USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Winchester > History of Winchester, Massachusetts > Part 10
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For many years it was an article of faith with Winchester folk that the original Baldwin apple tree grew on the farm later occu- pied by Samuel Thompson, just south of Black Horse. For this belief they had no less an authority than Brooks, the historian of Medford, who positively asserts it to be so. According to his account, those two very distinguished sons of Woburn, Colonel Loammi Baldwin and Benjamin Thompson (afterward Count Rum- ford) attended, as young men, the natural history lectures of Pro- fessor Winthrop at Harvard College. So much is certainly true. On their way to and from Cambridge on foot, the young fellows, he says, often paused at the tavern for refreshment. Nothing is more likely; Mrs. Wyman, the landlord's wife, was a cousin of Benjamin Thompson's father. (Everybody in Woburn in those days seems to have been related to everybody else.) One day, says Brooks, they happened to notice this tree standing near the road. It was a "natural" apple tree, ungrafted, and a favorite with the woodpeckers of the vicinity, which had drilled holes all over its trunk. They tried the fruit then ripe and found it delicious. Baldwin took scions from the tree and planted them. They bore the same fine fruit as the parent tree, and the apples were named for their discoverer, Loammi Baldwin.
This last fact, that the apple was named for Colonel Baldwin, is true enough; the rest appears to be mere legend, and not authentic legend at that. The true story of the Baldwin apple was long
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involved in contradiction. As in the case of Homer, some seven localities contended for the honor of its birth; but a number of years ago Rev. Leander Thompson of Woburn, a conscientious his- torian, went thoroughly into the tangled snarl of claims and straight- ened it out very skilfully. Here I can only report his conclusions,1 which were that the actual tree of whose fruit Colonel Baldwin ate and was glad stood on the farm of a Mr. Butters in Wilmington, where a monument has been erected in commemoration of the dis- covery of this choice native fruit of New England. The proof is complete that Colonel Baldwin never knew of the apple till twenty years after the days when he trudged along the dusty road to Cam- bridge with the future Count Rumford by his side.2
The later history of the Black Horse Tavern building is a chequered and rather melancholy one. The thirties of the last century were a time of real estate speculation, and the old house became a kind of pawn in the deals and trades of the speculators. It had many owners, and was plastered thick with mortgages. On a single day, April 23, 1840, it had three distinct owners. Asahel P. Buckman sold it to Deacon Nathan B. Johnson for $37 above the mortgage claims, and a few hours later Deacon Johnson conveyed the entire estate, freed from mortgage claims, to Hervey Wilbur, who lived there for seven years and then sold it to Henry Morri- son of Boston. Again the trading about began. On the day that Morrison bought it the old house again had three owners, for he immediately sold it to Charles Hubbard of Chelsea and made $500 by the trade! Mr. Hubbard, by the way, was the father of Mrs. Moses A. Herrick, whose husband was long an eminent citizen of Winchester. Among the other owners of the house for longer or shorter times were Samuel Steele Richardson, of whom we shall hear more in a later chapter, and Charles McIntire, a member of the first board of selectmen in Winchester. For sixteen years from 1866 to 1882, it was the residence of Josiah F. Stone, the manager of a life insurance office in Boston, and an enthusiastic "amateur" farmer and gardener. While he lived in the old house its grounds were attractive with hedges, fruit trees and beds of flowers. He,
1 His article on the origin of the Baldwin apple is to be found in the Winchester Record, Vol. I, pages 172 seq.
2 As a matter of fact it was not Colonel Baldwin, but the surveyor, Samuel Thompson, who actually discovered the tree.
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too, was in his turn a selectman of the town, and a representative in the legislature.
Meanwhile the acreage of the old Black Horse farm had been sold off, streets had been opened through it to meet the needs of the growing village, and in 1892 Preston Pond, the last owner of the old house, finding it unwanted and falling into bad repair, had it pulled down, and through its grounds opened the street we know today as Black Horse Terrace.
It is unfortunate that the house could not have been pre- served, both for its intrinsic interest as a piece of old colonial architecture and for the historic memories that clustered about it. Such old buildings grow regrettably few. The tavern would have stood as a connecting link between the little farming community of Waterfield and the busy and beautiful town of today in which Winchester people could have taken an honest pride. It has gone, and the town is poorer for its disappearance.
