History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 209

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 209

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If the Shrewsbury volunteers had organized them- selves into two companies and named six of their members for commissions as line officers, and one or two more for field or staff commissions, and insisted that they would only enter a regiment with these or- ganizations and commissions, they would have done just what others did, and would have been gladly re- eeived and their requirements granted. Our soldiers might not have accomplished any more towards put- tiug down the Rebellion then they did, and the town of Shrewsbury might not be entitled to any more eredit or honor on their account than it now is. But what with the exploits of these companies, and their officers, and their promotions, and their re.ord in published reports, letters and official documents, the writer of this history would have found better mate-

rial for making a good showing for Shrewsbury in the war than he now ean.

The early officers of the volunteers were mostly taken from the militia. Shrewsbury had no militia company. In 1861, as was natural, a little knowledge of the tactics, such as militia officers were supposed to have, was immensely overestimated. If one could say "Shoulder arms!" with the militia aecent, he was accepted as a proper commander to lead a thousand men to an assault upon artillery. It was doubtless from an overestimate of the mystery of the tactics that none of the Shrewsbury volunteers sought posi- tions as officers.1 The writer himself, being a native of Shrewsbury, and though not, in 1861, a resident of the town, having inborn in him mueh of the native modesty of Shrewsbury men, deelined a commission as eaptain. On entering the service in a lower rank, finding the army full of brigadiers not fit for second lieutenants, he plainly saw that he had been too modest. The real difference between the officers and men of the volunteer army of the War of the Rebel- lion was far less than has been commonly supposed. In 1861 two major-generals were wanted from Massa- chusetts, and two noted politicians, both Presidential aspirants, were appointed. They had both figured in the militia, and practieed the militia aecent for the manual of arms at the dress parade of militia mus- ters. Such was their preparation to cope with Lee and Jackson. When the President was looking for two men to trust with the fate of his country and the lives of his countrymen, he had much better have looked over those one hundred and forty-seven men from Shrewsbury and made his selection from them than to have looked where and selected what he did. I don't believe that Lee would have bottled one of them up with a great army at Bermuda Hundred, nor that Stonewall would have canght another napping and sent him skedaddling, pell-mell, helter-skelter, head over heels, panic-strieken, out of the Shenan- doah Valley, nor that one would have been the hero of both Big Bethel and Fort Fisher, nor that the other would have both planned and executed the Red River campaign.

Twenty-nine soldiers of Shrewsbury gave their lives for their country in the War of the Rebellion, to whose memory the town has erected an enduring monument, with their names inscribed thereon, on the Common fronting elose upon the public thorough- fare.

Several natives of Shrewsbury were officers of rank in the War of the Rebellion, and their services for their country reflect lustre on their native town, though their residenee was elsewhere.

Calvin E. Pratt, of New York, who is the son of

1 Since this statement, which was based upon examination of the pub- lished rolls of Massachusetts Volunteers, was in print 1 have learned that William E. Shaw, of Shrewsbury, served as a second lieutenant io the First North Carolina Volunteers, otherwise called the Thirty-sixth I'nited States Colored Troops, Colonel Edward Beecher.

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HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

Mr. Edward A. Pratt, late of this town, was born here in 1827. A practicing lawyer in the city of New York in 1861, he laid aside his practice to recruit a regiment and had it all ready for muster in June. As colouel of this regimeut, which was the Thirty- first New York Volunteers, he was commissioned June 20th to rank as of May 21st. With his command he took part in the first battle of Bull Run; with it also he served in the Peninsula campaign of 1862 and par- ticipated in the Seven Days' Figlit before Richmond. At the battle of Gaines' Mills he was severely wound- ed. He was promoted brigadier-general September 13, 1862. General Pratt studied law in Worcester in the office of the late Judge Henry Chapin, was ad- mitted to the bar in this county in 1853 and practiced his profession in Worcester till about a year before the war, when he removed to New York city. He has been for many years and still is a justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

John Baker Wyman, of Chicago, Ill., son of the late Seth Wyman, of Shrewsbury, was born here Novem- ber 18, 1816. He had been engaged in railroad busi- ness for several years and was, at the breaking out of the Rebellion, superintendent of the Illinois Central Railway Company. With the Chicago Light Guard, a military organization of which he was commander, as the nucleus, in the spring of 1861 he recruited the Thirteenth Illinois Infantry and was mustered into the United States service with that regiment as its colonel May 24th of that year. After a series of the most gallant and meritorious services he was killed at the siege of Vicksburg.

