USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, 1622-1918, vol 1 > Part 2
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Throughout the world, in almost every granite producing section, there are found also rocks to which geologists have given the names of amygdaloid, diorite and diabase, all of which are to be found in Norfolk County. Amygda- loid is an igneous rock containing numerous oval or spherical inclosures, different in texture from the body of the rock itself. Lava thrown out by volcanoes is one of the best examples of amygdaloid. Diorite and diabase are plutonic rocks usually composed mainly of hornblende and a species of feldspar. Amygdaloid, diorite and diabase are often included in the general term of "trap rock," heavy, compact in structure, and used in macadamizing roads or for railroad ballast. Diorite is sometimes called "greenstone."
In 1875 William O. Crosby began a study of the rocks in the vicinity of Boston, including Norfolk County, and the result of his investigations was pub- lished by the Boston Society of Natural History in 1880. The granite area he describes as consisting of about two hundred square miles in the southern part of Norfolk and the northern part of Plymouth County. The best known quarry in this field is the one at Quincy, which was opened in 1825 by Gridley Bryant, of Scituate, at the instigation of the Bunker Hill Monument Association. It afterward became known as the "Bunker Hill Quarry." Now the value of Quincy granite is well known all over the United States, and some of it has been shipped to other countries.
In the towns of Dover and Medfield Mr. Crosby found small patches of Paleozoic rocks "exhibiting local transitions toward granite and diorite." These rocks, greenishi or grayish in hue. compact in texture and very hard, are a species of felsite which Mr. Crosby classified as petrosilex. Farther southeast he noted a larger area, extending into what is now the Town of Westwood, in which the rock was more perfectly crystallized. In this field is the quarry from which was taken the stone for the Norfolk County court-house, St. Paul's Episcopal Church and the Memorial Hall at Dedham.
Mr. Crosby also found a considerable area of this petrosilex in the central and southern parts of the Town of Needham, where the color was gray or greenish white, with numerous small crystals or grains of transparent quartz, giving the stone the appearance of porphyry. In the northern part of Needham he noticed a reddish brown, compact stone resembling quartz in its texture. Only a few outcrops of this stone were observed in Needham, but just south of the Boston & Albany Railroad, near the village of Wellesley, the deposits were larger and the character of the rocks better defined. Similar deposits were seen in the Blue Hill region in the Town of Milton.
Upon the elevation known as "Rattlesnake Hill," in the southeastern part of the Town of Sharon, and on Moose Hill in the western part of the same town, the rocks are chiefly of syenite. In the eastern part, near the Randolph Town line, there are some beds of granite of excellent quality that have been quarried
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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY
to some extent. In early days a considerable quantity of bog iron ore was mined in this town.
DEVONIAN ROCKS
The Devonian rocks of the Paleozoic age rest upon the Silurian formations and are among the oldest of the fossil bearing rocks. Mr. Crosby, in speaking of the rocks of this period, says they "occur only in limited basins or depres- sions excavated in the ancient crystalline formations." One of these basins, which he calls the "Narragansett." extends from Newport, Rhode Island, through Bristol and Plymouth counties in Massachusetts. Near the line between the two states this basin divides, a narrow branch of it running northeast into the Town of Braintree, where it terminates in a bed of Paradoxides, a stone resembling the Upper Cambrian formation, from which it can be best distin- guished by the large fossils of the trilobite variety.
Some years before Mr. Crosby made his study of the rocks about Boston, W. W. Dodge, of the Boston Society of Natural History, made a geologic reconnaissance in the eastern part of Norfolk County. He noticed the Para- doxides bed above mentioned, particularly the slate deposits connected with it. Says he: "The slate along the Monatiquot River in Braintree is like that of the Paradoxides bed and similarly related to granite, and these two areas are con- tinuous under the bed of the Weymouth Fore River. On the west side of that river, at the first bend north of Weymouth Landing, the slate is greenish gray or brown, tinged with purple. West of the railroad the slate is exposed imme- diately north of the granite, and is almost identical with that along the Monati- quot River and at Hayward's Creek. The slate at Mill Cove is continuous across the Weymouth Back River with that in the northern part of Hingham."
