USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Bellingham > History of the town of Bellingham, Massachusetts, 1719-1919 > Part 10
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The convention met in September, 1779. In the Bill of Rights, Article III, Religious Rights, required the most discussion, lasting about two weeks. After a free and general debate, a special committee of seven was chosen, containing two men who became governors of the State, and two who became judges of its Supreme Court, these four being strict supporters of the old established church, a prominent patriot from Western Massachusetts, Rev. David Sanford of the West Parish and his neighbor Mr. Alden. The humble Baptist elder from Bellingham, who knew that the work was "grate and his gifts Small," was the chairman of this important committee. Neither its discussions nor the debates of the whole convention have been preserved. Its reported draft of Article III was debated three days, and then assigned for further consideration. It was adopted by the convention without much change, and remained in force till 1833. In sub- stance it was this: As happiness and good government depend on piety, religion and morality; as these cannot be generally spread without public worship and instruc- tion; therefore the legislature shall require towns to pro- vide for public worship and teachers of morality, and shall
135
TOWN AFFAIRS, 1747-1819
require people to attend church. Towns shall choose their own public teachers. All taxes for religious purposes shall support the teacher desired by those who pay them, provided the town has such a teacher; otherwise the public teacher of the town. All religious denominations shall be equally protected by the law.
This article was not more liberal in effect than the conditions that had prevailed before. The smaller and poorer sects like the Baptists, who could not possibly maintain a church in every town, could still be taxed unjustly, though they had some relief in special laws and in the forebearance of some towns. The Baptists immediately protested to the General Court, but in vain.
Article III was opposed by three classes: some wanted all sects publicly supported, but treated more equally, some wanted only voluntary support, and a few wanted greater strictness in favoring the old church. In 1833 Amendment XI provided that any religious society may tax its members only with their own consent.
After this, the longest discussion of the convention, it adjourned November 11 till the next January. This happened to be the worst winter since 1717; the Hartford Turnpike through our town was the only road open to travel towards the central part of the State; and the convention presented its constitution to the people on March 2. In June the convention declared it adopted by the votes of the people, and it went into effect. This convention has been called the body of men which best expressed the spirit of the American Revolution.
In 1782 in its instructions to its Representative, Stephen Metcalf, the town wanted to have all State salaries reduced, Representatives paid by their own towns, the General Court to meet away from Boston, a report to be made of all State income and expenses,
136
HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
"that so the people who have a right to know, may know how the money is expended that they pay," a separate report of the State's annual expense for "Continental affairs" and of its debt for that purpose, and a great reduction in the cost of getting justice in the courts.
Aaron Holbrook was the town's first Representative after Stephen Metcalf, in 1788. He was instructed to try to establish courts of small circuit "to be nearer the small towns," and "that the banefull gugaws of Briton and all West India goods like sugar, tea & coffee that the Publick can best do without, be heavily dutied. We charge you to encourage home manufactorys."
The Constitution of the United States was adopted in Massachusetts in 1788 by one hundred and eighty-seven Yeas and one hundred and sixty-eight Nays, with just nine men absent. In our county only five men in thirty- nine were opposed, the delegates of Stoughton, Sharon, Medway, Wrentham and Bellingham. One writer remarks that "Medway and Bellingham and other towns near Rhode Island had been more or less otherwise- minded all through the Revolutionary times." There were over twenty Baptists in this convention, and two- thirds of them voted against the constitution, as forming too strong a government; Mr. Alden was one of them.
A description of the town in 1784 in a " Gazetteer " is as follows: "Bellingham There is but one pond, beaver dam pond, remarkable for depth of water and miry shores almost surrounded by a cedar swamp. Into Charles River flow three small streams, North Branch, Stall Brook, Beaver Dam Brook. Peter's River and Bunge Brook in the south part empty at Providence.
" There are two grist mills, two saw mills and one fulling mill but of little or no use except in winter for want of water, nor all used even then. Roads are tol-
137
TOWN AFFAIRS, 1747-1819
erably good but in some places very sandy. The trade is very small; people depend on the land and some mechan- ical employments. Almost every family is provided with a pair of looms by which they make nearly enough clothing for themselves. The number of farms is about 80. The inhabitants are about equally divided between the Congregational and Baptist persuasions. The latter have a house and a settled minister. The principal part of the Congregationalists in 1747 was incorporated with the West Parish of Medway."
Poverty began to be more noticeable after the war, and perhaps for that reason swine were allowed to run at large again. No overseers of the poor were chosen till 1775. In 1786 "Voted that the Overseers of the Poore Put out the Town's Poore at the Best of their Disgression either at Vandue or any other way." A man working on the highway got four pence an hour and the same amount for his cart and oxen.
