History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 204

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 204

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Several meritorious sketches and well-matured pa-

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HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

pers relating to the early history of Lunenburg have been printed. Upon the open records, easily accessi- hle, a constant draft has been made by previous ex- plorers. The quaint and curious and many striking incidents in the records are familiar to the local read- er, and are not here repeated. In the preparation of this sketch the writer has been crowded out of the accustomed paths of research, and has found the or- dinary fountains drained by earlier and vigilant gleaners of material. And while dates and certain facts of necessity have been drawn from the original and worn records, very much of the material incor- porated into the narrative of the early grants-of the proceedings of the proprietors, of the military record of the past century and many incidents connected or explanatory-have been drawn from the State archives and from records which have escaped earlier notice. Many facts in the earlier history of the town are here printed for the first time. From an historical standpoint, Lunenburg, the mother of towns and the ancestral home of many families, occupies an important position among the older towns of Northern Massachusetts. For many years with the line of defense on the outer side, Lunenburg was on the border between the settlements and the wilderness. Many, pursned by the mania of immigration, were often temporarily delayed upon the borders within this town, and a few years later, when the younger and outer settlements for a season were abandoned, the fugitives from danger found safety and a tempor- ary home within the defences of this town. By fre- quent intermarriage, these sojourning strangers became allied to Lunenburg families, and at their departure, were often attended by many to the manner born. And, in addition to this accidental overflow from the town and during the burning fever of immigration that warmed the blood of the older towns, and which was only briefly allayed by the French and Indian War, there was a swelling tide of immigration from Lunenburg to the growing settlements in New Hampshire and elsewhere. In such numbers and in such types of sturdy men did the living current flow, that Winchester, Walpole and, in less degree, Charles- town, in New Hampshire, were New Lunenburgs on the border of the receding wilderness. In these vigorous movements the blood of the mother-town was widely disseminated. Two-thirds of the early population of Rindge were descendants of the early families of Lunenburg. It is impossible to find a town within an extended radius or to name a State in the Union that does not contain many who trace their ancestry through the records of Lunenburg. For the pleasure and benefit of the multitnde, the genealogical records of the parent-families have not been published. Continuous inquiries by interested persons have been kindly answered by obliging town clerks until the original records were defaced and re- stored by new copies. In a comprehensive study and arrangement of the gencalogical records of the Lun-

enburg families, George A. Cunningham, Esq., was laborionsly engaged many years. In its scope, com- pleteness and accuracy, his mannscript copy is not excelled by any published work of a similar charac- ter. The vigor of an intelligent mind and the earn- est labor of a life-time were exhausted in this treas- ury of genealogical knowledge. Mr. Cunningham also completed a manuscript history of the town. It is a voluminous supplement to the Torrey sketch, and quotes that work for the early history of the town. The supplement is brought down to the time when death stilled his tireless pen. The names of the soldiers in the War of Rebellion, enumerated in this paper, are drawn from his work. To Mr. Wil- liam E. Cunningham, through whose generous favor these valuable manuscripts have been consulted, I extend a grateful acknowledgment.

CHAPTER XCIX.

SHREWSBURY.

BY WILLIAM T. HARLOW.

EARLY LAND GRANTS.

THE history of Shrewsbury properly begins with certain land grants of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England, located within the territory of which the town was afterwards formed. These grants, called farms, named after the grantees and five in number, were: (1) Daven- port's Farm, 650 acres; (2) Haynes' Farm, other- wise called Quinsigamond Farm, 3200 acres ; (3) Malden Farm, 1000 acres ; (4) Rawson's Farm, 500 acres, and (5) Sewall's Farm, 1500 acres. But the quantity of land in these grants was, in fact, greatly in excess of the number of acres named, and the aggregate was, doubtless, more than 10,000 acres,

1. The Davenport Farm, granted to Captain Rich- ard Davenport, commander of Castle Island, in Boston Harbor, in consideration of public services, was laid ont to him in the valley of the Nashua River, in that part of Shrewsbury now West Boyls- ton and Boyl-ton, and included very valuable mill- sites, as well as the finest parcel of intervale land lying in a body to be found in Massachusetts east of Connecticut River. Its final confirmation to the grantee was May 28, 1659.1 Capt. Davenport came to Salem with Gov. Endicott in 1628, and after many years of public service was killed by lightning ("tooke away by ye solemne strooke of Thunder "), while sleeping by his magazine, with only the wainscot be- tween him and the powder. His son Richard, with his two sons, William and Nathaniel, came to Shrewsbury about 1736 and settled upon this grant.2

1 Colony Records IV., Part I, 314 and 372.

2 For rude plans, see Worcester Reg. Deeds, B. 3, p. 95.

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SHREWSBURY.

