History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 64

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

USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 64

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

The matter of a reliable public-way crossing of the Neponset first received the attention of the General Court in 1684, the year in which Boston had " en- largement at Mount Woolliston." Mr. Israel Stough- and skirting the rough, wooded heights. This trail | ton was then granted liberty to build a mill, weir, in due course of time was succeeded by the blazed way, axe-marks on the bark of trees supplying for the settler those more subtle indications which had pointed out his path to the savage. The earliest Europeans, like Alderman, of Bear Cove, in 1634, made their journeys on foot, and groped their way from tree to tree. The blazed trail was shortly suc- ceeded by the bridle-path, which was little more than the blazed trail made passable to horsemen, so that only at certain points was the rider forced to dismount and lead his steed over difficult ground. The highway was beginning to take shape. Natu- rally, these incipient roads were far from straight, and in following them many fences and gates had to be passed. They were, in fact, little more than a suc- cession of farm lanes running through cleared and fenced lands, and open only through the commons. Gradually these farm lanes were fenced in and the bars and gates removed, until at last the lanes were more or less straightened out, and made public ways.

mere cumbersome detail. That only is of interest now which bears on the progress of early development ; and the genesis of the Massachusettss town roads can best be studied in the history of one of them. The main thoroughfare through Braintree, connecting it with Boston, is fairly typical.

In a direct line the centre of the North Precinct was but little more than seven miles from Boston stone; and the devious character of the colonial ways is well illustrated by the fact that the great coast road of 1639 increased this seven miles to ten. It followed in some degree the line of the bay shore in order to avoid the difficult Blue Hill formation, and yet it was forced to make a long detour to go around the creeks and marshes which everywhere indent the coast. But the Neponset River was the great obstacle to be overcome; and for more than twenty years that puny stream seems to have defied every colonial effort at reliable crossing. Indeed, the futile attempts to effect one afford perhaps as clear an insight as can be obtained into the process through which the road development of New England was gradually worked out.

and bridge at the river's lower falls. Five months later, at the next session of the court, an exclusive mill privilege on the Neponset was granted to Stoughton, who, on the other hand, agreed to " make and keep in repair a sufficient horse-bridge over the said river." The building of this bridge was an important event in the history of the colony,-as im- portant as was the building of the St. Louis bridge across the Missouri in the history of the nation more than two centuries later. Indeed, the earlier effort at construction taxed much the more severely of the two the resources of the community which attempted it. Father of a son more famous than himself, and whose name in connection with the quaint and ven- erable hall which perpetuates his memory is a household word among the graduates of Harvard College, Israel Stoughton was a man of enterprise and substance. In the summer of 1634 he built on the Neponset the mill at which was ground the first bushel of corn ever ground by water-power in New England. This prototype of all the busy water- wheels in New England stood at the foot of Milton Hill, on the Dorchester side of the stream, in the midst of a wilderness; for it was four miles from

Such being the general process, the date of the laying out of any particular street, or the fact that originally it passed the gate or house of Goodman This or Deacon That, is of interest only as affecting titles or to those dwelling upon it. In history it is ' any settlement on the north, while to the southward

300

HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

Wassagusset was the nearest inhabited place. There was no road to it, and in 1634 the bridge at Stough- ton's mill was probably little more than a succession of logs thrown from rock to rock across the stream, affording passage to people on foot alone. In the autumn of that year the blazed trail seems to have been converted into a bridle-path ; for the town of Dorchester then ordered a road made to the mill, and voted the sum of five pounds with which to make it. This amounted to a little over one pound a mile for a road through a wilderness, and it was intended to make a trail passable for horses, so that those having corn to be ground could get access to the mill by land as well as water. Such was the beginning of the Plymouth road through Dorchester.

