USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Bellingham > History of the town of Bellingham, Massachusetts, 1719-1919 > Part 12
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Adin Ballou, 1803-1890, of Cumberland, became a Universalist at the age of twenty, and had to leave both
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his church and his home on that account. He preached in Milford, Mendon and Hopedale till 1880, and was the head of the famous Hopedale Community, the "Prac- tical Christian Republic," which lasted from 1842 to 1856. He wrote many religious books and others, among them a large history of Milford. His preaching continued nearly sixty-nine years, and he served occasionally in all the towns of this vicinity. He married one thousand one hundred and ninety-nine couples and attended about two thousand funerals. He declaimed against slavery and war and was called "a restorationist, communist, spiritualist, pacifist, one of the most remarkable souls that New England has produced."
In 1823 the Congregationalists voted to meet in common with the other societies till the lawsuit was settled. The next year they voted to unite with the Universalists and become a legal parish. By a special act the Legis- lature appointed a Justice to call a parish meeting, which was held in 1825. A committee reported to this meeting that "they might support a minister if united with con- cessions on a man who would lament the divisions that prevail in this place," and would suggest methods of restoring peace and harmony in this distracted region. Such a man is not in this place at present, and we believe that the good of society now calls for a vote of the parish excluding the Rev. Abial Fisher from any privilege in this house as a preacher except by permission of this committee on an extraordinary occasion. We do not wish to exclude the Baptists from this house, but urge them to join us in procuring a minister of the kind described. If they do so, we think it would be more likely to settle a Baptist than a man of any other belief."
The Baptists did not join them, but stood by their pastor. The others voted to call Rev. David Newman,
THE BAPTIST CHURCH, BUILT IN 1826
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and a year later to thank him, "as it is not probable that we shall be able to support him any longer." This was the end of the revived town church.
Meanwhile the Baptists were busy. Mr. Fisher himself gave $70 from his $350 salary for a new Baptist meeting house, and was chairman of the building com- mittee. Subscriptions of from $5 to $150 were raised in town, and others throughout the State, and in January, 1826, the contract for the building above the foundation was given for $2600 to Malachi and Appleton Bullard of Medway. Besides the subscriptions paid, $625 was received from the sale of pews. The church was ded- icated in November, to be held by trustees always to be Baptists. Mr. Fisher appeared to have a stroke of paralysis the next year, from which he recovered, but he left town soon after. His pastorate was stormy, but the church grew, in spite of its losses. In a time of great interest in 1821 and 1822 he baptized forty-five persons, and the members increased in his time from forty to ninety-six.
After leaving Bellingham Mr. Fisher preached at West Boylston for three years, and then went to Webster in 1832. He was considered there a good preacher and a good manager of church finances, but "expectations were disappointed," and he stayed only a year and a half. After serving several other churches he retired to a farm at West Boylston, where he died in 1862.
In 1828 Rev. Calvin Newton began an active and successful ministry here of three years. He left to become a professor in Colby College, Maine.
In 1834 Rev. Joseph T. Massey began his remarkable pastorate. He was born in Virginia in 1808, but grad- uated at the Newton Theological Seminary, and was ordained in Bellingham. After six years here he went
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back to that State for seven years, as a pastor and a missionary, but then he returned here again. During his absence Rev. Nehemiah G. Lovell was the pastor. The church increased from one hundred and forty-one to one hundred and seventy-four members, its largest number. He was a conscientious and scholarly man, rather sensitive in his disposition. He went from here to the Baptist Church at North Attleboro. For Mr. Massey the church built a parsonage. His second pastorate lasted till 1880, so that he served here in all thirty-nine years. The Sunday after the assassination of President Lincoln he happened to exchange pulpits with Dr. Ide of the West Parish, and he did not refer to the great event that every one was thinking of. As a Virginian he preferred not to talk publicly about the war. But besides being the longest, his ministry was doubtless one of the best liked in this town, as the people chose him for their highest offices so many times. He was town treasurer in 1859-1868, and even both treasurer and clerk in 1870-1879. He had only two children, who died young. He died in Virginia after preaching eleven years more, in 1891 at the age of eighty-three. The Centre school was named for him when the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the church was observed in 1887, and sixty-three of the seventy-six members were present, Mr. Massey came, and gave the historical address. The names of eight pastors were commemorated.
