History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 72

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 72

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ance were to receive " one shilling and four pence per day for one day in every week, and the selectmen were directed to supply the officers of the three com- panies with money to pay off said men day by day ;" and if there were no funds in the treasury they were to borrow on the town's credit. On the 19th of April occurred the affair of Lexington and Concord, and on the 24th the adjourned town-meeting directed the se- lectmen to " dismiss Mr. Rice, their Grammar School master as soon as their present engagements are ex- pired." It was evidently thought that there was no money for anything but men and munitions; and ten days later Mrs. Adams wrote to her husband : " Mr. Rice is going into the army as captain of a company. We have no school. I know not what to do with John." This John was her oldest son, John Quincy, then a boy of seven, who, eighteen months later, she again refers to as having " become post-rider from Boston to Braintree."

It was the general belief, after the affair of Lexing- ton and Concord had tightened the lines around Boston, that the need of supplies would oblige Gen. Gage to send out parties along the shore. As one of the salt-water neighborhoods, the North Precinct was accordingly in great and perpetual terror of forays. On the 4th of May, Mrs. Adams wrote: "There has been no descent upon the sea-coast. Guards are regularly kept." The widow of Josiah Quincy, Jr., ! who had died only a few weeks before, was then at the house of her father-in-law in the North Precinct,-the house, already referred to, in which President Josiah Quincy, of Harvard College, subsequently lived and died. On Saturday, April 29th, Mrs. Adams went to see her there, " and in the afternoon, from an alarm they had she and her sister with three others of the family, took refuge with [Mrs. Adams] and tarried all night." A little later Col. Quincy arranged with Deacon Holbrook, of the Middle Precinct, for a place of retreat, if he needed one; and Mr. Cranch, who lived at Germantown, did the same with Maj. Bass. Mrs. Adams herself secured a refuge at the house of her husband's brother.

flocking over the Plymouth road and down Penn's Hill to Braintree. The wildest rumors were cir- culated. Three hundred men had been landed ! They were marching into Weymouth village ! They were coming to Germantown ! Meanwhile the com- panies of minute-men came rapidly in, showing suffi- ciently well what a hornet's nest the region was. They came from distances of twenty miles and more. Those from Braintree were naturally among the first on the ground. Young Elihu Adams, also a son of |Deacon John Adams, and who afterwards died of dysentery contracted in camp during the siege of Boston, was in command of the Braintree company, and also one of the party which went out to drive the marauders away from Sheep Island, where they were foraging. This they succeeded in doing without loss to themselves.

Through all these events Mrs. Adams wrote that her house, being on the main road, was a scene of lasting confusion. "Soldiers coming in for a lodging, for breakfast, for supper, for drink, etc. Sometimes refugees from Boston, tired and fatigued, seek an asylum for a day, a night, a week." Meanwhile her husband was writing : "Let me caution you, my dear, to be upon your guard against the multitude of affrights and alarms which, I fear, will surround you ;" but a little later he exclaims, " Oh, that I were a soldier ! I will be ! I am reading military books. | Everybody must, and will, and shall be a soldier !"

All this was in May. At last, on the morning of Saturday, June 17th, a heavy cannonading to the northward awoke the town at early dawn. The British ships of war in Boston Harbor were firing at the breastwork which had been thrown up the night before on the crest of Bunker's Hill. The only records which have come down to us showing how that day was passed by those dwelling in Braintree are found in a letter from Mrs. Adams to her husband and in the later recollections of her son. Restless with ex- citement and suspense, unable to shut out the noise of the distant cannon, the mother, then a woman of a little more than thirty, taking with her the child of eight, went out to the neighboring Penn's Hill, and, climbing to its summit, looked towards Boston. It was a clear June day of intense heat, and across the blue bay they saw, against the horizon, the dense black volume of smoke which rolled away from the burning houses of Charlestown. Over the crest of the distant hill hung the white clouds which told of the

So things went on from day to day, the now inev- itable conflict drawing always nearer. At last, on Sunday morning, May 21st, Braintree had a veritable alarm,-the enemy was actually at its door. Three sloops and a cutter had come out from Boston Harbor and dropped anchor in Weymouth fore-river, not far from Germantown. Before six o'clock alarm-guns were heard, and shortly after the bells began to ring. | battle going on beneath the smoke. There was withal Then the minute-men fell in at tap of drum on the | something quite dramatic in the scene; for, as the training-field. The panic was great, especially in two sat there silent and trembling, the child's hand Weymouth, and men, women, and children came | clasped in that of the mother, thinking now of what

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was taking place before their eyes, and now of the husband and father so far away at the Congress, they dreamed not at all of the great future for him and for the boy to be surely worked out in that conflict, the first pitched battle of which was then being fought before them.