CHAPTER VIII
WINCHESTER IN THE REVOLUTION
THE part taken in the war of the Revolution by the men who then lived in what is today Winchester territory must, of course, be extracted with some labor from the town records both of Woburn and of Medford, and from the military records preserved in those cities and in the Massachusetts archives at the State House. Con- verses, Richardsons, Johnsons and Belknaps were among the voters who in Woburn town meeting, as early as October 10, 1766, instructed their representative in the General Court not to consent to paying damages to officers of the crown - Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson in particular - whose property had been injured by an anti-Stamp Act mob in Boston.1 They were also among those who adopted in town meeting, February 1, 1773, a report which reads like a Declaration of Independence in embryo, listing a dozen causes for complaint against the acts of Parliament and the con- duct of the crown's officers, and declaring finally that Parliament "had no power to bind the colonists by laws or to impose taxes upon them, without their consent either in person or through repre- sentatives."2 And they took part in the meeting of December 23, 1773, which voted to build a house in which to store ammunition; and in that of January 4, 1775, which voted to pay no tax moneys to the regularly appointed treasurer of the province, Harrison Gray, Esq., but to turn them over instead to Henry Gardner, Esq., of Stow,3 who had been chosen by the Provincial Congress that met at Salem in 1774 to act as treasurer of the already rebellious colony of Massachusetts. 4
Symmeses and Brookses were present at the Medford town meeting of December 31, 1772, which voted to stand firmly behind the citizens of Boston "in whatever measures shall be thought
1 Woburn Records, Vol. IX, page 10.
2 Woburn Records, Vol. IX, pages 188-191.
3 A descendant of Richard Gardner, see page 50.
4 Woburn Records, Vol. IX, pages 252, 262.
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expedient to be adopted for the preservation of our liberties, civil and religious." They helped to pass the vote that "the British Parliament has no constitutional authority to tax these Colonies without their consent," and that of November 14, 1774, "that we will not use East India Tea till the Acts be repealed."1
These were official expressions of patriotic determination; we can only picture in our imagination the scenes in the bar or the meeting hall of the Black Horse Tavern, where, throughout these troublous years, the farmers of this neighborhood met, evening after evening, to discuss the Stamp Act, the tax on tea, the Boston Port Bill, and all the other unpopular acts of Parliament, and to exchange opinions on what the colonists should do in defence of their rights. No records were ever kept of those fireside confer- ences of local patriots which were taking place in taverns or private houses all over Massachusetts; but it was at them that resolu- tions were taken and fires of patriotism kindled, which later swept through the town meetings and caused the organization of bodies of "minutemen" prepared for instant military service if all else failed.
The fateful morning of April 19, 1775 found the citizens of both Woburn and Medford ready. Medford was on the road of Paul Revere, and had early warning of the advance of the British troops on Lexington. Its company of minutemen was assembled and despatched before light. At least two Winchester men were among them - Lieutenant Caleb Brooks who was born in the old house at Symmes Corner, known to a later generation as the Le Bosquet house, and John Symmes.
There were as yet no minutemen in Woburn. Only two days before the town had voted to raise such a company; it was almost the last town in Middlesex County to do so. An interesting letter is still in existence2 written by Major Josiah Johnson in 1775, which is largely a defence of the town for its delay.3 Quite evidently the influential men of Woburn thought minutemen unnecessary, having three excellent militia companies and a newly enlisted com- pany of artillery, "well equipped and exercising daily without
1 Brooks History of Medford, page 160.
2 Printed in the Woburn Journal of May 28, 1897.
3 Major Johnson lived for a number of years in Winchester on Ridge Street; later he removed to Woburn Center.
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expense to the town." And quite as clearly there was a party in Woburn who were ready to charge Major Johnson and others with lukewarmness to the patriot cause because no company of minutemen had been formed.1
The confidence felt by the town fathers in their militia com- panies seems to have been justified. When the news of the British advance on Lexington and Concord reached Woburn, it was just before dawn. The word passed quickly through the town. Mes- sengers carried it up Lexington Street to the village square, up the country road from the Four Corners to "the Precinct," which is now Burlington, and down Plain Street (Cambridge Street) to South Woburn which is today Winchester. Our Winchester men were nearly equally divided between the first and second militia com- panies. Main Street was the dividing line; those living to the west of it were in the first company, those living to the east of it in the second. Yet it is a curious fact that the captain of the West Com- pany, Samuel Belknap, lived to the east of the road and the captain of the East Company, Jonathan Fox (and later Jesse Wyman), lived to the west of it.
