk worms feed; but the tide quickly turned, the morus multicaulis fever declined, and the speculation proved un- fortunate.
PARSONAGE AT NEWTON CENTRE .- A very plain two-story house, a par- sonage belonging to the First Parish of Newton, stood many years at the northerly corner of Grafton Street, at its junction with Centre Street. It was occupied, successively, by Rev. Messrs. Smith, Bates and Bushnell, during their ministry, and removed after the adjoining estate on the north came into the hands of Mr. George S. Dexter.
, RECOLLECTIONS BY SETH DAVIS, ESQ., OF THE COLD JUNE OF 1816 .-
Of the cold June, in the year 1816, I have a perfect recollection, and also . have a small blank book, in which I occasionally noted down some of the un- usual occurrences of that period. A few of these notes are appended below .
May 1, 1816, 10 o'clock, A. M .- Discovered by the naked eye, by means of smoked glass, a blackish spot on the sun's disc, apparently about one- thirtieth of its diameter.
May 2, 10 A. M .- Same spot still visible, and now about one-twelfth of the diameter of the sun.
May 3 .- Observed the same spot several times during the day.
July 7, 8, and 9 .- The same, or a similar, spot, of rather smaller dimen- sions, distinctly visible.
.
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[The severe cold at that time was believed by many to be attributable to the large spot on the sun (more than thirty times the size of the earthi). Its change of position was undoubtedly owing to the rotation of the sun on its axis, once in about twenty-seven days.]
Wednesday, June 5 .- So cold as to be under the necessity of making a fire in the factory to be comfortable. [The Cotton Factory of Seth Bemis, on the Watertown side of Charles River, of which the writer had the charge.] It has been so cold many nights, since the monthi commenced, that ice of nearly or quite one-half an inch in thickness, where the water was not in motion, was seen for several consecutive mornings.
June 12, 1816 .- Remarkable weather since June commenced. There have been eight severe frosts, which have destroyed many of the tender vegeta- bles. Snow fell in Boston in September last, and at Wiscasset, Me., and other places, for several hours in succession. The occurrence is uncom- mon, but cannot excite any distrust of the God of the harvest.
There was snow in this region in June, 1816, but only barely enough to cover the ground. July and August were warm months, and, had the hard frost in September kept off for two weeks, there would have been a good crop of corn; but as it was, it was worthless for fodder or for anything else. Pumpkin seeds cost in 1817 one dollar per hundred, and many kinds of seed were proportionally dear.
ORIGINAL LETTER OF ROGER SHERMAN.
Philadelphia, April 17, 1777.
SIR :- Congress is desirous, if possible, to subdue the enemy that are in this country, before a re-inforcement can arrive. The small pox has greatly retarded the recruits joyning the army. We had information some time ago, that preparations were making to attack the enemy on Rhode Island, and dislodge them. Why it has not been executed, we have not been informed. A resolution passed yesterday, recommending to the State of Rhode Island to raise its whole force; to the Massachusetts and Connecticut States, to raise their militia in the neighborhood of Rhode Island, to attack the enemy, and have directed General Washington to order a suitable Continental Gen- eral officer to command there. The President has sent copies of the reso- lution to the several States concerned. - Enclosed are resolutions to for- ward the recruiting service, and some alterations of the Articles for the gov- ernment of the army .- The enclosed News Paper contains a list of surgeons and physicians appointed for the hospitals, among whom is Doct. Philip Turner. Doct. Foster gives him a very good character, in a letter to a mem- ber of Congress. Your Hon'r will have a copy of the regulations of the Hospitals and the pay of the persons to be employed, in the public papers. The pay, I think, is very high ; but physicians in the Southern States are used to high pay.
