History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 205

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 205

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John Keyes held commissions as captain and ma- jor in the militia, and is traditionally known as the famous Major John Keyes. He is not to be con- founded with Deacon John, his cousin, who settled in the North Parish. In 1726 he evidently had built another house, as the relocated Great Road passed between it and his barn. A very active and energetic man, member of the first and many suhse- quent Boards of Selectmen. He bought a moiety of Sewall's Farm, and thus hecame tenant in common with Nahum Ward, who was his uncle, of that large tract of land.

Elias Keyes, who was the cousin of famous Major John, had his share of the farm assigned him near

his cousin's, but, in 1741, with his family, joined an - other colony that swarmed out of the Marlborough hive and followed the star of empire on its westward way to New Marlborough, in far-off Berkshire. The surname of Keyes is now extinct in Shrewsbury. But the Flaggs, of Boylston, are descendants of famous Major John, by his daughter Hannah, who married Gershom Flagg.

Daniel Noyes, of Sudbury, who settled on the South Squadron of Haynes' Farm, was descended both from Ensign Thomas Noyes and Lieutenant John Ilaynes. He was the son of Joseph, who signed the partition deed. His grandfather, also named Joseph, was the son of Ensign Thomas, and his grandmother was Ruth Haynes, daughter of Lieu- tenant Joshua.

Neither of the Newtons, Moses nor Thomas, set- tled in Shrewsbury. They sold their shares in Haynes' Farm to Nahum Ward, who was their consin, but their children came to Shrewsbury at an early day and settled here. Elisha Newton, son of Moses, was grandfather of the late Calvin Newton, of this town, and settled on the place, part of Sewall's Farm, where Peter Gamache now lives, where also Mr. Newton (Calvin), whose three sons, still living in this town, were all born there, lived and died. Eli- sha Newton's brother, Aaron, also settled in the North Parish (Boylston), and so also did Thomas Newton, son of Thomas, who signed the partition deed.

Nahum Ward, who bought the Newtons' share of Haynes' Farm, though not one of the twenty-three owners in 1717, was one of the first comers here and his purchase, a large tract, lay on the south side of the road opposite the Common, extending thence both easterly and westerly. His great-grandson, author of a history of Shrewsbury, supposes he was here before 1718, and living near the Jonas Stone house (now owned by Mr. Frederick Stone, of Boston), but Wil- liam Taylor at that time owned the land where that honse stands, and Mr. Ward owned no land nearer than the south side of the Great Road. Mr. Ward was colonel of a militia regiment in the Provincial Line, and chairman of the first and member of many subsequent Boards of Selectmen ; many times repre- sentative to the General Court, and a justice of the Worcester County Court of Common Pleas, 1745-62. He was admitted to the Worcester bar in 1731, but I have not found a case of his acting as counsel except in the Malden suit elsewhere mentioned. He was father of General Artemas Ward and ancestor of all who ever bore the Ward name in Shrewsbury. Wil- liam Ward, who came from York, England, to Sud- bury, about 1640, was his grandfather. The Newtons, of Shrewsbury, also are descended from William Ward.

Daniel How settled on the North Squadron, and kept a tavern on the Great Road, where the Shrews-

1 Ward, pp. 20 and 266-268, and see the deacon's deed of 1720 to his son in " Worcester Registry," Book 23, page 214. Mr. Ward is very wide of the fact in supposing this deed to relate to house. lot No. 26 of the proprietors' records, and in supposing this lot (26) to be the place where Erastus Wheelock, great-great-grandson of the first deacou, now lives.

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bury Poor-House formerly stood, on land now belong- ing to Mr. George H. Harlow. He was son of Josiah How, of Marlborough, and grandson of John How, who came from England and settled in Sudbury in 1638, or earlier, and on his mother's side he was grand- son of Deacon John Haynes, one of the original grant- ees of Haynes' Farm. His mother, whose maiden-name was Mary Haynes, was in 1713 owner of a share of the " farm at Quinsigamond," and under the name and addition of Mary Prescott, of Lancaster, conveyed it to " her true and well beloved son, David How, of Marlborough." The North Squadron, by lot, as we have seen, fell to the heirs and purchasers of the right of Deacon John. In explanation of his mother's name and addition, it should be added that her first husband, Josiah How, Daniel's father, dying young, she afterwards married John Prescott, of Lancaster, son of the famous blacksmith, miller and Indian fighter, who was the first settler and founder of the first town in the county of Worcester. Daniel How was the first town treasurer, and held the office several years, and he was many years a member of the select- men, and let the reader note the re-location, in 1726, of the Great Road between his house and barn as showing where he lived and kept tavern, and also where the road then was. From his militia office he . usually went by the name of Captain How.

