USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Winchester > History of Winchester, Massachusetts > Part 12
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1 Rev. Leander Thompson, History of Woburn Schools in Town Reports for 1876.
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HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
In these queer little buildings, typical "district" schools of the day, the children learned their reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic, with a modicum of geography thrown in. If they desired to pursue their education further they had to travel to the grammar school at Woburn center, which some - but not many - of them did. The school on Richardson's Row served until 1818, when, proving to have been none too well built, it was sold and another building erected farther up the street on land now included in the Leonard Playground. The old building, moved farther north, became Zachariah Richardson's shoemaking shop. In 1831 the school was again moved. This time with three yoke of oxen to pull it down Richardson's Row to a site near the present corner of Ridgeway. There it stood and dispensed learning, such as it was, until the building, in 1843, of a larger and finer school for "district No. 5" at the corner of Church and Dix streets, where in later years Dr. March and then Dr. Mead had their houses.
In 1831 the West Side school also went on its travels and was moved down into Winchester territory on Cambridge Street, a little way above Pond. There it stood until Winchester became a separate town in 1850. Then it was found to be no longer con- veniently located for the scholars who were to attend it. It was sold and turned into a dwelling house, which still stands beside the road. The school that replaced it was finally located on the south- erly side of Church Street, near the corner of Cambridge. It was the first of a succession of "Wyman" Schools.
There was no schoolhouse in the Medford corner of the town around Symmes Corner until after 1830, when a small building, the ancestor, shall we say, of the several "Mystic" Schools that have existed in this part of the town, was built on the slope of land above Main Street where Edgehill Road now runs. Miss Pamelia Symmes was the first teacher; for several years before that she had kept a little school in the ell of the house of her father, Deacon John Symmes, which still stands at the corner between Grove and Main streets. Before she opened her little school the children of the neighborhood, unless they could manage to gain admission to the Richardson's Row school, which was, of course, in Woburn, had to trudge the long two miles to Medford center in order to achieve the rudiments of an education.
I23
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL
The year of 1798 was a momentous one for our town, for it was then that it was invaded by a small army of men bearing picks and shovels, and a numerous fleet of tip carts. The Middlesex Canal was in process of construction. This canal was one of those ambi- tious commercial projects that sprang up in response to the improved financial conditions and the spirit of national expansion that fol- lowed the adoption of the Constitution. James Sullivan, son of the distinguished Revolutionary soldier General John Sullivan, himself judge, attorney general and finally Governor of Massa- chusetts, was the original projector. It was a time of canal build- ing, both in England and America; the future of transportation, certainly of heavy freight, was believed to lie with the artificial waterway. Sullivan dreamed of a canal to connect Boston with the Merrimac River. The building would not be impractical, for there was an elevation of only a little more than one hundred feet to over- come. From the northern end of this canal a waterway suitable for barges lay open by the Merrimac River to Concord. Thence Sullivan saw in his imagination another canal by way of Lake Sunapee to the Connecticut River, and by connecting streams to the heart of Vermont, if not indeed to Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence. By this means the trade between Boston and the north country was to be widely expanded, much to the profit of those far-sighted citizens who should dig and manage the canal.
The plan, as events proved, was not chimerical, at least as far as the Middlesex link in it was concerned. James Sullivan was influential and plausible. He found no great difficulty in interest- ing other prominent and wealthy men in the enterprise - Colonel Loammi Baldwin, the leading citizen of Woburn, General John Brooks of Medford, later himself Governor of the State, Christopher Gove, James Winthrop and Thomas Russell of Boston, Andrew Craigie of Cambridge, Samuel and Caleb Swan of Charlestown and the Hall family of Medford. The necessary money to begin the work was subscribed, and the canal company was incorporated by the legislature June 22, 1793. Not to delay too long over the details of the construction, it may simply be said that with the assistance of an experienced English canal engineer, Mr. Samuel Weston, a practicable route was surveyed from the Mill Pond at Charlestown, through Medford, South Woburn, Woburn, Wilming-
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HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
ton and Billerica, to Chelmsford on the Merrimac. The water wherewith to fill the canal bed was to be taken from the Concord River, a little below Chelmsford; the river was crossed there at grade, and a floating bridge or causeway was built to be used as a tow path.
