USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 136
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It is a somewhat remarkable fact that there is no one now residing within the limits of the town who is a descendant, and bears the name at the same time, of
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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.
either of the first five ministers settled, although | tend on the same without difficulties and hardships." It was accordingly determined that whatever they might now pay toward building the new meeting-house should, whenever they should be set off into a pre- Mr. Man left six sons and Mr. Messinger five, and Mr. Bean and his successors also left sons. The de- scendants of the first two must, nevertheless, be very numerous among us, notwithstanding the fact that | cinct, district, or parish by themselves, be returned to large numbers of them have from time to time gone to dwell elsewhere.
The Rev. Mr. Messinger's daughters were sought in marriage by neighboring clergymen. Mary mar- ried the Rev. Elias Haven, of West Wrentham (now Franklin) ; Esther, the Rev. Amariah Frost, of Men- don, Mass .; Sarah, first, Dr. Cornelius Kollock, of Wrentham, and second, Rev. Benjamin Caryl, of Dover, Mass. ; Elizabeth, the Rev. Joseph Bean, her father's successor in the ministry at Wrentham. His son, James, was the first minister of Ashford, Conn.
Those inhabitants of Dorchester living as they say convenient to come to the public worship of God in Wrentham, agreed to be taxed ratably for the pay- ment of Mr. Messinger's salary so long as the town of Dorchester would exempt them from paying there. Their names were Samuel Man, Hannah George, Samuel Lane, Jeremiah Ruggles, Mary Shepard, John Martin, James Humphrey, Samuel Richardson, Mark Force, and Solomon Howes. In October of this year, having voted that the new meeting-house should stand on or near the spot occupied by the old one, the inhabitants determined that it should be " forty feet in length and thirty-eight in breadth, and of such height as may be most convenient and proper for two tiers of galleries one above the other."
Another institution indicating the progress of the settlement in another direction was established as ap- pears by the following recited vote: " Agreed with Ensign Eliezer Ware to make a pair of stocks at the town's cost and charge." This useful reformer prob- ably adorned the common in front of the new meeting- house, where its beneficent workings were visible to all the good people of the village, as often as the night- watch, whose duty it was to patrol the streets east and west, one-half mile from the meeting-house, made their seizures, and bore the trophies of their vigilance to this place of confinement, where the morning sun found them bound hand and foot.
'We find that Benjamin Ware was living in Wren- tham in 1721 as a practicing physician. He was the first physician who settled here, Dr. Stewart, as pre- viously related, not finding sufficient encouragement in the earlier days of the plantation to remain.
At this time the inhabitants living in the westerly part of the town (now Franklin) desired some relief from ministerial charges because, as they say, they " live remote from the public worship and cannot at-
them for their use in the defraying the charge of building a meeting-house among them.
The provincial government having emitted bills of credit to the amount of fifty thousand pounds, this town took two hundred and seventy-two pounds and ten shillings, for which trustees were appointed to | loan to the inhabitants at five per cent. interest. The entire tax for this year (1722) was two hundred and ninety-two pounds, seventeen shillings, and eight- pence.
A committee appointed to seat people in the meet- ing-house were directed to reserve a pew for the min- ister and his family, and also one for the widow of the Rev. Mr. Man, and then to place the men on one side of the house and the women on the other. Schools were established in other parts of the town between the years 1723 and 1728, and in 1725, having op- posed the setting off the westerly part of the town into a new precinct, the inhabitants (in 1727) prose- cuted Bellingham for refusing to renew the bound- marks, and in 1728 took three hundred and fifty-one pounds and five shillings in bills of credit of the province.
In 1729 the number of inhabitants over sixteen years of age liable to road work was one hundred and ninety-three.
Bounties were occasionally paid for killing wild ani- mals. Jonathan Nutting had one pound for killing a wild-cat.