Charles Edward Hapgood, born in Shrewsbury, December 11, 1830, and son of Captain Joab Hap- good, was at the breaking out of the war engaged in mercantile business at Amherst, N. HI. He recruited a company for the Fifth New Hampshire Volunteers, and was mustered into service with it October 12, 1861. He served with his regiment till October 14, 1864, when, on account of severe wounds, he resigned, having been promoted lieutenant-colonel, December 14, 1862, and colonel July 3, 1864. The Fifth New Hampshire was one of the famous regiments of the army of the Poto- mac and did distinguished service. Its first com- mander, Colonel Cross, was killed at Gettysburg July 1, 1864.

Dr. Henry Putnam Stearns, son of the late Asa Stearns, and born in Shrewsbury in 1827, entered the service of the United States April 18, 1861, as surgeon of the First Connecticut volunteers, a three months regiment, and was mustered out August 1st of the same year, when he was appointed surgeon of volunteers and ordered to report to General Grant in the Depart- ment of the West. The next spring he was assigned to duty as Medical Director of the Right Wing of the Army of the Tennessee, was afterwards Inspector of Army Hospitals at St. Louis, also medical director of the general hospitals of the Northern Army of the Mississippi. He was afterwards in the same position

at Nashville, Tenn., where he remained till the close of war when (August, 1865,) he was mustered out of service with rank of brevet lieutenant-colonel. Dr. Stearns graduated at Yale College in the class of 1853, studied his profession in the medical schools of Harvard and Yale, and also at Edinburg, Scotland, and received his degree as M.D. at Yale in 1855; practiced medicine in Marlborough, Mass., till 1860 when he removed to Hartford, Conn., where, with the exception of the period he was in the United States service, he practiced till January, 1874, when he was appointed superintendent of the Hartford Retreat for the Insane, which position he still holds. He has also been lecturer on insanity in the medical department of Yale College since 1877.

Charles Grosvenor Ward, who was the son of the venerable Thomas W. Ward, Esq., and born in Shrews- bury December 30, 1829; was mustered into the ser- vice of the United States September 2, 1861, as second lieutenant in the Twenty-fourth Massachusetts Vol- unteers, the favorite regiment of the city of Boston, where he had resided for some years previous. He was promoted first lieutenant June 27, 1863, and as- signed to duty as adjutant of his regiment. After participating unharmed in sixteen of the great battles of the war and without having ever received any pro- motions at all commensurate with his long and meri- torious service, he was killed in the battle of Drury's Bluff May 11, 1864. His name is on the soldiers' monument.

All the above, except Colonel Wyman, were about the writer's age and companions of his youth, and he takes pride in this opportunity for brief memorial here of their honorable and patriotic services. He will leave to others to recount his own humble efforts to save his country. He cannot claim to reflect honor upon his native town hy high rauk or great exploits, and it would be presumptuous to name him- self in a list of natives of Shrewsbury who performed distinguished service.1

CHAPTER CVIII. SHREWSBURY-(Continued.)

AGRICULTURE-THE STAGE BUSINESS-THE TANNING AND CURRYING BUSINESS.

AGRICULTURE hasalways been the leading industry of the people of Shrewsbury. According to tradi- tion, or, perhaps, it were better to say according to the best information that can be obtained from liv- ing men as to what their grandfathers told them,

1 Major Harlow recruited a company in 1861, iu Spencer, Mass., where he was then practicing law, for the Twenty-first Massachusetts Volunteers, with which he was mustered into the United States ser- vice, and participated with that regiment in its engagements at Roa- noke Island, New Berne, Camden Court House, second Bull Run, Chantilly, South Mountain, Antietam, and Fredericksburg .- EDITOR.