The excavation, though tedious with the means then available, was not particularly difficult. In addition it was necessary to build twenty locks, to lift or lower the canal barges to different levels, and seven aqueducts where the canal crossed running water. The longest of these aqueducts was at the crossing of the Shawsheen River; it was one hundred thirty-seven feet long, and consisted of a stoutly constructed wooden channel, some thirty feet wide and five feet deep, supported on masonry piers. These piers still stand, lonely memorials of a dead enterprise, near the line between Wil- mington and Billerica. The second longest aqueduct crossed the Mystic at West Medford, the third was here in Winchester, where the canal crossed the Aberjona just above the head of Mystic Lake. This was only a little way above the house of the Winchester Boat Club. The youth of the town still go swimming at "the aqueduct," though it requires no little historical imagination to recognize from present appearances the justification for the name.
The canal was finished and ready for business in 1803. It passed through Woburn by the low land behind the Public Library, crossed Pleasant Street, and continued down to the eastern shore of Horn Pond. There a set of locks was necessary, for the shore is much higher at the upper than at the lower end of the pond. The company built a hotel at Woburn Locks, which was a favorable stopping place for bargemen and travelers by the canal, since the barges were only allowed to pass through the canal by daylight. It became, too, in later years the goal of occasional picnic parties from Boston, which visited this region, then considered far out into the country, to enjoy the rustic and solitary beauty of Horn Pond.
Passing down alongside the pond and its outlet, the canal entered the present limits of Winchester not many rods below the pond. It crossed the Horn Pond Brook a little way above the build- ing of the Eastern Felt Company at the foot of Canal Street, and still roughly paralleling the brook, ran over to the shore of Wedge Pond. Thence it passed over the low ground where the Palmer Street
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THE MIDDLESEX CANAL
tennis courts are today, crossed Wildwood Street, and passed through a cut that is still recognizable behind the houses on Fletcher Street to Church Street, which it crossed. Its course can still be traced through the lane behind the houses on Sheffield Road to lower Everett Avenue - which did not, of course, then exist. Just beyond Everett Avenue there are still indications of the old tow- path and of the hollow in which stood the lock gates to lower the barges to the level of the aqueduct across the Aberjona.
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LOCK IN THE MIDDLESEX CANAL AT HORN POND
From this point the canal ran along the peninsula, partly artificial, above Sandy Beach, turned south, and following in gen- eral the line of the Mystic Valley Parkway entered Medford. Another aqueduct spanned the Mystic River near the present Bos- ton Avenue bridge, and the canal, turning eastward now, followed rather closely the bank of the river to Charlestown.
At Church Street in Winchester the canal passed under the
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HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
street. The bridge by which the street crossed was long known as Huffmaster's Bridge, taking its name from a curious character named Andrew Huffmaster who lived close by. Huffmaster was an old Hessian soldier, captured in the Revolution, who had made up his mind that America was a better place than Hesse-Cassel in which to live. How he happened to land in our town we know not, but there he was, living in a humble edifice which today we might call a shack, the only habitation on the whole length of Church Street from the old James Converse house almost down to the center, to Cambridge Street. Huffmaster was a quaint figure enough; one old resident declares he wore "knee breeches made of eel skins and a coat braided out of corn husks!"1 At all events he used corn husks to bottom chairs, and was an itinerant workman at such jobs, known over a wide extent of the surrounding country. He was a good shot and an expert trapper, and eked out his income by taking muskrat and other furs to Boston to sell. Besides all this he was a performer on the old-fashioned bagpipes, and used some- times to play and dance for his customers in consideration of an additional fee. Huffmaster was married and left children. A grand- son of his once lived on the farm just south of Morningside on the road to Arlington.2
To return to the canal. Its construction was directed by Colonel Loammi Baldwin. Its cost up to 1819, when the project at last began to show a profit, was $1,164,200,3 mainly for the purchase of land and the original construction of canal bed, locks and aque- ducts; but considerable sums were spent for repair and improve- ments.4 For example, the aqueduct that carried the canal across the Aberjona here in Winchester was at first supported by timbered piers, but later these were replaced by substantial piers of split granite, remnants of which can still be seen on the shore of upper Mystic at the Narrows, just above the house of the Winchester Boat Club.
