USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Winchester > History of Winchester, Massachusetts > Part 14
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HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
1842. The office travelled up Main Street to his store, to which reference has already been made, but soon returned to the center when Mr. Howe removed his business to a building near the corner of Thompson Street.
The third postmaster (1844) was Nathaniel A. Richardson, the enthusiastic local historian to whose reminiscences the present writer is so heavily indebted. He served until 1850; the office at first remained in Mr. Howe's store, but in 1848 it was removed to the new store of Taylor and Sanderson, and in 1850 Mr. Alvin Taylor himself became our fourth postmaster. The later peregrina- tions of the post office until its permanent location in the handsome government building on Waterfield Road will later be recorded.
The postal business in the early days was curiously unlike that to which we are accustomed. Prepayment of letters was rare. They were generally "literally sold at the post office, for the postage (either 614, 121/2, 183/4 or 25 cents according to distance) was to be paid on delivery. The letter when mailed was accompanied by a bill stating the charge to be made, and the whole wrapped in another paper, tied with string. The postmaster must untie and save both string and wrapper, impaling the bill on a spindle for use in settling his accounts with the government."1 The letter was delivered only on payment of the postage charged. And that in the forties of the last century was considered the acme of postal convenience and efficiency :
The first physician to live in Winchester - or as it was then, South Woburn-was Dr. Moses C. Greene whom we have already seen as the first postmaster also. But he was a resident here less than two years and seems not to have done much at the practice of medicine. The first really to settle in the village was Dr. William Ingalls, who came here in 1846 and remained until the Civil War. His first house was in Thompson Street, probably that now num- bered 33. Later he lived on the corner of Main and Mt. Vernon streets where the Brown and Stanton Block now stands. Dr. Ingalls was a capable physician and a surgeon as well. He was a graduate of the Harvard Medical School (1836) and practised in Boston both before coming to Winchester and after leaving it. While he lived here he was a surgeon at the Marine Hospital in
1 Winchester Record, Vol. III, page 90 ..
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THE RAILROAD COMES TO TOWN
Chelsea, during the war he was a military surgeon attached first to the 5th and then the 59th Massachusetts Regiment, and after the war we find him on the surgical staffs of the Boston City and Children's Hospitals. Dr. Ingalls lived to be ninety; he died in Roxbury in 1903.1
Shortly after Dr. Ingalls was attracted to the fast-growing suburb of South Woburn he was joined by a brother practitioner, Dr. Alonzo Chapin. Dr. Chapin was an Amherst graduate, who received his medical education in Philadelphia. He and his wife were among the earliest missionaries sent out by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. They were settled in Hawaii, or the Sandwich Islands as they were then called, and remained there until Mrs. Chapin's health required that she return to this country. Dr. Chapin practised thirty years in Winchester, greatly beloved and highly respected. He was deeply interested in the schools of the infant town and for many years he was a member of the School Committee. The Chapin School which used to stand on Swanton Street was named in his honor. Mrs. Chapin was no less useful in Winchester in her own way; for she bore her part in all the charitable and cultural activities in the town.
For a few years Dr. Richard U. Piper was a resident of Win- chester, living on Walnut Street. Dr. Piper was a man of learning, but of a somewhat eccentric personality. He had some pretensions to being an artist as well as a physician. He was the painter of the view of Winchester center which is one of the illustrations of this book. He was also the author of a large volume on surgery, enriched by almost two thousand engravings from his own draw- ings. The book was highly regarded by the medical profession in its day. Dr. Piper removed to Woburn about 1850 and practised there for forty years or more.2
1 History of Harvard Medical School.
2 Woburn Journal, January 24, 1852.
CHAPTER XI
THE FIRST CHURCH. INCORPORATION AGITATED
ON the third of March, 1839, there was gathered in the little schoolhouse that stood on Washington Street at the foot of the slope on which the Skillings house now stands a company of earnest men, met to take counsel concerning the establishment of a Con- gregational church in South Woburn. For two hundred years, lacking only three, the people of this vicinity had attended and supported the old church in Woburn two miles away. But it was felt that the village of South Woburn had already grown so much, and gave promise of growing so much faster in the future, that it ought no longer to be without its own church.
