History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 191

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 191

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In 1881 a system of improvements was inaugurated. The old buildings were torn down and new and larger ones erected; new water-ways and new machinery were added, and it is to-day the largest and most com- plete shop in the world for the exclusive manufacture

of machine-knives. The products of this shop go to all parts of the world, in many instances direct to Cuba, South America, Spain, Germany and China. In 1887 a branch was started in Philadelphia. It is an interesting fact that the first knives that were used on a planing-machine in this country were forged by hand by Mr. Hankey in Boston, and also that the first dies for cutting out paper collars were made at this shop.

LEICESTER NATIONAL BANK .- " Leicester Bank" was chartered as a State bank March 4, 1826, with a capital of one hundred thousand dollars, which in 1853 was increased to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, aud iu 1854 to two hundred thousand dollars. John Clapp was made president of the bank April 26, 1826; N. P. Denny, October 4, 1830; Joshua Clapp, October 3, 1836 ; Waldo Flint, October 2, 1837 ; Joseph A. Denny, October 1, 1838; Cheney Hatch, October 2, 1843 ; Charles A. Denny, December 16, 1878. John A. Smith was appointed cashier May 26, 1826; H. G. Henshaw, October 21, 1826; D. E. Merriam, December 15, 1845; George H. Sprague, May 20, 1885. The institution was made a national bank March 21, 1865.

The first bank building was in connection with the old town-house, built in 1826 by the town and the bank. In 1853 the bank was removed to the brick building east of Leicester Hotel. In 1871 the present bank was completed and the business removed to it.

LEICESTER SAVINGS BANK .- The Leicester Savings Bank was incorporated April 17, 1869. Cheney Hatch was elected president May 5, 1869, and Lory S. Watson, May 21, 1879. D. E. Merriam was the first treasurer, appointed May 14, 1869, and was suc- ceeded by the present incumbent, George H. Sprague, May 24, 1885. The present amount of deposits is three hundred and ninety-one thousand two hundred and eighty dollars.

MISCELLANEOUS INDUSTRIES .- There have been several hatters. John Whittemore bound books where the Whittemore Card Factory now stands. Hori Brown had a printing-office on the west corner of Main and Mechanic Streets, where he not only did job-work, but printed books; among these was "Scott's Lessons," printed in 1815.

At the foot of the hill, from 1823 to 1853, was the grocery of Evi Chilson, especially prized by students of the academy for the rare quality of its entertain- ment for the inner man. It is remembered by them after many other things are forgotten.

It would be impossible to mention all the different kinds of business carried on at different times in town, or to give the history of the many stores.

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LEICESTER.

CHAPTER XCIII. LEICESTER-(Continued.)

THE CIVIL WAR.

eth Massachusetts Regiment-War Meetings-Twenty-fifth Regiment- Fifteenth, Ticeuty-first, Thirty-fourth, Forty-second-Action of the Town-Other Soldiers-Expenditures-Casualties-Close of the War.

NEWS of the attack on Fort Sumter reached Lei- ester on Saturday, April 13, 1861, and occasioned le most intense excitement. Then first the people omprehended the fact that the war had begun. onng men at once declared their intention to re- bond to the first call for soldiers, and men too old for ervice avowed their readiness to make any sacrifice quired for the preservation of the Union. From hat day to the close of the war the town of Leicester yally and liberally accepted all the demands of the vernment upon it for money and for men. The all of President Lincoln for 75,000 volunteers met ere the same prompt answer which it received roughout the loyal North.

Leicester had a special interest in the Sixth Massa- ansetts Regiment, the first to march from the State d to receive the baptism of blood. Its commander, ol. Edward F. Jones, was a native of Leicester, as as also Joseph Waldo Denny, lieutenant in the Torcester Light Infantry. They had been pupils gether in Leicester Academy. There were other eicester men in the regiment.

