History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 71

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

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Bass" once, "withdrew for refreshment," and during their absence in the bar of Ebenezer Thayer's tavern, just across the road, another vote was taken and their candidate defeated. A fortnight later, on the 18th of March, the newly chosen selectman met Major Miller, who, though a Tory then and afterwards, was a worthy man and useful member of his church and town. The successful candidate gave this account of the inter- view :

" Went to Weymouth; ... on my return stopped at Mr. Jo. Bass's for the papers. [This was the tavern at the centre of the North Precinct.] Major Miller soon afterwards came in, and he and I looked on each other without wrath or shame or guilt, at least without any great degree of either, though I must own I did not feel exactly as I used to in his company, and I am sure by his face and eyes that he did not in mine. We were very social, etc."

Six weeks later Mr. Adams wrote :

" May 4. Sunday. Returning from meeting this morning, I saw for the first time a likely young buttonwood tree, lately planted on the triangle made by the three roads, by the house of Mr. James Bracket. The tree is well set, well guarded, and has on it an inscription, 'The Tree of Liberty, and cursed is he who cuts this tree " . . . I never heard a hint of it till I saw it, but I hear that some persons grumble, and threaten to girdle it." 1

On the 16th of May, 1766, news of the repeal of the Stamp Act reached Boston and was the cause of general rejoicing. For some reason the event was not noticed in Braintree, which John Adams pro- nounced " insensible to the common joy," declaring that a duller day he did not remember to have passed. Yet there was a town-meeting held, and Ebenezer Thayer was chosen representative. Two more town- meetings were held that year, at each of which the question of granting compensation from the treasury of the province to the sufferers by the August riots of 1765 in Boston came up for discussion. Like many other towns, Weymouth for instance, Braintree at first instructed its representative to vote against the proposed indemnity. The inhabitants desired " at all times to bear their testimony against such unlaw- ful and abusive practices, but as they were in no wise accessory to the mischief committed they did not judge that they could be justly charged with the damages." At another meeting, held in December, Mr. Thayer was instructed to vote for indemnity. The

1 Apparently this tree was planted in a vacant grass-plot which then stood where the roads united diagonally opposite to where the Episcopal Church now is. Dr. Pattee (p. 378) says that it died a natural death eight years later.

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record of this meeting would also seem to indicate that the new method of repairing the ways by tax had not yet worked a full measure of reform; for the town petitioned to be relieved from a fine of ten pounds imposed upon it by the Superior Court " for not keeping their roads in repair."

In the following March, Norton Quincy and John Adams were again elected selectmen, and Major Miller appears at the head of the fence-viewers and surveyors of highways ; but the next year John Adams, who was then in active law practice in Boston, asked to be excused from further service. Not only did the town excuse him, but it passed a formal vote thank- ing him " for his services as selectman for two years past." There is no other case of such a vote of thanks, and the occasion for it does not appear. Mr. Adams may have declined to receive pay for his services, but if he did, the fact was not stated. Though fast rising into professional eminence, he was at the time a man of only thirty, and there seems no reason why a town which for generations had seen colonels and judges and counselors serving it as selectmen should have been especially grateful to the son of Deacon Adams because he filled for a brief period the office to which his father had been thirteen times elected. It would seem probable, therefore, that, for reasons which do not now appear, his ser- vices were known to have been of peculiar value.

After the repeal of the Stamp Act there was a lull in the agitation. Yet the troubled waters did not grow wholly calm before, in 1767, Parliament passed the Import Act. The popular alarm over that measure is next reflected in the record of town-meet- ings. The warrant, for instance, for that in Braintree at which John Adams declined re-election as selectman, contained an article for the town to agree upon " some effectual Method to promote Economy, Industry, and Manufactures, thereby to prevent the unnecessary im- portation of European commodities, which threaten the country with poverty and Ruin." This article of the warrant was referred to a committee which reported at once that, in view of the decay of trade, the scarcity of money, and the heavy public debt, the town should use its utmost endeavors towards the suppression of extravagance, idleness and vice, and to promote indus- try, economy and good morals.

