USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 21
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 21
USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 21
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New England was more thickly settled than other parts of the country when present-day nonogenarians were born. There was a certain social life which was joyous, sometimes convivial, usually destined to promote the prosperity and larger outlook on life. New England was thrifty, populated largely by descendants of the people from the British Isles, many of whom retained many of the traits of the Pilgrims, and Ply- mouth County was the essence of New England. It is sometimes said today that New England and Nova Scotia can best be described as the; places "where the men still go to church." This church-going character- istic functioned almost one hundred per cent a century ago.
The particular part of New England of which we write was a century ago largely populated by people who lived on small farms. Each family
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raised most of its own food supply. There were occasional hired men on the farms but most of the work was done by the owner and his sons. Neighbors sometimes united in work, and husking bees, barn raisings and log rollings were social events as well as cooperative methods of getting a large amount of work done.
Clumsy wooden plows and harrows, wooden rakes, scythes, flails, heavy forks and spades were used up to a comparatively short time ago. The first iron plow was patented in 1797. The grain cradle came in 1803 but very little modern farm machinery came into use before 1830. Indian corn, potatoes and pumpkins were natives of America and grown by the Indians but wheat, rye, oats and barley, cabbages, turnips, peaches and apples were brought over by the early colonists. The Indians possessed no domestic animal except the dog, but horses, cattle, swine and sheep came from Europe to America shortly after the landing of the Pilgrims. It was a long time before the number of horses was equal to the number of oxen used as beasts of burden.
Famous Daniel Webster Plow-Daniel Webster, the famous states- man, who was a resident of Marshfield, in Plymouth County, always kept several yokes of oxen. There is still in existence at Durham, New Hampshire, at the University of New Hampshire, a plow which was presented to Mr. Webster by a group of his friends about 1840. It was used by him on his Marshfield farm, where he greatly enjoyed hold- ing the handles behind four yokes of oxen and listening to the roots crack, as the big plow tore them from the tough soil.
Mr. Webster died in 1852, and the plow was secured by the New Hampshire Historical Society, as a valuable relic of the statesman- farmer and something which he had personally used with much pleasure. He was a native of New Hampshire, and the plow was kept in Hanover, in that State, until the opening of Culver Hall at Dartmouth in 1871. On that occasion it was taken into the college field and several furrows ploughed, with Hon. David M. Clough holding the handles. Mr. Clough was a resident of Canterbury and was known as the "corn king of New Hampshire."
In 1893 the plow was transferred from Hanover to Durham, where it has been ever since, except on a few occasions when it was loaned for an agricultural fair or otherwise exhibited under appropriate circum- stances.
During the annual Farmers' Week at the University of New Hamp- shire in August, 1919, it was hitched to a tractor, and with Dean Taylor holding the handles, two furrows, 300 feet long, were turned. It turned furrows, ten inches deep and eighteen inches wide, without a creak. It is made of white oak with a wooden moldboard, covered with strips
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of iron. It is thirteen feet long, twenty-five inches high, and weighs 372 pounds.
Clothing was homespun up to one hundred years ago and spinning wheels are still to be found in some attics in Plymouth County, al- though no longer in use. Many have been bought by antique hunters in recent years and served to ornament colonial rooms or museums. There are still a few grandmothers who can remember the days of making coarse linen and woolen cloth, such as were used for clothing in their childhood. Much hand-made furniture is still in use in the county, including the first rocking chair ever made, an invention for the comfort of a gentlewoman of Kingston, and still kept in the house in which it was made.
Plymouth and Barnstable counties furnished a large number of young men who engaged in cod fishing, shipping on the fishing schooners which sailed away from Kingston, Duxbury and the Cape Cod ports. The call of the sea met with ready response and some of the most skillful and daring seamen of the country have been the boys of these two counties. Whale fishing was an industry in which several genera- tions engaged.
