History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 75

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 75

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" Taking the two parishes in Dorchester, one in Dedham, the Town of Milton, two parishes in Hingham, and the offer they have made in Braintree, the average amount of the sallaries they give is nine hundred and twenty-seven dollars per annum. . . . The sum I propose is eight hundred and sixty dollars paid punctually at the end of every quarter; or eight hundred and eighty dollars at the close of the year. It will be recol- lected that the proposition I made to the town three years since was only eight hundred dollars. In exceeding that sum at the present time I have been influenced by two considera- tions. One is, as has been already observed, the information I have received from some of my brethren, whose salary is nine or ten hundred dollars per annum, that they can but barely live on their annual income. The other is that you may have an opportunity of exceeding Braintree in the salary you give your minister; for I think no inhabitant of Quincy would deem it respectable to be surpassed in this respect by that town."

The last argument was ingenious, but the town failed to respond. The committee to which Mr. Whitney's letter was referred reported in most affec- tionate language that the pastor's request was wholly reasonable, and that his " sallary was inadequate to his suitable maintenance;" but in view of " the uncer- tain and fluctuating state of our public affairs, the

great embarrassment, under which we at present suffer, and the threatening prospect of still greater," a postponement of the question was recommended. A vote of three hundred dollars additional salary for the current year was then passed.

The " threatening prospect" in public affairs here alluded to was the impending war with Great Britain of 1812-14. Quincy was a Federalist town. John Adams, true to his old patriotic and Revolutionary instincts, was an earnest supporter of the Madison administration, which his son, John Quincy, was then representing at St. Petersburg; but his townsmen were on the other side. Warm passages used to occur. Nearly seventy years afterwards a Quincy boy of that time gave the following entertaining account of one such passage. It is merely necessary to premise that the gentleman referred to in it was a near neigh- bor of Mr. Adams', and in his time the most useful citizen of Quincy. Of him more will be said presently :

" I remember very well at a social dinner-party in time of the war, when the political element ran perhaps as high as ever it did, that I had the honor as well as pleasure to stand behind the President's chair as waiter. Directly on his left was seated Thomas Greenleaf, a violent Federalist, who was bearing down upon the old gentleman with more zeal than discretion. The President bore it as long as he could, when he raised his left hand and, instead of bringing it down on Mr. Greenleaf's head, which he might perhaps have done with as much propriety, he brought it down upon the table near him with a force that made the plates and glasses rattle, and exclaimed in a voice that could not be misunderstood, 'Tom Greenleaf, hold your tongue ! you are always down on me when there is no occasion for it.' The scene which followed reminds me of that passage which says, ' There was silence in Heaven for half an hour.'"

But at this time Mr. Greenleaf represented much more nearly than the old ex-President what was the prevailing political sentiment in Quincy. At every annual election from 1812 to 1815, Governor Strong polled nearly three votes to his opponent's one. His smallest majority was in 1812, when he had one hun- dred and twenty-seven votes to fifty-nine cast for Elbridge Gerry. The second war with Great Britain accordingly left no more marks than the old French wars on the town record-book ; and, indeed, owing to the disloyal and almost treasonable action of the State government, the local militia were called out but twice, marching once to South Boston and once to Cohasset. An absurdly large town bounty, in addition to the State pay, was voted to those called into service in June, 1814; but one short experience sufficed, and in December this vote was "so far repealed as not to operate in future." Yet at this time the uneasiness was great in the seaport towns. The British ships of war were always hovering on the coast, and in the

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autumn a flotilla ascended the Connecticut, destroying more than a score of vessels. Edmund Quincy, in his life of his father, has vividly reproduced the sensa- tions in those days of the dwellers on Quincy Bay :

