USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Acton > History of the town of Acton > Part 17
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then living and could have attended, health permitting, were Solomon Smith, aged 82; Thomas Thorp, aged 80; Benjamin Hayward, aged 83; Moses Wood, aged 85; and Joseph Chaffin, aged 83. Of these only one was to survive as much as three years, namely Thomas Thorp, who was to live for fourteen years more.
A few days later Mr Edward Everett, the great Massachusetts orator, spoke at Lexington and in that speech he exhibited the powder horn of James Hayward and made the observation that he had been requested by Mr. Stevens Hayward of Acton, nephew of its wearer, to present it for the inspection of those present and to mention its history. This was particularly apropos since Hayward was shot on Lexington soil.1 Mr. Stevens Hayward was moved to make the request by Rev. Mr. Woodbury.
Ever since the inception of the school board it had been the custom for each member to run things to suit himself in his own district. In 1836, however, the board as a whole made its first annual report. The report was made orally in town meeting but even so it was the beginning of coordinated action in the matter of school management for the town.
In 1837 an event took place which in this day and age seems incredible. The state announced that it had surplus revenues which it was returning to the various towns pro rata. Acton decided to use the money toward the purchase of a poor farm and chose Francis Tuttle, William Reed, and Luther Conant as a committee to purchase a farm, at a price not in excess of the state refund, if and when the final payment had been made by the state.
Also in the same year we find the first mention of a state fund for education. The town voted that the selectmen be a committee to receive the money and to divide it among the school districts as was the locally raised money.
In June of 1838 it was brought to the attention of the town that certain persons were infringing upon the common, not only by tres- pass in feeding stock but also in the erection of fences enclosing public property. The selectmen had the lines surveyed by Caleb Fuller of Groton and by town action were ordered to secure deeds immediately.
In March of 1839 a movement was begun which continued at intervals for a score of years, namely, an attempt to have the meeting house of 1807 either torn down or remodelled to accomodate a town hall and school. Up until 1857 the respective articles bearing on the point were either dismissed or laid on the table.
It would appear that the money refunded to the town by the state did not prove adequate to purchase a farm since in February of 1839 it was again voted to obtain a poor farm at a price not to exceed six
1 Niles Register XLVIII, 170-171 (May 9, 1835)
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hundred dollars above the surplus. Francis Tuttle, Edward Wether- bee, and Silas Jones were chosen as a committee to conclude the details. Apparently the committee acted with dispatch to the annoy- ance of certain persons because at the March meeting there was much debate, several motions to reconsider actions taken in past meetings, as well as reversals of opinion within the same meeting. Out of it all emerged at last a decision to use the state money and instruct the treasurer to give surety for the balance.
A month later two conflicting articles came up for consideration. One envisioned the expediture of four hundred dollars for stock and tools and the making of the town farm a "house of industry";1 the second proposed that the farm just purchased be sold. The first article prevailed and the second was deferred until the next meeting. The matter did not come up at all at the next meeting due to reasons unknown but in November of 1841, two years later, a committee was chosen to hire a man to operate the town farm so apparently the obstructionists were finally overcome.
At the April meeting of 1840 the town voted to set out trees on the common and chose Francis Tuttle, John Fletcher, Winthrop E. Faulkner, John White, Nathan Brooks, Simon Tuttle, and Rufus Holden as a committee in charge. The trees were to consist of rock maple, buttonwood, elm and white ash. As a result of the vote the committee extended a general invitation to all inhabitants to bring in suitable samples of the types mentioned on the 20th of April, since that year the 19th fell on a Sunday. The people responded heartily and arrived on the specified day with an abundance of satisfactory specimens. Most of them survive to this day but had it not been for the diligent care given them by Deacon John Fletcher and Francis Tuttle during the severe drought of the summer of 1840 the story would have been far different. Some of them did die and in April of 1841 the two men just mentioned together with Horace Tuttle were delegated by the town to take care of any necessary replacements.2 Most of the rock maples that now stand on Main St. and Newtown Road were set out in 1859 as an afterthought to the beautifying of the common. One huge black walnut tree that measured better than fourteen feet around the trunk stood at the turn of the century just in front of the house of Mr. E. Faulkner Conant3; an almost equally large chestnut stood close by the stone guide board at the junction of Main St. with Nagog Hill Rd. but is succumbed to the blight that swept New England some forty years ago. Of the trees now standing
1 An item in a town report for 1855 shows fifty dollars received for meat skewers and 150,000 on hand.
2 A second committee consisting of Rufus Holden, Jonas Blodgett, and John Fletcher made necessary replacements in April of 1842.