Shipbuilding flourished in Plymouth County. There were numerous grist-mills, iron moulding foundries, sawmills and small manufacturing plants, giving promise of the large factories of the present generation. Furnaces for smelting iron ore, which was found in the ponds and bogs, were in most of the towns. Where the family, if at home, now in long, winter evenings, listens to the radio, it was the custom a hundred or more years ago for the women and girls to spend the evenings in spinning and weaving, while the men and boys made barrel staves, hoops or shingles before the colonial fireplaces. Staves and hoops found a ready market in the West Indies. Most towns had a cooper and barrels and kegs were in general use for all kinds of purposes. The first cooper in the county was John Alden, the secretary to Captain Myles Standish. The colonial home was a factory in which was produced nearly everything needed by the family.
CHAPTER XI HISTORY AMUSINGLY RELATED BY McFINGAL.
Clergyman Presented Suit of Clothes for Daring To Preach Sermon Which Filled Governor Gage With Rage-Word Pictures of Colonial Meeting-Houses and Early Town Meetings in Plymouth Colony- Lines Written in Appreciation of Marshfield Man Who Took His Commission Very Seriously and Dressed to Play the Part-How Burgoyne Set up Captives as Targets for His Troops and Encouraged the Spread of Smallpox-Savages Paid for Scalping English Colonists by the English Government.
There were numerous outstanding patriots who took a prominent part in events which led up to the Revolutionary War, whose homes were in Plymouth County. There was the usual proportion of Loyalists or Tories and this county, as all counties, had riotous demonstrations be- tween neighbors of opposing political views regarding Great Britain and the Colonies. There were Plymouth County men who rallied to the defense of Boston, following the Battle of Lexington and the Concord fight. This grand, old county gave a good account of itself in the Revo- lution and in all the wars.
When there became pronounced opposition to the home government and the tyranny of its officials in this country a Plymouth County clergyman, Rev. Gad Hitchcock of Hanson, was a member of the con- vention which framed the Constitution of Massachusetts in 1765. He preached the election sermon in the presence of Governor Gage in 1774, taking for his text, "When the righteous are in authority the people rejoice ; but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn." (Proverbs, 8-2.) After commenting in severe terms upon the calamities resulting from the reign of the wicked he remarked, "We need not pass the limits of our own nation for sad instances of this. Whether or how far it has been exemplified in any of the American colonies, whose govern- ment in general are nearly copies of the happy British original, by the operation of ministerial unconstitutional measures, or the public conduct of some among ourselves, is not for me to determine. It is, however, certain that the people mourn."
The sermon referred to was preached in Boston and filled General Gage with rage. Before going into the pulpit, Dr. Hitchcock had been told that General Gage and some of the king's troops were to be present and he was advised to tone down his sermon accordingly, but his an- swer was: "My sermon is written and it will not be altered."
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Among those who heard the sermon and were mightily pleased with the fearlessness of the minister and the way in which he had put over his message in the presence of the king's troops and their proud and haughty governor, was Samuel Adams. He and other leaders, in admira- tion, presented Dr. Hitchcock with a suit of homespun clothes, as a mark of their appreciation.
In after years "Harper's Magazine" thus referred to him: "Dr. Hitch- cock was celebrated for his patriotism and his fearlessness in avowing it, and in doing all that he could for the cause of his country. He some- times acted as chaplain in the army of the Revolution, and never shunned the dangers to which the soldiers were exposed." Reference is made to him in this history as typical of the men of Plymouth County in the Revolutionary War days, or in any other time of political stress. There were several military companies in the various towns in the county, at Plymouth, North Bridgewater, Middleborough, Bridgewater, Hingham, Scituate, Abington and some smaller towns.
Some amusing flashes, picturing the Revolutionary struggle from the standpoint of the Plymouth Colony, telling something of the peculiarities of the colony itself and reflecting some of the prejudices and judgments commonly held in those times which tried men's souls, were contained in the poem of McFingal.
"If you ask the average person today, among those having considerable literary attainments and believing that they know their Old Colonial history, "What can you tell me about McFingal?" the chances are very fair that he will answer in Yankee fashion by asking another question, "Who is McFingal?" This name, however, had a tremendous effect in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and then, as now, most people jumped at the conclusion that McFingal was a real personage, moreover one gifted with second sight.
