USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 35
USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 35
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 35
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Roxbury includes in its boundaries localities in which experiments and occurrences have taken place of much interest and importance. It was in the southwest corner of the town that Brook Farm, the scene
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of the most famous of American community life experiments, was lo- cated. The original Weld Farm, later the Bussey Farm, is now known for having built upon it the Bussey Institution, the agricultural school of Harvard University. The Bussey Institution includes the Arnold Arboretum.
Boston's first water supply was piped from Jamaica Pond through forty-five miles of pipes, made of logs. The average daily supply of water for Boston at the time of the incorporation of the Jamaica Pond Aqueduct Company in 1795 was 400,000 gallons. The old wooden con- duits supplied some portions of the old city until Cochituate water was introduced comparatively few years ago.
Roxbury might be said to have been typical of all the towns in Nor- folk County in the War of the Rebellion. It was proposed at a town meeting in 1862 to lay out a new road, and at that meeting, held in West Roxbury, it was resolved that "the only road desirable to be laid out at the present time is the road to Richmond."
Dorchester was equally patriotic and has as proud a record in edu- cational matters. The town passed a vote in 1784 "that such girls as can read in the Psalter be allowed to go to the Grammar School from the first day of June to the first day of October." This is said to have been the first vote in which provision was made for the public edu- cation of girls. The good example was not immediately followed by other towns. In the town of Northampton, for instance, it was voted in 1785 "Not to be at any expense for schooling girls." In 1792 that town, after a long struggle in town meeting, voted to admit girls to the town schools from May to October, but those only who were be- tween the ages of eight and fifteen years. Other towns took the same attitude.
Adoption of The Suffolk Resolves-Dedham has been called "The Mother of Towns" and rightfully so, because fifteen towns have been set off from this old shire town, the original name of which was Con- tentment. The fifteen towns, entire or in part, which departed from the mother town with her blessing were Norwood, Dover, Medfield, Walpole, Franklin, Wrentham, Needham, Wellesley, Millis, and por- tions of West Roxbury, Hyde Park, Bellingham, Natick, Sherborn and Westwood. West Roxbury and Hyde Park chose to be swallowed up by Boston but that was no fault of Dedham. The town was originally granted to nineteen petitioners, so, as it afterward turned out, there was nearly one town for each petitioner, as a manner of speaking.
Norfolk County was not set off from Suffolk County till 1793, which was exactly one hundred years later than the union of Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay colonies. Dedham was made the county seat or
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shire town of Norfolk County. The Registry of Deeds Building, corner of High and Ames streets, stands on the site of Woodward's Inn, and in that inn was passed the famous Suffolk Resolves, which led to the Rev- olution and the Declaration of Independence. There was an adjourned meeting of the committee which started the Suffolk Resolves in Ded- ham and this meeting was held in Milton when the resolves were com- pleted. The resolves were written by Joseph Warren who fell at Bunker Hill, a noble patriot whose memory is revered by every citizen of Norfolk County.
Space will not permit quoting these resolves in full, but one of the opening paragraphs will suffice to show the spirit of the men who originated them and of General Warren who wrote them:
Whereas, the power but not the justice, the vengeance but not the wisdom, of Great Britain, which of old persecuted, scourged and exiled our fugitive parents from their native shores, now pursues us, their guiltless children, with unrelenting severity. And
Whereas, this their savage and uncultivated desert was purchased by the toil and treasure, or acquired by the blood and valor of those our venerable progenitors; to us they bequeathed the dear bought inheritance, to our care and protection they assigned it, and the most sacred obligations are upon us to transmit the glorious purchase, unfettered by power, unclogged with shackles, to our innocent and beloved offspring. On this fortitude, on the wisdom and on the exertions of this important day is suspended the fate of this new world and of unborn millions. If a boundless extent of continent, swarming with millions, will tamely submit to live, move and have their being at the arbitrary will of a licentious minister, they basely yield to voluntary slavery, and future generations shall load their memories with incessant execrations.