" A general sense of personal insecurity prevailed all along the sea-board. . . . In these apprehensions the family at Quincy had good reason to share. For the estate bounds on the ocean, and the fears of boat attacks and foraging parties which had haunted the roof thirty years before returned again to dis- turb its repose. Every ship enters and leaves the port of Bos- ton in full view of the windows of the house, and it may well be believed that a sharp lookout was kept up in the direction of the light-house. The first naval spectacle discerned from that post of observation, however, was a memorable and an auspi- cious one. It was the entrance of the 'Constitution' into the harbor, on the 29th of August, 1812, after the capture of the ' Guerriere.' . . . Toward evening the frigate (recognized as the ' Constitution') came in under full sail, and dropped her anchor beside Rainsford Island,-then the Quarantine Ground. The next morning a fleet of armed ships appeared off Point Alder- ton. As they rapidly approached, the 'Constitution' was ob- served to raise her anchor and sails, and go boldly forth to meet the apparent enemy ; but, as the frigate passed the leader of the fleet, a friendly recognition was exchanged, instead of the ex- pected broadside. They joined company, and the ' Constitution' led the way to Boston. It was the squadron of United States ships, then commanded by Commodore Rodgers, unexpectedly returning from a long cruise.

" A few days afterwards, Hull, who had just taken the ' Guer- riere,' came with Decatur to breakfast at Quincy. . . . This breakfast is one of the earliest of my own recollections. I was a very little child, but I remember perfectly well sitting on Decatur's knee, playing with his dirk, and looking up at his handsome face, the beauty of which struck even my childish eyes, and which I still seem to see looking at me from out the far past. . . . There was a current belief that the British, should they propose making an attack on Boston, would land on my father's estate or thereabouts, and so take the town in flank. . . . The opinion was sufficiently prevalent with the au- thorities to induce them to station a body of militia on the left bank of the river Neponset, separating Quincy from Dorches- ter, which was selected as the first point of defence should such an invasion be attempted. This circumstance materially in- creased the uneasiness inseparable from the exposed situation of the family at Quincy. As I have already related, every ship that enters or leaves the harbor can be seen from the windows of the house. And as the triumphant entry of Hull in the ' Con- stitution,' after his victory over the ' Guerriere,' had been dis- cerned from that post of observation, so was the departure of Lawrence in the 'Chesapeake' on his fatal quest of the 'Shan- non,'-doomed to ' give up the ship,' but only with his life; and with the telescope ' the meteor-flag of England' could be seen from time to time flying at the masthead of men-of-war that prowled about the mouth of the harbor, so that it was no idle fear which suggested the probability of a midnight visit from a party of foragers or pillagers to that solitary shore.

" One Sunday there was an alarm that the enemy had landed at Scituate, a dozen miles away. The news was announced in the meeting-house during Divine service. The congregation was dismissed at once, and the village was all astir with excite- ment. The bell rang, the drums beat to arms, and the volun- teer companies marched to meet the enemy. It is unnecessary to say that they did not find him. . . . I suppose it was on the Sunday following this false alarm that the militia com- panies, in uniform, attended service to return thanks for their

escape from the assaults of their enemies; though it may have been after some more real and nearer danger. But the circum- stance made a deep impression on my young mind by the de- lightful variety it gave to the usual monotony of Sunday.

" My father, too, opposed as he was to the war, yielded to no one in determination to defend the soil of Massachusetts should it be invaded by an enemy. He assisted in the formation of a fine troop of volunteer cavalry, called the Boston Hussars, con- sisting chiefly, if not entirely, of Federal gentlemen, of which he was elected captain. . . . He used to be concerned lest the enemy might land between Quincy and Boston, and thus cut him off from his command."

It was at this time that the town appointed a com- mittee to confer with similar committees of the towns of Hingham and Weymouth, to devise " some meas- ures for the safety and protection of this and those towns against the assaults of the enemy." But the enemy did not come, and the actual contribution of Quincy to the burden of the war of 1812 was prac- tically limited to the sum paid in bounties and a spe- cial State tax of nine hundred dollars. One coasting schooner also, owned in the town, while on her way from the Penobscot to Quincy, was boarded off Glou- cester from an ambitious privateer out of that port, and, after some " ferocious conduct" on the part of the captors, was carried into Marblehead. What indi- viduals from among the youth of Quincy may have served on the Niagara frontier or fought in the naval battles of Hull, Decatur and Bainbridge nowhere appears. The official record of the town in this war is unpleasantly meagre.

