History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 13

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 13

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The industries of Grafton are distributed among the various villages of which the town is composed. A mill at the Central Village; another at Saunders- ville, on the Blackstone River; another at Farnums- ville, also on the Blackstone River ; a mill at North Grafton, formerly called the Grafton Mills; the Fisher Mills, at the junction of the Quinsigamond and Blackstone Rivers, and the lower mill at North Graf- ton, are engaged in the manufacture of cotton and fancy cloths and emery, and furnish occupation for a numerous and busy population. Besides these in-

aft.

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HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

dustries the manufacture of shoes is carried on at the North Village by J. S. Nelson & Co., and gives em- ployment to nearly two hundred hands. The busi- ness of currying is also largely carried on and is an important feature in the industry of the town. A full description of all these industries is given in Pierce's " History of Grafton," and to that valuable work the reader is referred.

Among the institutions in the town are the Grafton National Bank, incorporated in 1865, as the sueces. sor of the Grafton Bank, established in 1854, with a capital of one hundred thousand dollars; the First National Bank, incorporated in 1864, also with a capital of one hundred thousand dollars; the Grafton Savings Bank, incorporated in 1869; the Franklin Lodge of Masons, established in 1852; the Sprague Post of the Grand Army, organized in 1866; and the Good Templars, established also in 1866. The town has a Fire Department, established by law in 1853, and an abundance of good water supplied by the Grafton Water Company. The population of the town does not largely increase. In 1875 it was 4442 and in 1885 had only increased to 4498. Such a sluggishness of increase cannot long coutinne. Its proximity to Worcester, which is fast becoming a populous city, in connection with its owu admirable situation and desirable locations for residence easily accessible from that city and yet away from many of the annoyances which necessarily attend a bustling and noisy place of business, must in time attract to it a wave of immigration and give to it a healthy and prosperons growth.

Among the men who have been prominent iu Graf- ton at various periods since its incorporation may be mentioned : Thomas Pratt, the moderator of the first town-meeting and of nine other town-meetings be- fore 1750, and a selectman several years; Joseph Willard, a selectman eight years before 1748; Joseph Merriam, a selectman fourteen years before 1764; Nathaniel Sherman, a selectman nine years before 1752; Samuel Warren, John Goulding, Joseph Wood, Royal Keith, Joseph Bruce, Jonathan Wheeler. Charles Brigham, Phillip Wing, Edward Bigelow, A. M. Bigelow, James W. White, Jonathan D. Wheeler, John W. Slocomh, Jonathan Warren, and others, both dead and living, too numerous to mention. Of those natives of Grafton who have distinguished them- selves outside of its borders in wider fields of labor may be mentioned William Brigham, Frank P. Goulding, Henry A. Miles, Samuel D. Warren, Sherman Le- land, Phineas W. Leland and John Leland.

William Brigham was the son of Captain Charles Brigham, and was born in Grafton, September 26, 1806. He graduated at Harvard in the class of 1829, which was probably the most distinguished class of which the alumni of the college can boast. A list of its eminent men is almost a catalogue of the class. Among them were Rev. Joseph Angier, Chief Jus- tice George Tyler Bigelow, Hon. William Brigham,

Rev. William Henry Channing, Rev. James Free- man Clarke, Hon. Francis B. Crowninshield, Hon. Benjamin R. Curtis, justice of the United States Supreme Court ; Hon. George T. Davis, member of Congress; General George H. Devereux, Hon. Wil- liam Gray, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Rev. Samuel May, Professor Benjamin Peirce, Rev. Chandler Robbins, Hon. Edward D. Sohier and Judge Joshua H. Ward. In such a class as this Mr. Brigham found no difficulty in taking a good rank. After ad- mission to the bar he opened an office in Boston, which he retained until his death, which occurred July 9, 1869. His occupation as a sound and suc- cessful lawyer was diversified by antiquarian study, and the various historical works of which he was either the author or editor attest the accuracy of his mind and the diligence of his research.

A sketch of Mr. Goulding will be found in an ap- propriate place at the end of this narrative.