Mount Wollaston was now annexed to Boston, and a number of allotments made there. The need of a land route between the two places began to make itself felt. Accordingly, in 1635, John Holland, a wealthy and enterprising Dorchester man, was authorized to keep a ferry between what is now Commercial Point and a creek on the opposite shore, charging four pence for the carriage of each passen- ger, or three pence each in case there was more than one passenger. There were not passengers enough to make the business of carrying them a paying one, and this ferry was soon discontinued. The next attempt was made at a point higher up the stream, and by Bray Wilkins, who then dwelt on the Nepon- set, but subsequently moved to Salem, where he lived into the next century, dying at the age of ninety-two. Ten years before his death, Bray Wilkins, being then eighty-two, rode down to Boston, with his wife on the pillion behind him, to pass election week. He then visited Dorchester, and had an experience which led to his afterwards playing a wretched part in the hideous witchcraft mania. This was years later ; and now, in 1638, at the age of twenty-eight, he was ambitious of being a ferryman. Accordingly, he got permission to set up a house of entertainment and to ply across the Neponset, between the landing at the head of what is now Granite Bridge, on the Dorchester side, and the tongue of upland which, under the name of " the ridge," makes out across the marshes to the river's bank on the opposite shore. This, from the rate of fare established for it, was known as the " penny ferry." It was intended for the conveyance of foot passengers, and, indeed, owing to the flats in the river's bed, could have been used only when the tide was partially up. Like its predecessor further down the stream, it soon proved a failure, and was discontinued.

river, as no one could be induced to undertake the charge of one unless he was furnished with a house, land, and boat at the public cost. This method of over- coming the difficulty was not in accordance with the usages of the time; and so the Court, in apparent despair, referred the matter to Mr. John Glover, who lived on the south side of the river, in what was then a part of Dorchester. From the position of his farm Glover stood much in need of the ferry, and accord- ingly he kept up an agitation of the matter; so now the Court empowered him to grant the ferry to any one who could be induced to take it for a term of seven | years, “ or else to take it himself, and his heires, as his owne inheritence forever."

Four years more passed away, and the problem of crossing the Neponset was still unsolved. Mr. Glover did nothing. Yet the difficulty was one sure in time to force its own solution, for the river had to be crossed by every one journeying over the great coast road. Under the order of 1639 any town guilty of a default in the construction of so much of this road as lay within its limits rendered itself liable to a fine of five pounds. In view of its long neglect to build a bridge, measures were taken to enforce this penalty against Dorchester. The town then petitioned the court for a remission of the fine. This was allowed in May, 1652, but only on condition that the bridge should be constructed according to law, within three months, " and, if not, the said fine to take place ac- cording to the court order, the making of such bridges over such rivers being no more than is usual in the like case."

Dorchester was stimulated by this pressure to some action, but it seems to have been very loth to go into bridge-building. Accordingly, the town be- thought itself of the clause in the exclusive grant to Israel Stoughton, in 1634, one condition of which was that the grantee should " make and keep in repair a sufficient horse-bridge" over the river. Israel Stough- ton himself was now dead, but his widow owned and worked the mill ; so proceedings were begun against her. She then, in her turn, had recourse to the General Court, and petitioned to be discharged from her lia- bility. Some investigation was had, as a result of which her request was granted in part; and, in view of the fact that near the mill there was a good fording- place with a gravel bottom, she was excused from building a horse-bridge on condition that she main- tained a good foot-bridge, with a sufficient hand-rail. Satisfied with this concession, the widow Stoughton seems to have adopted a policy of masterly inac- tivity, and the next spring the attention of the Court

After this time there was no ferry at all across the i was called to the fact that, so far from a new foot-

301

QUINCY.

bridge having been built, the old bridge during the winter had been wholly ruined. Then at last the matter was taken in hand energetically. It was time, also. Massachusetts now numbered a population of over twenty thousand, dwelling in more than a score of towns, while Plymouth had five thousand people in five towns ; and a little river only seven miles from Boston, on the main road between the two colonies, was still unbridged, and in times of freshet must for days to- gether have been impassable. The construction of a cart-bridge " neere Mrs. Stoughton's mill" was now, therefore, pronounced both a necessity and a county matter, and ordered to be undertaken at once. A committee of six, among whom was Deacon Samuel Bass, of Braintree, was accordingly appointed, with full powers to locate a bridge and to contract for its building, the cost of it to be duly apportioned among the several towns. The committee seem to have done their work so effectually that nothing more was heard of a bridge across the Neponset. Indeed, for a whole century and a half the travel between Boston and the south shore followed the old Plymouth road across Roxbury Neck through Dorchester, and over Milton Hill by the bridge at Stoughton's mill.