"And in order to prevent the unnecessary exportation of money, of which this Province has of late been so much drained, it is further voted, that this Town will, by all prudent means, discontinue the use of foreign Superfluities, and encour- age the Manufactures of this Province, and particularly of this Town."

This was in March, 1768, and a few months later the rumor crept abroad that regiments of British sol-

| diers were to be brought from Halifax and Ireland to overawe, the Massachusetts Colony. Boston again took the lead in agitation, and a formal committee from its town-meeting waited on Governor Barnard, asking, in view of the well-authenticated character of the rumor, that the General Court should be called to- gether. It was not supposed that this request would be complied with ; but the refusal to comply with it gave the popular leaders a pretext for taking the next step to which they now saw their way. The town of Boston by circular letters invited all the other towns to choose delegates to a convention. As Hutchinson said, this act " had a greater tendency towards a revo- lution in government than any preceding measure in any of the colonies. The inhabitants of one town alone took upon them to convene an assembly from all the towns, that, in everything but in name, would be a house of representatives." This was the exact state of the case. The appeal was direct to the New England town system. In that system, acting through town-meetings called in a perfectly legal way, the popular leaders saw the material for perfect political organization. The units being of one mind, the way was open to a reorganization of the whole. The slow growth of a hundred and thirty years was now to produce its results. Without having recourse to any suddenly improvised political machinery, with no noise or confusion, but acting quietly through their accus- tomed local organizations, the people of Massachu- setts were in the most natural manner conceivable about to take the management of their affairs into their own hands.

In this work Braintree only did its share. John Adams had removed to Boston, and was now busy with his law books. Yet both this year and the year after he drew up the Boston instructions to its representatives. When the Braintree town-meeting was held, on the 26th of September, Col. Josiah Quincy and Ebenezer Thayer were chosen to repre- sent the town in the proposed convention. A-letter of instructions to them was at the same meeting read and approved and ordered to be spread on the rec- ords, two pages of which are covered by it.

These instructions-and during this period many of them are to be found in the records of the towns -are no longer interesting reading. They relate to issues long since decided, and set forth princi- ples which few now care to dispute ; but historically, they are of the utmost value. Generally well written, though in the somewhat turgid style of the day, they almost always show a clear idea both of what was wanted and of the means through which it was pro- posed to get it. That such papers should have ema-

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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

nated at once from so many towns in the province passed more than two years before the fight at Con- shows more clearly than anything else the generally cord bridge. They were in these words : high standard of political thought which then pre- "We, your Committee, &c., report,- vailed. Nor were these papers the work of a few " 1st. That we apprehend the state of the rights of the colo- nists, and of this Province in particular, together with a list of the infringements and violations of those rights, as stated in the Pamphlets committed to us, are in general fairly represented, and that the town of Boston be hereby thanked for this instance of their extraordinary care of the public welfare. leaders in advance of the people. The whole popular column was moving together. The instructions, pre- pared by committees, were read and understood in town-meeting. Those of Weymouth were cast in the same mould as those of Braintree. It was one voice, "2d. That all taxations, by what name soever called, im- posed upon us without our consent by any earthly power, are unconstitutional, oppressive, and tend to enslave us. and it emitted no uncertain sound. It was the voice of an intelligent people moving by an accustomed " 3d. That as our Fathers left their native Country and Friends in order that they and their Posterity might enjoy that civil and religious Liberty here which they could not enjoy there, we, their descendants, are determined by the grace of God that our con- sciences shall not accuse us with having acted unworthy such pious and venerable Heroes, and that we will, by all Lawful ways and means, preserve at all events all our civil and relig- ious rights and priviledges. path towards a given end which they distinctly saw. Hence there was nothing strange, irregular, or mob- like in their action. Even when engaged in a revo- lution they elaborately argued every measure, and took each new step in careful conformity with law and precedent.