The sum raised by taxation for town expenses in 1815 was $4000, and this included the expenses of the church. The growth of the appropriation was very slow. In 1792 it had been £350, or $1160, of which £75 had been on account of the schools. Of these there was now one,-the grammar school at the centre,-while the germs only of outlying district schools were to be found. By 1800 the annual ap- propriations had increased to $2100, and thence to $3300 in 1810. In 1820 they were $4000. Four years later the town was separated from the parish, and accordingly the appropriation for that year fell to $2800. In 1829 it was $3500. Perhaps a fourfold increase in forty years.

Up to 1824 the great items of expense were the church, the schools, and the town poor ; after 1824 they were the schools and the poor. These have both been elsewhere referred to. It has been seen that the cost of maintaining the town poor then was out of all proportion to what it has been since. In 1812, for instance, $1000 was raised for that purpose, while only $785 was raised for the schools and $800 for the church. In 1813 the poor cost $1665, or as much as both the schools ($800) and the church

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($850) combined. A reform was then instituted, the people were the children of the soil. They still followed the old, simple vocations. They were either the tillers of the soil, or the citizens and tradespeople who did the work and supplied the wants of those who tilled the soil. They were a single religious so- and in 1819 the schools cost $1000, while the church cost $850, and the poor had been reduced to $770. | In 1824 their cost had been still further reduced to $628, while that of the schools had risen to $1150; but the poor yet occasioned one quarter part of the | ciety, and worshiped in one meeting-house. Each whole tax levy. Meanwhile the highway tax did not appear in the estimates at all, for it was still, as in 1766, paid in kind, or, as the vote of April, 1825, read, " For each Day's work one Dollar, for each yoke of oxen one dollar per Day, for each Horse and Cart one dollar per Day, for each plow fifty cents per Day, and for each ox-Cart twenty-five cents per day." In 1829 the total assessment was $3668. Of this, centre grammar school receiving $500, for which sum -- regularly paid he had, it has already been seen, agreed four years previously to " give up all other business and devote his whole time to the school." The school com- mittee was further allowed $5 for " ink and brooms," which were all the " incidentals" then recognized, and $60 for fuel. The district schools were allowed from $30 to $120 each. For their services as selectmen, assessors, and overseers of the poor, Messrs. Souther, Wood, and Taylor received respectively $70.28, $30.14, and $25.68. For the repair of highways $600 was deemed sufficient. One thousand dollars, or nearly a fourth part of the whole, was appropriated to the support of the poor.

knew the others ; they were almost members of the same family. The political family had not become too nu- merous. It numbered about 1300 in 1810, and about 2200 in 1830. As respects worldly condition those composing it were not far separated. No one was rich, and most of those who took any part in town affairs were well to do. There was no alien element ; that is, no one lived in the town and had interests outside of it. $1563 was on account of the schools, the master at the | The town partook also of the spirit of that era of good feeling which followed on the war of 1812. The old Federal party was then absorbed in the party which supported the administration of Monroe, until at last during the six years 1825-30 the opposition in Quincy never threw more than nine votes on election day, and in 1828-29 it was limited to a single vote. The largest vote the town ever threw before 1831 was 217 in 1824, when Governor Eustis was chosen. It then gave a heavy majority to the defeated Federalist candidate ; a parting salute, as it were, fired over the grave of that political party. Then followed the Presidential election of 1825, and every vote cast (140) was for the Adams electoral ticket. Nor did the Jackson De- mocracy obtain any foothold in the town during the next four years, for in November, 1828, the electoral ticket defeated in the country at large had 140 votes in Quincy out of a total of 143, and in the following April, Governor Lincoln had 142 votes to one solitary ballot cast for Marcus Morton.

Such were the simplicity and economy of a town which now counted a population of 2200 souls, and which was at last rapidly growing in wealth, for its assessed valuation in 1830 exceeded $800,000. The burden of taxation, when compared either with popu- lation or wealth, was scarcely a sixth part of what it afterwards became, and the amount appropriated for the education of each child in the public schools, which half a century later was sixteen dollars a year, was then but three. Without entering into any comparison of the schools or the roads of 1830 with those of 1880, it may confidently be asserted that the years between 1810 and 1830 were in Quincy the golden period of the old Massachusetts town government. Never before had it been so strong, so pure, and so systematic as then ; never had | tematic way. The annual appropriations were made it done its work so well. It was, in fact, an absolutely model government " of the people, by the people, for the people."

