History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 66

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 66

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Recurring to the other seventeenth-century branch of the family, Daniel Quincy, the son of the second Edmund and father of John, on the 9th of Novem- ber, 1682, married Anna Shepard, the granddaughter of the Rev. Thomas Shepard, of Cambridge. The following quaint and striking account of her wedding is contained in the pages of Sewall :

"Cousin Daniel Quinsey Marries Mrs. Anna Shepard Before John Hull, esq. Sam'l Nowell, esq. and many Persons present, almost Captain Brattle's great Hall full; Captain B. and Mrs. Brattle there for two. Mr. Willard began with prayer. Mr. Thomas Shepard concluded ; as he was Praying, Cousin Savage, Mother Hull, wife and self came in. A good space after, when had eaten Cake and drunk Wine and Beer plentifully, we were called into the Hall again to Sing. In Singing Time Mrs. Brattle goes out, being ill; Most of the Company goe away, thinking it a qualm or some Fit; But she grows worse, speaks not a word, and so dyes away in her chair, I holding her feet (for she had slipt down). At length out of the Kitching we carry the chair, and Her in it, into the Wedding Hall; and after a while lay the Corps of the dead Aunt in the Bride-Bed : So that now the strangeness and horror of the thing filled the (just now) joyous House with Ejulation : The Bridegroom and Bride lye at Mr. Airs, son-in-law to the deceased, going away | like Persons put to flight in Battel."

There were two children born of this marriage, a daughter, Ann, in 1685, and a son, John, in 1689. The year following Daniel Quincy died. He seems always to have lived in Boston, where he followed the trade of goldsmith, and in Boston his son was born ; but circumstances seemed to draw the Quincys to- Massachusetts he gradually disposed of his property there, and in 1639 the greater part of his allotment at Mount Wollaston passed into the hands of William Tyng, a Boston merchant. Thomas Shepard had married a daughter of this William Tyng, and the farm at Mount Wollaston, in 1661, passed by inheritance into Mrs. Shepard's hands. In 1677, five years be- fore Anna Shepard married Daniel Quincy, her father, Thomas Shepard, had died, but her mother, William Tyng's daughter and the owner of Mount Wollaston,

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lived until August, 1709. Mrs. Daniel Quincy, it has already been seen, married the Rev. Moses Fiske in 1701, and died in July, 1708 ; accordingly, Mrs. Shep- ard surviving her daughter, left the farm at Mount Wollaston to her grandson, John Quincy, who had graduated from Harvard College one year before.

Coming into possession of the property at this early age, young John Quincy, in 1715, married Elizabeth Norton, daughter of the Rev. John Norton, third pas- tor of the Hingham Church, and on Tuesday, Octo- ber 4th, of that year, Judge Sewall records that he gave him " a Psalm-book covered with Turky-Leather for his Mistress." It was at this time that he built his house at Mount Wollaston, and went to Braintree to live, being then major of the Suffolk regiment. Two years later, in 1717, he was first sent to represent the town in the General Court, and he continued to represent it at intervals through forty years, his last term of service being in 1757. From 1719 to 1741 his service was consecutive, and from 1729 to 1739 he was Speaker of the House. Paul Dudley was then chosen to the place, but Governor Shirley nega- tived him, and John Quincy was rechosen. In 1742 he became a member of the Council, and again in 1746, continuing in it until 1754. He then became again a delegate for three years. He was now sixty- eight years old, and seems to have retired from active life to pass the remainder of his days at Mount Wol- laston. We there get a glimpse of him through the memoranda of John Adams, who, on Christmas- day, 1765, says he " drank tea at grandfather Quincy's. The old gentleman inquisitive about the hearing be- fore the Governor and Council ; about the Governor's and Secretary's looks and behavior, and about the final determination of the Board. The old lady as merry and chatty as ever, with her stories out of the newspapers." The hearing here referred to which excited the 'old councilor's interest was that before Governor Barnard on the memorial of the town of Boston, at the time of the Stamp Act riots, that the courts of law should be opened. .