2. The grantees of the Haynes' Farm, who did not themselves give their own name to their grant, but called it by the more euphonions title given by the Indians to " ye Greate Pond that lyeth West Pointe to ye sd farm," were the brothers John and Josiah Haynes, of Sudbury, and their brother-in-law, Nathaniel Treadway, of Watertown. The Haynes brothers, with their sisters, Sufferance and Mary, were the children of Walter Haynes, a Wiltshire linen- weaver, who, with his wife E izabeth and children, all under sixteen years, came in the good ship " Con- fidence" from England in 1638, and settled in Sud- bury. This grant was originally made to Isaac John- son in consideration of " £400 adventured by the said Mr. Johnson in the comon stock of The Governor and company of ye Massachusetts Bay in New Eng- land," which, to begin with, was little else but an incorporated trading company founded on the East India plan. Johnson dying, this grant, as yet un- located and accounted personal estate, came into the possession of his executor, Increase Nowell. John- son and Nowell were both original patentees of the colony charter of 1628 and had part with Winthrop in importing it to New England. Nowell also dying before location of the grant, his executor sold it to John Haynes and his brother Josiah and their brothers-in-law-Nathaniel Treadway, who mar- ried their sister Sufferance and Thomas Noyes, who married their other sister, Mary. It was finally laid out to the Haynes brothers and Treadway (Noyes having died), and confirmed by the General Conrt May 27, 1664.1 The southwest corner of Haynes' Farm was at the going out of the Nipnapp River from the southernmost end of Quinsigamond Ponds, and both the islands there belonged to the farm and so to the town of Shrewsbury to this day. Another corner was where the town hound between North- borough and Shrewsbury now stands, by the Great Road near the house of Mr. William U. Maynard. The northwest and southeast corners of the grant can- not be fixed with exactness, but cannot have been very remote from where the two school-houses, Nos. 3 and 5, now stand. The northern boundary curved northward and crossed the Boylston road near where Mr. Lowell Walker now lives, and thence passed on to the Northborough line. I have been thus par- ticular to trace the origin and show the location of the Haynes Farm, because it was much the largest of the five grants, because it was the owners of this large tract of land that formed the nucleus of the Marlborough colony that settled Shrewsbury, and be- cause the facts are not well known.

3. One hundred of the one thousand acres of Malden Farm were in Worcester. Its southern boundary line was three hundred and seventy rods long, and the

sonthernmost point of West Boylston was the centre of this line, and the line running northerly for about two miles from this point, between the two towns of Boylston and West Boylston, divided this farm into two equal parts. Its northwest cruer is said in the lay-out to be about a mile distant from the Davenport Farm. The orig nal grant to the town of Malden, made May 9, 1662, was on condition that "ye ministry of Maulden do cause it to be bounded ont and pnc on improvement within three years next ensewing." The location of the grant by metes and bounds was duly made and confirmed within the time prescribed, May 3, 1665, but the only improvements made were marking forest trees, at the corners, with the letter M.2 On this ground, want of improvements within three years, the validity of the grant was disputed by the proprietors of Shrewsbury, and their records contain frequent references to this grant as the "pretended Malden Farm." In 1736 Rev. Joseph Emerson, of Malden, and minister of God's Word there, brought suit in the Worcester Common Pleas against Ephraim Wheeler and David Crosby, of Shrewsbury, for pas- session of the nine hundred acres of this grant which lay in Shrewsbury. This suit was defended by the proprietors, by whose direction Wheeler and Crosby had taken possession of the land, and Nahum Ward, one of the proprietors, acted as their counsel in the suit. On trial in the Common Pleas the verdict and judgment were for the defendants, but Mr. Emerson appealed and prevailed in the Superior Court, final judgment for the plaintiff, October Term, 1736. Bnt the proprietors were not content, and the next year Mr. Ward was sent to the Great and General Conrt to re-open the question determined in the suit, and for four years Mr. Ward continued to press petitions for a new trial and for re-location of the grant, in vain. Malden Hill and Malden Brook were both named from this grant, though neither hill nor brook is in it. From uncertainty abont the location of the grant, it may have been supposed or claimed that its location was so as to include the brook and hill.

