USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Winchester > History of Winchester, Massachusetts > Part 7
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house had to be abandoned and a larger one built on the rising ground just off the northeastern corner of Woburn Common. This building was a square edifice, crowned in the center by a wooden belfry; the bell rope, as was not uncommon in churches of that period, hung down into the central aisle, among the pews. Those who have seen the ancient church called "The Old Ship," still standing in Hingham, will have a very good idea of the appearance of the second Woburn meetinghouse.
One episode did, however, disturb the serenity of these sixty years which ended with Mr. Fox's death. That was the appearance within the church of what our forefathers called "the Anabaptist heresy." This was neither more nor less than the doctrine, now held by the great Baptist denomination everywhere, that baptism ought to be the rite confirming a conscious conversion, and that accordingly infants ought not to be baptized. It was about 1670 that the existence of this belief began to be noticed among the members of the Woburn church. Several families refused to present their new-born children for baptism and, when remonstrated with by the minister and the deacons, pleaded their conscience as justi- fying their refusal.
But in 1670 the Puritan theocracy was still at the height of its power. Tolerance of religious views opposed to those of the clergy was unheard of. Dissenters, be they Baptists or Quakers, were handed over to the civil arm and sternly dealt with, for "heresy" was a statutory offence as much as stealing or man- slaughter. No less than thirteen Woburn men were summoned into court at Charlestown for "turning their backs on infant baptism." Several were among the original settlers of the town - John and Francis Wyman, John Russell and Francis Kendall, for example. Two were sons of Captain Edward Johnson, Matthew and John: None except Matthew Johnson lived within the present bounds of Winchester. The fathers of Winchester seem to have been unshaken in their orthodoxy.
Most of the thirteen presented in court more or less willingly professed contrition, got off with a public admonition and returned, chastened, to full communion with the orthodox church. That is a striking illustration of the firm control the ministry held over the people in the early years of Massachusetts Bay. When men of
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Puritan blood did not venture to stick to their convictions for fear of what might happen to them, in imprisonment, exile or sequestra- tion of property, it is evident that the orthodox clergy wielded a political power it is difficult for us to imagine today.
One man, John Russell, stood out, and got sent to prison in consequence. He was a man of importance in Woburn, having been both a deacon and a selectman. How long he stayed in prison is uncertain. In the end he was released, still firm in the Baptist faith. He died not long after, but his son John, who had been sum- moned for the same offence, removed from Woburn to Boston, and became in 1679 preacher and pastor of the First Baptist Church in Boston, an office which he held for only one year, when death removed him also. This Russell, it seems, was a shoemaker by trade, and it was he whom the Rev. Increase Mather, that pillar of orthodoxy, had in mind when he fulminated a blast against the Baptists on the non-Scriptural text, "Ne sutor ultra crepidam - Shoemaker, stick to your last."
It was very probably John Russell (senior) who wrote the "Woburn Memorial for Christian Liberty" as early as 1653. This memorial was a petition to the General Court protesting against the law that "no person shall undertake any course of public preaching or prophesying without the approbation of four of the elders of the next churches or of the county court." The signers of this petition, John Russell and twenty-eight other members of the Woburn church, argued strongly for the toleration of lay preaching in newly settled communities or in churches where no minister was settled; but the clergy looked with profound disap- proval on seeing anyone but an educated and ordained minister in the pulpit, and at that time the General Court was accustomed to do what the clergy told it to. So the petition was rejected. The settlement in South Woburn was, as I have mentioned, inclined to be orthodox; only two of the twenty-nine signers of the memorial, James and Josiah Converse, can be identified as residents of what is now Winchester.
Rev. Jabez Fox died in 1703 of smallpox, which he had con- tracted on a visit to Boston. This disease was often prevalent in colonial times, and in the seventeenth century no treatment either for prevention or cure was known. There was a serious outbreak of
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it in Woburn in 1678 and 1679. At least twenty-seven cases are known to have appeared in the town, some of them in the district of Waterfield, and the selectmen issued strict orders for the isola- tion of the sick and of their nurses for a period of six weeks. No people living in Winchester territory are positively known to have died of it.