For a number of years John Quincy was colonel of the Suffolk regiment, but in 1742 he lost that posi- tion through the intrigues of Joseph Gooch. John Adams has left a lively description of this affair, in which at the time he felt a boy's keen interest; for his own father was in the regiment, and was offered a captain's commission by Gooch,-an offer which " he spurned with disdain ; would serve in the militia under no colonel but Quincy." Early appointed a magis- trate, for years and years the name of John Quincy -or Col. John Quincy, Esq., as the form of those days went-appears in the Braintree records as moderator

of every town-meeting. In the parish also he was the leading man. Not only, after the usage of the period, was he noted for " a strict observance of the Lord's day, and a constant attendance upon the public ordinances of religion," but he presided at the parish meetings, and it was he who served as chairman of the committee which in 1753 investi- gated the charges against Mr. Briant. John Adams describes him as " a man of letters, taste, and sense," as well as " an experienced and venerated statesman ;" but it is a curious fact of one so prominent that not a letter or paper of his, or even a book known to have belonged to him, now remains in the posses- sion of his descendants. After his death and through a period of forty years his estate, and everything be- longing to him, fell into complete neglect. Yet if, as chairman of the committee, John Quincy wrote the report on the charges against Mr. Briant, that docu- ment alone, in its pure, simple language and broad, liberal tone, is evidence enough that John Adams' tribute to him was not undeserved. One passage in it may serve as a sample of the whole, for it breathes the true spirit which inspires every large-minded searcher for truth ; and it was a large-minded man who wrote it. Referring to the charge that Mr. Briant had at his ordination made a profession of faith, the committee in its report denies the fact ; but then does not fear to add that, even " if he had made any such profession, it could not destroy his right of private judgment, nor be obligatory upon him any further than it continued to appear to him agreeable to reason and Scripture." And, again, it had been charged that Mr. Briant had recommended a certain book doc- trinally unsound " to the prayerful perusal of one or more of his parishioners." The committee replied that his so doing " was worthy a Protestant minister ; and we cannot but commend our pastor for the pains he takes to promote a free and impartial examination into all articles of our holy religion, so that all may judge, even of themselves, what is right." A country parish in which such sentiments as these were offi- cially set forth in the year 1753 was well advanced on the path which led to revolution, both political and religious.

Among those of his own day John Quincy " was as much esteemed and respected as any man in the province." Enjoying what was then looked upon as an ample fortune, " he devoted his time, his faculties, and his influence to the service of his country," studiously avoiding " an ensnaring dependency on any man, and whatever should tend to lay him under any disadvantage in the discharge of his duty." He filled almost every public office to which a native-born

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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

New Englander could in the colonial days aspire. Colonel in the militia, Speaker of the House, member of the Council, he also negotiated Indian treaties, and in 1727 the remnant of the Punkapog tribe, abused and defrauded, petitioned that he might be appointed their guardian. For nearly twenty years he held this trust, then resigning it "by reason of his dis- tance" from his wards. Finally, in all positions he approved himself "a true friend to the interest and prosperity of the province ; a zealous advocate for and vigorous defender of its liberties and privileges."

This detailed sketch of John Quincy is a necessary feature in the history of Old Braintree. He was a typical man. He represented, perhaps more com- pletely than any other member even of the remark- able family to which he belonged, a political and social element in New England life which has since disappeared. He belonged to the class which in England produced John Hampden,-the educated country gentlemen, the owners of the broad acres on which they dwelt. Following no profession, but going up to Parliament year after year, they were the loyal, ingrained representatives of the communi- ties of which they were a part. Of these men Washington was a Virginia offshoot. He represented them in their highest phase of development under Southern surroundings,-plain, true, straightforward, self-respecting, gifted with that perfectly balanced common-sense which in its way is one sort of genius. Favorable circumstances, always availed of, brought Washington to the front, and have made of him an American immortality. Yet in America at that time, as in the Stoke-Pogis churchyard, there were doubt- | line of virtuous, independent New England farmers less many men who contained within themselves the possibilities of a Hampden, a Milton, or a Cromwell. That John Quincy did, cannot be asserted ; for of him now nothing remains except a name and a few dates. His grave, even, is not marked, nor its place known. But he none the less was a good specimen of the sturdy, common-sensed, high-toned class of English gentlemen in the shape New England reproduced them in colonial days. What under other circum- stances he might have proved, it would be idle to surmise. Born and dying a colonist in a small pro- vincial community thickly crusted over with theology, and in freedom of thought and fancy hardly re- | the fee it was which gave him his individuality. He moved from the childish stage, he and those of his time had scant room for development. The stage was small; and its atmosphere was icy.