The next day the mother wrote,-

"The battle began upon our intrenchments upon Bunker's Hill Saturday morning, about three o'clock, and has not ceased yet, and it is now three o'clock Sabbath afternoon. Charles- town is laid in ashes. It is expected they will come out over the Neck to- night, and a dreadful battle must ensue. Almighty God, cover the heads of our countrymen, and be a shield to our dear friends ! How many have fallen we know not. The con- stant roar of the cannon is so distressing that we cannot eat, drink, or sleep. My bursting heart must find vent at my pen. 'The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong ; but the God of Israel is He that giveth strength and power unto his people. Trust in him at all times, ye people, pour out your hearts before him ; God is a refuge for us.' "

There were no services held that Sunday in the North Precinct church, nor had there been on the Sunday before. "They delight in molesting us on the Sabbath," wrote Mrs. Adams. But at last, on the 25th of June, "we have sat under our own vine in quietness ; have heard Mr. Taft. The good man was earnest and pathetic ; I could forgive his weakness for the sake of his sincerity." Nor did her own pastor fully meet the spiritual needs of this lady, for pres- ently she speaks of him as " our inanimate old bache- lor," whom she " could not bear to hear ;" and then says that he " made the best oration (he never prays, you know) I ever heard from him." Two companies of soldiers were now stationed in the town,-that of Capt. Turner, at Germantown, and that of Capt. Vinton, at Squantum. Presently they were engaged in small affairs in the harbor ; but, before this, their presence led to a town-meeting episode which showed how the lessons of history were ingrained in the peo- ple. The descendants of the Puritans bore freshly in memory the fact that Cromwell had with his soldiery dispersed the Long Parliament. The town was to choose a representative. Col. Palmer and Mr. Thayer, dwelling in different precincts, were opposing candidates, and Captain Vinton's company was largely composed of men from Mr. Thayer's precinct. The meeting was held on the 12th of July, and again Mrs. Adams tells what took place :

" There was a considerable muster upon Thayer's side, and Vinton's company marched up in order to assist, but got sadly disappointed. Newcomb insisted upon it that no man should vote who was in the army. He had no notion of being under the military power; said we might be so situated as to have the greater part of the people engaged in the military, and then all | power would be wrested out of the hands of the civil magistrate. He insisted upon its being put to vote, and carried his point immediately."

During the night of the 9th of July a body of three hundred volunteers put out in whale-boats from Germantown, and crossed over to Long Island, where they seized some cattle, sheep, and prisoners, and brought them off without being discovered from the vessels lying near. Their emulation being fired by this achievement, a few days later another party put off from the Moon Island, opposite Squantum, in open day, and fired the house and barn which the previous party had spared. Though exposed to a sharp fire from the enemy's ships, the whole force re- turned in safety, and only one of the, covering party on the Moon was killed. Then all the companies guard- ing the south side of the bay were ordered to go to Nantasket, and cut and bring away the ripened grain. While there, and under the eyes of several men-of- war, they crossed over in their whale-boats and set fire to the light-house. Returning, they were fired upon and pursued, but got back without loss. Gen. Gage thereupon sent a force of carpenters, under guard of thirty marines, down to repair the building, and caused a new lamp to be set up. In consequence of this, on Sunday evening, the 29th, a body of men went off from Squantum in the whale-boats, surprised and overcame the guard, killing the lieutenant in command and one man, and completely destroyed the buildings. Returning with their prisoners they were hotly pursued, but escaped with the loss of one man killed. Two days after he was buried from German- town. These were the only military operations un- dertaken during the siege of Boston from Quincy Bay ; and though, as Mrs. Adams wrote, they were in themselves but trifling affairs, yet they served " to inure our men and harden them to danger."

