USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Stoneham > History of Stoneham, Massachusetts > Part 2
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It requires but little stretch of the imagination to go back two hundred years, recall to life our early forefathers, look in upon them as they lived in their first rude cabins made of logs, and behold the fields which they cleared amidst the forest, the corn and grain just starting up between the charred and blackened stumps. In those days the streams were dammed by beavers, the sheep were a prey to wolves, the bear roamed through the woods, and now and then the hunter brought down a deer. During these years our pious ancestors, not numerous enough to support a minister themselves, traveled on Sunday to the meeting-house in Reading. Their habits were simple and their wants were few. It was a hard contest with a rigorous climate and a
1
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HISTORY OF STONEHAM.
barren soil for the bare necessaries of existence, but it produced a strong and manly character. They may have been rough, and uncouth, and uneducated, but they possessed the best traits of English yeomanry. Some of the aborigines lingered about their old haunts. The Indian wars and the wild beasts made them familiar with the use of firearms. In 1675 John Gould and Thomas Gery were troopers in Captain Hutchinson's company, and were impressed as soldiers from the "Three County Troopers," and served in King Philip's War. There were liquor laws in those days as well as now. In 1682 "John Gould appears before the Court, and convicted of selling strong liquors to the Indians is fined ten shillings money and pay the costs." The means of communication was at first by forest paths and private ways from farm to farm. No public highway existed till about 1685, when one was laid out from Reading to Woburn as follows: "Beginning at ye Country road near Sergt. Parker's house and so along by the meadow, called Hoop- per's Meddow, and by the foot of ye hill, which is above ye leest of three ponds, from thence to the way marked out by Sergt. Parker, throwe Charles- town land to Woburn River, neer John Richardson's house." Another high- way was also laid out the same year from Reading to Charlestown (now Stoneham). These two roads were the old road over Farm Hill and the present North Street, or possibly one of them was Green Street. The latter road, beginning at the easterly foot of Cowdrey's Hill, came in a southwest- erly direction by the houses of the Goulds, passed William Rogers, near the end of Thomas Cutler's land, and so on to Charlestown, a more particular description of which will be given hereafter. The road over Farm Hill ac- commodated Thomas Gery, and the road from Reading to Woburn (North Street), Matthew Smith. Tradition says there was an old road over the southeast corner of Bear Hill, and so on to Spring Pasture in Medford. "In 1673 a large trade was carried on in cedar posts, shingles and clapboards. The select men granted many of the inhabitants permission to cut the trees in Cedar Swamp near Spot Pond, and John Mousal was charged with the duty of inspecting the number and bigness of the trees cut down." There were but few additions to the inhabitants for many years. In 1688 Thomas Cutler had died, and was succeeded by his son Thomas. Daniel Gould, the son of John, had come of age, and Samuel Cowdrey, Michael Smith and Andrew Philips were added to the settlement of 1678. The history of the town during these years is little more than the bare mention of the names of the people who lived here, and the location of their farms. Measured by the progress and attainments of the nineteenth century, their lives must have been barren indeed. The tomahawk and war-whoop of the red man at times varied the monotony of their existence, but the great and vital question. which, more than any other, seems to have absorbed the attention of our ancestors was religion. About the most important business which came be- fore the town was the building of the meeting-house, and the support of the
A VIEW FROM THE INDEPENDENT CUPOLA LOOKING NORTHEASTWARD).
21
HISTORY OF SICNEEAM.
minister. Attending church as they did at Reading, it was a source of griev- ance to the people of that town that they should contribute nothing towards the support of the Gospel, being taxed as they were in Charlestown, and so the following petition was presented to the General Court :
"The humble petision of the inhabitants of the towne of Redding, Humbly Showeth-That whereas our case, being as your petissiners humbly conseive, soe sircumstanced, as wee Know not the like in all Respects-and not Knowing which waye to helpe ourselves-But By humbly acquainting yor honners with our state your honners beeing the Fathers of the Common- wealth to which wee doe belonge ;- and yor petissiners humbly hoping that yor honners will helpe soe far as may bee to the Relieving of us in our case; - It being soe with us that wee are but a poore place, very few above sixty families, Abell to pay to the Ministry, and severall of them have more need to Receive than to paye, - it we were a place of ability as many others bee; and to us there is Adjacent farmers, which bee constant hearers of the word, with us, which oes not at all to their owne towne, But transiently as others doe; Neither came they one the Sab bath daye butt bee breakers of the Lawe of god and of this commonwealth as we conseive. And to many of them itt would be soe intolerable a burthen, that many ef them must necessa- rily refraine from the public worship of god, established amongst us, for prevention of which they doe heare with us, which seems to be very hard for us to maintayne Ministry and Meeting . house conveniently for them, and others to force them to pay their hole Rates to their one townes, as others do; or if some of them bee Better-minded, their bisenes lyeth so att the present that wee have nothing from them all or next to nothing.