But the men did not delay to assemble and march by companies to Lexington. Each man, as he got the word, seized his musket and ammunition and made his way, at his best speed, across the fields or down the old road (now Russell Street) from the Four Corners to the scene of the fighting.
Only a few Woburn men arrived at Lexington in time to take part in the actual fighting there. But the first man to fall by a British bullet was Asahel Porter who lived in Woburn. His grand- son, Samuel Porter, was long a resident of Winchester. He lived on Cross Street and died there, almost one hundred years old. As the men straggled into Lexington they were formed into line by the captains of their respective companies - Belknap, Fox and Walker - and hurried along the road to Concord in pursuit of the British forces. They came up with the redcoats as they began to withdraw after the fight at Concord Bridge, and taking cover behind stone walls and trees on either side of the road were among the most active in this Indianlike warfare during the retreat of the British soldiers all fifteen miles to Charlestown. Nor did they
1 Major Johnson's letter.
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desist from the chase until the redcoats, spent and exhausted, tumbled into their boats at the Charlestown ferry.
Among the folk tales that had their origin in the stirring events of that nineteenth of April is one which, whether or not authentic in all details, must have had a substantial foundation in fact. It has to do with the gray-headed Yankee horseman mounted on a powerful white steed, who harassed the British during their retreat from Concord, and who, though he killed or wounded a number of redcoats, himself bore a charmed life among the bullets that showered about him. This remarkable "white horseman" was a Winchester man, Hezekiah Wyman, whose home was on Cambridge Street on the spot where his grandson Marshall Wyman lived within the memory of a few still living.
Hezekiah was fifty-five on the morning of the Lexington alarm. He was a son of that Captain Seth Wyman whom we have seen winning fame in Lovewell's fight with the Indians, and conse- quently he was a great-grandson of Major William Johnson. He had returned, about the middle of the century, from old Woburn, to live in the neighborhood where his Johnson ancestors had lived. On the morning of the battle he had, so the story goes, early news of the British advance on Lexington. In spite of his age he deter- mined to bear his part, and though his wife remonstrated with him, he mounted his strong white mare and, musket in hand, set off at a gallop for Lexington. He was too late for the fighting at the Common, as the other Woburn men were, but riding his horse up the Concord road he came face to face with the returning British soldiers. He rode at them furiously, discharging his piece, and a redcoat fell. Spurring his mare over the stonewall into the field he reloaded and returned to the attack. Again and again he rode at the enemy, always getting his man, but always escaping unhurt himself. "His tall, gaunt form, his white locks floating in the breeze, and the color of his horse distinguished him from the other Ameri- cans; the British called him 'Death on the Pale Horse.' . . . Once a bayonet charge drove him off, ... but ere long he was returning to the charge and this time killed an officer. His powerful white horse, careering at full speed over the hills, with the dauntless old man on his back, was continually to be seen, and the British learned
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to dread his reappearance in their front and the report of his trusty musket."1
Hezekiah Wyman is said to have joined the "old men of Menotomy" who laid an ambush for the ammunition and supply wagons that were following Lord Percy's troops, who came out from Boston to succor the flying British and convoy them back to Charlestown. These men, all beyond the age of active service, placed themselves behind a stonewall and, firing upon the supply train as it passed, killed some of the party of soldiers that accom- panied it and dispersed the rest, all of whom, twelve in number, were later captured. There is a monument in memory of this exploit in front of the First Parish Church in Arlington. After participating in this affair Hezekiah, we are told, resumed his hec- toring of the retreating British and followed them like an avenging spirit all the way to Charlestown.