4. Secretary Edward Rawson received from time to time grants of several parcels of land to eke out his pitiful salary, and among the rest a rectangle of five hundred acres lying between Marlboro', Lancaster and Worcester, about half a mile north of Haynes' Farm, and Deacon John Haynes located it for him. It was one mile (three hundred and twenty rods) long by two hundred and fifty rods wide. Rawson's Hill, called in the grant by its Indian name of Ashant's Hill, was in it and Cold Harbor Brook ran through it. Some years before this grant to him the secretary had spent some money to no profit in experiments with saltpetre or something he thought was saltpetre, and the General Court, to encourage such patriotic experi- menting and compensate him for his los-es thereabout. granted him five hundred acres of land " near Pequot,"

1 Colony Records III. 189 and 435; IV., Part I. 295; IV., Part II. 7 and 8 and IIl. See plan in Secretary's office, vol. - , Maps and Plans.

2Col. Rec. IV. Pt. II. 45 and 148.

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HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

but afterwards gave him thirty pounds instead of the land. As no consideration is expressly named in the grant which was located in Shrewsbury, and the quan- tity is the same, it is probable that this grant was a renewal of the other, modified so that it might be "layd out in any free place not prejudicing a planta- tion." The lay-out and confirmation of this grant was May 13, 1686.1

5. Sewall's Farm lay on the westerly side of Shrews- bury, with a narrow strip between it and Worcester line. Its south boundary line was a little south of the Great Road, its southwest corner near the head Quinsigamond Pond. Its given dimensions were seven hundred and eighty rods long, south to north, and three hundred and forty rods wide, east to west, or not quite two miles and one-half long by a little more than a mile wide-extending from its south line, be- fore mentioned, beyond and including Grass Pond, (once so called, but for three generations last past known as Sewall's Pond), in Boylston. It was bounded for a considerable distance on its west side by Malden Farm, and also for a less distance on the east by Haynes' Farm, and so connected the two. It had on it two mill-sites,-one a little below Sewall's Pond, where Banister's Mills were built, and the other, now unoccupied, but much the better water-power of the two, near the house of Mr. Frederick E. Abbott, where once stood Harlow's Mills, burned nearly forty years ago. Sewall's Hill, as well as Sewall's Pond, is within the farm limits, and both took their name from the grantee, Samuel Sewall, chief justice of the old Su- perior Court of Judicature, one of the judges who tried the Salem witches and the only one of them that is known to have repented thereof; author of Sewall's Diary, etc.

The south part of Sewall's Farm-one thousand acres-was laid out and confirmed November 20, 1695, to James Russell, sometime colony treasurer, to whom the grant (originally made to Deputy-Governor Francis Willoughby, in consideration of public ser- vice) came, unlocated, by descent from his father, Richard Russell, also sometime colony treasurer, who had bought it of the Deputy-Governor. Chief Jus- tice Sewall's title to this part of his farm in Shrews- bury was by purchase of Treasurer James Russell. His title to the north part-five hundred acres-was in right of his wife, who was the only daughter of Mintmaster John Hull, who "by minting made a mint of money " for himself, as well as for the colony, and became the richest man of New England. Hannah Hull married Samuel Sewall long before he was chief justice, or hung the witches, or had made much pro- gress in his famons diary, or was famous for anything, and brought her husband a marriage-portion of £30,000, all duly counted ont to him on the wedding- day in "pine-tree" shillings, fresh from her father's

mint .? This grant, which had come to Madam Han- nah Hull Sewall through her father, in some way that I have not yet been able to trace, was confirmed to her and her husband, May 27, 1696. A rude plan of Sewall's Farm may be seen in the Worcester Reg- istry of Deeds,3 with a deed, dated June 1, 1732, of a moiety thereof from William Pepperell, of Kittery, et ux. et als. to Nahum Ward, of Shrewsbury. This was thirteen years before the famed exploit of Louisbourg, and the thrifty trader of Kittery was then only a hero in posse, and tenant, in common with others, of fifteen hundred acres of real estate in Shrewsbury, in right of his wife, who was Mary Hurst, and one of Chief Justice Sewall's three granddaughters, and so coparcener of the real estate aforesaid. This plan was made, as appears from the deed, from a survey made in November, 1714, by David Haynes, youngest son of Deacon John, of Sudbury, and one may read in the Sewall Diary the following entry, under date " 1714, 8' 6. Mr. David Hayns dines with us. . .. Gave him the Bounds of Quanssi- camon Farms, that he may review and refresh them."