In 1881 Rev. Daniel A. Wade began a pastorate of nine years. Edwin F. Mitchell was here from 1890 to 1892, and the church was altered and repaired then. Rev. Lucian Drury served from 1892 to 1897. At that time the church had sixty-six members. Then came an interval of supply by theological students, among them S. S. Huse, 1893, J. P. Berkley, 1897, and 1898, C. L.
THE NORTH BELLINGHAM BAPTIST CHURCH, BUILT IN 1908
-
F
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Chamberlain, 1909 and 1910. Mrs. Harriet Littlefield left the church $1000 in 1907. Rev. W. W. Wakeman was the next settled minister, from 1910 to 1916, when he went to Westwood. The church had then sixty- eight members. His successor was Rev. Adolph Aubert till this year, when Mrs. Emma J. C. Park came from North Reading to take his place.
THE BAPTIST CHURCH AT NORTH BELLINGHAM
This church is seventy-two years old. The mill here was owned for twenty years by Bates & Arnold, and Mr. Bates was a deacon in the First Baptist Church of Provi- dence. In October, 1847, they dedicated a hall for use as a chapel, containing thirty-five pews, of which twenty-nine were let at once. Every year since then has been recorded, except the war time, 1862-1866. That firm failed then, and Hiram Whiting became Mr. Arnold's successor as superin- tendent of the mill in 1867. The next year the congrega- tion became a Baptist Church, duly recognized by a council of seven churches. Its preachers have usually been either students from the Newton Baptist Theological Sem- inary or the Baptist pastor from the center of the town, but in 1882 Rev. E. D. Bowers was settled here for two years. After the two years' service of Rev. L. J. Brace their present building was dedicated in 1908, costing about $4500. There were twenty-seven members in 1917.
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THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
A history of the Catholic Church in New England states that there were probably less than two hundred Catholics in Massachusetts in 1780, seven hundred and twenty in Boston in 1810, and about a dozen in Milford in 1832. These went first to Boston and later to Woon- socket for marriages and baptisms, and to Blackstone for burials. The first mass in Milford was said in a house, 1836, and about a dozen persons heard it. When the railroad from Framingham to Milford was built in 1848, many Irish laborers came, and the first Catholic Church in Milford was built then.
In Bellingham before 1850 fourteen persons with apparently Irish names were married, six births were registered and five deaths. The record is of little value, because it is known to be incomplete. The Catholics of the north part of the town at first had to go to churches of their faith on the east, north, and west, at Franklin, Medway and Milford.
The Franklin parish belonged to Attleborough till 1877, but the people bought the old meeting house of Dr. Emmons in 1871, built in 1788 for $3514.86. It was now called St. Mary's Church. Only a few persons from our town went to Franklin and not for long.
The Milford Church, where most of our Catholics went till about 1870, received a strong man as pastor in 1857, when Rev. Patrick Cuddihy came, from Berk- shire County, where he had built several churches. He was a priest for sixty-six years, and active till over ninety years old. His great parish included Hopkinton, Holliston, Ashland, Westborough, Upton and Medway, till 1866, when Ashland, Hopkinton and Westborough were set off from it.
In Medway the Catholic people used to meet at the
ST. BRENDAN'S ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH, BUILT IN 1895
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house of Walter Dewire in 1850, and in 1857 with John Kenney, when Father Cuddihy came to them. Their present church lot was bought in 1863, and it is said that "St. Clare's Parish" was organized in 1864. In 1870 Holliston became an independent parish with Medway for its mission, and here was the church home of the Bellingham Catholics. Rev. Richard J. Quinlan was in charge, and he built the basement and most of the superstructure of the Medway church, which was first occupied in 1877. In 1885 Rev. M. T. Boylan came to the new parish of Medway, and the building, seating six hundred persons, was completed and dedicated the next year. He was educated at Montreal, ordained in 1874, and came here from Cambridge.