Thomas Hapgood was great grandson of Nathaniel Treadway, one of the original grantees of Haynes' Farm, to whose heirs fell the Middle Squadron, and he settled in Shrewsbury and built his bonse near where Mr. Albert Clapp now lives, and Mr. Clapp's farm is part of Thomas Hapgood's share of the Mid- dle Squadron. He was son of Thomas Hapgood, of Marlborough, who lived to see his great-great-grand- children, and had three hundred and thirteen de- scendants living at his death, and his (the said Thomas, of Shrewsbury) grandfather was Shadrach Hapgood, of Sudbury, who married Treadway's daughter Elizabeth, and was killed in the Indian fight at Brookfield, in 1675. Thomas Hapgood's name is twice signed to the partition deed with a cross -once for himself and again as attorney for another. He was a militia captain, and commonly called Cap- tain Hapgood, town treasurer ten years and often a selectman. His three sisters, Mary,1 Elizabeth and Hepzibah, who were, of course, of the same descent with him, married and settled in Shrewsbury.

Edward Goddard, who married the said Hepzibah Hapgood, was born in Watertown, where his father and grandfather-both also named Edward-lived, and where the latter, who married Elizabeth Miles and came with her from England about 1650, first settled. He settled in the North Squadron, on the place which Edward Howe now owns, and built the house in which Mr. Howe still lives, and which, under its modernized exterior, I suppose, retains the frame

of the oldest house in Shrewsbury. The Goddard farm extended to and was bounded on the northernmost boundary line of Haynes' Farm. Mr. Goddard, who is distinguished from most of the other new-comers to Shrewsbury by having no military title, was an active man in church and town, held the office of selectman and other town officers, and was a man of considerable means.

William Taylor, who married Captain Hapgood's other sister, Elizabetli, was also a man of considerable means for his day, but did not wholly escape, like his brother-in-law, militia honors. His name in town and church-records, I believe; has the uniform prefix of sergeant. He settled on a lot of the North Squad- ron, adjoining Goddard's, being the place where Mr. Charles A. Holman now lives, and where the late Amasa Howe, great-grandson of Taylor, lived ; where lived also Amasa's father, Nathan, and his grand- father, also named Nathan, who was son of Captain Daniel How, and married Sergeant Taylor's dangh- ter, Hepzibah. The house which William Taylor built was taken down by Amasa Howe in 1849. The Taylor farm or share which he had in the North Squadron extended south to the Great Road, and in- cluded the site of the house in which his great-great- grandson, Thomas Harlow, now lives, and all the other land to and including the Common and the site of the Sumner honse. The Great Road was sub- stantially on the line between the North and Middle Squadrons, and this was Taylor's south line. The name Taylor as a surname died in Shrewsbury with the first comer, but his descendants, by six daughters, are very numerons. His father and grandfather both lived in Marlborough, and were both named William Taylor. He was many years a selectman of Shrews- bury.

CHAPTER CI.

SHREWSBURY-(Continued.)

GRANT OF TOWNSHIP-LAY-OUT OF LOTS-INCORPORA- TION-ORIGIN OF THE NAME OF THE TOWN.

IN colony and provincial records and early deeds recorded at Cambridge and Worcester one meets frequent reference to a tract of land, larger than any existing town of this Commonwealth, as "lying between Marlborough, Worcester and Lancaster," or "joyning ye west side of Marlborough town bounds," or "lying east pointe to Quonsigamon Ponds," or as "Quonsiccamon Farms," or a " meete place for a plantation near Quansiggamog," the Indian name in our times uniformly written Quinsigamond, one to two hundred years ago, being differently spelt almost every time it was written, and being applied to the vicinity of Long Pond as well as to the pond itself- much oftener, too, as it were quite easy to show, to the

1 Mary Hapgood was the first wife of John Wheeler. 50

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HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

east side, notwithstanding the complacent appropria- tion of it by our neighbors of Worcester, than to the west side of the pond. The question why formation of this large tract of land into a town was delayed till after all the other territory in the vicinity was formed into towns has been often asked, but the answer is not far to seek, and in truth has heen already given. The choicest portions of it had been already granted, and in the language of the report of a viewing com- mittee sent out to find a meet place for a plantation at Quinsigamond, it had been " spoiled by the grant- ing of farms."