I have already outlined something of the history of the Woburn church up until the year 1758. Following that year it continued much as it had in the past, often in trouble as to its ministers but retaining so much vitality that it could endure the secession of many of its members to form the churches in Burlington and Wilmington, preserve its orthodoxy against the assaults of Unita- rianism to which so many Congregational churches in Massachu- setts surrendered, and be regarded in 1839 as one of the strong churches in its denomination.
Few churches have had so much controversy over its pastors. The story of the long feud between the friends of Rev. Mr. Fox and Rev. Mr. Jackson has been told. In 1758, both of these min- isters having died, the church seemed for a time to be united under Rev. Josiah Sherman, an eloquent preacher and an able man. But ere long financial troubles arose. Mr. Sherman was dissatisfied with his salary, which he found insufficient to his needs. The parish never quite met his desires either as to salary or to pro- vision for his support in case of future incapacity. There was more or less wrangling over the matter for some years; it ended in Mr. Sherman's asking and receiving his dismission in 1775.
But the affair left deep scars behind. Many of the church
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THE FIRST CHURCH
members were devoted to Mr. Sherman and indignant with their brethren who had made it impossible for him to stay. For two years Woburn had no settled minister. The two parties within the church found it hard to agree on any candidate, and whenever they. did the candidate shied off and decided not to accept his call. At last in 1785 Rev. Samuel Sargeant entered upon the vacant pas- torate, but his path was a rough one. The division within the church continued; he was not the man to heal it. A good many of his parishioners who were dissatisfied with his election from the first, left to attend other churches in Woburn. Mr. Sargeant could not collect his salary in full and had to sue for it; the parish made no secret of the fact that it wished to get rid of him.1
Nevertheless Mr. Sargeant clung to his office for fourteen years, when at last an Ecclesiastical Council, called by the Church, recommended his dismissal. His successor was the Rev. Joseph Chickering, a good and holy man, who had the misfortune after some years of peace to fall into a quarrel with one of the most influential of his parishioners over a parcel of land which the layman wished to buy of the clergyman. That led to fresh divisions within the church and, though the great majority seems to have sympa- thized with the minister, the situation gradually became so unpleas- ant that Mr. Chickering decided to resign, which he did in 1821.
He was in turn succeeded by Rev. Joseph Bennett, under whose ministrations quiet and harmony descended upon a church that had been sorely tried. Mr. Bennett was still the pastor when, in 1839, the first steps were taken to create a new church in South Woburn - at the expense, of course, of the membership of the venerable church in Woburn.
The meeting at the district schoolhouse on March 3, 1839 chose Zachariah Symmes as chairman. Those present were appar- ently united in favor of setting up a new church in South Woburn. It was pointed out that more than a hundred members of the old church lived in this neighborhood, including three of its deacons, B. F. Thompson, Nathan B. Johnson and Marshall Wyman. The village was growing fast; there would soon be a much larger con- gregation to be depended on, and it was not right that so thriving. a community should be without religious opportunities in its midst.
1 Sewall, History of Woburn, page 438.
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HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
eacon Thompson, Deacon Johnson and Stephen Cutter were appointed a committee to draw up a petition to be addressed to the Woburn church and requesting it to consider whether the time had not come for the formation of another Congregational church within the limits of the town.
The Woburn church, by no means ready to part with so large a part of its membership, asked to be better informed concerning the reasons why it should consent to such a separation. Another petition was accordingly drawn up - probably by the same com- mittee - and duly presented. From it we take the following extracts :
"We want the stated means of grace, the preached word and the ordinances of the gospel in that part of the town where we live. . . .
"That the feeble among us and those who have not the means of conveyance may be better accommodated. That persons of good moral character and sound religious principles may be induced to come and settle with us.
"That the multitude among us whose sense of duty and love of the commands of God are not powerful enough to induce them to go far to meeting, may have the gospel brought to them.
"That our sons and daughters may be delivered from that example which springs from neglected means of grace.
"That the great and increasing moral and religious wants of this whole town may be better supplied. ...