Our last letter from Doct. Franklin and Mr. Dean was dated the 6th of February. No treaty had been then concluded. Some probability that France and Spain would make war with Great Britain, but nothing certainly determined upon,- both French and Spaniards favour our cause .-
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Accounts from England are, that the king's subjects have lost 1,800,000€ by the American Cruisers. That Insurance is at 28 per cent. That the ministry intend to bend their force against New England, to extirpate them and enslave the Inhabitants of the Southern States-There has been talk that the enemy designs to come to this city; but I dont think they will at- tempt it, before they are reinforced-I, with some of the other Delegates of Connecticut, would attend Congress. The Confederation will be entered on next Monday, & finished as soon as possible. I write in haste, as the Hon'ble Mr. Collins of Rhode Island, by whom I send this, waits. I am, with great Regards,
Your Hon'rs obedient humble servant,
To ROGER SHERMAN .-
The Hon'ble Jonathan Trumbull, Esq'r, of Lebanon, Governor of the State of Connecticut.
REMINISCENCES OF NEWTON, BY SAMUEL C. CLARKE, ESQ.
The following reminiscences of Newton, as it was about the year 1816,- contributed by Samuel C. Clarke, Esq., grandson of General William Hull and brother of Rev. James Freeman Clarke,-give a vivid and life-like pic- ture of portions of the town at that date, and are a valuable addition to this chapter. The view commences with the estate of Obadiah Curtis, on the east side of the street now called Waverly Avenue, and situated next north of the Harbach estate. A portion of the Obadiah Curtis estate became the property of Dr. Samuel Clarke, the father of Samuel C. Clarke and James Freeman Clarke. [The houses of Obadiah Curtis and Dr. Freeman were removed, from their original location, a little towards the east, in the sum- mer of 1880, to make room for extensive improvements. ]
Obadiah Curtis was descended, in the third generation, from William Cur- tis, of Roxbury (1632), whose wife Sarah was sister to Rev. John Eliot,* of Roxbury, the apostle to the Indians at Nonantum.
The estate of Obadiah Curtis consisted originally of eighty acres. The part owned by Dr. Samuel Clarke contained thirty acres. This, with the. house, he sold in 1807 to his grandfather, Obadiah Curtis, who afterwards gave it to his daughter Martha (Mrs. Dr. Freeman). Obadiah Curtis lived
* I have lately received from England the genealogy of the Eliot family. Rev. John Eliot was son of Bennet Eliot, of Nazing, Essex, and was born in 1603,- being the fourth child in a family of seven, -- five of whom came to New England. John came to Plymouth in 1631. He was of Jesus College, Cambridge. William Curtis and wife came in Winthrop's fleet to Boston in 1632, and brought with them Mary Eliot and Anne Mountfort, who married John Eliot in Boston the same year. He became min- ister of Roxbury, and William Curtis settled there, and built a house in 1640, which still stands near the Boylston Station of the Boston and Providence Railroad, on Stony Brook, in the occupation of Isaac Curtis, seventh in descent from the builder. Rev. John Eliot had by his wife Anne,- Anne, born 1633; John, born 1636, Minister in Newton; Joseph, born 1638, Minister in Guilford, Conn .; Samuel, born 1641, Tutor in Harvard University; Aaron, born 1644; Benjamin, born 1647.
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for about fifteen years in the house next south of the Freeman [Francis Skinner] place,- from 1795-6 to 1811.
The house opposite, now owned by heirs of Charles Brackett, Esq., was built by Colonel Joseph Ward. The latter sold it to Charles Coolidge, of Boston, who occupied it till he died, about 1810; it was then sold to the late Charles Brackett. .
In 1816, the next house southwardly, at the forks of the road [junction of Waverly Avenue and Ward Street], was owned by Thomas Harbach (butcher), [now by his heirs]. These three were the only houses, from the forks of the road leading to Brookline to the junction of Indian Lane [Sar- gent Street] with the road to Brighton, a distance of a mile and a half, except the Kenrick house, and an old house standing at the junction of the Lane with the Brighton Road, occupied by Captain Dana.
The street or lane skirting the old cemetery on its south line, then called " Rural Lane " [Cotton Street], had no house on it in 1816.
Opposite the Harbach house, on the same side of Waverly Avenue, and on the other corner, stood an old house owned by Captain Hammond, in which the Newton Theological Institution began its career in 1825; the house is no more. Then came William Brackett (butcher),-house still standing; then westwardly another house, - and now gone,- very old, oc- cupied by Jonathan Hyde, on the south side of the road; he married Eliza- beth Mullen. One other house stood on the south side, opposite the stone quarry ; nothing more, until you reached Dedham road [Centre Street].