Mr. Crosby mentions what he calls an "island of slate" in the Blue Hill granite deposits in the Town of Milton, near the boundary between Milton and Quincy. The slate formation extends to the Randolph turnpike, where it ends in several ledges of a gray argillaceous rock, similar to the Paradoxides bed in Braintree, but containing more iron pyrites. Just how these slate beds became intermingled with the Devonian rocks furnishes food for theory and specula- tion on the part of the geologists.
The bed rocks in the Town of Weymouth are very old, ranging from the Cambrian to the Devonian periods of the Paleozoic age. The rocks underlying a large portion of the town are closely allied to the granite beds in Quincy. though less perfectly crystallized and broken here and there by wide seams of amygdaloid and the slate formations referred to above. Some of the veins of slate here are rich in iron pyrites and contain fine crystals of quartz.
THE SHAWMUT GROUP
According to Crosby, the principal constituents of what he calls the Shawmut Group are breccia and amygdaloid. The breccia of this group is a conglomerate composed of angular fragments of the older rocks. Mr. Crosby noticed out- crops of this group in Dedham and Milton, the breccia appearing on the west side of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, and the amygdaloid
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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY
on the east side. He also observed outcrops along the road east and west of Charles River Village in the Town of Needham.
In the Town of Brookline the Shawmut amygdaloid resembles felsite, though it is not so hard and contains more or less quartz and crystals of feldspar. Some geologists have given this stone the name of "graywacke," commonly called "plum-pudding stone," on account of the numerous oval or rounded nodules of some other mineral found in it. Both the breccia and the amygdaloid of the Shawmut Group belong to the trap rock species. The Shawmut basin extends irregularly from the Blue Hill region on the south to the porphyry hills in the vicinity of Lynn and Malden on the north.
THE GLACIAL EPOCH
About the close of the Tertiary period of Cenozoic time came the Pleistocene or "Ice Age," when practically all of British North America, New England, the Central States as far west as the Missouri Valley and south to the vicinity of St. Louis, Missouri, were covered by a vast mass of ice called a glacier. This sheet of ice was formed by successive falls of snow, each adding its weight to the mass until the whole was compressed into a solid body. How long ago the Ice Age began, or how long the great ice sheet remained upon the surface of the country, can only be conjectured. Then came a geologic change. The tempera- ture rose, the glacier began to melt and the huge body of ice moved slowly south- ward, carrying with it soil, rocks, etc., and depositing them in the form of "glacial drift" upon the bed rocks of more southern latitudes. The hard sub- stances that gradually settled to the bottom of the glacier left scratches, called "striæ," upon the bed rocks, and from these geologists have been able to determine with tolerable accuracy the course taken by the glacier.
Many of the bed rocks of Norfolk County are striated, thus bearing evidence that they were once beneath the great glacier. This is especially true of the Town of Weymouth, where the exposed ledges show the striæe plainly; and along the Weymouth Back River the sharp linear hills, called "horsebacks" or "kames," mark the terminal moraine or ridge where the last of the ice melted. The debris carried by the glacier was deposited upon the bed rocks in the form of drift, as above stated. The constant grinding reduced many of the rocks to a fine powder, and these disintegrated rocks form the soil of a large part of the New England States. Many of the ponds and lakes are of glacial origin, the water from the melting ice settling into the depressions in the drift.
CHAPTER II
EARLY EXPLORATIONS
EFFECT IN EUROPE OF COLUMBUS' DISCOVERY OF AMERICA-THE CABOTS-GOSNOLD'S EXPEDITION-PRING AND BROWNE-WEYMOUTH'S EXPEDITION-LONDON AND PLYMOUTH COMPANIES-SMITH'S EXPLORATIONS-CAPT. THOMAS DERMER- FRENCH EXPLORATIONS-CONFLICT OF FRENCH AND ENGLISH INTERESTS- ENGLISH CLAIMS SUSTAINED.
October 12, 1492, marked the beginning of an epoch in the world's history, for on that day Christopher Columbus discovered the New World. Previous to that time the Atlantic Ocean had been a bugbear to sailors, but when the news of Columbus' successful voyage was carried to the courts of Europe, monarchs were seized with a desire to send expeditions to the new continent. Although to Spain was conceded the honor of leading the way, it was not long until other nations were competing with Spain for the profits of her discovery.
