USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Clinton > History of the origin of the town of Clinton, Massachusetts, 1653-1865 > Part 11
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"Cuff Tindy" lived north of the Elder farm. He was a negro, black as ebony. He drew a pension for his services in the Revolution. He lived with Perley Hammond, his nephew. He died at a great age, about 1824. Perley Ham- mond was a mulatto, and married a negress. His father was a negro, and his mother pure white. The house in which he lived was said to have been the last log house in Lancaster. The family was well-to-do, and had a snug farm. In 1820, a new house was built. Hammond was a blacksmith, and an excellent mechanic. He died in 1826. The property was squandered by his cousin, Murray Waterman. Some of the citizens can yet remember "Miss" Hammond, Perley's widow, the fortune teller who disclosed to them the mys- teries of fate for a dime.
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CLOSING YEARS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
Samuel Dollison, or Dorrison, was brought up on the farm now known as the Howard or Bingham place, on the South Meadow Road. Both of his parents were practical jokers. One day, John Dollison, the father, to gain protec- tion from a thunder shower, crawled into a sugar tierce that stood on the brow of a hill. There he sat placidly smoking, but his wife saw her opportunity to repay the old gentleman for some of the jokes he had played on her, and running out in the rain, she started the tierce rolling down the hill. He felt sore in more senses than one, until he had "got even" with his wife.
John Goldthwaite, the broom-maker, lived in the old rickety house known as the Rigby place. In the latter part of his life, he lived entirely alone. In 1799, Daniel Aldrich, of Uxbridge, owned this place. Within the next few years, it passed through the hands of Stephen Sargent, Eben Southwick, John Hunt, and Stephen Sargent, a second time. Ebenezer Pratt bought the farm in 1819, and erected a small house of two stories. He married Emily Rice, the daughter of Joseph Rice. They had six children. About 1830, his house and farm were sold to Joseph Rice.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE COMMUNITY EAST OF THE RIVER.
As the community east of the river remained a farming people until nearly the middle of the nineteenth century, and thus was not brought into very close connection with the comb-makers and cotton manufacturers on the other side, it is proposed to take a comprehensive view of the leading families, until their farming life was broken up by the development of manufacturing industries.
Of Jotham Wilder, the farmer and cattle raiser, whom we took as the representative man of the district east of the Nashua, little is known after the close of the French and Indian war. He continued living for some years at the old homestead, near the site of the Carville house, on a large farm of three hundred acres or more. Tradition relates that, between 1760 and 1770, an event occurred, which must have filled the latter part of his life with gloom. He and his nephew, Aurelius Collis Wilder, were ploughing one day about a mile above the present location of the Lancaster Mills' Bridge, when they happened to see a deer. The old man took his gun, which he had with him in hopes that he might get some game, and followed the deer, telling his nephew to stay in the field. But the young man, after his uncle had disappeared, followed him. After a while, the farmer, all intent on killing the deer, saw a movement in the underbrush, and, as it parted, he fired. The shriek of his nephew told him of his awful mistake. He hastened to his
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THE COMMUNITY EAST OF THE RIVER.
aid, but when he reached him the wound had already proved fatal.
Stephen Wilder, the eldest son of Jotham, will be recalled as a Revolutionary soldier. He settled on a portion of his father's farm to the northwest of the homestead. His house was near the present Jonas E. Howe place. He married Betty Sawyer, of Harvard, in 1770, and they had seven boys. He was a very prosperous farmer, leaving at his death, in 1820, an estate valued at eight thousand dollars. Levi, his eldest son, having died at the age of eighteen, John, the second son, tried to manage the farm. He was familiarly known as Doctor John Wilder, as he had studied medicine to some extent, although not enough to receive a degree. As he became indebted to his brothers for their share in the estate, he found it difficult to pay his interest, and finally be- came dependent on his children. He had married Sally Moore, of Boylston, and they had five sons and four daughters. John, one of his sons, became a Baptist minister of note, and another, Levi, was a teacher of music. Leonard Pollard, a son-in-law, managed the farm for a good many years, but he was killed by lightning, in 1834. Franklin, the fourth son, then tried to take his father's estate, but the load of his misfortunes, finally culminating in the burning of his house in 1842, made him insane. There are none of the descendants of Stephen Wilder in the male line now living in town.
