History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 67

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 67

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Such in those days-" good old days"-was the pro- vision made for the insane,-eighteen pence a week for care, or twenty pounds provided bond was given " to clear the town forever of said girl." The poor were treated with consideration not much more ten- der. In old Braintree there was no almshouse until shortly before the division of the town. One was finally built in the Middle Precinct in 1786, and Capt. Jonathan Thayer was chosen its first overseer, being allowed £3 12s. for a year's services as such. Down to that time, therefore, providing for the needs of the poor at their homes had been one of the most important and irksome duties of the selectmen. In Braintree and Quincy, as in all the other Mas- sachusetts towns, these social problems, of which pau- perism was one, were, until a comparatively recent date, disposed of in what is commonly known as the plain, practical, business-like way. Unfortunately the problems were complex ; so the plain, practical way of disposing of them proved not to be the right way. Insanity and pauperism could not be hustled out of sight by a town-meeting vote; nor could they be dis- posed of beyond the current year to those who would undertake the job of dealing with them at the lowest rate. Though excellent for certain purposes, it had adapted to every purpose, and least of all could it work to results through what is now known as a scientific method. As a means for dealing with com- plex social problems it is, therefore, not a success. It can no more do that, than it could make discover- ies in chemistry or astronomy. But poverty, intem- perance, ignorance and vice are found everywhere. The town government is found only in New England ; and it is the object of a work like the present to deal It was also a fruitful source of jobbery. Johu Adams describes how the moment a selectman was elected he was importuned for " the privilege of sup- plying the poor with wood, corn, meat, etc." He then had to visit them ; and, if he found they had a legal residence in another town, return them to it. The amount spent for their care was not large, but it was enormous compared with what was spent for other town purposes. In 1770, for instance, it was £90 in a total town expenditure of £245. This also seems to have been the normal proportion. Nor did it decrease after the division of the town. Quincy | yet to be made plain that the town-meeting was not then adopted the practice of putting the care of its poor up at public auction, to be knocked down to those who would undertake it at the lowest price. In 1813 · this price averaged " $1.42 each per week, exclusive of sickness and funeral charges." In 1806, also, it was voted that " the medical care of the poor be let out by the selectmen to the physician who will under- take that charge at the lowest price." Naturally this method of dealing with pauperism put a premium on

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rather with those institutions which are peculiar to New England than with the problems common to all mankind.

When John Adams was minister of the federated States at the English Court, a certain Maj. Langbourne, of Virginia, one day dined with him, and in the course of their table-talk noticed, rightfully enough, the difference of character between Virginia and New England. John Adams then goes on :

" I offered to give him a receipt for making a New England in Virginia. He desired it; and I recommended to him town- meetings, training-days, town schools and ministers, giving him a short explanation of each article. The meeting-house and school-house and training-field are the scenes where New England men are formed. . The virtues and talents of the people are there formed; their temperance, patience, fortitude, prudence, and justice, as well as their sagacity, knowl- edge, judgment, taste, skill, ingenuity, dexterity, and in- dustry."

In saying this Mr. Adams spoke from actual ob- servation. He, and his ancestors before him, had for a century and a half been a part of that which he described. He thoroughly understood New England. But there was one institution he did not mention, which, for good and ill, was hardly less influential an element in early New England life and action than the most potent of those which he did mention. That omitted institution was the country tavern.

Of the Braintree town-meetings and church-going | that as early as 1709, the church bell being cracked, there is little that needs to be said. They were like other Massachusetts town-meetings and church-goings, and these have been frequently described. During the first twenty years after 1640 formal or stated meetings of all the freemen do not seem to have been held, or, if they were, no record of them was made ; but from time to time a few of the more prominent church members met at the dwelling-place of one of their number and passed certain votes, some of which were recorded in a book. Not until 1673 was pro- vision made for holding general meetings at specified seasons. For over sixty years these were then held in the old stone church, but in 1736 it was voted to hold half of them in the North Precinct and the other half in the Middle Precinct meeting-house. The last- named edifice, therefore, served not only as a town- hall, but for a time at least as a magazine, for in 1746 the selectmen were instructed to build a " Closite on the Beams of the Middle Precinct meeting-house (if it be allowed of) as a suitable place to keep the pow- der." There was nothing sacred about the early New England church building. That the meeting-house and the furniture in it underwent hard treatment at. secular meetings scarcely needs to be said. Not only were those gatherings frequent, but the deliberations