Rev. Henry Adolphus Miles is a descendant from John Miles, an early settler of Concord, where he was living as early as 1637. He was born in Grafton, May 30, 1809, and graduated at Brown University in 1829, receiving an honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from his alma mater in 1850. After graduating at the Harvard Divinity School in 1832 he was was settled for a time in Hallowell, Me., and from there went to Boston to assume the duties of secretary of the Ameri- can Unitarian Association. At later dates he was settled in Lowell and Hingham, at which latter place he is now living, though not in the service of his pro- fession. Dr. Miles is a man of large intellectual capacity, of original thought and deep and earnest convictions. As a public speaker he has always com- manded the earnest attention of his hearers, and in social intercourse his genial disposition and warm heart and rare conversational powers wiu to his side all who come within their influence. If the writer may be permitted to introduce personal feeling into an historical narrative, he cannot refrain from saying that there are few men whom he holds in such affec- tion and respect as the subject of this imperfect sketch.

John Leland, the son of James and Lucy (Warren) Leland, was born in Grafton, May 4, 1754. From 1775 to 1791 he was a Baptist preacher in Virginia of considerable note. From 1792 until his death, which occurred at North Adams, January 14, 1841, he was settled in Cheshire, Mass. His autobiography was published in 1845.

Phineas W. Leland was the son of David W. Leland, and with all the Lelands of Grafton was descended from Henry Leland, who died in Sher- burne in 1680. He was born in Grafton, October +, 1798, and after leaving Brown University without graduating, studied medicine in Boston and settled at Medfield. In 1834 he removed to Fall River, where he held the office of collector of the port for nearly twenty years. He was a prominent and active mem-

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ber of the Democratic party, and when that party came into power in the State in 1843 he was that year a member of the Senate and chosen its presi- dent.

Sherman Leland was the son of Eleazer and Eliza- beth (Sherman) Leland, and born in Grafton, March 29, 1783. He was admitted to the Worcester County bar in 1809 and settled in Eastport, Me. In 1814 he took up his residence in Roxbury and opened an office in Boston. From 1817 to 1822 he represented Roxbury in the House of Representatives and was a member of the Senate four years, two of which he was its president. He was also for many years judge of probate for Norfolk County, and in this position, as in all others, he won and retained the confidence and respect of the community.

With these few sketches and with an acknowledg- ment of the aid which the writer has received from the " History of Grafton " by Mr. Pierce, to which reference has several times been made, this narrative must close.

CHAPTER CXXIV.

GRAFTON-(Continued . ) AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS.1

THE love of kindred is a sentiment large enough to include and account for that reverence and affection which we feel for those of our ancestors whose forms vanished from earth long before our own time. That sentiment is not altogether dependent upon personal presence, nor upon the mutual exchange of kindly offices, but abides with us as a permanent and ele- mentary principle of our nature. We find it impos- sible, therefore, to repress a feeling of deep and inti- mate concern in the history of a community of which our ancestors formed a part ; and if, perchance, the characters with whom we are dealing were cast in a heroic mould, or were great and happy in their for- tunes and achievements, they become in a peculiar sense,-

The dead, but sceptered sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urus.

One hundred and fifty years have now passed since the incorporation of this town. You select this as a fitting occasion to recall the memory of the fathers who laid the foundation of these institutions into which you were born. You would revert once more to the early scenes in which they played their part ; would remember their virtues; would sympathize with their patient toils, and admire the courage and fortitude with which they encountered the perils and endured the hardships of frontier life ; would applaud

the clearness with which they saw, and the dauntless resolution with which they maintained their rights ; would recognize, with gratitude, their steady and unswerving devotion to the principles of civil liberty, and the constancy with which they persevered, against every discouragement, in establishing those principles upon the secure basis of public education and public morality. But, upon this occasion, the historical theme which irresistibly attracts, at the same time, from obvious considerations, strongly re- pels me. The field has been so recently traversed and so amply covered, that, in attempting to recite anew any part of the familiar story, I shall appear to repeat a thrice-told tale. In 1835, at the centennial celebration of this event, an eminent native of the town skillfully gathered the scattered and scanty ma- terials which constitute its original early history, and presented them in an address, which is at once the best authority upon the subject it treats of, and an able and statesmanlike survey, not only of the his- torical facts of the period covered, but also of the underlying forces and principles which made possible the great progress it recorded.