When he went away to Charlestown in 1888, Rev. Thomas B. Lowney took his place. He was born in 1846, studied in Montreal, and served in Natick, Wey- mouth, Chelsea and Boston before coming to Medway. North Bellingham was his mission, and he built St. Brendan's Church here. In 1896 he went away to Marl- boro, and was succeeded in Medway by Rev. D. J. Keleher, Professor of Science at St. John's Seminary, till 1906. Father Dewire served there 'from 1906 to 1910. Rev. Martin J. Lee has been the rector at Medway since then, and Rev. Joseph Reardon has been the curate since 1898.
St. Brendan's Church, which still belongs to the Med- way parish, stands on the Pelatiah Smith estate, where for many years the Catholics who lived in the old tavern building used to meet on Sundays to say the rosary when they did not go to Milford. The first service was held in it September 8, 1895, when the building was consecrated to divine worship. It seats four hundred persons.
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St. Brendan was an abbot in Ireland who ruled over three thousand monks in several monasteries, and died 1340 years ago. He lived where the first civilized men came to Ireland from Spain about a thousand years before Christ, and had a church on Brandon Mountain near the mouth of the River Shannon, where he loved to gaze out over the western sea. Soon after he was ordained by Bishop Erc, who died in the year 512, he prayed for some place of retirement, far away from men. He dreamed that an angel promised him a beautiful island, and soon a hermit came and told him with tears of excitement of one where he had been, "the land of promise of the Saints, where no night ever came, for Jesus Christ was the light thereof," and where people lived without food and drink. His heart was kindled by the tale, and with chosen monks he sailed away and was gone for seven years and saw whales, icebergs, vol- canoes and many other great marvels, and "things that are not and never were." This tale is found in ancient manuscripts in the Latin, French, English, Saxon, Flemish, Irish, Welsh, Breton and Scottish Gaelic languages, with many wonderful variations. St. Brendan's Island is found on most of the maps of the time of Columbus. In 1521 an expedition from the Canary Islands searched for it, and again in 1570, when over a hundred persons testified that they had seen it from a distance. In 1605 another ship was sent in vain, and again another in 1721. The many reported appearances are now explained as the effects of mirage of the clouds upon the water.
It may be that the Saint discovered far more than an island that no one else could find. Some of the man- uscripts say that after a five-year missionary voyage to islands towards the north, he started on his seven- year voyage in a larger ship, built for the purpose, with
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sixty men. The date of this sailing was observed for some centuries as a memorable event in the history of the church. He came to a land where he could find no limits in forty days' travel, and saw a large river flowing from east to west which he could not cross. This land has been called North America, and the river the Ohio. When Cortez came to Mexico in 1519, he found tradi- tions of a white man who had come across the ocean long ago from the northeast in a boat with "wings" like the sails of the Spaniards, who remained seven years and taught a humane religion. "The envious tooth of time" prevents our knowing surely whether "those happy plains of Paradise in that great western land" were in our own country, visited by St. Brendan more than nine centuries before Columbus came.
CHAPTER XII
TOWN AFFAIRS, 1819-1919
IN 1822 Mr. Fisher preached his two Century Ser- mons, and the town is fortunate in having this printed record of its first century.
In 1823 Pelatiah Smith, the tavern keeper, carried a negro traveler to Holliston, who became sick there and was cared for at the town's expense. Mr. Smith refused to bring him back to Bellingham, and was sued by the town of Holliston, losing in fine and expenses $200. Our town allowed him $75 towards his loss.
Many times in our history it has been proposed to change our boundaries, besides the long continued waverings in the Wrentham line and in the State line between Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In 1730 a part of Mendon was declined, and afterwards invited to join us in vain. The West Parish of Medway, incor- porated for church purposes only, could easily become a town by itself, as was proposed in 1807, and the people of the four towns to which it belonged were asked in 1816 to state their reasons both for and against that change. The agitation for it increased for several years, and in 1824 thirty-two men of Medway, eleven of Hollis- ton, five of Franklin and eight of Bellingham raised $360 to accomplish it. Bellingham voted against it fifty-eight to twelve, and the next year seventy-three to twelve. The town would lose an eighth of its land, a seventh of its valuation and more than a sixth of its inhabitants.
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The petition was refused by the Legislature. The pro- posal was renewed about thirty years ago, and discussed in the local newspapers, but it interested only a few persons at that time.