"Finally that sinners may be converted, souls saved and God glorified." 1
Cogent reasons all, and excellently expressed. But the Woburn church was still not ready to lend its aid to the project or to express its sympathy with a proposal which, if carried out, would obviously weaken its own organization. At a church meeting on April II, 1839, the Woburn church voted to postpone all consideration of the petition for a year; and when the matter was taken up at the
1 Rev. George Cooke in Winchester Record, Vol. II, page 105. The petitions were signed by B. F. Thompson, Stephen and Sullivan Cutter, Zachariah, Horatio and J. B. Symmes, Nathan B., Francis and Francis, Jr. Johnson, Samuel S., Caleb and Sumner Richardson, Samuel B. White, W. T. Perry, Timothy W. and Artemas Mead, John Robinson, Nathan Jaquith, Oliver R. Clark, Rufus Wade and Alvah Hatch.
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THE FIRST CHURCH
meeting in April 1840 the petition was dismissed, since the pro- posal "contemplated a division of the church, which was considered inexpedient by the majority."
But the people of South Woburn did not mean to let their plans depend on the consent or approval of the mother church. Convinced of the necessity of a new church, they waited courteously for the Woburn church to take final action on their petition. No sooner did they hear of the dismissal thereof than they determined to take the matter wholly into their own hands.
At a meeting held on May 12, 1840, at the Wakefield house,1 so-called, at the center, it was voted to organize a new Congrega- tional Society without delay. A petition signed by Deacon B. F. Thompson, Stephen Cutter, Stephen Swan, Sumner Richardson and Alvah Hatch was addressed to Colonel Leonard Thompson, a Justice of the Peace in Woburn, requesting him to issue a warrant for a meeting of legal voters interested in forming such a society. The warrant was duly issued, and on June first the meeting was held, once more in the schoolhouse on Washington Street.
The society was properly organized by the election of Zach- ariah Symmes as Moderator, Sumner Richardson as Clerk, Benja- min F. Thompson as Treasurer, Stephen Cutter, Harrison Parker and John Fiske as Parish Committee, S. B. White as Collector, and Nathan B. Johnson and Stephen Symmes as Auditors. It was then voted to build a meetinghouse immediately, at a cost not to exceed $5,000, and a committee consisting of Deacon Thompson, Deacon N. B. Johnson, Deacon Marshall Wyman, Henry Cutter, Sumner Richardson, Stephen Swan and Harrison Parker was chosen to have charge of the building.
That the plans of the new society had been well perfected in advance is apparent from the promptness with which the com- mittee went to work. On June 5, only four days after its appoint- ment, it purchased from Thomas Collins for $125 an acre and a quarter of land, more or less, lying on the slope between Church Street and Wedge Pond; and on the same day it acquired from the Boston and Lowell Railroad for $50 some eight thousand square
1 The Wakefield house, so named from its builder, was the first house north of the railroad crossing on the easterly side of Main Street. In later years Cogswell's bakery was in this house.
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feet additional, adjoining on the east the land bought of Mr. Collins.1
The site thus selected (it is the same still occupied by the Congregational Church) was happily chosen. It occupies a gentle elevation above the very center of the town, just such an elevation as the New England folk from time immemorial have loved to crown with their places of worship. Its appearance in 1840 was not what it is today, for then the slope rose much higher toward the pond and terminated in a rather conical hill of gravel covered with a growth of small pines. It was necessary to level off this summit, and the work was almost wholly done by volunteer labor. Many a leading citizen of the town and many still young, who were in after years equally prominent in Winchester affairs, bore a hand with pick and shovel in the toilsome task of grading off the "church hill." 2
On this sightly lot the meetinghouse was erected with admir- able expedition. The corner stone was laid on July 27;3 by Octo- ber II the building was so far along that it was possible to hold a parish meeting in the vestry, and before the end of the year the church was completed and ready for dedication. The South Congregational Society of Woburn thus presented to the parent church what the French call neatly a fait accompli. At the meeting of October II a letter was adopted and signed by an even hundred of the members of the old Woburn church living in South Woburn. The letter informed the parent church - as if it stood in need of information - of the formation of the new society, and requested that letters of dismissal be granted to the five score subscribers, that they might ally themselves with the new church. To such a request, courteously presented, there was but one answer to make; the Woburn church granted the letters of dismissal and the hun- dred men and women were free to constitute themselves as the "South Congregational Church in Woburn."