On Centre Street, from Angier's Corner [Newton] to the Baptist Pond were Murdock's store (grocery and rum shop), on the corner. Next, on the left "hand [east side] was an old house built by - Park in 1650; next, on the same side, the house of Samuel Hyde; next, on the right [west side], Na- thaniel Brackett (butcher) ; next, on the same side, the Sargent place, with the high stone wall in front [now Miss Shannon]; next, Nathaniel Tucker [late Thomas Edmands]; next Joseph Tombs [the late Gardner Colby's farm- house]. All these houses remain. On the east side, south of Rural Lane [Cotton Street], the Joshua Loring place. On the west side, James Lovell; then Dr. Homer's, both gone. On the cast side, Marshall S. Rice's place, then a private school; opposite, Rev. Joseph Grafton's [afterwards the late George C. Rand]; then, as now, the East Parish Congregational church. Where Lyman Street joins the Common, the old brick Powder House. Where the Newton Theological Institution stands, was a large house, built about 1800-5 by John Peck, who sold it, and removed to Kentucky. On either side of the Rice house, north and south, were fish ponds. This house, according to Jackson, was built by Henry Gibbs in 1742. A brook flowed through the most southerly of the ponds, and, crossing the road, ran, westwardly, till it formed the upper part of Smelt Brook, above Bullough's Pond. In it I caught speckled trout, about 1829-30. Then came the Common or training field, and I remember no house till you came to the Wiswall house, then oc- cupied by Mrs. Eliza Guild, on the east side of the road which led past the Great Pond [Centre Street]. Opposite this, on the bank, stood the Baptist meeting-house. One house I remember on the south side of the Pond
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HISTORY OF NEWTON.
[Clarke house, now Jepson], and one, small and old, on the northwest side [the Blanden house, formerly Joseph White]. These twelve houses are all I remember on Centre Street in 1816.
On the road which starts from Centre Street opposite the Loring place, for- merly Mill Lane [now Mill Street], there were only two houses,- Bullough's and Nathan Trowbridge's, [near and north of Bullough's mill]. It was a solitary piece of woods, on both sides.
On the main road from Angier's Corner, westward [Washington Street], there were at that time between Newton Corner and Newtonville Avenue but three houses, - William Jackson's, near the Brook, Mr. Bacon's, and, I think, the Poor House. The father of Mr. Bullough, the miller, was a desperado, living in the woods west of General Hull's place. He was in the State Prison more than once for horse stealing and other villany, and was the terror of the town. His family, I believe, were worthy people. He stole two horses from General Hull.
Dr. Samuel Clarke's last house in Newton was on Homer Street [now owned and occupied by E. F. Waters, Esq.]. Mrs. Clarke received from her mother's estate a tract of land lying south of Bullough's Pond, on the brook leading from the Cold Spring, on which Dr. Clarke built a dam and made a pond, and then erected a mill for grinding drugs, and also a chemical factory, where he manufactured acids, alkalis, calomel, etc. He also bleached wax there. In the woods near, he built a house for his foreman, Peter Macoy, who was of an old Newton family. After the burning of the mill, and the death of Dr. Clarke, which occurred the same year, the place occupied by it was sold to Rufus Brackett, of Newton, for a morocco factory. Mr. Brack -. ett lived at that time in the Obadiah Curtis house, next south of the Freeman place. The remainder of the tract in the woods, south of Bullough's Pond, was sold by Mrs. Clarke to the town of Newton, and now forms a part of the Newton Cemetery.
The house of Peter Macoy, which in 1829 stood solitary in the woods, [is the house formerly known as the Albert Sanderson house, and still stands].
While Dr. Clarke was building the house on Homer Street, now the house of Edwin F. Waters, Esq., in 1829, he occupied a cottage then on the hill west of Centre Street, nearly opposite the Samuel Hyde place, and since called Mount Ida.
Newton, in 1816, was an agricultural town, and the farmers were generally poor. That was before the manufacturing period, which has diffused so much wealth throughout New England, and few Boston business men had their country seats in Newton, as at present.