And, at the centennial celebration of the nation's birth, in 1876, another son of the town reviewed the same ground, and, in fluent narrative and eloquent speech, brought down the history to the present time, and rendered superfluous any further treatment of the subject. And, later still, in his excellent history, composed for the county history, in 1879, Rev. Mr. Windsor told again the simple but interesting story and placed in permanent and easily accessible form all that can be known of the events which marked the dawn and early progress of civilization within the territory of Grafton. Besides these treatises there remain the fine historical discourse of Rev. Mr. Wilson, preached in 1846, covering the ecclesiastical history of the town-no unimportant part of the early history of any Massachusetts town which can boast a hundred years of life-as well as the town history ot Mr. Pierce. From these various essays in the annals of this venerable municipality you must have derived such familiarity with the initial steps and later ad- vance of this community that I shall feel at liberty to select such parts of our history, without regard to consecutive narrative as shall seem best to subserve the general purpose I have in view, to wit : to attempt some estimate of the character and environment of the early fathers of the town, and to assign some of the causes which made them what they were. But it may be of interest to repeat some portion of the his- tory of the region prior to the settlement by the English.

At what time the first white man's eye ever gazed upon, or the first white man's foot ever pressed this territory, abounding in "rich land and plenty of meadows," it is wholly impossible to tell. It certainly requires some exercise of the imagination to conceive that Governor Winthrop and his party, who, on

1 The following interesting historical address was delivered by Hon. Frank P. Goulding at Grafton, upon the one hundred and fiftieth anni- versary of the incorporation of the town.

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HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

January 27, 1631, ascended a high rock only eight miles westerly of Watertown, "where they might see all of Neipnett and a very high hill due west abont forty miles," could see from that point any part of the present territory of Grafton ; and as for the sup- position that the company of English who, in 1635, emigrated from Massachusetts Bay to Connecticut, traversed this territory, the probabilities are strongly against it. For the road to Connecticut, soon after existing, certainly lay to the north, though near the territory of Hassanamesitt, and passed north of Lake Quinsigamond, and there is little reason to suppose that, when that road was established, a new trail was struck out, instead of following the route of the first explorers.

But, however that may be, the territory emerges out of the darkness of barbarism into the view of history many years before its corporate name was conferred upon it, in honor of the second Duke of Grafton. In the middle of the preceding century, when the royal grandfather of that nobleman was skulking, crown- less, on the continent of Europe, and before he had formed his scandalous alliance with the beautiful but profligate Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, who was our namesake's grandmother, and while the imperial sceptre of England was held in the firm grasp of Oliver Cromwell, the General Court of the province, on the petition of Eliot, set apart the terri- tory of Hassanamesitt for the use of the Indians. Here was formed the third of the towns of the praying or Christian Indians, Natick and Pakemitt or Punka- poag (a part of Stoughton) being the first two; and here, in 1671, was organized the second Indian church. Upon the organization of the church, a meeting-house was erected, the site of which, near the old Indian burying-ground, in the vicinity of Mr. Frederick Jourdan's place, is still pointed out. A school was also established, where youth were educated to preach the gospel to the Indians in the neighboring towns. Of course, the services of the church were conducted in the Indian language, and there is ample proof in the writings of Eliot, as well as in those of Major Gookin, the Indian commissioner of those days, that, under the dusky skin of those prim- itive congregations, lurked traits of human nature common to all complexions. 1 cannot stop to give more than a single example of the numerous shrewd and difficult questions which his Indian disciples put to the pious Mr. Eliot. In his letters to the corpora- tion established in London for the propagation of the gospel among the Indians, he gives, in great abundance, examples of these queries; but he does not give his answer to the following, among others :

" If God made hell in one of the six days, why did God make hell before Adam sinned ?"

them do fear God and are believers; but yet 1 will not deny but that there may be some hypocrites that profess religion and yet are not sound-hearted. But things that are secret belong to God, and things that are revealed unto us and our children."

