USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Winchester > History of Winchester, Massachusetts > Part 18
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1 In the Winchester Historical Society's collections.
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HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
increased - indeed very nearly doubled - its fares to Boston. Some money was raised here, and more in Stoneham and Medford; a contractor, one Cahill of Worcester, was found who would take a quantity of stock for the work of building the road.
Here in Winchester the Stoneham Branch was to parallel the Lowell tracks from the Woburn line to the village. It was to run right through the mill pond in the center, pass alongside the Aber- jona to a point near Mystic Avenue, where it turned eastward, slanted up the hillside to Symmes Corner, and then ran southward, not far from Main Street, into Medford. A good deal of the neces- sary grading was done; a gravel embankment was built to raise the tracks above the level of the river as far as Mystic Avenue, and a cut made to carry them up the hillside and under Main Street, where a bridge was built near the present corner of Marshall Road. The line continued east of Main Street across the low land, then partially filled with a shallow pond - probably an old beaver pond - and beyond that all the way to the Medford line. Traces of the old grade can still be seen here and there along this route; the gravel embankment near the center was long ago used to fill up the shal- low backwaters of the Aberjona, which formerly covered much of the land where the Mystic Valley Parkway now runs and that in the rear of the Junior High School building.
The Stoneham branch was inadequately financed from the beginning; it was a waste of materials and money to build so many miles of unnecessary track, and it was violently opposed by many landowners in Medford. In July 1853 the contractor Cahill went into bankruptcy; no money could be found to keep the project alive, and the vision faded. With it disappeared several thousand dollars of Winchester money.
While railways are under discussion it may be mentioned that in 1851 the Lowell Railroad removed the old station at the center and built a new and larger one on the same spot. The "depot," a sufficiently modest structure, was highly complimented in the newspapers of the day. It was noted as a remarkable fact that it was - like the Lyceum Building - lighted with gas manufactured in the basement of the latter building.1 This was perhaps the prod- uct of the Winchester Gas Company, a corporation formed by Charles McIntire, Aaron D. Weld and Benjamin Abrahams in
1 Woburn Journal, March 13, 1852.
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SOCIAL AND COMMUNITY LIFE
1852.1 This company made some experiments in the manufacture of gas, but it was never able to raise the capital for commercial success, and disappeared, leaving behind it no ripple pronounced enough to stir men's memories.
The company in Arlington brought its pipes to Winchester in 1860, and put up a gasometer at the corner of Church and Fletcher streets, a familiar object in that vicinity for more than half a cen- tury. The pipes were carried all the way down Church Street to the center, along Main Street from O. R. Clark's house in Cutter Village to Symmes Corner, and up Washington Street as far as Eaton Street.2 The Congregational Church, Lyceum Hall, and several stores and private residences made use of the new illumi- nant, but it was a number of years before the service was extended into any of the side streets. Kerosene remained the source of light in almost all houses until at least 1880. By that time most of the stores had been piped and those who chose could discard their oil lamps. If they were wise, however, they kept them handy, for service in those days was not as dependable as it has since become. Frost or water in the pipes, and an occasional break due to the settling of the ground after a hard winter not infrequently inter- rupted the flow of gas.
Street lights were few and far between. Most were simply kerosene lamps erected on posts, usually by householders. There is no reference to street lighting by the town in the records until the March meeting of 1861, when $125 was voted to install a few gas lamps at the center. The records are again silent until Novem- ber 1863, when it was again voted to maintain a few lights at or near the center and to permit private citizens, "not to exceed six," to put up gas lights near their houses, the gas to be paid for, I presume, by the town.3
As a matter of melancholy interest, it may be noted here that Winchester was visited in the winter of 1859-60 by an epidemic of scarlet fever. Scores of children fell sick, and at least ten deaths occurred, including children of Mr. John R. Cobb, Mr. E. A. Wadleigh and Mr. T. P. Tenney. In two cases two children in the same family were taken.4
1 Incorporated April 12, 1852, Chapter 102, Acts of the Legislature in that year.
2 Middlesex Journal, June 2, 1860, September 8, 1860.
3 Winchester Town Records, Vol. I, page 419.
4 Middlesex Journal, January 14, January 21, February 11, 1860.
CHAPTER XIV
MEN AND EVENTS IN THE SIXTIES. WINCHESTER IN THE CIVIL WAR
THE population of Winchester in 1850 was 1,350. Ten years later it had increased to 1,937. Numbered among the new residents whose families helped to enable the town to show this thrifty gain in population were several who were to become conspicuous in the history of Winchester.