The patriotism of the inhabitants was so much ex- cited at this time that they, with preamble and good set phrase, ordered the selectmen to draw out of the treasury the sum of twenty-five pounds and forward the same to the Hon. John Quincy, Speaker of the House. The controversy between the officers of the crown and the people had been waged for many years with regard to fixed salaries. The king's government, fearing the effect of the payment of their salaries to the royal governors by the people, instructed each viceroy to demand of the provincial assemblies a fixed salary, believing that he would thus be less likely to incline to the popular interests against the crown. The demand made by Dudley in 1702, and resisted by the Assembly, was renewed by Shute in 1706, with like result, and being insisted on caused violent dis- putes, the people in the course of the quarrel repeat- edly asserting the principle on which they finally ap- I pealed to arms against the mother-country. Glancing
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at the fact of Shute's going to England in 1722 and preferring complaints against Massachusetts, of the House of Representatives choosing their Speaker in 1723 and placing him in the chair without presenting him to the Governor for confirmation, and in a variety of ways asserting its rights, especially in voting the allegations of Shute without foundation and ordering one hundred pounds sterling to be remitted to their agent in Europe to employ counsel, in which, how- ever, the board of assistants refused to join, the pre- paring an address to the king, in which the Council refused to join, the ordering the Speaker to sign and send the paper to England, the preparing a separate address by the Council, which was forwarded to Shute, and the employment of Dummer and Cooke to appear for the province, we find that it was not until 1726 that a decision was made before the Lords in trade and the king in council upon the complaints preferred by Shute. The decision, as is well known, was adverse to Massachusetts, and resulted in adding two clauses to her charter, viz., one affirming the right of the Governor to negative the choice of Speaker, the other denying the House of Representatives the right of ad- journing itself for any period longer than two days. And Governor Burnett, the successor of Shute, renew- ing in 1728 the demand that a fixed salary be paid him, saying this was the command of the king, the House refused, but granted him seventeen hundred pounds towards his support and the expenses of his journey. He refused it, but took three hundred pounds granted for his journey. Hence arose a violent quar- rel, the Governor remonstrating and threatening, and the deputies persisting in their refusal. A statement | the minister's salary.
of the controversy and its causes being made to the The town, in 1734, having refused to build a meet- ing-house for the westerly inhabitants, voted to supply them with preaching, and chose a committee to " clear the town of certain scandalous charges made by Bel- lingham in a petition to the General Court. It was also voted in 1735 that some people with their es- towns, great excitement ensued, Boston in a particu- lar manner declaring its opposition to the commands of the king, in consequence of which the Governor adjourned the General Court to Salem, the House denouncing the step and requesting the Governor to summon them to Boston, which, being refused, the | tates be annexed to Medway ; and that a number of Court remained at Salem, supported by the towns. Here the House resolved to apply to the king, and Belcher and Wilkes were employed as its agents. Grants were made by the House to defray their ex- penses, but the Council rejected them, whereupon a sufficient sum was subscribed by the people of Boston and placed at the disposal of the House. The grant of twenty-five pounds made by Wrentham in 1729 was intended for this fund.
The bills of public credit continuing to depreciate, the town "proposed to take into consideration the present difficult circumstances of the Rev. Mr. Mes- singer, and make some further provision for the sup-
port of him and his family." " Wherefore it was voted that a contribution be taken up once a quarter upon the Lord's day for this purpose for one year next en- suing, and that the deacons take care to deliver the money so gathered to the Rev. Mr. Messinger." His salary was nominally one hundred pounds, but, as he was paid in the depreciated bills of credit of the prov- ince, the real sum received by him must have been much less.
The cost of the late war to the colonies, estimated at sixteen millions of dollars, of which only five mil- lions was repaid by the British ministry, bore hardly upon the province. Besides, Massachusetts had con- tributed her share of the thirty thousand lives com- puted to have been sacrificed in the protracted con- test. To defray her expenses she made such large emissions of paper money that gold and silver were not at all in circulation. It seems that a small party favored the calling in the paper money, "relying on the industry of the people to replace it with a circu- lating medium of greater stability."