The summer was hot and dry. There was meat to be had in abundance, but at one time it seemed probable that the corn crop would prove a failure, and famine might thus be added to war. Tea, coffee, and sugar became very scarce, but " whortleberries and milk we are not obliged to commerce for." The camps about Boston, swarming with raw, untrained levies, were not properly policed, nor were the food and mode of life such as the men were accustomed to. As a matter of course sickness ensued. The state of con- tinual excitement and alarm in which the people of the neighboring towns had long been living naturally predisposed them to disease, and when the camp sick- ness took the form of dysentery it soon became epi- demic and spread rapidly. Then followed some weeks of terrible trial. It was a time of pestilence. In Braintree Mr. Wibird was stricken down, and all through August and September the Sabbath services were not observed. There was almost no house

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which did not count some dead, and two, three, and even four funerals would take place in a day.

" The small-pox in the natural way was not more mortal than this distemper has proved in this and many neighboring towns. . . . Mrs. Randall has lost her daughter. Mrs. Bracket hers. Mr. Thomas Thayer his wife. I know of eight this week who have been buried in this town. . .. In six weeks I count five of my near connections laid in the grave. . . And such is the distress of the neighborhood that I can scarcely find a well person to assist in looking after the sick. Mr. Wi- bird lies bad, Major Miller is dangerous, and Mr. Gay is not expected to live. . .. We have fevers of various kinds, the throat distemper, as well as the dysentery prevailing in this and the neighboring towns. .. . Sickness and death are in al- most every family. I have no more shocking and terrible idea of any distemper, except the plague, than this. So mortal a time the oldest man does not remember."

So wrote Mrs. Adams to her husband. His brother Elihu, who had just taken a commission in the army, was among the earliest victims. Returning home at that time, John Adams had started back to Philadel- phia on the 26th of August, and between that day and the 8th of September there were eighteen per- sons buried in the Middle Precinct alone. The disease was supposed to be contagious, so that watchers and nurses could be obtained only with difficulty, and the sustained physical strain upon the well soon made them sick. Mrs. Adams' own house was a hospital. A servant was first taken down; she herself was then seized ; another servant followed, and then one of her children ; a third servant fell sick, and had to be moved to Weymouth, where she afterwards died. Thither Mrs. Adams followed her to be by the bed- · side of her own mother, and from thence, on October 1st, she wrote, in an agony of grief, to her husband, ---

"Have pity upon me! have pity upon me, O thou my be- loved, for the hand of God presseth me sore. Yet will I be dumb and silent, and not open my mouth, because Thou, O Lord, hast done it. How can I tell you (O my bursting heart !) that my dear mother has left me! After sustaining sixteen days' severe conflict, nature fainted, and she fell asleep. At times I was almost ready to faint under this severe and heavy stroke, separated from thee, who used to be a comforter to me in afflic- tion ; but, blessed be God ! his ear is not heavy that He cannot hear, but He has bid us call upon Him in time of trouble."

Ten days after this letter was written Col. Josiah Quincy watched, from an upper window of his house, the ship that bore Gen. Gage down the harbor on his way home to England. The pane of glass is still preserved on which he then scratched a record of the incident. But six months more were to pass before the evacuation of Boston. During that time the apprehension of attack along the Braintree shore was continual; but those dwelling there had become accustomed to it, and took the alarms more quietly. Col. Quincy wrote,-

" Although we have five companies stationed near us, yet the shells thrown from the floating batteries and the flat-bottomed boats which row with twenty oars, carry fifty men each, and are defended with cannon and swivels, keep us under perpetual apprehension of being attacked whenever we shall become an object of sufficient magnitude to excite the attention of our en- emies. Our circumstances are truly melancholy, and grow 1 rather worse than better."

Towards the end of October the sickness abated, | and as the winter came on the situation became in every way more endurable. Money, it was true, had already become scarce. Paper currency was at a discount of ten per cent., and a silver dollar was a great rarity. Prices had begun to rise. Those of foreign goods had doubled. Molasses was an article in common household use; its ordinary price had risen from twenty-five cents a gallon to forty. Of the domestic products, corn was sixty-five cents a bushel, rye eighty, hay twenty dollars a ton, and wood three dollars and a half a cord. Meat was abundant. The condition of the people was, there- fore, in no way unbearable, and though Boston was in a state of siege only ten miles away, with the exception that the greater part of the able-bodied men were away in camp, life went on in Braintree much as usual.