3 Now the residence of Clark W. McElvein.
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on the common1 three elms measured four feet from the ground have girths of 12 ft. 8 inches, 11 ft. 8 inches, and 12 ft. nine inches res- pectively; two ash trees similarly measured showed 10 ft. 1 inch, 11 ft. 6 inches; and two maples on Newtown Rd. checked at 9 ft. 7 inches and 8 ft. 11 inches.
The hurricane of 1938 punished these monarchs severely but they withstood and recovered amazingly to stand today as things of beauty and a joy to the citizens of Acton.
In 1840 Daniel Wetherbee erected an up to date flour and grain mill in East Acton on the site of the much older mill of Thomas Wheeler. Concerning the mill itself mention has already been made but something should be said about the builder. Few men have held a more prominent position in Middlesex County. He grew up in and eventually became proprietor of the old tavern situated on the Great Road from Fitchburg to Boston, Wetherbee's Tavern was known from Boston to Canada and was a temporary Mecca for drovers and drivers of baggage wagons for more than half a century preceding the advent of the railroads.
In later years the old tavern was the residence of Mr. Webster C. Robbins, who, although never a keeper of the hostelry as such, was one of Acton's busiest and most colorful citizens in his capacity as a farmer and general trader.
The sign of the Red Robin Inn that adorned the building after the Robbins regime originally hung in front of the imposing old Worden place in the days when it was a public house. It was embellished with the painting of an ancient sleigh and the date 1775 and was for generations a keepsake in the attic. The living room was the original bar room and the slots in which the bar set are plainly visible. Behind the chimney was a concealed cubby hole that served its laudable purpose in the days of the underground railroad.
The small stream running through his ancestral domains he at once improved and enlarged until Wetherbee's Mills comprised one of the most important points in the illustrated map of the county. Mr. Wetherbee was town clerk, assessor, and selectman for many years and was for five years representative to the legislature. He was largely responsible for establishing the State Reformatory at West Concord. He was one of the prime movers in the establishment of the Lowell and Framingham Railroad and a permanent director. He married Clarrisa Jones, daughter of Abel Jones. He died July 6, 1883 aged sixty eight, leaving a widow and seven children.
It was in 1840 also that Mr. Oliver W. Mead moved to West Acton from Boxborough. He and his brother Adelbert went into the
1 As of July 1951 there were forty of the old trees standing between Nagog Hill Road and the residence of Mr. Horace Tuttle.
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marketing business and drove a horse team to Boston weekly with diverse produce. With the coming of the railroad, which they doubt- less foresaw, their business thrived amazingly. In 1867 the two brothers together, with a third brother Varnum B. Mead, went into business in Boston under the name of A. & O. W. Mead & Co.
Their lumbering interests in New Hampshire and Maine were large as were also their holdings in lands and cattle in Iowa, Minnesota, and certain states which at that time were territories, particularly Wyoming. They built in West Acton the first refrigerator for fruit storage anywhere in this part of the country.
Mr. O. W. Mead was a director of the American Powder Mills for twenty years, settled important estates, was three years a director of the Florida Midland Railroad, was a director of the Board of Commerce, and was also on the directing boards of the First National Bank of Ayer and the North Middlesex Savings Bank. Adelbert Mead died in 1905 at the age of eighty three and Oliver March 20th, 1912 precisely on his eightieth birthday.
The A. & O. W. Mead Company is no longer extant but the family name is still associated with Boston business since Mr. Francis V. Mead of Belmont and West Acton, his son Varnum Mead of Lincoln, and Mr. Carl Richardson now operate the former dairy products company of H. A. Hovey at 35 North Market St.