After the death of the original grantees of the Haynes' Farm, several of their heirs sold their rights or shares therein, and in 1716 the owners of it, twenty- three in number, living mostly in Marlborough, but some of them in Sudbury and other towns, with a view to division and settlement of their three thousand two hundred acres at Quinsigamond, cansed it to be surveyed and divided up. Their surveyor was Johu Brigham, of Marlborough, who was the grantee of a large " farm " in the West Parish of that town, and was at that very time pushing a scheme for setting off that parish as a new town, to be called West- borough, and the owners of the Haynes' Farm em- ployed Mr. Brigham to draw up and present to the General Court a petition for the grant of the whole of the large tract between Marlborough and Worcester as a township. This petition, which was signed by John Brigham himself and thirty others, is said to have been lost, and it is not known who all of the petitioners were nor exactly what they asked for, bnt it was referred, together with another petition of which also John Brigham was the first signer, for in- corporation of his new town of Westborough, to the same viewing committee, who reported favorably on both petitions. But it is easy to see that Mr. Brig- ham and his committee, of which John Chandler, of Woodstock, was chairman, and to which the reference of bath these petitions was of course no accident, were looking mainly to the interest of the new town and less to those of the new township. A good slice from the latter-to wit, a strip between the former boundary of Marlborough and Ilaynes' Farm-was added to the former by the committee, who thought that the petitioners for the township were competent members and likely to make a speedy settlement, and that the slice proposed to be taken would not so disadvantage the township but that it might make a good town-that is to say, if the owners of all the five farms at Quinsigamond would make common cause with the petitioners, there would be plenty of land left after parting with the slice in question.

November 2, 1717, the General Court accepted the committee's report and "ordered that the tract of land protracted and described, together with the farms heretofore granted to particular persons contained in the plot, be made a township, excepting" the slice referred to, and appointed a committee to lay out the

whole of said lands (except the lands before granted) to persons most likely to advance settlement of the place, who were to pay not exceeding twelve pence per acre to the use of the Province and the com- mittee's charge for laying out.

The committee, of which Jonathan Remington was chairman, laid out forty-five lots of about seventy acres each, with a fifty-acre right to each, by which I understand a right in the settler to have fifty acres more in the uudivided lands, and also laid out for each lot about six acres of valnable meadow often quite remote from the lot. The " valuable meadow " was swamp land, and is at the present day less highly valued than it once was. And the proprietors, March 28, 1722, granted "the committy to settle the town " fifteen hundred acres for laying out the lots. The Committee's Farm, so-called, was a parcel of good land in the northwest corner of the township, called the Leg, on the Stillwater River, now a part of Sterling. Many persons have been misled by Ward's "History of Shrewsbury " into supposing that it was upon the lots laid out by the Remington committee that all the first-comers to Shrewsbury settled, and such appears to have been the belief of Mr. Ward himself. The number of the proprietors in 1718, as appears from the apportionment of a tax, was forty-five, and a lot was laid out for each one, and a few of the men to whom lots were assigned no doubt settled up- on them personally. But it was upon the Haynes' Farm, which covered all the land on both sides of the Great road, extending southerly beyond where the Worcester turnpike was afterwards laid, that most of the new-comers from Marlborough settled. The lots numbered one to sixteen, were laid out on a strip of land extending along the south and east boundary lines of the town-that is between Haynes' Farm and the town of Grafton on the south, and the towns of Westborongh and Northborough on the east-and if one will carefully examine the description of these lots, as taken by Mr. Ward from the proprietors' book, he will find frequent recurrence to the "town lines " and "Haines' Old Farm " as boundaries. Lots Nos. 17, 18 and 19 lay east of Rawson's Farm, whose locality has been before given, and Nos. 21, 22 (which was the minister's lot) and 23 lay between Haynes' Farm and Rawson's Farm, and the description of all these lots refer to these so-called "farms" as boun- daries. The other lots are more difficult to locate with exactness. Most of them were in that part of Shrewsbury now Boylston and West Boylston. No. 24 is " bounded westerly by Judge Sewall's Farm ;" No. 26 " lyeth near the west bounds of Haines' Old Farm;" No. 30 " Lyeth near the North End of Day- enport's Farm ;" Nos. 31, 32 and 34 are bounded by the "pretended Malden Farm," etc., etc. Mr. Ward has copied these descriptions containing these refer- ences to the farms without inquiry as to what or where they were.

