History of Winchester, Massachusetts, Part 3

Author: Chapman, Henry Smith, 1871-1936
Publication date: 1936
Publisher: [Winchester, Mass.] Published by the town of Winchester
Number of Pages: 498

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I.9

FIRST SETTLEMENTS

public building of the town. This Great House, which stood for many years, was in succession the dwelling place of Governor Winthrop, the courthouse and the first meetinghouse in Charles- town; and it declined at last to be the tavern or "ordinary" of the town. Already, it seems, the newcomers recognized the superior advantages of a location on Boston Bay and were preparing for an important, perhaps their most important settlement there.

So when Governor Winthrop and his following appeared in Charlestown in 1630 they found matters well advanced there. Among the Indians, of whom as Prince says "the neck was full,"1 they found Sagamore John, the son of the Squaw Sachem and chief of the savages in this vicinity. He readily gave them per- mission to build their homes where they liked, and houses began to rise on every hand. It was not long however before fault was found with Charlestown as the permanent center of the colony. There was not land enough on the neck for a large company it was said, and there was complaint because water was not abundant. The largest spring was on the shore, often under salt water at high tide, and so brackish. The near-by peninsula of Shawmut was larger, better situated and "full of springs of living water." So the greater part of the Charlestown settlers, led by their governor, Winthrop, and their minister, Rev. John Wilson, passed over to Shawmut and established themselves there. The Governor took with him the timbered frame of the house he had begun to build for himself in Charlestown, and so passed the brief glory of the little village as the chief seat of the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay.

Only seventeen "heads of families" who had come in with Winthrop remained as permanent residents of Charlestown. This would mean a population of perhaps sixty or seventy persons; but to them must be added some at least of those who had lived there since Thomas Graves laid out the town in 1629. We have no list of them, and their number is uncertain. Among the seventeen were several whose names touch Winchester history nearly. These are Edward Converse, who was later to build the first house in Win- chester - and by the same token the first house in the old town of Woburn - Ezekiel Richardson, one of the first settlers of our 1 Prince, New England's First Fruits.

HISTORY OF WINCHESTER

town, and Increase Nowell, the largest land holder in the first division of the land at "Waterfield." There were also Edward Gibbons and Captain Norton, whose names we have come across in following the litigation over the Squaw Sachem's land on the west side of Winchester. Increase Nowell was clearly the most impor- tant man in the town, the only one who, in the list preserved in the Charlestown records, bears the title of "Esquire." Edward Converse, it is interesting to note, was the first to establish a ferry between Charlestown and Boston, which he maintained for at least nine years. Within a few years other names which were to become familiar in Winchester history appear on the list of Charlestown citizens: Rev. Zechariah Symmes, who became in 1634 the first pastor of the Charlestown church, James Thompson, the ancestor of the family of that name in Woburn and Winchester, Rev. John Harvard, one of the original landowners in Waterfield, and Captain Edward Johnson who has been called the "father of the town of Woburn."1

The government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was at first in the hands of a governor and a body of Assistants, all of whom had been named by the company in England. But it was not long before the colonists, like good Englishmen as they were, insisted on having another "house" in the government, to be com- posed of representatives duly elected by the citizens of each of the towns, which were, by 1634, ten in number. These formed, with the Assistants, the "Great and General Court," a title which is still legally that of the Massachusetts legislature. One of the first duties of the Court was to set the bounds of the various towns, that none might encroach upon its neighbors. Charlestown was granted a wide extent of territory on the "main land"; to the northward it reached eight miles into the country, which means that nearly all of the present town of Winchester was included. The first appearance of our community in Massachusetts history , therefore, is as a part of the venerable town of Charlestown.

This region was of course still a shaggy wilderness, about which little was accurately known. Governor Winthrop and a party of companions had looked down upon it in 1631 when they had made a journey of exploration up into the Fells, discovered and 1 Frothingham's History of Charlestown.

TANIELD

HISTORY OF WINCHESTER

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FIRST SETTLEMENTS

named Spot Pond, and lunched frugally on cheese without bread, on an eminence they named Cheese Rock, but which a more genteel generation subsequently renamed Bear Hill. No doubt Captain Edward Johnson, who had a permit to trade with the Indians at Pawtucket Falls (Lowell), passed through the Mystic Valley and up the Aberjona in the same year, on his way to his trading post. Otherwise little can have been known about it. It is to be noticed, however, that in the quaintly drawn map that accompanies Wood's "New England's Prospect," published in 1634, we find not only the Mystic Ponds but Horn Pond laid down. It is placed, however, not where it belongs but on the site of Spy Pond in Arlington, which indicates that although Horn Pond must have been seen and named (probably from its shape) very early, there was still in 1634 some confusion about its real situation.