and debates which took place at them were sometimes long and exciting, while among those assembled there was not a little disorder and drunkenness. The Mid- dle Precinct meeting-house stood directly opposite the Eben Thayer tavern, where a sort of open-house was kept on all election and other public days, and in 1766, John Adams records that a certain candidate on the ticket with himself was defeated because "the north end people, his friends, after putting in their votes the first time, withdrew for refreshment." Ac- cordingly, it is small matter of surprise that the record contains formal votes forbidding those attending the meetings from standing on the seats.

The rude and almost stern equality which, as matter of common usage, prevailed at those town- meetings was well illustrated by an incident which occurred in 1758. It was the duty of the annually elected town constable to collect all taxes. The office, therefore, was avoided ; for not only did it en- tail much work, but there was a dangerous liability attached to it. Under the law as it then stood the constable had to account for all taxes included in the levy which he had failed to collect, as well as for those he actually received. Nor without reason, there- fore, was it argued in the town-meeting of 1766 that " collecting taxes had laid the foundation for the ruin of many families." So much was the office avoided one Daniel Legaree offered to mend it " on condition of his being free from being chosen constable ;" and the town formally accepted the offer, providing further that "if anything should happen whereby [the bell] should be melted or broken, that [Legaree] will re- turn the same weight of the same metal that he re- ceives." At the March town-meeting of 1761, John Adams says, " when I had no suspicion, I heard my name pronounced in a nomination of surveyors of high- ways. I was very wroth, because I knew no better, but said nothing. My friend Dr. Savil came to me and told me that he had nominated me to prevent , me from being nominated as constable. 'For,' said the doctor, ' they make it a rule to compel every man to serve either as constable or surveyor, or to pay a fine." This was quite true ; nor could John Adams well have failed to know it. He had probably thought that, as a college graduate and student of law, he would be exempted from the common rule. If he did think so, he should have known better. There were no exemptions allowed; and, indeed, it was one of the rough town-meeting jokes to elect men consta- bles who had never served, and make them pay the fine. For instance, in 1734, Josiah Quincy, then a young man of twenty-five, was elected; and the

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record reads " Mr. Josiah Quincy refused to serve, and paid his fine down, being five pounds." In 1728, Moses Belcher was chosen; and he declaring ron- acceptance, William Fields was next chosen. Fields also declaring his non-acceptance, "John Adams being by a majority of votes chosen, he declared his acceptance." In 1735 no less than twenty-five pounds were paid in as fines for non acceptance, and those fines were looked upon as a considerable source of revenue to the town. Col. John Quincy's only son, Norton, graduated in 1736, and two years later, at the town-meeting of September 11th, he was chosen constable. Another meeting was held a week afterwards. Col. Quincy was then a man of nearly seventy, and for almost fifty years he had been the most prominent personage in the town. He was looked up to with that respect which, in the popular mind, always accompanies advancing years associated with high public office. Apparently the old man thought the choice of his son as town constable an act derogatory to him; so he went into the meeting, and, as the record says, "desired his son might be excused from serving constable." Among those to whom he addressed his request there could not have been many who remembered a time when. he had not, as a matter of course, presided at town- meetings. They were not wanting in deference to years and standing ; and, if they would defer to any one, they would surely defer to him. But, clearly, they thought that Col. Quincy was now demanding for him- self and his an exemption from public service which amounted to little less than a denial of equality. Such an assumption of superiority was inconsistent with the spirit of town government. And so, the record proceeds, "after reasons offered," the re- quest to be excused was " passed in the negative," and the town treasurer was directed " to call on said Norton Quincy for his fine." Apparently the old man felt this slight, as he regarded it, deeply, for his name does not again appear in the town records, though it was nine years yet before he died. But young Norton Quincy accepted the rebuke in the true spirit. He paid his fine; and the next year when the town again chose him constable, he quietly accepted the office and performed its duties. Later he was chosen selectman, serving as such for many years during the Revolutionary period.