Rev. Jabez Fox was followed in the ministry at Woburn by his son, Rev. John Fox, who had already acted as master of the grammar school in the village. For many years he preached accept- ably to an increasing congregation. There are extant in print at least two of his sermons, both delivered on the occasion of the great earthquake of October 29, 1727, and they show him to have been, if not a brilliant, a sound and thoughtful preacher of the orthodox school. This earthquake, by the way, was one of the most severe that ever visited New England. It was felt from Pennsylvania to Maine - and caused much alarm among the good people here- about. Houses were shaken, chimneys thrown down, and a great store of crockery broken. Wide cracks appeared in the earth and many a well, hitherto productive, went dry. Our forefathers, accord- ing to their custom, looked upon it as a visitation from an exasper- ated God. The Rev. Mr. Fox, as the little pamphlet shows, took full advantage of the opportunity to put the fear of God into the hearts of his hearers.
About this time, however, his health and eyesight began to fail (he was totally blind for the last fifteen years of his life), and in 1729 an associate, Rev. Edward Jackson, was called to assist him.1 From that moment dissension lifted its head. Mr. Fox and Mr. Jackson were temperamentally antagonistic; perhaps they dif- fered also on points of theology. At all events their relations were never cordial, and before long they became so hostile that it is said neither would speak to the other, even in the pulpit. As was natural in such a situation the members of the congregation took sides. There was a Fox party and a Jackson party, and the feeling between them was, at times, extremely bitter. This unhappy state of affairs continued for more than twenty years, even until the death of Mr.
1 The "entertainment" at the ordination of Mr. Jackson cost the town of Woburn £83, 9 shillings and 6 pence, a sum equal in present-day money to some $2,000. Among the items are 433 dinners, 178 suppers and breakfasts, 672 barrels of cider, 25 gallons of wine, 2 of brandy and 4 of rum.
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Jackson in 1754, "notwithstanding the earnest endeavors of many well-disposed Ministers and other Christian brethren to reconcile these two ministers."1
As Mr. Fox became more infirm, Mr. Jackson became more and more the real minister of the church, so much to the dissatis- faction of the opposite party that in 1745 a petition was presented to the Legislature praying for the right to establish a Third Parish in Woburn (the Second being the church in what is now Burling- ton). The old First Parish of course opposed the plan, but in vain. The General Court granted the petition, and a new parish consist- ing of some eighty pew holders, nearly half the membership of the old church, was founded, with Rev. Josiah Cotton as its pastor. The seceders agreed still to pay their proportion of Mr. Fox's salary, but were to be relieved of paying anything for the support of Mr. Jackson.
Even after the separation - perhaps the more because of it - the village animosities continued. Old Mr. Fox, whenever he could go abroad, met with Third Parish instead of with the church of which he was the senior pastor. Malicious tongues spread scandal- ous stories about Rev. Mr. Jackson, who was accused of being the father of an illegitimate child. When Rev. Mr. Cotton took up these tales and repeated them publicly, Mr. Jackson brought suit for libel. The case dragged on. The lower court found for the plaintiff; but on an appeal a jury in the Superior Court gave Mr. Cotton the verdict. The friends of Mr. Jackson stood by him in this painful situation, and the church took no steps to remove him. A year later, in January 1754, evidence having been found that there had been a conspiracy for character butchery in the case, Mr .. Jackson pleaded for a review of the cause. The court granted his plea, and when the suit came again to trial, Mr. Cotton, convinced that he had been deceived, entered no defence. Judgment was entered for Mr. Jackson, who, satisfied with this vindication of his character, declined to press his claim for a thousand pounds in damages.
Before the year was out, Mr. Jackson died. Two years later the venerable Mr. Fox also passed away. Not very long thereafter
1 Petition of those who desired to form a Third Parish in Woburn, Sewall's History of Woburn, page 305.
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the two rival parishes, who had found the burden of supporting two separate ministries decidedly irksome, decided to forget their differences and reunite. The first name upon the joint committee that brought this happy solution to pass is that of Josiah Johnson, who was prominent in all town affairs and whose home was just off Cambridge Street within the present Winchester.