In the spring of 1840 Acton once again attracted the attention of the country at large, even though the town itself was scarcely aware of it. Senator Daniel Webster, upon learning that the widow of Isaac Davis, Mrs. Hannah Leighton, was far advanced in years and with- out means of support, placed before the Senate of the United States a bill seeking to ensure her a pension for the remainder of her days. Mrs. Leighton was ninety three at the time and it would seem that no one could object to the pittance that would be needed until she should come to the end of her span. Nevertheless Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, together with senators Benton of Missouri, King of Alabama, Hubbard of New Hampshire and Allen of Ohio put up an extended argument on the grounds of impolicy, swelling the pension list, and opening the door to all descendants of soldiers of the Revolution. Mr. Webster, however, had not only his own sur- passing eloquence to bring to the debate but also the outstanding forensic abilities of Mr. Calhoun's colleague from South Carolina, Senator Preston, and the brilliant Senator Crittenden of Kentucky. The bill passed by a vote of thirty one to nine and Hannah Leighton thereby received tardy but tangible evidence of the country's appreciation of her husband's sacrifice sixty five years before.1
1 Baltimore Sun, May 12, 1840. President Van Buren was in favor of the passage of the bill.
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(OUBL VDHID) NOJOY ILLAIOS
Hannah Leighton lived only about a year after the awarding of the pension. There is conflict in the statements as to her age at death in the vital records of the town. One assertion gives it as ninety two and the gravestone in Woodlawn gives ninety six. If, as she stated, she was seventy one at the time of her first appeal for a pension in 1818 she was born in 1747 and hence was ninety four at the time of her death on December 22, 1841.
As the town grew one of the ever present terrors was that of fire. Real protection was non-existant. At the April meeting of 1842 the purchase of a fire engine was considered for the first time. No positive action was taken. It was once again the old story of pro- crastination which was to be repeated in 1847, 1849 and 1855 but within a score of years grim experience was to teach its folly.
In 1842, ten years after the schism that split the churches, an attempt was made to resuscitate the old First Parish by uniting all the elements which had not affiliated with the Evangelical Con- gregational Church.1 The attempt had no permanent success, as a matter of fact it was about this time that a Methodist group main- tained preaching for a short interval.
During 1843 two innovations were made, namely, the printing for the first time of the reports of the selectmen and the overseers of the poor and the erection at important highway intersections of stone guide posts. Possibly half a dozen of these are still standing but none are now legible due to neglect since the introduction of route numbers. One of the best examples extant is at the junction of Main Street and Nagog Hill Road. It is of split granite, the portion above ground being 32 inches wide, 54 inches high, and varying in thickness from three to four inches, being thinner at the top. Just where the earlier stones were quarried is not a matter of record but an entry dated 1888 cites Mr. Thomas Mccarthy as supplying some at that time.
At the same time other events were imparting a direction to the town's future, namely, the building of the Fitchburg Railroad out to its temporary terminus at what is now West Acton.2 Up to 1843 no village existed, the whole area being vaguely designated by the term "west part of town". The elements for starting a village were present since three highways met there to form the little triangle now bounded by Massachusetts Ave., Central Street, and Arlington Street.3 Some- time previous to 1837 Bradley Stone built the brick house now used for the telephone exchange and in the year 1837 erected the store
1 Fletcher, p. 293.
2 The first recorded mention of West Acton depot occurs in the warrant for a town meeting in October of 1845.
' Arlington St. was Thomas Farr's road to meeting, built in 1735; Central St. was a county road built in 1766; Massachusetts Ave., originally the Harvard Turnpike, was built in 1799.
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building on the opposite corner. This store was run by Burbeck and Tenney who were already well established before the railroad was more than a hope.1 When it did come a horse-power saw was erected, for the purpose of sawing firewood for the engines. On this account the tiny settlement was known temporarily as Horse-power Village.
The locality now known as South Acton was, until the arrival of the railroad, known as Mill Corner. In the immediate vicinity of what is now Quimby square the outstanding buildings were the houses of Elnathan Jones2 and Capt. Abel Jones3 and the new store built in 1843 by two of Acton's most astute business men, Messrs. James and Varuum Tuttle, when the coming of the railroad was assured.4
As anyone familiar with Acton controversies might expect, the final location of the railroad was a matter of considerable man- oeuvering. Between the machinations of those who were straining every nerve to route it through their back yard, so to speak, and those who deemed it a dirty and noisy nuisance, filling the air with clamor and soot, and causing valuable horses to flee in terror, the railway engineers must have had a hectic existence.
