History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 109

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1576

USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I > Part 109

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existence as a town, by full agreement of all parties interested, began. She had formed a separate parish precinct in Mendon, known as the Easterly or Mill River Precinct for thirty-nine years.

Mendon also stoutly opposed her separation from Suffolk and assignment to Worcester County, which took place February 18, 1730. As late as 1734 she voted a petition to the court to be joined with Ded- ham in a new county, then in 1798 in favor of divid- ing Worcester County. It may be here noted that Mendon, during the first four years of town existence, was a part of Middlesex County. In 1671 she was decreed, evidently in harmony with her own wishes, "to be and belong to ye county of Suffolk."

After the incorporation of Milford no serious at- tempt to secure a further division of Mendon is known to have been made till 1816, when ten inhabit- ants of the South Parish (now Blackstone) petitioned the town, without avail, to vote that that precinct be set off as a town. It had continued in apparent con- tent as a parish in Mendon since 1766, though in 1779 we find record of one feeble movement for divis- ion. In 1823, and during the four succeeding years, the South Parish sought for separate existence, ap- pealing in vain to the town and to the Legislature. Again, in 1843, the vexed question arose and was dis- cussed at brief intervals with great bitterness till the division was effected and Blackstone incorporated March 25, 1845. The petitioners therefor numbered seven hundred and sixty-seven, the remonstrants three hundred and fourteen, and they were divided on other than local or usual lines. In fact, strange to say, it appears that very probably a large majority living in what is now Mendon desired division, while divisionists were so unpopular in Blackstone as to be excluded from town office at the first town election. Closing the story of the construction of towns from Mendon's territory, it should be observed that the towu of Northbridge was taken from Uxbridge in 1772, and Hopedale from Milford in 1886, and can both claim Mendon as their mother or, perhaps, with more accuracy, their grandmother town. By this course of disintegration, not, however, likely to be extended further, forty thousand acres and more, her original holding, with its substantial additions by annexation, have been reduced to eleven thousand three hundred and seventy-five acres.

Mill River alone is the only considerable stream which crosses the Mendon of to-day, but the Charles, as of old, forms a part of its eastern boundary and the lovely " Nipmuck Great Pond " is still retained with- in its limits, with shores now somewhat famous as a summer resort. Pond Hill remains, also Wigwam Hill in the south and Misquoe in the north, both dis- tinguished for magnificent views. Mendon shares with Blackstone at the south a right in Daniels or Southwick Hill, and with Hopedale on the east it claims jurisdiction over Neck Hill. Muddy Brook flows between the elevation last named and the beau-

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tiful summit on which is the principal village which stands, deeply shaded, just where the settlers had their house-lots in 1663.

The above glimpse of Mendon as it now is must suffice till its manufacturing, military, educational and ecclesiastical history have been outlined.

CHAPTER LVI. MENDON-(Continued.)

MANUFACTURES.

The First Grist-Mill and Saw-Mill-The Successive Occupants of the Oui Grist-Mill Site-Contracts with Millers and Blacksmiths-Torrey and Warfield Sato-Mills-Factories, Miscellaneous and Modern.

IN Mendon's colonial life early efforts were made to utilize its water-power. In the beginning of 1664 the committee conditionally granted to Benja- min Albee twenty acres on the town site and fifty acres near the proposed mill, to encourage him to establish a "corne mill" on Mill River, near Hopedale's present town line. It was probably built in 1672, and till then the settlers ground their grain at Wrentham or Medfield, twelve or fifteen miles dis- tant.

Ten years later Josiah Chapin had eighty acres granted him near the village and east of Muddy Brook, for his encouragement to build on that treacherous stream the first saw-mill. April 24, 1668, the town voted to build its first meeting-house " neere to Joseph White's saw-pit, in his house-lott." There can therefore be little doubt that for the first ten years, and till Chapin's mill was started, all boards were manufactured in the primitive manner of pit-sawing.

In 1684 Matthias Puffer's corn-mill was built on the site of Albee's, destroyed by the Indians. Three years later his son James occupied it; and we can trace an occupation of this place for the same pur- pose for more than one hundred and seventy-five years, and for more than a hundred years the town appears to have exercised control over it through conditions under which both Albee and Puffer and their successors held their rights. It is not impor- tant to name all the millers, but David How, 1724, Lieut. Wm. Sheffield, 1735-70, after him Jeremiah Kelley, 1779, then one Ellis and finally Nathan and Alvin Allen, occupied the place.

