USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 27
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 27
USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 27
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In 1707 John Leverett was chosen president of Harvard College. He was known to be identified with the "Manifesto Church" and it was a great blow to the old-style Congregationalists to have the head of the college descend upon a liberal-minded man, when they had considered Harvard College their own institution. It was a personal disappoint- ment to Rev. Increase Mather and his son, Rev. Cotton Mather, as they both sought the place. Both made accusations against Governor Dud- ley, instigated by his part in having President Leverett appointed, and Rev. Cotton Mather wrote a pamphlet or two of bitterest denunciation. There was a tract printed in London of about forty pages, entitled "A Memorial of the Present Deplorable State of New England." An authority has said: "It is evident that Rev. Cotton Mather was the inciter and perhaps the compiler."
President Leverett died in May, 1724, and again Rev. Cotton Mather desired and expected the office. He was regarded by many as one of the great scholars of his time and was inclined to admit it. But the bitter religious controversy which he had incited at the appointment of President Leverett was not forgotten in seventeen years. Rev. Joseph Sewall, pastor of the Old South Church in Boston, was given the ap- pointment but the church was unwilling to release him and he declined the appointment. The Mather family then received "the most unkindest cut of all" when Rev. Benjamin Colman, pastor of the Brattle Street Church, a so-called liberal church, received the appointment. He, how- ever, declined after the General Court had refused to provide a fitting salary for the office, and Rev. Benjamin Wadsworth relinquished the pastorate of the First Church to manage the affairs of the college.
These affairs in connection with Harvard College indicate that the
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liberal movement had considerable standing in the provincial affairs. About this time the Baptists had grown considerably in numbers. The Quakers had a meeting-house here and there. There was a colony of Irish Presbyterians in Boston and a few employed elsewhere in the province. A law was passed in 1729 which relieved Baptists and Quakers from parish taxes.
All ministers were closely watched in those days for any evidence of departure from the churches which were direct descendants of the Pilgrims and Puritans. Even the son of Rev. Cotton Mather was under suspicion and finally charged with being unsound in doctrine. He was Rev. Samuel Mather and at that time assistant pastor of the Second Church in Boston. He was dismissed and ninety-three members of the church went out with him and organized the Tenth Congregational Church in Boston. They erected a meeting-house on Hanover Street in which they worshipped until the death of Rev. Samuel Mather in 1785. The congregation then returned to the Second Church, in accordance with his request, and their meeting-house was sold to the Universalists. The latter denomination acquired it as their first meeting-house in Bos- ton on Christmas Day, 1785 enlarged it twice, the last time in 1805. During the changes the society worshipped in Faneuil Hall.
There were Methodists among the British soldiers who came in 1768 and the beginning of a society was made but it was not until after the Revolutionary War that Methodism received any real impetus in Mas- sachusetts.
The same year that the Universalists made their beginning in Boston, the Unitarians became prominently in view in that city by action of the society worshipping in King's Chapel adopting a modified form of the English liturgy, in place of the original. This was the first Unitarian Society in New England which admitted the fact and remained the only one for several years.
The city of Boston has been mentioned many times in this history of the religious movement during the provincial period, because it is the metropolis and, naturally enough, the place where nearly all the denominations which spread to Plymouth County, had their first repre- sentation. Worshippers from Plymouth County as well as elsewhere attended the meetings held by Whitefield in Boston in "The Great Awakening," and for making these trips and the effect the Whitefield meetings had upon them some of the Plymouth County clergymen were dismissed by their congregations.
CHAPTER XVIII FROM COLONIAL PERIOD TO THE CIVIL WAR.
Yankee Influence Entered Into Developing the Middle and Far West and A More National Feeling Was Engendered by the Give and Take of Days of the Pioneers-Discovery That Coal Was Fuel For Smelt- ing Ruined Iron Industry Locally But Cotton Industry Has Always been Important-Famous Slogan of War of 1812 "Don't Give Up the Ship" Uttered By Captain Lawrence in Battle Off Massachusetts Coast-"American Army of Two" at Scituate-Beginnings of Amer- ican Literature and Oratory in Plymouth County-Intrepid Prospec- tors of the Days of '49.