" Another party favored a private bank, the bills not to be redeemed in specie, but landed security to be given." Another party were for a public bank, the faith of the government to be pledged to the value of the notes, and the profits accruing from the bank to be applied for its support. This party was successful, and fifty thousand pounds in bills of credit were issued, and afterwards one hundred thousand pounds. This currency was so much depreciated that at one time fifty thousand pounds were voted to defray town charges and six thousand seven hundred pounds for
families formerly of the westerly end of Dorchester, but now intermixed with the westerly end of Stough- ton, who were joined to this town in 1724, may be returned to the town of Stoughton." One reason assigned for this movement was " that the town of Wrentham is now under very mean, low, and poor circumstances, their town charges being very great ; adding, the charge of the town to maintain the poor would amount, as we suppose, to more than all the polls and estates of families upon the said land would pay, and also many highways must be made through said tract."
The town continued to oppose the application of
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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.
the inhabitants of West Wrentham to be set off into a separate township, but, at the suggestion of the committee of the General Court, voted in 1737 that they might be set off as a distinct parish. Those who were dismissed from the church here formed a new church there in 1738, and Rev. Elias Haven was ordained their minister in November of the same year.
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The warrants for town-meetings began in 1740 to summon the voters to meet at the public meeting- house in the East Precinct, and in 1742 the town discontinued the practice of warning town-meetings from house to house. In 1746 two parcels of land were laid out for training-grounds, one of which in- cluded all the common land about the meeting-house ; and a grant was made to Eliphalet Whiting, of the use of the creek between the two ponds, with the privilege of erecting a dam, with the right of the town to resume it on certain conditions.
The church records say, " The Rev. Mr. Messinger gave up the ghost on the 30th day of March, 1750, and was buried on the Tuesday following ; that the church and First Precinct unanimously invited the Rev. Mr. Joseph Bean to carry on the work of the ministry among them." Mr. Bean accepted, and was ordained Dec. 5, 1750.
Joseph Grant, Robert Ware, Obadiah Allen, Eben- ezer Guild, Ephraim Knowlton, Samuel Ray, and John Hills, Jr., declaring themselves Anabaptists in 1752, were exempted from ministerial taxes.
A. part of Stoughton was annexed to Wrentham, in 1753, and the next year the inhabitants of the West Precinct praying the General Court to organize them into a separate district, a committee was chosen to oppose the petition ; and at the same time the town voted that "it was not in favor of the excise bill printed by the General Court."
Nothing extraordinary seems to have occurred in the affairs of the town from this date until the year 1765, when the voters placed themselves on record in regard to the Stamp Act, so called, in the following decided language :
" At a meeting of the freeholders and other inhabitants of the town, held by adjournment Nov. 1, 1765, it was unanimously voted that the following sentiments be recorded on the town book, that the children hereafter to be born may see the desire their ancestors had to hand down to them their rights and privileges as they received them from their ancestors, and that a copy thereof be sent to the Honorable, the House of Repre- sentatives in General Court assembled. Gentlemen, as a free and full enjoyment of the inherent rights and privileges of natural, free-born subjects of Great Britain, long since precisely known and ascertained by uninterrupted practice and usage from the first settling of this country down to this day is of the utmost value, and ought to be contended for as the best frame of gov-
ernment in the world, though with decency yet with the utmost firmness, having the strongest affection and loyalty to the King and the highest veneration for that august assembly the Par- liament, and sincere regard for all our fellow-subjects in Great Britain, any attempt to deprive us of our rights and privileges as colonists must be very alarming, and as such we cannot for- bear mentioning some of the proceedings of the late Ministry, and especially of the late Parliament, commonly called the Stamp Act, which we apprehend is unconstitutional and oppres- sive, as it wholly cancels the very conditions on which our an- cestors settled this country and enlarged his Majesty's dominion in America, at their sole expense with vast treasure and blood, -that it totally deprives us of the happiest frame of civil