First of all should be mentioned the name of David N. Skill- ings, who first settled here in 1854, and whose integrity, generosity and public spirit made him, before his death, twenty-five years later, recognized as the first citizen of the town. Mr. Skillings was a native of Maine. Without advantages of birth or means he made his own fortunes - and very successfully. When he came to Win- chester, still a young man, he was already well to do, a member of a firm conducting a large business in lumber. In the years that followed he became wealthy, but he remained unassuming in his manners, and he was devoted to the welfare and improvement of Winchester as few of its citizens have been. He was a religious man, deacon of the Congregational Church and generous in all benevolences. In politics he was a Democrat of the old school. He will be mentioned often in the pages that are to follow.
Sherburn T. Sanborn, who came to Winchester a year or two earlier, was another successful Boston business man. He built the large and imposing house which stood within the memory of many on the ground where the Winchester Chambers have since been built.
Aaron D. Weld came to Winchester in 1850 and soon became prominent in all town affairs. He died in the service during the Civil War; it was for him that the Winchester Grand Army Post was named. He too was a Boston business man, and a leading mem- ber of the Baptist Church.
J. B. Judkins lived on Washington Street and owned a quantity
190
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MEN AND EVENTS IN THE SIXTIES
of land between the street and the banks of the river; the artificial pond created by running the railway right of way across Black Ball Pond was often in later years called Judkins Pond since his land very nearly encircled it.
Several lawyers with extensive practice in Boston found Win- chester so attractive that they removed thither at this time. Among them were A. K. P. Joy, who lived on the site of the new public
1936
THE E. A. BRACKETT HOUSE
library, Abraham B. Coffin, who occupied the stone house on Forest Street, built as I have recorded by Jason Richardson, and E. A. Wadleigh,1 whose deep interest in Winchester schools was com- memorated in the grammar school building on Washington Street.
Edward A. Brackett, sculptor, painter, and lover of wild life is another whose name should be remembered. He was for many years the active member of the first Massachusetts Fish and Game Commission. He was an artist of talent, but his interests in life were various. At his home, a picturesque octagonal house on High-
1 Later a Clerk of the Superior Court.
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HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
land Avenue,1 he was an enthusiastic grower of fruit, and especially of fine grapes. He bred Chinese pheasants on the edge of the woods that have since become part of the Middlesex Fells, and built for a private fish hatchery, the stone building near South Border Road that is now a headquarters for the Winchester Boy Scouts.
Samuel W. Twombly, a well-known Boston florist, who became a devoted lover of Winchester, Alfred Norton, a Boston paper dealer who was often in public office and for many years in the Boston Custom House, Lieutenant William F. Spicer, an officer in the United States navy, whose house overlooked Wedge Pond from its southern shore, Thomas P. Tenney, William Pratt, a clock merchant who lived on a portion of the old Symmes farm near the western end of Bacon Street, Edmund Dwight, who occupied what is now the Langley estate opposite the Country Club, Irving S. Palmer, a son-in-law of Harrison Parker the elder, and a partner in his large business in mahogany lumber, the brothers Albert and Thomas Prentiss Ayer, R. T. Whitten and John C. Mason were all new residents who gave character and importance to the grow- ing town. It was the first flush of the suburban era when successful men from the city were seeking out pleasanter homes among the wider spaces and the verdure of the countryside, and Winchester was attractive enough to draw to it a considerable proportion of the outflowing tide.2
It was in these years that the most distinguished man who ever lived on Winchester soil built his mansion here - Edward Everett, president of Harvard, Governor of Massachusetts, United States Senator, minister to Great Britain, candidate for Vice- President, orator at Gettysburg on the day when Abraham Lincoln delivered his brief but immortal address. Mr. Everett was attracted to Winchester not only by the beauty of the shores of the Mystic Lakes but by the fact that his brother-in-law, Peter Chardon Brooks, lived just on the other side of the lakes in West Medford, and his nephew, Francis A. Durivage, a brilliant writer and lin- guist, who had been Mr. Everett's private secretary, lived in Win- chester itself.