Between September, 1765, and September, 1776, there are seven of these state papers, as they may properly be called, entered at length on the Braintree records, filling eighteen closely-written folio pages. First are the town instructions to its representative in relation to the Stamp Act ; last is the Declaration of Independence. Between these come the instruc- tions to Col. Quincy and Ebenezer Thayer, delegates to the Boston convention of September, 1768; the resolutions of March 1, 1773, in response to the cir- cular report of the committee of correspondence of the Boston town-meeting of Oct. 28, 1772; the re- port and resolves on taxation without representation of March 11, 1774; the brief instructions of Jan. 23, 1775, to Deacon Joseph Palmer, town delegate to the Provincial Congress held at Cambridge ; and, March 15th, the full covenant for non-importation, non-consumption, and non-exportation then recom- mended by the Continental Congress.

Of these several papers, the resolves of March 1, 1773, are the most noticeable. They appear to have been drawn by Gen. and Deacon Palmer, an active freeman of the town, who then and for several years after was prominent in the North Precinct. Though born in England, and emigrating at thirty years of age, Gen. Palmer was an ardent patriot, and in 1774 represented Braintree in the Provincial Con- gress. He was at the head of the committee to which the Boston report was referred. Hutchinson says that the responses of "some of the towns were very high and inflammatory." Perhaps he so classed those of Braintree. Though they began in a meas- ured way, they were certainly explicit, and clearly re- vealed the advance of public opinion. From them to a declaration of political independence was but one step, and not a long one. Yet these resolves were

" 4th. That by the divine constitution of things there is such a connection between civil and religious Liberty, that in what- ever nation or government the one is crushed the other seldom or ever survives long after. Of this History furnishes abundant evidence.

" 5th. That all Civil officers are, or ought to be, Servants to the people, and dependent upon them for their official support; and every instance to the contrary, from the Governor down- ward, tends to crush and destroy civil liberty.

"6th. That we bear true loyalty to our Lawful king, George the 3d, and unfeigned affection to our Brethren in Great Brittain and Ireland, and to all our Sister Colonies, and so long as our mother-country protects us in our Charter rights and privileges, so long will we, by divine assistance, exert our utmost to pro- mote the welfare of the whole British Empire, which we earn- estly pray may flourish uninterruptedly in the paths of right- eousness till time shall be no more.

"7th. That Mr. Thayer, our Representative, be directed, and he hereby is directed, to use his utmost endeavors that a Day of Fasting and Prayer be appointed throughout the Province for humbling ourselves before God in this day of darkness, and imploring divine direction and assistance."

Events now moved rapidly. On the 18th of De- cember of this year (1773) the tea was thrown into Boston Harbor, Deacon Palmer's son from Braintree aiding in the work. On the 1st of the following June, Governor Hutchinson sailed away from Boston into his life-long exile, and the same day the Port Bill went into effect. During June also the General Court appointed five delegates to represent the prov- ince in the first Continental Congress; and August 10th, John Adams set off with his colleagues for Philadelphia, having previously moved his wife and family back to Braintree from their home in Queen Street, Boston. On the 22d of August Braintree appointed Deacon Palmer, Col. Thayer, and Capt. Penniman its delegates to the county convention, and likewise its committee of correspondence; a larger body of six, at the head of which was Norton Quincy, was likewise instructed to act as a sort of committee of public safety.

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QUINCY.

For this latter committee there was then supposed to be special need in Braintree. The town powder was stored in a small building on the common in the North Precinct, and some anxiety was felt as to its safety. Owing to the presence of the Church of Eng- land people, the North Precinct was looked upon as a Tory hot-bed. Party feeling there certainly ran high, " and very hard words and threats of blows upon both sides were given out." In the course of the month of September, Gen. Gage sent two companies of soldiers over to Charlestown, and secured some ammu- nition stored there. This led to a tumultuous gath- ering next day at Cambridge, and the excitement soon spread through the neighboring towns. Mrs. John Adams then tells the story of what occurred in Brain- tree :