"McFingal" was a modern epic poem which was first published in America in 1782 in its completed form, although a part of it had been published in Philadelphia in 1775, and the next year reprinted in Lon- don, where it passed through several editions. It was published anonym- ously but was at first thought to have been composed by an Englishman It dealt with situations in the Plymouth Colony and told the truth about the Revolutionary War, in its later cantos, as no other writing seems to have done, and is deserving of a place in a history of the Pilgrim land. Its author was John Trumbull, Doctor of Laws, whose ancestor came from England in 1645. He was for a time a law student in the office of John Adams, later President of the United States. He was a student of the political turmoil of the time and an ardent advocate of liberty. In 1775 the Battle of Lexington began the Revolutionary War.
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Congress was in session in Philadelphia when Trumbull wrote the first part of the poem of McFingal in an effort to inspire confidence in the plan for crushing the Tory party and preparing the public mind for the Declaration of Independence. Friends of the cause immediately took steps to have the poem published in Philadelphia while Congress was in session in that city. The last of the poem was not written until after the surrender of Cornwallis decided the fate of the Revolution. As the poem was not copyrighted it was reprinted by thirty or more printers and booksellers and obtained what was then an enormous circulation. Associated with other young men gifted with powers of satirical writing, many essays appeared more or less mysteriously and had the effect, by their boldness and satire, to check and intimidate leaders of disorganiza- tion and infidel philosophy.
An indication of the style of the poem "McFingal" is shown in lines descriptive of the rout of the British from Concord and Lexington when fired upon by the colonists who
"Fired the shot heard round the world."
These opening lines of Canto I were as follows:
Then Yankees, skill'd in martial rule, First put the British troops to school, Instructed them in warlike trade And new manoeuvres of parade, Made them give up, like saints complete, The arm of flesh, and trust the feet, And works, like Christians undissembling, Salvation out, by fear and trembling; Taught Percy fashionable races, And modern modes of Chevy-Chases.
The buildings used as places of public worship in the Old Colony were called meeting-houses rather than churches, as they were used on secular days for whatever gatherings of the people might take place, or, in the language of McFingal :
That house, which loth a rule to break Serv'd heaven, but one day in the week, Open the rest for all supplies Of news, and politics, and lies.
M'Fingal described one of the early town meetings, such as were held in the meeting-houses :
And now the town was summon'd, greeting, To grand parading of Town-meeting; A show, that strangers might appal, As Rome's grave senate did the Gaul. * * *
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Stood forth the constable; and bore His staff, like Merc'ry's wand of yore, Waved potent round, the peace to keep, As that laid dead men's souls to sleep. Above and near the hermetic staff, The Moderator's upper half
In grandeour o'er the cushion bow'd,
Like Sol half seen behind a cloud.
Beneath stood voters of all colours, Whigs, Tories, orators, and brawlers;
With every tongue in either faction
Prepared like minute-men for action; Where truth and falsehood, wrong and right,
Drew all their legions forth to fight. With equal uproar scarcely rave
Opposing winds in Aeolus' cave;
Such dialogues with earnest face Held never Balaam with his ass.
Abijah White of Marshfield was employed to carry from that Plym- outh County to Boston famous town resolves, censuring the Whigs and reprobating the destruction of the tea at the Boston Tea Party. He armed himself in ridiculous military array, as a comic opera hero, pretending he was afraid he would be robbed of his documents. About this time, some British officers, walking on Beacon Hill, Boston, after sunset, were affrighted by noises in the air which they took to be the sound of bullets. It is supposed the cause was the flying of bugs and beetles. An historian says: "They left the hill with great precipitation, spread the alarm in their encampment, and wrote terrible accounts to England of being shot at with air guns." Indeed, for some time they seriously believed, that the Americans were possessed of a kind of magic white powder, which exploded and killed without report. McFingal tells the story :
As comets thro' th' affrighted skies Pour baleful ruin as they rise: As Aetna with infernal roar In conflagration sweeps the shore; Or as Abijah White, when sent Our Marshfield friends to represent, Himself while dread array involves, Commissions, Pistols, Swords, resolves, In awful pomp descending down Bore terror on the factious town: Not with less glory and affright, Parade these generals forth to fight. No more each British colonel runs From whizzing beetles, as air-guns; Thinks horn-bugs bullets, or thro' fears Muskitoes takes for musketeers;
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HISTORY AMUSINGLY RELATED BY McFINGAL
Nor 'scapes, as if you'd gain'd supplies, From Beelzebub's whole host of flies, No bug these warlike hearts appalls; They better know the sound of balls. I hear the din of battle bray; The trump of horror marks its way. I see afar the sack of cities, The gallows strung with Whig-committees; Your moderators triced, like vermin, And gate-posts graced with heads of chairmen.
