USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Winchester > History of Winchester, Massachusetts > Part 9
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1 There was an intricate succession of land transfers connected with this property. Mr. W. R. Cutter describes them all in an article in the Winchester Record, Vol. II, page 266. See also an article on page 272 concerning the genealogy of the Belknap family.
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General William G. Belknap, who won his rank by able service in the war with Mexico, and his son, General William W. Belknap, who, after holding high command in the Civil War, was Secretary of War during the presidency of General Grant.
A martial spirit seems to have been hereditary among the Belknaps; the most eminent of the family while it still lived in the part of Woburn that is now Winchester was Captain Samuel Belknap, the grandfather and great-grandfather of the two generals just mentioned. He was for many years the commander of one of the three militia companies in Woburn - the "West" company, and he saw several years of military service in the Revolution at the head of this company or detachments from it. We shall hear more of him when the part of our town in the Revolution is described. Captain Belknap was also a representative in the General Court in 1781 and 1783, and was altogether a man of mark and consideration. He was one of those who removed to Newburgh, after the war, and there he died.
A singular member of this family was an eccentric spinster, who according to tradition was called "Witch Belknap." Strange stories used to be told around Winchester firesides, almost two hundred years ago, concerning the mysterious powers of this woman. She used, it seems, to haunt the fields through which Cross Street then ran, and constituted herself the special guardian of the gate which in those days had to be opened when any vehicle or horseman wished to pass through the lane - for it was hardly more than that.
It was reported - and believed - that once when a rider leaped his horse over the gate instead of opening it the "witch" suddenly appeared out of the bushes, jumped upon the horse's back, and steadying herself with her hands upon the rider's shoul- ders rode so, nearly half a mile to Richardson's Row, to the aston- ishment and terror of both man and horse, the animal galloping wildly all the way. When the witch jumped down she cried out to the rider that she would see him again when he passed that way - which she did, according to the man's account, in the form of a crow that pecked viciously at his eyes.
Again, so the gossips said, a man driving an ox cart through the lane stopped to pick up a loose rail that had fallen from one
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of the Belknap fences and threw it on his cart. Instantly the witch appeared, the wheels of the cart sank several inches into the ground, and the oxen could not move it until the rail had been thrown off on the ground, at which the witch screamed with laughter and clapped her hands!
Such were the tales told of Witch Belknap, who was no doubt merely a queer, half-demented female whose strange dress, piercing black eyes and singular aversion to the company of other human beings excited the awe and suspicion of the superstitious. The late Nathaniel A. Richardson used to say that his own grandfather, who as a boy had absorbed all the whispered nonsense about the woman's supernatural powers, firmly believed to his dying day that she was a bona fide witch.1 If it seems strange that hard-headed folk should have credited such superstitions, remember that it was not so many years before this that the witchcraft delusion swept Massachusetts, and caused the death of not a few innocent persons who were accused of commerce with the Evil One.
To return for a moment to the fortunes of the Belknap mill site on Horn Pond Brook, it passed for several years to the owner- ship of Duncan Ingraham who operated the gristmill there. In 1802 it was bought by the Middlesex Canal Company; the canal passed within a short distance of the mill. The company disposed of it thirteen years later, and the land had a succession of different owners until 1847 when it was purchased by Church and Lane. The old gristmill and fulling mill had already passed away; the new owners established on their site a manufactory of pianoforte cases. In 1865 the business passed to a new firm, Cowdery, Cobb and Nichols, which supplemented the old water power with the use of steam.
The old Belknap house, after the family had moved away, was for a number of years used as a tavern; Nathaniel Davis who moved here from Weston was the inn keeper. It was to Davis's tavern that the bodies of two Woburn men, Benjamin and Joseph Brooks, were brought after they had been found frozen to death on Horn Pond Mountain. They had gone up the mountain to cut wood on January 9, 1810. That was a bitterly cold day; people spoke of it
1 N. A. Richardson's scrapbook now in the possession of the Winchester Historical Society.
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for years afterward as the "Cold Friday." The men perhaps tried to keep the frost out of their blood by the internal application of Medford rum, and carried the treatment too far. Whether or not an injustice is done them by such a suggestion, the fact is that they did not return home when they were expected, and a searching party discovered their bodies lying in the snow, frozen stiff.
