USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 40
USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 40
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 40
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The earliest records show that permission was granted at the tav- erns to "draw" wine and to brew and sell "penny beere" but intem- perance was punished severely by the Puritan fathers. The court ordered on March 4, 1633, that "Robert Coles for drunkenness by him committed at Roxbury shall be disfranchised, weare about his necke & soe to hange upon his outward garment a D made of redd cloth & settle upon white; to contynue this for a yeare and not to leave it off at any tyme. when he comes amongst company under pen- alty of XL s for the first offence & V pounds the second, & after to be punished by the court as they think meet; also he is to weare the D outwards and is enjoyned to appear at the next General Court & to contynue there until it be ended."
Timothy Winter was recompensed, according to the records of Quincy in 1687, for having lodged, fed, clothed and buried Jacob Pool, the first public welfare work mentioned in that town. He was paid out of the rates, "with the town Cow which he received from the widow Scant" thrown in.
Records of that town show that in 1694 it was voted in town meeting "on the affirmative five pounds for John belshers widows maintenance and thirty shillings to Thomas Revill for keeping Wil-
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liam Dimblebee. .. and seven shillings to William Savill for dimble- bees cofin."
The cause of poverty in those days was sometimes attributed to the taverns or "ordinaries." John Adams declared that in them "the time, the money, the health and the modesty of most that were young and many old were wasted; here diseases, vicious habits, bastards and legislators were frequently begotten."
Those to whom the towns provided fuel, care, lodging and sus- tenance were required to pay for the same in such labor as they were able to furnish. Sometimes they were employed in keeping the high- ways in better condition. A story is told of one town in Norfolk County where there was an earnest discussion at one of the town meetings regarding the justice of the way in which the labor of poor people had been expended. One town meeting orator objected that a certain end of the town had received most of the labor of indigent persons and "most of the paupers come from that end of the town too."
The answering orator called upon his fellow-townsmen to witness the justice of the matter. "If we provide most of the paupers why shouldn't we get the benefit of their labor?" was his argument.
Sometimes People Were Warned Out-Selectmen in towns were empowered by Colonial laws to "order the affaires of the towne" and their duties included, at times, compelling the improvident and the infirm "to voyde the towne." There is a record that in 1701, the se- lectmen gave "notis to a leame gearle whose name is Wodekins that she doe depart out of Dedham."
In Colonial laws no single person could remain by himself unless a free man. Masters were required to support their servants. Un- der the Massachusetts Bay act of 1636, no servant could be set free before the end of his term. All towns were required by law "to dis- pose of all single persons and inmates within their town to service or otherwise." Where there were instances of the head of a family neglecting to support his dependents, he and his children were put out to service. The idea was to save the community from the bur- den of caring for slackers and to place the burden of incompetents and deficients upon the next of kin and, so far as it could be determined, where it belonged. Children were bound out until they became of age, in many instances. The volume of poor relief was kept relatively small and the colonists were usually able to acquire a plot of land and secure from it a sufficient living to keep the wolf from the door. The plan gen- erally in vogue was patterned after the famous Poor Law of Queen Elizabeth of England.
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There was an order of the General Court enacted in 1639, "That any shire court, or any two magistrates out of court shall have power, to determine all difference about the lawful settling and providing for, poor persons; and to dispose of all unsettled persons in such towns as they shall judge to be most fit for the maintenance and em- ployment of such persons and families, for the ease of the country."
The selectmen in the towns were the officers of administration un- til overseers of the poor were established. The first board of this character was established in Boston in 1691. There were laws in both the Plymouth and Bay colonies against new comers, except with permission from the authorities. The Bay Colony, in 1636, enacted a law: "Ordered that no townsman shall entertaine any strangers into their houses for above 14 days without leave from those that are ap- pointed to order the townes businesses."
Cases of poverty were discussed freely in town meetings and the poor were auctioned off to the lowest bidder who would undertake their care. In many cases persons likely to become public charges were "warned out."