The first attempt to fix the line of road through Braintree was in 1641 ; but not until 1648 was the final location made. Running close at the base of the hills, crossing brooks at the points where up- lands were nearest each other, the coast thoroughfare divided when it came to the church. Meeting again beyond, it took the shortest line to the foot of the hills, always avoiding the swamps. Then crossing a spur of the granite hills by a sharp ascent and de- cline, it approached the Monatiquot, which, like the Neponset, proved an obstacle not easily overcome. As early as 1635 a ferry had been established across the Monatiquot between Mount Wollaston and Was- sagusset, the toll being one penny for each person and three pence for each horse. The ferryman was one Thomas Applegate, of whom not much is known, ex- cept that he was married to a wife, Elizabeth, who would seem to have been an unamiable woman, inas- much as in 1636, " for swearing, railing, and revil- ing," she was sentenced by the magistrates to stand with her tongue in a cleft-stick. Applegate did not long have charge of the ferry, for, in March, 1636, six months only after he was licensed, Henry King- man, of Weymouth, was put in his place. A year later Kingham was authorized to keep a tavern in connection with his ferry, the toll on which was in March, 1638, raised to two pence a person. Mean- while Applegate would seem to have remained in Kingman's employ, for this year in crossing the ferry

he upset a canoe of which he had charge, and into which he had crowded nine persons, three of whom were drowned. For this misadventure he was sum- moned before the General Court, and Richard Wright, a prominent personage at " the Mount," was commis- sioned " to stave that canoe, out of which those per- sons were drowned." The matter ended with the appearance of Applegate and five others before the March General Court of 1639, which discharged them with an admonition not in "future to ven- ture too many in any boat." But in consequence of this mishap the use of canoes at ferries was inter- dicted.

At its September session the General Court of 1639 changed the location of the Kingman ferry, and at the same time reduced the toll to a penny. Two months later the act providing for the construc- tion of the coast road was passed, and, as the road was laid out in 1641, the ferry undoubtedly was a link in it. Subsequently John Winthrop, Jr., established his iron-works in that neighborhood, and a stone bridge was in 1644 built across the little river, twenty years before one was built at the Milton Falls.

The section of the coast road within the limits of Braintree was about five miles in length, the church being not far from midway. It was the backbone upon which the growing settlement formed itself. At first it had but three lateral branches,-two to points upon the shore, Squantum and Hough's Neck, and one to what subsequently became the Second Precinct of the town. Wright's mill, upon the town brook, stood a short distance from it, and with this the way from Hough's Neck connected, crossing the coast road. From this simple beginning the system of modern town-ways gradually developed, the lane and farm- way regularly, at the proper time, becoming the vil- age road and town street, fierce contests sometimes arising over questions of prescriptive right. But from 1641 to 1803 the old coast road remained the single thoroughfare from Braintree, and Quincy, to Boston. Then, at last, the needs of an increasing community began to make themselves felt, and a bridge across the Neponset nearer its mouth was projected. Char- tered in 1802 and located in 1803, the turnpike road of which this bridge was a part followed nearly a straight line from the point where it crossed the Neponset to the centre of the town. The way in which it was laid out and built-disregarding the lay of the land, crossing the marshes, cutting through hills, and filling the bog-holes-was in strong contrast with the method pursued a century and a half before. It even dimly foreshadowed the coming railroad era. Gates and bars and crooked

302

HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

farm-ways disappeared before the "pike," and the colonial lines of travel underwent a change which only prepared the way for the greater change brought about by the railroad only two-score years later.