There were sixteen Leicester men in the Third attalion of Rifles, which left Worcester on the 20th : April. Their names were: Henry H. Bowman, ramley A. Bottomly, Michael Collins, John P. Crim- ins, Jacob H. Gibson, George W. Hatch, John irk, Joseph Laverty, Martin Leonard, Randall . Mann, John McDonald, John Moriarty, J. Daw- ! n Robinson, Emerson Stone, Jesse S. Scott and William B. White. Church Howe and Myron J. ewton enlisted in the Sixth Regiment.

The battalion was stationed at Fort McHenry, and turned on the 2d day of August, and was re- eived with great joy. Several of these men re- listed, and their records are given in connection ith the regiments which they joined. The evening efore the departure of the Third Battalion for the at of war, news of the attack on the Sixth Regi- ent had been received, and had deepened the agi- tion. That day the national flag, before seldom en except on government buildings, and sometimes n the Fourth of July, was thrown to the breeze on le flag-staff on the Common. The war was the all- bsorbing subject of thought, conversation, discourse od prayer on the following day, which was the abbath.

On Monday evening, April 22d, was held the first f those memorable war meetings, which made the

town-hall a historic building, and in which the fer- vent patriotism of the people of Leicester found earnest and eloquent expression, as in the days of the Revolution it had done in the old " First Meet- ing-House." On the 26th forty or fifty of the young men of the town commenced military drill in the town-hall, under the instruction of John M. Studley, of Worcester. A town-meeting was held the 4th of May, and $500 was raised and appropriated, and a committee was authorized to borrow $5000 if neces- sary. A bounty of $10 a month, in addition to government pay, was offered to volunteers, and uni- forms, guns and equipments were to be furnished if necessary. The women were equally patriotic and efficient. Their first meeting for work was in the town-hall, May 13th, where, in response to notices from the pulpit the day before, they assembled, to the number of about sixty, and with four or five sewing- machines and many busy hands, made garments for the Third Battalion of Rifles. On the 15th, at 6} o'clock on a pleasant May day, a beautiful flag was raised over the Centre School-house, with music by the band and addresses by the School Committee- Dr. Pliny Earle, Dr. John Murdock and Rev. A. H. Coolidge. Flags were also flying in different parts of the town. Says one, writing at the time, "The war feeling seems to absorb every other thought, and the subject of religion seems secondary to patriotism, which now occupies the mind notonly of the private individual, but the pulpit and the press."

There had not been for a generation such a revul- sion of feeling as was occasioned in town by the ex- aggerated tidings of the disaster of Bull Run. Men turned pale, and abandoning all hope of easy victory, nerved themselves for the long struggle, which was not to be ended until many of our own citizens had laid down their lives for their country.

In the early autumn of 1861 the Twenty-fifth Mas- sachusetts Regiment was formed, with a larger num- ber of men from Leicester than any other three years' regiment. In it were many representatives of the families in town, and it was followed in all its eventful and honorable career with the special so- licitude and interest of the people.

The national fast, appointed by President Lin- coln for September 26th, on account of the peri- lous and gloomy condition of the country, was a memorable occasion in Leicester. Services were held in the First Church. The attendance was large, and the congregation deeply affected. The re- cruits for the Twenty-fifth Regiment were to leave for camp that day, and this fact added to the impres- siveness of the occasion.

In this regiment were Corp. Augustus Adams, in ten engagements, taken prisoner at Drury's Bluff, died at Florence, S. C .; Charles M. Ball, arm broken at Cold Harbor, killed at Petersburg; Corporal James Brady, Edwin Y. Brown, William Carson, David B. Collier, in six engagements; Isaac Creed, in eight engage-

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HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

ments, three wounds at Cold Harbor; Otis Cutting, wounded at Drury's Bluff; William Eddy, wounded at Petersburg ; William Fernley, taken prisoner at Drury's Bluff, died at Audersonville; Owen Finnegan, in several engagements, wounded at Arrowfield Church; Horace L. Fisk; James S. Foster, died at Newbern; Levander M. Gould, died at Newbern ; James Gehegan, wounded at Arrowfield Church, in ten engagements; John Galooly, died at Charlotte, N. C .; David Gotha, in seven engagements ; George W. Gould, killed at Cold Harbor ; Edward R. Graton, wounded at Roanoke Island and died of the wounds. He was saved from instant death hy his prayer-book, the ball stopping at the verse,

Thon, gracious Lord, art my defence, On thee my hopes rely.