Ten years after the township grant the town of

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SHREWSBURY.

Shrewsbury was incorporated-not by a formal act, but by an order upon application of the inhabitants for incorporation dated December 19, 1727. Mr. Ward thinks it was so called from the English town of that name, whence may have come the ancestors of some of the proprietors. Before Saxon scholars gave the true etymology of the name it was said to mean the borough of shrews, which may be either a kind of moles or a kind of wives. The Saxons, who took the English town in the fifth century, derisively changed its Welsh name to Scrobbes-Byrig (scrub town), of which the name Shrewsbury is a euphonious corrup- tion. But there is neither evidence nor reason for supposing any of the proprietors' ancestors came from the English Shrewsbury. Like many other towns, probably Shrewsbury took its name from a prominent man of the time when it was in want of one. Our neighbor on thesouth is well known to have been named from the Duke of Gra'ton, damned to everlast- ing fame in the letters of Junius. Charles Talbot, titular Earl of Shrewsbury by birth, was one of the Seven who signed the declaration inviting over the Prince of Orange on the abdication of James II., and became Secretary of State to King William, with title of Duke of Shrewsbury. On account of his winning manners Talbot is said to have been named by William of Orange King of Hearts, and habitually called by this pleasant title by the whole royal court. Under Queen Anne he held the offices of First Lord Cham- berlain and Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and finally with her dying breath the Queen gave him the staff of Lord High Treasurer, that a sure hand might hold the helm of state at her death and safely transmit the Protestant succession. As soon as the Queen had drawn her last breath Charles Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury, August 14, 1714, proclaimed George Lewis, Elector of Hanover, King of England and Ireland. The Duke died 1718, between which time and Queen Anne's death our town was settling, and as a child horn in some historical crisis is named from a prominent actor in it, so the town of Shrewsbury took its name from the statesman who, notwithstand- ing public apprehension of the Pretender, had safely transmitted the English crown in the Protestant line. But if the same partiality for Indian names had ex- isted in early times as now, probably Shrewsbury and Grafton would have continued to be called Quinsiga- mond and Hassanimisco to this day.

CHAPTER CII. SHREWSBURY-(Continued.)

THE MEETING-HOUSE LOT AND THE HOUSES THAT WERE BUILT THEREON-THE PARISH FUND-ITS ORIGIN AND GROWTH.

OCTOBER 27, 1719, the proprietors of Shrewsbury voted " that the meeting-house be on Rocky Plain,

near the Pines, and if the said spot cannot be obtained on reasonable terms, that then the meeting-house be set on Meeting-House Hill," whereby it appears that the hill laid down on maps and known to this day as Meeting-house Hill was so called as early as two years and a half after the first comers were here- doubtless because public opinion had designated this hill as the site of the house of worship that was to be. It belonged to the proprietors-which Rocky Plain did not-and it was nearer to the centre of the town- ship. Rocky Plain was part of Haynes' Farm and the portion of it which the proprietors wanted be- longed to one of their number, William Taylor. Its name, Rocky Pine Plain, indicates the boulders and forest trees that the pioneers had to deal with. On the 4th of May, 1721, the very month when the first meet- ing-house in Shrewsbury was built, William Taylor conveyed to the proprietors, of whom he was one and retaining an equal right therein with any one single proprietor, fifteen acres of land situate on Rocky Plain and lying within the bounds of a farm pur- chased by him of one of the heirs of John Haynes, bounded westerly by land of John Balcom, northerly by land of Edward Goddard, southerly by the squad- ron line and every other way by the remaining parts of said Taylor's own land. The squadron line here was the Connecticut Road, then so called. In making this conveyance Sergeant Taylor was actuated mainly by public spirit, though no doubt he expected advan- tages from having the meeting-house, which was sure to be the village centre, near where he had settled. On the 20th of May, sixteen days after his conveyance to them, the proprietors granted to him in satisfaction of his fifteen acres "5 acres and 24 rods of land on Pine Plain, westerly of Haynes' Farm on the south side of the country road," remote from the centre and of trifling value-a mere make-weight or nominal quid pro quo granted from some supposed legal neces- sity for a consideration. This fifteen acres, called "the common," beside the church site, the land around it and the graveyard, contained several other parcels, some of which were sold by the proprie- tors and some of which were appropriated without sale. The lot on which the Sumner house stands, and which was the southwest corner of the original Com- mon, was sold in 1754 to Artemas Ward, who after- ward sold it to Dr. Joseph Sumner. The house where Mr. A. J. Gibson lives, where formerly stood the old Crosby house, occupies the southeast corner. Both the Town House and the High School house are on the Taylor grant. Nor can any record of any convey- ance or grant of the proprietors be found of the sites of these public buildings. The site of the Andrews house and the field in rear of it are entirely within the old Common limits ; so also is a part of the site of the Jonas Stone house, but the sites of these two houses and the field were sold by the proprietors, as by their records appears.1