This continued until March, the war and its incidents being, meanwhile, the great subject of dis- cussion. Rumors of what was going on in camp and in Congress were abundant. Among others, there came a story, which was industriously bruited about, that Hancock and John Adams had both left Philadelphia, and sailed for England from New York on board an English man-of-war. In other words, they had proved traitors. In the morbid condition of the public mind, even this absurd story gained credence. Angry disputes took place in Braintree taverns, and " some men were collared and dragged out of the shop with great threats for reporting such scandalous lies." Norton Quincy, then one of the selectmen, seems to have been especially excited over the calumny. Though a man of indolent temper, lie went so far as to offer his own life as a forfeit for that of the husband of his niece, should the report prove true. But, a mere war rumor, it was soon forgotten. . Indeed, the beginning of new military operations soon drove all such wild ideas out of the people's heads.

On the 3d of March the sound of heavy cannon- ading from the direction of Boston warned the peo- ple of Braintree that new movements were going on. The militia were all mustered, and marched away with three days' rations. Scarcely a man was left in town, and the place of those serving as sea coast . guards was filled by others from the interior.

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think of nothing but fortifying Boston Harbor. I want more " I have just returned," wrote Mrs. Adams, " from Penn's Hill, where I have been sitting to hear the amazing roar of cannon, and from whence I could see every shell which was thrown. . . . I went to bed about twelve, and rose again a little after one. I could no more sleep than if I had been in cannon than are to be had. I want a fortification upon Point Alderton, one upon Lovell's Island, one upon George's Island, several upon Long Island, one upon the Moon, one upon Squan- tum. I want to hear of half a dozen fire-ships, and two or the engagement; the rattling of the windows, the jar of the | three hundred fire-rafts prepared. I want to hear of row-gal- leys, floating batteries built, and booms laid across the channel in the narrows, and Vaisseaux de Frise sunk in it. I wish to hear that you are translating Braintree commons into the channel."

house, the continual roar of twenty-four pounders, and the bursting of shells. About six this morning there was quiet. I rejoiced in a few hours' calm. I hear we got possession of Dorchester Hill last night."

Three days later, she speaks of the militia as all returning, and of her great disappointment that noth- ing more was effected than the occupation of Dor- chester Heights. " I hoped and expected more im- portant and decisive scenes. I would not have suffered all I have for two such hills." A fortnight later the evacuation of Boston had been decided upon. " Between seventy and eighty vessels of various sizes are gone down and lie in a row in fair sight of this place, all of which appear to be loaded." The fear of marauding parties was so great at this time that the shores had to be guarded nightly. Under date of the 18th of March, when an adjourned town-meeting was to have been held, the following entry appears in the records :

"The inhabitants being obliged to guard the shores to pre- vent the threatened damages from the ships which lay in the harbor with the troops aboard, the meeting was adjourned to 25th instant, at one o'clock P. M."

Three days later, Col. Quincy reported as follows to Gen. Washington :

" Since the ships and troops fell down below, we have been apprehensive of an attack from their boats, in pursuit of live stock ; but yesterday, in the afternoon we were happily relieved by the appearance of a number of whale-boats, stretching across our bay, under the command (as I have since learned) of the brave Lieut .- Col. Tupper, who in the forenoon had been cannonading the ships, with one or more field-pieces, from the cast head of Thompson's Island, and I suppose last night can- nonaded them from the same place, or from Spectacle Island. This judicious manœuvre had its genuine effect ; for, this morn- ing, the Admiral and all the rest of the ships, except one of the line, came to sail, and fell down to Nantasket Road, where a countless number is now collected."

At the same time Mrs. Adams wrote,-

" From Penn's Hill we have a view of the largest fleet ever seen in America. You may count upwards of a hundred and seventy sail. They look like a forest. . . . To what quar- ter of the world they are bound is wholly unknown; but it is generally thought to New York. Many people are elated with their quitting Boston. I confess I do not feel so. "Tis only lifting a burden from one shoulder to the other, which is per- haps less able or less willing to support it. . .. Every foot of ground which they obtain now they must fight for, and may they purchase it at a Bunker Hill price."

