USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Acton > History of the town of Acton > Part 24
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thought that we stand on the ground made sacred by the ashes of the heroes, will be of value to the military of Massa- chusetts in increasing in their bosoms the emotions of patriotism, and inspire them to be able defenders of the institution for which Davis, Hosmer and Hayward fell.
"We rejoice that we are able to be here and thank you again for the welcome and the bounty with which you greet us. We propose to close our response by a salute of thirteen guns, which will be fired by one of our light batteries, as a further tribute of respect and affection for the men of Acton living and dead."
Forthwith the salute was given and thus ended one of the major assemblages on Acton Common in honor of its Revolutionary heroes.
Although competent authorities never felt justified in according General Butler any considerable military acumen he was, neverthe- less, a mighty patriot, a criminal lawyer of much power, and altogether a most colorful character. An interesting episode connects him with Acton in an unusual manner. In an old scrapbook that formerly belonged to Rev. Franklin P. Wood there is a portion of a letter in Butler's own hand. It is impossible to ascertain at this late date just what the subject under discussion was but it appears that the General and the clergyman had carried on some correspondence concerning a third party who must remain unknown. Apparently this third party had entertained some convictions regarding certain remarks of Butler's and Mr. Wood had communicated the fact to the General, whose reply contained the following lines:
"I will agree to give ten dollars to your charity plate on the following Sunday if your intelligent "bull" friend will declare upon his honor that he had read the full text of my speech or an authorized version, either the Traveller or the Congressional Record. If I am correct as to the man you will pardon me for saying that I never reason with the head of an ass or the heels of a mule"
I am, with friendly regards, yours truly BENJ. F. BUTLER
It is the author's conviction that the forward portion of the letter contained the name of the suspect but that Mr. Wood removed it as a matter of policy.
Apparently the General lost his bet since upon turning over the page of the scrapbook the following note appears:
Washington April 1, '78
My dear Sir,
I give up. I have written today because I was stupid
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enough, even in the good cause of charity, to bet against the effect of human stupidity, ineffable, inexhaustible, un- fathomable and eternal. Enclosed please find the $10 for some starving workingman's family.
Yours truly, BENJ. F. BUTLER
In October of 1870 there was an unusual article in the warrant of a special town meeting, namely, "to see if the town will purchase one or more freezers for the preservation of corpses". The article was dismissed but the wording of it demands some explanation for the present day reader. Embalming had not at that time come into general practice and hence freezing had been an alternative technique. Some light is thrown upon this matter by an advertisement appear- ing in a pamphlet printed in Acton some eight years later wherein Mr. L. E. Reed makes known to the public that he makes picture frames and room mouldings and also "makes a specialty of embalming and am prepared to preserve the dead any reasonable length of time, this process being preferable to freezing".
In view of the fact that at present large numbers of outsiders are being buried in the Acton cemeteries it is interesting to record that in 1871 the town seriously debated whether or not non-residents should be allowed to purchase lots. The matter was eventually referred to the cemetery committee. It was just about this time also that the town voted to dig wells and install pumps in the east and west burying grounds.
According to the best information available Memorial Day was first proclaimed in 1868 by General John A. Logan, commander-in- chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, and was first observed in 1869.1 There are several versions of his inspiration. One is that Capt. Asgill Connor organized the first decorating of graves in 1866 at Carbondale, Illinois, where General Logan was speaker of the day. Another is that Mrs. Mary Logan witnessed in 1867 the decorating of graves in Petersburg, Virginia, and described it to her husband. The originator of this ceremony was a school teacher, Miss Nora Davidson. A Union veteran also claimed to have written General Logan. In any event Acton early realized its obligation in this direction and on April 3, 1871 voted a sum not to exceed one hundred and fifty dollars "for hiring the Acton Brass Band to furnish music for Isaac Davis Post, G. A. R. No. 135, for the coming Decoration Day parade and for other expenses". Incidentally this is the first recorded mention of the Acton Band.
The same town meeting voted that "if the South Acton district, by a vote of the majority of the district, does not call upon the select- 1 World's Almanac, 1951, p. 501.