"Another thing that your humble petisioners desire to declare to your honners is thatt wee have not now roume enough in our Meeting-house for ourselves, but the Adjasent farmers be- ing one third or very neare one third as much as wee, we muste build anew before it be Longe, for the house will be too little for them and us, which we hope your honners will consider how the case is like to bee with us, if nothing bee considered. Butt as wee hope itt is the waye, that god would have us to take to leave the case to your honners, we desire humbly soe to doe, and quietly to reste to this honoured Courte's good pleasure as to what hath been declared.
"And shall ever pray-In the name & by the consent of the reste of the inhabitants of the towne. Win. Cowdrey, Robery Burnap, Jona. Poole, Thomas Parker, J. remy Swaine.
When subscriptions were raised for the purpose of building a new meeting- house in Reading in 1688 the following subscriptions were raised from per- sons living at Charlestown End and the list substantially comprises those liv- ing here at that time.
42 s. d.
John Gould.
.4
IS 4
Daniel Gould.
.3 O
Thomas Gery.
.3 0 0
Matthew Smith Sen.
0 0
Matthew Smith Jun
2 IO O
Michael Smith. .. 0
IO 0
Thomas Cutler.
I
0
Samuel Cowdrey
I
Andrew Philips.
I
Samuel Cowdrey came from Reading, and probably lived not far from where Mr. Tilton now resides. Michael Smith was advanced in years, and his daughter Sarah was the wife of Andrew Philips. Domestic infelicities existed then as well as now. "At a Court held at Charlestown, June 17, 1679, Michael Smith and wife, of Charlestown, for disorderly living apart from one another were admonished and to pay the costs of Court." Andrew Philips settled here somewhere about 1686, living, perhaps, at first in the
22
HISTORY OF STONEHAM.
easterly part of the town near the house of Mr. Outram, but at the time of his death he resided on Cobble Hill, in a dwelling formerly owned and occu- pied, and probably built by Nathaniel Dunton, of Reading. His homestead was afterwards conveyed to Rev. James Osgood, the first minister of Stone- ham. All the old residents will remember the parsonage of Parson Osgood. It stood on the corner of Green street, about opposite the house of the late Reuben Locke, and was the best specimen of architectural style among us, which antedated the Revolution.
Prior to the latter part of the seventeenth century the population increased very slowly. The settlers had generally located in the northeasterly part of the town, but after this they spread out in all directions. In 1685 Eleazer Bateman came from Woburn and located in the extreme westerly part of the town, just north of Marble Street. The old cellar-hole where his house stood was to be seen till within a short time. That part of the town including the level land extending all the way to Summer Street, was then known as Dole- ful Plain. When Bateman purchased his land in 1685, there was a cellar dug and stoned upon it, and the frame of a house twenty-two by eighteen feet, which seems to have been the regulation size that then prevailed. Mr. Bateman was a carpenter and owned one or two houses in the neighborhood besides the one in which he lived. One of these probably stood a little north of the house where Mrs. Lot Sweetser resides. He lived here till 1713 and then sold his place to Joseph Underwood. He was a man of so much repute that on several occasions he was appointed by the town on a committee to lease the Charlestown Farms.
In 1688, Patrick, otherwise called Peter Hay, then described as of Redding, commenced to buy land at Mystic Side, so called, and afterwards became one of the largest land owners and most prosperous settlers in the neighborhood. Hay was a Scotchman, lived for awhile at Lynn, (Lynnfield) and removed to Charlestown End in 1692 or 1693. He must have been a man of great force of character, buying as he did numerous tracts of land, clearing farms and erecting dwellings. Although his possessions extended in all directions, he himself located in the northerly part of the town, building first a log cabin, which tradition says stood near the bend of Tremont Street, and afterwards the house where he lived and died, on or near the spot where Luther White now lives. This dwelling was occupied by his descendants till about 1846 or 1847, when it was burned. To his son James, who was a shopkeeper in Charlestown, he gave a farm of sixty-three acres, with house and barn in the easterly part of the town. The house stood on the westerly side of Pleasant Street, about opposite the residence of Amos Hill, Esq., and was owned by the Hays till it passed out of the family to Thomas Gould in 1799.