It was the custom, born of necessity, in early Plymouth days for the Pilgrim Fathers to carry their guns with them to religious services, as indeed wherever they went. McFingal paints the word picture as follows :
So once, for fear of Indian beating, Our grandsires bore their guns to meeting; Each man equipped on Sunday morn With psalm book, shot, and powder horn, And looked, in form, as all must grant, Like th' ancient true church militant, Or fierce, like modern deep divines, Who fight with quills, like porcupines.
As the Revolution approached, commissioners were appointed to ferret out the Tories and bring them to a renouncement, in writing of their toryism; and it was ordered if they should refuse, they be brought before the people assembled and dealt with as the assemblage should decide. Some of these recantations were described by McFingal as follows :
I now renounce the Pope, the Turk, The King, the Devil, and all his work: And, if you will set me at ease, Turn Whig or Christian-what you please.
Sometimes, however, there was a Loyalist or Tory who would not recant, come what would, and in such an event, there was the liberty pole which was the fitting scene for patriotic doings of all sorts and the personification of McFingal would be eased into its presence
And with loud shouts and joyful soul, Conduct him prisoner to the pole. * * And stood heroic as a mule To meet the worst-for recompense To trust King George and Providence,-
When the good work went on
There from the pole's sublimest top The active crew let down a rope,
Plym-13
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At once its 'other end in haste bind And make it fast upon his waistband, Till like the earth, as stretched on tenter, He hung, self balanced, on his centre; Then upwards, all hands hoisting sail, They swung him like a keg of ale, Where looking forth in prospect wide His tory errors he espied,-
Such a scene as Trumbull has described had its counterpart around the liberty pole in several Old Colonial villages
While loyalty, oppress'd in tears, Stands trembling for its neck and ears
and some of the characteristic and effective ways in which the Tories were treated is described in a chapter devoted to that purpose in this history. Many of the Tories had a vision of what was to come and were like McFingal when he says
I hear a voice, that calls away, And cries "The Whigs shall win the day."
Many of them joined the British Army or sailed for Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, or elsewhere, fearing the vision of McFingal might be realized :
I see the Mob, beflipped at taverns, Hunt us, like wolves, through wilds and caverns! What dungeons open on our fears! What horsewhips whistle round our ears! Tar, yet in embryo in the pine, Shall run on Tories' back to shine; Trees, rooted fair in groves of sallows, Are growing for our future gallows; And geese unhatched, when plucked in fray, Shall rue the feathering of that day.
Trumbull described in his inimitable way the cruelties of the British commanders. It has been said that the conduct of the Turks in putting all prisoners to death is much more humane than that of the British army for the first three years of the Revolutionary War, or till after the cap- ture of Burgoyne. Loring, a refugee from Boston, was made commis- sary of prisoners by General Howe. The consummate cruelties practiced on the American prisoners under his administration, almost exceed the ordinary powers of human invention.
Where Britons, all their captives taming, Plied them with scourging, cold and famine, By noxious food and plagues contagious Reduced to life's last, fainting stages. Amid the dead, that crowd the scene,
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The moving skeletons were seen. Aloft the haughty Loring stood, And thrived, like Vampire, on their blood.
Burgoyne, in his northern expedition, arranged to give compensation to the Indians for American scalps, without distinction of gender. He denied, however, his personal agency in these transactions, which is hardly borne out in the correspondence between him and General Gates, occasioned by the murder and scalping of Miss McCrea.
There is a footnote in the London Edition of "McFingal" which states, "Loring was a refugee from Boston, made commissary of prisoners by General Howe. The cruelties practiced on the American prisoners under his administration almost exceeded the ordinary powers of human in- vention. The conduct of the Turks in putting all prisoners to death is certainly much more rational and humane than that of the British army for the three first years of the American war, or till after the cap- ture of Burgoyne."