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men to build them a school house within seven days from date, the selectmen shall proceed to build one at the Centre." It was also voted that six thousand dollars plus the old houses and grounds be appropriated for the new school house in the Centre or the South as the case might be and Henry Smith, Moses Taylor, Samuel Hosmer, George W. Gates, Francis Dwight, and G. D. Fletcher were chosen as a building committee.
The South district did not avail itself of the opportunity and in consequence the year 1871-72 saw erected the impressive new school building at the Centre.1 This is the same edifice at present in use. However far it may fall short of the modern ideal it was in its day a huge step forward in school architecture and the town had every reason to be proud of it.2 The land was purchased from E. P. Bullard. Mr. Henry M. Smith, father of the late Charles E. Smith, was the supervisor of construction. The buildings in the other two villages were erected the following year. The Centre structure has the distinction that its whole basement is cut from the solid ledge. The pines that formerly stood as a windbreak to the west and rear were set out by Mr. Moses Taylor and his sons.
Present day Acton, under the impact of the influx of commuter population has out grown these buildings and has had to make do with various expedients during recent years until now the prospect of a whole new arrangement is in the offing Even so, however, these school houses far surpassed in that day and time what other towns of equal size were doing and they still stand as a monument to local interest in civic affairs.
Due to the fact that the teachers shifted rather rapidly it is dif- ficult to trace the record but it appears reasonably certain that the following persons were the first to enjoy the privilege of working in the new buildings: Centre Grammar; Miss Allie Burnham, Mr. J. H. Butler, Mr. E. F. Richardson; Centre Primary, Miss Ina Austin, Miss Ada Davis; South Grammar, Miss Amelia Comstock; South Primary, Miss Charlotte Faulkner, Miss Ida Dadmun; West Grammar, Miss Ada Davis, Miss Abbie Allen; West Primary, Miss Anna Hall.
The year 1871 brought with it several events that were to have a great impact upon the future of the town. On April 19th Acton acquired a new neighbor with the incorporation of Maynard. The story is a familiar one in New England where frequently favorably located industrial sites engendered communities that rapidly out-
1 An elderly resident made the statement a generation ago that the old school- house that preceded the present one was moved and remodelled to make the dwelling next to Nagog Hill Road now occupied by Mr. Edward W. Mann.
2 The building cost $6,950.00 and the land $225.00. The South and West buildings, put up shortly afterward under the direction of James Tuttle and George Wright respectively, cost $7,000.00 each.
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grew the parent ones.
The general area now known as Maynard was in early colonial times designated as Elzabeth or Isabeath from the river, now called Assabet, which flowed through it. A notation dated May 22, 16511 states that, "Capt. Willard and Lt. Goodenow are appointed to lay out the thousand acres of land at Isabeath which Jethro the Indian mortgaged to Herman Garret". Jethro was one of Eliot's converts in 1650 and Daniel Gookin, the Indian agent, characterizes him as a grave and pious man. On a map of Sudbury dated 1795 the spelling is Elsabeth. The river had a tributary that was always called Assabet Brook. Six Indian skeletons, lying side by side, were once exhumed on the old Benjamin Smith place.2
In 1846 the little rug mill and the water privilege at the village of Assabet was purchased by Amory Maynard and William H. Knight, a carpet manufacturer of Saxonville. For sixteen years the mill con- tinued to turn out rugs and carpets but in 1862, under the impetus of war demands and war prices, the firm reorganized as a corporation, the Assabet Manufacturing Company, and, as a producer of woolen fabrics, thrived like the proverbial bean-stalk and carried the village along with it. As Assabet enlarged apace the rural communities of Stow and Sudbury were in no position to supply the civic facilities of the offspring that had entirely outgrown them. It was almost a repetition of the story of Groton and Ayer and could have but one result. The new town of Maynard was created by taking thirteen hundred acres from Stow and nineteen hundred form Sudbury. Mr. Amory Maynard for whom the town was named died in March of 1890.
In May 1899 the mills and the business were purchased by the American Woolen Company. Immense new mills were built and Maynard became a modern, busy, industrial community, full of life and vitality but also subject to the ups and downs of the purchasing cycle of the nation. At times conditions have not been too happy in recent years but so far as Acton people are concerned Maynard is a popular shopping center.