gov- ernment, expressed in our charter,-for by the charter of this Province the General Assembly has the power of making laws for its internal government and taxation,-and that no freeman shall be taxed, but by his own consent either in person or by proxy. And by this act a single judge of the Admiralty has power to try and determine our properties in controversies arising from internal concerns without a jury ; which in our opinion is contrary to the very expressions of Magna Charta- that no free man shall be amerced but by the oath of good and lawful men of the vicinage, and by this act it is certain that it puts it in the power of Mr. Informer or Prosecutor to carry the subject more than a thousand miles distance for trial. Who, then, would not pay a fine rather than to be thus harassed, guilty or not ? What can be worse ? If his Majesty's subjects in America are not to be governed according to the known stated rules of the Constitution as those in Great Britain are, what then will be wanting to render us miserable and forlorn slaves ? But supposing that these difficulties were imaginary only, yet we have reason to except against that act, as we apprehend con- sidering the almost insupportable load of debt the Province is now under, and the scarcity of money. We have reason to think that the execution of that act for a short space would drain the country of its cash and strip multitudes of their prop- erty and reduce them to desolate beggary. What then would be the consequence resulting from so sudden and convulsive a change in the whole course of our business we tremble to con- sider. Gentlemen, as these are our sentiments of that act, we, the freeholders and other inhabitants of this town legally as- sembled for that purpose, claim a share to join with all the friends of liberty on so important a point; but when we con- sider the answer (this day read before the town) of the Honor- able IIouse to his Excellency's speech at the opening of the pres- ent session so minutely pointing out the inherent rights of the colonies and the spirit that runs through the whole form, it gives us the utmost satisfaction and strongest confidence under God to rely on the wisdom and integrity of the respectable body of the House, under whose paternal care and protection we have ever been a happy people. And we remain with the utmost assurance that no measures will be wanting by this Honorable House, in joining with all the other colonies in such remon- strances and petitions as are consistent with our loyalty to the King and relation to Great Britain, for the repeal of said act, which we hope by the blessing of God will have its desired effect."
This report was signed by Capt. John Goldsbury, Deacon Jabez Fisher, and Ensign Lemuel Kollock.
This act so odious to our patriotic sires, signed March 8, 1765, by a commission on account of the king's insanity, rendered invalid every written instru- ment which was not. drawn upon stamped paper, to be purchased of the agents of the British government at
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exorbitant prices, and punished every violation with | ingly.'" This report being read twice before the town, severe penalties, suits for which were to be brought in after consideration and some debate, it was unanimously voted and accepted. any Admiralty or King's Marine Court throughout the colonies. The excitement extended throughout the province. The foregoing report was read to the town on the very day the act was to go into oper- ation.
Boston had assumed an attitude of defiance; its people had determined that stamped paper should not be used; had hung Oliver, the distributor, in effigy upon the old liberty-tree, and made him swear that he had not and would not distribute the odious stamps; shouted liberty, property, and no stamps ; demolished the stamp-office, and making a bonfire of its materials on Fort Hill, had consigned the images of Oliver, Bute, and Grenville to the flames, calling themselves Sons of Liberty, and rending the air with huzzas for Pitt and liberty, even going so far as to ransack the house of Hutchinson, the chief justice, spoiling his furniture and throwing his books and manuscripts into the street. At a meeting in Faneuil Hall these riotous proceedings were denounced, but Boston's resistance to the stamp act was sustained by numerous towns in the province, among which Wren- tham's voice was heard in the emphatic yet temperate words of the manifesto above written.
Jabez Fisher, the representative to the General Court, was instructed the following year to vote against charging the province for any of the damages caused by the riotous proceedings above mentioned, and also against extravagant grants for superfluities ; but to join in measures designed for the detection and punishment of the rioters. At the same time he was instructed to vote for a statue in honor of the most patriotic Pitt without any limitation annexed as to its cost.