In 1825 Major Cook kept a tavern at the Centre, and Wright Curtis at the South End.
In 1830 the town voted "to put . . . Esq and his wife out to any suitable lowest bidder," and to sue his son unless he paid for half of their support. Perhaps this sad case led to the purchase of the town farm the next year. Seth Holbrook received $3500 for one hundred and fifty-five acres, with buildings, four cows, oxen, etc. Twenty paupers went there, but only eight were left the next year. The farm sold butter, straw braid, calves, lambs, etc., amounting to $130, and $50 worth of wood. The net expense was a little over $400 a year. This same farm has been run by the town for eighty-eight years.
In 1832 it was voted to do all town business annually at the March meeting only.
Even as late as 1833 "cattle & horses shall not run at large on the highways."
In 1835 the school bank money had probably been used to help pay for the town farm, but the school appro- priation was $600 and $25 "interest" on that fund. The town had lately changed its plan again to one general school committee instead of district committees. High- ways required $600 this year, besides $100 for bridges, one over Peter's River to be made of stone.
In 1836 the town spent $250 on inoculation for small- pox, and built a temporary hospital at the town farm.
In 1840 the town voted that the selectmen should visit all manufacturing establishments and remove any- thing injurious to health. The third story of the town
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house porch was finished off for an armory. The town has always taken a notable interest in military matters.
The school report for 1841 showed nine schools with two hundred and seventy-three pupils in winter and two hundred and fifteen in summer. The teachers received their board in their districts, estimated at $6.75 for men and $5.20 for women a month, not a week, and $15.85 a month salary for men and $7 for women besides. The school bank money was called $418. The wage for work on the highway was ten cents an hour.
The south part of the town was immensely excited in 1842 by the strange civil war in Rhode Island. The charter of that colony, which was granted by King Charles II of England in 1663, gave the Colonial Assembly the right to admit as voters "such persons as they shall think fit." When the colonies became independent of British authority by the Revolution, instead of estab- lishing a new and more just government for the new State like the others, Rhode Island strangely kept the King's charter as its constitution. In colonial times only landowners could be voters as a matter of course, and this restriction still remained in force, so that in 1840 of over twenty-two thousand adult males only nine thousand five hundred and ninety were freemen; Providence with twenty-three thousand people had only one thousand six hundred and ten voters, but Smith- field and Cumberland, including Woonsocket, with three thousand, had four hundred and fifty voters. Generally the north part of the State fared worse than the south, because all the men of the south part owned land, since they were farmers. Besides this injustice, towns were not represented in the Assembly in proportion to their population, but by an arbitrary rule, perhaps reasonable once, which had remained unchanged for nearly one
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hundred and fifty years. Providence County, the northern half of the State in area, with fifty-eight thousand seventy-three population against fifty-four thousand five hundred in the rest of the State, had only twenty- two of the seventy-two representatives in the Assembly. The country voters of the small towns whose power was thus out of all proportion to their number, had always prevented any reform, both in suffrage and in representation. For want of a proper constitution the people of Rhode Island had suffered more than two generations, from fundamental laws long ago outgrown and plainly unjust.
In 1824 a constitution was presented to the voters which gave fair representation but still restricted voting to landowners; the city of Providence voted six hundred and fifty Yes to twenty-six No, Cumberland and Smith- field two hundred and sixty-eight Yes to thirty-two No, but the constitution was rejected by a vote in the State of two to one. In 1834 a constitutional convention con- trolled by conservatives adjourned finally for lack of a quorum. So after years of agitation and discouragement the suffrage party decided in 1841 to hold a State con- vention and adopt a constitution by popular vote without legislative authority, and then ask recognition from the United States government instead of that tyrannical State government, which had always been able to prevent its own reform.