THE CABOTS
Henry VII, then King of England, was not noted for his liberal policies, but he was sagacious enough to see that some advantage might be gained for his country, and showed a willingness to encourage explorations-provided the royal treasury was not called upon to bear the expense. To that end, on March, 5, 1496, he granted to John Cabot and his three sons-Lewis, Sancius and Sebas- tian-a commission authorizing them "to sail to all parts, countries and seas of the East, of the West and of the North. under our banners and ensigns, with five ships of what burden or quantity soever they be, and as many mariners or men as they will have with them in the said ships, upon their own proper costs and charges, to seek out, discover and find whatsoever isles, countries, regions or provinces of the heathen and the infidels whatsoever they be which before this time have been unknown to all Christians."
The patent also gave the Cabots power to set up the royal banner of England in every "village, town, castle, isle or mainland by them newly found, and to subdue, occupy and possess the same as vassals of the English crown." For this service the Cabots were given the exclusive privilege of trading with the natives of the country or countries they might discover and claim in the name of the crown. This privilege was granted to them, their successors or assigns, without limit or condition, further than that upon their return to England they were required to land at the port of Bristol and pay one-fifth of the profit of their enterprise to the King.
About the middle of May, 1497, John Cabot and his son Sebastian set sail
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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY
from Bristol in a vessel called the "Matthew" and on June 24th they landed either upon the Island of Newfoundland or Cape Breton Island, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. They returned to England and on February 3, 1498, the King issued to them a new patent, which is said to have been "less ample than the first and worded more cautiously," though it granted the patentees six English ships and the exclusive right to trade with the people of the lands they might visit on their voyages.
John Cabot died soon after the second patent was granted, but Sebastian, with a fleet of five vessels, sailed from Bristol in May, 1498, on his second voyage. At that time the extent of the lands discovered by Columbus was not known, and it was believed that somewhere there was a passage by water to the "South Sea," as the Pacific Ocean was then called. To find this passage was one of the objects of Sebastian Cabot, and it is asserted by some writers that in his voyage of 1498 he passed into Hudson's Bay. He then examined the coast as far southward as the thirty-eighth parallel of north latitude and is credited with being the first explorer to discover the mainland of North America. Upon the voyages and discoveries of the Cabots England laid claim to a large part of North America.
Nearly a century later (1583) came Sir Francis Drake, Sir Humphrey Gil- bert and his half brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, and some others, but their explo- rations have no bearing upon New England history. Colonization did not follow upon the heels of the explorer and a century after Cabots' first voyage "in all New England and the vast tract north towards the pole, not a white family was settled, not a white child had been born."
GOSNOLD'S EXPEDITION
Early in the spring of 1602, a company of thirty-two men, under the com- mand of Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, sailed from Falmouth, England, in a small vessel called the "Concord." The expedition was fitted out under the direction of the Earl of Southampton, who bore the greater share of the expense. On May 14, 1602, the expedition came in sight of land about 43º 30' north latitude, somewhere on the coast of New Hampshire or Maine. Turning southward, they followed the coast until the afternoon of the 15th, when they discovered "a mighty headland, which, from the great number of cod fish caught in the vicin- ity, was named Cape Cod." Here they landed and were no doubt the first white men to set foot upon the soil of Massachusetts. The next day Gosnold made another landing, at what later became known as "Sandy Point," in the extreme southern part of Barnstable County. During the next two weeks he explored the coast, naming Martha's Vineyard, Dover Cliff, Gosnold's Hope (now Buz- zard's Bay), the Elizabeth Islands and some other places.
On the 28th he fixed upon a site for his plantation, "near a small lake of fresh water, about two miles in circumference," on the Island of Cuttyhunk, at the entrance to Buzzard's Bay. It was arranged for eleven of the men to remain with him upon the plantation, the Concord to return to England under command of Captain Gilbert. Three weeks were spent in building a fort and storehouse, and in lading the vessel with sassafras, "a goodly quantity of which grew near by." During this time several excursions were made to the mainland's "fertile
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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY
meadows, stately groves, pleasant brooks and beauteous rivers." By the time the fort and storehouse were completed it was noticed that the stock of pro- visions was running low and the project of establishing a plantation was aban- doned. All went on board and on July 23, 1602, the Concord dropped anchor in the harbor of Exmouth, England.