The finest houses in the north and east parts of Newton were those of Dr. Morse, between Angier's Corner and Charles River, on the west side; Mrs. Coffin's, and John Richardson's [afterwards the Nonantum House]; Honor- able Jonathan Hunnewell's, on the road from Angier's Corner to Brighton ; the Haven and Wiggin houses on Nonantum Hill; John Peck's, afterwards the Newton Theological Institution; the Sargent place, on Centre Street [now the Shannon Place] ; then, John Cabot [corner of Cabot Street,- since removed] ; then, a house, occupied by Blackler, afterwards by Nathanicl
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Tucker, and afterwards Thomas Edmands; the Ward place, then owned by Charles Coolidge [afterwards Charles Brackett]; the Freeman place [afterwards of Francis Skinner], and that of General Hull [Ex-Governor Claflin ].
I remember but three coaches owned in the town, at that time. There was a stage three times a week from the Lower Falls to Boston.
The following, by the same pen, are from the Newton Transcript.
The town of Newton, as I remember it about 1815-20, contained & scat- tering population of some fifteen hundred persons. There were four villages, Angier's corner, the West Parish and the Upper and Lower Falls. All these were composed of small houses; Angier's Corner had probably not over twenty buildings, the principal of which were Bacon's tavern, standing where the present Bank building stands, and Murdock's store, kept in an old building on the corner, where a few groceries and much New England rum were sold. There was great consumption of that beverage, which then cost only fifty cents a gallon, at retail. A barrel of rum was supposed to be as nec- essary a part of the household stores as the pork barrel; the farm hands all took their drink at 11 A. M. and 4 P. M. Rev. James Freeman, of Nonan- tum Hill, allowed no rum on his place, but paid his men a dollar a month extra, in commutation therofor. This was generally regarded an eccentric- ity. The farm laborers were mostly from Vermont or New Hampshire, who came for the summer, and earned about ten dollars a month. Female help cost from fifty cents to one dollar per week; the helpers were Americans, farm- ers' widows or daughters, who earned a little money in this way. There were few Irish then, even in the cities. At the two Falls villages, some manufact- uring was done,-paper mills, woolen mills ; rolling and slitting mills for iron, and nail factories. At Waltham was a cotton mill; but the great and varied industries which have so enriched New England were then in their infancy.
The population of Newton was mostly agricultural, with little demand and small prices for their crops, and the people were poor. A few Boston peo- ple, in easy circumstances, had their country seats in the town, always noted for the purity of the air, and health of the people.
The war of 1812 imposed heavy burdens on the people of New England, destroyed their foreign commerce, and greatly injured the coast trade. Dur- ing the war, much of the flour used in Boston came in great wagons from Philadelphia and New York. Great strings of these wagons, each drawn by four horses, were constantly passing through Newton, and were popularly called " Madison's Ships."
A great event of that period was the September gale of 1815. It began about eight A. M., and came from the south, lasting three or four hours. Houses and barns were destroyed, great trees uprooted, and the ocean invaded its shores. Our chimneys were demolished, our windows blown in, and our carriage house, with its contents, destroyed. All this was fun for the boys, especially when the baker, making his daily visit, had his cart over- turned by the wind, and all his gingerbread thrown into the mud. This was on Saturday, and when, on the following day, we drove to Boston to church,
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great trees lay across the road, and in Cambridgeport, a schooner had been washed up, high and dry, into the main street.
North from Newton Corner, towards Watertown, we pass an old-fashioned house on the left, occupied in 1815 by Madam Coffin; in 1785 it was the resi- dence of General Hull, and was built by Captain Phineas Cooke about 1760. Opposite was a large brick house, owned and occupied by John Richardson, Esq., which was built by General Hull about 1800, and occupied by him until 1805. It is now a part of the old Nonantum House.
On the road to Brighton were three or four small dwellings, a blacksmith shop and that of John Rogers, watchmaker, who made the clock in Dr. Ho- mer's meeting-house, Newton Centre. The Doctor used with great satisfaction to derive the ancestry of this parishioner from that John Rogers, who was burned at the stake in England, in the first year of the reign of bloody Mary. A little east of this, was the mansion of Hon. Jonathan Hunnewell.