These circumstances were all favorable to a good administration of affairs. The people were well to do ; but they looked closely to their taxes, and they had a traditional horror of waste. Corruption in public office was practically unknown. The scale of town expenses was so limited that no item was-too small to escape notice. The sum of five dollars un- necessarily spent, or spent for an unaccustomed pur- pose, might lead to a town-meeting discussion. Prior | to 1810 all business had been done in a loose, unsys-

by viva voce vote; the treasurer received the money which the constable collected ; and the selectmen drew it out and paid it over to the minister, the schoolmas- ter, and those who acted for the town's poor. No re- ports or estimates were made ; no papers were placed

That this was so was due in part to the condition of the town itself, and partly to the influence of one man. In 1810 the population of Quincy was still | on file. Everything was done on a general under- thoroughly homogeneous ; and it had not ceased to be standing. A cruder, less organized system could not so in 1830. It was the original Massachusetts stock ; be imagined. All that could be said was that it was 23

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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

natural, and, like most natural things, it worked well under the circumstances. As the town increased some one was needed to organize such a degree of system as the new condition demanded. That some one appeared in Thomas Greenleaf.

Mr. Greenleaf was Boston born, and graduated at Harvard in 1790 ; he came to Quincy to live in 1803, and remained there until his death in 1854. He speed- ily began to take an active interest in town affairs, and he showed how useful in a local way a man of charac- ter, fair parts, and good business capacity can always be. He belonged to the class of colonial country gentry ; and, indeed, he and his neighbor, George W. Beale, both dying at much the same time, were the last representatives of that class in Quincy. Mr. Green- leaf was a man of property, and, it has already been seen, a strong Federalist. In 1808, and for thirteen consecutive years thereafter, he was chosen to repre- sent the town in the General Court. He then became a leading man in Quincy, and so continued until towards 1840, when the growth of the Democratic element superseded him. In his day he organized the town's business, and he did it admirably. Everything was systematized. The change began about 1812. The charge of the town poor had then grown to be a scan- dal. Mr. Greenleaf took hold of the matter, and caused an almshouse to be built. He was chairman of the building committee. The sum of $2000 was appropriated for the purpose, and when the building was completed Mr. Greenleaf reported, with a pride which he did not attempt to conceal, that though no allowance had been made for omissions in the estimates and much extra work had been done,-amounting to twenty per cent.,-yet, notwithstanding this, the new almshouse was completed, and every bill paid, with | $84.48 of the appropriation still unexpended. Under his close business management the cost of maintaining the poor was then reduced by more than one-half, and his reports on the subject are as interesting to-day in presence of that still unsolved problem of pauperism as they were seventy years ago.

Having reduced the care of the poor to a system, Mr. Greenleaf turned his attention to other matters. Insensibly, but steadily, the method of conducting the town business in all its branches was brought into order. In March the annual town-meeting took place. Over this Mr. Greenleaf presided as modera- tor. The full list of town officers was then chosen, and the various articles in the warrant were referred to special committees. The meeting then adjourned. In April another meeting was held, and the commit- tees on the almshouse, the schools, the town lands and the town finances presented their reports, which | action on this matter, and a committee was appointed

were in writing, and entered into every detail. They were all spread on the record. Another adjournment was then had, and in May the appropriations were voted. Everything was thus made public and of record ; and everything was open to criticism and de- bate. As a system, under the conditions then exist- ing, it did not admit of improvement. The so-called democratic system which later succeeded it was a degradation of government.

It is needless to say that under the regime which has been described the town prospered greatly. A debt of some $2000 was incurred on account of the war of 1812 and for building the almshouse in 1814, but it was speedily paid off out of the surplus which a better management saved from the regular appro- priations for the care of the poor. In 1816 the town hall and school-house was burned down. The amount appropriated for a new building was $2400. Mr. Greenleaf was chairman of the building com- mittee ; and again be in due time reported, with over- flowing pride, that the work was done, all the bills paid, whether included in the original estimate or found to be necessary as the work went on, and that an unexpended balance of $362.61 remained in the hands of the treasurer. In doing this work a new town debt had been incurred ; but good financial management soon paid it off without increase of tax- ation.