In 1635, however, Charlestown took some real action to explore systematically its land to the northward. The town records inform us that in that year Edward Converse, William Brackenbury and Abraham Palmer were delegated to "go up into the country on discovery," for which they were to be "benefitted at the charge of the town."

These men must have brought back a pretty clear report of the geography of Waterfield (the present Winchester) for presently we find Charlestown granting land there to the citizens of the town. The "Book of Possessions" which was made up in 1638 contains allotments of all the land lying in the Winchester valley and some outside it, with the bounds carefully set forth. From it we learn that every freeman in Charlestown had his share, large or small. By far the largest "farms" were assigned to Increase Nowell, the chief magistrate of the town, and to Zechariah Symmes, the min- ister of the Church. These amounted to some three hundred acres each. Good-sized lots were granted to Captain Edward Johnson, Edward Converse, Rev. John Harvard, John Mousall and other prominent men in the community, and less generous ones to men of inferior importance.1

1 By a very thorough and useful piece of research, Rev. George Cooke, long a resident of Winchester and Secretary of the Winchester Historical Society in 1886, determined the location of all the Waterfield allotments recorded, and prepared a map which shows at a glance where each man's land was situated. It is reproduced here- with.

HISTORY OF WINCHESTER

It must not be supposed that all these persons were expected to settle on the lots thus assigned to them. All of them still owned their two-acre lots on Charlestown neck, and most of them had other pieces of ground, often of good size, scattered about else- where. Increase Nowell had no less than ten such, one in Malden at least as large as his farm in Winchester. Rev. Mr. Symmes also had several grants within the original limits of Charlestown, and so had Converse, Johnson and others.

This portioning out of the land of the infant town was a sort of division among the citizens of the only wealth available, so that each might have his share. The significant word "dividends" was often used to describe the grants. It was expected that many would realize on some or all of their lots, by selling them to those who intended to settle in the neighborhood or to newcomers. Only a few, therefore, of the original land owners in Waterfield became permanent residents. That saintly young man Rev. John Harvard died shortly after he had received his portion, leaving behind him a name that has gone abroad through the earth more widely than that of any of his fellow citizens. Increase Nowell never lived on his allotment, though he kept possession of it until his death, and may have had a part of it cultivated for him, since he always spoke of it as his "farm." But on the other hand, the families of Edward Converse, Ezekiel Richardson, Rev. Zechariah Symmes, Captain Edward Johnson and many more did make their dwelling places here and became the pioneers of civilization and religion in this "shaggy wilderness."

In 1640 Charlestown, finding that its population increased apace, and desiring more land for occupation by its people, peti- tioned the General Court for the addition to its boundaries of two miles square beyond the limits of Waterfield. On May 24 the Court granted the petition, provided the land asked for did not fall within the bounds of Lynn Village (Reading) and was built upon within two years. And at the October session of the Court the grant was increased to four miles square.

No sooner was the ink dry on the order of the General Court than Charlestown sent forth a party of leading citizens, including the Rev. Mr. Symmes, Increase Nowell, Edward Johnson, Edward Converse, Ezekiel Richardson and several more to "search out the

FIRST SETTLEMENTS

land" newly added to the town. Somewhat later another company, including Johnson and Converse,1 went out to view the bounds between the new grant and Lynn Village. Both expeditions must have had a rough time of it forcing their way through the as yet trackless forests and swamps. To add to the discomfort of the second party, we learn from the Woburn Records that it "poured down rain all night incessantly." The bedraggled Puritans were, however, shown one conspicuous evidence of the watchfulness of Providence over them. "Some of the company lying under the body of a great tree ... when daylight appeared, no sooner was the last man come from under it, but it fell down to their amazement; being forced to dig out their food that was caught under it; it being so ponderous, all the strength they had could not move it."2

The man who recorded this providential escape from death was Captain Edward Johnson, first Recorder or Town Clerk of Woburn and so conspicuous in its early history that he has been called the "father" of the town. He was never a resident of Win- chester, though he lived not far from our borders, near the four corners at the foot of Shaker Glen where the highway to Lowell crosses the Woburn-Lexington road;3 and he cuts so great a figure in the early history of Woburn, of which much of Winchester was then a part, that he merits a word or two in respect to his memory.