For forty years the canal was in operation. Barges, loaded with timber, firewood, granite, ice and a great variety of farm and
1 N. A. Richardson in Winchester Star, December 26, 1900.
2 Another grandson was killed in the tornado that tore through Arlington and Medford August 22, 1851. He lived near the West Medford railroad station.
8 Historical Sketch of Middlesex Canal, by Caleb Eddy, Boston, 1843.
4 Workmen on the canal were paid $10 a month, with board and lodging.
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THE MIDDLESEX CANAL
country produce, traversed the waterway through the peaceful farms and pastures of Woburn and Winchester to the markets of Boston; and returned laden with every sort of manufactured goods for the people of the back country. Besides the barges of the com- pany, private cargo boats built to fit the canal were allowed to pass through, after paying the required toll. The business was prin- cipally with freight; but the company owned two passenger boats, the General Sullivan and the General Washington, and did some- thing with them.
I have said that pleasure parties were frequent patrons of the canal during the tens, twenties and thirties of the last century. It may be added, in parenthesis, that the towpath was a favorite place for an evening stroll in fine weather - particularly among the young who were romantically inclined. It was for most villages along the line of the canal the accepted Lover's Lane of the neigh- borhood. That was, we are told, true for Winchester also.
An old diary, fortunately preserved, contains the account of one of the fashionable pleasure parties which were wont to embark on the peaceful waters of the canal and sail sedately on to Horn Pond, which was the usual goal for such picnics. This party was a distinguished one, for it included William Tudor, Mrs. Josiah Quincy, several members of the Buckminster family and, above all, Daniel Webster and Mrs. Webster. The company set forth from Charlestown early on the morning of a July day in 1818. Their craft traversed the marshes of Medford and skirted the beautiful shores of the Mystic Lakes. At the Narrows, here in Winchester, it was lifted by the locks to the level of our West Side fields and con- tinued across them to Horn Pond or "Lake of the Woods" as the romantically minded had dubbed it. The day was spent happily in dining, singing and dancing in the pavilion which the Canal Com- pany had built near the locks on the eastern shore of the pond, the party having been augmented by others who had driven out from Boston, not willing to expose themselves to the "hardships" of a canal voyage.
On the return trip when the picnic party reached the Narrows, where the Aberjona then entered the Upper Mystic Lake, it was discovered to be still so early that they disembarked again to enjoy an hour or more in "Symmes Grove." The cove on which the
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HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
Winchester Boat Club's house now stands was observed to be well carpeted with lily pads, among which shone occasional blossoms. One of the young ladies exclaimed that she wished she had some of the lilies. No boat was available and the two or three young men - Harvard students, says the diary - looked dubiously at one another, for they were dressed in their very best.
Then arose the sonorous voice of Mr. Webster, that voice which ere long was to stir the listening Senate with its profound exposition of the Constitution, "If I were a young man," he said, "and a young lady expressed a desire for water lilies, I could not too quickly gratify her."
There was nothing for it after that but for the young men to wade boldly in, up to their knees and beyond, and gather the lilies. The captain of the excursion barge, concerned at their bedraggled appearance, asked with some asperity: "What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?" "Nothing but Mr. Webster's eloquence," was their reply.
"It never brought me lilies before," observed the god-like Daniel, but some one added, "It has brought you laurels, how- ever." And so, vastly pleased with the affair (even the college boys in their wet boots and trousers), the party reentered the barge and returned in safety to Boston.1
Mr. John L. Sullivan, a son of Governor Sullivan, was the company's agent in the early years. He was an enterprising, mechanically minded man and conceived the idea of using the still rather unfamiliar power of steam in place of horses to propel his barges. He acquired title to a patent for what was called a "revolv- ing engine," and bought a half interest in the old Symmes mill privilege on the Aberjona, which had been for more than a hundred years the property of the Symmes family. His partner was Captain John Symmes, and these two built a second mill across the river from the old one. Here corn was ground; the old mill contained a lathe and trip hammer for Captain Symmes who was a wheel- wright, and was the scene of Mr. Sullivan's experiments with steam power.