Had Maynard not come into being it is unlikely that Acton ever would have passed through its tenuous, though pallid, electric car era.
Of the other events, two in particular can be discussed together, namely, the building of the prison as West Concord and the laying of the railroad tracks through the east and north parts of the town. No sooner had the Fitchburg Railroad been built than other interested parties began to agitate for service elsewhere. As early as 1845 a special town meeting instructed the selectmen to submit a petition
1 Colony Records, vol. iii, p. 225.
2 History of Middlesex County, vol. 2, p. 437.
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to buttress one already presented by Francis Tuttle and others to charter a line through the east part of the town. The war years silenced the demand temporarily but once peace was established the movement took on new life. In September of 1870 there appeared in the warant of a special town meeting an article worded as follows:
"To see if the town will instruct the selectmen to take stock in the Lowell & Framingham Railroad to an amount not to exceed five percent of the valuation of the town pro- vided it runs through South Acton and west of the cemetery near the Rocky Guzzle."
This was obviously a resurgence of the idea of twenty five years previous and would have located the right-of-way along the pic- turesque glen that now lies between the cemetery proper and the mortuary chapel. Fortunately the article was dismissed. Two months later the town did vote to request the senator and the representative of the district1 to vote in favor of a charter for a railroad from Dun- stable to Concord.
The chief mover behind the project was Mr. Daniel J. Wetherbee who lived in the large brick house erected by his father in 1802 and now occupied by Henry K. Doyle. He was a man of integrity and vision and a leading citizen and hence was shrewd enough to realize that a rail line close to his grist and flour mill would give an impetus to his business and to the locality as well. His mill, built in 1840, stood until well after 1900, directly across the highway from the house and was served by a spur track branching off from the main line at the present grade crossing. The dam was essentially the one that stands today beside the residence of Mr. Stuart Allen and the water flowed to the mill by way of a long canal now filled in. The Wether- bee mill stood on the site of the ancient mill of Thomas Wheeler, Acton's first settler. The dam in those early days was only "two logs high" so the Wheeler mill, although a busy one, was perforce an unpretentious affair.
The locality had no name other than Wetherbee's Mills but with appearance of the railroad things began to happen. A contemporary newspaper article comments as follows:
"The pleasant village in the neighborhood of Acton Centre station has grown up within a period of five years. There are two causes for this sudden start, the projection, in this direction, of the Lowell and Framingham Railroad in 1871 and the Boston, Acton and Nashua shortly after- ward, and the erection of the State Prison only half a mile away in Concord. These causes have resulted in the building of seventeen dwellings within the period just mentioned and
1 Mr. George W. Gates of Acton.
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and we doubt not that there will be still greater growth in the future. Much credit is due to Daniel Wetherbee for what has been accomplished here, as he has had an im- portant part in every step which has been taken for the promotion of the interests of the place.
The Nashoba Brook runs through this valley, and, as Nagog Pond, covering six hundred acres, is its reservoir it affords constant power. This is the best mill privilege in the town but it was utilized only slightly until Esquire Wetherbee erected his grist mill on it in 1840. The present mill has done a large business ever since it was built and its enter- prising proprietor has recently found it necessary to en- large it.
The only other use which is made of this ample power is by a saw mill which stands near the road leading to Acton Centre. The first saw mill to be built on this site was erected by Capt. Joseph Robbins about 1797. Capt. Robbins was the first one to receive the alarm given on the morning of April 19th, 1775. The old house was destroyed by fire over twenty years ago. In those days the highway, instead of crossing above the dam as it does now, ran on the other side of the mill.
In 1850 the store was started by Daniel Wetherbee and J. E. Billings. It continued in their hands for four years until they sold it to George Frost. He owned it seven years and resold it to Daniel Wetherbee who sold it, after eleven years, to the present proprietor Mr. Isaac W. Flagg, who re- cently enlarged and improved it.
The residence of Mr. Elbridge Robbins was built by John Robbins about 1800. When built it was by far the best house in Acton and is excelled by very few even now.
One thing which has promoted the growth of the village has been the reasonable price at which building lots have been sold. The lot upon which Capt. Luke J. Robbins erected his building was a free gift, and other good lots have not cost over fifty dollars. The principal impediment in the way of the growth of some of our villages is the high price at which building lots are held.1
The house in which J. R. Bassett lives was built by Daniel Wetherbee."