During these twenty years of faction, the Woburn church had financial worries to trouble it. Both Mr. Fox and Mr. Jackson had frequent difficulty in collecting their salaries. This was due in part to the dissension within the church; the people were no longer so far constrained by a stern sense of duty as to pay cheerfully for the support of two ministers, one or the other of whom was disliked by almost everyone, while one - Mr. Fox - was so infirm that he could discharge only a small part of his duties. Mr. Fox was obliged for several years in succession to appeal to the General Court to get any salary at all, for the town held that the contract made with him in 1704 was made void when he could no longer discharge the "whole ministry" of the church and had to call in a colleague. The General Court took the minister's view of the case, and assessed a special tax on the people of Woburn to pay Mr. Fox his eighty pounds a year. After this had been repeated several times the town surrendered and agreed to pay him his salary as long as he lived.
Mr. Jackson's difficulties were not the same. They grew out of the continual depreciation of the paper money of the time. He still got the number of pounds specified in his contract with the town, but as their value fell to one half or less of what it had been when he came to Woburn he set up a claim to additional pay, in order to make the purchasing value of his salary what it had been at first. The town fought this claim vigorously, but lost again. The courts gave Mr. Jackson the right to collect from the taxpayers enough to make his salary "as good as it was when he first settled in Woburn." In some years the addition amounted to £100.1
Our forefathers were often in perplexity about their currency, of which, as the colony grew and needed more money to do business, there was never enough. The colony after 1688 was forbidden to
1 The history of the Woburn church subsequent to 1758 will be touched upon in a later chapter.
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coin money, and the amount of British coinage brought in by new- comers or received in the course of trade was never sufficient for the needs of the people. Farmers had often to "work out" their taxes by labor on the roads or pay them in the produce of their farms. The town of Woburn often received for taxes or paid its own share of the colony taxes with shoes,1 for already in the eight- eenth century it was something of a "leather town" and a good many of its citizens understood the making of shoes and practiced the art in little shops beside or behind their houses.
Four times at least the General Court voted to "expand " the currency in order that there might be more money for the purposes of business and the payment of taxes. "Bills of credit" were first issued in 1690 to pay the expenses of the colony incurred in the Indian wars. There was a second emission in 1715. In 1721 the General Court authorized a "Province Loan" of £50,000, and seven years later another of £60,000. This money, in the form of bills of credit, was distributed among the several towns in proportion to their population and wealth, and was then loaned out by the towns to citizens who could give satisfactory security. The per- sonal notes of these borrowers were the only form of security behind these bills. It would not be fair to call this an example of unre- strained inflation, however, for the loans had to be repaid to the town authorities and by them restored to the treasury within a certain number of years. Woburn availed itself of both these opportunities and was able to return its loan of 1721 promptly. It was not so fortunate with the second loan, not, we believe, through any dishonesty, but because borrowers found it harder and harder to repay what they had borrowed. Woburn was not the only town in this difficulty; there were many to keep it company. But it was the failure of these towns to make good on their loans, and the consequent loss of confidence in the bills of credit as properly secured money, which led to the steady depreciation of the paper currency, the dissatisfaction of the Rev. Mr. Jackson with his salary, and many other matters of greater consequence.
At this same time the General Court was persuaded to come to the rescue of the harassed town of Woburn by a gift of wild land between the settled towns of Lancaster and Groton, within
1 Woburn Records, Vol. III, page 52.
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the present boundaries of Lunenburg. There were two thousand acres in the grant; Woburn held the land for ten years, when a committee of the town, of which Josiah Johnson who lived, as has been already noticed, on or near Cambridge Street in the present Winchester was one, sold it for £3,300 to Israel Reed.
The colony bills of credit had so far sunk in value by 1734 that the paper money paid in by Israel Reed in settlement of his purchase was worth only £1,100 in coin instead of £3,300. Such as it was, however, the money was loaned out by the town's com- mittee in various amounts to citizens of Woburn; and for a time the town prospered under this arrangement. The interest on its loans was for ten years sufficient to pay most if not all of its county and province taxes, and a great part of the town's expenses as well. But then politics crept in. The old committee of which Josiah Johnson was the head was turned out on the plea that it had not given sufficient security to the town for the fund it was administering. A new committee of nine took its place, but though the town meeting passed several votes requiring bonds from its members they were all evaded or subsequently rescinded.