Care of the Insane One Hundred Years Ago-In the latter days of the eighteenth century the care of the poor was a heavy burden upon the towns, even though the price paid for the care of each individual pauper seems insignificant. When Quincy was set off from Brain- tree in 1792, one of the first acts of the selectmen was to warn four- teen adults, seven of whom had families, to "depart the limits of the town." The care of the poor was put up at public auction, to be knocked down to the bidder who would undertake the support of the paupers for the lowest figure. In 1813, the price for care of poor in Quincy averaged "$1.42 each per week, exclusive of sickness and funeral charges." During the six years between 1808 and 1813, in- clusive, the whole tax levy was $18,200 to meet town and parish ex- penses. More than one third of the whole, or $6,205, went to the support of the poor. A less sum was used for school purposes.
There is a record of the town of Braintree as early as 1689 regard- ing the care of the insane.
It was voted that Samuel Speer should build a little house, seven foot long and five foot wide, and set it by his house to secure his sisters, good wife Witty being distracted, and provide for her, and the town by vote agreed to see him well payed and satisfied which shall be thought reasonable.
It is said that the method was to chain insane persons like a dog in these kennel-like houses, usually built in the yard of some relation or other keeper who assumed their care.
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The method of caring for the poor and otherwise unfortunate was not peculiar to Norfolk County towns.
Under date of January 9, 1826, there is a record in the town of Fox- borough: "Voted, that the Selectmen be instructed to remove Dan- iel Dassance, as soon as convenient, from the House of Correction, at Dedham, and build a cage and place it within his mother's house, and him the said Dassance therein, under the care of the Selectmen."
The vote was in the interest of a poor, insane person who was un- der the care of the town, according to the custom of the time. Later Dassance was provided for in a hospital at Worcester.
The care of the insane in this country was always more humane and gentle than in Europe. The treatment of such unfortunates in England, for example, was conducted under a belief that they were possessed by devils. They were chained, often in darkness. They were beaten and sometimes starved. Many times they were exhib- ited for money to a jeering, cruel public which made sport of pester- ing them. The evils of insanity were consequently aggravated. Fol- lowing a Parliamentary investigation in 1815, and the report that mental diseases called for tender and indulgent care, the suggestion was regarded by the wise men who are always so admittedly wise in every generation, that such an idea was a dream of an idealist. But, in 1839, the barbarous mechanical appliances of chains, strait-jack- ets and chairs of restraint which were regularly employed in the asy- lums, were cast out, or used in extreme cases to prevent a patient do- ing violence.
Under more humane treatment the types of the disease gradually changed and the victims, no longer exasperated by continued sever- ity of brutal attendants ceased to be afflicted by demoniac frenzies, and many cases were cured.
Document One Hundred and Fifty Years Old Recently Found ---- In the filing room of the Cambridge Public Welfare office was found early in 1928 an interesting document, showing an exact examination made of a woman who made application for assistance. The docu- ment was dated June 10, 1777. One Phebe Thayer, whose maiden name was Wright (spelled in the letter Rite) applied for aid on ac- count of her husband having died in the Revolutionary War. The examination was to determine her proper place of "inhabbitancy." The Selectmen of Cambridge reported to the Selectmen of Boston that the latter city should stand responsible and that two children of the couple were in Braintree. Questions and answers were as fol- lows:
Q-what was your maiden name.
A-Phebe Ritt.
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Q-where did you belong and where was you born.
A-At wilmington but I lived three years on Noddle Island and then was married to Ab thayer and lived with him there nine years, he then belonging to the Castle, but hired a house for me on T. (said) Island.
Q-was you ever warned out Boston or T. Island.
A-No.
Q-how long is it sence you came from T. Island.
A-when the Late Light was on hog Island.
Q-where did you go then.
A-I went to Chelsea, and my husband went in the army.
Q-where did you go then.
A-I went to Cambridge and have lived in the barracks ever sence in T. Town, my husband having Returned home from the army this last spring, was taken sick and died, and haith left with me in this Town of Cambridge four children, and two more in Braintree.
This examination was forwarded to the Selectmen of the town of Boston with the notation, signed by Edw. Marvett :
The above is a true examination from the mouth of the T. woman, Not Doubting but you are satisfied, they belong to the Town of Boston, and as the barracks are all to be cleared of the smallpox, Doubt not but you will Emediately send about for T. family or Doctor Rand haith given it as his opinion that the woman and one of her children now haith the D -- (word obscured by blot).