While the enterprising Thomas Belknap was operating his new mills on Horn Pond Brook - let us hope at a reasonable profit - the venerable Converse gristmill at the center of the village passed into new hands. The purchaser of the mill and the old house across the road was David Wyman, a stirring citizen of Woburn, who was the first to bring into Winchester territory a name long and honorably connected with our town. Wymans were among the very first settlers of Woburn. The brothers John and Francis, farmers by trade, were the first to engage in the busi- ness of tanning leather in the town and were among its leading citizens. David was the grandson of John, and a grandson also of that Samuel Richardson whose wife and children were massacred by the Indians, as you have read. His own wife was a grand- daughter of Thomas Richardson, one of the three brothers who were among the earliest settlers in Winchester, and it was through her that he first became a landholder in the Winchester region of Woburn. David Wyman was a man of importance in his day, nine times a selectman, whose wise counsel was often sought by his neighbors in both public and private affairs.
He was an indefatigable buyer and seller of real estate, and at one time or another owned a great part of the land along the country road (now Main Street). Besides the old Converse home- stead, he owned for a time much of the land toward Horn Pond, including some of the original Belknap farm, and he or his sons were for years owners of the Black Horse Tavern, of which more will presently be said. His son, also named David, was the first to keep an inn in that famous old house, and after his death he was succeeded by his brother James.
A third brother was Paul Wyman, whose distinction it was to keep the first store within the present limits of Winchester. This little shop stood at the junction of Main and Washington streets, pretty nearly on the site of the house of the late Charles E. Kendall.
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It was doing business at least as early as 1770, and probably before that. Mr. Wyman dealt in but few commodities - tea, molasses, brown sugar, salt fish, a few spices and plenty of New England rum were the chief of his stock. In later years his son Jesse, who con- tinued the business until 1830, no doubt added shoes, calico, and a wider selection of groceries, such as became an old-fashioned "general store."
Paul Wyman was famous hereabouts for his unusual strength. Not an especially large man, he had a powerful frame and muscles of iron. One example of his strength has been preserved by tradi- tion. A big, broad-shouldered teamster from New Hampshire was on this occasion bringing a sledload of dressed hogs to the Boston market and put up overnight at the Black Horse Tavern, not far down the road from Paul Wyman's store. After supper the stranger began to boast to the patrons of the tavern bar of his great strength. "I have two hogs on my sled that weigh 450 pounds apiece," he said. "I can lift one of them off the sled, lay it down on the snow, pick it up again and put it back on the sled." This indeed he did, when the bystanders challenged him to make good his words. Just then Paul Wyman walked into the tavern yard. His neighbors told him what the big teamster had done, and urged him to show the man what a really strong fellow could do.
Mr. Wyman thereupon picked up one of the hogs, carried it into the barroom and laid it down on the floor. He then went back to the sled, lifted the other hog and carried that into the barroom too. Then he took them both - one at a time - outdoors again, and called for a piece of rope. He made an end of the rope fast around each hog, bent down, and passed the middle of the rope over his neck and shoulders. He then carefully and deliberately straightened himself, lifted both animals off the ground and walked with them to the sled fifty feet away.1
There is of course no documentary proof of this exploit; it may be only a "tall story," its stature exaggerated through fre- quent repetition, but it could be told only of a man who was remark- able for his physical strength.
Sarah Wyman, a granddaughter of David the elder, was the heroine of a veritable Enoch Arden story, the memory of which is 1 N. A. Richardson's Recollections.