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which covers a period of more than one hundred years, most of the lands now in use for pasture and tillage was cleared of wood before the Revolu- tionary War and then used for pasture and tillage. In the earliest times all meadows which, without improvement or any kind of tilling, pro- duced grass, though of the coarsest quality, were con- sidered " valuable," and farmers often had a few acres of "valuable meadow" quite remote from their farms. These meadows, to begin with, were generally free from wood, or, at any rate, from large trees, and the quantity of natural meadow was much increased and a much better kind of hay produced by bringing water whenever it could be done, by ditches upon uplands. Down until within the memory of living men, farm products in Shrewsbury were chiefly con- sumed within the town. Families were large and home consumption was large. Nor was there any market to buy or sell in, nor much money in farmers' pockets to trade with. But early in the present cen- tury it was discovered by Shrewsbury farmers that, there was a market in Boston for butter, cheese, eggs, chickens, veal and pork, and for beef on the hoof in Brighton, and a class of middle men called drovers and market men, began to pass and repass back and forth from Shrewsbury and the market. From this time farming began to improve. Farmers were not so absolutely destitute of money. There were better tools, better methods of farming, better cattle and better crops, and with industry and economy it was possible for the Shrewsbury farmer to rise a little above the chill penury of the beginners. Rye, oats, Indian-corn and hay were the chief crops. Apple- trees were planted at the very outset, and, before 1776, nearly every farm had its orchard, and if good fruit was not abundant, there was no lack of cider. About 1820 market-wagons began to run regularly every week from Shrewsbury to Boston, and return- ing they hauled for the storekeepers the groceries and dry-goods that they dealt in. This continued till about 1845, when it was found that the town of Worcester was a better market than Bostou as well as much nearer, and everybody could be his own market-man, and so put in his own pocket the com- missions on sales. Before the use of coal became common in Worcester, the Shrewsbury farmer had a near and growing market for wood as fuel, and be- fore the great forests of Canada and the west were connected by rail with the east, the demand of Wor- cester for Shrewsbury lumber was beyond the supply. But times in recent years, with the Shrewsbury farmer have greatly changed, and there is but one farm product in respect to which he is not obliged to compete with producers of remote States. On ac- count of its quickly perishable nature, milk, which is in demand the year round, is in no danger of re- mote competition. It is to-day the chief product that goes to market from Shrewsbury farms. Except milk, and possibly apples, of which in alternate

years the orchards of Shrewsbury produce a large quantity and of famous quality, 1 do not suppose there is any other farm product of sufficient amount to supply more than the home market.

In recent years the salable value of farm lands in Shrewsbury has been steadily diminishing, and, in fact, they cannot be sold at all. Nobody will buy and many want to sell. There is not, probably, a farm in the town that would sell for enough to pay the cost of the buildings and fences standing on it. The reasons are not far to seek. "To diversify industry " the manufactures of Massachusetts have been so fa- vored at the expense of agriculture that the natives of Shrewsbury have been enticed away from the homes and occupations of their fathers to enter shops. The "home markets " which the cities and manufactur- ing centres of the State are reputed to furnish, are flooded with the farm products of other States, and the Shrewsbury farmer has to pay tribute not only to other occupations for every article of clothing he wears and every tool that he nses, but even for farm products to farmers of sunnier climes and more fer- tile soils than his own living within his own country. Not a pound of sugar or rice can he buy without paying the favored growers of these necessities of life double prices. Protection for everybody else's products and free trade against his have ground the Shrewsbury farmer like upper and nether millstones, and no wonder he wants to sell his farm and no wonder nobody wants to buy it.

In 1860 was formed in Shrewsbury a Farmers' Club, for the purpose of promoting the best methods of farming. The club holds occasional meetings in the winter season for discussion of agricultural topics, and its annual cattle shows, held in October, have become famous and the favorite resort of the people of neigh- boring towns. In 1815 was formed in Shrewsbury a like association, called the Agricultural Associates of Shrewsbury, and the next year another, with the name of the Agricultural Associates of Worcester, was formed in Worcester. In 1818 the two societies were merged in a county society and incorporated under the name of the Worcester Agricultural Society, which directly took and has ever since maintained a prominent position in the esteem, not only of the farmers, but of all the people of Worcester County of whatever occupation.

Of other branches of business, such as the manu- facture of guns, of watches and of boots and shoes, which, to some extent never large, was formerly car- ried on here, the limits of this work do not admit of more specific mention. But I cannot omit some brief account of the famous stage business, whose founder and manager lived here, and with Shrewsbury as his headquarters, carried it on to places far remote ; nor of the tanning and currying business which, begun here in an humble way more than a century ago, has grown to a very extensive business.