1 More thau forty years ago Nathan Howe pointed out to two of his

788

HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

Under date May 13, 1766, the day of raising the second meeting-house of the First Parish, Dr. Sum- ner has a memorandum of the fact, accompanied with a note, that "The first meeting-house in Shrewsbury was Erected in ye mounth of May, 1721." The site of the first meeting-house, according to tradition, was a little northerly and easterly of where the present house now stands. Its dimensions, given in the pro- prietors' records, were "40 feet in length by 32 in breadth, 14 feet stud." And the proprietors voted, June 22, 1720, to lay an assessment of five pounds on each,-aggregate of forty-two proprietors, two hun- dred and ten pounds. This house had neither stee- ple nor bell. The first sermon ever preached in Shrewsbury was by Rev. Robert Breck, of Marlbor- ough, June 15, 1720, and the record of the meeting, of the proprietors, when the assessment before re- ferred to was voted, contains also the proprietors' vote to apply to Mr. Breck for the notes of his sermon, in order to have them printed.1

For forty-five years (1721-66) the first meeting- house served its original purpose, but during the last five years or more there had been a growing feeling

grandsons the corners and boundaries of the Taylor grant, and told thein that they were pointed out to him when a boy by his grandfather Taylor. These grandsons were then school-hoys, of the age of seven teen years, studying surveying in the Shrewsbury High School, and one of them, a youth of rare promise and mathematical capacity, surveyed and plotted the old Cummon as his great-great-grandfather originally granted it, and his plot lies before nie on my desk while I write. His field notes are " Began at S. W. corner on the road and ran east 31 rods, N. 4° W. 7212 rods, S. 70° W. 431 2; rods, S. 17º E. 6816 rods, to where we hegan,-area, 16 acre-, 12 rods." The other boy was the writer, who alone, of all William Taylor's descendants, has the honor to bear his name. Ilis cousin, who made the survey, and whose name was Nathan Howe, so called after his grandfather, untimely died at the age of twen- ty-one years of a malignant typhus. I have recently di-covered in the files of the Supreine Judicial Court, October Term, 1832, at Worcester, First Parish in Shrewsbury es. Daniel Smith, a carefully made plan of the " Meeting-House lands," by Henry Snow, for the use of the court on trial of that case, showing all the roads, buildings, horse-sheds, tombs and fences. and the site of the meeting-house as it was in 1832, and I am both gratified and surprised at the almost exact coincidence of the sur- vey of this accurate and painstaking surveyor with that of my youthful cousin.

A history of Shrewsbury ought aot to omit some notice of the famous lawsuit of the parish with Daniel Smith, and I must crowd in some- where a brief arconnt of it,-here perhaps as well as anywhere. In 1830 Daniel Smith, who was a grandson of William Taylor, claimed title to the Common as his heir, plowed it up and sowed it with rye, wherenpon the parish brought an action of trespass against him. Of course Taylor himself had no title after his conveyance to the pro- prietors, except as one of them, and even this title, since the proprietors were a corporation, did not descend to Taylor's heirs; and, even if Taylor had never conveyed the Common at all, Smith would have had no other title than as one of Taylor's many descendants. But the proprietors were all dead, and their quasi-corporate organization was extinct. And they had never, either personally or corporately, con- veyed the Common to either the town or the parish, nor to anybody. In the action brought against him by the parish, Smith's lawyers, Re- joyce Newton and Levi Lincoln, finding he had no title to stand on, boldly challenged the title of the parish. But the Court held that the parish was the legal successor of the proprietors to at least so much of the Common as had been actually used for parochial purposes, and, being in actual possession, could maintain its action against a stranger, The case is a leading authority upon parish law, 14 Pick., 297.

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History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 205

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