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preserved among her descendants to this day. Sarah Wyman was married in 1770 to Ichabod Richardson, one of the family of which we have heard so much. Her husband was one of the first to enlist in the Revolution, and was one of the crew of a Yankee privateer fitted out to prey on British commerce. Somehow he got himself captured, was carried a prisoner to England, and was "pressed,"
AN ANCIENT GRIST-MILL
so tradition has it, into the British service. At all events he disap- peared, and was never heard from until after the end of the war. In the meantime his wife, having given him up for dead, married, in 1782, his distant cousin Josiah Richardson. They had not long lived together as man and wife when, behold, the missing Ichabod reappeared in the flesh, to the astonishment of all and the obvious embarrassment of his supposed widow and her new husband. There was, however, but one thing to do. Sarah Richardson returned to her first and only lawful husband. She survived only
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three or four years; Josiah did not again essay wedlock after his unlucky experience.1
During his occupancy of the Converse house David Wyman must have rebuilt the old mill, or built a new one, for when, in 1773, the property was sold to Abel Richardson the mill was the two-story structure that remained a familiar object in the center for many years. Abel Richardson, the new proprietor of the grist- mill and occupant of the ancient Converse house, we have met before, serving at Ticonderoga when "Yankee Doodle" was written and drawing out of the waters of the Aberjona the lifeless body of Hannah Shiner, the last Winchester Indian. This Abel Richardson appears to have been one of those salty characters once common in old New England towns, now, alas, rarely met with. It is related of him that once being angered with his wife, who had forgotten to perform some duty about the house with which he had charged her, he declared "she should be chastised with the word of God." Thereupon he put the big family Bible into a meal sack and laid it so upon the poor woman's back that she ran screaming out of the house.
He had, it is said, a practical joker's sense of humor. On one occasion a traveler, passing by his house and hearing some golden robins singing sweetly in the great elm tree that overhung it, asked Abel to catch one for him and have it ready for him when he should return that way a few days later. The traveler appeared in due time and Abel handed him a good-sized box, which, he said, contained a beautiful singer; the box, he added, must not be opened until the man reached his home in Charlestown. By the time the traveler had got to Medford, however, certain sounds proceeding from the box aroused his suspicions. He opened it, and was cha- grined to find inside a large green frog - a lusty singer indeed, but not of the range or pitch he had bargained for.
Abel Richardson had a daughter, who was universally called "Molly Abel." This woman, who never married, was long a familiar figure about Winchester streets. She was a singular person in man- ners and appearance, but capable in a sick room, and for years she was relied upon by her neighbors as a visiting nurse. Molly inherited some of her father's peculiarities. We are told that when
1 Richardson Memorial, pages 247, 267.
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he once forbade her to attend a dance at the Black Horse Tavern, and locked up her best dress so that she might not disobey him, she retaliated by throwing three or four large cheeses, which had been laid by for the winter's provender, into the pigpen for the animals to dine upon.1
Abel Richardson maintained the old gristmill until he was an old man, but then it fell into neglect. Neighborhood gristmills were no longer so essential after 1800, and a more enterprising miller, Joseph Richardson by name, had in 1787 built a new mill on Horn Pond Brook, below the old Belknap mill, on the site which in later years was occupied by that of Stephen and Henry Cutter. Business deserted the old Converse-Richardson mill, though only for a time, for as we shall see later there was still a fairly busy industrial life in store for it.
I have had occasion in the course of this narrative to make several references to the Black Horse Tavern. It is high time to devote some space to this historic house. It was built previous to 1728 - but not more than a year or two previous - and it stood on the easterly side of Main Street at the corner of Black Horse Terrace, the roadway of which was, anciently, the driveway to the tavern stables. The tavern was only a few rods north of the line that divided Woburn from Medford; it was the first house in the former town as one entered it from the south. The land on which the house stood was originally Converse property. It was in 1724 that William Richardson bought from Robert Converse some eight or ten acres along the country road; a few months later he bought twenty-two acres more, lying behind this lot and further up the hill toward the present Highland Avenue, from the widow of Captain James Richardson, a veteran of the Indian wars, lately dead. This made up the farm that was long connected with the tavern.2
At some time between 1724 and 1728 William Richardson built on this land beside the country road (Main Street) by far the most pretentious house that the little community that was to become Winchester had yet seen. Richardson called it his "man-
1 From the reminiscences of N. A. Richardson in the Winchester Historical Society's Collections.
2 The deeds are on file in the Middlesex County Records.
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sion house" and the title is fairly descriptive. The building was nearly square, and the front, which faced Main Street, was forty feet or more in length. There were two full stories of good height, four chimneys, and the low-pitched roof was bordered on all four sides by an ornamental railing. It had entrances on both the south and west fronts. Our picture of it, taken in its later years of neglect, nevertheless shows it as a rather imposing dwelling designed with some taste.