Your Complyance, will greatly Relieve the Selectmen and this Town.
Even Almshouses No Longer Needed-The old-fashioned poor house was primarily a place of refuge. It was not an institution in the modern sense. It was usually managed by someone who attained the place as a reward for political service. In recent years there has been a tendency to abolish the almshouses, care for the indigent per- sons in institutions when hospitalization was required, or furnish them with financial assistance, fuel and food in their own homes, if they could keep them up with such assistance.
"Comfort and happiness are the chief things we can give these people who have come into our care. Let's give them all we can," is the Massachusetts attitude, as expressed by Francis Bardwell, State inspector, who occupies a little old leather-covered chair in the State House, when seated at his official desk. The chair is men- tioned because it is the one used by Frank B. Sanborn, one of the! Concord philosophers, an able welfare worker whom Mr. Bardwell succeeded in office.
Mr. Bardwell attributes the high standard of Massachusetts in car- ing for its dependents to the fact that the system is municipal instead of county care. He says: "The comfort and care of one's neighbors is more intimate, nearer the heart, in a system based upon the home town as a government unit. Voters in the average town select the
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overseer of the poor because of his fitness." The State has supervi- sion but not control. Mr. Bardwell is frequently called to other States interested in taking over features of the "Massachusetts way." Sev- eral towns in Norfolk County have given up their almshouses, hav- ing so few persons requiring assistance from the town.
CHAPTER LIV PROGRESS IN TRANSPORTATION
Following the Cow and the Indian On Horseback-Introduction of Carriages, Sleighs and Taking a Buggy Ride-Motor Busses in the Wake of Old-time Stagecoaches-Proposition of Boston and Al- bany Railroad Considered Madness-Town Meeting Action Against Railroads-First Railroad in Quincy Followed By Many in Spite of Opposition Fears-Old Colony System Made Up of Many Links -Names of Early Locomotives-Some Famous Old Taverns- Sign of the Sun-The Punch Bowl-Dr. Nathaniel Ames' Tavern, Almanac and Diary-A Beautiful Moose and "A Monstrous Sight" -Hospitality and Traveling Experiences-Busy Terminals in Sea- port Towns a Century and a Quarter Ago.
Many times it has been told as a joke or as an historical fact that the streets of Boston were laid out according to the perigrinations of an erratic cow, and what applies to the streets of Boston applies more or less to the highways in Norfolk County towns, and towns in the Plymouth and Bay colonies. It was not the ways of a cow but the ways of the Indians which determined to a large extent the ways in which the early settlers went and, with variations, the ways in which we of the present generation go. There are numerous Indian paths, still used as public highways in Norfolk County. Surveyors were among the officers chosen at early town meetings and a part of their duty was to lay out highways, with a "jury" chosen for the purpose. Many of the ancient highways have been discontinued or straightened and, unless access be made to the records, it would be hard to ascer- tain their early locations.
Indian paths or trails gave way to bridle paths and these wene widened into carriage roads. The turnpikes, with their taverns at convenient intervals, with "something for man and beast" were much traveled in stagecoach days.
The system of State highways is not new, in a sense. In earliest days the General Court had a watchful eye on the roads, poor as they were. They were owned by the towns and the towns were sometimes fined if they were not kept in passable repairs, up to the crude stan- dard of the times. Indian trails were followed in many instances and some of the highways in Massachusetts remain crooked to this day on that account. At a session of the General Court in 1640, Boston was one of the towns fined and instructed to "mend its ways."
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One of the earliest traveled highways in Norfolk County, and it might be said with equal truth one of the earliest in America, was the main trail from Boston to Providence and New York. This is some- times referred to as the Country Road, or Old Post Road, or Roebuck Road. Of course there were taverns or inns at convenient intervals and travel over the old highway was not without its pleasures and moments of satisfaction. It was over this road that the Quakers were whipped at the cart-tail on their way out of Massachusetts to Rhode Island or the wilderness, or wherever fate might find them a more pleasant place in which to live or die. This Country Road remained the principal highway in the colony for many years.