In 1727 there was a fulling-mill near the grist- mill, which was used many years.

The latter mill became a ruin about 1847, and the town claimed a forfeiture in consequence, under the contract of 1662. There was a vote to investigate, but the claims were never pressed in court.

James Bick's contract, made in 1686, somewhat re- sembled Albee's. He was "to doe the town's smith-

ery work for the next ten years upon reasonable conditions, unless death or disablement hinder," otherwise the land granted was to revert or fifteen pounds to be paid. Long wrangling between Bick and the town followed; he would neither do the work, vacate the premises, nor pay the forfeiture; but finally, in 1695, he left the town, and some years after, 1713, it seems the eminent Quaker, Moses Al- drich, was the town blacksmith.

In 1691 Josiah and Angel Torrey were authorized to build a saw-mill dam upon the town's land, be- tween School Meadow and Rock Meadow, and were granted necessary land therefor, so long as they maintained the mill. A mill on this spot, which is not far from P. W. Taft's residence, and two miles west from the village, was used till within a very few years.

In 1711 Samuel Warfield was granted land near the old saw-mill on "Fall Brook," an uncertain loca- tion, but probably on Mill River, in Hopedale, near Spindleville Shop.

There were " Iron-works" (probably a smelting fur- nace) and a saw-mill at or near "The Falls" (Woon- socket) in 1698, and iron-ore had been found at or near East Blackstone.

A saw-mill and a grist-mill had been started, in 1712, on the Charles River, and one in Uxbridge, on the Mumford, many years prior to the incorporation in 1727.

Samuel Thompson's grist-mill, on the Blackstone, where Millville village now is, was begun about the same time; as also iron-works and perhaps mills at Whitinsville.

Before 1800, within the present limits of the town, there were two or more establishments for making potash, several small distilleries and some brick-kilns. One of the last-named, near Albeeville, was used within forty or fifty years. All the others were aban- doned many years before.

Manufacturing, as the term is generally understood and applied, never long flourished here and is now almost extinct. From 1845 to 1878 there were im- portant boot-factories in operation. One Leland, W. H. Comstock and Dennis Eames each had a factory before 1850. Enos T. Albee and Edward Davenport were not much behind these. After them came J. R. Wheelock & Co., who for a year or two produced in their large shop, then new, some three or four hun- dred cases of boots weekly.

Albee maintained his business, averaging about sixty cases a week, for twenty years or over, ending in 1870. N. R. & J. A. George began boot manufactu- ring in the Wheelock shop in 1863, but the partner- ship was brief. J. A. George continued the business till 1879. Charles H. Albee has within a few years been engaged in making boots and shoes in the build- ing occupied by his father, which is in Albeeville, about two miles southwesterly from the Centre Vil- lage, where all the other boot-makers named had

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their factories. Those factories have one by one been removed or converted to other uses, and no boots nor shoes have been made in Mendon for several years. The largest factory built by the Wheelocks was torn down the present year (1888).

George R. Whiting in 1873 bought the ancient Albee "privilege," erected a new dam and a mill near the one first built in 1682, remains of which still ex- ist, and with some interruptions has ever since util- ized the property for shoddy-making. His buildings, burnt in 1887, have been replaced by improved ones made of brick.

W. H. Swan has made shoddy on Muddy Brook for about twenty years. He has a steam-engine as well as water-power, and formerly sawed lumber and made boxes-and for a time boats.

Samuel G. Wilcox made boot and shoe-boxes at the junction of Muddy Brook and Mill River, using water-power from both, for over forty years, and since his death, in 1882, his son, Hamilton C. Wilcox, has carried on the business at the old stand.

Samuel W. Wilcox, another sou of S. G. Wilcox, has a steam-mill near the last-named, where for ten years he has made cigar-boxes.

All these manufacturing establishments now in operation are near each other in the southeasterly part of the town, and their production is small.

CHAPTER LVII.

MENDON-(Continued.)

MILITARY HISTORY.

Mendon in the French and Indian War-The Revolution-Shays' Rebellion- War of 1812-The Rebellion.

IN the French War, 1755-63, Mendon furnished her full quota of soldiers. There were forty-one in one company, serving in 1759 in the expedition to Ticonderoga and Crown Point; many more served during the war, but the town records do not reveal much concerning the popular feeling nor town action on 'military matters. The lists of soldiers contain many names familiarly known all through the town's history. We only know the people did their part well and loyally, scant though the record may be.