It was not originally meant to be a tavern; when in 1728 Richardson sold it, as perhaps too expensive a mansion for his use, the purchaser was Captain Isaac Dupee, a resident of Boston, who was a prosperous man, a merchant or money lender (or both). While he lived in his "mansion house" he was a leading citizen of Woburn, a pew holder in the First Church and a member of various committees of the town.1 Captain Dupee was an officer in one of the cavalry regiments which were, in the eighteenth century, organ- ized quite outside the local militia system, its members recruited from various towns for the defence of the colony. The memory is preserved of at least one occasion when Captain Dupee entertained the members of his regiment with lavish hospitality at his hand- some home in "South Woburn." The spectacle of the troopers in gay regimentals riding to and from the house, swords rattling, spurs jingling and bugles singing made a deep impression on the homespun folk of this little rural hamlet; old men who as boys had witnessed it used often to recall the scene.2
In 1743 Captain Dupee removed elsewhere, and his house was bought by David Wyman the younger. From this time the "man- sion house" was frankly a tavern. It is said that Captain Dupee, while he owned the house, was accustomed now and then to lodge well-appearing travelers who were passing over the road to and from Boston, but David Wyman made no pretence of being any- thing but an inn holder. He is so referred to in his will - he died in 1751 - and in that instrument he calls his house the Black Horse Tavern. Very likely he gave it that name when he first opened it eight years earlier as a place of public entertainment
1 Especially in connection with the Lunenburg Loan Fund, Sewall's History of Woburn, page 290.
2 N. A. Richardson, in his thorough article on the Black Horse Tavern, in the Winchester Star for September 24, 1892.
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and hung upon a corner of the building the swinging sign that bore the image of a coal black steed trotting gaily away to an unknown destination. That sign remained exposed to sun, wind and rain for nearly a hundred years. At some uncertain time it was transferred from the house itself to a post beside the road, and still later it was fastened to the large elm tree, the somewhat shattered remains of which still stand on the southerly corner of Black Horse Terrace.
The tavern remained a place of public entertainment almost a hundred years - until 1835. The Wymans were succeeded as landlords by the Pierces, Joseph and Thomas, who were members of the old Woburn family of that name. In 1773 Thomas Pierce sold the inn to Noah Wyman, a distant relative of the first keeper of the tavern. On Noah Wyman's death in 1789 - or not long thereafter - the house and farm were bought by Simon Elliot of Boston who already held a considerable mortgage upon it; for though Wyman was a popular host, he was not a careful layer-up of the goods of this world.
In 1792 we find Zechariah Symmes in possession of the tavern. He was one of three brothers, descendants of Lieutenant William Symmes, who had moved northward from the ancestral acres in Medford and were now citizens of Woburn. It was another Zech- ariah, a nephew of him who kept the Black Horse for fourteen years, who lived on the rising ground above the Aberjona, where the town high school now stands. His daughter Nancy (Mrs. Henry W. Howe) bequeathed the land to the town to be used for a public library building, but in their wisdom the town fathers chose to put the school building there instead.
Wyman Weston of Reading bought the tavern of Zechariah Symmes's heirs in 1806. He was a good landlord and, assisted by a very capable wife, maintained the reputation of the tavern, which was known all over Massachusetts as one of the best of rural taverns. Mrs. Weston had a ready tongue, so it is said. It is related of her that when a guest, stopping at the Black Horse, ventured to rally her on the fact that she was childless, she put him in his place by replying that that was doubtless a blessing, for if she had children "they might have turned out to have as little breeding and man- ners as himself, which would be a great calamity!"1
1 N. A. Richardson's article in the Star, September 24, 1892.
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In 1827 Weston, having experienced religion, gave up selling liquor at the tavern, and in the next year - perhaps because his temperance principles affected his business adversely - he sold the tavern to Joshua Davis. This man was the last of the Black Horse landlords. The building of the Boston and Lowell railroad (1832) had already begun to make the business of conducting a wayside inn precarious, and when Davis died in 1835 the purchaser of the house, Noah Johnson, showed no disposition to continue a decaying enterprise.