Although the legislature now called a constitutional convention, this People's Convention on January 12, 1842, without waiting for the report of the legal convention due a month later, declared that their own constitution had been adopted by thirteen thousand one hundred and sixty-four votes in an adult male population of twenty- three thousand. Both the voting and the counting of the
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votes were done without any authority, and the result was only the report of voluntary members of the suffrage party. The Providence Journal said that some of the votes in Cumberland were cast by Massachusetts men. Though the legal convention was held and proposed reasonable reforms, the suffrage party had voted that when a majority of the citizens of a State, themselves United States citizens, should form and accept by vote a new constitution, it became the fundamental law of the State, and they now displayed a flag with the words: "The Constitution is adopted and shall be maintained." They began to practice military drill and to hold evening parades in Providence.
In March the legislature met, and decided to post- pone attempts at reform in the present excitement, but considered it necessary to meet the threatened rebellion by a law to punish those who should accept office or act under the new People's Constitution. The landowners' party called themselves Law and Order Men, but the reformers called them Algerines, recalling the Barbary pirates; this therefore was called the Algerine Law.
The Governor warned the people against supporting the rebels, and called on the President of the United States for military aid; it was not refused, but tempo- rarily withheld as not yet required. United States soldiers just returned from Mexico are said to have been quartered at Crooks' Tavern, but they did not actually enter Rhode Island.
April 18 the suffrage party held a State election under their constitution, and chose for Governor Thomas W. Dorr, the man who had been their leader in the legislature for years. He organized his government the third of May in an unfinished building in Providence, after being escorted by a procession of about one thousand six hundred
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and fifty men, of whom four hundred and ninety-five were armed. His legislature adjourned to July, after repealing the Algerine Law and a few other votes; they were unwilling to seize the State House, as Dorr wished to have done. He now visited New York and even Wash- ington, and his story brought him considerable encour- agement, with some promises of men and arms, which were not kept.
After his return to Providence at one o'clock in the morning of May 18, a signal gun was fired before his quarters, and he marched to the State arsenal with less than two hundred and fifty men. He called for its sur- render and tried in vain to fire a cannon. His men gradually deserted him and he retreated with thirty of them. At nine o'clock he escaped to Connecticut, and the Governor there refused to give him up when it was requested. The Governor of Rhode Island offered $1000 for his capture.
While he was outside the State again, he met sym- pathy and promises of support, and his party continued active, especially in the north part of the State. They began to hold meetings and parades again in Woonsocket, June 10, and tried to get cannon and powder into Prov- idence. June 23 the legislature authorized the Governor to proclaim martial law, and Dorr proclaimed the meeting of his legislature at Chepachet, only six miles from the Connecticut line, instead of at Providence, for June 25, and also summoned his troops to that place: "I hereby direct the military of this State who are in favor of the People's Constitution to repair forthwith to headquarters."
Governor King now asked aid from President Tyler for the third time, which was refused "because the leg- islature though in session had not joined in the request." Martial law was finally declared on June 25, and about
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three thousand State troops marched towards Woonsocket and by different routes towards Chepachet. On Monday, June 27, Dorr found out what forces were approaching, and at 7 P.M., he wrote a note saying: "Believing that a majority of the People who voted for the Constitution are opposed to its support by military means, I have directed that all the military here assembled be dis- missed." They scattered and he fled, and the Governor offered now $5000 for his capture. He escaped from the State, but returned later, was convicted under the Algerine law after a long trial, and finally pardoned.
Martial law was enforced in Woonsocket for a week by nearly two hundred soldiers, and this region was in great excitement. A Boston news paper reported: "Rhode Island declares war on the United States." A little girl in Woonsocket was left alone in a house with her baby brother, and when she heard the terrifying cry, "The Algerines are coming," she hid the baby in a bureau drawer for some hours, but it was not harmed. It is said that two Rhode Island officers were sued by the State of Massachusetts for arresting Dorrites under a military order in Bellingham at Crooks' Tavern.
The Massachusetts Governor's account of the affair is in his message to the Senate of September, 1842. The Adjutant General lent to the Rhode Island authorities on their urgent appeal on June 25, five hundred stand of arms, etc. On June 27 the Governor refused to allow him to lend more. Complaints of violence in Massachusetts came from only two places, Pawtucket and Bellingham. On Sunday, June 26, a brawl in Pawtucket, which then belonged to Massachusetts, caused the death of a Paw- tucket man on the Massachusetts end of the bridge, from a shot fired by a Rhode Island guard at the other end, and others were wounded. No militia company
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