Once, when in Amsterdam, John Adams defined the New England man as a " meeting-going animal ;" and again he derived his experience from Braintree, where, as he long subsequently wrote, it was notori- ous that he had himself " been a church-going ani- mal for seventy-six years, from the cradle." In

Braintree the dogs even seem to have gone to church, for in 1730, by a solemn town vote, Mr. Joseph Par- menter, precinct clerk, was paid twenty shillings " for taking pains in beating dogs and keeping them out of the meeting-house on Sabbath days." But the Braintree church-going differed in no wise from the ordinary New England church-going, of which sufficient has been written and said.1 For genera- tions all those dwelling in the town as regularly as the Sabbath day came gathered towards the plain, wooden structure, standing on the training-ground. Until the year 1827 the old horse block, for the conveni- ence of the pillion-riding good-wife, stood close to the main entrance. In the galleries sat the boys. Be- fore the altar were the deacons. And here doubtless in the early days not unfrequently in midwinter was it so cold that " the Sacramental Bread was frozen pretty hard, and rattled sadly as broken into the plates."

A glimpse of the interior of the church on a Sun- day is obtained through the memoirs of the wife of President Quincy. She came to Quincy as a summer home in 1798, living in the house which Col. Josiah Quincy had built in 1770, and which still stands at the end of the long avenue of elms which her hus- band set out in 1790. She was wont to describe the Quincy of 1800 as being still a retired village, in which few changes had taken place since the Revo- lution.

" There were only two churches, both ancient wooden edifi- ces,-the Episcopal and the Congregational. The pews in the centre of the latter, having been made out of long, open seats by successive votes of the town, were of different sizes, and had no regularity of arrangement, and several were entered by narrow passages, winding between those in their neighbor- hood. The seats, being provided with hinges, were raised when the congregation stood during the prayer, and, at its con- clusion, thrown down with a momentum which, on her first at- tendance, alarmed Mrs. Quincy, who feared the church was falling. The deacons were ranged under the pulpit, and beside its door the sexton was seated, while, from an aperture aloft in the wall, the bell-ringer looked in from the tower to mark the arrival of the clergyman. The voices of the choir in the front gallery were assisted by a discordant assemblage of stringed and wind instruments. In 1806, when the increased population of the town required a larger edifice, the meeting-house was divided into two parts ; the pulpit, and the pews in its vicinity, were moved to a convenient distance, and a new piece was inserted between the fragments."

In mentioning the muster-field among the great formative influences of New England, it may well be questioned whether John Adams did not give to it an undue importance. Certainly there are in the

I See Mr. Young's description in the volume of " Commemo- rative Services of the First Parish in Hingham," Aug. 8, 1881.

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Braintree records few traces of it as an active edu- cational force. Whatever else they were, the New Englanders were not a military race. On the ocean they were at home, and the hardy mariners who, as Burke expressed it, pursued their gigantic game " among the tumbling mountains of ice," and " drew

Keayne in 1636, and which he had " cried divers times, and divers came to see it, but none made claim to it." Mrs. Sherman then appeared on the scene, and the quarrel ensued which by degrees en- listed the sympathies of the whole community on one side and the other, resulting finally in the separation the line and struck the harpoon on the coast of | of the Massachuseets Legislature into two bodies, and Africa,"-these same men, skillful, alert, and venturesome upon their element, have never failed to assert a brilliant supremacy in maritime warfare. But, though repeatedly in the course of its history engaged in conflicts the brunt of which was sturdily assumed, New England proper has never yet pro- duced any considerable military genius. Church and Peperill, Putnam, Allen, Knox, Stark and Lincoln are names of only local note, while during the war of the Rebellion the great leaders from the New England stock were born and bred far in the interior of the continent. Not one New England soldier achieved renown.

