History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 124

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1464

USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II > Part 124

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The woolen-mill now run by W. E. Hayward & Co. was built by Warren Hunt, in 1863, for a cotton- mill. It has subsequently been in the possession of Nelson Williams, C. P. Whitin, Moses Taft and Lee & Murdock. Among other manufactories may be mentioned Thayer's grist and saw-mill, Logee's car- riage manufactory, Wellman's grist-mill and Eagle Grist-Mill. Manufactories of a former period were the Cragin satinet-mill, Wallis's planing.mill, Samuel Legg's fulling-mill, Adams' cassimere factory, Burt plow factory, Preston cotton factory, the Lovett mill, Southworth's grist-mill and Carpenter's tannery and shoe factory.

EDUCATIONAL .- The first reference to schools, found on the town records is under date of 1748, when it was " voted that a schoole be kept three months in ye summer seasons." The early records show that the town manifested a lively interest in schools, and in 1757 it was voted that "schools be set up in five parts of the town." The cost of schools from 1747 to 1770 ranged from £2 to £20 annually, and occasion- ally a year passed with no appropriation. The schools of the town at present are in a fairly pros- perous condition.

The present members of the School Committee are Levi White, M.D., E. C. Esten, Stillman Russell, Rev. James Wells, James Wixted, Francisco Bowen, C. S. Caswell, E. B. Knapp and W. W. Brown.

The present Board of Selectmen, who are also over- seers of poor, are E. N. Jenckes, Orin Chase, J. M. Parker, W. P. Wight and N. G. Dudley.

The present Board of Assessors : S. W. Potter, Caleb Hill and Thomas E. Wixted.

1 A more extended history of Douglas is now in course of preparation by Mr. A. F. Brown, and will be issued in due time. Mr. Brown is well qualified for the work, and the history will be a valuable addition to the historic literature of New England .- [EDITOR. ]

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DOUGLAS.

The present postmaster at Douglas Centre is A. J. Dudley, and at East Douglas, A. F. Brown.

The fund known as the " Wallis Devise " was orig- inated by the will of Moses Wallis, wherein he be- queathed a certain sum of money to be kept on inter- est until November 16, 1901, when both principal and interest should form a new principal to be " forever thereafter kept on interest, the annual interest " of this new principal, when it reaches twelve thousand dollars, to be applied to the building of a Town Hall, &c. The present agent of the fund is C. W. Potter.

SOCIETIES .- The Masonic Lodge is in a prosperous condition, with John M. Rawson as present Master.

Samuel Sibley Post, Grand Army Republic, No. 137, was organized about eight years ago, with George H. Walker, Commander, who was succeeded by Henry Hutchins, and he by J. Q. Bigelow, the present Com- mander. The members of the post are harmonious and united, and have done and are now doing a noble work in the distribution of charities and look- ing after the wants of the needy and destitute. The town has given them from one hundred to two hun- dred dollars annually, which they have judiciously expended.

THE PRESS .- The Douglas Herald was established March 7, 1868, by G. B. Quinby and George W. Spen- cer. Soon after Mr. Quinby retired and for a short time Mr. Henry F. Dudley was associated with Mr. Spencer. In 1872 Charles A. W. Spencer, a brother of George W., became interested in the paper, and it was published by George W. Spencer & Co.

January 25, 1873, the Douglas Herald and Whitins- ville Compendium were consolidated under the name of the Worcester South Compendium, and was pub- lished here until October 4, 1873, when it was re- moved to Uxbridge. .

Other sheets have been as follows : The Advertiser, by C. J. Batcheller ; Our Home Journal, by W. D. Bridge & Co. ; The Engraver's Proof Sheet, by William A. Emerson; and Practical Instructions in the Art of Wood Engraving, by William A. Emerson.