He came to America from Canterbury in Kent, the ancient city which was also the English home of the Rev. Zechariah Symmes. He must have seen military service in his youth, for he brought the title of Captain with him, and is spoken of in early records as the "Kentish soldier." He was of the great emigration that came over with Governor Winthrop, but he seems to have had commer- cial rather than religious motives for the voyage, for we soon hear of him carrying on trade for furs with the Indians. In 1631 he went back to England, but five years later he returned to Charles- town, bringing his family with him. He had apparently experi-

1 So in the Woburn Records, but there is on record an affidavit of Converse's, sworn to in the suit mentioned on page 54, to the effect that he did not accompany the party.

2 Woburn Records, I, 3.

3 Captain Johnson's distinguished son, Major William, was in fact a resident of Winchester. His house stood on Cambridge Street not far above Wildwood Street, where the Edward Russell house now stands.

HISTORY OF WINCHESTER

enced conversion, for he came back a zealous Puritan, and became at once a leading figure both in church and town.

Johnson was more literate - at least more ambitiously literate - than most of his fellow citizens outside the clergy. He loved to write. The Woburn Records, which as Town Clerk he kept for many years, are delightfully informal, personal and voluminous, and they are introduced with a long piece of verse - charity itself could hardly call it poetry - celebrating the aims, the hopes, and the sufferings of the first settlers. He was also the author of the "Wonder-working Providence," a history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony up to 1651. This book is invaluable as an historical source and it is quaintly if rather grandiloquently written. It is full also of doctrinal or pious passages which sometimes interrupt seriously the thread of history, and is embellished moreover with numerous examples of Johnson's versification; he evidently fancied himself as a poet. An interesting, self-revealing, sturdy, capable old Puritan was Edward Johnson. Peace to his ashes.

To return to our story: it was not the original intention to set up a new town on the land granted to Charlestown by the General Court. The soil was to be portioned out to Charlestown residents, present or future, and a village, which should still be part of the mother-town, was expected to be established there. It was to be called Charlestown Village, as Reading was originally called Lynn Village, and the new settlement did actually bear that name for two years.

But even before the first house had risen there, a movement was begun to create a new town in place of a mere village, tributary to Charlestown. On November 9, 1640 the church of Charlestown - not the town, observe - chose seven commissioners, Edward Converse, Edward Johnson, Thomas Graves, John Mousall and the three Richardson brothers, Ezekiel, Thomas and Samuel, "for the erecting of a new church and town." It was felt, no doubt, that the settlers of Charlestown Village would live too far distant from the Neck to enjoy the church privileges to which every good Puritan should be entitled; and that they ought accordingly to have a church of their own.

The town seems not to have resented this apparent intrusion of the church into secular affairs; as a matter of fact in 1640 church

DOGWOOD IN THE MIDDLESEX FELLS

FIRST SETTLEMENTS

and town were interchangeable terms, consisting as they did of the same persons under different titles. At all events the town offered no opposition to the idea; but when on November 23 a church meeting was called to see who would volunteer to go out into the wilderness to form the new church and town, so many came for- ward that the church officers were inclined to abandon the plan, lest Charlestown should be depopulated.1 This was an unexpected turn of events; but by some means or other the fears of the objectors were soon calmed, and the commissioners were authorized to pro- ceed according to the original vote.

Followed a meeting of humiliation and prayer at the house of John Mousall, to seek God's blessing on the new enterprise, and several subsequent meetings to discuss ways and means and enroll suitable persons - suitable financially, theologically and physi- cally - to undertake the work.

By February 10, 1641 (O.S.) they were so far advanced in their plans that we find a party of men at work building a bridge across the Aberjona, in order that there might be easier access to the proposed town. The weather it seems was extremely cold, and the frost-bitten bridge builders commemorated their sufferings by naming the structure "Cold Bridge," a name it bore for many years. This bridge was on the very spot where the handsome con- crete Converse Bridge now spans the stream at Winchester center. The Woburn Records describe it as "over against Edward Con- verse's house,"2 which is excellent evidence that Mr. Converse had already built there or did so immediately afterward. In either event his was the first house to be built in Winchester and in the old town of Woburn as well. It stood a few rods from the river on the easterly side of the highway, near the present corner of Main Street and Converse Place, and it was almost two hundred years before it disappeared to make way for a more modern building.

