History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 154

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534

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2 Hutchinson, vol. iii. p. 181.

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is unsupported by any record, and is entirely con- jectural with myself. In 1643, John Winthrop, Jr., came from England, and brought one thousand pounds' worth of stock and divers workmen to begin an iron-work. He had formed in England a com- pany for this purpose. The General Court of Mas- sachusetts encouraged the enterprise by granting a 1 monopoly for twenty-one years, freedom from taxes and trainings of the laborers, and a very liberal grant of the colonial lands to be made when the works were completed. The town of Boston was greatly interested in the undertaking, and the location of the works at Braintree was encouraged by a grant of three thousand acres of land, still belonging to Boston, at that place. This tract is the same land which was purchased seventy years afterwards, in 1711, by Manasseh Tucker, Samuel Miller, and John Wadsworth, of Milton, and divided by the court be- tween Braintree and Milton at that time. The fifteen hundred acres attached to our jurisdiction forms the present Scotch Woods settlement. In 1651 two of the largest stockholders of this iron company, re- siding in London, viz., John Beex and Robert Rich, chartered a large ship, bound to Jamaica, to touch at Boston and land there two hundred and seventy-two Scotch prisoners taken from a lot of eight thousand prisoners captured by Cromwell, Sept. 3, 1650, at the battle of Dunbar. The ship arrived at Boston in May, 1651, and landed the prisoners consigned to the agent of the iron-works, and their names are all | recorded in the Boston records."

In July of the same year the Rev. John Cotton wrote a letter to Cromwell, as follows :

" The Scots whom God delivered into your hands at Dunbar, and whereof sundry were sent hither, we have been desirous to make their yoke easy. Such as were sick of the scurvy or other diseases have not wanted physic and chirurgy. They have not been sold for slaves to perpetual servitude, but for six or eight years, as we do our own, and he that bought the most of them, I believe, buildeth houses for them, for every four an house, | layeth some acres of land thereto, which he giveth them as their own, requiring three days in the week to work for him (by turns), and four days for themselves, and promiseth as soon | as they can repay him the money he laid out for them, he will set them at liberty."

We infer from these circumstances that Beex and Rich, for themselves or the company, thinking to get some income from their land, which without laborers was unproductive and inconvertible, embarked in this speculation, and the mode of disposing of the prison- ers mentioned by Cotton was only a form necessary to satisfy the public mind in the matter, and the men were employed on this land belonging to the freighters of the ship in the way described in this letter; and

thus originated the name, Scotch Woods, ever since attached to the spot. This supposition is confirmed by an act of the General Court, A.D. 1652, ordering that all Scotchmen and negroes shall train,-referring, doubtless, to their first law exempting the laborers of the iron company from this duty. These persons may have been employed in cutting wood or collect- ing bog-ore for the iron company.1 The result of this operation was that after a large outlay of capital it was found that every pound of iron made cost more than two pounds imported from Europe; the com- pany failed, the sheriff seized their effects, and their -laborers were dispersed and mixed up with the gen- eral population of the country. The land was prob- ably a conditional grant, and reverted to the town of Boston, from which corporation our townsmen bought it.

The records of the town for nearly eight years from the beginning are missing, excepting that of a few births. Two years after the organization, Robert Vose made a deed of eight acres of land (for a meet- ing-house and other ministerial purposes) to eighteen trustees, probably every church member or freeman in the town.2 No church organization was formed here till 1678, but the principal inhabitants were members of the Dorchester and Braintree churches. Of these eighteen persons eight have descendants still among us, and these families have inhabited the town during its whole existence, viz .: Robert Vose, Samuel Wadsworth, Anthony Gulliver, Robert Bad- cock, Thomas Swift, George Sumner, Robert Tucker, and Henry Crane. The first tax-list on record, of fifty-nine persons, is dated 1674, and the name of only one of our present families, Teague Crehore, is added to the above list of trustees in the interval from 1664 to 1674. Many of the lots in the west- ern part of the town were soon occupied, especially at Brush Hill.

George Sumner, whose father, William Sumner, of Dorchester, had drawn one of the large lots in that locality, occupied the same in 1662.

Robert Tucker, who had resided more than twenty years at Weymouth, came and purchased several ad- joining lots. He brought a family of four sons and three daughters ; his oldest son twenty-two years of age.