Presently the committee began to be remiss about turning over the interest it was supposed to collect; money was becoming harder to get and its value was shrinking year by year. The town tried to use legal methods of collecting from borrowers who were behind in their interest, but by this time a great part, if not a majority, of the voters were themselves debtors to the fund, and saw to it that nothing really serious was done in town meeting. They were even able to defeat the sensible proposal that none of those who owed money to the town should be allowed to vote on questions affecting their debts. The town treasurer was instructed to proceed against the most incorrigible delinquents, but it does not appear that he ever did so. It was a time of financial distress; nearly everybody was in debt, and though the pleasant word "moratorium" had not yet made its appearance the principle it defines was well understood and widely practised. The town voted not to demand repayment of loans so long as the interest was kept up; that pointed to the eventual evaporation of the fund. By 1750 the depreciation had reduced its value to £440. Twenty years later it had shrunk to a third of that. The town at last began
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to bring suits against delinquent debtors; it collected a little, but at discouraging cost. Then came the engrossing events of the Revolution. The Lunenburg fund was no longer of enough impor- tance to be fought over, and in the smoke of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill it faded quite out of sight and is no more heard of.1
The story of this fund may teach us that for all their virtues, public and private, our forefathers of the eighteenth century were not above making disastrous experiments with their currency, of playing politics with the public money, or of evading debts which they found it difficult to pay. Human nature changes but little, and a thoroughly honest man is still the noblest work of God - but not frequent enough in any century to lose his distinction among his fellow-men.
1 A very full account of this episode is given in Sewall's History of Woburn, pages 284-301.
CHAPTER VI
COLONIAL MILITIA AND PRIMITIVE SCHOOLS
THE Puritan towns of Massachusetts Bay were not content with organization civil and religious. There had to be military organization as well, for in a strange land, surrounded by savages who might at any time become dangerous, and threatened too by the hostility of the colonists of another nation in Canada, some preparation for defence with arms was considered highly necessary. From the first, therefore, there were militia companies in all the newly founded towns. These companies were patterned after the "train-bands" with which the colonists had been familiar in Eng- land. They were as all-inclusive as the church or the town meeting. Every male when he reached the age of eighteen was enrolled in the company as a matter of law. There was at first no age limit; men, if they were physically able, bore arms and drilled with their fellows not only till past the age of sixty years, but even till past seventy. The officers were very tenacious of their distinction. Like the politicians of whom Thomas Jefferson complained, "few died and none resigned." There is record of one militia captain of Concord who clung to his office until he was eighty-seven, though for several years before that he was confined to a wheel chair. Seated thus in state he would have himself trundled onto the training field "to view and order his company."
Training days were social events of the first importance. The entire male population was gathered for drill and exercise in marks- manship, usually on the common in the center of the town, and the women and children in great numbers used to attend as well, to enjoy the martial spectacle and make general holiday. In the early years the military training, still taken most seriously, was the central feature of the day. In later times - particularly after the Revolution - though training day still survived as a New England institution, it was in a degenerate form. Militia drill, on these occasions, became little more than a joke, and the day became
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rather an excuse for rustic merrymaking, attended by a variety of boisterous sports and a good deal of stout drinking.
The first captain of the Woburn company was Edward John- son, who had had military experience in England and had brought the title of captain over to this country with him. John Carter was his lieutenant. On Captain Johnson's death Carter became captain, William Johnson lieutenant and James Converse (Sr.) ensign or sergeant. Observe that all three officers were men who have already been identified for the reader as residents within the present bounds of Winchester. The southern end of Woburn, though not strong in numbers, was evidently as militant on the field as it was orthodox in matters of religion, and its few residents were among the most forceful and influential citizens of the town.
John Carter remained captain till 1690, when he was well past seventy. In fact he had to be petitioned out of the captaincy, for there is on record a paper signed by fifty members of the Woburn company and addressed to the Governor and Council praying that Captain Carter be removed on account of "his great age and extraordinary deafness." The petition goes on to declare that on a recent occasion when the old man's son desired to inform his father that a "warrant for the press"1 had been issued, he was obliged to shout so loud in his ear that many others in the street heard him, "upon which report the young man absconded."