One preliminary survey envisioned a right of way coming through the Rocky Guzzle5, thence following approximately the old road which now leads from the cemetery to the home of Mr. Dunn, thence westward between the houses of Mr. Rimbach and Mr. Liebfried to Littleton and Fitchburg. This route was violently opposed, however, by most of the substantial residents of the Centre because they felt that the beauty and charm of the village would be ruined. Needless to say this attitude had the blessing of the west and south parts of the town. Under the leadership of Winthrop E. Faulkner and Bradley Stone respectively the Centre was assissted in its desire to be by-passed and everybody was satisfied.
The Fitchburg Railroad was chartered in 1843. The first or north- bound track was laid as far as Shirley Village in the fall of 1844. A contemporary diary contains the following two entries:
"June 17, 1844. We hear that the cars ran from Boston to Con- cord today for the first time since it was finished as far as there". December 30, 1844. The passenger cars ran up to Shirley Village today for the first time. A screaming of the engine whistle could be heard almost every hour from seven in the morning till seven at
1 Mr. Charles H. Mead operated a general store in the building for many years. 2 Locally designated as the Jones Tavern and dating back to Samuel Jones and the incorporation of the town.
a Stood across the street from the Jones Tavern.
'Located between the present post office and the railroad tracks.
' Between Woodlawn Cemetery and the Whitney Mortuary Chapel.
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night. This was the first passenger train that went up there on the Fitchburg Railroad."1
The rails were laid to Fitchburg in 1845. The second track was laid in 1847.
The original ties were of split granite but were shortly found to be impractical since they were too rigid and cracked with the winter frost. Mr. David Kinsley has reason to believe that his old and almost buried back door step on the side of the house nearest the railroad is one of these relics.
For a few weeks in the summer of 1844 Horse-power Village enjoyed the distinction of being a railhead. Thereby hangs a tale. It was planned originally by the engineers to make the terminus some distance to the northwest at about the location of the former Box- borough station. Mr. Stone and his neighbors naturally exerted what influence they could to prevent this but their efforts might have been in vain had it not been that Mr. John Hoar,2 who owned the land surrounding the proposed Boxborough site, cooperated heartily to prevent what he considered to be an unmitigated nuisance from being imposed upon him. He even went to the State House to protest and lay the enormity of his tribulations before any influential individuals who would listen. As a result the west part of Acton obtained a station which was not in the original scheme of things. Strangely enough, under the impact of changing conditions, the wheel of fortune has now turned full circle and the West Acton depot is being closed.
Mr. Ralph Richardson of Ayer was kind enough to impart the following interesting phase of the railroad story.
"Prior to the construction of the Fitchburg Railroad in 1844 the location of the village of Ayer was a sparsely settled, outlying farming section of Groton. There was a district school and about six farms of dubious prosperity together with two saw mills. The directors of the rail- road requested the people of Groton to recommend a lo- cation for the Groton station. There was no village in Groton along the railroad line. At a Groton town meeting held August 28, 1844 it was voted that the selectmen be chosen a committee to confer with the directors of the rail- road and instructed the committee to advocate the location of a depot at the lower part of the town near the mill of Calvin Fletcher.
"The first Groton depot, freight depot and other buildings were erected there in 1844 at the crossing of the Groton and
1 Courtesy of Mr. Ralph Richardson of Ayer.
2 Grandfather of Mr. John S. Hoar now living in West Acton.
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Harvard road, then the most frequently travelled highway from Groton to Harvard, Lancaster, and Worcester but now a back road, rarely travelled, and neglected by the town highway department. That crossing of this highway has long been known as Flanagan's Crossing, from the name of the owner of a nearby dwelling.
"The Worcester and Nashua Railroad was incorporated March 5, 1944, and construction was begun December 1, 1846. It crossed the Fitchburg Railroad 'in the wilderness'. The section between Ayer and Clinton was opened for travel July 3, 1848; between Clinton and Worcester Novem- ber 22, 1848; between Ayer and Nashua December 18, 1848.