Titus Wilder followed his father, Jotham Wilder, at the old homestead, and he received about one hundred and forty acres of his farm. We have seen him as a soldier of the Revolution. From his marriage with Mary Allen, sprang a family of eight children. Of these, Elisha succeeded his father on the farm, having married Emily Pollard. He had three sons and two daughters. He built the Carville house, recently burned. He died at the age of forty-three, in the ycar 1836. Titus Wilder, the father, died at the Poor Farm, as a Revolutionary pensioner, in 1837. Titus, his second
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THE WILDERS.
son, became a school-teacher, and, it is said, taught in every district of Lancaster. He served with his brother, Ebenezer, in the war of 1812. They were in an artillery company, which was on duty about Boston for a few weeks in 1814, when Boston feared the coming of the British fleet. They thus kept up the patriotic tradition of the family. Titus died in 1833.
Ebenezer, the third son, settled on a portion of his father's farm, near Clamshell Pond. He married Lucena, a daughter of Moses Sawyer, November 3, 1807, and after her death, in 1825, he married Clarissa Keyes, of Berlin. He had a dozen children, seven sons and five daughters. He was well educated. A daughter says of him: "Father was a man of superior mind. He read many portions of Homer and Virgil by the light of pine torches at the age of sixteen, and he never forgot them." He was a teacher in the common schools. It is said that he was the first teacher in the South Woods school-house, which was built in 1809. He died in 1858. His descendants of the second and third generations are still living in town on Chace Street, so that this family may claim the longest continuous, or nearly con- tinuous, citizenship in the male line of this community, since it has lasted through two hundred years and some eight generations.
The farm of about eighty acres next beyond the old Wilder-Carville estate to the east, was occupied from about 1781 to 1802 by Simon Butler, who married his cousin, Eliza- beth Butler, in 1782. They had one son and two daughters. In 1791, he married Eunice Butler, another cousin, by whom he had two sons and one daughter. All the children of the second marriage were either deformed or imbecilc. Titus Wilder, Jr., who married Eunice, a daughter of the first marriage, took part of the farm on the death of his father- in-law, in 1802, and a part went to Simon Butler, 2d, who sold out his share to Peter Larkin, 2d, in 1815. Most of it
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THE COMMUNITY EAST OF THE RIVER.
passed, after several transfers, to Baxter Wood, whose grandson still controls it. In 1820, Joseph Butler built the house which stands first on the right after passing the Lan- caster Mills' bridge. He bought the land of Reuben Hastings. Joseph Butler is recorded to have had seven children. He had married Parney Temple, of Boylston, a sister of Stephen Sargent's wife.
The Carruth house was built by James or Edward Fuller, who, as tradition reports, had a farm here of an hundred acres, not far from the middle of the eighteenth century. He had, we are told, a family of three sons and one daugh- ter. Ignatius Fuller, who married Anna Reed, of Sterling, in 1787, owned this land in 1796; Edward, in 1798. Edward, who had married Susannah Maynard, of Berlin, in 1802, remained on the old place, which was sold in 1813 to Stephen Sargent for fifteen hundred dollars. The farm then con- tained one hundred and five acres. The evidence in the registry of deeds in regard to these Fullers is not complete.
On the bridle-road, leading off toward Clamshell Pond, James Fuller, Jr., "cordwainer," built a house. He bought land of Thomas Gates, and others, in 1778, and of William Tucker, in 1788. James, Jr., and his wife, Sarah, are re- corded as baptized in 1775. There is also a record of the
baptism of five daughters. We have already noted the service of James Fuller in the Revolution. He died in 1831, at the age of eighty-one. One, Robert Hudson, a "Briton," of Shrewsbury, who married Dinah Butler, July 12, 1780, is said to have built a house and settled at the end of this same bridle-road nearer Clamshell Pond. He was a shoe-maker. Stephen and Titus Wilder sold him land, the former in 1795. In the deed of the latter, the land is said to be near the house where "Robert Hudson now dwells." The death of his wife, in 1806, appears in the records of the first church of Lancaster. In 1807, he married Polly Fife, of Berlin. In 1813, Robert Hudson, Sr., sold to Robert Hudson, Jr., the estate, on condition of support for self and wife. The estate was immediately sold to Rufus Sawyer, of Berlin.
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FULLER-CARRUTH HOUSE.
129
FAMILIES ABOUT CLAMSHELL POND.