Many people have never had called to their attention the fact that Plymouth County has had a continuous share in promoting the world's oldest factory industry, that of spinning cotton. The making of cotton gins in this county was not even interrupted to a serious extent by the Civil War, although transportation between the North and the cotton- growing States was rendered practically impossible at times.
The review of the cotton industry for the year 1926 showed that the New England States have about the same number of spindles as the cotton-growing States, or approximately 17,750,000. For the cotton season ending in July, 1926, North Carolina showed figures for active spindle hours of 19,952,000 against 18,938,000 for Massachusetts. A large number of northern cotton mills have moved south the past five years but cotton is still a great industry in Massachusetts, harking back to early days in this county.
At the close of our colonial period, there was a spinning wheel and other paraphernalia for the manufacture of clothing in nearly every home. Likewise nearly everything else which entered into the usual requirements of the family were made by its members in what we con- sider today a very crude manner. Labor-saving machinery had not been invented to say nothing about its being introduced into America. When such machinery was invented and first used in England, great was the opposition on the part of the people who thought that it would displace men, women and children with machinery and there would be no means of livelihood for those displaced. The struggle against the introduction of labor-saving machinery in the Old World is a very interesting chapter in the advancement of humanity.
The introduction of machines for weaving and spinning into the United States came immediately after the Revolution. In 1789, Samuel Slater came to America from England, and erected a spinning mill in
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Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He had been employed in a factory operated by Richard Arkwright, who had invented a spinning machine, an im- provement on the spinning jenney, which was the invention of James Hargreaves, a weaver of Lancashire, England. He named the ma- chine in honor of "Jenney," his wife. Slater's mill at Rhode Island was a success from the start. Other improvements were made in spinning machinery. Arkwright's spinning machine had been called the "water frame," because a water wheel was used as motive power. It was learned that clothing could be produced at Rhode Island in what seemed to the Plymouth colonists amazing rapidity, but there was another in- vention on the way which had a direct bearing on the industrial develop- ment of Plymouth County and brought about the founding of an in- dustry which has flourished ever since. This was the invention of the cotton gin.
The growing of cotton obtained a feeble start about the time of the Revolution but when a machine was invented which separated the seed from the fibre, the development came much faster. By the hand method one workman could clean only about one pound of cotton in a day. Eli Whitney, a native of Massachusetts, invented the cotton gin, his early machine enabling a person to clean three hundred pounds of cotton in a day. Through the invention of this Massachusetts man, who had gone to Georgia as a school teacher, the Southern States became the greatest cotton-growing region in the world. The story of how the Carver Cotton Gin Work in East Bridgewater was established and its remarkable success, is told in the proper place in this history.
It has already been related how iron ore abounded in the lake bottoms and swamps in the Plymouth Colony and how taking the ore was one of the industries, in which each town appointed a committee to super- intend the taking of the ore from the lakes and the collection of the share agreed upon as belonging to the town. Pots, kettles, andirons, war material, anchors and other things were cast or forged in several Plymouth County towns before and during the Revolution. Probably this section would have been a much more important region for the iron industry, had it not been for the discovery that coal could be used as fuel in smelting. It had been believed that charcoal was the only fuel which could be used to advantage. The great development of the iron industry west of the Alleghenies was on account of the proximity to the coal mines.