There were other objections to Captain Carter too in the minds of the fifty petitioners. The colony had recently passed through a distressing experience. The old charter under which it had existed for fifty years, had been revoked by King Charles II because the General Court kept refusing to alter the laws so as to admit persons other than orthodox Congregationalists either to church communion or to the suffrage. Charles's successor, James II, sent Sir Edmund Andros over as royal governor, to rule with no responsibility save to the king himself. His government had been in many respects tyrannical, and the colonists had chafed under it. In 1689 James II was overthrown in England, and Sir Edmund was ousted from his office, but public opinion continued to be very
1 An order from the General Court calling for the impressment of a certain number of citizens for military service outside the borders of the town - obviously a confidential matter until the warrant was posted.
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bitter toward any who had recognized his authority while governor, or accepted commissions from him.
According to the petition referred to, Captain Carter had been altogether too complaisant toward the Andros government. He had taken a commission from it and had sought and profited by the influence with Sir Edmund of William Symmes of Charlestown, "under whose illegal actings," say the petitioners, "we have suf- fered for above two years." This charge needs a little explanation. The William Symmes in question, who was, of course, the same whom we have already seen building his home and spending his life on the banks of the Aberjona on the land granted to his father the Rev. Zechariah, was from the first inclined to go along with the new royal governor rather than to stand out against him. He chose the opposite course to that of William Johnson, lieutenant of the militia company, selectman of Woburn, former member of the Board of Assistants and conspicuous leader of the "patriot" cause. Mr. Symmes was one of the Justices of the Peace appointed by Sir Edmund for Middlesex County.
Now one of the Andros laws was that there should never be more than one town meeting in a year in any town, that it should transact no business except to elect town officers, and that it should be called not by the selectmen, but by Sir Edmund's Justices of the Peace. On two occasions, in 1687 and 1688, Woburn chose to disregard this law, and held its meeting in the old fashion on a day designated by long usage; and on the first occasion they elected William Johnson selectman and recorder, though he was in such bad odor with the Andros regime that he had shortly before been threatened with imprisonment for hesitating to take the oath of allegiance demanded of him.
Both elections were annulled by the king's officers in Boston, and the town had to submit to meet at the call of three of Sir Edmund's Justices of the Peace - one of whom was William Symmes. This was "illegal acting" spoken of in the petition for the removal of Captain Carter. His friendship with Symmes, and his submission to the royal governor were the chief of his offending. His "extraordinary deafness" might have been borne, but not his deference to King James's governor.
So we find him in 1690 removed or resigning from the cap-
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taincy; it is not quite clear which. But the election that followed indicates the persistence of differences within the company - which means of course the entire citizenship of the town. Lieuten- ant William Johnson was the natural choice, but at first the com- pany seems to have voted for James Converse, 2d1 fifty-three to forty-seven. There is also on record another petition to the Governor and Council signed by seventy-eight men of Woburn protesting against the election on the ground that Johnson deserved the honor by reason of seniority in command, and had been deprived of it by what we should call tampering with the ballot box. "Among Converse's votes," says the petition, was that of "James Fowle, taken from the troopers and made an ensign over us by Sir Edmund. This man put in his vote; also one of his journeymen, who hath wrought his journey-work at Boston and came up to see his friends, and another of his men that stole our ammunition, and another man that liveth in Cambridge village and put in a vote; also Anthony Goffe that is now in prison for reflecting on their Majesties names .... Now take these votes from the 53 and add two or three sober men that are for Mr. Johnson, but came not to vote, and Mr. Johnson will have had as many votes as the other; but so it is, that rum and strong drink, with the help of a few preju- diced persons will in this way turn out those that are fit, loyal, virtuous and able ... and put in those that have been the greatest compliers, and will if opportunity serve be so again; the which this town has had sufficient proof of, and especially Mr. Johnson, who felt the smart of it; for this James Converse did draw the heads of a petition against him, for one who presented it to Sir Edmund, and had like to have brought him into some trouble, had not the weakness of some justices prevented it."2
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