Another son of Patrick Hay, Capt. Peter Hay, who was one of the most influential men in Stoneham of his time, settled near his father, living for a while in the building known a few years since as the Old Office, and after-
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HISTORY OF STONEHAM.
wards in the Hay Tavern, which descended in turn to Capt. David Hay. For generations the race was a thrifty and prolific one, exercising a very large in- fluence. A third son, John, a young man of great promise, died in his thirty-first year. Peter Hay was not only the owner of houses and land and men-servants and maid-servants, but he had a multitude of wives, no less than four. He was one of the first selectmen when the town was organized. After having lived the life of a patriarch, so far as such a life was possible in the eighteenth century, and in Puritan New England, he died at the age of ninety in 1748.
As Peter Hay owned a large part of the Northern so John Vinton owned a large part of the Southern section of Stoneham. He was a weaver, after- wards a farmer, born in Malden about 1678 ; came from Woburn about 1710. His house probably stood on a slight elevation which is to be seen between the residence of Warren Wilson and South Street. An old house once stood on this spot near which has been dug up old pottery and curious relics. This was upon his farm and he appears to have been the original settler of the ter- ritory, so it would seem that this was probably his residence, though possibly he occupied and built the old John Bucknam house which was torn down a few years ago. The author of "Vinton Memorial" locates him as near the outlet of Spot Pond, but although he and Stephen Richardson bought the lot on which stood the mill in 1715, there is no reason to suppose he lived there unless for a short time. The above author says "John Vinton, Esq., was a man of great ability, energy and activity, and became a leader in every place where his lot was cast." When Stoneham was incorporated the usual order from the General Court was addressed to John Vinton as the principal inhab- itant, directing him to issue a warrant for the first town-meeting. He ad- vanced more money and probably did more than any other man to obtain an act of incorporation for the town.
John Vinton was one of the first board of selectmen and served in that responsible office six years, viz. : 1726, 1727, 1731, 1732, 1734, 1735. He was commonly called to preside at town-meetings as moderator. He was very often employed on public business. He was placed by his townsmen on almost all important committees. At one town-meeting he was placed on four committees. One of the first measures of the town was the erection of a meeting-house, and Capt. John Vinton was one of the committee of three to select a site, procure materials, put up and finish the building. He was also one of the committee to employ a minister. He seems in an eminent degree to have enjoyed the confidence of his fellow-citizens. He was a rep- resentative of the town in the Legislature in 1734. Capt. Vinton paid the highest tax of any man in town. He was a lieutenant in the train band in 1720, captain in 1723, a very energetic, enterprising prosperous man. He received a commission as Justice of the Peace in 17:34.
FRANKLIN STREET, SHOWING T. H. JONES' SHOE FACTORY.
25.
HISTORY OF STONEHAM.
In 1736 he sold his farm of 270 acres to James Allen, of Boston, for which he received £2550 and removed to Dudley where he died in 1760. Some of his descendants remained in Stoneham, and settled in that part of the town which has since been annexed to Melrose.
Another large land owner was Timothy Wright who was born in Woburn, was originally a carpenter, and came here about 1700, settling in the westerly part of the town, his house being located near the corner of Wright and Hancock streets. A large portion of the original farm with additions made to it by his descendants remained in the family for about 175 years. The. venerable form of Capt. John H. Wright is still fresh in the memory of the present generation. The possessions of the Wrights embraced most of the territory westerly from Main and Warren Streets to Woburn line, and from Marble Street on the south to the lands of the Hays, northerly from Mont- vale Avenue.
The progenitor of the Bucknams was Edward who came from Malden in 1716, and bought twenty-six acres of Philip Alexander with a house and barn which stood near the corner of Warren and Lynden Streets, on the easterly side of the road. With the usual thrift of the early settlers he made con- siderable additions to his original purchase, and died in Stoneham in 1773, aged eighty-two years.
Next easterly from Edward Bucknam lived Richard Belcher, who is des- cribed of Charlestown as early as 1708, when he bought a house and twenty- one acres of land of Joseph Wright, Jr., of Woburn. He very probably occupied the old Marston or Ebenezer Bucknam house, on the north side of Summer Street. He was a mason, taught school at Charlestown End, and died in 1720, leaving a large family of children.