During the War of the Rebellion Douglas aided the Colonial cause nobly, both in men and money. It is impossible to ascertain the number of her citi- zens who served in the war, but it is safe to say that the number reached from seventy-five to one hundred, and this in a probable population of not exceeding three hundred souls. In April, 1775, Lieut. Ezra Whiting represented the town in the Provincial Congress at Concord, and in the following May Jere- miah Whitney was member of the General Court. Among others who were active in aiding the cause were William Johnson, Ezra Whiting, Robert Humes, Caleb Bill, William Dudley, Nathaniel Snow, Daniel Aldrich, Stephen Streeter, John Herendren, Joseph Emerson, Samuel Parker, Daniel Hunt, Abner Perry, John Taylor, Aaron Benson, Caleb Whiting, Jonah Martin, David Thompson and Job Knapp.

WAR OF THE REBELLION .- At the breaking out

of the Rebellion the town responded promptly to the President's call for troops, and its record during the struggle is one in which its citizens may justly feel a patriotic pride.

The town furnished about two hundred and fifty men, and appropriated for war purposes, exclusive of State aid, the sum of $30,734.36. The following is a list of soldiers :

Second Massachusetts Volunteers .- Lebright Brown, John B. Johnson, John Richards, Tbomaa Take, Thomas Wolf.

Fourth Massachusetts Volunteers .- John Schriver.

Eleventh Massachusetts Volunteers,-Horace Belding, Lorin B. Chase, Philip Gannon, J. Francia, W. Thompson.

Fifteenth Massachusetts Volunteers .- Edwin F. Andrews, Rufns Belden (corporal), Kennedy Bronock, Franklin Bullard (corporal), Benjamin R. Elliott, Harlan Fairbanks (corporal), Sylvester Oakes, Nathaniel Put- nam, Adoniram J. Rawson, Samuel Sibley, Harvey Sibley, Thomas Snow, Jr., Thomas A. Southwick, Hiram Ward.

Eighteenth Massachusetts Volunteers .- Alexander Thompson.

Twenty-second Massachusetts Volunteers .- Alfred H. Marsh.

Twenty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers .- John Blake.

Twenty-fifth Massachusetts Volunteers .- Joseph Alhee, Orrin J. Aldrich, John Allen, Willianı Deforest Balcome (musician), Benjamin Bartlett, James O. Bartlett, Nathan S. Bartlett, Elbridge Buxton, Glory Busch, Orlando Carpenter, Samuel Cragin, Joshua Dubuque, Cornelius Em- miona (band). George A. Gleason, Stephen Hall, George Hall, Samuel Hall, John Hall, Rensselaer G. Ilamilton, Benajah Hodge, Allen R. Hough, Henry C. Lampson, George Leach, Joseph Lemay, Jeremiah E. Luther (corporal), Thomas Magee, Timothy Megary, Aaron Metcalf, Marshall Purinton, Nathaniel Putnam, Lambert B. Simmons, Hiram Staples, Amos Steere (hand). Francia A. Stockwell, Joseph Teabault, Charles C. Wall, William Wood.

Twenty-seventh Massachusetts Volunteers .- Dr. Franklin Hunt (assistant Norgeon), William Mayer, Lewis Satro.

Twenty eighth Massachusetts Volunteers .- Thomas J. Calden (hand), Euoch Converse (hand), Noah H. Jones (baud), Edward L. Thayer (band), Bennett W. Thomas (band).

Thirtieth Massachusetts Volunteers .- John Perry.

Thirty-third Massachusetts Volunteers .- James Ward.

Thirty-sixth Massachusetts Volunteers-Daniel A. Burton (sergeant), Patrick Callahan, Leonard A. Chapman, Elias H. Freeman, Matthew Hudson, William Mowry.