The tale of his strange adventures may owe something to the embroidery of three generations of story-tellers, but observe this: in his will, made four years later, he leaves as an object of special value "my white mare" to one of his sons.2
There is another venerable tradition that on this same historic morning a company of British cavalry rode into what is now Win- chester center, coming over the county road from Medford. These soldiers are said to have halted at Abel Richardson's (the old Con- verse house), tied their horses to the ancient elm that overhung the house, and in some way to have injured the tree so that it became split and had to be bound together thereafter.3 The incident exists only in the realm of legend, but it is not incredible. Remember that the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, meeting at West Cambridge (Arlington) on April 18, adjourned to meet next day at the Black Horse Tavern in South Woburn. It is quite possible that the British may have learned of that fact, and dispatched a patrol of cavalry to break up the meeting and arrest the committeemen if they put in an appearance. It is harder to believe that anything less than a cannon ball could have split apart a tree then thirty
1 From an article in the Boston Pearl, "before 1840," the earliest known appear- ance of the story of the white horseman in print. The article, found in an old scrap- book, was reprinted in the Woburn Journal of July 12, 1887.
2 The will is preserved in the Middlesex County records.
3 Article by Oliver R. Clark in the Winchester Record, Vol. I, page 56.
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feet in circumference; that part of the legend can safely be dis- missed as invented.
It is not easy to say exactly how many men from our com- munity took part in the famous battle that ushered in the Revolu- tionary War. Accurate records of this early volunteer service have not been preserved. Of the two hundred and fifty men belonging to the three Woburn companies one hundred and eighty were pres- ent during the fighting,1 and it is probable that at least twenty were from our part of the old town. Among those who are positively known to have been in arms either at Lexington and Concord or at Bunker Hill (and in some cases at both battles) are many whose names already have a familiar sound; Captain Samuel Belknap, John Symmes, Robert Converse, Daniel Reed, Abel Richardson, Joseph Brown, Zachariah Brooks, Paul Wyman, Francis Johnson, Jeduthan Richardson, Gideon Richardson, Samuel Symmes, Jesse Richardson, Jonathan Locke and Zechariah Symmes.2
To these may be added two natives of our community who were not at the time living here: John Brooks, captain of the Reading minutemen, and Lieutenant Caleb Brooks, of Captain Isaac Hull's company of Medford militia. These two men were half-brothers and both were born in the old Brooks house at Symmes Corner. They both - together with Captain Belknap and a number of private soldiers from Winchester homes - saw service also under General Washington in the siege of Boston, which continued from June 1775 until General Howe evacuated the city on March 17, 1776.
During this first year of the Revolution military service was voluntary, and since their own homes were threatened by the pres- ence of the British army in Boston, Massachusetts men were ready and eager to offer themselves. With the formation of the Conti- nental Army, however, and the movement of military operations out of New England to the more distant regions of New York, New Jersey and the South, we hear no more of volunteering. Its place was taken by a draft, to which all members of the militia companies were subject. For example, on July 11, 1776, every twenty-fifth
1 Major Johnson's letter.
2 See the Records of Soldiers and Sailors in the Revolution (17 vols.), published by the Commonwealth, and W. R. Cutter's MS. records of Woburn soldiers, preserved in the Woburn Public Library.
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man in the Woburn companies was drafted for active service with the army in New York and New Jersey, and on September 12, 1776 every fifth man in the same companies was drafted to march to Ticonderoga where preparations were making for an expedition against Canada. In the same way twenty-nine men were drafted in 1777 to join the New England troops that formed a part of General Gates's army facing Burgoyne's invasion of northern New York.
On two occasions, once in 1777 and once a year later, men were drafted for service in Rhode Island, where the British still held the town of Newport, from which an American army under General Sullivan, aided in 1778 by a French fleet, tried unsuccessfully to drive them. And again and again during these years detachments from the Woburn militia (including several Winchester men) were drafted to "guard prisoners" from Burgoyne's defeated army, held captive at Cambridge or at Bunker Hill. Finally there were occa- sional drafts to fill up the quota of Massachusetts men in the Con- tinental Army. As the war prolonged itself, the towns took to hiring men by means of bounties to fill up the quotas required of them, and it became more and more common for drafted men, who could afford it, to hire substitutes to take their places. Among the Wyman manuscripts preserved at Woburn are scores of receipts for money paid out "for hiring men into the war." In the month of June 1778, Captain Belknap received from the town treasurer £983 and some odd shillings, with which to hire fighting men. During July 1779 Bartholomew Richardson received almost £3,000 to be spent for the same purpose. The reason for so great an increase in the amount paid in 1779 must be sought in the progressive loss in value which the Continental currency underwent. In 1777 the town of Woburn was offering bounties of from £6 to £12 for men who enlisted for three or five months service. In 1778 it had to pay a bounty of £81 5s for men to join the army in New York on an eight months enlistment. By 1780 it was necessary to pay no less than £1,200 for a similar service. Paper money was worth only two or three cents on a dollar; within another year or two its value had disappeared altogether. "Not worth a Continental" was the popular phrase to express absolute worthlessness.