For lack of documents we are obliged to rely on tradition for the statement that Daniel Albert lived in what is now known as the Cannon house. The elder Daniel Albert married Mary Houghton, December 2, 1725. She died soon after, and January 25, 1726, he married Abigail Houghton. By her, he had three sons and three daughters, whose births are recorded. In 1755, Henry Houghton, of Leominster, trans- ferred to the children of Daniel Albert, land south of the house where Daniel Albert lived. It is likely that the land here fell originally to the Houghtons, and that Albert received his estate from his wives. We have seen him as a soldier in Lovewell's war, and the wars with Spain. He died January 28, 1769. His sons, Daniel and Frederick, who still lived in this vicinity, were in Amherst's expedition of the French and Indian War. The name of the former appears also on the rolls for the Rhode Island campaign in the Revolution. Frederick, of Boylston, bought the paternal estate of the other heirs of Daniel Albert in 1792. The brother, Daniel, had evidently managed this during the pre- ceding twenty-one years since his father's death.
The Alberts were said to be of Dutch extraction. The district around the point where Clinton, Berlin and Boylston meet was in the latter portion of the eighteenth century familiarly called the Six Nations. The Wilders, and others, were English; the Alberts, Dutch; the Larkins, Irish. There were families of other nationalities which lived a little outside present Clinton limits : Andrew McWain, a Scotch- e man ; Louis Conquerette and Hitty, Frenchmen, and John Canouse, a Hessian, a deserter from Burgoyne's army.
On Chace Street, north of the Tucker-Chace estate, lived John Pollard. He was born in 1729. The date of his settlement here is unknown. He had eight sons and two daughters. He died May 10, 1814, at the age of eighty-five. His wife, Elizabeth, died at the age of seventy-eight, March 4, 1816. Gardner Pollard, a comb-maker, followed his father
10
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THE COMMUNITY EAST OF THE RIVER.
on the estate, erecting a new house near the old one in 1816 or 1817. He had three sons and seven daughters. Levi remained in this section, and built the Eli Sawyer house. We shall have occasion to notice him as a comb-maker.
Mr. Pitts tells in his reminiscences of a very ancient house occupied by William Larkin, which stood a quarter of a mile east of the Pollards'. It had diamond-shaped window panes of mica set in lead. It is possible that this house was the original residence of one of the earlier Wilders. This William Larkin was one of the five sons of Philip Larkin, whose names appear so often in the rolls of colonial armies. He was born March 13, 1730. He served in three campaigns in the French and Indian War. He died January 4, 1814, in the poor-house, his wife and daughters, who had done every- thing they could for him in his old age, having preceded him to the grave.
Josiah Coolidge, of Bolton, cordwainer, bought of David Wilder, of Leominster, April 30, 1779, a tract of twenty-five acres, north of John Pollard's. No buildings are mentioned in the deed. December 1, 1797, Josiah Coolidge, then of Lancaster, sold to John Goss, of Sterling, the same twenty- five acres, with buildings, for three hundred and thirty-three dollars. It is evident that the buildings constructed during the ownership of Mr. Coolidge, had little value. The same year, John Goss bought eleven acres of the Pollards, and in 1815 he bought thirty-two acres more. This John Goss was the son of Joseph Goss, of Sterling, and a great-grandson of John Goss who settled in the northern part of the town in the first half of the eighteenth century. He married Mary W. Fuller. They had eight children. Three of them died in infancy, and one in young manhood. Mr. Frank Sawyer, who now occupies the old homestead, is a grandson of Mr. Goss, and Mrs. Eli Sawyer is a daughter. John Goss died March 24, 1843.
Samuel Dollison, or Dorrison, bought ten acres of land of Gardner Pollard in 1814, where the house of Mrs, E. A.
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THE CHACES.
Harris now stands, for three hundred dollars. In I817, he sold the same to Asahel Harris, with buildings, for four hundred dollars. Although Mr. Dollison has the reputation of having built the original Harris mansion, it is evident from the price paid for the property that there was no house of any considerable value on the land when it went out of his hands.