And in reply, John Adams exclaimed,-

" We are taking precautions to defend every place that is in danger, the Carolinas, Virginia, New York, Canada. I can

Though the body of the English fleet took its de- parture for Halifax during the month of March, a few vessels lay at anchor in the outer harbor or cruised about the bay for several weeks longer. They seemed reluctant to give up all pretence of maintain- ing a hold on Boston. At the end of May, Mrs. Adams wrote: " We have now in fair sight of my uncle's [Norton Quincy's house, at Mount Wollaston] the ' Commodore,' a thirty-six gun frigate, another large vessel, and six small craft." At last military move- ments were made under orders from the patriot au- thorities looking to the occupation of the islands. In consequence of these the last remnant of the fleet, " ' Commodore' and all," put to sea upon the 14th of June, and " not a transport, a ship, or a tender [was next day] to be seen." Braintree, in common with her sister-towns on Boston Bay, was thereafter allowed to rest in peace.

So far as Massachusetts was concerned, the war of independence now entered upon a new stage. Neither any longer was the enemy on the hearth-stone, nor was the struggle a novelty. The glow of excitement which stimulated and made easy the first patriotic . movement had passed away. In its place came a con- sciousness of the drag and drain of a seemingly endless war. In this respect the experience of one genera- tion is but a repetition of that of another. The ugly details of the past are forgotten, while whatever there was of heroic about it stands out clean cut and prominent. On the other hand, the selfish, venal spirit of the present makes itself painfully apparent, and is supposed always to be of recent development,-one of the characteristics of a race degenerate. A careful examination of the record reveals a different story. The years between 1860 and 1865 will lose nothing by contrast with those between 1776 and 1782. In each case the conflict opened on a people wild with patriotic ardor. All were burning to do something ; many could not do too much. Money was poured out like water ; regiments formed as if by magic. Self- sacrifice was the order of the day, and life in the presence of trial assumed an unknown charm. For the time being a whole people had become heroic.

Then came the reaction. The realities of war be-

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gan to be felt. Enlistments fell off in 1776, as they did in 1862. It grew harder to procure men just in | and the blind must be exempted. During the years proportion to the more pressing need of men. Values 1776 to 1782, therefore, the whole arms-bearing popu- lation of Braintree did not exceed 475 at the outside. It probably fell considerably short of that number. were unsettled. Prices rose. The poorer and more selfish natures began to show the baseness of which they were capable. The voice of the croaker was loud in the land. The contractor grew rich ; the patriot poor. It seemed as though the war would never end; not a few were forward to express the wish that it had never begun. The weak, the craven, and the mean longed for quiet and the flesh-pots.

As respects available wealth, it is far more difficult | to fix on any safe basis for estimate. This subject has already been considered. It has been stated that the Braintree people during the colonial period had substance, but very little of what would now be called quick capital. In other words, they had nothing owned the houses in which they lived, their farms,

Even while the town clerk of Braintree, in obe- | which could readily be turned into money. They dience to the mandate of the Provincial Council, was entering the Declaration of Independence on the | farm buildings, and stock. They had clothes and records, " there to remain as a perpetual memorial,"- some furniture. A few had money out at interest ; and others were in debt. To this general rule of only three months after the last British ship had been driven from Boston Harbor, -- even thus early Mrs. | no available means there were, of course, in an old Adams wrote as follows to her husband :

town like Braintree a few exceptions. Such were Col. Quincy, Major Miller, Gen. Palmer, and, possi-

" I am sorry to see a spirit so venal prevailing everywhere. When our men were drawn out for Canada, a very large bounty | bly, Mr. Thayer. John Adams was not an ex- was given them ; and now another call is made upon us. No one will go without a large bounty, though only for two months, and each town seems to think its honor engaged in outbidding the others. The province pay is forty shillings. In addition to that, this town voted to make it up six pounds. They then drew out the persons most unlikely to go, and they are obliged to give three pounds to hire a man. Some pay the whole fine, -ten pounds. Forty men are now drafted from this town. More than one-half, from sixteen to fifty, are now in the ser- vice. This method of conducting will create a general uneasi- ness in the Continental army." ception to it. He had nothing except his house in Queen Street, Boston, and the farm at Penn's Hill. The farm his wife tried to manage. Few men were more capable, and yet in September, 1777, she wrote to him, " Unless you return, what little property you possess will be lost. . . . As to what is here under my immediate inspection, I do the best I can with it. But it will not, at the high price labor is, pay its way." This was the common experience. The | Penn's Hill farm also affords a basis on which to | make an approximate estimate of the wealth of the town. One part of that farm consisted of thirty-five acres of arable land, with a house, barn, and other

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 72

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