Whereby one may note that the Indians' name for Long Pond (whatever may be the Indians' spelling of it) was once applied to Sewall's Farm, as well as to Haynes'. Probably it was to distinguish the two that at a later period they were called after their respective grantees.4

CHAPTER C. SHREWSBURY-(Continued.)

THE MARLBOROUGH MEN AND WHEN SOME OF THEM SETTLED.

IT will aid to a better understanding both of what precedes and what is to follow to give a brief account of the road through Shrewsbury anciently called the Connecticut Road,-in later times the Country Road, the Stage Road, Post Road and Great Road. The original road from Massachusetts Bay to the Con-

2 So Hutchinson i. 165, to which tradition adds that the bride, being set in the scales, exactly balanced the silver pine-trees, Merely suggest- ing to the reader that a pine-tree shilling's prescribed weight was three pennyweights, Troy, I leave him to compute "exactly " what was Mrs. Sewall's weight on her wedding-day.

8 Book 3, page 91.

4 Since the above was in the hands of the publishers, I have discov- ered, under date of June 20, 1715, another grant of sixteen hundred and eighty-three acres to the heirs of John Haynes, lying in the sontherly part of Shrewsbury and adjoining "Haynes' Old Farm " on the south side. This is what is called in the Proprietors' Records "Robbins' Farm," so named from Joseph Rothins, a "Praying Indian" of Hassani- misco, whose title Deacon Haynes in his life-time bad bought, of which title this grant was a confirmation. See Court Records, 1715, and Maps and Plans, Vol. 5, page 3, Secretary of State's office. See also a plan of the original grant to the Shrewsbury Proprietors, vol. 16, page 518, on which this grant, under the name of " Haynes' Indian Farm," is laid down.

1 Col. Rec. V. 415, 418 ; III. 178.

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necticut River did not pass through Shrewsbury at all, but to the south of it. It was merely the old trail of the Indians. The new Connecticut Road was laid out by Major John Pynchon, whose father Wil- liam had founded a town at either end of it.1 The "worshipful" major's authority was an order of the General Court, under date March 30, 1683, in these words:

"WHEREAS the way to Koroecticut, now used, being very hazardous to travelers by reason of one deepe river that is passed fower or five times over, which may be avoided, it is referred t, Major Pynchon to order ye said way to be layd out & well marked. He baving hyred two injins to gu de him in the way for fitty shillings, it is ordered that the Treasurer pay them the same in country pay towards effecting this worke." 2

The principal change of the old way consisted in passing north instead of south of Quinsigamond Pond, and so through Shrewsbury. Departing from the old way, it passed northerly of Little Chauncey Pond in Northborough into Shrewsbury exactly where the Great Road enters the town to-day, and thence through the town to the head of Quinsigamond Pood, on substantially the same line as the present road. But in 1726 it was re-located by a jury sent out by the Middlesex Court of Sessions, whose accepted return, so far as relates to the re-location in Shrews- bury, is as follows (what immediately precedes re- lates to the way in Worcester): "And thence in Shrewsbury, keeping the old way, crossing the Brook, running into Long Pond, and so keeping the old way south of Gershom Wheelock's house, and between the house and barn of Daniel How, & so still keep- ing the old road till it comes out of the woodland east of said How's, on the edge of the Great Rocky Plain, and so keeping very nigh a straight line a lit- tle south of Mr. Cushing's house, on the east side of the aforesaid Plain, and then in the old way till it come to Capt. Keyes' fenced land, and so crossing a small corner of said Keyes' fenced ground, and then in the old way running between said Keyes' house and barn, and so keeping the old road south of Widow Blair's, and so to the Westborough 3 line in the old road, passing between Daniel Barnes' house and barn," etc.

That is to say, the re-located road crossed the town line in exactly the same place where the old road crossed it, nor has there been any change had, either in the road or the town line from that time (1726) to this day, and the town bound by the road here stands precisely where it was established in 1717 by the viewing committee's report "at a heap of stones, called Warner's Corner, which is the most easterly corner of Haynes' Farm by the Country Road." Daniel Barnes occupied the sixteenth house-lot of the proprietors' records, " bounded easterly by the town line, northerly by Haines' old Farm . .. and " (the

lot) " lycth where Mr. Warner formerly improved." This is the place where Mr. William U. Maynard now lives, and is without doubt the earliest place in Shrewsbury occupied by a white man.'