On the other hand, if we arrest the hand which would ransack our pockets ... if we successfully resist that unparalleled usurpation of unconstitutional power . . . whereby the streets of Boston are thronged with military executioners .. . whereby the charter of the colony, that sacred barrier against the encroachments of tyranny, is mutilated and in effect annihilated.
At the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Dedham, held in 1836, Honorable Samuel F. Haven said in an address concerning the convention held at Wood- ward's Tavern: "Those who now or in other times shall examine the journal of the earliest Congress, held at Philadelphia, in search of the first recorded resolutions, to try the issue with Great Britain, if need be, at the point of the sword, will find the doings of this convention entered at length upon its pages, appearing as the medium through which the object of their assembling was first presented to their deliberation and serving as the basis of their subsequent proceedings."
On the site of the tavern in Dedham where the committee was ap- pointed to draft the Suffolk Resolves are two tablets of bronze inform- ing the reader :
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Here met on Sept. 6, 1774, The Convention Which three days later at Milton Adopted the Suffolk Resolves. They lighted the match that kindled the mighty Conflagration of the American Revolution. Here were the Birthplace and Home of Fisher Ames. Advocate --- Patriot -- Statesman 1758-1808.
On a tablet at the old house in Milton where the Resolves were com- pleted appears the following :
In this mansion On the ninth day of Sept., 1774, at a meeting of the Delegates of Every town and district in the Co. of Suffolk the Suffolk Resolves were adopted. They were reported by Major Gen'l (Jos) Warren, who fell in their defence in the Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775. They were approved by the members of the Continental Congress at Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia, on the 17th of September, 1774. The Resolves to which the immortal patriot here gave utterance, the heroic deeds of the eventful day on which he fell led the way to American Independence. Posterity will acknowledge that virtue which preserved them free and happy.
It will be recalled, as recorded in the chapter in this volume on "The Three Learned Professions" how Dr. Nathaniel Ames wrote in his diary, April 3, 1802: "Nothing will go with fools without a lawyer, but from good company they are excluded; or, if they get in, they spoil it." The words were written by the father of the most distinguished lawyer of Dedham at that time and, perhaps, of any time, Honorable Fisher Ames. Just what the elder Ames, physician, astronomer, tavern keeper and almanac maker, had in his thoughts when setting down his daily entry in his diary cannot be known but he was proud, and justly so, of his dis- tinguished son, educated in the law. The following is a satisfactory sketch of the career of the younger Ames :
The Honorable Fisher Ames, LL.D., was a native of this town. This civilian, eminent for his talents and oratory, graduated at Harvard Col- lege, in 1774. He not long afterwards studied law in Boston. The af- fairs of the Revolution drew his attention to politics, and he became conspicuous by his speeches in the convention of his native State, on the adoption of the Federal Constitution. He was chosen a member of the first Congress, after the organization of the general government in
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1789, and for eight successive years was one of the most distinguished members of that body. He held the first rank among his countrymen and contemporaries, in strength and splendor of endowments, lofty eloquence, a profound acquaintance with the science of government, and an enlightened and ardent patriotism. His health then failed, and he withdrew from public life. The lustre of his character, however, con- tinued undiminished. His retirement was adorned by uncommon ami- ability, modesty, and simplicity of manners, and the virtues of an en- enlightened and exemplary Christian. He died July 4th, 1808. His writ- ings, prefaced by a memoir of his life, were published in one volume 8vo. 1809.
Starting of A Famous School-It is always treading on dangerous ground when a writer attributes to any special town or locality the dis- tinction of being first in the field in any reform or progressive move- ment. There are numerous places which claim to have taken the first official action in defiance to the tyrannous government of Great Britain. There are as many which defy any other towns to rob them of the glory of having started the public school system going on its glorious way. Braintree was one of the early towns to have a free school and most towns in Norfolk County set the schoolhouse next to the meeting-house, both figuratively and physically.