Fifty-first Massachusetts Volunteers .- Leander Andrews, Nelson Angell, Joseph T. Arnold, Charles T. Balcome, Elmer H. Balcome, Wellington Balcome, Solomon V. R. Barnes, Lemuel C. Belding, John Bird, Phile- tus Buffum, Loami B. Carr, John Collar, John Donalaon, George E. Dunn, John N. Gaskell, Gilbert L. Gillson, Leonard G. Higgins (corporal) Moses W. Hollis, Joseph Hough, Josiah Hough, Jr., Loren M. Howell, William Hunt (captain), George F. Hntchina (hand), William N. Jones, Oscar Keith, Benjamin Knapp (corporal), Alphonzo Luther (sergeant), Francis A. Maynard (corporal), Charles W. Moore (second lieutenant), Francis L. Moore, Lewis T. Moore (sergeant), Nahum Morse, Ezekiel Packard (first lieutenant), Peter Roberts, Charles F. Russell, Jeremiah F. Russell, Alfred Snow, Ira Southwick, Willie W. Sherman, Simeon Il. Staples, Lucius M Thayer (captain), Elijah Thompson, David L. Thomas, Chandler Titus, Hiram Ward, Charles Whitney, Lucins S. Whipple, Charles A. Whipple, William A. Wilcox, William H. Wilcox, James Woodard, Dorris B. Young.

Fifty-seventh Massa husetts Volunteers .- David B. Curtis, John N. Gas- kell, Henry Glover, Abner A. Lealand. Lewis Mountain.

Fifty-eighth Massachusetts Volunteers .- George A. Stone.

First Massachusetts Cavalry .- John D. Darling, Noah M. Knight, William N. Sprague, Charles C. Walla, John Kelley.

Third Massachusetts Cavalry .- Herbert R. Bragg.

Fourth Massachusetts Cavalry .- William Brown, James Clark, John McGrath, Noah M. Knight (transferred from First Massachusetts Cav- alry).

First Massachusetts Heavy Artillery .- Stephen Martyr, Alexander Miken, Andrew Peter.

[ For balance of list see Appendix, page 1748]-

WORCESTER.

THE following history of the town and city of Worcester was prepared under the supervision of a committee, which consisted of Samnel Swett Green, A.M., librarian of the Free Public Library, Worcester; Charles Augustus Chase, A.M., treasurer of the Worcester County In- stitution for Savings; and Mr. Nathaniel Paine, cashier of the City National Bank, Worcester. This committee eelected the writers of the different chapters, and secured their services; it also made suggestions to them regarding the performance of their work, and has read the chapters in manuscript and rendered aid as occasion required. The gentlemen who form the committee are well known to have an exten- sive knowledge of local history, and are, all of them, members of the Council of the American Antiquarian Society. Special thanks are due to the chairman of the committee for the fertility of resource, energy, courtesy and executive ability which he has shown, and to all ite members for the good judgment and aptness for the work undertaken by them, which they have displayed, and for the readiness with which they have given conusel, and out of their large stores of information have offered aid to writers and publishers. The editor and publishers wish to state emphatically that the services of the committee have been in the highest degree valuable .- EDITOR.

CHAPTER CLXXX.

BY P. EMORY ALDRICH, LL.D.

¿1. An outline of the history of Worcester, from the earliest attempts at settlement to the close of the Revolutionary War, is all that will be undertaken in this initial chapter ; a fuller narrative of the events of that period will be given by other writers, to whom that duty has been assigned. The origin of New England towns has occupied the attention of many students of our early institutions, and much has been written and published on the subject within the last few years. These writings disclose a very consider- able divergence in the views held by different writers as to the true origin of towns, and the formative influences by which their development has been con- trolled.

As this chapter is devoted to an account of the origin and early annals of Worcester, it has seemed to the writer that some discussion of the general sub- ject of the origin and growth of towns in the Plym- outh and Massachusetts Colonies would not be out of place in this connection.