As a people they do not take kindly to camp life. When forced to it, they have always fought in a dogged, intelligent sort of way, just as they fought at Lexington and Bunker Hill ; impelled, as it were, by a consciousness that the situation was one of their own making, and they proposed to see the thing through. But to disband a New England army has never proved a difficult or delicate task. Once the work in hand was done, the camp quietly and joyously dis- solved of itself. An army of Yankee mercenaries sounds like a contradiction in terms. Accordingly, though the Suffolk regiment existed as a military or- ganization through a century of colonial life, and the Braintree companies were always a part of it, there is no reason to suppose that it was ever an effective force. Commissions in it were eagerly sought, and were intrigued for, and the titles of captain, lieuten- ant, and ensign are continually met with in the records ; but, except in time of military excitement, the training-days were few and far apart, and partook apparently more of the character of a rough country jollification than of war. Certainly, when Washing- ton took command of the provincial army at Cam- bridge, neither its discipline nor its equipment be- spoke a martial race. It was little more than a mob of intelligent men, organized by localities, and, as sportsmen, accustomed from youth up to the handling of guns.

the introduction of the Senate as a feature in Ameri- can polity. Capt. Keayne was presently succeeded in the command of the Braintree company by William Tyng, the Boston merchant who bought Mount Wol- laston of Coddington. Capt. Tyng represented Brain- tree in the General Court, and died in 1654 the richest man in the province. To him succeeded Capt. Richard Brackett, who was deacon and town clerk as well, hold- ing his military commission until he reached the ripe age of seventy-three. He resigned in 1684; and to trace his successors thereafter is matter of hardly local interest, even though shortly after 1700 the town had so increased that it had two companies, one containing seventy-two families and the other seventy- one, " both enumerated by exact computation."

The training-field may have been overestimated as a factor in the making of New England, but to over- estimate the influence of the school in that making would be difficult. It stands next below the church in the earlier period, and above it in the more recent. Prior to 1830 it was below it. There are entries in the Braintree records which indicate that a public Latin school was established in the town at a very early period, though the exact date cannot be ascer- tained. It was probably designed to prepare youths for college in the days when any might be admitted who were " able to read Tully, or such like classical author, extempore and decline perfectly the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue." Yet this Latin school could hardly have been a public school in the modern sense of the term, and was prob- ably only Teacher Flynt's side of his wife Margery's institution for "instructing young gentlewomen." If this was so, he in it fitted for Harvard not only his own son Henry, but also Benjamin Tompson, the son of his colleague, afterwards the first regular school- master of the town. The school-house, which must have been a structure of the humblest possible description, stood at the side of the main street and almost under the caves of the church. Nor does it seem to have been built until the year 1680, so that for forty years prior to that time all the teaching the children got must have been at home, or in the house where the temporary teacher lodged. At last, in 1679, the town agreed with Benjamin Tompson that

The first commander of the Braintree company was Capt. Robert Keayne, whose name is more fa- miliarly connected with a great litigation carried on be- tween him and " one Sherman's wife," springing out of a quarrel over " a stray sow," which was brought to | he should be schoolmaster, receiving for his services

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"the rent of the town's land, made up to thirty " on the training-field" and opposite the church, the cost of which was estimated at ninety pounds. The school-room was twenty-eight feet long by twenty pounds." Tompson had graduated at Harvard eight years before, and was seeking to make his way as a physician. That calling afforded him a scanty sup- ' wide. In 1815 this building was burned, and in port, and so he eked out a living by teaching. Yet | 1817 another was constructed, to serve both as town- even this school was not wholly free, for part of the agreement between the town and Tompson was that every child should carry in to him half a cord of wood, besides the quarter money, every year. From a subsequent vote, in 1700, it would seem that this " quarter money" was a shilling, which was accounted for by the schoolmaster to the selectmen as part of his salary. In 1701 the fee for tuition was fixed at " five shillings a year, and proportionably for any part of it." Again, in 1715, it was voted that each parent, master, or guardian of a school child should, on that child's next appearance at school, deliver to the mas- ter three feet of wood for the use of the school.