It is related of John Symmes (later Captain John) that when
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he returned home in 1780, "ragged and emaciated" after three years service in the Continental Army, he was able, with his pay, to buy a yoke of oxen. Tempted by the rise in the nominal value of the oxen as the money depreciated, he sold the animals. But he made the mistake of keeping the money by him for a time; when he was ready to spend it, all it would buy was a sack of Indian meal !1
As I have said, the practice of hiring substitutes for distant service became general; Yankee thrift of course dictated caution with regard to the sum to be paid. We read that Josiah Johnson, Jr., drafted for the army facing Burgoyne in 1777, aroused great indignation among his neighbors by paying £30 for his substitute, which it seems was about double the going price at that time.2
It was customary in the later years of the war for the citizens to divide themselves, or be divided by the assessors, into as many "classes" as there were men in the quota that the town was required to furnish to the Continental Army. The members of each class were then assessed, in accordance with their ability to pay, a suffi- cient sum to hire a soldier to represent them. Occasionally the man hired would be himself a member of the "class"; more often he would be one whose ratable property was not large enough to include him in any class.3
It follows therefore that although well-known citizens, mem- bers of old established families, were commonly to be found in the ranks while the fighting was on Massachusetts soil the later quotas (except for such peaceful service as guarding prisoners) were chiefly made up of later comers, men whose names are no longer familiar, and who were sufficiently in need of money to be willing to take a little risk to earn it.
In all about forty men connected with our Winchester com- munity saw more or less service in the Revolutionary armies. This includes several who did not live in the little village during the war but who were subsequent residents for many years - like Captain John Le Bosquet, Colonel Bill Russell and Job Miller, for example. The names, so far as they can be identified, are printed in Appendix A.
1 Symmes Memorial, page 55. His title was not won in the Revolution but as a captain of militia.
2 Cutter's MSS. Revolutionary Records in Woburn Library.
3 Sewall's History of Woburn, page 368.
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Besides furnishing men for the fighting forces, the towns were required to supply food and clothing in great quantity for the army. We are so used to the idea that the national government shall undertake the task of feeding and clothing its soldiers that it seems a little strange to read of such responsibilities being thrown on the individual towns. But during the Revolution there was no national government worthy of the name; and the Continental Congress, which represented what there was, had no financial resources and no administrative system equal to the emergency. So each of the thirteen colonies - or states as they now were - had the duty of finding clothes and food for its own men in arms, and the only way they could get what was needed was to collect it in the form of goods or money from the several towns.
Accordingly we read of "beef-taxes" being levied on the citi- zens of Woburn (and so of course on those who lived in what is now Winchester), wherewith to raise money for the purchase of beef cattle. On one occasion, in 1780, the town had to find no less than 24,078 pounds of beef - which it did, no doubt, by pur- chasing the cattle of its own citizens. Let us hope there was no profiteering in the transaction.
In 1778 the towns were required by law to provide as many shirts, shoes and stockings as would clothe one-seventh part of all their male inhabitants. And in 1781 the Legislature, resolving to "collect clothes for the Commonwealth's quota in the Continental Army," levied on Woburn for forty-two shirts, as many pairs of shoes and stockings, and twenty-one blankets. There still exist in the Wyman collection of manuscripts at Woburn a great number of orders on the Town Treasurer in payment for articles of this sort sold to the town. As for example, "Please to pay Zachariah Rich- ardson twenty pounds for hose he delivered to the Selectmen."1 "Please to pay Paul Wyman seven pounds in part for ... shirts, shoes, stockings and blankets he supplied the State in 1781."2 Which, with more of the same sort, indicate that residents of our community did their share in providing for the needs of the never- too-well-equipped Continentals.
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