Yet in one respect John Quincy was singularly fortunate. Though not a line of his writing remains, though his public services are forgotten, though his grave is unknown and his only son died childless,

yet his name survives. When, in 1792, the orig- inal town of Braintree was subdivided, the Rev. Anthony Wibird " was requested to give a name to the place. But he refusing, a similar request was made to the Hon. Richard Cranch, who recommended its being called Quincy, in honor of Col. John Quincy." Nor was this the only form in which the name was perpetuated. Col. Quincy had two children, a son named Norton in honor of his mother's family, and a daughter, who became in time the wife of William Smith, of Weymouth. Among the children of this couple was one who, in October, 1764, married John | Adams. In July, 1767, as old John Quincy lay dying at Mount Wollaston, this granddaughter of his gave birth to a son, and when, the next day, as was then the practice, the child was baptized, its grand- mother, who was present at its birth, requested that it might be called after her father. Long afterwards the child thus named wrote of this incident : "It was filial tenderness that gave the name. It was the name of one passing from earth to immortality. These have been among the strongest links of my attachment to the name of Quincy, and have been to me through life a perpetual admonition to do nothing unworthy of it."

In the year 1791, Miss Hannah Adams, the his- torian, in writing to John Adams, made reference to the " humble obscurity" of their common origin. Her correspondent, in reply, while acknowledging the kinship, went on to energetically remark that, could he " ever suppose that family pride were any way excusable, [he] should think a descent from a for a hundred and sixty years was a better founda- tion for it than a descent through royal or noble scoundrels ever since the flood." The " virtuous, independent New England farmers" here described were to the full as important a social and political element in colonial days as the gentry. They repre- sented the free yeomanry of England under the new conditions, just as the gentry represented the land- holders. But it has already been noticed that the New England farmer, as a rule, did not pay rent. He was the owner of the land on which he lived and a freeholder,-the equal of any one. This holding of ceased to be the cultivator of another's ground, and himself had a stake in the country. Accordingly, he became an influence second to none other in the shaping of New England development. His in- fluence, too, was immensely conservative. Not quick of thought, he was the reverse of receptive of new ideas ; and, when money entered into the question, he

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was mean. Accustomed in his struggle for subsist- ence to extort everything he got from a niggard soil, he watched public expenditure with a cold, saving eye, and in town-meeting could be safely counted upon to raise his voice against anything which was likely to impose a burden on his farm. Subsequent history showed this clearly. Questions of taxation appealed to him at once, and a freedom from all im- posts not voted by himself most nearly embodied his idea of independence. In the sphere of his narrow village life, far removed from great cities, he saw around him but two classes of men to whom he in any way looked up; these were the clergy and the gentry, the minister and the squire. So far as means and mode of life were concerned, these were not very different from himself; they, as well as he, led simple lives. All mingled in the streets, at church and in town-meeting, with an equality which was not the less mutually respectful because it was real. In the gentry and clergy, therefore, the farmer saw nothing to which he might not aspire for his own child. There was no privileged class, no suggestion of caste, or rank, or nobility. If the small farmer chose by dint of severe economy to send his son to college, that son would be a minister and might marry into the gentry. Accordingly, the farmer was very apt to send one son at least to college.

As Edmund and John Quincy were in Braintree typical of the gentry, so Deacons Samuel Bass and John Adams were typical of the farmer class. Through the whole colonial period the deacon was held in high respect; on the Sabbath he sat on his own bench before the pulpit, and on the week-day he and the magistrate and the officers of the militia were the titled men of the village. Speaking of a kinsman of his, Oxenbridge Thacher used to say, " Old Col. Thacher, of Barnstable, was an excellent man; he was a very holy man ; I used to love to hear him pray ; he was a counselor and a deacon. I have heard him say that of all his titles, that of a deacon he thought the most honorable." Braintree's first deacon, Samuel Bass, has already been referred to as the progenitor of a numerous offspring, for at the | time of his death he had seen one hundred and sixty-two descendants. Born in 1601, he came over to New England in 1632, and first settled at Roxbury ; from whence, in 1640, he re- moved to Braintree, there purchasing lands which for over two centuries remained in the hands of his descendants. He was received into the com- munion of the church in July, 1640, and chosen dea- con, which office he held until his death, in 1694. A | years that his military life came to an end as the result small two-handled cup of plain silver in the commu-

nion service of the first church yet bears his name and title inscribed upon it as one of its givers. Active also in civil life, Deacon Bass represented the town in no less than twelve General Courts between 1641 and 1664. In 1645 he was on the committee to see that the town-marsh should " be improved to the Elders' use," and for several years he was one of three, empowered by the court to "end small cases in Braintree under twenty shillings." In 1653 he re- ceived fifteen votes out of a total of forty-one for the position of ruling elder in the church, and two years later he was one of the commission appointed by the General Court to build a cart-bridge over the Ne- ponset. Thus-