With the coming of the railroad the growing village aspired to,
1 The Elbridge Robbins house mentioned above was one of the lottery houses and is now the residence of Mr. William Hinckley. The Luke J. Robbins house is at present occupied by Mr. Ronald McGarigle. Mrs. Amelia Robbins now lives in the Bassett house.
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and obtained, a post office. The name Elmwood had been selected by the residents but as this was in conflict with an already existing village in the state the designation "Ellsworth" was accepted as a compromise. On March 3, 1873 Ellsworth post office began to function with Mr. I. W. Flagg as postmaster. For more than a dozen years the office kept its name but eventually, due to a confusion between the Ellsworths in both Maine and Massachusetts, it became East Acton on December 30, 1885. Two months previous Mr. James Billings had taken over the position of post master, which he con- tinued to hold until succeeded by Mr. Charles J. Williams on Septem- ber 7, 1900.
With the introduction of the automobile and long haul trucking the secondary railroad lines began to languish. Simultaneously the local farmers ceased to produce corn and grain in volume. A new era in food production was in process and with it the mill ceased to function with the result that on April 15, 1910 the East Acton post office became a thing of the past and the little village went into a temporary coma until rejuvinated by the modern trend of rural expansion.
The story of the railroads is briefly as follows.1 The Lowell and Framingham ran under that name for two years and then became, strangely enough, the Framingham and Lowell. Subsequently it was run by the Boston, Clinton and Fitchburg, then by the Old Colony, and then by the New Haven.
The Nashua, Acton, and Boston ran from Nashua to Boston via the Reformatory. Within the confines of Acton the two tracks ran side by side and it was ever a mystery to youngsters how it could be that one track belonged to one railroad and the other to another. Until 1912 at least the old Reformatory station still functioned just across route 2 as a combination dwelling and station. It was not at that time possible to purchase a ticket direct from East Acton to Boston via Lexington and Arlington although freight was shunted about upon occasion. For passenger service the Reformatory station was the terminus of the line, particularly for the entering prisoners. Eventually the Nashua, Acton and Boston was taken over by the Boston and Maine, but not until it had been operated for a time by the Concord and Montreal.
Mr. Nahum Reed was station agent at East Acton from 1871 to 1898. He was followed by Thomas Evans and Carl Gurley who remained only briefly. Mr. Arthur Rayner, still resident in Acton in a home built many years ago just a stone's throw from the site of his long service, was agent from March 1908 until 1938 at which time the station was removed.
1 Data supplied through the kindness of Mr. Arthur Rayner.
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Mr. Charles I. Miller came to North Acton station in 1872 and remained until well after 1900. He was a native of Sudbury, Vt .. In 1870 he had the misfortune to lose one hand and a portion of the arm but was so adept at handling freight and express with the attached hook that he was ever a marvel to the youngsters of the town. His son Samuel grew up with railroading in his blood and retired in 1951 after having been successful as Assistant General Manager of the Boston and Maine and the Maine Central Railroad. Of the men who followed Mr. Charles Miller at North Acton the longest to remain was Mr. Elmer C. Cheney who built the house now owned by Mr. Swen Hagen and then was subsequently transferred to Lancaster. The station was closed in 1925.
Eventually the Boston and Maine tracks were removed and at present the one track remaining serves as an important cross country tie between Lowell and Concord. Military authorities assert that in the event service on the main line between Fitchburg and Boston were cut off in time of war this detour, single track though it is, would have a value far beyond its present apparent importance
Apparently the years of peace had induced a diminution in the interest in the militia. As an incentive the town, in November of 1872, voted to lease the armory portion of the town hall to the Davis Guards for three years on the same terms as formerly and also agreed to purchase swords and epulets for the commissioned officers provided the company would recruit the ranks to the regulation standards.