There is much more known of the Revolutionary period. The first mutterings of discontent with British rule found an echo in Mendon. Its inhabitants ap- proved the action of those who were willing to pay the damage done by the mob to Governor Hutchin- son's property in 1765, but were eager to pardon the rioters, although later, in general terms, they de- nounced such riots. They voted, in 1767, to concur with the men of Boston in their famous agreement not to sell or use any article, tea in particular, on

which Parliament should lay a tax; indeed, their records are crowded with patriotic utterances ; nine- teen resolutions denouncing British wrongs to the Provinces, and declaring in sounding terms their " Rights and Liberties," "The gift of God Almighty," were discussed and passed March 1, 1773. About a year later three more stirring resolutions were passed, suspending intercourse with Great Britain, and refus- ing to buy or use her goods while Boston is blockaded, and until a " Restoration of our charter-rights be obtained," and denouncing as "inimical to their country " all persons acting otherwise. A Committee of Correspondence was chosen to confer with similar committees in other towns, and the selectmen were authorized, in their discretion, to add to the town's stock of arms and ammunition. September 28, 1774, Joseph Dorr, Esq., was chosen delegate to the Pro- vincial Congress, to be held in Concord, October 11th.

Dr. William Jennison gave the town a six-pounder field-piece about the same time, and two more, with other arms, were purchased by the town. One-third of the soldiers on the military list were enlisted as minute-men, and made ready to march at a moment's notice.

In common with other towns, Mendon contributed in aid of blockaded Boston and Charlestown, and promptly sent delegates to every convention called to organize colonial strength, or declare or guide colonial sentiment.

In 1775 the town was ready with arms and men. Promptly following the battle of Lexington, one hundred and sixty-two men in four companies were in arms, and one hundred and sixteen men appear to have enlisted for the three months ending August, 1775. Mendon, with Concord and other towns, had been designated as a place of 'deposit for army sup- plies.

Till the spring of 1776 every town-meeting since 1667 had been loyally called in His Majesty's name ; but now Mendon's liberty-loving people openly dis- carded his authority, and met "in the name of the Government and People of the Massachusetts Bay," and thereupon voted "that the town advise and in- struct their Representatives to acquaint the General Assembly, that if the Honorable the Continental Congress shall think it for the benefit and safety of the United American Colonies to Declare them inde- pendent of Great Britain, said Town will approve the measure and with their lives and fortunes support them therein." The immortal Declaration of Inde- pendence passed soon after and appears in full with the town's approval upon its records. Through all the years of the great contest, all testimony goes to show that no community surpassed this in devotion to liberty, influence in the colony or in patriotic service. Men of Mendon fought at Bunker Hill, marched to Canada with Arnold and were at Long Island, Valley Forge, Bennington, Saratoga and Yorktown.

Edward Rawson, a descendant of Secretary Raw-

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son, Judge Joseph Dorr, Jr., the son of the minister, Thomas Wiswell, Lieutenant Benoni Benson and se- veral others appear to have enjoyed the confidence of the colonial authorities in a high degree. Judge Dorr was especially prominent, and from his pen came many of the patriotic utterances on the records.

We note some miscellaneous matters apparently worth recording as illuminating somewhat the history of the period. A few years before the Revolution the town had been compelled to receive several of the French neutrals cruelly driven from Nova Scotia in 1755 by English authority represented by General John Winslow, descendant of the Pilgrim Governor. The same British power in 1775 turned its cruelty against Charlestown, and by order of the Provincial Congress, Mendon was " to take thirty of the people of Charlestown," made homeless by the burning of their town. Eleven years before, five of the banished Acadian French were still living in Mendon. If they saw the thirty homeless Charlestown people entering Mendon, and we have no reason to suppose they did not, they must have thought it savored of retribution.

In 1776 seven officers of the Seventy-first British Regiment Highlanders, supposed taken prisoners at sea, were quartered in Mendon. They forwarded many complaints to the Colonial Council of abusive treatment from the inhabitants, especially of language reflecting on the prowess of British soldiers generally and that of the prisoners in particular. There was also complaint of tyrannical treatment in many re- spects, and the citizens complained on their part of being obliged to keep the officers' servants, and ex- pressed suspicions of the prisoners conspiring with Tories. Captain Colon Mckenzie was the chief offi- cer. How long they remained is not known-perhaps till exchanged.