1 Governor Bradstreet writes, twenty years later, that some of the Dunbar prisoners were still in bondage.

2 Robert Vose, John Gill, Richard Collicot, Anthony Gulliver, William Daniels, Robert Redman, Anthony Newton, William Salisbury, Stephen Kinsley, Samuel Wadsworth, James Hough- ton, John Fenno, Henry Crane, David Homes, Robert Tucker, Robert Badcock, Thomas Vose, Thomas Swift.

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Thomas Swift, son of T. Swift, of Dorchester, mar- ried the only daughter of Mr. Vose, and is supposed to have occupied a part of the Glover farm, conveyed to him by his father-in-law.

Ten years passed from the date of the incorporation before a new meeting-house was built, the small ac- commodation for worship in the eastern part of the town being made to suffice. Mr. Joseph Emerson officiated as the first minister for several years, under adverse circumstances part of the time. Great diffi- culty existed in the currency. The whole town, and a part of the adjoining town of Braintree, with all their zeal for religious instruction, could not raise. fifty-three pounds, or one hundred and seventy-five dollars, per annum, the stipulated salary. Mr. Emer- son, who at first was passed about from one parish- ioner to another, made shift to live without embar- rassment, but venturing to marry the daughter of the Rev. Edward Bulkly, of Concord, and establish a house of his own, " the country pay," as it was called, in which he received most of his dues, compelled him to open a running account with every man in the parish. Misunderstandings ensued, rendering his po- sition disagreeable, and he accepted an invitation to settle at Mendon, and left the town in 1669.

Some other occurrences, simultaneous with this period, which affected the whole colony, as well as our town, deserve mention.

We had grown up into a vigorous community in a space of thirty-five years, not by the fostering care of the mother-country, but by her neglect and engross- ing engagements elsewhere, although it must be con- fessed we did receive some encouragement from the partiality of Master Oliver. Now, in 1660, all this is over; the king is restored again, and some active enemies of Massachusetts in England enter sundry complaints against us, and make the charge of various violations of the charter. The king appointed four commissioners, armed with full power, to come over and examine all grievances and correct all abuses. We had coined money without authority, encroaching on the king's privilege; we had prohibited the exer- cise of all forms of worship except our own, especially that of the English Church, and would not allow the privileges of citizenship except to professors of a certain creed ; and then we had sheltered certain regicides, who had compassed the death of the king's , with a part of his men, went to meet them in a wood father, and had committed various other misde- meanors.

The arrival of these commissioners caused much anxiety, and all the skill and diplomacy of our wisest men were used to parry these charges. Finally, by giving up the matter of church membership as a

qualification of voters, promising to make no more pine-tree shillings, and making a sham effort to ar- rest the regicides, the commissioners went home, and the colony retained for a time longer the charter. This result, so earnestly hoped for, was aided greatly by sundry ship-loads of masts and other presents to the king. The great benefit to the colony was the extension of the right of suffrage, which till then had been confined to a small part of the community ; and the consent of the colony to tolerate in the future the service of the English Church, had the beneficial ef- fect of so far liberalizing the colonial government that no further prosecutions against other sects as heretical were enforced. The extreme rigor which characterized the first years of the colony was in some degree mitigated when our town commenced its corporate existence.

Now commences a great struggle, which threatens the very existence of the colony,-Philip's Indian war. Philip, a name given by the English to the second son of Massasoit, the sachem of the Pokanoket Indians, with whom the Plymouth Pilgrims enter- tained such friendly relations, was now at the head of the tribe living at Mount Hope,-a restless, am- bitious person, and possessed of much ability. He entertained the opinion that the English would soon control the whole country and destroy the native population, and conceived the idea that by the united action of all the native tribes they might be resisted or driven away. He cautiously enlisted the co-oper- ation of most of the other tribes of New England in his plan. The matter was communicated to the au- thorities by one of Mr. Eliot's praying Indians of Natick.