But in November following a committee reported to the town that, " considering his Majesty's most gra- cious recommendation and the application of the suf- ferers, the vote passed in August last be reconsidered and the following instructions be given to our repre- sentative. 'To Mr. Jabez Fisher : Sir, we, your con- stituents, his Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects in town-meeting assembled, considering the gracious de- sire of his Majesty that a veil be cast over the late times of tumult and disorder, and considering it as a point of prudence and true policy, instruct you that you give your vote to the purport of the bill which is prepared by the honorable House of Representatives at their last session entitled " An Act for granting compensation to the sufferers and of free and general pardon, indemnity and oblivion to the offenders in the late times," and that you use your influence accord-
The town chose a delegate to a convention to be holden in Faneuil Hall on the 22d day of September, 1768, to consult and advise such measures as his Majesty's service and the peace and safety of his subjects in the province may require. In 1771, Jabez Fisher was chosen representative to attend a General Court to be held at Harvard College. The House was convened at Salem and Cambridge, to avoid the influence of the people of Boston upon that assembly. The quarrels with the Governor at every session of the court tended to make clearer and clearer the fact that the British government intended to coerce the colonies. The House protested against being adjourned from Boston, and learning that the government officers were receiving salaries from the crown, it passed a tax-bill, including those officers in the list of persons to be taxed, which the Governor rejected on the ground that he was expressly forbid- den from giving his consent to such an act upon any pretense whatsoever, which so roused the ire of the members of the House that they declared they knew of no commissioners of his Majesty's customs, nor of any revenue his Majesty had a right to establish in North America. The Governor also rejected the grants made to the agents of the province in Europe. Vessels of war, twelve in number, arrived and an- chored in the harbor, and Sam Adams declared " that America must under God work out finally her own salvation." The clergymen of Boston refused (with one exception) to read the Governor's proclamation for Thanksgiving, but "implored Almighty God for the restoration of lost liberties." In April, 1722, the Governor convened the Assembly at Boston, and here the quarrel was renewed. A resolve having been passed denouncing the payment of the salary to the Governor by Great Britain, he was informed by the secretary for the colonies that the king had made pro- vision for the support of his servants in the Massa- chusetts Bay. A town-meeting was called (the court not being in session) ; John Hancock was moderator. The Governor was asked by this meeting " if stipends had been fixed to the offices of judges." He refused to answer. A message condemning the measure as contrary to the charter and the common law was sent to him, and requesting that the subject might be referred to the General Court. This request was also refused, and the General Court was not permitted to meet in December, the time to which it had been pro- rogued. The Governor in his reply denied the right of the town to debate such matters, upon which it
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was voted that the inhabitants of Boston have ever had, and ought to have, the right to petition the king for the redress of such grievances as they feel, or for preventing of such as they have reason to apprehend, and to communicate their sentiments to other towns. And Samuel Adams then proposed that step which, it has been said, "included the whole Revolution, viz., a committee of correspondence to consist of twenty-one persons, to state the rights of the colo- nies, and of this province in particular, as men and Christians, and as subjects, and to communicate and publish the same to the several towns, and to the world, as the sense of this town, with the infringe- ments or violations thereof that have been, or from time to time may be, made." This was the origin of the famous committee of correspondence, and it is in answer to their letter that the inhabitants of Wren- tham, on the 11th day of January, 1773, returned the following spirited and patriotic reply :
" First. Resolved, That the British constitution is grounded on the eternal law of nature, a constitution whose foundation and centre is liberty, which sends liberty to every subject that is, or may happen to be, within any part of its ample circum- ference; that every part of the British dominions hath a right freely to enjoy all the benefits and privileges of this happy con- stitution, and that no power of legislation or government upon earth can justly abridge nor deprive any part of the British dominions of those liberties without doing violence to this happy constitution and its true principles ; that every part of the British dominions in which acts of the British Parliament are exercised contrary to the true principles of the constitution have, and always ought to have, a right to petition and remon- strate, or to join in petitioning and remonstrating to the king, lords, and commons of Great Britain that all such acts of Par- liament may speedily be removed, abrogated, and repealed. That the province of Massachusetts Bay have the right not only by nature and the laws of England, but by social compact, to enjoy all the rights, liberties, and immunities of natural and free-born subjects of Great Britain to all intents and purposes whatsoever; and that acts of the British Parliament imposing rates and duties on the inhabitants of this province while they are unrepresented in Parliament are violations of those rights, and ought to be contended for with firmness.
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