On Davis's gravestone in the old Woburn cemetery is inscribed this classic of New England epitaphs :
"Afflictions sore, long time I bore, Physicians were in vain, Till God was pleased my breath to take, And ease me of my pain."
Through all its long history the Black Horse Tavern was a successful and well-managed hostelry. It was a favorite stopping place for travelers overtaken by darkness or bad weather on their way to and from Boston, and it was especially well patronized by farmers on their way to the city market with timber, firewood or such varied country produce as grain, cheeses, fresh vegetables, poultry, hams and dressed meat. These men often came from sur- prising distances, not merely from the towns along the Merrimac in Massachusetts and New Hampshire but all the way from the Connecticut River Valley, and even from Vermont, and they pro- vided the landlords of the Black Horse with much of their custom.
When stage lines were established to the northward, the coaches often made regular stops at the tavern, though the famous Fowle Tavern, which was in Woburn Square where the Savings Bank now stands, was an active competitor, and was frequently the pre- ferred place for coach passengers to descend and eat - or drink - since it was at a more convenient distance from Boston.
From the Old Farmers' Almanacs we learn that Woburn and South Woburn (Winchester) were in 1775 on the "upper" stage route to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and in 1792 and 1797 they are set down as on the upper road to Portland, Maine. The stages in those days followed the old road from Woburn to Andover
THE BLACK HORSE TAVERN
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through the eastern part of Wilmington, and thence ran to Haver- hill, Exeter and either Dover or Portsmouth. In 1812 Woburn is mentioned as on the regular stage route to Amherst, New Hamp- shire, and on the main road from Boston to Montreal and Quebec. The Black Horse no doubt got its share of the business passing over these routes.
But it is for the old tavern's social influence on the straggling little village that was to become Winchester that we are chiefly interested in it. For the first time this quiet community of farms, without church or schoolhouse, had a place for its citizens to fore- gather, talk, exchange opinions and indulge in blameless social gaieties. In the well-stocked bar the men could gather of an eve- ning to discuss the stirring events of the French wars, the Revolu- tion or the period of the making of the Constitution, and when great matters failed, to talk over the humble affairs of their local com- munity. Over the bar was a good-sized hall, which was in frequent use for public meetings, dances, singing schools and neighborhood gatherings. The tavern was the most important institution here- abouts; as is apparent from the fact that for a time it actually gave its name to the settlement around it. During the latter half of the eighteenth century Winchester was most frequently called Black Horse Village.
In Revolutionary times the tavern was the meeting place for soldiers as well as citizens. When the Committee of Safety and Supplies met at Cooper's Tavern in Arlington on the night of April 18, 1775, it adjourned to meet next day "in Woburn," and it is supposed that the Black Horse was the intended place. The meeting was never held, for on that next day came the fighting at Lexington and Concord, and the honorable committeemen were otherwise engaged. Military companies or detachments were assem- bled or dismissed at the tavern. I have before me the copy of an ancient document preserved in the government archives at Wash- ington. It is the application for a pension made by one Timothy Wakefield of Reading who served for three months in 1778 at Bunker Hill "guarding the prisoners" from Burgoyne's army, defeated at Saratoga in the previous year. Wakefield sets forth that his commander was Captain Jesse Wyman of Woburn, and that when the company's term of service was over Captain Wyman
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marched the men to Woburn and there dismissed them "at a place called the Black Horse Tavern." The inn was then kept by the captain's kinsman Noah Wyman. We are not told but we may guess that there was some liberal drinking of healths in the Black Horse bar on that occasion.
Another interesting document that has survived is the order addressed by the Adjutant General of the Commonwealth to Captain Jonas Richardson of Woburn on September 10, 1786. Captain Richardson's company was called out to assist in putting down that short-lived uprising in western Massachusetts that was dignified by the name of Shays's Rebellion. In this order the captain is directed to "assemble his company at the Black Horse Tavern," which in due course he did, though he led them not much further, there being no occasion for their services.
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