Whoever Mr. Warner may have been, and whatever may have become of him, certain it is that he had no title to the land " where he formerly improved." His corner makes a very noticeable and unexplained jog into the boundaries of Haynes' Farm laid out in 1664, and he was probably some daring pioneer who was either driven out or perished during King Philip's War. Widow Mary Blair, mentioned also in the re- location of 1726, lived with her children on the place where Mr. Samuel Johnson now lives. It was house- lot No. 12, " situated near where Warner formerly im- proved, bounded northerly on Haines' old Farm, east- erly by the 16th House-Lot," etc. The widow's husband, William Blair, died shortly after coming to Shrewsbury, and the Barnes and Blair families both certainly here in 1726, not long afterwards returned to Marlborough.

The germ of the movement for settlement of Shrews- bury is described in a deed of partition5 of Haynes' Farm, dated April, 1717, which, after reciting the "orderly " meeting of the owners, twenty-three in number, heirs and purchasers of the rights of Deacon John Haynes, Lieutenant Josiah Haynes and Mr. Nathaniel Treadway, all deceased, the appointment of a committee to go with John Brigham, surveyor, and divide the farm into three parcels ready to draw lots, and a second meeting of said owners December 10, 1716, at David How's house in Sudbury, then sets out the committee's report that they had divided the farm by east and west lines into three parts or squadrons- whereupon, lots being drawn, the North Squadron fell to the heirs and purchasers of the right of Deacon John Haynes, the South Squadron to the heirs of Lieutenant Joshua Haynes and the Middle Squadron to the heirs and purchasers of the right of Mr. Nathaniel Treadway. Of the twenty-three signers of this deed, the following or their children settled in Shrewsbury : John Keyes, Joseph Noyes, Moses New- ton, Daniel How, Elias Keyes, Samuel Wheelock, Thomas Hapgood, Edward Goddard and William Taylor.

Samuel Wheelock's son Gershom is reputed to have been the first permanent settler of Shrewsbury, and the place where he settled was on the share of his father in Haynes' Farm-on the north side of the Great Road, between where Mr. Levi Prentice and Mr. William Fitzgerald now live. Tradition represents

1 Roxbury and Springfield.

2 Colony Records, V. 394.

3 Now Northborough.

4 Distinguished also by a recent archaeological fiod of much interest. Ditching in his meadow in 1884 Mr. Maynard came upon the fossil molars of a mastodon, and the next year, in the margin of the ditch, which it was koowo was to be explored by the amateurs of the Worces- ter Natural History Society was found a human skull, doubtless the plant of a practical joker, of which not only the amateurs, but a learned professor of Harvard became eager victims.

6 " Cambridge Registry," Book 29, page 44,

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HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

him as sleeping aloft in his cabin during the winter nights of 1716-17, and drawing up his ladder after him, "whistled an air did he," doubtless to keep up his courage. How long he continued to live there I have not ascertained, but certain it is that he was still there in 1726, as appears from the re-location of the Great Road at that time. In 1720 his father gave bim a deed of this lot, and February 10, 1729, house- lot No. 26, which "lyeth near the west bounds of Hains' old Farm," was in possession of Samnel Wheelock.1 Gershom Wheelock, the first settler, who had both a son and a grandson of the same name, was commonly called in his life-time Captain Wheelock, from his militia rank, and his father was called the deacon from his office in the church, of which he was one of the founders. Deacon Wheelock was a mem- ber of the first Board of Selectmen and a very active man in church and town affairs for many years.

Mr. Cushing, mentioned in the re-location, is Rev. Job Cushing, who and whose place of ahode will be further noticed later.

John Keyes, whose honse, barn and fenced land is referred to in the re-location of 1726, son of Elias Keyes, of Sudbury, and grandson of Robert Keyes, of Watertown, who came from England in 1633, had his share of Haynes' Farm assigned to him on the south side of the Great Road, nearly opposite where the cur- rier's shop stands in the Lower Village. In 1723 he built a new house a few rods east of the rude and primitive cabin that he first lived in, but before it was finished both houses were burnt in the night and Mr. Keyes' three sons and two apprentices of Ebene- zer Bragg, the carpenter, who was building the new house, perished in the flames. Mr. Bragg, al-o sleep- ing in the same hou e, harely escaped. The old house was also burned, but the inmates, Mr. Keyes and wife and four daughters, were awakened by Mr. Bragg just in time to flee ont of it.

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History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 204

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