Meanwhile the question of a site for the new church and village center was under debate. The first plan was to place them on the eastern side of the town near the Aberjona River in the dis- trict now called Montvale. Here some forty men who intended to settle in the new town met on February 16, 1641, and set about

1 Woburn Records, I, 4.

2 Woburn Records, I, 4.

HISTORY OF WINCHESTER

"marking trees and laying bridges,"1 but, say the Records written by Edward Johnson, "the way was so plain backward that divers never went forward again." Thus cryptically does Johnson refer to a difference of opinion that had already arisen among the seven commissioners and soon spread to the body of the settlers.

Four of the seven commissioners, Thomas Graves and the three Richardson brothers, having lots granted them in Water- field on the eastern edge of the tract, naturally wished the village to be set conveniently to their land. The other three, Johnson, Converse and Mousall, objected. They insisted that the village should be placed on higher and more fertile land nearer the geo- graphical center of the town. A majority of the settlers seem to have agreed with them, and the difference became so warm that a committee of leading Charlestown men, including Mr. Nowell, Captain Sedgwick and Lieutenant Sprague, had to be called in to give advice. In the end, Johnson, Converse and Mousall carried their point, we know not exactly how; and it was settled that the meetinghouse - and therefore the village - should be built in the spot where Woburn center stands today.

Whether or not it was from chagrin at the decision or for some other reason, Thomas Graves shortly afterward withdrew from the enterprise and returned to Charlestown. This man, though having the same name, must not be confused with the engineer who origi- nally laid out the streets and public places of Charlestown. He was by profession a ship captain, and within a few years of his return to Charlestown he returned to the sea. After the execution of King Charles and the establishment of the government by Parlia- ment he entered the service of that government and we hear of him as commander, first of the frigate President and then of the St. Andrew, a sizable warship of fifty-seven guns. He won dis- tinction in the naval war that Oliver Cromwell found it necessary to carry on with Holland, and was killed in an engagement with a Dutch frigate in 1653. A lively tradition among Charlestown people refers to him as the "Rear Admiral"; but if, as the tradition declares, Cromwell honored him with this rank it must have been posthu- mously. He died a captain. His land in Winchester was near the corner of Washington and Forest Streets, adjacent to that of the Rev. John Harvard, which he bought after Harvard's death.

1 Sewall's History of Woburn, page 15.

FIRST SETTLEMENTS

Within little more than a year from the determination of the site of Woburn Village, sufficient progress had been made in clear- ing land and erecting houses to justify the forming of a church organization. The seven men who were its first members, were Edward Johnson, John Mousall, William Learned, Edward Con- verse, Ezekiel, Thomas and Samuel Richardson - the last four all residents within the present bounds of Winchester. The occa- sion was one of great solemnity. President Dunster of Harvard College, nine eminent clergymen including John Wilson and John Cotton of Boston, John Eliot of Roxbury, Richard Mather of Dor- chester and Zechariah Symmes of Charlestown, and Mr. Increase Nowell were present. Mr. Symmes "continued in prayer and preaching about the space of five hours,"1 which probably tried his hearers less than it would their descendants - and then the seven men mentioned above "stood forth and made declaration of their religious faith and Christian experience." The covenant was then read and agreed to, the right hand of fellowship was extended by the elders of the visiting churches and the ceremony was at last ended.

The church having been "gathered," Mr. Thomas Carter, "recently from England," was called to be its minister, and ordained on December 2. A few weeks earlier the General Court had voted to incorporate the new town under the name of Woburn - or Wooborne, as the spelling then was. Why this name was chosen is not entirely clear. Sewall, the historian of the town, suggests that it was "from respect to the Hon. Richard Russell, a man of consequence in Charlestown, and highly regarded in the Colony, of which he was for thirty years the Treasurer." He was, it seems, connected with the noble family of Russells, who were Dukes of Bedford and whose chief country seat was at Woburn Abbey. A more likely theory is that of Mr. William R. Cutter, who thinks the compliment was paid to Captain Thomas Sedgwick, long a leading citizen of Charlestown and a close friend of Edward John- son, who often spoke of him with admiration in his writings.1 Cap- tain Sedgwick was a native of Woburn in England. What more natural than that his friend, having a new town to name, should

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History of Winchester, Massachusetts, Part 3

Author: Chapman, Henry Smith, 1871-1936 Publication date: 1936 Publisher: [Winchester, Mass.] Published by the town of Winchester Number of Pages: 498

Author: Chapman, Henry Smith, 1871-1936
Publication date: 1936
Publisher: [Winchester, Mass.] Published by the town of Winchester
Number of Pages: 498