A bitter quarrel arose hetween Uxbridge and Men- don members of the Third Massachusetts Regiment concerning the election of field officers. It could only be settled by a committee from the Colonial Council and an order on their report for a new elec- tion and an assignment of the Uxbridge soldiers, who were from the first in a minority, to another regiment. This was in 1776.

A census, taken January 1, 1777, gives Mendon five hundred and seventy-two male inhabitants, sixteen years old and upwards. She had seventy-five sol- diers in the field in March, 1778. During the year 1776 twenty-eight had enlisted for three years. In 1779 there is a list of thirty-three nine-months' men in the Rhode Island service, but neither State nor town records enable us to make complete military lists or give the town exact credit for its labors and losses in the cause of liberty. Tradition has brought down the names of but one or two Tories in the whole town. Some were suspected of disloyalty, and peti- tions for stringent laws against them went from Men- don, whose Committee of Safety never relaxed in vigilance, if we may trust the records.

Those records also show with what wise adjust- ments of business the evils of the depreciated cur- rency were met, and the careful attention given to their regular municipal affairs. Throwing aside the old-time local strifes, Mendon voted at last that the East Precinct, Milford, might become a town. The new Constitution of Massachusetts was laboriously and fully discussed, article by article, the voters amending, rejecting or adopting, as if on them alone depended the making of the organic law of the Commonwealth, and, finally, as the clouds of war rolled away, they set themselves resolutely at work to do their part as an important town in the new State of Massachusetts.

No proof is found of any Mendon citizens taking part with Shays in his rebellion, in 1786, though pe- titions with lists of grievances uncounted went to the General Court. Among the complaints were named the sitting of the General Court in Boston, the want of a circulating medium, the exorbitance of the lawyers' " fee-table," the doings of the Court of Common Pleas, "too many office-holders, and their salaries too large," etc.

But the town, nevertheless, furnished its quota of men, sixty in all, to march against Shays, and seems to have had no thought of resisting the government, imperfect as it was, which had cost so much.

In 1797 fears of a war with France arose. While Milford was plainly of a martial spirit, Mendon appears memorializing Congress against arming ships, and expressing its dread of the horrors of war.

There is nothing to show the town's zeal in the War of 1812, unless it be that it voted seven dollars per month extra pay to such of its militia as should be called into actual service. Six officers and twenty-six enlisted men of Mendon were paid by the United States in 1814 for service in the army. According to " Ballon's History," Milford was earnestly in favor of the war, and furnished many men.

Nothing has been found showing any popular in- terest in the Mexican War, or any men from Mendon serving therein.

When the great Rebellion broke out this town took its stand promptly, and, with a spirit which never faltered, sent men and expended money most freely to crush out traitors. In 1861, after a preamble de- claring loyalty, and their duty and purpose to sustain the government, the voters unanimously passed reso- lutions appropriating five thousand dollars in aid of the families of volunteers. In 1862, while adopting patriotic resolutions, they voted to pay a bounty of one hundred and fifty dollars to each soldier volun- teering, and later they increased it to two hundred dollars. This action was in harmony with their course to the end of the war, and when President Lincoln was assassinated, the town records show the horror of the citizens. The votes and resolutions passed in relation to the Rebellion were generally passed unanimously. Aside from town action, the

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people called meeting after meeting to encourage enlistments, volunteers were honored, their families aided, and, if a word in defence of the rebels was ventured, the overwhelming popular sentiment in opposition prevented its repetition. In Mendon, from 1861 to 1888, traitors and copperheads have always been odious, as Tories were to the fathers.

The town's ordinary appropriations were little over five thousand dollars a year, but it paid in bounties over sixteen thousand dollars, of which the town fur- nished all but about twenty-five hundred dollars, which was raised by subscription. The State's records show one hundred and fifty-six residents of Mendon who served in the army or navy from 1861 to 1865, and one hundred and thirty-two are credited on her quotas, being sixteen over all calls to which she was required to respond. Nineteen were killed or died in service, namely,-Franklin B. Wilcox, Charles H. Wheelock, Juba F. Pickering, Alanson E. Bathrick, Samnel Hall, John B. Rockwood, Martin S. Howe, George W. Wilcox, David S. Thurber, Lawrence B. Doggett, William Cosgrove, Albert Cook, Patrick Wallace, Robert Wallace, Samuel Everton, Franklin Freeman, Anthon C. Taft, Benjamin H. Smith and James Burns.