All New England was aroused. The Indians had acquired great skill in the use of fire-arms, and the number of fighting men among them was supposed to be superior to those of the whites. Philip ap- peared with a large force near Swanzey. But the hope of detaching some of the tribes from the alliance induced the government to send Capt. Edward Hutch- inson with a company of horse to Brookfield, to ne- gotiate with the Nipmug tribe. Hutchinson had a farm at Marlborough, and was personally known to the chiefs of this tribe, and they designated him as a person they would treat with. By appointment he, | or swamp, where a large body of Indians were con- cealed. Hutchinson and sixteen of his men were shot, mostly dead. He was carried down to Marl- borough, and died a day or two after.

This settled the character of the struggle, and a war of extermination began, which lasted fourteen

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months, during which almost every man in New England capable of bearing arms was called into service. The Indians appeared in force in every di- rection,-in the Old Colony at Scituate, Plymouth, and Rehoboth ; on Connecticut River at Northamp- ton and Springfield ; in Middlesex at Groton and Sudbury ; also in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maine. Milton, being more sheltered than many other towns, became the refuge of several families from more exposed places, some of whom are still here by their descendants. Edward Adams came from Medfield, Roger Sumner and Ralph Houghton from Lancaster, and Thomas Davenport from Casco Bay.

The Neponset Indians at Punkapog did not appear to belong to the conspiracy ; but, to make matters sure, the men of the tribe were all placed under the command of Quartermaster Thomas Swift, and re- moved first to Long Island in Boston harbor, and afterwards brought up to Milton. Maj. Gookin, in his Indian History, says that Mr. Eliot and him- self met every other week, in the winter of 1676, among the Punkapog Indians, who were brought from Long Island and placed near Brush Hill, in Milton, under the care of Quartermaster Swift. They | came up late from the island, yet they planted some ground procured for them by Maj. Swift, and they got some little corn. Their wives and children were there with them.

The great interest to Milton in this affair arose from the death of Capt. Wadsworth and several young men belonging to the town. Samuel Wads- worth, already mentioned as an early inhabitant, soon after his arrival married Miss Abigail Lindall, of Duxbury, and spent most of his adult life here. He was an active, intelligent person, named in the Dor- chester records before the incorporation of Milton, was always occupied with the affairs of the planta- tion and the town, zealous in church matters and the | military organization, frequently chosen selectman and representative, and also a justice to settle small causes. In the war of 1675-76 he was appointed captain of a company raised in this vicinity, partly in Milton, to serve the colony. John Sharpe, of Brookline, was his lieutenant. In April, 1676, he was ordered to move with his company to Marl- borough, to relieve Capt. Brocklebank, of Rowley, supposed to be in peril at that place. Wadsworth and his company arrived safe and unmolested. On the 21st of April news came to him that the Indians were burning the houses at Sudbury, the adjoining town. Wadsworth started with his company of eighty men to meet the foe. Seeing a few Indians,

he pursued them into a swamp, when suddenly, from all directions, emerged a cloud of savages, greatly outnumbering his force. He secured a retreat to a neighboring hill, which he successfully defended four hours, with the loss of five men only. His ammuni- tion was expended. The Indians set fire to the wood, when an attempt was made by the troops to force their way through the savage horde, and Wadsworth, Sharpe, Brocklebank, and sixty-five men met their death. Fifteen only escaped to tell the tale. The names of his Milton companions are not preserved. Capt. Wadsworth left five sons, all of whom were respectable men. His youngest son, Benjamin, be- came president of Harvard College, and erected a monument to his father, at Sudbury, which was re- newed, in 1852, by the State.

The war ended in August, 1676, with the death of Philip by the hand of one of his own men. The In- dians had previously met defeat in every direction. Some of the leaders were executed at Boston ; many prisoners were sent to the West India Islands and sold as slaves, and those who escaped fled to tribes in the West. No formidable attack from the natives ever disturbed the colony again, except as allies of our French neighbors in Canada or instigated by them.