The origin of these towns was not the same in all cases. The mode of acquiring title to the soil and the means of effecting settlements were not the same in all towns. But, although the methods of acquiring title to land might vary in different cases, yet the

primary sources from which all land titles in these colonies were derived were the same. At the time of the discovery and settlement of this country it had become a fixed principle of international law, among the European nations, that prior discovery by any of them gave to them the prior and better title, and grants from them passed an absolute title to the grantee, subject to the Indian occupany. And it be- came a rule of law, also, in all English colonies that the Crown had the sole and absolute right to acquire or extinguish the Indian title. This statement does not agree with the very common opinion as to what was the real nature of the Indian's title to the land over which they roamed, but upon which they could hardly be said to dwell, or of the manner in which that title or right could be acquired, and yet the state- ment is strictly true. Chief Justice Marshall, in giving the opinion of the United States Supreme Court, in a case in which the question arose, says, "The power now possessed by the government of the United States to grand lands resided, while we were colonies, in the Crown or its grantees. The validity of the titles given by either has never been ques- tioned in our courts. It has been exercised uni- formly over territories in the possession of the In- dians.

" The existence of this power must negative the existence of any right which may conflict with and control it. An absolute title to lands cannot exist at

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WORCESTER.

the same time in different persons, or in different geveruments. An absolute, must be an exclusive title, or at least a title which excludes all others not compatible with it. All onr institutions recognize the absolute title of the Crown, subject only to the Indian right of occupancy, and recognize the abso- lute title of the crown to extinguish the right."1 It would not be difficult to demonstrate, if this were the proper place to do so, that what is called the absolute right of the Crown was, in reality, the right of the people of England, which, by their free choice, they had vested in the Crown.2

The Crown, in the exercise of that sovereign right, granted certain lands, lying within defined limits, to the Massachusetts Colouy ; subsequently the colony, through its constituted authorities, granted specific parcels of these lands to companies or proprietors, and the latter, sooner or later, became the founders of towns; and these proprietors, either before or after their organization into townships, conveyed, in smaller parcels, the lands they held in common to individuals who held the same in severalty.

In this way Worcester had its origin, as will herein- after be more fully set forth, with the conditions upon which the original grant was made and the struggles and hardships through which the early set- tlers passed before they finally succeeded in laying the foundations on which this goodly city of eighty thousand inhabitants now, after the lapse of more than two centuries, securely rests.

Worcester furnishes a good illustration of the man- ner in which many of the Massachusetts towns origi- nated, and it will hardly be necessary to seek among the primitive Teutonic institutions on the continent or look to the Anglo-Saxon or Norman institutions in England for models on which these towns were built. " In that land," says De Tocqueville, speaking of America, " the great experiment was to be made by civilized man of the attempt to construct society upon a new basis ; and it was there, for the first time, that theories hitherto unknown, or deemed imprac- ticable, were to exhibit a spectacle for which the world had not been prepared by the history of the past."

It is true that local self-government, in a modified form, had been known both in Germany and England before the earliest colonization of America. But long before that colonization commenced the Crown had, by repeated encroachments, deprived the people of their ancient right of self-control, and that right or power had been vested in municipal councils or other local boards, and which were self-perpetuating bodies.3 But when removed from the presence of that domi- nating power of the few over the many, the colonists at once returned to what has been called the natural order of society in the establishment of government.

Writing upon "The American System," a writer already quoted says : " The village or township is the only association which is so perfectly natural that whenever a number of men are collected it seems to constitute itself. The tithing or town exists in all nations, whatever their laws and customs may be; it is man who makes monarchies and establishes re- publics, but the township seems to come directly from the hand of God."

This may be regarded as an ideal or speculative, rather than an historical statement of the origin of towns, yet it contains the announcement of a funda- mental truth connected with the subject, and that is, when men come to live together in society, they find it necessary, when left to regulate their own affairs, to establish, within comparatively narrow territorial limits, some form of local self-government; and this they do, not because some more or less remote ances- tors may have done the same thing, but rather in obedience to a necessary law of social existence.