At about this same time a number of items appear on the record which, although unassociated, have a bearing on the progress of town affairs. The Fitchburg Railroad was requested to place crossing tenders at the main crossings at West and South Acton for the safety of the travelling public. The final report of the building committee for the three major school houses just erected was accepted and the committee was instructed to proceed with the necessary grading. In addition George Harris, Frederick Rouillard, and John White were constituted a committee to build a new school house at North Acton. This building was promptly erected and served the town for many years. It still stands in good condition on Harris Street as the residence of Mr. William Kendall. Two other projects, namely the installation of central heating in the Centre school house and the inauguration of a town high school, were broached at this time but the public mind was not yet receptive. Both innovations lay far in the future, even though Acton's population, by now more than 1600, was forcing the issue with the ruthlessness of a creeping glacier. The matter of public health was also ceasing to be an unimportant item beyond the communal interest. In 1872 a scourge of small pox swept the locality with devastating effect. Among the
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pertinent data is found a notation stating that the town spent the sum of two hundred and forty nine dollars for the care and burial of the entire family of Horace Adams, nine persons in all, victims of the dread disease.
In this year also, on March 25th, died Mrs. Mehitable Piper, widow of Silas Piper, at the age of 101 years, 2 months and one day. So far as is known this is Acton's only centenarian. Her father was Joseph Barker, a member of Davis's company. He dwelt in a house long since burned that stood opposite the present residence of Mr. Dunn on Taylor Road. She was the last survivor of the member- ship of the old first church that worshipped as Puritans before religious differences were known.1 At the turn of the century the "old Joe Barker place", under the care and ownership of Silas Taylor and subsequently his son Moses and his large family of sons, had become one of the busiest and most productive pieces of prop- erty in the town.
An interesting item in connection with national unemployment during this era appears in a notation of the overseers of the poor wherein it is recorded that in a single year one hundred and seventy five dollars was spent in feeding three hundred and fifty one "travellers". By 1875 the designation "traveller" had been sup- planted by the less complimentary word "tramp".
In 1874 Acton's first newspaper made its appearance. It was an eight page tabloid measuring 13 x 20 inches with five columns to a page. At the top of the front page was an engraving of the Acton monument and the bold title ACTON PATRIOT. Under the word ACTON was the following quotation from remarks made by Governor John C. Andrew in 1861, "It is one of the hallowed omens of the war for the Union, that men of Concord, Lexington, and Acton are first in the field." On the right side under the word PATRIOT appeared the oft repeated words of Isaac Davis, "I haven't a man that is afraid to go." It was published weekly, at first on Saturday and subsequently on Thursday, at Dwight's Block in South Acton by a printing firm known as Johnson and Fletcher.2 The mast head paragraph asserted it to be the only paper published within the ten towns of Acton, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Lincoln, Sudbury, Concord, Stow, Littleton, Boxborough and Westford, which had a combined population of fifteen thousand at the time. About half the space was devoted to advertising and a perusal of it convinces the reader that although human nature changes but little fundamentally there
1 Fletcher, p. 257.
2 Dwight's Block is now owned by Edward Bursaw. It has been made into a two tenement dwelling at present occupied by Donald Brazee and William Hughes. The old livery barn was torn down several years ago and replaced by a cement block garage.
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have evolved certain methods of approach. This was the beginning of the heyday of the patent medicine and consequently the virtues of diverse liniments, salves, pain-killers, and cure-alls were proclaimed with abandon and profusion of rhetoric. The day of classified advertisements had not yet arrived and so we see Lowell, Hudson and Maynard competing with local talent in a hodge-podge of propaganda concerning merchants, shoemakers, dyers, blacksmiths, piano tuners, hack drivers, coffin builders, stud horses, private schools, roofers, bug killers, and church services. Nowadays it is regarded as poor taste for physicians and surgeons to advertise publicly in the press but in that more naive era a certain Dr. Bartlett of Lowell went into considerable detail concerning his remarkable success with tapeworms.
With such a thriving printing establishment in operation it was only natural that the town reports for 1874 should have been printed locally. Previously they had been done by Benjamin Tolman of Concord, or by Tolman and White of Boston, or by Marden and Rowell of Lowell. The Patriot town report is somewhat smaller then had been the custom. It was bound in pale blue and in general ran pretty much true to customary form.1 The contract with the PATRIOT continued until 1884. Thereafter until 1889 the name of the Acton Enterprise Steam Job Printing Company appears on the cover and subsequently the Enterprise Company of Hudson did the work.
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