1 Later the home of H. C. Wellington.
2 A statistician in the Middlesex Journal of February 9, 1861 found 89 Winchester citizens whose business was in Boston.
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MEN AND EVENTS IN THE SIXTIES
Mr. Everett bought the level piece of ground at the foot of Myopia Hill, traditionally known as the Pond Plain, of Deacon Luke Wyman, whose house, modernized, stands on Old Mystic Street at the top of the Country Club hill today. It was a beautiful site for a mansion, and Mr. Everett's diary1 several times refers to the "delightful situation," "more beautiful than I had imagined." He bought also a considerable part of the high land on Myopia Hill from Deacon Wyman and Samuel Gardner.
The house was built in 1859, a large and, as was then con- sidered, an "elegant" building, with a charming prospect across Mystic Lake to the heights beyond. Mr. Everett spent no little time here, but the house was designed to be the home of his son Edward, of whom he was extremely fond. The untimely death of this brilliant young man in 1864 was a severe blow to the aging father. He seems to have lost his interest in the fine estate he had created. At this time the building of the dam between the two Mystic Lakes to form a reservoir for the Charlestown Water Works raised the level of the lake along the shores of the estate six feet. Every effort was made by the engineers to build up the bank behind the Everett house so that no land would be flooded and no damage of any kind done to the property. It is hard to see how any was done, but Mr. Everett insisted that his estate was spoiled and brought suit against Charlestown for a large sum of money. Before the case was decided he was dead, of a pneumonia contracted, per- haps, by his attendance at a hearing in connection with his suit. The referees awarded his estate $11,000, an exceedingly generous sum.
The Everett mansion became the property of William Everett, a son, who occasionally occupied it. This gentleman was for some time a professor at Harvard, and later head master of Adams Academy at Quincy. For several years he was a member of Con- gress. Professor Everett was among the founders of the Unitarian Church in Winchester, and once (1869) moderator of the town meeting. The mansion was sold by him in 1876. It has since had several occupants, the latest of whom was Willard D. Robinson, the owner of the well-known Belmont Spring and promoter of the Belmont Spring Country Club. As "Robinson Park" the estate is
1 Preserved in the Massachusetts Historical Society Collections.
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HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
now a recent real estate development; the future of the old house is uncertain, and it may soon be pulled down.
Another distinguished man who came to reside in Winchester at this time, though the exigencies of his profession gave him little time to spend in the town until after the close of the Civil War, was Captain - later Admiral - Henry Knox Thatcher. Admiral Thatcher was a grandson of General Henry Knox, Washington's Secretary of War. He was a naval officer of distinction, who won fame by his part, under Farragut, in the capture of Mobile. He lived in the house built by Colonel S. B. White at the northern end of Wedge Pond, now the residence of Thomas Quigley, Jr. His dignified and rather imposing figure was familiar in the streets of Winchester until his death in 1880.
As the critical year of 1860 approached, Winchester like other New England towns grew apprehensive and disturbed. There was anti-slavery sentiment here, as there was throughout this section, but apart from mention of a "Female Emancipation Society" in South Woburn as early as 1846 I have found no evidence of an anti- slavery organization in town. There was certainly no station of the "underground railway" here, as there was in the neighboring town of Stoneham; and a very large proportion of the substantial men of the town were either Democrats or Whigs, more alarmed by the enthusiasms of the newly founded Republican party than sympathetic with them.
But John Brown's execution brought out a wave of powerful anti-slavery feeling. On the day he was hanged, December 2, 1859, the bells of the town were tolled between the hours of eleven and twelve, and in the evening there was a great public meeting in Lyceum Hall addressed by the Baptist minister, Rev. Mr. Eddy, Alfred Norton, Sumner Richardson, Nathaniel A. Richardson and others.
The presidential campaign of the next autumn was lively with meetings and political parades. At the election the Lincoln elec- toral ticket carried the town with 190 votes. The Douglas electors had 93 votes, the Breckenridge electors 4, Bell and Everett (Edward Everett), the old Whig or Constitutional Union candidates, received no less than 78, an indication of the strength of the Whig sentiment
195
WINCHESTER IN THE CIVIL WAR
still existing in Winchester. At the same time, Oliver R. Clark, the Republican candidate for state Senator, and Alfred Norton, the Republican named for Representative to the legislature, were beaten. A fusion of Whigs and Democrats had been formed to check the advance of the new party, and Charles Heywood, its candidate for the legislature, defeated Norton 185 to 170.