The year 1682 closed the career of two of the oldest inhabitants, Robert Vose and Robert Tucker,1 both over eighty years. Mr. Vose is not mentioned in the Dorchester records until about the time of his purchase of the Glover farm in 1654; he was then past middle life, and his three children already of adult age. We have no means of knowing his antece- dents. His whole career here exhibits him as a public-spirited man, who had brought up his children with care, and who spared no efforts to establish our community upon the surest foundation. Mr. Tucker had been residing in Weymouth, and all his large family were doubtless born in that place. He came to Milton about the time of the incorporation, and purchased several of the lots laid out aud drawn by the inhabitants of Dorchester at Brush Hill. He was selected by Mr. Vose as one of the trustees of the church lot, was selectman and representative, also re-

1 Robert Tucker was at Weymouth about the time that town was incorporated, in 1635, and is believed to have accompanied a certain association which came to New England about that time with the Rev. Mr. Hull, from the town of Weymouth, in Dorsetshire, giving that name to Wessagusset. This conjecture is strengthened by the fact that several prominent families of the name of Tucker are inhabitants of that county. John Tucker, a resident of Weymouth, represented the borough of Weymouth and Melcom Regis in Parliament, twenty years in succession, previous to our Revolution.

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corder of the town. He was held in much esteem by his neighbors. He left a large family of four sons and four daughters, and his character and education during a long period exercised an important influence here. His handwriting indicates a gentleman familiar with the pen.

In 1680 the town was provided with a respectable house of public worship and a regularly organized church.

In 1690 two sons of the town received their degrees at Harvard, viz., Benjamin Wadsworth and Joseph Belcher.

Benjamin Wadsworth, youngest son of Capt. Sam- uel Wadsworth, was born at Milton in 1669, grad- uated at Harvard in 1690, studied for the ministry, settled at the First Church in Boston in 1696, and, after a pastoral service of thirty years, was elected to preside over his Alma Mater at Cambridge,-a place which he filled with great acceptance twelve years, till his death, in 1737. His character is portrayed in a sermon by Rev. Thomas Foxcroft, and also more at length by Rev. William Emerson. Dr. Chauncy speaks of him as "a man of good learning, most pious, humble, and prudent, and an excellent, plain, pathetical preacher." His death occurred at Cam- bridge. He left a widow, but no children.1

Joseph Belcher, son of Joseph and Rebecca (Gill) Belcher, was born at Milton in 1668. He inherited a large property from his grandfather, John Gill, when he was fifteen years of age, was educated for the ministry, ordained and settled at Dedham in 1693, where he officiated thirty years with much sat- isfaction, and died in 1723. His family of two sons and three daughters returned to Milton, and for a time occupied their paternal estate at Milton Hill (the Hutchinson property). The eldest son, Joseph, graduated at college in 1717, lived here in 1734, and was selectman of the town. Their property at Milton Hill was sold about 1740 to Thomas Hutchinson, and the residue of the Stoughton purchase, being the vil- lage property, was sold to Jeremiah Smith in 1741. The family left the town at that time.

Cotton Mather preached Mr. Belcher's funeral ser- mon. He calls him " a tree of righteousness, who had all the fruits of the Holy Spirit growing upon them. Among the articles of his piety was conspicuous, well-

1 John Wadsworth, son of Deacon John and Elizabeth Wads- worth, of Milton, born in 1703, graduated at Harvard College in 1723, studied for the ministry, and was ordained at Canter- bury, Conn., Sept. 3, 1729. He married Abigail Sproat, of Middleborough, separated from his parish, and returned to Milton in 1742, which was his principal residence until his death, in 1766. He officiated in several other places pro- fessionally.

governed speech, and the management of the tongue, with which he prevented what the ancients consid- ered as making half the sins of our lives, a gentle- manly temper and carriage, with a sweetness of dis- position which was a varnish upon these virtues, and added more lustre unto them." As a preacher he was greatly admired and followed.

Oxenbridge Thatcher, the eldest son of Rev. Peter Thatcher, was born at Milton in 1681, educated for college by his father, entered at Harvard before the age of fourteen, and graduated in 1698. He is said to have studied for the ministry, and, after preaching a few times, changed his calling, and engaged in trade at Boston, where he lived some twenty-five years, and was occasionally representative of that town. After his father's death he returned to Milton, and occu- pied his place on Thatcher's plain some forty years. He represented Milton occasionally, and died here in 1772, at the advanced age of ninety-one years. He is better known as the father of an eminent son, Oxenbridge Thatcher, the distinguished lawyer and patriot, who died at Boston in 1767, at the early age of forty-five years.

John Swift was the oldest son of Deacon Thomas Swift. He was born here in 1679, graduated at Harvard in 1697, and was settled as minister at Framingham, where he died, after a long service, in 1745.