The valuation for 1787 was:
91 houses at 45s.,
£204, 15s. Money at interest and on hand, £1,000
72 barns at 18s., 64,16s. Goods,
271
20 stoves at 5s., 5, 5s. 63 horses,
378
2 mills at 50s., 5 117 oxen, 319
627 acres of mowing, 232, 3s.
305 cows, .
1,220
172 barrels of "cyder", 21
381 goats and sheep, 57 swine,
115
598 acres of tillage, 125
34
360 acres of meadow, 239
Coaches and chaises,
40
1172 acres of pasture, 146
Gold, 10
5099 acres of woodland, 111
Silver, 127
A cow was nearly worth two houses.
The first school committee for the whole town was chosen in 1791, and one constable and collector instead of two. He offered to collect the taxes for £2 14 s.
In 1792 and 1793 the town refused to provide a house for smallpox inoculation: "The Town disapprove of the Small pox coming into Town Contrary to Law."
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HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
In 1794 the tax collector's pay was in dollars instead of pounds. Swine were confined to their residences from this time on.
In 1798 three hundred and seven pupils in six dis- tricts cost $219, and $200 was spent on highways, paying wages of 6 cents an hour.
In 1798 the United States laid a direct tax on real estate of two classes, of which the original details have been preserved. Stephen Metcalf was the principal assessor for the three towns of Bellingham, Wrentham and Franklin, and Laban Bates was one of his four assistants. Ninety-three houses with lots of not over two acres were found in Bellingham worth at least $100, of which these fourteen were valued at $400 or more:
William Adams
$440
Daniel Jones $825
John Scammell $660
Laban Aldrich
517
David Jones 640
Seth Shearman 650
Laban Bates 962
Stephen Metcalf 650 .
Eliab Wight 440
Ezra Forristall
495
Daniel Paine 495
William Whittaker 638
Jesse Hill
60
Daniel Penniman 543
On other land than house lots, one hundred and fourteen men were taxed, of whom thirty-one had land valued at $800 or more:
Amos Adams
$1000
Joseph Fairbanks$2100
John Scammell
$3128
Laban Aldrich
1050
Ezra Forristall 1500
Samuel Scott
1300
Ezekiel Bates
2400
Aaron Hill 900
Saul Scott
1460
Laban Bates
5050
Seth Holbrook 900
Nehemiah Shearman 1050
John Chilson
2000
Stephen “ 950
Seth
1550
Joseph
900
David Jones
3000
Simon Slocomb 900
Joshua 66
1450
Elisha Kelly
1260
Pelatiah Smith
810
Ezekiel Cook
1200
Stephen Metcalf
2032
Elias Thayer
1330
Stephen Cook
800
Gideon Paine
1500
Eliab Wight
900
Amariah Cushman 810
Daniel Penniman 1720
Amos Ellis
1050
Joshua Phillips 1360
The nine men who owned the most real estate within the town were Laban Bates $6112, John Scammell $3788, David Jones $3640, Stephen Metcalf $2692, Daniel
139
TOWN AFFAIRS, 1747-1819
Penniman $2263, Seth Shearman $2210, Joseph Fair- banks $2100, John Chilson $2000, and Ezra Forristall $1995. Of course these small figures are not understood unless we remember the changed value of money and the few rich men in early times. The richest man in the United States in 1799 was thought to be George Wash- ington, whose property was estimated at $500,000, mostly land and slaves.
The building of the town house in 1802 has been related in the last chapter. It is shown in the town seal in its original form, before the curved top of the porch became unsafe and was removed.
The first vote in town meeting after choosing officers had kept its place sacredly from the beginning: swine and cattle shall or shall not run at large this year. It had been negative for fifteen years, but in 1809 "Those People that have but one cow may run at Large by obtaining leave of the Selectmen."
The town gave at least five soldiers to the War of 1812 with Great Britain, whose graves are in the Centre Cemetery: Joseph Adams, Laban Burr, Mason Clark, William Paine, and Warren L. Lazell. In 1814 a vol- untary and popular military company was formed, the Bellingham Rifles, which had a long and successful career. The town was not excused from maintaining its standing militia company besides.
The store at Bellingham Centre had now been kept for several years. Christopher Slocomb ended his part- nership with John Thayer there in 1815.
In 1816 it was voted "to transfer all business that hath been done at the September meeting to the April meeting and discontinue the former."