The exercises at the laying of the corner stone of the meeting- house had included a prayer by Rev. Mr. Bennett of Woburn and
1 A fuller account of these transactions, as well as an extended history of the early history of the church prepared by Rev. Leander Thompson, Mr. Abijah Thompson and others, is to be found in the Winchester Press, Vol. I, Nos. 20 to 50.
2 Winchester Press, Vol. I, No. 21, quoted from Rev. George Cooke.
3 Winchester Record, Vol. I, page 60.
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THE FIRST CHURCH
an address by Rev. Mr. Emerson of South Reading (Wakefield). It was marked also by the singing of an original hymn by Sumner Richardson, clerk of the parish, which is creditable enough to justify quotation. It ran:
"Eternal God, before Thy throne Thy people now their voices raise; And while we consecrate this stone, May all our hearts be joined in praise.
Thou precious, sure Foundation Stone That ancient builders did reject,
Thy presence grant, Thy people own,
The workmen bless, the work protect.
Come Holy Spirit, peaceful Dove, And richest blessings on us pour; Fill all our hearts with Christian love From this the consecrating hour.
Oh grant, Thou Sacred One in Three, That all our hearts be joined in one! And that the House we build for Thee May e'er be chosen for Thine own."
The exercises at the dedication of the church fell on Decem- ber 30, 1840. Another original hymn, no doubt also by Mr. Richard- son, was sung. Rev. Mr. Emerson and Rev. Mr. Bennett again assisted, and the sermon was preached by Rev. Daniel Crosby of Charlestown.
Six weeks earlier1 a council consisting of pastors and delegates from Woburn, South Reading, Tewksbury, Charlestown and Med- ford had met at the house of Deacon B. F. Thompson and, finding everything in proper form, had voted to constitute the subscribers to the letter of October II, referred to above, as the South Congre- gational Church in Woburn. Thus organized and provided with a meetinghouse the company assembled for their first service on January 3, 1841, when Rev. Luther Wright, an aged and retired minister living in Woburn, preached and administered the com- munion.
1 November 19, 1840.
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HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
The church thus successfully set upon its hill was a simple, white painted New England meetinghouse, not without some grace of proportion and crowned by a belfry and a steeple.1 It stood some fifty feet nearer to Church Street than the present edifice, and like that was in two stories, the vestry below and the auditorium above. According to the fashion of those days it had been financed by the sale of pews, which were "assessed" at values of from $55 to $220 according to their advantages of location. The list of the original pew holders is preserved.2 There were forty-two of them and they paid in $5,945. This amount was almost a thousand dollars more than the building was expected to cost, but a full thousand less than it actually did cost ($6,973.22). The furnishings of the house were given by generous members of the new church: a pulpit by Harrison Parker, a vestry pulpit by the Cutter brothers, a chande- lier by Mrs. Stephen Swan, a bell by "various individuals," bibles, a communion service, a clock, a carpet, and a double bass viol by societies or groups within the church.
The story of the bell is an interesting one. Thriftily in search of a bell that would not cost too much, the parish officers learned that one hung in the belfry of an abandoned church building in Waltham. It could be had at a very reasonable price, if the pur- chasers would take the responsibility of moving it from its perch. The task was not an easy one, for the building where it hung was dilapidated and none too safe. But Deacon N. B. Johnson, a mechanic of unusual ingenuity and resource, undertook to get it down, and assisted by Colonel S. B. White he put up the necessary rigging, lowered the bell safely to his big wagon drawn up beside the old church, and drove off with it in triumph.
The church building was flanked by two rows of horse sheds; the right to occupy the sheds was sold to certain parishioners. The shed furthest to the south was occupied by the town hearse. In the rear of the church toward Wedge Pond a churchyard or burying ground was laid out, the first cemetery to exist within the present bounds of Winchester. Hitherto all burials had been made in the old burying grounds at Woburn center, except for the few that were made in private tombs built by families who lived on Andrews
1 Gardner Symmes was its architect and builder.
2 See Winchester Press, Vol. I, No. 21.
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WINCHESTER CENTER IN 1845
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THE FIRST CHURCH
Hill - notably the Johnson, Locke and Carter-Bucknam families. The land for the churchyard was bought, like the church lot, from Thomas Collins; the deed was executed October 29, 1841. It is to be noticed that it did not run to the South Congregational Society but to the "Inhabitants of Woburn"; during its existence the responsibility for the care of this burial ground seems to have been confusingly divided between the parish and the town.