Braman Grout, in two battles; George L. Grout, in two battles ; Thomas Grooves, died at Newbern ; William Henshaw, Patrick W. Hannagan, wonuded at Cold Harbor; Albert S. Hurd, killed at Cold Har- bor, in most of the battles of the regiment ; George E. Kent, wounded at Roanoke Island, died at New- bern ; Hugh Keuney, in three engagements, wounded at Arrowfield Church ; Peter Kenney, wounded at Arrowfield Church and at Cold Harbor ; William II. Kenney, killed at Cold Harbor ; Sergeant John Kirk, in most of the battles of the regiment, taken prisoner at Drury's Bluff; Eugene D. Lacount, wounded and taken prisoner at Drury's Bluff; Michael Leonard, wounded at Drury's Bluff; John McMannis, wounded at Drury's Bluff; Corporal Randall Mann, killed at the battle of Roanoke Island ; John Mclaughlin, in ten battles, wounded at Cold Harbor ; Lyman Monl- ton, killed at Cold Harbor ; Ezra Reed, Albert Stock- dale, wounded at Arrowfield Church and at Petersburg; First Sergeant Emerson Stone, lost an arm at Drury's Bluff, passed as captain of United States Colored Troops just as the war came to an end ; Sergeant H. A. White, wounded in the foot at Drury's Bluff, in the battles of his regiment till his discharge in the summer of 1864.

The Twenty-fifth Regiment formed a part of the Burnside Expeditiou in North Carolina, and remained in that State till 1864, when it was united with the Army of the James, serving in Virginia before Rich- mond and Petersburg. After suffering severely and becoming reduced to a mere skeleton, it returned to North Carolina, and being recruited, participated in the closing scenes of the war under General Sherman. It will be noticed that the casualties of Leicester men in this regiment were especially numerous at Cold Harbor. Of the charge, in which the Twenty-fifth Regiment bore the brunt, Gen. Horace Porter writes in the Century, of June, 1888: "Perhaps the most striking case of desperate and deliberate courage which the history of modern warfare has furnished was wituessed at Cold Harbor. The men had been repeatedly repulsed in assaulting earthworks, had each time lost heavily, and had become impressed

with the conviction that such attacks meant certain death. One evening after a dangerous assault had been ordered for daylight the next morning, I noticed in passing along the line that many of the men had taken off their coats and seemed engaged in mending rents in the back. Upon closer examination I found that they were calmly writing their names and home addresses on slips of paper and pinning these slips upon the backs of their coats, so that their dead bodies might be recognized upon the field and their fate made known to their friends at home. Never was there a more gallant assault than that made by those men the next day, though their act of the night be- fore bore painful proof that they had entered upon their work without a hope of surviving. Such courage is more than heroic, it is sublime." Of this charge Gen. P. D. Bowles, who had command of the Con- federate line, wrote, "The regiment that made this gallant charge was the Twenty-fifth Massachusetts. This we learned from the twenty-odd officers and men who fell down among the dead and wounded at the first fire. Not since the charge of the six hundred at Balaklava has a more heroic act been performed."