During its first century the town's population had grown very slowly except at last, when the factories
140
HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
were built on Charles River. Mr. Fisher estimated six persons to a family at the beginning, and two hundred and forty persons in all. A state census in 1765 showed four hundred and sixty-five in eighty-two families living in seventy-two houses, two hundred and thirty of them children under sixteen, and eight negroes. In 1776 the total was six hundred and twenty-seven; in 1790 the first United States census showed seven hundred and thirty-five, in one hundred and twenty-one families. Three hundred and thirty-two persons then bore one of these eight names:
Adams, 4 families, 27 persons.
Holbrook, 12 families, 71 persons.
Cook, 8 families, 57 persons. Scott, 6 families, 47 persons.
Darling, 9 families, 46 persons.
Thayer, 5 families, 36 persons.
Hill, 4 families, 17 persons.
Thompson, 4 families, 31 persons.
In 1800 the population fell to seven hundred and six; in 1810 it was seven hundred and sixty-six, but in 1820 it had become one thousand thirty-four.
ADDISON E. BULLARD
CHAPTER X THE MILLS
FOR its first century the people of this town were practically all farmers; during the second they have produced much more wealth in manufactures than on the farms, though the majority of the men have not been at work in the mills until lately. Of course the variety of employment has increased greatly in our time. Of the manufactured goods, boots and shoes were about one- third in value in both 1845 and 1876, but both before and since those dates cotton and woolen goods were generally at least three-fourths of the whole. So in a sense the mills have been the most important thing in the town during this last century. Here are some reports of its industries in the past.
In 1828 Bellingham was "an active and flourishing manufacturing town."
In 1831 three cotton factories with twenty-six looms and one thousand five hundred and seventy-six spindles made goods worth $11,032; a woolen factory with nine looms and two hundred and forty spindles, goods worth $2880.
In 1837 two mills with one thousand six hundred and seventy-two spindles made four hundred and twenty- seven thousand four hundred and seventy yards of cotton goods worth $35,110, and employed twenty men and thirty-four women. The woolen mill with two sets of machinery made twenty-four thousand yards worth
141
142
HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
$62,000. Fourteen thousand five hundred and seventy pairs of boots and two hundred and twenty pairs of shoes were made, worth $28,077, and one thousand four hundred and fifty straw bonnets worth $2650.
In 1845 three cotton mills with two thousand five hundred and twenty spindles produced $33,640 in print cloth, thread and sheetings, and the two set woolen mill $10,000. Other products were brushes, carriages, farm tools, glue, straw braid, rowboats, etc. Boots were valued at $48,862, lumber $20,194, fruit one thousand four hundred and fifty-five bushels and hay one thousand fifty-two tons. All manufactures $150,000.
In 1855 the boots and shoes came to $117,000.
In 1860 three cotton factories with eighty-four looms and four thousand four hundred and twenty spindles pro- duced $18,700, the woolen mill $500, three boot factories $15,000, and two shoe shops $90.
In 1875 the whole capital invested in town was $480,000, and the product was $638,547. $150,000 invested in mills produced $330,000 in goods, $25,000 in boots and shoes produced $33,000, and $2500 in farm tools produced $18,000.
In 1876 eleven manufacturing establishments had a capital of $178,900 and produced $544,530. Boots and shoes amounted to $180,000; manufacturers of iron to $1400. One hundred and fifty farms were valued at $207,396. Agricultural products were $94,017 and lumber had reached $121,000 in one year.
In 1883 there were four factories, three gristmills, seven sawmills and five stores in town.
In 1885 ten manufacturing establishments, including two woolen mills, a boot factory and two food factories, produced $419,412, and one hundred and thirty-one farms $91,445.
W. H. CARY 1855-64, C. H. CUTLER 1864-78, W. A. McKEAN 1878-99, A. E. BULLARD 1899-1919
1
143
THE MILLS
Almost all the colonists wore homespun clothes. A fulling mill to dress this cloth appeared at Watertown in 1662, and in three other towns by 1670. The first cotton mill in the United States was at Beverly in 1787. The Slater mill at Pawtucket started in 1798, the Medway Cotton Manufacturing Company began in 1804, and the Norfolk Cotton Factory at Dedham in 1808. Our town began the work two years later.
THE NORTH BELLINGHAM MILL, 1810
The first building was built in 1810 by Joseph Ray, a young stone mason of Blackstone. He built many other cotton mills in the Blackstone Valley, and his firm, Paine & Ray, also made cotton mill machinery, at one time in two factories. He ran a cotton mill of his own successfully at Hillsboro, New Hampshire, from 1826 to the hard times of 1839, when the failure of a great cotton firm in Rhode Island involved him with it. His notes were extended for five years, and he came to Unionville to live. He retired in 1844 and died in 1847, leaving three sons, who owned many mills in this vicinity.