As the discovery that coal was a suitable fuel to use in smelting iron, took the iron industry away from that part of the country with which this volume deals, so the invention of farm machinery led to great agri- cultural developments in the Middle West, rather than in the older part of the country. For a generation, beginning about 1830, the hand tools used in tilling the soil were displaced by the mowing machine, horse rake,
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horse hoe, grain drills, corn planters and many implements which enabled farmers to think in terms of large areas. Plows and harrows were the only farm implements drawn by horses and oxen when the first rail- roads were begun. So the marvelous changes and expansion in agri- culture came by reason of steam transportation as well as by the labor- saving farm machinery and, the Middle West, being rich in large areas of land enriched by centuries of leaf mould, required no fertilizer. The Pilgrims, previous to the introduction of domestic animals in the colony, followed the example set them by the Indians, planting their seed with dead fish buried in the furrows, in lieu of better fertilizer. Fertilizing was one of the important and expensive parts of agriculture.
Went West in the "Covered Wagon"-While the rich prairies of the Mississippi valley were far away, there was a way of getting to them and of getting the produce from them to available markets. Conse- quently many Plymouth County men "went West," and grew up with the country, following the advice of Horace Greeley. The imprint of the New England character and determination is upon the success of many important cities and counties of the present Middle and Far West.
It should not be inferred that those who left this section to "go West," did so in railroad trains. The building of the railroads was more of a promise and a prophecy of the future than a present reality to the hardy, adventurous, eager and ambitious families who broke home ties and, like the man in the Scriptures, "went out not knowing whither he went." Some of the emigrants to the West carried all their possessions in packs upon their backs or in small carts drawn by hand. Others procured a canvas-covered wagon in which they loaded their household goods and provisions, and in this "prairie schooner," cut loose from old associations, determined "to do or die." The wagons were drawn by horses or mules, sometimes by oxen, and a distance of twelve to twenty miles a day was made, according to the condition of the road or trail. After the War of 1812 sometimes a group of such families joined together on the way. It is not necessary to go into the details of the life of those who took the trail of the "covered wagon." On the contrary, to forego mention of those who took the blood of the Pilgrim into the pioneer country would be unfair to the stout-hearted and am- bitious. They were among those who established public schools in the new country, as they carried their ideas of education and religion with them.
Many people from this section emigrated to the "Western reserve." This was that part of Ohio on Lake Erie which had been reserved by Connecticut when she ceded her western land claim to the United States. There had been a fellow-feeling between the "charter oak" state and the Plymouth Colony ever since the episode with Governor Andros
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which made famous that most venerated giant of the forest. Some people from this section had moved to Connecticut and, in turn, were making another move to Ohio. The diary of a Connecticut girl who traveled with her family to Ohio in 1810 contains some interesting en- tries. Her diary concerned some people from Plymouth County who were accompanying their Connecticut friends on the adventure west- ward. Among the entries were : "I have learned to eat raw pork and to drink whiskey. Don't you think I shall do for a new country? From what I have seen and heard, I think the state of Ohio will be well filled before winter. Wagons without number every day go on. One went on containing forty people."
In 1820, so rapid was the growth of Ohio, that its population out- numbered that of the State of Massachusetts, and some of its inhabi- tants were natives of Plymouth County. It was that same year that Massachusetts acquiesced in the desire of its northern population to found a state of their own, and the state of Maine was set apart.
This separation and loss of an area several times the area remaining to Massachusetts had a political significance which many people of the present day have, perhaps, never had called to their attention. Maine was admitted into the union in 1821 as a free state. Missouri had pre- viously sought admission to the union but the petition was delayed over a controversy whether it should be admitted as a slave or free state. Admitting Maine as a free state brought about the admission of Mis- souri as a slave state. There were eighteen states in the union in 1815, half free and half slave. Congress attempted to preserve the balance between the two opposing opinions. After the admission of Maine and Missouri, it was fifteen years before another state was admitted to the union. In 1836 Arkansas was admitted as a slave state, followed by the admission of Michigan a year later as a free state, restoring the bal- ance between freedom and slavery.