Charles Chace of Bellingham, and William Jenks of Wrentham, bought the Tucker house and farm on what is now known as Chace Street, in the spring of 1798, of Major Merrick Rice. As Major Rice was one of the lawyers of Lancaster, and as the property had come into his hands from those of Benjamin Houghton and Josiah Coolidge, who had received it from Thomas Tucker two years before, it is probable that the estate had passed from the hands of the Tucker family on account of the hard times at the close of the eighteenth century. The house, like that of William Gould on the "Mill Road," and that of Elias Sawyer at what is now Lancaster Mills, had been begun, but through lack of funds had never been finished. It remained for Mr. Chace to complete it. It was a large, square, New England mansion, and may still be seen standing on its original site, between Chace Street and the Nashua. The farm contained one hundred and fifty acres, or thirty-five acres more than there had been in the Tucker farm. The price was two thousand dollars. Mr. Jenks relinquished his hold on the estate in 1802.
Mr. Chace was not only a farmer, but also a tanner, currier and shoemaker. He bought the hides directly from the neighboring farmers whenever they slaughtered cattle. These hides he tanned in vats which were constructed to the north and south of the house. The tanning was wholly done by means of bark; no chemicals were used. It was two years from the time when the hides were received, before the leather was ready to be made into boots and shoes. The
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THE COMMUNITY EAST OF THE RIVER.
currying and shoemaking were done in a shop of one story, six rods to the west of the house. This building was about eighteen by thirty feet. It was high studded, in order that the sides of leather might be hung up there to dry. On one side of the building, the drying and dressing were done ; on the other, was the shoemaker's shop. The work, which is now so specialized that it passes through scores of hands, was done by Mr. Chace and his apprentices alone. He had but little machinery to aid him, and what he did have was of the simplest kind. His two oldest sons probably learned the whole business of their father, but, in later life, Alanson confined himself to boot and shoe making, while Charles, Jr., became a tanner.
Mr. Chace was approaching middle age when he came from Bellingham. He had lost his first wife, who had borne him two children. One of these children had died in childhood, the other grew up and married a man named Crowningshield. For his second wife, Mr. Chace had married Ruth Jenks. By her, he had four sons, Alanson, Charles, William J. and George Ide, and two daughters, Diana and Amia Ann. All of these, with the exception of William J., grew to maturity. The family life was that of the ideal New England home, as it existed in the early part of the century. There was great earnestness of religious belief, but no austerity. Mr. Chace belonged to the Rhode Island family of Chaces, and brought with him from his old home the Baptist belief. Although the members of the family attended public worship at the old church at Lan- caster Center, still they clung to their own form of faith and gathered their neighbors to worship with them, and thus be- came the originators of the Baptist organization in the town. When John Burdett settled in Clinton, they found in him an equally devoted co-worker.
Something of the beautiful home life of the family can be surmised from this extract from a letter written by the youngest son to the mother on his thirty-sixth birthday.
TUCKER-CHACE HOUSE.
I33
THE CHACES.
"This day reminds me anew of the untold, unpaid and unpayable debt of gratitude which every son is under to a good mother, and for which the only return he can make is to show her that he is not insensible of it. Frequently, when not otherwise occupied, does my mind wander back to the days of my early childhood, when it was so sweet to pillow my head upon my mother's knee, when her lap was my home, the safe refuge to which I flew from every child- ish grief or trouble. And there are moments when my spirit, worn and soiled by the cares of life, has lost its freshness and its hope, in which I would fain be that little boy over again and again nestle in my mother's bosom and find it as secure a retreat from the trials of manhood as I did then from the trials of infancy."
Mr. Charles Chace died about the middle of the present century at the age of nearly ninety.
Alanson Chase, born October 22, 1795, and his brother Charles, probably with the aid of their father, bought in 1818 of Seth Grout one acre of land, and of James Pitts one acre of land and one-twentieth of the water power at the dam now controlled by Lancaster Mills. They erected a small tannery between the spot where the present machine shop stands and the river. The old part of the house, so long known as No. I, Green Street, was built by Charles Chace, Jr. The shop, house, land and water right were sold to James Pitts in 1828. Charles Chace, Jr., removed to Still River and his connection with Clinton history ceased.