During Braintree's first century it is very ques- tionable whether the roads were kept in any state of systematic repair at all. That they were very bad, and at the season of the year when the frost comes out of the ground well-nigh impassable, may safely be inferred. There was no tax imposed for constructing or keeping them in order, and such work as was done upon them was done in kind. At certain seasons of the year every one was called upon to labor on the roads, bringing with him his horse and his oxen, if he had them, his cart and his tools. The principles of road construction were wholly unknown, and the labor and time expended were largely thrown away. The change to another system took place about the year 1760, and John Adams was instrumental in bringing it about. He afterwards recounted his experience in the matter. In March, 1761, being then a young lawyer in Braintree, he found himself suddenly chosen surveyor of highways. He was at first very indignant, and remarked that " they might as well have chosen any boy in school;" but after thinking the matter over, he concluded that it was best for him to accept the situation quietly, and at least give the town an energetic administration of the office.

" Accordingly, I went to ploughing and ditching and blowing rocks upon Penn's Hill, and building an entire new bridge of stone below Dr. Miller's and above Mr. Wibird's. The best workmen in town were employed in laying the foundation and placing the bridge, but the next spring brought down a flood that threw my bridge all into ruins. The materials remained, and were afterwards relaid in a more durable manner; and the blame fell upon the workmen, not upon me, for all agreed that I had executed my office with impartiality, diligence, and spirit."

Yet this not unusual outcome of amateur, though official, zeal seems to have set the Braintree road sur- veyor reflecting, for he goes on to say,-

" There had been a controversy in town for many years con- cerning the mode of repairing the roads. A party had long struggled to obtain a vote that the highways should be repaired by a tax, but never had been able to carry their point. The roads were very bad and much neglected, and I thought a tax a more equitable method and more likely to be effectual, and, therefore, joined this party in a public speech, carried a vote by a large majority, and was appointed to prepare a by-law, to be enacted at the next meeting. Upon inquiry I found that Rox- bury and, after them, Weymouth had adopted this course. I procured a copy of their law, and prepared a plan for Braintree, as nearly as possible conformable to their model, reported it to the town, and it was adopted by a great majority. Under this law the roads have been repaired to this day, and the effects of it are visible to every eye."

The closing words of this extract are perhaps the

most suggestive portion of it. Some idea may be formed of what the condition of the roads must have been before 1760, when their condition prior to the year 1820 is confidently spoken of as a vast and indis- putable improvement.

But during the whole colonial period down even to the year 1830, the use the roads were put to in a country town was comparatively light. There was then no internal commerce worthy of the name. There were no lines of regular stages running through Quincy prior to the year 1800, and the pleasure travel over the roads amounted to nothing at all. Journeys were made chiefly on horseback. In the winter-time, when the ground was hard with frost or covered with snow, the clumsy carts and sleds, drawn mainly by oxen, were kept busy bringing loads of cord- wood down from the wood-lots, or carrying corn, potatoes, and other farm produce to market in Bos- ton. Manure was hauled only from the barn-yard to the neighboring field ; lumber and material were carted only when some dwelling or out-building had to be raised. The quarry teaming did not begin until after 1825, and the stage-coach period was wholly of the present century. The first of these coaches which ran from Boston was that to Providence in 1767, making part of the inside line to New York ; and the Massachusetts south-shore towns-Wey- mouth, Hingham, Scituate, and Plymouth-had a packet or, later, a steamboat service until after the railroad was opened. As late as 1823 the stage- coach travel through Quincy was limited to some three trips a week to and from Plymouth and the in- termediate towns. Locally, when the Neponset turn- pike was opened, Col. James Thayer began to run a baggage-wagon, in which he also carried passengers, from Quincy to Boston. Simon Gillett purchased the route in 1823, and shortly after put upon it a regular stage passenger-coach, the "John Hancock" by name. This was an epochal event, and the "John Hancock" made four trips a week, carrying passengers inside and out. It left Quincy betimes in the morn- ing so as to reach Barnard's, in Elm Street, at nine o'clock, from which place it started at four P.M. on its return trip. It was years later that daily trips were made; and, indeed, it was not until 1840 that the stage-coach movement began to tax the capacity of the highways.

During the first hundred and seventy years of the settlement, therefore, the country roads in Braintree, however poorly made or kept in repair, were quite equal to the light work exacted of them. Of what that work was we get glimpses here and there in such records as that of Tutor Flynt's journey to

303

QUINCY.