With the news of the fall of Fort Sumter there came a surge of loyal sentiment. The pastors of the Congregational and Baptist churches preached stirring sermons, the Stars and Stripes were everywhere displayed, and on April 22, 1861 there was a public meeting in Lyceum Hall, at which Dr. Chapin presided, and F. O. Prince, Dr. Ingalls, B. F. Thompson, Salem Wilder and J. F. Stone made patriotic speeches. Nineteen young men volunteered to form a local military company, and a subscription paper to furnish the money necessary to equip such a company was signed by men who promised to pay a total of $2,850. This amount was increased by later subscriptions to more than $3,750 but only $412.13 was ever collected.1 The town proved too small to raise a full company. Thirty-five volunteers for three months service were finally raised. These men first attached themselves to the Lexington company, but withdrew from it when the town of Lexington declined to vote a sum of money for the payment of volunteers or those dependent on them during their term of service.2 Some of the Winchester men enlisted in the Woburn Phalanx, others in the Light Guard of Medford, still others in the various companies and regiments being formed in Boston. It is noted in the newspapers of the day that Mr. Foss of Winchester had no less than five sons among these early volunteers, and Mrs. Benjamin Abrahams three.3
It had not proved difficult to supply a sufficient number of volunteers for the three months service originally required by Presi- dent Lincoln's order; but as the war prolonged itself, as the calls came not for three months but for three years service, Winchester was often put to it to fill the quota of recruits assigned to it. The action of the town in the support of the war and in encouraging enlistments may conveniently be summarized by extracts from the records of votes passed at successive town meetings.
1 Middlesex Journal, April 27, 1862; August 24, 1861.
2 Middlesex Journal, June 1, 1861.
3 Middlesex Journal, September 28, 1861.
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HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
On June 10, 1861 it was voted "to furnish to the families of the volunteers belonging to the town such aid as they may need, so long as such volunteers shall be engaged in state or United States service; such aid to be paid out of any monies in the town treasury."1
On March 24, 1862 it was voted to borrow $1,800 to be used for "aid to the families of volunteers now enlisted in the United States service."2
By July 1862 matters had become very serious. A public meeting, presided over by Thomas P. Ayer, was called to devise ways and means to raise the town's quota of the three hundred thousand men just called for by the President; and a committee of which Oliver R. Clark was chairman was appointed to prepare a vote to be presented to the town meeting called for July 16. The committee reported and the town passed a vote authorizing the selectmen "to pay a bounty of $100 to each person who has been or shall be enlisted or mustered into the volunteer service ... as part of the quota of this town."3 This bounty proved an effective recruiting sergeant; the quota of twenty-five men was promptly filled.
But hard on the heels of the President's call came another for three hundred thousand more men; the battles of the Peninsula Campaign and at Shiloh had taken a heavy toll. In this call pro- vision was made for drafting, if a sufficient number of volunteers did not present themselves; but Winchester, like all the rest of Massachusetts, under the inspiring leadership of Governor Andrew, was determined not to resort to the draft. Another great "war meeting" was held in advance of the town meeting of August 19. Mr. Ayer was again chairman, Dr. Chapin and Mr. Clark spoke with great effect, and a "rallying committee" of thirty-two headed by Abijah Thompson, 3d was appointed to speed enlistments. The town meeting in due course voted another bounty of $100 to all who should enlist under the second call, and authorized the select- men to borrow $4,000 to pay the same.1 Fourteen of the town's quota of forty-three were enrolled at an enthusiastic public meeting in Lyceum Hall after the adjournment of the town meeting. Among
1 Winchester Town Records, Vol. I, page 356.
2 Winchester Town Records, Vol. I, page 376.
3 Winchester Town Records, Vol. I, page 383.
4 Winchester Town Records, Vol. I, page 385.
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WINCHESTER IN THE CIVIL WAR
them were two sons of Mr. J. Hunnewell, making four from that family in the uniform.
Before the quota was filled it had been raised by the authority of the Governor to sixty men. A town meeting held November 29, 1862 voted to increase the amount of the bounty to $150 and to authorize the selectmen to secure the additional men needed by "transfer" from some other town. In this way some twenty men who had enlisted in Reading, beyond the quota of that town, were transferred to Winchester and the ranks were thus filled. By March 1863 the selectmen reported that one hundred and eight men from our town were in the service.1
In November 1863, another call for three hundred thousand men having been issued, the town appointed a committee, of which J. F. Stone was chairman, to encourage recruiting. The committee called a "war meeting" for November 21 in Lyceum Hall, and another for two days later. There was abundance of patriotic ora- tory on both occasions, more than $3,000 was subscribed to supple- ment the town's bounty money, and in a few weeks it was announced that the Winchester quota was filled, with a surplus of six men.2
At the town meeting of March 25, 1864 the town voted to raise $7,100 by taxation, to be used in recruiting soldiers, and on June Io a bounty of $125 was voted to every man who should enlist during the year.