Thus, as the end of the provincial period drew near, there was in Quincy a condition of general good feel- ing and prosperity such as the town had not before known. It showed itself in various ways. John Adams was then closing his long life. The wife who had watched the smoke of Bunker's Hill from the heights on the Plymouth road beyond the old Brain- tree farm-house had died in 1818; and the son who then stood, a little boy, by her side was at the head of the national cabinet and soon to be chosen President. The meeting-house of 1732 still stood on the train- ing-field; but it was old and out of repair. The townspeople began to talk of a new church edifice more in keeping with their increased numbers and wealth. Under these circumstances, John Adams, in June, 1822, moved, as he expressed it, " by the ven- eration he felt for the residence of his ancestors and the place of his nativity, and the habitual affection ¡ he bore to the inhabitants with whom he had so happily lived for more than eighty-six years,"- thus moved, he deeded to the people of the town a tract of quarry-land, from which the material for the building they wished might in part be derived. A special town-meeting was called in July to take

9. 2. Adams.

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to wait on the ex-President and express to him the gratitude with which his townsmen received his gift. They were instructed to say that, highly as the inhab- itants of Quincy estimated the advantages that would result from the gift itself, they valued it more as coming from one who by his patriotism had shed honor on his native place, and " to whom, under the smiles of Providence, we are so largely indebted for our independence and prosperity as a nation." So gratified was the old man by this cordial expression of kind feeling that he at once added to his former gift not only a deed of further lands, but the whole of his private library, consisting of some three thou- sand volumes. Again the town met and spread upon its records further and even warmer expressions of gratitude and veneration.

Immediate steps were taken towards building the new church, but not until April, 1826, were arrange- ments so far perfected that a building committee was appointed. Thomas Greenleaf was its chairman. But during that summer, and before any work of con- struction was begun, John Adams died. He was over ninety, and his life thus covered one-half of the whole settlement of the town, lacking only two years. The old order of things, like the old church which was symbolical of it, was about to pass away. A new generation, with other customs and modes of thought, was fast coming to the front, and it was fit and proper that the transition should be strongly marked. It was strongly marked. On the 4th of July, 1826, the town celebrated with special rejoicings the fiftieth an- niversary of independence. It was celebrated, as its sturdiest supporter had fifty years before predicted it would be, as " a day of deliverance, with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bon- fires, and illuminations." On that fair, glad day- in the midst of peace and prosperity and political kind feeling, with the sound of joyous bells and boom- ing guns ringing in his ears, with his own toast of " Independence forever" still lingering on the lips of his townsmen-the spirit of the old patriot passed away. But he had lived to see with his own eyes that " ravishing light and glory" the distant rays of which had reached him in 1776, and he had found that the end was indeed "more than worth all the means."

Warned of the approaching event, President John Quincy Adams had left Washington on the morning of the 4th of July, and at Baltimore he received word of his father's death. He reached Quincy on the morning of the 13th, the funeral having taken place on the 7th, in the presence of a great concourse of people. The following Sunday when the church bell

rang he went to the old North Precinct meeting-house, and a few hours later he thus recorded his feelings :

" I have at no time felt more deeply affected by [my father's death] than on entering the meeting-house and taking in his pew the seat which he used to occupy, having directly before me the pew at the left of the pulpit which was his father's, and where the earliest devotions of my childhood were performed. The memory of my father and mother, of their tender and af- fectionate care, of the times of peril in which we then lived, and of the hopes and fears which left their impressions upon my mind, came over me, till involuntary tears started from my eyes. I looked around the house with inquiring thoughts. Where were those I was then wont to meet in this house ? The aged of that time, the pastor by whom I had been baptized, the deacons who sat before the communion table, have all long since departed. Those then in the meridian of life have all followed them. Five or six persons, then children like myself, under the period of youth, were all that I could discern, with gray hairs and furrowed cheeks, two or three of them with families of a succeeding generation around them. The house was not crowded, but well filled, though with almost another race of men and women."

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 75

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