The old Turnpike stage route from Providence to Boston, through Walpole, with a stop at the Old Morse Tavern in that town, was the one taken by General Lafayette in August, 1824. The tavern, con- ducted by David Morse, stood on the site of the present hospital and library of Bird & Son, Incorporated.
At this tavern Walpole had its first post office. On the second floor was the largest public hall between Dedham and Wrentham. It is said that Julia Ward Howe gave her first lecture there, a circumstance which is mentioned in "The Story of Walpole," by Willard DeLue.
From the earliest times in New England to the latter half of the eighteenth century travelers usually rode on horseback, and for short distances this continued to be the custom until long after stage lines had become numerous and well-managed. Felt, in his "History of
Ipswich," published in 1834, tell us that "about thirty-five years ago, (1800) horse-wagons began to be employed. Gradually increasing, they have almost altogether superseded riding on horseback among our farmers. They are used to carry articles to market, which were formerly borne to town in wallets and panniers, thrown across a horse. They have prevented the method of going in a cart, as often practised before they were invented, by social parties, when wish- ing to make a visit of several miles."
Following the horseback riding, and the days of the one-horse open sleigh and many a good time, thanks to the buggy rides, came the electric cars. In their coming it was believed that perfection itself had arrived, as there was nothing faster than lightning, and it seemed mysterious enough to be the last word. Wherever an electric railroad was built, from the building of the first one in Brockton, up to a cer- tain period, all were financial successes, and electric railway franchises were regarded as gold mines.
In recent years the old rails have been junked, the roads given up, and transportation taken on an entirely different form. With the present-day busses, instead of trolley cars, there is something in the
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situation not unlike a return to the old stagecoaching days. As Wil- lard DeLue says : "Not only are busses furnishing local transportation over some of the very same highways whereon the stages plied, but other lines are making several trips a day between Boston and Provi- dence. In part of their route these through busses roll smoothly and swiftly over the once-famous turnpike road on which travelers of one hundred years ago were tossed about in the coaches of the Citizens' Company. Even the fare, $2.00, is the same as of old."
Stagecoaches, "Boldness" and "Madness" - Israel Hatch's daily stages from Boston to Providence, established about 1793, covered the distance between five o'clock in the morning and two in the after- noon, changing horses once, at the half-way house in Walpole. The fare was one dollar, but this was a cut-rate, expressly advertised as "one half the customary price, and 3s. cheaper than any other stage." In 1811 the stage ride from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, two hundred and ninety-seven miles, took six days; a wagon required about twenty days. Stage fare was twenty dollars: wagon fare, "five dollars per cwt., for both persons and property." The faster stages were often decorated with such hyperbolical titles as "Flying Machine" and "Flying Mail." The famous Telegraph Line from Boston to Al- bany was in 1831 operated under a contract which bound the drivers to make seven miles an hour on the average, day and night, includ- ing stops.
Naturally, journeys of any length were planned a good while be- forehand, and intending travelers were always on the watch for casual means of conveyance. Their alert attitude is well exemplified in the following typical advertisement, from a Philadelphia news- paper of 1777 :
A person wants to go to Boston and would be glad of a place in a chaise or wagon going there, or if only half the way on that road, and a genteel price will be given. Any this will suit will be waited on by leaving a line with the printer.
Our foreign visitors were better pleased with our sleighs, which to most of them were complete novelties, than with our stagecoaches and wagons. "No carriage," writes one just before the Revolution, "goes with so easy a motion as these sleighs do, having none of the jolting motion of a wheel carriage; but much resembling the motion of what we used to call a shuggie-shew, or a vessel before a fine wind." The same authority was much struck with the American custom of sleigh-riding for pleasure. "The young ladies and gentlemen," he says, "are so fond of this, as a diversion, that whenever the snow gives over falling, tho' it be after sun-set, they will not wait till next
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day, but have their sleigh yoked directly, and drive about without the least fear of catching cold from the night air."
The earliest agitation for railroads in New England contemplated particularly the establishment of lines on which freight should be transported by means of horses. The Quincy Railroad, finished in 1827, was of this kind; it was only a few miles in length and was used to carry granite from the quarries to tidewater.