CHAPTER LVIII.

MENDON-(Continued.)

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY.

Ministers and Meeting-Houses, 1663 to 1818-The Change to Unitarianism- The Meeting-House of 1820-Pastors to 1888-The North Congregational Church and Pastors-The Methodists in Mendon-The Quakers.

LIKE every New England settlement of its time, Mendon was founded on the idea that religious wor- ship and religious life should be established and maintained at every sacrifice. Grants of privileges to establish a plantation or incorporate a town or precinct were made on the express condition that the inhabitants settle and support "a learned Orthodox Minister of good conversation," which, indeed, in every case they promptly did.

Rev. John Rayner was accepted as a settler by the committee on the Mendon plantation May 22, 1662, and in 1667 is recorded as having an allotment of meadow land. In 1669, in a petition to the General Court, he is named in terms showing plainly that he was the minister then preaching in Mendon.

Mr. Benjamin Eliot, son of the apostle Eliot, re- ceived a call in 1668 to settle there, but it was not accepted. Late in 1669 the church appears to have been fully organized and the Rev. Joseph Emerson made the first settled minister of the place.

At the beginning land had been set apart for the ministry and for schools, and when divisions of the common lands were made, the same allotment was

made to them as to individual proprietors. Before Mr. Emerson came, the minister's house was ad- vanced towards completion. It evidently, as well as the early meeting-houses, was built by the combined labor and gifts of the settlers. The town voted to build, and the selectmen employed a master workman who supervised the labors of the workers. Several records concerning the obstinate and sometimes in- sulting refusal of one Job Tiler to work on Mr. Emerson's house at the summons of the selectmen, their threats to report him to the Colonial magis- trates, and his final surrender and giving satisfaction " for that offence" with others, make up a curious comment on the management of an early New Eng- land town.

Mr. Emerson fled with his people from the Indians in 1675, and died in Concord June, 1680. He was the an- cestor of Ralph Waldo Emerson. His house and the first meeting-house were burned with the rest. It is supposed his house stood on the Caleb Hayward place. The first meeting-house, which stood near the building now occupied by the Taft Public Library, is described in the quaint language of the time as " the breadth 22 foote square, 12 foote studd, the Ruffe gathered to A 7 foote square wth A Turrett." It was built under the direction of Deacon Job Hide in 1668.

The first town-meeting after the settlers' return was held Jannary 3, 1680, and at the second, held ten days later, it was voted to build for the minister " A house 26 foot in length 18 foot In bredth, 14 foot be- tween joynts a girt house and a gabell end In the Roofe and a Leantowe att one end of the house the breadth of it."

January 17, 1680, Samuel Hayward had agreed with the selectmen to "begine and manige the frame of a meeting-house, 26 feet in length and 24 foot in breadth, a girt house 14 foot between joynts."

October 4, 1680, "the towne Agreed, and it pased by a clere vote, that they would give Mr. Grindall Rawson a call to the work of the ministry for this yere In order to his further settlement; for £20 in money, his bord and a hors to be kept for his servis." After three years of preaching, he was settled April 7, 1684, at £55 a year, with house and forty-acre lot.

The third meeting-house, thirty feet square, with sixteen-foot posts, was built 1690, "by subscription," doubtless under town control, at a point not now known. Four years later the old one was sold. None of these meeting-houses had pews, seats being assigned by a committee, of whom the pastor was one. In 1709 the town voted to enlarge the meeting- house by an addition of ten feet at each end, with changes in the galleries, new floors and seats, and it appears the minister and a few others had pews therein built by themselves. In 1737 "Pew Room " was sold, the elderly men paying most for church matters to have first choice.

Mr. Rawson died in 1715, aged fifty-seven, after

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preaching in Mendon thirty-five years. He was twelfth son of Secretary Rawson. His body, with that of his widow, who died in 1748, lies in the town's ancient burial-place. In 1744 the town made pro- vision for the memorial stone at his grave. He was a class-mate and friend of Cotton Mather, and re- nowned in the Colony for his learning. He knew the Indian language well, and preached regularly in different parts of the town week-days as well as on the Sabbath, to Indians and whites with equal fidelity.

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History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 109

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) Publication date: 1889 Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1576

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1576