Wattascompanum, the chief ruler of the whole Nipmuck country, resided here. He was said to be "a grave and pious man." It is probably no im- peachment of his gravity or piety that he was executed in Boston in June, 1677. For his crime was that he had been induced or forced to join the party of his countrymen in a desperate and futile attempt to drive from their ancient domain the ever-encroach- ing pale-faces, in whose insidious advance the pro- phetic souls of the natives read the doom of their own race. And popular feeling ran so high against the Indians at the close of that sanguinary war, that small measure of justice was likely to be meted ont to a native who had yielded to the blandishments or threats of the foe.

In proof that these obscure natives who once occupied this vicinity were not destitute of all the amenities of civilized life, I must not omit to men- tion that here, two hundred and fifteen years ago, occurred the first seizure of liquor in this county, under process of law, of which I have discovered any record. It appears that Petavit, otherwise called Robin, was one of the magistrates or rulers here at Hassanamesitt, and he was, evidently, a magistrate not easily deterred from the performance of his ofli- cial duty. Major Gookin gives an account of the seizure of the liquor, as follows: "I remember sun- dry years since, a Sagamore that lived up in the inland country came to Hassanamesitt, and brought with him a rundlett of strong liquor [it was more than three per cent. alcohol, and could not be palmed off for Schenk beer], and, lodging in his house, Petavit, in the morn, sent for the constable, and or- dered him, and, according to law, seized the rundlett of liquors. At which act the Sagamore drew a long knife, and stood with his foot on the rundlett, daring any to seize it. But Petavit thereupon rose up and drew his knife, and set his foot also to the rundlett, and commanded the constable to do his office. And the Sagamore" --

Here the ancient manuscript breaks off, like a se- riał novel, in the very crisis of a thrilling scene. We see a sudden flash of long knives in the morning sun, and the curtain falls. We shall never know with certainty what the issue was. But, considering the divinity that doth hedge a magistrate, and the dauntless and resolute temper of Mr. Justice Petavit alias Robin, I hasten to assure you that, in my opin- ion, the Sagamore from the inland country, after growling out sundry phrases in the Indian dialect, not strictly in accordance with the discipline of the church then established at Hassanamesitt, restored his long knife to his belt, removed his moccasin from

Gookin says of these Indians, whom he saw at- tending upon the preaching in the churches : " And for my part, I have no doubt, but am fully satisfied, according to the judgment of charity, that divers of the rundlett, and yielded to the inevitable.

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The war with King Philip was disastrous to the promising enterprise of bringing the Nipmncks un- der English and Christian influences, and upon no part of the extended and nndefined domain of that people did it fall more fatally than upon Hassana- mesitt. Two engagements were fought in this terri- tory,-one not certainly located, and the other on Keith Hill. The first engagement resulted in a re- pulse of the company of English under Captain Henchman, with a loss of two of his men. Mr. Brigham says, on the authority of the Gookin manu- script, published by the American Antiquarian So- ciety, "that npon the return of the English the next morning to the scene of the conflict, they discovered the heads of their two men who had fallen in the at- tack placed on crotched poles before the wigwant, and facing each other." But, as given in a note to Drake's edition of Hubbard's narrative, Gookin's ac- count of it is as follows : "Capt. Henchman told me he judged several of the Enemy were slain in the wigwam, but the certainty is not known ; but it was certain he lost two of his men, whereof his Lieuten- ant was one, Philip Curtice, of Roxbury, a stout man. His Hands they cut off and placed upon a crotched Pole at the Wigwam Door, faced each other, which was seen a few days after." It may not be of much importance, but if the note in Drake's Hub- bard is authentic in its citation of General Gookin's manuscript, it would appear certain it was the hands of the stout (i. e., valiant) Lieutenant Curtice, and not the heads of the slain, which were the subject of the ghastly humor of the savages. There is some confusion and contradiction in the original authori- ties respecting the battle on Keith Hill. According to Hubbard, it occurred on May 6th, and according to Drake, on May 5, 1676. The English were accom- panied by some Natick Indian allies, and these allies came upon the hostiles, who were pursuing a bear. They did not perceive at first that the Natick Indians were not of their own party, which gave the English some advantage. From eleven to sixteen Indians were slain. Dr. Mather says " our Forces had proba- bly destroyed many more of them had not an Eng- lishman unhappily sounded a Trumpet, whereby the enemy had notice to escape.''1