Alanson still continued to live at the old homestead. As his father was already an old man, he took charge of the farm as well as continued in his business of shoe making. It is doubtful if he ever did much tanning after selling out to Mr. Pitts. In the later history of the district, we shall see him serving as a member of the school committee of Lan- caster ; as one of a committee of five representing Clinton- ville in the division of property when the town of Clinton was incorporated ; as a selectman of the new town; as one
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THE COMMUNITY EAST OF THE RIVER.
of the organizers and most devoted supporters of the Bap- tist church in Clinton; as the builder of the Chace mansion formerly on Prescott Street but now moved to Cedar Street ; in general, we shall see him as one of the most prosperous, the most trusted, and the most public-spirited of our citi- zens. He married Maria Harris. His son, Charles H. Chace, born February 19, 1826, followed his father at the homestead, and his daughter, Maria Ann, married William H. Haskell,
George Ide Chace, the younger son, gained a world-wide reputation. He received his elementary education in the school of the "South Woods District." When he was ten years old, he fell from the roof of a building and was severely injured. During the long period of confinement in the house, resulting from these injuries, he was instructed by his elder brother, and his ambition became aroused to seek a college education. When he recovered, he was sent to Lancaster Academy. Here he studied for some years with great en- thusiasm, and in 1827 was admitted to the sophomore class of Brown University.
At the end of three years, he graduated as valedictorian of his class. He was for a year principal of a classical school in Waterville, Maine. In 1831, he became a tutor in mathematics in Brown University. In 1833, he was made adjunct professor of mathematics and applied philosophy. In 1836, he became professor of chemistry, geology and physiology. This position he held for thirty-one years. He was, during this whole period, one of the leading teachers of the physical sciences in America. He received the de- grees of Ph. D. and LL. D. Besides teaching in college he was widely known as a lecturer. His services were often sought as a mining expert. He traveled in this capacity in Canada, Nova Scotia and Central America, as well as through the newly developed West.
On the death of Rev. Barnas Sears in 1867, Prof. Chace served for six months as president of Brown University.
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THE CHACES.
He would doubtless have been elected permanently to the office of president, if it had not been necessary that the incumbent should be a clergyman. At this time, he became instructor in metaphysics and ethics, and afterwards served for five years as professor in these branches.
He had great ability as a teacher, as all those who came in contact with him testified. Many of the leading men of the country trace to his influence much that has been most noble in their lives. His executive power was no less marked. Whatever he undertook was done in a masterly way. Presi- dent Andrews says of him: "Professor Chace had the keenest analytical power of any thinker whom I have ever heard discourse * * * and he joined with this a hardly less remarkable faculty for generalization."
In 1872, he resigned his professorship and travelled in the Old World. After a year and a half of rest, he returned to his home in Providence, and during the remainder of his life devoted himself to the interests of his city and state. His chief work was as chairman of the Rhode Island State Board of Charities and Corrections. His work in this connection attracted the attention of social reformers throughout the world. His published works form but a small part of his productions which were worthy to be preserved, but, few as they are, they will be sufficient to give him a high place among scholars for all time. A volume of his collected essays and lectures, with a biography, was published in 1886. He died April 29, 1885, in Providence, Rhode Island. Hc may be considered the most scholarly man that this locality has ever produced.
As the records of School District No. 1I have not been preserved, tradition and human memory are the only sources of information on this topic. It happens, however, that the son of the first teacher in the South Woods school-house told ere he died the story of the school as it lived in his memory. This account of Frederick W. Wilder's is reported
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THE COMMUNITY EAST OF THE RIVER.
in nearly the same words as it appeared in the Courant of September 5, 1885, and as it was afterward told to the author by the venerable man.
Before a school-house was built, the pupils were accus- tomed to gather for instruction during the winter at certain private houses. In the northern part of the district, the house of Charles Chase was the general place of meeting. On alternate winters, the school was kept in the southern part at the Wilder house, where Daniel Carville's house now stands. In 1809, a little school house was erected a short distance west of the Fuller-Carruth house, opposite the Mc- Lean house of more recent date. It was on the western side of the road and faced toward the south. There was no hall or entry, but the outer door opened upon the school room. The outside garments hung upon the wall. The building was heated by a stove near the center of the room. The writing desks stood on three sides, and the benches for them stood a little out from the wall so as to allow a passage-way. In front of the writing desks, were the seats of the smaller pupils. The master's desk was at first in the northeastern corner. In 1826, short seats were put in instead of long benches and the master's desk was moved to the eastern side. The scholars stood for recitation on the south and west of the room in front of the desks. When the house was no longer needed for school purposes, it was sold to Alanson Chace. He moved it to the Acre. Here, in 1885, it was "still in existence as the L of a house owned by Mr. Greenwood and occupied by Martin Kittredge." This school was always noted for its earnest study, and some went forth from it, such as Roscoe G. Greene and George Ide Chace, who exerted a powerful influence in the world.
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