hall and school-house, which cost a little over $2000, and measured fifty-five feet by thirty. Up to 1800 all children whose parents desired them to be taught had to find their own way to the centre. In a town the size of Quincy their so doing implied a daily walk measured in many cases by miles. For the smaller children this was generally found to be too severe, and provision was made for local or " dame" schools, for which specific sums varying from $4 to $40 were annu- ally appropriated. Yet in the year 1820 the whole amount voted for the support of the centre school, " in- cluding ink and fuel," as well as the pay of both a male and a female teacher, was but $692. It is now, there- But in 1715, Mr. Tompson had ceased from teach- ing. He died at Roxbury in 1714, leaving " behind | reported the school-room so crowded that the scholars, him an uneasy world, eight children, and twenty- eight grandchildren ;" and on his tombstone he is referred to as " ye Renowned Poet of N. Engl." In Braintree he had served as town clerk, as well as physician and school-teacher; and, after being en- | gaged with it in a long controversy, which in 1700 he compromised on payment of five pounds, he seems to fore, small matter for surprise that a committee then 204 in number, " were obliged to wait one for the other for seats, notwithstanding the master gave up his desk, and used every other means in his power to accom- modate them." Still the town had not yet reached the stage of differentiation. With the innate conser- vatism of a community accustomed to majority gov- ernment, it clung to the primitive customs ; and the have moved away about 1710. The building in | committee went on to submit a plan for certain altera- which he taught is said to have measured some | tions, at an estimated cost of $200, by which 250 twenty feet by sixteen, and that which elsewhere re- placed it in 1715 was of the same dimensions. The old school-house was then sold "for three pounds paid into the treasury." The new building sufficed for the needs of the North Precinct until as late as 1763.

The history of the Braintree schools, no less than that of the church, shows in a striking way how the chrysalis stage of development lasted to the year 1830. During all that long period the same identical system was pursued, the difference being only in degree. The precinct grew and became a town, and the town increased in population ; but not until 1830 was the strain from within sufficiently strong to rend the in- tegument. About the year 1720 the practice of ex- acting payment for each child taught was abandoned, and the whole expense became a charge on the town. The master was then paid thirty-four pounds a year, |

scholars were to be brought together in one room and under one master, "with an assistant when necessary." Then in 1825 the master was censured for not attend- ing more faithfully to his duties ; whereupon he replied that he was not paid enough ($450 per annum) to sup- port him, but if the town would increase his salary to $500 he would devote all his time to the school. This increased the appropriation to $745, leaving 8245 with which to pay the female assistant and defray all other school charges. At last, in 1829, the condition of af- fairs had become intolerable, and provision was made for the district system. The chrysalis stage was over.

Of the old town school of Braintree, and the system of instruction pursued in it, it is needless to speak at length. Both have often been described. They were wholly primitive. No print, or black-board, or map, and the town was noted for the excellence of its | or motto adorned the grimy, blackened walls within school in which boys were fitted for Harvard, no the narrow limits of which were crowded scores of children of both sexes and of every age. They sat in twos and threes on benches behind rude rows of desks cut and hacked and mutilated by the jackknives of successive generations. The larger scholars, among less than forty-seven having gone there from the First Precinct before the year 1740. In 1792 this school certainly had not improved on its earlier record, and the sum of seventy-five pounds was appropriated for its support. In 1793 a new school-house was built | whom were full-grown young men and women, sat at

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the rear, the sexes on opposite sides, while the smallest of the little children occupied low benches close to the teacher's chair. Great logs of wood blazed in the fire- place, or later in stoves one of which was at each end of the room, and before these they read and ciphered and wrote. The period was one neither of refinement or sentiment, and both at home and in the school the rod was freely used. The children were neither taught much nor were they well taught; for through life the mass of them could never read with real ease and rapidity, nor could they write a legible hand. But, after a fashion, they could read and they could write, and for those days that was much. In itself the standard was not high, but it was the highest of its time. It is well in matters of teaching as in other things to talk of the good old times, and of the thor- oughness of its simple methods ; but examination only serves to make those living in the present thankful that the times have changed. Brutality, ignorance, and coarseness have not yet vanished from the world, nor are they soon likely to vanish from it: but it is safe to say that if the Braintree village school of 1790 should for a single fortnight be brought back to the Quincy of 1880, parents would in horror and astonish- ment keep their children at home until a town-meet- ing, called at the shortest possible legal notice, had been held; and this meeting would probably culmi- nate in a riot, in the course of which school-houses as well as school would be summarily abated as a dis- grace and a nuisance.

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 67

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