The new year 1642-3, was started by the inhabitants of Dedham with a town meeting, held January 2, with fifty-one persons present. Accord- ing to a record of the meeting, "It was with an unanimous consent concluded that some portion of land in this extended division should be set apart for public use, 'for the Towns, the Church and a free schoole, viz 40 acres at the leaste or 60 acres at the most." Notice that this action was unanimous. It was six years after Dedham was founded and six years after Harvard College was founded, as both were established the same year.
Town records show that the school was in operation in 1644 and Ralph Wheelock was teacher, probably the first. From him descended the first and second presidents of Dartmouth College. He moved to Medfield and was a teacher there. On the church green, facing High Street, is a bronze tablet, placed there by the Commonwealth of Mas- sachusetts, June 17, 1898, recognizing one of Dedham's most signal honors. The inscription reads :
This tablet is erected by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to commemorate the establishment by the inhabitants of Dedham in town meeting assembled on the first of January, 1644
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of a Free Public School to be maintained by general taxation. Near this spot stood the First School House built by the town 1649.
Dorchester and other places have made claim for the honor of having the first public school on the American continent. It is believed that Dedham had the first school entirely supported by general taxation of the inhabitants. Marshfield in Plymouth County and Dorchester in Norfolk County had schools early established by voluntary private con- tributions.
Quincy of Quincy and the Adams Family-At the celebration of the three hundredth anniversary of Quincy in 1925, Hon. Perley E. Barbour, at that time mayor of the city, said: "Tonight we look back through three centuries and recall our very humble beginnings here at Merry- Mount. The little trading post has become a great city of over 60,000 peo- ple. In this population of today are the lineal descendants of the found- ers and the blood of every nation on the face of the earth. Under happy auspices the process of assimilation has gone on, and we believe today no city is more truly American than this city of the Presidents."
At that same celebration, Hon. Herbert Parker, in referring to the early settlers said: "Brave as the bravest of the men of your ancestry were their mothers, their wives, their counselors and their companions. Here came, and here, in 1661, in Braintree, died Joanna Hoar, as is told by the inscription on her gravestone in the ancient burial place of Quincy. Most excellent and honored mother of patriots; her children, in pulpit, council house, college and battlefield, ever and in every genera- tion of American life, among the foremost of New Englanders, in all that has created and sustained our nation.
"Through one daughter of Joanna Hoar, of her mother's name, is traced the line of the elder branch of the Quincys whence came Abigail Adams, granddaughter of Colonel John Quincy, who was himself grand- son of Joanna Hoar, through her second marriage with the third Ed- mund Quincy of Braintree. Thus was commingled the blood of the families of Adams and Quincy, and of Everett, with whose names the history of Massachusetts and even of our America would be as of the sky arching over us, but without its stars.
"Colonel John Quincy, whence Quincy takes its name, was grandson of the immigrant Edmund Quincy, one of the landowning gentry and builder of the Quincy homestead, now one of your cherished landmarks. Of this John Quincy it is fitting to speak in just praise, and so to reveal those qualities of character and mind from which the virtures and
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achievements of the long line of his illustrious descendants had their source.
"John Quincy, of Quincy, was moderator of every town meeting in Braintree until his death, speaker of the House of Representatives, colonel of the militia, member of the Council, negotiator of treaties with the Indians, and, by petition of the harassed remnant of the Ponkapoag tribe, appointed their guardian and protector.
"John Adams, his kinsman by marriage, with characteristic candor has described him as 'a man of letters, taste and sense, an experienced and venerated statesman' studiously avoiding any 'ensnaring depend- ency on any man, and whatever should tend to lay him under any dis- advantage of his duty.'
"Here John Adams, first of your Presidents, was born. His life, as that of his son, a successor in the presidency, and that of his grandson, in their several phases, are parts of the international history of their times, yet are inseparable and essential features of the story of their own community and of their own homeland.
"The lineage of the Adamses was the very fibre of New England, woven into the texture of its ideals and the realities of the institution of its government; as real a part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and of our Union as are the elemental ledges of the everlasting granite which bind together the borders of your city and fix its place upon the earth.