During the summer the Fifteenth and Twenty- first Massachusetts Regiments were enlisted. In the Fifteenth were from Leicester, W. H. Bergen, Simeon E. Ball, who died in the service at Poolesville, Md .; Heury Carpenter, in all the engagements from Ball's Bluff, in which the Fifteenth suffered so severely, to Gettysburg, in both of which battles he was severely wounded ; H. R. Dawson transferred to the Twentieth ; Chas. W. Clifford ; the three Davis brothers, Freeman wounded at Ball's Bluff, reinlisted in-the Fifty-seventh Regiment and killed in the battle of the Wilderness ; William M. who returned from Libby prison and died; Alfred W., who died from wounds at the battle of An- tietam ; Charles A. Gleason, who was taken prisoner at Antietam and again in the Wilderness, and who was in Libby prison, Andersonville and Milan, where he died; Charles H. Gough, killed at Ball's Bluff, the first Leicester soldier who lost his life in the service; Maj. Church Howe, first in the Sixth Regiment and then in the Fifteenth, iu thirteen battles; lieutenant quar- termaster in the Fifteenth Regiment, provost mar- shal at Harper's Ferry, aud senior aide-de-camp to Major-General Sedgwick; Peter McGee; Sergeant John A. Richardson transferred to the Twentieth Reg- iment ; Samuel Slater ; Corporal Charles W. Wood in eighteen engagements, taken prisoner at Gettysburg and again at Petersburg, confined at Andersonville, Milan, Savannah, Albany and Thomasville. These men were, with few exceptions, sharers in the hard- ships, the battles and the sufferings of this historic regiment.

In the Twenty-first Regiment were James Bell, who, in the battle of Chantilly, becoming separated from his regiment and finding himself surrounded by the enemy, continued to fight single-handed and was shot. Horatio N. Barrows in five battles, wounded at An-

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LEICESTER.

tietam ; Edgar C. Felton, also in the Thirty-sixth and Fifty-sixth ; Thomas Hurst, killed at Newhern ; John Hopkins, transferred to the Thirty-sixth and to the Fifty-sixth ; James Lackey, also in the Thirty-sixth and Fifty-sixth, died of wounds received in the Wil- derness; Barney McNulty, also in the Thirty-sixth and Fifty-sixth ; Wm. MeGrath, transferred to United States Cavalry; Jesse S. Scott, musician, also in the Fifty-seventh ; Frank H. Sonthwick, wounded at An- tietam; Wm. W. Scott, afterward asst. quartermaster at Chattanooga ; Edgar Salisbury, wagoner.

John Graham was in the Signal Corps and also the First Frontier Cavalry. Jerome Bottomly, artificer and Andrew Crossley were in Co. C, Battalion United States Engineers' Troops, enlisting in the antumn of 1861, and serving three years. The company was recruited by Captain (afterwards Major-General) James B. Mc- Pherson, its first commander. They were engaged in all the varied dnties of military engineers, laying ont roads, fortifications and defences of various kinds, and especially in building pontoon bridges, often in the face of the enemy. They as isted in building one across the Chickahominy and another over the James, each two thousand feet in length. They often acted as infantry. The names of seventeen battles of the Rebellion are inscribed on their colors.

In the summer of 1862 the Thirty-fourth Regiment was organized. Leicester contributed to it the fol- lowing men : Edwin N. Adams, transferred to the Twenty-fourth Regiment ; Henry H. Bowman, first in Third Battalion Rifles, in seven engagements ; Alexander Benway, John A. Barr, Joseph R. Brooks, Frederick S. Blodgett ; Corporal Henry Converse in nine engagements ; Timothy P. Griffin, principal mu- sician ; Edwin Holden in sixteen engagements, wound- ed at Fisher's Hill; Edwin Hoyle, wounded and a prisoner six months at Andersonville; Lincoln L. Johnson died at Harrisonburg, Va .; Sergeant Alfred James in eight engagements, wounded at Fisher's Hill ; Franklin B. King, Lieut. Ira E. Lackey, Mat- thew Malloy, Corporal Rufus H. Newton, in sixteen battles, wounded at Winchester, and severely at Petersburg ; Frank Pollard, Michael Rice, in fifteen engagements, wounded at Petersburg; Corporal James Rawdon, died of wounds; Lieutenant Walter W. Scott in ten engagements ; John Shean, Henry South wick, Corporal Henry E. Williams, wounded.in the battle of Piedmont, a minie-ball passing through the left arm, through the body, and lodging in the right arm, captured and taken to Libby prisou. John Sherman, James Sherman, Owen Smith, also as Leicester soldiers, Joseph P. Morse, from Worcester, and Norris Morse, of Spencer. The regi- ment left Worcester August 15, 1862. It served principally in the Shenandoah Valley, under Gener- als Sigel, Hunter and Sheridan, until March, 1865, when it formed a part of the Army of the James until the surrender of Richmond. Some of these men were with Sheriden at the time of his famous