" His virtues walk'd their narrow round, Nor made a pause, nor left a void ; And sure the eternal Master found His single talent well employ'd."

In 1657 a son of Deacon Bass, John by name, married Ruth Alden, the daughter of John and Pris- cilla Alden, of Plymouth and " Mayflower" fame. By her he had a daughter, Hannah, born in June, 1667. This Hannah Bass presently married Joseph Adams, of Braintree, and on the 8th of February, 1692, she gave birth to John Adams, afterwards in his turn deacon of the First Precinct church. This John Adams, therefore, was the great-grandson of the original Deacon Bass, and one of the hundred and sixty-two descendants born to him before his death. John Adams was in his turn a typical New England yeoman. He lived, on his farm, through which ran the main street of the town, dying in 1761, " beloved, esteemed, and revered by all who knew him," having had seven children, the eldest of whom, also named John, he had sent to college. The life of the elder John Adams well illustrates what has been called " the sturdy, unostentatious demeanor of those who filled the minor places of usefulness" in early New England. For nearly forty years his name regularly appears in the records of the town. He passed through all its grades of office ; for in 1722, he being then by occupation a " cordwainer," or maker of shoes, was chosen " sealer of leather." In 1724 he was tythingman, and in 1727 constable, or collector of taxes. In 1734 he was an ensign in the militia, and also selectman ; and a little later, having become lieutenant, he volunteered to take care of the town powder, providing a chest for it in his own house, which he thus converted into a magazine. Between 1740 and 1749, being still Lieut. Adams, he is nine times selectman. It was in one of the earlier of these of Joseph Gooch's intrigues to supersede Col. John

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Quincy. Lieut. John Adams, it will be remembered, "Five pounds for John Belcher's widow's mainten- refused " with disdain" the offer of a captaincy from Gooch. But in May, 1747, he had taken his place among the deacons on the bench before the pulpit, and in 1752 he reappears in the records among the selectmen as Deacon John Adams, and is chosen through four successive years, and again in 1758; fourteen years in all, did he fill the office, " almost all the business of the town being managed by him." He was now in his sixty-seventh year, and his name appears but once more in the records, and 1 then only in connection with a way through his land. Three years later he died in a season of epidemic. Long after, in referring to him, his son wrote that he could not adequately express the exalted opinions he had " of his wisdom and virtue," and that he was " a man of strict piety and great integrity ; much esteemed and beloved wherever he was known, which was not far, his sphere of life being not extensive."

While the individuals whose lives have been sketched represented the gentry and yeomanry of the province, it must not be supposed that those classes made up the whole of that community. This was not the case. They were its distinctive types only. The body of that community, like those of all commu- nities, was composed of laboring people; and, while in Braintree the richest were poor, there is ample evi- dence that the poorest did not live in abundance. On the contrary, besides the ordinary laborer who simply made his living, there was a curious pauper class, traces of which appear all through the records, who lived in hovels on the waste land, picking up a living in un- known ways. They were the vicious, the shiftless, and the intemperate. Left to take care of themselves, the law of the survival of the fittest worked upon them slowly, perhaps, but in that rugged climate it worked with certainty. They died out. When Quincy was set off, in 1792, one of the first things the select- men did was to warn fourteen adults, seven of whom had families, to " depart the limits of the town." Throughout the records of the whole colonial period, down even to the year 1830, the heavy proportion which the expense of maintaining the poor bears to all other public charges is most noticeable. It was far heavier than it now is, and it showed a continual tendency to disproportionate growth. And yet the charity of those days was cold. Indeed, anything colder could not well be conceived. It acknowledged in the poor and the unfortunate a right to live ; and that was all. On this point the record is instructive.