The people from New England, inheriting the virtues and the preju- dices alike of the Pilgrims and Puritans, helped to give the breath of life to the New West and develop its marvels. There they came in con- tact, competition and cooperation with emigrants from Europe. After 1840 great numbers of European workers sought employment in Ameri- ca and many of them found their way to the West, especially those who had a tendency toward farming. Men from all sections of this country and from foreign climes met on the level of the western prairies and be- gan to get one another's point of view. New Englanders, Virginians and pioneers generally broke away from local prejudices and embraced a more national conviction as Americans. The schools, churches and books with their refining influences were characteristic of the East and they were duplicated in the West by the people who were loyal to their traditions and convictions, but with the give and take spirit which mu-
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tual respect and a wider outlook had fostered. The finest qualities of the American people were brought about by the mutual dependence of pioneering.
An extract from Baylies' "History of New Plymouth" in this connec- tion is appropriate: "The Plymouth Colony has furnished her full pro- portion of talent, genius, learning and enterprise in almost every depart- ment of life; and, in other lands, the merits of the posterity of the Pil- grims have been acknowledged. ... In one respect they present a re- markable exception to the rest of America. They are the purest Eng- lish race in the world . . In all the southern and southwestern states, the natives of the Old Colony, like the Armenians of Asia, may be found in every place where commerce and traffic offer any lure to enterprise ; and in the heart of the gigantic West, like their ancestors, they com- menced the cultivation of the wilderness, like them, surrounded with savage beasts and savage men, and like them, patient in suffering, de- spising danger, and animated with hope."
And still their spirit in their sons, with freedom walks abroad; The Bible is our only creed, our only sovereign, God!
The hand is raised, the word is spoke, the joyful pledge is given- And boldly on our banner floats, in the free air of Heaven, The motto of our sainted sires; and loud we'll make it ring --
A Church without a bishop, and a State without a king!
Rev. Charles Hall, D. D.
In the Visitors' Book in the Old South Church in Boston-with the possible exception of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the most no- table landmark and reminder of the early American story-appears this entry :
L. D. Adams
Brockton, Mass.
My husband is a direct descendant of Crocker Sampson of Kingston, Mass., who served seven years in the Revolutionary War. I have in my possession Crocker Sampson's certificate of membership in The Society of the Cincinnati, signed by George Washington and Henry Knox. I have also the identical colonial script of bills which he received for his patriotic service. These notes are still uncut from the original sheets. Mr. Sampson also received a grant of land in Ohio-Incidentally, I may say, this colonial money was of little or no value and the land in Ohio has not yet been located.
The United States had to fight a second war for independence from Great Britain in 1812. That nation had treated us in the most overbear- ing and haughty manner possible and had treated our remonstances with disdain. Over nine hundred American ships had been taken by the British and six thousand American citizens had been forced to serve in the British navy. England was at war with Napoleon. The latter attempted to secure American provisions by promises and guarantees against interfering with our trade. Napoleon a little later seized every.
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American ship in the French ports and by this act stole $10,000,000 worth of American goods.
From 1807 to 1812 the United States had every good reason to make war against England or France, but the country desired peace, until the price of peace became too high. Henry Clay of Kentucky was one who favored war with England. When asked "What are we to gain by war?" his reply was "What are we not to lose by peace? Commerce, character, and a nation's best treasure, Honor." About this time the British traders supplied the Indians in the West, under Chief Tecumseh, with guns and ammunition, and people believed that the Indians were incited against the settlers in the West by the British. The Battle of Tippecanoe was fought by General William Henry Harrison, which taught the Indians a lesson, and, in June, 1812, Congress declared war against Great Britain, which apparently was just as much in need of one.