"Here John Adams passed the years of his earlier youth. . . . He strove mightily to frame and to proclaim from the Congress the Declaration of Independence, and though Jefferson gave it words, John Adams gave it life ... His kinswoman, Hannah Adams, had referred in a letter to 'the humble obscurity' of their common ancestry. Bluntly he observed in reply that if he could ever suppose that family pride was in any way excusable, he should think that a descent from a line of virtuous, in- dependent New England farmers for a hundred and sixty years, a better foundation for it, than a descent through royal or noble scoundrels ever since the flood.'
"We should know the old Massachusetts better if we could know more of this testy son of the soil, old John Adams, who has made so much of its history.
"In July, 1767, a son was born to John Adams and his wife Abigail. The grandmother of the child, a daughter of old John Adams, who passed from life at the moment of the child's birth, had asked that he bear her father's name, and so came John Quincy Adams into the life and history of your town and later, as Minister, Secretary of State and Pres- ident, into the world history .... Defeated for reelection by Jackson, he
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retired to the brief privacy of a home life at Braintree. Von Holst, a most discriminating student of American history, has described him as the last of the statesmen Presidents of the historian's time."
This other favorite son of Norfolk County who became President of the United States followed Monroe. He was John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, and, like his father, a native of Quincy. He was an ex- pansionist, having great faith in the growth of the United States and desirous of gaining additional territory. He was in favor of taxing Canada, buying Texas, securing Cuba by annexation and extending the United States to the Pacific Ocean, but he was unable to convert Con- gress to his way of thinking.
When he came up for reelection in 1828, he was defeated by Andrew Jackson. It was during Jackson's term of office that the first railroads were built in the United States and, strange to say, first of all was the Granite Railway, built in Quincy, the home town of the man he defeated. One reason for the defeat of John Quincy Adams was that some of the new states were tired of having the president come from Massachu- setts and Virginia. At the end of Adams' term Virginia had furnished presidents thirty-two years out of the forty that the Constitution had been in operation. Massachusetts had furnished, from Norfolk County, the two Adams, who served the other eight. Not until Calvin Coolidge became president at the death of Harding did the honor again come to Massachusetts, almost a hundred years intervening.
John Quincy Adams was unable as a presidential candidate for re- ëlection to overcome the popularity of Andrew Jackson on account of his fame at the battle of New Orleans. Although he was uneducated and a very poor speller Harvard College made him Doctor of Laws. He wanted to fight anybody who criticized his deceased wife. He killed Charles Dickinson in a duel for that reason. In his latter days he pro- fessed to forgive everybody except those who had slandered his wife. It is said some of the people of the South have voted for him regularly ever since his campaign against Adams.
Spirit of the Founders Still Exists-The story of the Norfolk County towns is the story of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The record of sacrifices, privations, overcoming difficulties, meeting new problems, responding to the numerous calls to duty, of obstacles surmounted and successes achieved have not been peculiar to this county. Weymouth was the first settlement within what afterward became the colony of Massachusetts and later absorbed the Plymouth Colony. The place of the beginnings was accidental or determined by choice after superficial explorations. It was the spirit of the colonials, the provincials, the pa- triots and those who dared and did which wrote a record in deeds for
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which we honor those who have gone before us but to whom we owe a large measure of what we have and what we are.
There is not a town in Plymouth County without a record of local history of which the inhabitants now sleeping in the quiet burial grounds or those worthily succeeding them in the affairs of today, were and are justly proud.
At the tercentenary celebration of the town of Weymouth, June 16, 1923, former Governor Channing H. Cox of Massachusetts, said: "I be- lieve that it still remains true that human nature is much the same to- day as it was three hundred years ago when the settlement was laid here. Men give evidence that they have the same elements of strength, and sometimes they give evidence that they are susceptible to the same temptations ; that they yield themselves to the same prejudices, and they indulge in the same weaknesses.