And every generation or community of men, when left free to act, will establish such local institutions as will best subserve the necessities and wants grow- ing out of their environments ; and this they will do without any servile imitation of those who have gone before them. The late Professor Parker, of the Dane Law School, a learned writer on legal and historical subjects, said, in a paper on "The Origin, Organiza- tion and Influence of the Towns of New England," that "a careful examination of the history of New England towns will show that they were not founded or modeled on precedent; . . . they were not con- trived in the closet, nor in the hall of a legislative assembly, and brought into existence, with the powers and duties which we find attached to them, by the enactment of a law for that purpose. They did not burst into mature life by any previous con- trivance. But, like most other useful machinery, they had their origin in the wants of the time, and came into existence by a gradual progress from im- perfect beginnings." The learned author of a me- moir of Plymouth County declares that "the origin of town government in New England is involved in some obscurity. The system does not prevail in England. Nothing analogous to it is known in the Southern States; and, although the system of inter- nal government in the Middle States bears a partial resemblance to that of New England, it is, in many respects, dissimilar."

In another part of the same memoir the author says : "To the independent churches we may trace the original notion of independent communities, which afterwards assumed the name of towns, and which, having passed through an ecclesiastical state, and after the proprietaries became extinct from the special appropriations of all the lands within the bounds of their charter, assumed the shape of polit- ical corporations, with municipal and in part legisla- tive powers within their limits." This will hereafter

1 8 Wheaton's Rep., p. 588.

2 J. Toulmin Smith on " Self-Government." Ch. on the Crown.

3 Frothingham's " Rise of the Republic," pp. 14-15.

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HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

be shown by the undisputed facts of history to be an imaginary and not the true genesis of towns.

Another late writer on this subject, and quoting the opinion of an earlier author, says, "New Eng- land towns are models after the plan of King Al- fred's hundreds."

To show the fallacy of this theory of the origin of our towns, it may suffice to state that it is but a tradi- tion that Alfred devised the arrangement into hun- dreds and tithings ; and, beside-, the tradition itself is inconsistent with the facts of authentic history.1 And, moreover, the English hundred had very lit- tle in common with the New England townships or towns.2

In his " History of Charlestown " Mr. Frothingham affirms that "the nearest precedent for New England towns were those little independent nations, the free cities of the twelfth century, or the towns of the An- glo-Saxons, when every officer was elective." In an- other connection the same writer says, that "the German and Anglo-Saxon principle of local govern- ment was early asserted in all the colonies, and that whether the organization was called parish, borough, hundred, town or county, the principle was carried out that the inhabitants should manage their local affairs through officers legally elected. Municipality in New England was the simplest of all municipal forms, and the best adapted to develop the republi- can idea."

An inquiry respecting the origin and constitution of the free cities of medieval Europe would show that they differ very widely from the towns of New England. Most of these cities had existed before the fall of the Roman Empire in the West; they had suffered from invasions and civil wars, and "upon the fall of the Empire had still been repressed by the feudal polity." Their inhabitants had been de- spoiled and their commerce and industry destroyed. " But the municipal traditions of Rome had sur- vived, and were confirmed by the free customs of the Teutons. The towns gradually obtained from the crown, and from feudal superiors, charters of enfran- chisement, which secured to them the rights of main- taining fortified walls, of raising troops and main- taining self-government."

In Italy and other parts of Europe some of the principal towns grew into sovereign municipal re- publics and formed alliances among themselves more or less permanent; hence arose the Hanseatic League and the other great confederation called the Rhenish League, and the confederation of towns and cantons in Switzerland. And, above all, the Roman law, the greatest monument of legislative wisdom the world has ever seen, survived the fall of the empire, and became the law of the nations that overran and destroyed the empire, and exerted a

controlling influence in the formation of all their in- stitutions.

From these brief statements the great dissimilarity between the so-called free cities of the twelfth century and New England towns is apparent. The former had existed as component parts of pre-existing nation- alities, and had been over-run by barbarians, and their liberty destroyed by feudalism, and after centuries of struggle they succeeded in throwing off the oppres- sions of feudalism, and regained, in a measure, their franchises as independent municipalities; whereas, the New England towns were original creations, on a virgin soil, and far removed from the scenes of okler civilizations, and instead of being separate and inde- pendent municipalities, these towns were component parts of the State, forming together one body politic.