"The report took here on Friday, and on Sunday a soldier was seen lurking about the Common, supposed to be a spy, but most likely a deserter. However, intelligence of it was com- municated to the other parishes, and about eight o'clock Sunday evening there passed by here about two hundred men, preceded by a horse-cart, and marched down to the powder-house, from whence they took the powder, and carried it into the other parish, and there secreted it. I opened the window upon their return. They passed without any noise, not a word among them until they came against this house, when some of them, perceiving me, asked me if I wanted any powder. I replied, ' No, since it is in such good hands.' The reason they gave for taking it was that we had so many Tories here they dared not trust us with it; they had taken Vinton 1 in their train, and upon their return they stopped between Cleverly's and Etter's and called upon him to deliver two warrants. Upon his producing them, they put it to vote whether they should burn them, and it passed in the affirmative. They then made a circle and burnt them. They then called a vote whether they should huzza, but, it being Sunday evening, it passed in the negative. They called upon Vinton to swear that he would never be in- strumental in carrying into execution any of these new acts. They were not satisfied with his answers ; however, they let him rest. A few days afterwards, upon his making some foolish speeches, they assembled to the amount of two or three hundred, and swore vengeance upon him unless he took a solemn oath. Accordingly, they chose a committee and sent it with him to Major Miller's to see that he complied; and they waited his return, which, proving satisfactory, they dispersed. This town | appears as high as you can well imagine, and, if necessary, would soon be in arms. Not a Tory but hides his head. The

1 The Vinton here mentioned was Capt. John Vinton, of Braintree Middle Precinct. He was then deputy sheriff, and as such had in his hands a number of the newly-issued war- rants for summoning juries, in pursuance of the act of Parlia- ment for new modeling the government of Massachusetts. Though an official under the colonial government, John Vinton was at a later time an earnest patriot, and held a commission in the Revolutionary army. (Vinton Memorial, pp. 57-61.) | Joseph Cleverly and Peter Etter were both members of the Braintree Episcopal church, and they lived on the old Plymouth road, near Penn's Hill, and were accordingly neighbors of Mrs. Adams. It has already been seen (ante, p. 332) that Etter was a warm political friend of John Adams.

Church parson thought they were coming after him, and ran up garret ; they say another jumped out of his window and hid among the corn, whilst a third crept under a board fence and told his beads."

The powder was removed on Sunday, September 4th, and the alarm caused among the church people by such proceedings was naturally great. Their sym- pathizers were almost wholly confined to Boston, and accordingly exaggerated rumors soon began to get currency there of the dangers to which Mr. Winslow and the members of his society were exposed. Lex- ington and Concord were still six months in the future, and public feeling had not yet reached the pitch of intolerance to which it subsequently rose. These rumors accordingly scandalized the law-abiding senti- ment of Braintree, and early in October the matter was brought to the notice of an adjourned town- meeting. The following preamble and vote were then passed :

" WHEREAS, a report has been spread in the Town of Boston and other places that a considerable Number of People in this Town had entered into a combination to Disturb and harrass the Reverend Mr. Winslow and other members of the church of England, with a letter to oblidge them to leave the Town. And no evidence appearing to support the charge, Therefore

" Voted, That said report is Malicious, false and injurious, and calculated to defame this Town, and that we protest against all such combinations as being subversive of good Government. We being as ready to allow that right of private judgment to others which we claim for ourselves.

"Voted, The relation Mr. Peter Etter made respecting his conduct is satisfactory to the Town."

Peter Etter was a German by extraction, and one of the company that undertook the development of glass-works in Braintree in 1752. He continued to be an inhabitant of the town after that enterprise failed, and took an active part in public affairs. Though apparently a churchman, he seems to have been on excellent social and political terms with John Adams, who used, with his wife, to take tea with him ; and apparently it was well known in the town that on public issues he did not sympathize with his rector. It was not so with all. Major Miller evidently stood well with his townsmen. He had served acceptably in many offices, and was on the board of selectmen as late as 1772. But he belonged to the church and the gentry,-the class of the Apthorps, Borlands, and Vassalls,-and at the very meeting which passed the votes just quoted all persons in the town who felt "aggrieved by the conduct of others respecting our public affairs" were enjoined to go to a com- mittee of observation, then appointed, who were " de- sired, if possible, to remove the grounds of uneasiness (if real), and direct all inquiries."