James P., the oldest, taught school at fifteen years of age, worked in his father's mill at sixteen and started in business for himself in the panic year of 1837, buying two hundred pounds of cotton to make cotton batting. In 1844 he took his brother Frank into partnership, and the third brother Joseph G. in 1851. James P., the head of this firm, was also president of the Milford, Franklin and Providence Railroad and a director in many corporations. He died in 1894, and left two sons Edgar and James.
Frank B., the second brother, was interested in satinets, feltings and woolen stock, and fond of farming. He left the firm in 1860, and died in 1892, leaving only one son, William F. Ray. The third brother Joseph
144
HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
began early in life to work for his brothers in their mill at Unionville, and started the first rag picker in this vicinity. The firm built one mill after another in several towns for both cotton and woolen manufacture, and gradually changed from cheaper to higher grades of cloth. The Ray Woolen Company mills have now generally passed over to the American Woolen Company. Mr. Ray was president of the Milford, Attleboro and Woonsocket Street Railroad, a director in many companies, and probably no man in this vicinity had larger business interests than he. He married the daughter of Joseph Rockwood of Bellingham, and made her home into an elegant summer residence, with a race course, an artificial pond and a stock farm. The estate after his death included nearly four hundred acres. Mr. Ray died in 1900, leaving two daughters.
The North Bellingham mill was first run by a com- pany of which Dr. Nathaniel Miller of Franklin was the head. He was a graduate of Bowdoin College and the Harvard Medical School, and an eminent physician. He built a building near his house for the use of his patients. He had a small thread mill, and was a prominent citizen of the town.
In 1813 he sold to Samuel Penniman of South Milford one-eighth of their property of thirteen acres for $162. He was the son of Landlord Penniman, and was starting the South Milford factory about this time. In 1814 another partner sold to "Dr. Nathaniel Miller, Whiting Metcalf of Franklin, Samuel Penniman and Seth Hastings of Mendon, now constituting the Bellingham Cotton Manufacturing Company" one-eighth of about sixty acres in three pieces for $1840. Dr. Miller now owned one-half and the other three one-sixth each.
Seth Hastings was a prominent lawyer of Mendon,
THE NORTH BELLINGHAM MILL
MP
-
145 -
THE MILLS
whose opinion was often asked by Stephen Metcalf. He was born at Cambridge in 1762, graduated at Harvard College and settled in Mendon. The story is told that he hesitated between that town and Worcester, and decided that Mendon had a better prospect for him. He arrived with all his property tied up in a red hand- kerchief, but he married a rich wife and became a member of Congress, as did his son after him.
In 1815 Penniman sold two and one third of fifty-four acres and "a stone factory" to Hastings for $1535. He sold his whole share, seven thirty-seconds, in 1820, to Joseph Ray and Rila Scott for $984. These two men probably married sisters. Rila Scott was born on Scott Hill in 1795 and had five children. He was a cloth manufacturer in several towns in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire and settled in Miford in 1850. His father, Saul, 1674-1834, married a Ballou and had thirteen children. He was the son of Deacon Samuel, the son of Joseph, the "bloomer." Ray and Scott bought out the other partners also in 1820, and then sold the property, which was now fourteen acres, in 1822, to Underwood & Drake of Rhode Island for $7650. This firm held it for two years and then sold it to Nathan A. Arnold, Peleg Kent, and Seth Arnold of Cumberland for $8400.
Seth Arnold, 1799-1883, was a descendant of Richard Arnold, the first settler of Woonsocket, whose father came from England in 1635, and settled in Providence in 1661. Richard's grandson John built the first frame house at Woonsocket in 1711, and a gristmill below the falls. His grandson, Nathan, was a captain in the Revolution. He had a son Nathan whose wife lived to nearly one hundred years, and their son was Seth the cotton manufacturer. In 1840 he began to make patent medicines also, and
146
HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
built up a great business. He was a man of a quiet, retiring disposition.
These purchasers gave Underwood & Drake a remark- able mortgage, promising $377 every two months till $5276 was repaid. In 1827 Saul Scott, Rila's father, who had lent $2250 to Ray & Scott in 1820, released his claim on the property to the Pawtucket Bank for $1000, and in the same year Samuel Metcalf of Providence, another creditor, got an execution against Arnold & Kent on their stone factory. In 1829 after the mortgage came into his hands, Jabed Ingraham of Seekonk, "Gentleman," sold to the Pawtucket Bank for $10,000, fourteen acres, and the mill mortgaged by Arnold & Kent to Underwood & Drake. He may have had some other business with the bank at the same time. The bank held it only a few months, and sold it to Benedict & Wood, manufac- turers, of Smithfield, for $4000, and they sold it soon for the same sum to D. C. Cushing and Nathan Giles. Mr. Cushing died soon after, and his partner, Giles, a lame man, ran the mill till it burned in 1838. The next year he sold out half to Varnum D. Bates of Providence, a deacon in the First Baptist Church and a commission merchant, and the other half to Noah J. Arnold, a mill overseer from Coventry, Connecticut. They rebuilt it and ran it for twenty years. Arnold was an ardent Whig in politics, very active in the Harrison and Tyler presidential campaign.