"The Peterborough and Shirley Railroad was opened from Ayer to West Townsend in February of 1848 and to Greenville, N. H. in 1851.
"The Stony Brook Railroad was built from Ayer to North Chelmsford in 1848.
"The junction of these four railroads at a point where previously no village had existed led to the abandonment of the Groton depot at Flanagan's Crossing and the erection of a Union Station at the junction in 1848. Around this junction there grew up a village, first known as South Groton and later as Groton Junction. A tannery, plow shop, foundry, machine shop, an enlarged saw mill and other in- dustries were attracted. Groton Junction was a 'boom town' in the 1850's and 1860's. By 1871 the population had sur- passed that of the old town of Groton. There was much dis- satisfaction among the Junction residents over the failure of Groton to furnish school buildings, fire protection, street and sidewalks and other municiple services. It was difficult for Junction residents to travel to Groton to town meetings to vote their requests. Probably the staid, conservative voters at the center resented the eruption of this upstart boom town on the outer edge of its territory and begrudged voting ap- propriations for its sole benefit. The natural result was an agitation for the partition of the town and the incorporation of a separate township. As a result the town of Ayer was in- corporated on February 14, 1871, thereby becoming one of the youngest towns in the county of Middlesex.
America was on the move and this story of Ayer is but typical of many other localities. The junction of the four rail lines necessarily had an impact upon the fortunes of Acton. Anything that facilitated transportation was reflected in the business life of the communities along the railroads. The great rail barons had visions without limit
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and the necessary money was available and easy to get. By 1851 the rails had been laid from Boston to the Canadian line and westward to St. Louis. In September of that year Boston held a huge three day celebration of the event at which President Fillmore and a score of state governors indulged in continued oratory and parades and harbor cruises. A two hundred and eighty eight page book was re- quired to encompass the details of the exercises.1
It may be apropos at this point to insert the gist of a newspaper article of 1880 descriptive of South Acton as it was just prior to the building of the railroad.
"Very few living in this thriving village have an idea of the change that has taken place in two score years. In this locality forty years ago there was nothing here that could claim the dignity of a village. At that time the follow- ing were all of the buildings, the Faulkner homestead and grist mill, the dwelling of Elnathan Jones (which served the double purpose of hotel and store), the house of Mr. Abel Jones (upon the site of the present residence of Mr. Abram Jones, Mr. Abram Jones' saw mill, a copper shop which stood on the present location of the dry goods store (Exchange Hall), the home of Moses Hayward, on the short road running from Stow toward the Maynard road the dwellings of Abel Forbush and Cyrus Putnam, on the road to West Acton the residence of Abram Conant, and a school house on the present site of Dwight's block.
The school house is fully exposed to the scorching rays of the sun and is devoid of shades, but it is the most con- venient season for the children to be at school so here they are, varying in age from four or five to girls in their teens. We say girls for the reason that very few boys of this age attend school in the summer, as their work is valuable on the farm. At the far end of the room is the teacher's desk with some low seats about the platform for the little ABC children whose feet would not touch the floor from the ordinary ones. On each side of the open space between the teacher's desk and the door are arranged three long desks and four seats, the lads and misses sit on opposite sides of the room, facing each other, thus obviating the temptation which pupils in school sometimes experience to turn about in their seats.
1 BOSTON RAILROAD JUBILEE, p. 21, states that in 1851 there were 1200 miles of railway in Massachusetts; that $54,000,000 had been expended to complete the lines; that in 1850 the Massachusetts railways alone transported 9,000,000 passengers and 2,500,000 tons of freight. On an appended map the Marlboro Branch appears under the name of the Lancaster & Sterling R.R. The town of Ayer does not appear for reasons already made clear but the junction point now called Ayer is shown.
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The recitations consist almost wholly of verbal answers to questions. This is because the art of writing is not taken up until the pupils are ten or twelve years of age and this is preceded by such a long training on the shaped designs for the muscles of the hand that the pupil gets to be in the teens before he presumes to a penmanship that will make him competent to write a letter.
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