Portsmouth in 1755, and John Adams' drive with his wife to Salem in 1766 to visit their " dear brother Cranch." There being then no stages at all in the colony, " a single horse and chair without a top was the usual mode of conveyance. A covered chair, called a calash, was very seldom used." In the case of Tutor Flynt, he and his companion, leaving Cambridge after breakfast, " oated" and had "a nip of milk punch" at Lynn, and then towards sunset " reached the dwelling of the Rev. Mr. Jewett, of Rawley, and Mr. Flynt acquainted him he meant to tarry there that night." They reached Ports- mouth the following evening. John Adams, some ten years later, leaving Braintree in the morning, dined in Boston and passed the night at Medford, getting to Salem at noon the following day. The streets of Salem he found " broad and straight and pretty clean." The houses he thought the most elegant and grand he had seen in "any of the in- terior towns." A few years later, while riding the circuit, he described how he

"Overtook Judge Cushing in his old curricle and two lean horses, and Dick, his negro, at his right hand, driving the curricle. This is the way of traveling in 1771,-a judge of the circuits, a judge of the superior court, a judge of the King's bench, common pleas, and exchequer for the Province, travels with a pair of wretched old jades of horses in a wretched old dung-cart of a curricle, and a negro on the same seat with him driving."

An eye-witness gives a not dissimilar description of Dr. Chauncey, pastor of the First Church in Bos- son, as he drove about the town making his parochial visits at a period about fifteen years later. " In a heavy, yellow-bodied chaise, with long shafts, a black boy perched on the horse's tail, the old divine was seated, in his dignified clerical costume, with three- cornered hat, gold cane, and laced wrists, bowing gracefully to citizens as he passed. His grinning young driver in the meanwhile exchanged his com- pliments with young acquaintances of his own color by touching them up with his long whip from his safe perch."

describes how, " because of the Porrige of snow, the Bearers rid to the Grave, alighting a little before they came there. Mourners, Cous. Edward and his Sister rid first; then Mrs. Anna Quincy, widow, be- hind Mr. Allen'; and cousin Ruth Hunt behind her Husband." A few years later, in 1712, Judge Sew- all also describes a journey he made from Plymouth, where he had been holding court, to Boston. It was early in March :

" Rained hard quickly after setting out ; went by Mattakeese Meeting-house, and forded over the North River. My Horse stumbled in the considerable body of water, but I made a shift, by God's Help, to set him, and he recovered and carried me out. Rained very hard, that went into a Barn awhile. Baited at Bairsto's. Dined at Cushing's. Dryed my coat and hat at both places. By that time got to Braintry, the day and I were in a manner spent, and I turned in to Cousin Quinsey. Lodged in the chamber next the Brooke."

When Judge Sewall thus turned in at its gate on that rainy March day, the Quincy house had already been standing for twenty-seven years. It still remains, a noticeable specimen of the best domestic architec- ture of colonial times. Its comparatively broad hall in the centre of the house, the easy, winding staircase with carved balustrade, the low studded, but fairly large, rooms opening to the south and west, the broken line of the floors and ceilings which tell the story of increased size, the little ship-like lockers and other like attempts to economize space while space is everywhere wasted,-all these things bespeak the dwelling-place of gentry. Time has only hardened into something very like iron the solid timbers of hewn oak still bearing upon them the marks of the axe; and one room yet has on its walls the quaint Chinese paper which tradition says was hung there in 1775 in honor of Deborah Quincy's approaching marriage to Hancock.

Nor in the last century was the Edmund Quincy house the only specimen of this order of dwelling in Braintree North Precinct. Col. John Quincy occu- pied another such house at Mount Wollaston, which he had built in 1716, and which stood there, though reduced to baser uses, until the year 1852. Here during his long public life he often entertained parties of ladies and gentlemen who came across the bay to visit him from Boston, and there are traditions of strawberry parties held on the Half-Moon before yet the upland top of that now submerged gravel ridge had been wholly washed away. The Vassall house, sequestered as Tory property after the Revolu- tion and bought by John Adams in 1785, was another of these gentry residences. Built about 1715, as the summer resort of a West India planter, it still

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 64

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