"In their origin our boroughs," says the author of the " History of the English People," "were utterly unlike those of the western world. The cities of Italy and Provence had preserved the municipal institutions of the Roman past; the German towns had been founded by Henry the Fowler with the purpose of sheltering industry from the feudal oppressions around them ; the Communes of Northern France sprang into existence in revolt against feudal outrages within their walls. But in England the tradition of Rome pas-ed utterly away, while feudal oppression was held fairly in check by the Crown. The English town, therefore, was in its beginning simply a piece of the general country, organized and governed precisely in the same manner as townships around it. Its existence wit- nessed, indeed, to the need which men felt in those early times of mutual help and protection. The bor- ough was probably a more defensible place than the common village. But in itself it was simply a town- ship, or group of townships, where men clustered, whether for trade or defense, more thickly than else- where.

" The towns were different in the circumstances of their rise. Some grew up in the fortified camps of the English invaders. Some dated from a later occupa- tion of sacked and desolate Roman towns. Some were the direct result of trade. There was the same variety in the mode in which the various town communities were formed." This passage has been quoted partly for the purpose of testing the soundness of those theories which attempt to trace the beginning of New England towns to a definite German or Anglo-Saxon origin. Neither English towns nor towns on the con- tinent of Europe had a common origin, and they differed essentially in the elements of their organiza- tion and powers. The historian Stubbs, who seems to have explored the beginning of English institutions more thoroughly than any of his predecessors, says : " The historical township is the body of allodial owners who have advanced beyond the stage of land community, retaining many vestiges of that organiza- tion ; or the body of tenants of a lord who regulates them, or allows them to regulate themselves, on prin-

1 Stubbs' "Constitutional History, " I vol., ch. 5, p. 99.

2 Ibid. pp. 96-108.

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WORCESTER.

ciples derived from the same. In a further stage, the township appears in its ecclesiastical form as the parish, or portion of a parish, the district assigned to a parish." The same writer clearly shows that in different parts of England these primary divisions of territory or people assumed different forms, and passed under different names.

The description of an English town, by the dis- tinguished historian of the Norman Conquest, exhib- its a most marked contrast, rather than similarity, be- tween an English and a New England town. "An English town," says that writer, " was a collection of every class of inhabitants, of every kind of authority, which could be found in the whole land, all brought close together. Lords with their sac and soc ; churches with their property and privileges; guilds-that is, artificial families, with their property, their usages, their religions rites; thanes and churls in the lan- guage of one age, barons and villains in the language of another, merchants, churchmen, monks, all the elements of English society, were to be seen side by side in a small compass. The various classes thus brought together were nnited by neighborhood, by common interests, by common property and privi- leges."1 There is very little in all this to remind one of the simple and homogeneous character of a New England town, either of the earliest or latest type. The statement of Maine, in his interesting work on "Village-Communities in the East and West," "that the earliest English emigrants to North America or- ganized themselves at first in Village-Communities for purposes of cultivation," is too broad and unqnali- fied for the facts upon which it is based. It is true the Pilgrims at Plymouth held and cultivated their lands in common for a short time, but they soon made a division of the common property and each person held his own in severalty. As early as 1625 every man at Plymonth planted for himself, and all the prodnets of his labor were to be his own individual property. The fact that the Colonial Legislatures made grants of lands to companies, who undertook to establish towns, were made with no expectation or design that the members of the company should con- tinue to hold the lands as tenants in common, but rather that they should make allotment of portions of the lands to the several members of the company, and convey the remaining portions to other persons whom they could induce to join them in the organi- zation of a new town. One ingenious writer on the origin of our early political institutions declares "that here (in New England) the fathers laid deep and broad the foundations of American freedom, and that here was developed the township, with its local self- government, the basis and central element of our po- litical system-npon the township was formed the county, composed of several towns similarly organ- ized; the State, composed of several counties, and

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History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 124

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) Publication date: 1889 Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1464

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1464