"ride." They participated in the various forced marches, raids, skirmishes and battles of that heroic commander, as well as in the later battles of the war.

The duties of the town officers during this and snc- ceeding years were very arduous and perplexing. No pains were spared to fill each new order for men. In Jnly, 1862, the town was called upon for forty-five men as its quota of the three hundred thousand called for by the President. In anticipation of the order a meeting of the citizens was held in the Town Hall ou the evening of the 14th day of July. It was a rainy night, but the attendance was large, and stirring ad- dresses were made by the clergymen and several other citizens of the town. It was voted expedient to pay liberal bounties, and the selectmen were requested to open a recruiting office and call a legal meeting forthwith. The next day a guarantee subscription of 81,000 for bonnties was seenred. On the 22d a com- pany of thirty-two Spencer volunteers passed through town, escorted by the Spencer and Leicester fire companies and the Leicester Cornet Band. They halted a few minutes before the cottage of the vener- able Dr. Nelson, who briefly addressed them. The town-meeting was held on the 26th of the same month, and it was nnanimonsly voted to pay a bounty of $100 to all volunteers who had already enlisted or who should enlist under this call ; that an additional bounty of $50 be paid to all who should remain in the service longer than one year ; and an extra bounty of $25 to any who should enlist before the next Monday, at 9 o'clock, P.M. The meeting was adjourned to the evening, when patriotic addresses were made by several gentlemen. On the 28th a mass-meeting was held, but the process of filling the quota was difficult and slow. It was not completed when another call was issued for three hundred thousand men, to serve nine months. The town was ordered to furnish sixty men. On the evening of the 18th of August another war-meeting was held in the Town Hall. It was large, and proved to be the most stirring and eventful of those remarkable assemblies. John D. Cogswell, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, presided. Ad- dresses were made by various prominent citizens. The chairman, in a few earnest words, nrged all who conld to enlist at once, and then placed his own name at the head of the list. Sixteen came forward at once, in the words of the Worcester Spy, "amidst the cheers and enthusiasm of the large number of ladies and gentlemen, who remained to a late hour." Among the number was the Rev. William F. Lacount, pastor of the Methodist Church in Cherry Valley. The quota was filled in a few days by volunteers. " Among them," as was truthfully stated in the Spy. " were the present and former chairmen of the Board of Selectmen, and many of the enterprising young men from the best families of the village. The in- dustrions mechanic left a prosperous business, the minister his people, the collegiate his college class, and the husband and father the comforts and pleasures of

726

HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

home to unite in putting down speedily this wicked and savage rebellion." Before August 30th fifty had volunteered, all but four of whom became members of a company recruited from Spencer, North Brook- field and Leicester, of which John D. Cogswell was captain, and T. M. Duncan, of North Brookfield, and Lyman A. Powers, of Spencer, lieutenants. On Sep- tember 18 the company thus formed came together iu the Town Hall, where the Leicester ladies served a collation, long remembered by these men in the subsequent days of army rations. Addresses were made by citizens and officers of the company, which was conveyed to its camp on the Agricultural Grounds in Worcester, preceded by the band, and escorted by the Union Fire Company. It was finally assigned, as Company F, to the Forty-second Massachusetts Regi- ment. They sailed on the 4th of December under sealed orders. After a long, stormy and perilous voyage, they reached New Orleans the 29th of December, where they served under General Banks. They were in no battles, but were engaged in arduous guard and picket duty.