We have no blue prints of Sullivan's engine, and no descrip- tion of its construction that is at all clear. "The whole engine
1 Moses W. Mann in the Winchester Star, July 27, 1906.
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revolved," we are told - an explanation that leaves this writer as much in the dark as ever. But in the end the engine was made to work after a fashion. It was installed in one or two canal boats, which it drove through the canal and up the Merrimac to Concord. Tar was used along with wood as fuel. The steamboat alarmed and disgusted dwellers along the canal by the clouds of thick, black, tarry smoke which it belched forth; and one who saw - and heard - the invention at work has handed down the information that the exhaust of the engine could be heard for miles and that the machin- ery made a noise "like a floating blacksmith ship."1
The steam barges were not regarded as successful; the wash from the wheel undermined the earthen walls of the canal bed and made expensive repairs necessary. Mr. Sullivan's undertakings bankrupted him at last, and he sold the two mills on the Aberjona - for he had meanwhile bought out Captain Symmes - to one Abner Stowell, from whom one mill quickly, and the other eventually, passed to Robert Bacon, of whom we shall hear more later.
The Middlesex Canal was financially profitable from 1819 to 1836. It might easily have continued to be so had it not been for the appearance of a competitor too strong for it - the steam rail- way. With the completion of the Boston and Lowell Railroad in 1835, the canal business fell by a third. Within a few years another third had gone. Ruin was inevitable. The resourceful Mr. Eddy, who was then the agent, tried to salvage part of the property by a scheme for using the middle section of the canal as a conduit to bring the Concord River water to furnish a supply for Boston, but his plan fell through. In 1846 the canal was abandoned. Its course here in Winchester has been largely filled in and built upon. The stone superstructure of the aqueduct piers has vanished, to reap- pear, however, in the walls of the stone farmhouse on the Brooks estate, which the motorist on Grove Street passes halfway between West Medford and Winchester. A block of granite bearing a bronze memorial tablet stands beside the Mystic Valley Parkway, near the line between the two towns, to mark the last vestiges of the old embankment which led the canal from the aqueduct at the Nar- rows to the eastern shores of the lake - a modest tombstone for what was, in its day, a mighty enterprise.
1 Moses W. Mann, article in Medford Historical Register for September, 1928; Luther R. Symmes, article in Winchester Press, October 4, 1901.
CHAPTER X
MEN AND INDUSTRIES OF A CENTURY AGO THE RAILROAD COMES TO TOWN
THE War of 1812 seems not to have made a deep impression on the people of this vicinity. The two militia companies of Woburn, East and West, were still active; indeed in 1808 the second Middle- sex regiment of which they were a part held a grand regimental muster on Wyman Plains, as the West Side of Winchester was then called, with a large attendance of interested citizenry, and all the circumstances of rustic gaiety, including, I fear, a general indulgence in New England rum - which had at that time become associated with such spectacles. But neither company was called out for service, and no company was enlisted or mustered in in Woburn. Some local men must have served on the detachments commanded by sergeants who stood guard over bridges, armories and wharves of Boston to protect them against possible hostile acts by British agents. In the records that have been preserved one recognizes the names of Edmund Symmes and Nathaniel and Samuel Richardson, who were certainly Winchester men. But the war did not touch Massachusetts nearly save on the sea and along the coast of Maine, and men from our community were not often drawn into active service.
In September 1815 the town was visited by an extraordinary gale of wind which was long remembered. The damage done to trees was very great; several hundred fruit and shade trees were destroyed, chimneys and roofs suffered, one barn at Washington and Forest streets was blown flat, and several tons of hay scattered over the neighborhood. Those who ventured out in the storm were often blown from their feet and rolled along the ground. Mrs. Jesse Richardson, returning from a neighbor's house with a baby in her arms, saw the infant torn from her hold by the wind and car- ried over a near-by stone wall. No serious injuries occurred.1
1 N. A. Richardson in Winchester Star, October 8, 1900.
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MEN AND INDUSTRIES
In 1831 the town of Woburn was again called upon by the state to make a survey of its territory and submit a record of its real estate. Bartholomew Richardson was the surveyor. One full gen- eration had passed since the survey of 1798, and the village of South Woburn showed unmistakable signs of growth. Instead of thirty-five dwelling houses, there were now more than sixty. Most of them were still occupied by scions of old Winchester and Woburn stock - Symmeses, Richardsons, Johnsons, Wymans, Lockes, Gardners, Reeds, Pierces, Parkers and Hutchinsons account for forty-three of them, but there were some new and significant names. W. C. Jarvis, the first lawyer to take up his residence in our village, occupied the Caleb Swan house. His office was at Woburn center, and he represented that town in the legislature. William Grammer was another new resident; with his brother Seth he opened a store on Main Street, near its junction with Washington Street, where, as his son recalled, he sold "Salt Fish, Oil, Molasses, Sugar, Tea, Coffee, Spices, Rum (West India, St. Croix and New England), Brandy, Gin and Wine." This was the second store in Winchester; like the first, it probably did a brisker trade in wet than in dry goods.