But while the devastation of battle cannot be said to have swept the place with special violence, in other ways the desolate track of war was left deeply imprinted on its soil. For, through the intrigue and force of the hostile savages, the little Indian town whose bright promise had filled the inspired Eliot, and the resolute, but humane Gookin, with such high hopes, was completely broken up and dispersed. The church and school were never rehabilitated, and only a few of the surviving natives, after an interval of many years, straggled back to the desolate scenes of

the old settlement, and took up again their abode on the land of their fathers.

In 1718 a single white man had acquired title to some lands in the town, and in 1727-28 the title to the whole original territory of Hassanamesitt resided in seven individuals, who were descendants of the original native proprietors under the reservation of 1654, and in nine English families, who, under per- mission of the General Court, had purchased lands and settled here. In that year was granted by the General Court the petition of forty English families, preferred some time before, to purchase the entire reservation of 7500 acres from the Indians, with cer- tain restrictions. And thereupon a deed was given, dated March 19, 1727, old style, and it is executed by the seven proprietors and the husband of one of them. It reserves the previous grants to the earlier white proprietors, and to the Indian grantors an equal divi- dend of land with each of the grantees, and one hun- dred acres besides for the use of the Indians. It is in the nature of a strict entailment, for it is, by its terms, a grant for the settlement of forty English families of the petitioners or their posterity, and no others. By an act of the General Court, passed at the same time, certain conditions were coupled with the grant, the most important of which were,-

That within the space of three years they build and furnish a meeting-house for the instruction as well of the Indians as English children ; that they settle a learned orthodox minister to preach the gospel to them, and constantly maintain and duly support a minister and schoolmaster among them, and all this without charge to the Indians.

The expense of building the meeting-house and school-house was imposed, by the same act, four-fifths upon the purchasers and one-fifth on the prior Eng- lish settlers, who were likewise required to contribute to the maintenance of the minister and schoolmaster. The English purchasers under this deed immediately proceeded to execute its conditions, and, almost be- fore the ink was dry npon the parchment, and months before it was recorded the proprietors made provision for the location of the meeting-house and school- house, and only a little later began the allotment of lands, and as early as 1730 the meeting-house was completed, and a large portion of the forty families had removed here, and in the following year the church was regularly organized and a minister duly installed.

Although the day we celebrate-April 18-29, 1735 -is the date of the legal incorporation of the inhab- itants with the powers and privileges of a town, the true era of the permanent settlement of the place by the English must be referred to the years 1730 or 1731. We have now reached the period when first came upon this scene the men and women by whose charac- ters and deeds the first bias and direction was given to the history of this community. There is a certain unity and individuality of type belonging to every

1 Muther, Brief Hist., 143. This was the first time the Natick In- dians were employed in any such number by the Government .- Drake, 257.

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HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

community, if we only had the art to discover it. And it will be found to be a reproduction of the type of character which predominated in the leading founders of the community. Of course there will be no community without concurrence of sentiment, and the masses will finally concur with the minds of the strongest and most positive cast of character. The first settlers of a town, surviving for a generation, will generally set the current of popular thought and feel- ing and establish the polity of that town for genera- tions to come.

In that view, and in all views, it will be of interest to inquire who these emigrants were; what they did and what they aimed to do; what they thought; what they hoped; what they believed ; and, in short, what manner of men and women they were. It will be of interest to inquire what were some of the causes which enabled them to establish so goodly a heritage for their children, and to instil principles into the minds and hearts of their successors, which made of them heroes in their turn, and enabled them, in com- mon with the inhabitants of other towns and States, to set examples of wisdom in counsel and courage in action, not surpassed by anything in the annals of man.

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History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 13

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