Even with the amount of labor that had been spent in levelling the hill, the burial ground was still considerably higher than the foundation of the church. From Church Street we are told the monument at the grave of Major Francis Johnson stood up so prominently that it seemed to rest on the top of the horse sheds. The churchyard contained fifty-one burial lots, forty-four of which had been sold when the yard was abandoned in 1854.
In 1843 the improvement of the church grounds was advanced by the planting of a number of elm trees along the three sides of the lot. These trees which thrived for many years, though some of them have lately had to be removed, were known as the "Deacon's Elms," but others besides the early deacons had a hand in plant- ing them. To each of twenty leading members of the church was assigned the duty of supplying and caring for a young elm; it does not appear, however, that all did so. The trees that can be identi- fied were those set out by Joseph Wyman, Loring Emerson, Mar- shall Wyman, Captain Jefferson Ford, Benjamin F. Thompson, Joseph B. Symmes, Putnam Emerson, N. B. Johnson, Peleg Law- rence, Stephen Swan, Thomas Hutchinson and Ebenezer Parker and Thomas Collins.1 The first deacons of the church were only three in number - the same three who had held that office in the mother church - B. F. Thompson, Marshall Wyman and N. B. Johnson; it is obvious therefore that the dozen or more "Deacon's Elms" must, most of them, have been set in place by other and less reverent hands.
The first minister of the new church was Rev. George Phillips Smith, a recent graduate of Andover Seminary. He was eminently successful both as a preacher and a pastor, and the church flourished under his care; but having met with domestic bereavement, which
1 See the map in article on the history of the church by Rev. George Cooke in Winchester Record, Vol. III, No. I.
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HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
led him to wish for a change of scene, he accepted a call to the First Congregational Church in Worcester, and was accordingly dis- missed January 21, 1845, to the deep regret of his flock. Mr. Smith lived but seven years after leaving Winchester.
He was succeeded by Rev. William T. Eustis, Jr., who was ordained - and also installed - on April 8, 1846. He remained with the church only two years, when he too accepted a call to a larger and wider field with the Chapel Street Church of New Haven.
Another young man, Rev. John M. Steele, followed Mr. Eustis. As in the case of the first two pastors, the Woburn South - soon to become the Winchester - Church was his first charge. Mr. Steele remained until 1852. He was a man of energy and enterprise, but he got on none too well with his people. He built for himself a large and imposing house on the hillside toward the Fells in what was then still woodland. The house stood till lately on the easterly side of Highland Avenue near Wolcott Terrace. He seems also to have engaged in certain imprudent real estate ventures, or at least they were so regarded by many of his parishioners; and though he had warm friends among the congregation his withdrawal seemed wise, and he resigned his pulpit February II, 1852.1
The further history of Winchester's first church will be resumed in the chapter devoted to the religious history of the town.
The question of separating South Woburn from the mother town and incorporating it as an independent municipality was already being quietly discussed as early as 1845. The village con- tinued to thrive; by 1845 it must have numbered at least a thousand persons. In addition to those attracted by its industries, it was beginning to be sought out by residents of Boston who recognized the beauty of its surroundings and found the railroad a ready and speedy means of reaching it. Conspicuous among these early sub- urban residents was Frederick O. Prince, of an old and wealthy Boston family, who moved hither in the middle forties and built a handsome house overlooking Wedge Pond where Wedge Pond Road now runs. Mr. Prince was a man of ability and force of character. From his first arrival here he became one of the leading citizens of the town, as we shall have occasion to see. After his return to Bos-
1 Winchester Press, Vol. I, No. 22, article by Rev. Leander Thompson.
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INCORPORATION AGITATED
ton he was as eminent in the larger city as in the rural village. He was mayor of Boston from 1877 to 1881, and a man influential in the counsels of the national Democracy.1
Mr. Prince was the father of Dr. Morton Prince, the eminent neurologist, and of Frederick H. Prince, banker and railroad presi- dent. The latter was born in Winchester. His son - the grandson of F. O. Prince therefore - was Norman Prince, who was one of the first American boys to join the famous Lafayette Escadrille in the early days of the World War. He served with distinction in the squadron for a year and a half, and was killed in the crash of his plane October 15, 1916.
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