PRING AND BROWNE
Gosnold's description of the country stimulated interest in the new continent and encouraged further explorations. The Virginia patent, granted to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1585. included the present State of Massachusetts, but Richard Hakluyt, an earnest advocate of colonizing the New World, and Robert Alds- worth obtained permission from Raleigh to send a vessel to that part of the coast that had been visited by Gosnold. They enlisted the cooperation of the mayor, aldermen and a number of the wealthy merchants of Bristol, and raised by sub- scription a fund of one thousand pounds to defray the expenses of an expedition. On April 10, 1603. two vessels-the "Speedwell" of fifty tons and the "Dis- coverer" of twenty-six-left Bristol. The former had a crew of thirty men and was commanded by Martin Pring, and the latter, with a crew of thirteen men, was commanded by Capt. William Browne. The two ships were provisioned for eight months and carried a large stock of cloth, hatchets, trinkets, etc., for the Indian trade.
The expedition struck the coast near the entrance to Penobscot Bay, and then cruised southward to the Vineyard Islands. There the Discoverer was laden with sassafras, which was then considered a panacea for "all the ills that flesh is heir to," and returned to England in July, leaving Pring with the Speedwell to make further explorations. In August the Indians in the vicinity began to show signs of hostility and Pring also returned to England, arriving at Bristol early in the year 1604.
WEYMOUTH'S EXPEDITION
To follow up the discoveries of Cabot, Gosnold and Pring, the Earl of South- hampton and his brother-in-law, Lord Arundel, fitted out a vessel called the "Archangel" with a crew of twenty-eight men and placed Capt. George Wey- mouth in command. The Archangel left the port of Dartmouth on the last day of March, 1605, ostensibly to discover the long sought "Northwest Passage," but really to strengthen England's claim to the territory about Massachusetts Bay. About the middle of May Weymouth reached the shore near Cape Cod. From that point he proceeded northward, ascended the Kennebec River some distance and traded with the natives.
Captain Weymouth did one thing that was a stroke of bad policy, to say the least. He lured five Indians on board the Archangel and then set sail for Eng- land. The Indian captives were sold into bondage. This act engendered a feel- ing of hatred and distrust among the natives that grew as colonies were estab- lished in New England, until the Indians sought vengeance in the Pequot and King Philip wars.
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LONDON AND PLYMOUTH COMPANIES
Sir Walter Raleigh's failure to colonize Virginia within the time specified caused his patent to revert to the crown. Early in the Seventeenth Century applications were made by two companies for grants of land for plantations on the Atlantic coast, between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth degrees of north latitude. Patents were issued to those companies on April 10, 1606, the southern grant to the London Company, called the "First Colony." and the northern to the Plymouth Company, or the "Second Colony." The London Company was authorized to establish a plantation at any point below 41º north latitude, and the Plymouth Company to open a plantation any where above 38°, though it was stipulated that the second plantation should be located not less than one hundred miles from the first.
The patent of the Plymouth Company was granted to "Thomas Hanham, Raleigh Gilbert (a nephew of Sir Walter Raleigh), William Parker, George Popham, and their associates, knights, gentlemen and merchants, or Exeter, Plymouth and other towns of the West of England." On the last day of May, 1607, this company started two ships-the "Gift of God" and the "Mary and John"-with about one hundred men, under Raleigh Gilbert and George Popham, to open a plantation. They failed to establish a permanent colony and it seems that no second effort was made under the patent of 1606.
SMITH'S EXPLORATIONS
Capt. John Smith, who had been an active factor in the establishment of the London Company's colony at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, sailed from London early in March, 1614, with two vessels and forty-nine men to look for mines of gold or copper along the coast of New England. In the event he failed to find the mines, it was his intention to trade with the natives and carry back to Eng- land cargoes of fish and furs. He explored the coast from the mouth of the Penobscot (Kennebec) River to Cape Cod. crossed from Cape Ann to Cohasset, and some writers claim that he entered Boston Bay and to some extent explored its coast line. He prepared a map of the coast, upon which Quincy and Wey- mouth bays are shown with a fair degree of accuracy.
That Smith was an enthusiast regarding the beauties and possible advantages of the Massachusetts coast, may be seen from his report of the voyage, in which he says: "We saw forty several habitations (that is places where habitations might be successfully established) along the coast, sounded about twenty-five excellent harbours, in many whereof there is anchorage for 500 sails of ships of any burden, in some of them 1,000, and more than two hundred isles, overgrown with good timber of divers sorts of woods. * * Of all the four parts of the world that I have yet seen, not inhabited, could I but have the means to transport a colony, I would rather live here than anywhere. And if it did not maintain itself, were we but once indifferently well fitted, let us starve."