Three years passed away before the persecution of

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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

the Tories in Braintree became open and pronounced. Meanwhile they were certainly treated with no little forbearance. Even after the Declaration of Inde- pendence had been read from the North Precinct pulpit and entered in the records of the town, Mrs. Adams, on the 29th of September, 1776, wrote to her husband : " The church is opened here every Sunday, and the king prayed for, as usual, in open defiance of Congress." In reply, he expressed his surprise at " prayers in public for an abdicated king," and declared that nothing of the kind was heard any- where in the country except New York and Brain- tree. " This practice," he added, " is treason against the State, and cannot be long tolerated." Outwardly, and in other respects, Mr. Winslow was probably more discreet, but it has already been observed that he felt bound by his ordination oath to conform literally to the ritual, and he did so until at last the long-suppressed popular feeling found open expression. In June, 1777, a town-meeting was called for the purpose of agreeing upon a list of those persons dwelling in Braintree who were " esteemed inimical" to the popular cause. The selectmen presented the following names : Rev. Edward Winslow, Maj. Ebenezer Miller, John Cheesman, Joseph Cleverly, James Apthorp, William Veazie, Benjamin Cleverly, Oliver Gay, and Nedabiah Bent. The following names were then added : Joseph Cleverly (second), William Veazie, Jr., Henry Cleverly, and Thomas Brackett. All of these persons it was then voted were " esteemed inimical," and William Penniman was chosen to procure evidence of their disloyalty and lay it before the court.

ship, but it belonged chiefly to non-residents. In conse- quence of one of these seizures John Adams bought the old Vassall house, in which he passed the last twenty-five years of his life, and from which both he and his wife were buried. But the Tory persecution in Braintree, though it doubtless made the lives of those suspected miserable enough at the time, seems, so far as actual residents in the town were concerned, to have resulted only in the expatriation of Samuel Quincy, the Borlands, and the Rev. Edward Winslow. The other suspects quietly accepted the situation.

Returning to the autumn of 1774, after the seizure of the powder on the 4th of September Braintree was alive with rumors and military preparation. Re- turning from a visit to Salem, Mrs. Adams stopped at her house in Boston, and thence wrote to her husband on September 24th :

" ' In time of peace prepare for war' (if this may be called a time of peace) resounds throughout the country. Next Tuesday they are warned at Braintree, all above fifteen and under sixty, to attend with their arms; and to train once a fortnight from that time is a scheme which lies much at heart with many."

She then goes on to speak of a conspiracy among the negroes in Boston, which, it was supposed, had just been discovered, and she adds,-

" There is but little said, and what steps they will take in consequence of it I know not. I wish most sincerely there was not a slave in the province; it always appeared a most iniqui- tous scheme to me to fight ourselves for what we are daily rob- bing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have. You know my mind on this subject."

In the form of covenant " very unanimously" adopted in the Braintree town-meeting of 15th March follow- ing the date of this letter there appears this clause,-

The coming event had cast its shadow before, and on the 2d of April, Mrs. Adams wrote: "The " We will neither import, or purchase any slave imported since the first day of December last, and will wholly discon- tinue the slave trade; and will neither be concerned in it our- selves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it." Church doors were shut up last Sunday in consequence of a presentiment ; a farewell sermon preached and much weeping and wailing ; persecuted, be sure, but not for righteousness' sake." The action of the The two utterances taken together are significant, for Mr. Adams had returned from Philadelphia in October, 1774, and it was he, doubtless, who draughted the covenant. Immediately on his getting back to Braintree the town had chosen him as an ad- ditional delegate to the Provincial Congress, Messrs. Thayer and Palmer having been previously elected. He had passed the winter at home, and as soon as the covenant was adopted he came forward with another report as chairman of a committee on minute-men. It was voted to raise three companies, one in each precinct, to be composed of forty-one men each, includ- ing officers. Provision had already been made in January for military drill, and payment for attendance town two months later was in the nature of a formal indictment of the whole society, for among the names of those recorded as " inimical" were its rector, its wardens, and all its leading members. Yet Mr. Winslow alone would seem to have left the town, following the British army to New York. In any event his occupation in Braintree was gone. Against the other members of the society proceedings do not seem to have been pressed, and afterwards they all of them become good citizens of the United States, their names again appearing in the Braintree and Quincy records, and, at last, on the stones in the graveyard. Later a certain amount of property in | Braintree was seized and sold because of Tory owner- i thereat ; and now the minute-men in prompt attend-

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 71

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