Loring Emerson, destined to be an important man in the Win- chester of later years, had lately come into the town. He was a cattle dealer and butcher; a son-in-law of Colonel Bill Russell, he lived in Colonel Bill's old house on Cambridge Street, at the corner of the present Calumet Road.
More important than any of these were two families who had taken over two of the mill privileges in the village and were develop- ing them with energy and success - the Cutters and the Bacons. It was in 1810 that John Cutter bought the grist-mill built by Joseph Richardson on Horn Pond Brook near the spot where Main Street crossed it. Mr. Cutter was an enterprising man who had been interested in mills all his life and had experimented with mills driven by wind as well as water. He had even gone so far afield as the West Indies where he built a mill for grinding sugar cane and as Canada where he had a windmill for grinding corn. He was born at Menotomy (Arlington), where his family was long established, but he came to South Woburn from Medford, where he had various business interests. He built a new dam for the Richardson mill and.
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HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
flooded back a good-sized pond, long since filled in; being a good business man he made the mill pay.
John Cutter had a large family; seven of his children were sons, and three of them, Stephen, Henry and Sullivan, also made their homes in our village. After their father's death in 1825, Stephen and Henry took over the old mill. The day of grist-mills was passing; the brothers used their power first for carding wool and making machines for splitting leather, and later for sawing mahogany and other fancy woods. They expanded their business to the importation of mahogany and were extremely successful therein. In 1840 the old mill burned, but was immediately replaced by a better one, into which - for reasons of sentiment mainly - the Cutters put a pair of millstones for grinding corn as well as the saws and other machinery needed in their lumber business. As time went on, two sons-in-law of Stephen Cutter, Oliver R. Clark and Charles Hall, were admitted to the firm. All these families, as well as Stephen H. Cutter, a son of Stephen, and Stephen A. Holt, a son-in-law of Henry, lived along Main Street, north of the Cutter mill, in substantial houses, most of which are still standing. Those of Sullivan, Stephen and Stephen H. Cutter, and Mr. Clark stood on the easterly side of the way; those of Henry Cutter, Mr. Holt and Mr. Hall on the opposite side. When I add that two other brothers of Stephen and Henry Cutter, Captain John who was a sea captain, and Andrew who was employed in his brother's business, lived for several years in the same neighborhood, no one will be surprised to know that this part of Winchester was long popularly known as Cutter Village, a name which one still hears used today.
All the Cutters were prominent in town affairs, citizens of substance. Stephen was perhaps the most interesting; in addition to sound business sense and a mechanical ingenuity that served him well in designing and improving machinery, he was a musician. For years he was the leader of the choir in the Congregational Church, the founding of which we shall soon chronicle, and until the building was equipped with an organ, Mr. Cutter's violin, always true and sweet, led the congregation in the singing of hymns.
At the other end of the town the Bacon family established itself in 1824 when Robert Bacon, of a family well known in Boston,
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MEN AND INDUSTRIES
bought one of the Symmes mills on the lower course of the Aberjona and began the manufacture of felt. Mr. Bacon was as successful in business as the Cutters. He controlled two or three recently patented improvements in felting machinery, to which he added some further ingenious ideas of his own. In one year in his Aberjona mill, he is said to have formed 85,000 hat bodies, besides making a quantity of felt for other purposes. When Mr. Bacon moved here he lived in the old Symmes dwelling house beside the mill, but before many years he built the handsome house with brick ends which stands on the Mystic Valley Parkway near the bridge that crosses the river just above its union with Upper Mystic Lake. His son John H. Bacon succeeded him in the old house by the mill; but before many years he too moved to the other side of the river and bought the farm of Josiah Symmes, which lay south of Bacon Street, its house on the rising ground which is now Lakeview Road.1 The land, which stretched down to Symmes's meadow through which the Aberjona still meandered,2 he beautified with some care, and his gardens were widely known and admired.
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