Plymouth and Barnstable counties suffered directly through the causes of the War of 1812. Among the American seamen who had been seized and impressed into the British navy were citizens of those coun- ties. They had suffered through the Embargo Act of December, 1807, which was an ineffective method of President Jefferson to deal with the outrages perpetrated on the seas by both France and England. They were ready for the War of 1812 and many from this section took part in it enthusiastically. Many served in the navy. The United States was woefully unprepared for a war, with only sixteen ships of all sizes against the British navy of more than a thousand ships. One of the United States ships was the "Constitution," since called "Old Ironsides," and with this frigate, Captain Isaac Hull, defeated the British ship "Guer- riere" off the coast of Nova Scotia, and captured the "Java." The "Wasp" took the "Frolic;" the "United States," the "Macedonian;" the "Hor- net," the "Peacock," and the American captain and crews proved to be superior to the British as seamen and gunners.
- A battle was fought off the Massachusetts coast between the "Chesa- peake," Captain Lawrence, and the "Shannon." Captain Lawrence was carried below mortally wounded, and he shouted to his men: "Don't give up the ship. Keep the guns going. Fight her till she sinks." His last command became an inspiring war cry for the American navy and the words "Don't give up the ship" appeared upon Captain Oliver Hazard Perry's flag when he captured the British fleet on Lake Erie. The victorious fleet, under Perry, had been built from timber cut in the forest, and the ropes, sails, guns and ammunition were supplied with great difficulty to the young naval officer who announced his victory in the historic words: "We have met the enemy and they are ours."
Cape Cod sailors were among those engaged in privateering upon British commerce. With letters of marque or reprisal, the captains and
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crews captured ships of the enemy. The captured ships and cargoes be- came the property of the captors and privateering became very profit- able. Enormous damage was inflicted upon British commerce in this way.
England succeeded in defeating Napoleon in 1814 and could then give her full attention to the war with the United States. Attempts were made to invade the United States with veteran British troops. The entire eastern coast of the United States was blockaded that sum- mer. A British fleet and army entered Chesapeake Bay, landed below at Washington, advanced on the Capital, defeated the raw militia which tempted to defend it. The British burned the White House and other public buildings, destroyed as much priceless property as possible and then withdrew to their ships. The fleet moved up the bay toward Bal- timore. An attempt was made to take that city but it was unsuccess- ful. The flag of the United States still floated over Fort McHenry after the attack and the sight of this flag inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star Spangled Banner."
The attempts on the part of the Americans to invade Canada had been fruitless, so were the attempts of the British to invade the United States, except for the satisfaction which may have been derived from burning the White House at the Nation's Capital. Had there been modern com- munications between the two countries, presumably the War of 1812 would never have taken place. It is more likely that England and the United States would have united against Napoleon. The arrogance on the part of the British, however, made the War of 1812 necessary, under all the circumstances, and both sides were losers to a great extent. There were lessons learned on both sides. The United States learned the necessity of preparedness, and how to act like a nation. England learned that the United States could not be conquered.
Before the close of the war, however, the British policy of coast de- scents placed the Massachusetts coast in a hazardous position, especially Plymouth County and Cape Cod, which were away from the forts and armies around Boston, and with many miles of seacoast undefended. The sails of English cruisers could be seen from Burial Hill in Plym- outh, the site of the Pilgrim fort.
In October, 1814, the General Court took action towards concerted action among the New England States to stir the national government to action regarding naval defences. The Hartford Convention was held, with a part of the delegation ready for secession or any other strong measure. Judge Joshua Thomas of the Plymouth County Pro- bate Court was one of the delegates from Massachusetts to this famous Convention, the voice of which would have been heard with no uncer- tain sound at Washington, but the committee reached the Capital City just as the news of the Ghent treaty was received.
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Commerce had been largely destroyed by the war and manufacturing received a great impetus. From that time to the present day manufac- turing has increased and the goods which have been made in Massa- chusetts have been shipped to all parts of the world, testifying to good workmanship, honesty in production and the ability to produce articles pleasing to their purchasers, as it has been a Yankee characteristic to study the needs of the market and produce the thing needful. This has been especially true of shoemaking, the leading industry of the county, which has a chapter by itself.
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