It is asserted that General Howe's troops, openly and without cen- sure, in many instances, on his first conquest of Long Island, tied up the first captives for the troops to shoot at, and "hoped they'd learn on foes thus taken,"
To aim at rebels without shaking. Then deep in stratagem, he plann'd The sure destruction of the land; Turn'd famine, torture and despair To useful enginry of war; Sent forth the smallpox, and the greater To thin the land of every traitor.
Concerning the above allusion to the smallpox in the poem "McFingal," it is explained that "Great pains were taken by emissaries from New York to communicate the smallpox through the country. It became necessary to counteract the attempt by a general inoculation of the in- habitants."
CHAPTER XII CHOICE BETWEEN WAR AND SLAVERY.
Colonists Camped Before Boston in Such Numbers That the British Took the Hint and Their Departure for Canada-First War Vessel Built for Revolutionary War At Kingston and Launched on the Jones River-Issue of Money "Not Worth a Continental" Led To Shays" Rebellion-Existence of the Commonwealth Threatened But Governor Bowdoin's Firmness Saved the Day-Adoption Of Constitution by Convention at Philadelphia of Peculiar Interest in Massachusetts- Salutary Influence of Paul Revere.
At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, there was no widespread desire for independence in America. It was an uprising on the part of the colonists to defend their rights as Englishmen. Great interest was felt in Plymouth County in the controversies which had arisen, as John Adams of Quincy and John Hancock of Boston were well known by reputation and were recognized as acknowledged leaders. Consequently, when General Gage, the British commander in Boston, was ordered to arrest Adams and Hancock and send them to England for trial, it was the spark which ignited the flames which would not be quenched as long as there was patriotic zeal to finish the process of purification by fire, and burn up the dross of persecution and unrighteous demands from the throne of George the Third.
Warned by Paul Revere and William Dawes who made the ride from Boston to Lexington, Adams and Hancock escaped. The British soldiers numbering 800 reached Lexington at sunrise April 19, to find about fifty minute-men, under Captain John Parker, armed with guns and displaying a most determined appearance, the fifty men confronting 800 trained and fully equipped British soldiers who were on the way to destroy the military stores which the colonists had collected at Concord. After arresting Adams and Hancock. Major Pitcairn, riding at the head of the British troops, merely expected to capture the additional military implements which he saw in their hands, but his demand "Disperse, ye villains, and lay down your arms" was met with the calm command of Captain Parker to the farmers: "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."
At Lexington common, the British slew eight minute-men, including Captain Parker, whom they bayoneted because he would not disperse, even when his companions fled. Ten were wounded and some of them
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crawled and hobbled to positions behind stone walls or clumps of trees and took part in the firing upon the British later in the day when the latter returned from Concord, after destroying the military stores and engaging with the citizens of that town and vicinity who were drawn up at the bridge, half a mile from the powder house.
Concerning the Concord fight, Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of Amer- ica's greatest men of letters, afterwards a resident of Concord, wrote :
By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world.
. That shot was heard in Plymouth Colony almost instantly and men from Southeastern Massachusetts and indeed from all New England, were encamped before Boston with surprising promptness, after the British had returned and were under the protection of their fleet in Boston harbor. The colonists of America came together for a common purpose and began to know one another better. The New Hampshire minute-men were led by John Stark, the Rhode Island militia by Nath- aniel Greene, Connecticut men by Israel Putnam and, even in the wilder- ness of Kentucky, there was a Camp Lexington, occupied by a party of hunters and named in honor of the town where the first blow was struck against British misrule. George Washington declared that Amer- icans must choose between war and slavery.
The soldiers encamped before Boston were represented at the Conti- nental Congress which met at Philadelphia May 10, 1775. John Adams was a prominent figure there. George Washington was appointed com- mander-in-chief of the army and was soon on his way to Massachusetts to take command. An important battle was fought, however, before Washington took command of the army under the old elm tree in Cam- bridge, which was still in existence until a few years ago. This was the Battle of Bunker Hill, in which the colonists fought until their am- munition was exhausted, twice driving the British back and diminishing the attacking force more than one-third. Nathaniel Greene of Rhode Island said: "I wish we could sell them another hill at the same price."
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