Besides the North Bellingham mill, Bates & Arnold bought of Dwight Colburn for $2400 in 1841 his stone cotton factory higher up the Charles River where the Red Mill is. The deed is very long, with about two thousand words, describing three tracts of land. Bates bought three-fourths and Arnold one-fourth. In 1842 they borrowed $10,000 on a mortgage from a Bates firm
147
THE MILLS
of Pawtucket. They paid Ruel Adams $1060 for the right to flow his land for their mill pond, and bought such rights from several others in the next three or four years. They prospered for some time, but in 1854 they borrowed $12,000 of Newell & Daniels of Providence, and in the hard times that came soon after Bates had to fail and in 1860 they surrendered both the upper and the lower mills to their creditors, Newell & Daniels.
By them the Bates & Arnold mill at North Belling- ham was sold in 1864 to J. P., F. B., and J. G. Ray, the three sons of the man who built the original stone building there, at the war price of $16,500. The brothers kept it for thirty-five years till 1899. Their superintendent for most of that time was Mr. Hiram Whiting. In 1879 the property was assessed at $36,400.
In 1884 it was called a cotton warp woolen satinet mill with eight sets and one hundred and fifty hands, making one million yards a year. It had been a cotton mill till the Rays took it in 1864. In 1886 Mr. Rathbun of Woonsocket, who had been a partner in the firm, sold out to the others and they took the name of Rays Woolen Company.
In 1899 they sold this mill and another in Franklin to the American Woolen Company; the stamps on the deed indicate a price of $100,000. The next year the American Woolen Company sold the North Bellingham mill with twelve lots of land to the Charles River Woolen Company of Bellingham at an apparent price of $59,000. In 1912 this company was dissolved, and the property was bought by the newly incorporated Bellingham Woolen Company, of which A. E. Bullard is president and W. W. Ollendorf is treasurer.
The present capital is $95,000. There are five pickers, ten sets of cards, one hundred and sixty narrow looms
148
HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
and three thousand woolen spindles. Two steam boilers are used, besides Edison electric current. The company has forty-nine tenements, a boarding house and a moving picture hall, and employs two hundred persons. The mill was run at night during the recent war to make silk yarn for powder bags, and it sold many thousand yards of its regular product, narrow cotton warp woolens, to the government.
THE CARYVILLE MILL
This was the second textile mill in town, started in 1813 by Joseph Fairbanks. The land where it stood was bought by Secretary Rawson of the Indians, sold by his son to Hayward, Sanford and Burch, in 1701, by Burch's son to John Metcalf in 1735, and by his grandson Stephen to his own son-in-law, Joseph Fair- banks, in 1800. He reserved the right to dig a channel to get water near the dam, "but not to injure the going of the mill."
The deed of 1813 gave Stephen Metcalf for $71.43 and certain privileges, one hundred and one rods of land to own in common with Joseph Fairbanks, miller, and his son, Elijah, Ethan Cobb, Eliphalet Holbrook, Eliab Holbrook and Asahel Adams, seven in all, "near said Fairbanks' Mills," with the right to convey water from his pond in a trench to be dug and stoned ten feet wide and four feet deep "to a Cotton Factory which is cal- culated to be built," reserving to himself "18 by 20 feet of the southwest corner of the lower story of said Factory" for a gristmill. The factory to be built and half the expense of the dam in the future to be paid by the seven proprietors, the other half with the sawmill "and Trip Hammer Shop flume," to be supported by Fairbanks.
JOSEPH FAIRBANKS 1803-35, ELIJAH FAIRBANKS TO 1868, CALVIN FAIRBANKS TO 1902, H. A. SPEAR IN 1919
149
THE MILLS
Probably the quantity of iron, manufactured here was always small; it may have come from the Mine Woods near North Bellingham, which were owned by the Metcalf family with others. They had another sawmill at least very soon after this time, where Holden's mill is now, which made this one less necessary, and allowed most of the power to go to the cotton machinery, which had the first claim upon it. But the gristmill was active for over fifty years, till Joseph's son Jonas sold to William Cary, the owner of the cotton mill in 1862, a quarter acre of land with his gristmill and dam, for $1000.
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