"The men who laid the foundations of Plymouth and of Wessagus- sett, and of these other old towns in Norfolk and Plymouth Counties ; the men who laid the foundation of a new state here on this continent understood with a remarkable foresight what would be required. And so they erected the frame-work of a government which would permit the multiplying of industries, the expansion of commerce, and the increase of wealth; but it was all predicated upon the assumption that the citizen would intelligently and loyally discharge all of his obligations to the community as a whole. And athough many experiments in government have been tried. ... they have tried them in the laboratories of Germany, of Italy, of Russia and other countries in the world .... so far they have failed to make any substantial improvement upon the Yankee invention of representative government, which is ours to enjoy, and under which we live."
On one occasion Curtis Guild, Jr., a former governor of Massachu- setts, said : "Free government of Plymouth, Dorchester, Massachusetts, Maine and finally of all in one, blossomed into one free republic, that has become the first great Power in the world."
William T. Davis, the Plymouth historian, said: "In the cabin of the 'Mayflower' not only was the foundation of republican institutions on this continent laid, but the first New England town meeting was held and the first elective officer chosen by the will of a majority."
When Domestic Animals Were Legal Tender-When Peregrine White was born and rocked in the cradle of the deep on the "May- flower," in Provincetown Harbor, there was not a cow in America. Peregrine had grown to a lusty youngster before he had a taste of the bovine lacteal fluid now considered so essential in the bringing up of infants.
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The Massachusetts Bay colonists brought over many things. In fact that settlement started as a picnic, compared with the beginnings of the Pilgrims. Some cattle which had reached Virginia were secured by intercolonial trade by 1650. The cattle which early came from Europe came from Devonshire and the present Devon stock came down from those early arrivals. Cattle came into the Puritan colony in 1633 by way of New Hampshire. They were Danish cattle.
Sheep were imported early in colonial days but wolves and lack of shelter in several winters made it hard to raise them. The sheep raising industry was encouraged by the Massachusetts Bay Colony because of the necessity of raising wool for clothing. Special privileges in public pastures were granted for sheep. In the vicinity of Boston in 1687 there were 214 sheep on thirteen farms. One farm had a flock of forty. In the same year there were one hundred and ninety-five cattle in Brookine or Muddy River as it was then called. This locality was used to pasture the cows while beans and corn were planted in Boston. Now it is not the cows but the tired business men who are sent to Brookline.
The first plow made its appearance in the Plymouth Colony twelve years after the landing of the Pilgrims. In some instances the first plows were owned by the towns, but at the middle of the seventeenth century there were as many farms in Massachusetts on which there were no plows as those which had this needful implement. Hand im- plements were scarce and many of them were of home manufacture.
Many towns not only owned plows which were rented to the inhabi- tants for a consideration, but cows were also held in common and might be assigned to poor families. Such community cows were usually gifts to the town to be used for the relief of the poor.
In giving out land in the establishment of towns the number of cattle was one of the things taken into consideration. A person who had no cattle was sometimes granted about thirty acres of mowing ground. Those who had two cows, steers, or yearlings had at least two acres for each animal and for a horse at least four acres.
Much land was held in common and in some towns there was a divi- sion for a cow common, ox common, calf common and sheep common.
There were titles as late as 1880 on Cape Cod which consisted of "one-eighth of a cow right."
In 1662, the General Court ordered that the inhabitants of one county should pay their taxes to the county treasurer in fat or young cattle, as well as in corn, at current prices in that vicinity.
One of the early entries on the books of Harvard College is " A goat of the Watertown rate. And he dyed." Another entry mentions a
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"sheep weighing sixty-seven pounds." Animals were regarded as legal tender. Cattle and horses were frequently included in payments for public debts but, if so offered, no "lean cattle or horses" were bound to be accepted.
Export and import duties were imposed in trading between the colonies. In 1680 imposts were placed upon the importation of cattle from other plantations; and protective duties were levied to prevent the "filling up our market and incapacitating our inhabitants to sell what they breed and raise."
Municipalities in Norfolk County - Bellingham is eighteen miles southwest of Dedham, the county seat of Norfolk County, but, for all that good distance, it was a part of Dedham until incorporated as a town in 1719.
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