In July 1864 came another and final call for men. The Win- chester quota was 38; it was filled without serious difficulty.3 Thus honorably and without recourse to any form of conscription Win- chester bore its part in filling the ranks of the armies that saved the Union from disruption. In all 244 men are credited to the town, 31 of them in the naval service. Ten died in active service : George W. L. Sanborn, Josiah Stratton, Jr., Aaron D. Weld, Jefferson Ford, John Fitzgerald, Francis A. Hatch, Joshua T. Lawrence, John Gordon, Ira Johonnott and Francis B. Bedell. Of these, Hatch, it is strange to recall, served but eight days in the army. Enlisted on August 1, 1862 in the Second Massachusetts, he fell at Cedar Mountain on August 9.
Aaron D. Weld and Captain Jefferson Ford whose names are
1 Selectmen's Report, 1863.
2 Middlesex Journal, November 28, 1863, January 16, 1864.
8 Middlesex Journal, September 17, 1864.
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HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
found in the list of ten were two of the best-known citizens of the town. Of Mr. Weld I have already said something. He was a suc- cessful business man and active in public affairs, a former selectman and member of the School Committee. He served in the navy as an assistant paymaster, and died at sea on the steamer Ocean Queen June 11, 1862. The Winchester Post of the Grand Army of the Republic was named for him.
Jefferson Ford lived in Winchester many years, though his profession, which was that of a ship captain in the merchant serv- ice, kept him much away from home. His wife was of old Win- chester stock, the daughter of Joseph Brown Symmes and the great-granddaughter of Hezekiah Wyman.1 Already elderly at the outbreak of the war he patriotically offered his services to the government, and was sailing master on several vessels attached to the North Atlantic Squadron - the Ohio, Princeton and Monticello. He died at Beaufort, North Carolina, June 18, 1864.2
A man whose home was in Winchester, but who enlisted from elsewhere, was a member of the crew of the Monitor during its famous battle with the converted ironclad Merrimac in Hampton Roads. This man was John H. Carter; he was a boiler maker in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and he volunteered to sail on the Monitor when it left the yard to try its improved mettle against the Confed- erate ram. After the regular gunners had been stunned by the impact of a Confederate shell on the Monitor's turret, Carter joined the improvised gun crew. He is said to have aimed the final shot that pierced the hull of the Merrimac below the iron plating and drove her to take refuge in Norfolk Harbor, where she was subsequently blown up.3
Among the prominent men of the town who saw active service were, of course, Admiral Thatcher and Lieutenant - later Cap- tain-Spicer, who were officers in the regular navy, John A. Bolles, who served as captain on the staff of General John A. Dix, was then appointed a judge advocate general with the rank of major, and finally won the rank of brevet colonel and brevet major general
1 See Chapter VIII, page 104.
2 For a complete list of Winchester men in the Civil War, with their military or naval records, see "Winchester War Records," published by the town in 1925.
3 See Russell H. Conwell's lecture before the Winchester G. A. R., Woburn Journal, February 13, 1875.
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by active service in the field, and Dr. William Ingalls. Dr. Ingalls was chief surgeon first of the Fifth and then of the Fifty-Ninth Massachusetts regiments, and rose to be chief surgeon of the artil- lery brigade, of the Ninth Army Corps. He was forty-five years of age at the time of his original enlistment, and is said to have been the oldest surgeon from the state in active field service. Neither Colonel Bolles nor Dr. Ingalls returned to Winchester after the war. The former made his home in Washington, where he held various political offices, and the latter removed to Boston where he was long a successful surgeon.
Officially the town raised and paid out $12,031.14 during the war in aid to the families of volunteers enlisted from Winchester. It paid in bounties to the volunteers themselves more than $15,000. Besides these sums, several thousand dollars-the exact amount is not available - were raised by private subscription and applied to the uses of the town in recruiting or to the aid of soldiers in the field.
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