Mr. Peter Thatcher, the second son of our minis- ter, was born in 1688, graduated at Harvard College in 1706, and, after studying the clerical profession, was ordained and settled in Middleborough in 1709, and continued there thirty-five years, until his death, in 1744. Rev. Thomas Prince, of the Old South Church, published his life, as an example of zeal and success as a revival preacher.

Dr. Ebenezer Miller was the second son of Samuel Miller. He was born at Milton Hall in 1703, was prepared for college by Mr. Thatcher, and graduated at Harvard. in 1722. He commenced the study of divinity at once, and soon manifested a bias for the Episcopal form of worship. A few gentlemen at Braintree, with similar tendencies, proposed to estab- lish a church there, having assurances of aid from England for the furtherance of this project. For this purpose Mr. Miller was encouraged to proceed to Eng- land and procure Episcopal ordination (no Episcopal organization existing here). He was ordained by the Bishop of London as deacon and priest, received the degrees of Master of Arts from the University of Oxford in 1727 and Doctor of Theology in 1747, and was appointed missionary to Braintree by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.

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He returned, and forthwith entered upon his duties, and continued there until his death, thirty-six years afterwards. Many persons of that persuasion in the neighboring towns attended his ministrations. It is believed he was the first native of the Puritan colony authorized to preach under the Episcopal form.

The Miller family are supposed to have emigrated early from Dorchester to Rehoboth, and during the Indian war, in 1676, to have left the latter place.

Mr. Samuel Miller first appeared in Milton about 1688, possibly led hither by the attractions of Miss Rebecca Belcher, with a nice jointure of sixty acres of land on Milton Hill, all of which became his on his marriage in 1690. He built his house on the lot at that time (the house stood where Mr. Dudley's resi- dence now is, and was taken down some fifty years ago), and there his numerous family were born. He was afterwards, in 1711, one of the Scotch Woods purchasers, and his eldest son, Col. Samuel Miller, built his house there at an early day, and the prop- erty continued in the family until the Revolution, when, in 1776, Stephen Miller, of the third genera- tion, a much respected inhabitant of our town, joined the royalist party and emigrated to the province of New Brunswick, where he lived more than forty years, and died in 1817, aged ninety-onc. He left ! numerous descendants, who are still among the most respectable inhabitants of that province. His house was the one now owned by Dr. Palmer.

Allusion has already been made to the acquisition of the Blue Hill lands, in 1711, by the purchase, from the town of Boston, of three thousand acres formerly granted to the iron company, and which reverted to that town from breach of condition. The grantees were Manasseh Tucker, Samuel Miller, and John Wadsworth, all of Milton. The court refused to annex the whole purchase to Milton, but decreed that it should be divided as to jurisdiction between the towns of Braintree and Milton, fifteen hundred acres to each.

In addition to the foregoing, a large tract of land (doubtless a part of the new grant made to Dorchester in 1637), containing, perhaps, one thousand acres, bounded on the southeast by the Blue Hill River, and northwest by the old Milton line, was passed into our limits by consent of the town of Dorchester. This latter piece contains Houghton's pond, and all the lands within our borders above the stone monument near the late Thomas Hunt's house.

By these acquisitions, in 1712-13, the area of the town was extended about two thousand five hundred acres, nearly one-third of its present surface. The Blue Hill purchasers sold a portion of their lands 47

, before a division took place, reserving, however, a large part of the best of it for their own posterity. Deacon Manasseh, the youngest son of Robert Tucker, was about fifty-seven years of age at the time of the purchase, and continued to reside at the old home- stead at Brush Hill till his death, in 1743, aged eighty-nine years ; but his eldest son, Capt. Samuel, then about twenty-six years old, laid out a farm, and moved very soon to the new purchase. The same was done by young Samuel Miller, as already related, and one of Deacon Wadsworth's sons occupied the lot next adjoining the old Wadsworth property. The remainder was soon sold to other persons, and has ever since formed an important section of the town.

We have now, 1730, reached a new era in our history,-the ordination of another minister, the building of a new meeting-house, and a considerable accession to our taxable property by the settlement among us of sundry persons of wealth and importance from the neighboring town of Boston.

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 154

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1534

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534