In 1695, Deacon Nathaniel Lawrence came from Groton, bought seventy- one and a half acres of Joseph Lynde, and built the house recently torn down on the southerly side of Hancock Street, known as the Old Zac Gerry house. A lane formerly led from the house to the old road (now Summer Street) . - A brick was taken out of the chimney bearing the mark 1708, from which it is possible to fix the probable date of its erection. For those times it must. have been a roomy and substantial residence. The character of this building as of the Ebenezer Bucknam house, the Old Office, the Jonathan Green house in Green Lane, and of several others which have disappeared within the past fifty years, many of them similar, and built about the same period, indicate the thrift and prosperity of the men who were the founders of Stoneham. These ancient relics of the past are gradually fading away, and the time may soon come when not a single monument built by human hands will carry us back to the days of Charlestown End. Even the names of most of those who laid the foundation of the town, have been long forgotten.
Deacon Lawrence very likely may have built and first lived in the house which was the home of Deacon Jabez Lynde on the east side of Summer
26
HISTORY OF STONEHAM.
Street, and now owned by Miss Sarah A. Lynde. He was past middle life when he came here from Groton, and died in 1724. He had been a leading man in Groton, was an ensign in the militia, a deacon in the church, and one of the first representatives of that town under the charter of William and Mary in 1693. The next year after his death, his farm was sold by his children to Thomas Geary.
Another citizen of Groton who settled here was Samuel Holden, who lived for a time in Woburn, and bought a tract of forty-five acres in the westerly part of the town south of Marble Street in 1690. The Holdens owned an extensive territory in the southwesterly part of Stoneham, and easterly of Bear Hill. It is impossible to say with certainty where Samuel first located, but probably on the land which he originally purchased near Marble Street, although subsequently some of his descendants lived in two houses westerly and southwesterly from the last residence of the late John Bucknam. In an ancient paper now in possession of one of the family is the following reference to him while in Groton :
"Samuel Holden, second son to Richard Holden, lived in Groton until the Indian War (which probably was the war with Philip, but whether it was or not, I shall not determine, the war with Philip, I think) was about the year 1675, at which time Mrs. R. was taken captive.
"The town in the night was beset with Indians; the Indians came to his house in the night and broke i: open and came in. His wife made her escape out of a door with two small children in her arms and went into a corn-field. Mr. Holden stood behind a door with a gun in his hand, intending to kill some of them, but it being so dark he could not see them. He also made his escape out of the house and went to a garrison house. The Indians, after plundering the house, went off. Soon after this Samuel Holden moved to Stoneham (then Charlestown) for fear of the Indians. He died on or about the year 1739, aged eighty-eight years !" As the observant pedestrian tramps over the pastures between the Nathan Bucknam house and Bear Hill, he notices three depressions in the ground where once stood human habita- tions which long since have disappeared. Two of them were occupied by Holdens, and the one farthest south by Isaac Howe, who purchased there a house and barn and eighty-two acres of land, in 1715. William Richardson, the brother-in-law of John Vinton, probably built the house and for a time lived in it. Isaac Howe came from Roxbury at the age of fifty-nine or sixty, and lived but two or three years after his settlement. He left, however, sev- eral sons and a daughter, Naomi, who married Joseph Holden.
To the lover of antiquity, in this new country where there are but few an- tiquities, there is nothing more fascinating than roaming through the woods and over the fields, placing the old range lines, discovering here and there an ancient cellar-hole, and re-peopling in imagination once, more the territory with the early inhabitants who dwelt here one hundred and fifty and two
27
HISTORY OF STONEHAM.
hundred years ago. To a person familiar with the transfer of their lands, the dates of their birth, times of their death, the names of the girls they married and the children they left, these forefathers of ours seem like old and near friends.