Associated with Smith on this expedition was an Englishman named Thomas Hunt, who carried about twenty Indians into slavery-an act that was inexcu- sable and which bore fruit in after years. Mather says it "was the unhappy occasion of the loss of many a man's estate and life, which the barbarians did
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from thence seek to destroy; and the English, in consequence of this treachery, were constrained for a time to suspend their trade and abandon their project of a settlement in New England."
CAPT. THOMAS DERMER
Smith's voyage seems to have been a prosperous one, from a pecuniary point of view, and this created in his mind an earnest desire to make a second visit to the New World. His own capital being insufficient to outfit an expedition, he imparted his views to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, " a man of kindred enthusiasm." and to Doctor Sutcliffe, Dean of Exeter, who agreed to assist him. After some delay two ships-one of 200 and the other of 50 tons burthen-were furnished him for a second voyage. Before going two hundred leagues, the larger vessel, which was commanded by Captain Smith, sprang a leak and was forced to return, but the smaller, commanded by Capt. Thomas Dermer, kept on, returning to England after an absence of about five months.
Captain Dermer made another voyage in 1619, and this time carried back to America the Indian Tisquantum (or Squanto), who had been carried into cap- tivity by Hunt five years before. This Squanto afterward became the firm friend and interpreter of the Pilgrims. Bradford (History of Massachusetts, p. 14) thinks it probable that on this second voyage Dermer visited the harbors of Boston and Plymouth. While the primary object of these voyages was the acquisition of wealth, Captain Dermer was instructed to find a place in which to establish a colony "for the propagation of the gospel among the ignorant and debased aboriginal inhabitants."
Barry, in his History of Massachusetts, says: "This journey of 1619, as pre- ceding by a year the settlement of Plymouth, and as taken in the territory so often alluded to by the Pilgrims, is exceedingly interesting. It was an impor- tant addition to the knowledge of the country and prepared the way, by its friendly termination, for the hospitable reception by the generous Massasoit and his brother Quadequina."
In the fall of 1619 Captain Dermer sailed southward and passed the winter with the colony of the London Company at Jamestown. The following spring he returned to Cape Cod, where he encountered a party of hostile Indians and received several severe wounds, of which he afterward died.
FRENCH EXPLORATIONS
Before the middle of the Sixteenth Century, France had laid claim to the valley of the St. Lawrence River and the country about the Great Lakes, basing her claim upon the expeditions of Jacques Cartier in the early part of that century. In 1603 Henry the Great, then King of France, gave a patent to one of his friends named De Monts, covering the Atlantic coast from the fortieth to the forty-sixth parallels of north latitude. De Monts led an expedition to America and it is said he entered what is now Boston Harbor, in search of a place to plant a colony, but was discouraged by the hostile attitude of the Indians he found in that locality. He then explored the coast to the northward and finally located his settlement at Monts' desert (now Mount Desert), on the coast of Maine.
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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY
The greater portion of the grant made by King Henry to De Monts was included three years later in the grant made by the English crown to the Plymouth Company. This was the beginning of a conflict of French and English claims to territory in America-a conflict which was intensified when La Salle, in 1682, discovered the mouth of the Mississippi River and laid claim to all the territory drained by that stream and its tributaries, and which finally culminated in the French and Indian war.
Following the usage of nations to claim territory "by right of discovery," England had the oldest tenure to a large part of the continent of North America, on account of the discoveries made by the Cabots in the closing years of the Fifteenth Century. Subsequent expeditions sent out from England strengthened the claim, which the other nations of Europe ultimately recognized, and in time English settlements were planted along the coast from Maine to Georgia.
CHAPTER III
INDIAN HISTORY
DISTRIBUTION OF INDIAN TRIBES AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CEN- TURY-NEW ENGLAND TRIBES-THE MASSACHUSETT-NARRAGANSETT-NIP- MUCK-THE PEQUOT WAAR-THE WAMPANOAG-KING PHILIP'S WAR-THE PRAYING INDIANS-INDIAN DEEDS TO THE LAND.
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