ance; thirty shillings to Thomas Revell for keeping William Dimblebee." But the unfortunate Dimble- bee had already gone to his rest, and this payment was for service performed, as a little further on seven | shillings is appropriated " for Dimblebee's coffin." Before this entry of 1694 there is one other which throws a gleam of ghastly light on a subject which of late years has been somewhat discussed. It has been the fashion to assert that for certain reasons, traceable to local peculiarities of life or thought, insanity is in New England on the increase, and the census tables have been confidently appealed to in support of this theory. Those advocating the theory have seemed to forget that social statistics are of recent invention, and that the charitable systems of some communities are more perfect than those of others. To compare the showing as respects insanity of a community which now carefully gathers the demented together, and ten- derly cares for them in hospitals, with the showing of that same community before its demented were cared for at all, is sufficiently absurd : yet even this is far less absurd than it is to compare the record of such a com- munity with that of some other community which still leaves its insane tied in atties and cellars, or wandering in the streets ; and then to argue that the first commu- nity, because it cares for the insane and numbers them, is afflicted with an epidemic of insanity from which the last community, because it neither cares for or numbers them, is exempt. It is a mistake to suppose that our age has been fruitful of new social or physical evils. There is a world of truth in Macaulay's remark, when treating of these questions, that the social and physical ills which so shock us now are, with scarcely an exception, old ; " that which is new is the intelli- gence which discerns and the humanity which reme- dies them."

Here is the first record relating to the treatment of the insane poor of Braintree town, under date of 1689 :

" It was voted that Samuel Speer should build a little house, seven foot long and five foot wide, and set it by his house to se- cure his sisters, good wife Witty being distracted, and provide for her, and the town by vote agreed to see him well payed and satisfied which shall be thought reasonable."

The wretched maniac was chained like a dog in a kennel which stood by her brother's house. Then again in 1699, in language hardly less significant of cold, merciless brutality, it was

" Voted, That John Bagley, of Roxbury, should have four pounds for keeping Abigail Neal, Providing he give the Town no further trouble."

It opens with the town-meeting of Dec. 24, 1694, when the earliest specific appropriation ever recorded | Poor Abigail Neal was not in this way to be gotten in Braintree was made. The first item of it reads ! rid of; and the next year Dr. Bayley had to be voted

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eight pounds more, accompanied again with the con- dition that he should " take up therewith and give the Town no Farther Trouble." The year following Abigail cost the town thirty-eight shillings; and at last, in 1707, it was bargained with one "Samuel Bullard, of Dedham or Dorchester," that he should take the unfortunate creature and keep her for eighteen pence a week ; and if he cured her he should have ten pounds, but if he failed to cure her, only twenty shillings. The records contain no further trace of Abigail Neal. But at the same time " Eben- ezer Owen's destracted daughter" had to be cared for, and the selectmen accordingly in 1699 are in- structed to treat with Josiah Owen " and give him Twenty pounds money provided he gives bond under his hand to cleare the Town forever of said girle." Mary Owen was no more to be so disposed of than Abigail Neal, and in 1706 forty shillings a year was voted Josiah Owen for her care.

its increase. Accordingly, during the six years be- tween 1808 and 1813, both inclusive, out of $18,200 levied by taxation to meet necessary town and parish expenses, $6205, or more than one-third of the whole, went to the support of the poor. They cost more than the church or the schools. The mat- ter was then vigorously taken hold of, and reformed. Nevertheless, the evidence all points to the conclusion that, in proportion to the total of all expenses, the cost of maintaining the poor prior to 1820 was several times what it now is in any well-regulated town. In Quincy it amounted to nearly one-half of the town expenses, those of the parish being deducted. It now amounts to less than one-tenth. Undoubtedly carelessness and want of system in extending relief had much to do with this excess ; but, making all due allowance for this, it is difficult to avoid the inference that there is proportionally much less extreme pov- erty in the modern than there was in the colonial New England town. Pauperism has distinctly de- creased. This is not generally supposed to have been the case ; should it prove to be so, a partial explana- tion, at least, of the fact will probably be found in the more temperate habits of the people. This subject will have presently to be considered by itself. Mean- while it is only necessary here to say that if rum, gin, and cider were now sold as publicly and used as freely in Quincy as they were there sold and used sixty years ago, the increase of pauperism and vice could doubt- less be studied clearly enough in the tax-rate and the returns of the almshouse.

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 66

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