Going now to the northwestern part of the town, north of William Street, to the farms of Micah Williams and Sumner Richardson, let us rebuild again the houses of Timothy Baldwin, Sr., and Timothy Baldwin, Jr. Theformer came from Woburn as early as 1705, perhaps earlier, hired of. Charlestown eighty-six acres, bought land of his own and lived a few rods northeasterly from the house of Mr. Williams. Deacon Dean. in his history of Stoneham, tells this story of Baldwin's house, which is a tradition. "The building for a considerable length of time was supposed to be haunted. A family lived there at that time. At the season of harvesting a quantity of pumpkins were carried into the garret; one evening while the father was absent, and the mother with the children and other members of the family sat by the fireside, a noise was heard ; something appeared to be coming down stairs It came stamp, stamp, down the garret stairs; it then came to the entry stairs, which led to a lower door, and with increased force came pound, pound, into the entry below. Then the noise ceased. The affrighted family waited with great anxiety for the return of the husband and father. When he returned the news was communicated to him. He repaired to the entry, when, on opening the door, a good, lusty pumpkin was reposing on the floor." Mr. Baldwin was a person of good education for those times, a man of influ- ence, and one of the first board of selectmen. With John Gould, James Hill and Peter Hay he built a grist-mill near Mill Street. Timothy Baldwin, Jr., lived west from his father, a few rods northeast of the house of Sumner Richardson. In 1713 he bought the house and barn and thirty-seven acres of land of Andrew Beard ; the latter probably having cleared the land and built the house, for we find Beard buying lots of woodland, which made up the farm of the first proprietors or their heirs, as early as 1700. Hannah, the widow of Timothy Baldwin, Jr., and her second husband, John Vinton, in 1763, sell to Oliver Richardson, in whose family most of the land has since remained.
During the first century of the town hardly any family exerted a wider in- fluence or furnished more leading citizens than the Greens, two or three branches of whom located in the easterly and southeasterly parts of the town. Henry, or Elder Green, was a weaver; came from Malden; commenced to purchase land in the latter part of the seventeenth century; is described as of Malden in 1695, and of Charlestown, in 1709, and died here in 1717, aged seventy-eight. He was the father of Deacon Daniel Green ; probably built his house on the north side of East Street, near the spot where Daniel G. Sturtevant now lives, who is a lineal descendant, a portion of the property
RESIDENCE OF CHARLES BUCK ON PLEASANT STREET.
29
HISTORY OF STONEHAM.
having remained in the family for two hundred years. His possessions lay chiefly north and south of Spring and East Streets.
Captain Nathaniel Green was also a resident of Charlestown End in 1716, but in a few years moved to Liecester. Another one of the Greens who settled at Green Lane was Jonathan, who came from Malden in the early part of the eighteenth century. From then till now the old homestead, which is said to have been built early in the eighteenth century, has been occupied in each generation by a Jonathan Green. The Green farm was very extensive, embracing a large portion of the territory from the Melrose line southwest to Pond Street. Captain Jonathan Green, son of the first Jonathan, became a leading citizen, and filled a large spice in our history during his life, but it belongs to a later period than the one of which we are now speaking.
Supposing it now to be the year 1716, we will return to the abode of Patrick Hay, and travelling easterly, towards the farm of William Rogers, we shall notice the house of Samuel Smith, on the north of where now is Elm Street, about opposite the residence of Captain Snow. This year he sold his farm of thirty-four acres with a house, barn and orchard, to Ebenezer Damon. Damon came from Reading ; was a blacksmith ; in 171I was a soldier against the French and Indians in Canada, and lived here but a few years.
One of the oldest dwellings in Stoneham is on Green Street, owned and occupied by Oakes Green. Its history goes back almost two centuries, through the families of the Greens, the Bryants and Southeis, to Thomas Millard, who is supposed to have built it and lived there until 1725, when he sold to John Souther. Millard came from Reading. North of Thomas Millard lived Joseph Bryant, the father of Col. Joseph Bryant.
To a person tramping through the Fells west of Bear Hill and so down to Spring Pasture, the territory appearing, till within a few years, like a solitary wilderness, away from roads and human habitations, it seems almost impos- sible to realize that he is passing over what was once cultivated farms, and yet, in this immediate neighborhood, long before the memory of living man, there were three different houses. As one peered into the well, looked down into the cellar-hole and traced the numerous walls about the Parker place, he felt almost the weird sensation of looking back on a pre-historic past, that the traveler experiences in gazing upon the ruins of Palenque and Uxmal. These old landmarks have afforded, how many hours of happy revery, but alas ! they are now all swept away, the walls are gone, and not a trace re- mains to locate the home of Ebenezer Parker, who lived here 150 years and more ago. His nearest neighbors to the south lived, one of them where now is the east end of Winchester Reservoir, and the other a little farther south, in Spring Pasture. As there was no highway in this neighborhood, the people probably used the road over Bear Hill, which extended down through the woods to Medford.
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