Captain Levi Pease, the founder of stage business

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HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

in this country, moved from Boston to Shrewsbury in 1793. He was a son of Nathaniel Pease, born at Enfield, Conn., in 1739, and was by trade a black- smith. His father was a sailor, and reported to have been lost at sea. His mother married a second husband, named Parsons, after which her first hus- band returned. After one glance at the situation Nathaniel Pease went off to sea, and was never heard of at Enfield again. Levi's title as captain was earned in the Continental line. At the begin- ning of the Revolutionary War he was living at Blandford, Mass. He served with General Thomas in Canada, and later with General Wordsworth in the Commissary Department,-often employed in perilous euterprises, to bear dispatches and obtain supplies,-a resolute and tireless man, up early and down late. After the war he kept a tavern for some years at Somers, Conn. Afterwards he kept the Lamb in Boston, whence he removed to Shrewsbury, where he bought the tavern stand of Major John Farrar.

But more than ten years before Captain Pease came here, he had projected and was running a stage line from Boston to Hartford. Farrar's Tavern in Shrewsbury had been from the beginning a night stop- ping-place on the line, and after becoming familiar with his route, he selected it as the best point from which to operate his business. He took into partnership with him a young native of Somers named Reuben Sykes, who was also a blacksmith. No man of capi- tal would invest a dollar with Pease aud Sykes in their visionary stage line. Said a solid man of Bos- ton to Captain Pease : "The time may come when a stage line to Hartford will pay, but not in your day." The partners commenced business with an outfit of eight horses and "two convenient wagons," and their first trip was performed October 20, 1783. Pease drove one wagon from the Lamb Tavern in Boston at six o'clock Monday morning, and reached Hartford on Thursday; and Sykes drove the other, leaving Hartford at the same time, and arriving also in Boston in four days. Two of the night stopping- places were Farrar's, in Shrewsbury, and Pease's, in Somers. The other-when Tuesday night they met- was at Rice's, in Brookfield. And tbey ran in fair weather and in foul, in mud and in snow, passengers or no passengers, punctual as the stars in their courses. In two years this stage line was a great success, and was extended to New York. In 1786 Pease and Sykes established a line of stages from Portsmouth to Savannah, and carried the mails. They also had, for several years, an exclusive con- tract with the government to carry the mails for all New England, re-letting to numerous others, who on branch lines collected and distributed the mails. It was Pease and Sykes that made punctual as the mail a proverb.

Captain Pease learned his punctuality in one les- son, and his teacher was George Washington, who,

when he was at Cambridge in 1776, wanted to buy a pair of horses, and made an appointment with Pease, who had a pair of horses to sell. Pease was a few minutes too late for the appointment, and Washing- ton did not wait for him. It was the last time Levi Pease ever got left.

The founder of stage lines was also the first pro- jector of turnpikes. Of all the many companies chartered in Massachusetts about the beginning of this century to build turnpikes, it was the First Mas- sachusetts Turnpike Corporation whose charter (1796) was to Levi Pease and his associates, authorizing them to build a turnpike through Palmer and West- ern.1 He put in his earnings and savings, and made a good road where there was a very bad one; but the turnpike never paid, and in consequence of his in- vestments in its stock Captain Pease died a poor man. But he lived and ran his stages many years. His death took place in Shrewsbury January 28, 1824, and his age was eighty-four years. His honor and integrity, which were as famous as his punc- tuality, were inborn, and therein Washington him- self could have taught him nothing. Often in the army, often in his business as tavern-keeper and stage-driver trusted with uncounted money, the trust was sacredly inviolate.

For many years four stages a day, two going east and two going west, passed through Shrewsbury on the Great Road. In 1806 the Worcester Turnpike Association was chartered to build a turnpike from Worcester to Roxbury. Its course was as straight as possible, and ran through the south part of Shrews- bury. After its completion in 1808, four stages-two each way also-ran daily on the turnpike. Another turnpike, having Shrewsbury for one of its termini, and Amherst for the other-the Sixth Massachusetts -sometimes called the Holden Turnpike-was built in 1800. A line of stages also ran daily on this turn- pike. Both of these turnpikes were abandoned many years ago by the corporations that built them, and were laid out by the county commissioners as high- ways.