Passing two houses on the hill towards Brighton, we come at its foot to the roads where stood, on the left, a school-house, and two oaks, of great size and antiquity. At the corner of Indian Lane, now perhaps Tremont Street, lived Captain Dana; to the left, as we ascend the hill, are two houses of consider- able pretension, built about 1815 by Messrs. Haven and Wiggin,* of Boston. They stand on Nonantum hill, where John Eliot, the Apostle, first preached to the Indians. John Dunton, a London bookseller, who came to Boston in 1686, and wrote an amusing book of travels, relates that he rode with Mr. Eliot through Charles River valley to Natick, where was the principal Indian town,-a wild region, then, for the records of Cambridge in 1696 mention the killing of seventy-six wolves in that town, which then comprised much. of Middlesex county.
Turning south, we enter Waverly Avenue, and reach the house of John Kenrick, who with his sons, William and John, were among the first who embarked in the nursery business in Massachusetts. At the top of the hill, on the West side of the road, stands the old mansion built in 1792 by Colonel Joseph Ward. He made a fortune as a stock broker, and purchased this place which he called "Chestnut Hill." Afterwards, meeting with misfor- tunes, he sold the place to Charles Coolidge, son of Joseph Coolidge, a wealthy Boston merchant. His eldest daughter married S. W. Pomeroy of Brighton, afterwards proprietor of the town of Pomeroy on the Ohio River. The place is now owned by heirs of Charles Brackett. Opposite this is the house built by Dr. Samuel Clarke in 1805, afterwards occupied by his mother, Mrs. Free- man; after the death of Dr. and Mrs. Freeman the place was owned and
* Messrs. Haven and Wiggin bought seventy acres of land from the Hull estate, about 1807. They then tried to purchase a portion of the Beals estate, so as to obtain access to the highway; the owners of the Beals estate, however, set the price so high that they refused to pay it, and, consequently, instead of building these fine residences within the limits of Newton, they erected them near the line of Brigh- ton, one of the houses being entirely within the town. A considerable amount was lost to the town in consequence of this action, as the taxes were paid to the Brighton authorities, and much regret was expressed at the failure to secure both the gentle- men as residents of "Newtown." One of these houses was occupied in recent times by the late Dr. Daniel White, formerly of Charlestown.
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occupied by Mrs. Clarke until 1845, when it was sold to Francis Skinner, of Boston. Southwardly, on the same estate, stands an older house, which in 1800 was owned by Obadiah Curtis, born in Roxbury, but long a citizen of Boston, where he was an ardent patriot, and one of the tea party in 1773. Mr. Curtis was so obnoxious to the British rulers in 1775, that when Boston was besieged by the Americans, he was obliged to retire with his family to Providence, until after the evacuation of Boston by the British troops. He and his wife died in 1811, and were buried in the old cemetery. South of this, and on the corner of the road leading to Brookline, is the old house belong- ing for many years to the Harbach family. This place belonged about 1652, to Captain Thomas Prentice, said to have been a soldier under Cromwell. In America he was a noted Indian fighter, captain of a troop of horse, and one of the leaders in the war against King Philip. He is said to have killed with an axe, a bear which had attacked one of the servants on his farm.
CHAPTER LIX.
NOTICES OF EX-GOVERNOR WILLIAM CLAFLIN. - EX-GOVERNOR ALEXANDER H. RICE. - MAYOR J. F. C. HYDE. - MAYOR
ALDEN SPEARE .- MAYOR WILLIAM B. FOWLE .- MAYOR ROYAL. M. PULSIFER .- DR. S. F. SMITH.
FOR obvious reasons, it has been deemed inexpedient to under- take the delineation of the life and services of living citizens of Newton, except so far as their names are involved in the transac- tions recorded in the foregoing History. This rule, however, is departed from, for equally obvious reasons, in the case of two Ex -- Governors of the Commonwealth, one of whom is a native of New- ton, and the other has honored it as his favorite residence, and the four successive Mayors of the city. Another name has also been added, by the importunate suggestion of the "Committee on the History," whose judgment in the case the Author does not feel at liberty to resist.
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