They were mustered out of service August 20, 1863. A public reception had been arranged for them on their return, and tables were set in the Town Hall, but they were so much worn by their hardships in the malarial regions of New Orleans and so many were ill that the purpose was abandoned.

In this regiment were thirty-eight men from Leices- ter,-Albert M. Adams (who afterward enlisted in the Second Iowa Cavalry ; was captured in Tennessee by Hood's army December 17, 1864, while on a charge; taken on foot to Meridian, five hundred and ninety miles, through mnd, and over frozen ground, the last half of the way barefoot ; thence in stock cars to Andersonville, thence to Macon, Ga., thence to Al- bany, Ga., thence on foot to Thomasville, Ga., thence by rail to Baleluin, Fla., thence on foot to Jackson- ville, " arriving under the Star Spangled Banner April 29, 1865 "), George Adams, Sergeant Bramley A. Bottomly, Corporal Charles B. Brown, Henry Bisco, Moses Bagley, Captain John D. Cogswell, Albert W. Cargell, Corporal James H. Croome, Clark K. Denny, Lewis W. Gates, George D. Hatch, Edward W. Hubbard, Henry E. Holbrook, William H. Haven, Charles S. Knight, John Craft, Rev. William F. La- count (pastor of Cherry Valley M. E. Church, who acted a part of the time as chaplain and the rest as hospital nurse), Franklin M. Lamb (musician), Charles M. Marsh, Horatio P. Marshall, Peter McArdle, George Morgan, Albert S. Marsh, George Mann, Thomas Nolan, Martin Procter, Thomas H. Robinson, George M. Roberts (afterward lientenant in the Six- tieth Regiment), William C. Sprague, Charles Sander- son, William J. Sprague, Corporal George L. Stone, Thomas S. Snow, Orderly Sergeant Joseph A. Titus, (afterward lieutenant in the Sixtieth Regiment), Charles H. Warren, Corporal Charles H. Woodcock, Eli Wrigglesworth (also in the Twenty-ninth Regi-

ment), Albert M. Goulding, Warren E. Howard and John F. Kibler (first in the Fifty-first Regiment), en- listed in the Forty-second Regiment, in its second term of service for one hundred days.

July 13, 1863, fifty-two men were drafted from Lei- cester. Some of them paid the commutation fee of three hundred dollars or furnished substitutes, while others were, for various reasons, exempted, so that it is believed that none of them entered the service. This was a time of unusual excitement. The riots in New York and threatening demonstrations in other places encouraged resistance and awakened apprehensions. Whatever of disloyal feeling existed in town then found expression in protests and the encouragement of discontent. Information was re- ceived of threats to gain possession of the enrollment list, or burn the office where it was kept. The office was consequently guarded several nights by armed men, and the town, to some extent, patrolled. The danger may have been exaggerated, but the facts illustrate the feverish condition of the public mind at this time.

In November, 1863, the Rev. Mr. Coolidge re- ceived leave of absence from his church, and spent about two months with the Army of the Potomac, in the service of the Christian Commission. In all the years of the war the women vied with the men in loyal service. Every call for help met a prompt re- sponse, and there were many meetings for sewing and the preparation of hospital supplies, while the children made " comfort bags," furnished with . sew- ing materials, for the convenience of the soldiers. In all this work, Mrs. Billings Swan, whose great regret was that she had not sons who were able to go to the war, was a conspicuous leader.

Mrs. Nelson, wife of the senior pastor of the First Congregational Church, although seventy-five years of age, labored unremittingly, and enconraged others to do the same. She knit one hundred pairs of stockings for the soldiers, and enclosed a note in the hundredth pair to the soldier who should receive it, to which she received an answer.

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History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 191

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