Col. Nymphas Pratt, whose father, Capt. Seth Pratt, was the founder of the tanning and currying business in Shrewsbury, was born April 5, 1786, in the old house owned by Henry Harlow, standing near the brick house in which he lives. The tannery was on the south side of the road opposite the houses, and was sold in 1796 with the old house then compara- tively new, and about twenty-two acres of land, by Capt. Pratt to the writer's grandfather, Thomas Har- low, who came from Duxbury, when he was twenty-one years old, to buy it, and paid $1000 for it. Here was the place where, and Seth Pratt was the man by whom the tanning business was begun in Shrewsbury. After sale of his tannery he moved to Barre, dammed the Ware River, built woolen-mills and founded the vil-

1 Changed to Warren.

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lage of Barre Plains. Deacon Thomas Harlow, who was a farmer as well as tanner, carried on the tannery for nearly fifty years in connection with his farm, which he bought piece by piece of his neighbors.

Col. Pratt, Capt. Seth's son (military titles both de- rived from militia commissions), about the year 1810 built a new tannery in the Lower Village in Shrews- bury, where the business or the currying branch of it has been continued to the present day. Here Col. Pratt did the business, both tanning and currying, till from a small beginning it grew into a very large and prosperous one, and the owner of it became a man of great influence and was accounted to possess immense wealth. People said he was worth one hundred thon- sand dollars, which sounded bigger than a million does now. Col. Pratt was one of the principal foun- ders of the Citizens' Bank in Worcester, incorporated in 1836 with a capital stock of $250,000, and was its first president. In 1839 he failed in business and this bank, which had discounted a large amount of his paper, was a heavy loser. But the failure of Col. Pratt was dne not so much to his own business as a tanner and currier as to his courageons and honorable though rash attempt to sustain through such a financial crisis as that of 1837-40, the firm of S. H. Allen & Co., of which the partners were his son, William Pratt, who was a lawyer and lived in Worcester, and his son-in-law, Simon Hapgood Allen, who was the active manager of the firm business and lived in Shrews- bury. The business of this firm, which was formed in 1833 and carried on at the brick store in the Lower Village in Shrewsbury, was mainly the mannfacture of ready-made clothing. Mr. Allen may be said to have been the founder of the ready-made clothing business. The firm employed a large force of tailors, who cut out the garments, which were taken home and sewed by women at their houses. Many of the sales of the firm were on credit at places far remote-in the South and West. In such a crisis as that of 1837 no wonder the firm failed. If Col. Pratt had allowed this firm to go down into its inevitable bankruptcy, probably he might have saved himself and his own proper business.

Upon the winding np of Col. Pratt's affairs in bankruptcy, Lucius H. Allen, who was his foreman, bonght of his assignees the tanning business, and continned to carry it on till 1862, and Jonathan H. Nelsou and Thomas Rice, who had learned the trade of curriers in Col. Pratt's shop, took the currying business. With no capital except their trade to be- gin business with, by industry, laboring untiringly with their own hands they, by degrees, built up a very large and profitable business. In 1862 Mr. Allen, who had also done a large and profitable busi- ness, sold out to Nelson & Rice his tannery. Dur- ing the war the business of this firm became enor- mous and its profits immense-many times exceed- ing anything that Col. Pratt had ever done or dreamed of. Mr. Nelson died in 1872, leaving a

large estate, and his partner, Mr. Rice, has recently died, leaving, doubtless, a much larger. The busi- ness is still carried on by Mr. Charles O. Green, who, after the death of Mr. Nelson, was associated with Mr. Rice as partner. Col. Pratt, Mr. Allen, Mr. Nelson and Mr. Rice were all men of public spirit, and deeply interested in all that concerned the town of Shrewsbury and the Congregational parish ; and they were, all of them, honored with the public trusts of selectmen and representatives to the Gen- eral Court. Mr. Rice was also, in 1869, a member of the Massachusetts Senate, and, having been for many years a director of the First National Bank of Worcester and president of the Northborongh Na- tional Bank, he had an extensive acquaintance among business men.

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History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 209

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