In 1829, William Jackson, in a lecture before the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, gave much space to showing what loads could be drawn by a horse on a railroad in comparison with the work that he could do on an ordinary turnpike. He was, however, fully cognizant of the experiments that had been tried with locomo- tives, and believed, though he expressed himself cautiously, that steam would soon supersede horsepower.
At this time the enthusiasm for a line from Boston to Albany was great, and Jackson's address was meant to further the project. A large part of the route had already been surveyed at public expense, and it was hoped that the undertaking would be fathered by the State. There was much scornful incredulity, however, which found utterance in various amusing ways. In 1827 Captain Basil Hall, whose "Tra- vels in America" is deservedly celebrated for its intelligence and good-humor, went over a considerable part of the route between Bos- ton and Albany. He was assured, he tells us, that it had been "ser- iously proposed" to connect these two cities by rail, but this he char- acterizes as a "visionary project." Appeals were frequently made to him to admire the plan. "I was compelled to admit," he says, "that there was much boldness in the conception; but I took the liberty of adding, that I conceived the boldness lay in the conception alone; for if it were executed, its character would be changed into madness."
Captain Hall's language is moderation itself in comparison with some of the strictures of the Massachusetts press. In June, 1827, there appeared in the Boston "Courier" a satirical article from the pen of the editor, Joseph T. Buckingham, which ridiculed the "railroad mania" unsparingly :
Alcibiades, or some other great man of antiquity, it is said, cut off his dog's tail, that quid nuncs (we suppose such animals existed in ancient as well as in modern times) might not become extinct for want of excitement. Some such motive, we doubt not, moved one or two of our natural and experimental philoso- phers to get up the project of a railroad from Boston to Albany ;- a project which everyone knows, -- who knows the simplest rules in arithmetic,-to be impracticable but at an expense little less than the market value of the whole territory of Massachusetts; and which, if practicable, every person of common sense knows would be as useless as a railroad from Boston to the moon. Indeed, a road of some kind from here to the heart of that beautiful satellite of our dusky planet
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would be of some practical utility,-especially if a few of our notional, public- spirited men, our railway fanatics, could be persuaded to pay a visit to their proper country.
Railroads Regarded as Calamities-The prejudice against railroads entertained by a good many people in New England died hard. As late as 1842 the inhabitants of Dorchester voted, in town-meeting, that a railroad on either of two proposed lines "will be of incalculable evil to the town generally, in addition to the immense sacrifice of private property which will also be involved. A great portion of the road will lead through thickly settled and populous parts of the town, crossing and running contiguous to public highways, and thereby making a permanent obstruction to a free intercourse of our citizens, and creating great and enduring danger and hazard to all travel upon the common roads." Further they declared that, if a railroad must be built, "it should be located upon the marshes and over creeks," and finally it was --
Resolved: That our representatives be instructed to use their utmost endeavors to prevent, if possible, so great a calamity to our town as must be the location of any railroad through it; and, if that cannot be prevented, to diminish this calamity as far as possible by confining the location to the route herein designated.
It is doubtful if there was ever a steam railroad proposed previous to the Civil War which did not bring about vigorous opposition on the part of well-meaning folk who produced what they believed were strong arguments against the railroad in question and, at least, against the proposed location. In the days when "All the way around the Cape 's the only way to Boston, in the words of a song sung by people who inhabited the south shore of the Cape Cod, a correspond- ent on the lower end of the Cape wrote to the "Yarmouth Register," as follows :
You are aware that the citizens of this place have generally stood aloof from the extension of the railroad to Yarmouth. The reasons were well known. Provincetown placed a steamboat upon the Cape route to Boston, but the Cape Cod railroad took nearly all the passengers on the south side, whispering in their ears, it is said, the unsafe condition of the boat (while a safe and better boat never need be asked for). The owners of the boat, many of them mechanics, widows, and persons of limited means, were compelled in about three years to sell the "Naushon" at an enormous sacrifice. Indeed, many have hardly received a dollar for all they paid. Others, as a desperate push, purchased the boat and placed her upon the route again, but the railroad it is evident had the advantage and crushed the boat. These things were galling the minds of the people here. Could it therefore be expected that they would subscribe for the stock of the road, that had sunk about twenty thousand dollars for them in less than four years?
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