History of the town of Bellingham, Massachusetts, 1719-1919, Part 13

Author: Partridge, George Fairbanks, 1863-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: [Bellingham] Pub. by the town
Number of Pages: 296


USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Bellingham > History of the town of Bellingham, Massachusetts, 1719-1919 > Part 13


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was present, and the bridge was wholly in Rhode Island. On June 29 the Pawtucket Selectmen thought that no Massachusetts troops were needed, and none were sent.


On June 30 two men from Bellingham came to the Governor and reported that the night before an armed force broke into Crooks' Tavern and carried away four persons. The Adjutant General was sent to assure the town's people of protection, to find whether the Rhode Island authorities caused the trespass, and to visit Pawtucket.


He found the Bellingham people assembled in a special town meeting, for which the warrant said: "To see what measures the Town will Take concerning a Mob or an armed force invading and breaking into the House of Jeremiah Crooks and Threatening and abusing said Crooks on the night of the 29th inst." They voted to choose a committee of three "to make arrangements for a preparation to defend the Inhabitants of said Town," and he promised them the State's protection and took one of them with him to the commanding officer at Woonsocket. This officer disclaimed all knowledge of the trespass and showed his written orders, which forbade him to cross the State line. The Adjutant General concluded that both parties in the invasion belonged to Rhode Island, and that there was no further danger of its repetition. He found quiet at Pawtucket, and the Rhode Island Governor disclaimed any intention of trespass.


The bitterness of the quarrel reached across the State line, and for a long time after this people of any position and property in South Bellingham were called by their neighbors Algerines.


In 1843 the Woonsocket Patriot, the first and greatest of the many local newspapers of adjoining towns read


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by Bellingham people, advertised: "A stage leaves Woon- socket at R. Smith's Hotel every morning except Sunday at 6 A. M. Monday, Wednesday and Friday it goes through Bellingham, Medway, Medfield and Dedham to Boston, at 1212 o'clock, the other days through Bell- ingham, Franklin, Rockville, Medfield, &c. Fare, $1." It was $1.50 in 1847, when the Providence and Worcester Railroad began operation.


In 1843 a committee of three was chosen "to buy a stove and funnel to warm the town meeting house," and another to act as a board of health. This appears to be the first stove used; the West Parish people peti- tioned for one in their meeting house as early as 1820.


In 1844 a committee was chosen "to suppress the sale of ardent spirits in town." A town liquor agent was chosen in 1855.


In 1845, one hundred and sixty-three votes were cast for Representative, and James M. Freeman, the town clerk, received eighty-two and was declared elected for his second term. Another single ballot was found cast against him, and the Selectmen then declared his election lost. He petitioned the General Court, proved that two of the votes against him were illegal, and received his seat.


In 1846 citizens petitioned the town to move towards getting a railroad here.


The first board of auditors was chosen in 1849. Schools and streets both cost $800 that year. The school committee was three men, besides a prudential committee in each district. The town vacillated between having only one general committee, or district committees, or a combination of both.


In 1851 it took ten ballots on three successive days to choose the town's representative in the Legislature.


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Edwin Fairbanks was elected by ninety-one votes against Fenner Cook, who had eighty-two. Mr. Cook was chosen on the second ballot the next year.


In 1852 a committee was chosen to finish off the lower floor of the town house to be let for a boot shop, to appraise the pews on the upper floor, and to adapt it better to town business, but the changes were not made at that time.


In 1853 "Voted to pay 25 cents for the head of an old crow, 1212 for a young one, and 25 for a woodchuck. All other birds and beasts to run at large."


The election of a representative in the Legislature this year was actually given up as a hopeless job, after six indecisive ballots on three separate days. The last result was Noah J. Arnold sixty-one, Jeremiah Crooks forty-two, and Martin Rockwood fifty.


In 1855 a committee of three was chosen to investigate the subject of intemperance and "Root out all such existing evils as may be found in said Town."


The school district which had included both Cary- ville and North Bellingham up to this time, was now divided, leaving nearly fifty children in the North Belling- ham school. The strong opposition to this change caused a lawsuit against the town, butit remained in effect till 1901.


In 1856 Martin Rockwood was elected to the Leg- islature by one hundred and sixty-eight votes out of two. hundred and thirty-nine.


In 1860 it was voted to print an annual report of the town's business. Some of these reports are missing from that year to 1889, but since then the file is complete.


Some of the votes of the Civil War time are as follows: 1861, May 4, To raise $1000 for soldiers' aid under a committee of eleven persons. May 20, To borrow $2000 for outfit for drill and for aid.


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1862, $100 to every soldier up to seventeen sworn in for this town, and after them $10 to every man who enlisted within ten days. August 23, $200 to every man. September, To borrow $5000 to pay volunteers for nine months.


1863, To borrow not over $3000 for aid to soldiers' families. July, $5000 more.


1864, $2000 more for State Aid. $186 to repay all subscribers for the volunteers in 1863.


1865, $1000 for State Aid.


1866, To repay all subscriptions made for volunteers with interest. $500 more for State Aid.


The nine persons who held the office of selectmen in the years 1861-1865 were Alanson Bates, Elisha Chase, Calvin Fairbanks, A. H. Holbrook, D. J. Pickering, Savel Metcalf, Martin Rockwood, James A. Thayer and B. W. Woodbury.


In 1863 the list of men in town subject to military · duty had one hundred and forty-five names, and thirty- one were then in service. The Massachusetts Records give the names of thirty-three soldiers from Bellingham as follows:


Edward J. Adams W. O. Freeman Jos. W. Holbrook Asa Pickering


Frederick Bates Patrick Gallagher Jairus Lawrence James W. Pickering Amos R. Bent John J. Gerstle Thomas McDowell Robert Post


Charles E. Burr Joseph Gerstle Peter McKeen Geo. A. Richardson Howard Carlton T. G. Getchell George L. Metcalf George Swift Martin V. B. Cook Samuel D. Gregory John C. Metcalf John Terlin


John V. Coombs Chas. P. Hancock Garrick F. Moore Elisha H. Town Pardon L. Crosby Handel Holbrook Joseph Osgood Willis Whiting James Davis


There are ten names on the Soldiers' Monument, six of which are not on the list above:


Thomas Carey C. Philip Hancock Joseph Osgood Calvin C. Thayer


W. Ellis Cook


Jos. W. Holbrook


H. Perry Slocum Lewis E. Whitney


Moses Drake Jairas Lawrence


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In 1892 when the town made its first appropriation for Memorial Day (of $50), thirty-six graves of Civil War soldiers were decorated, eighteen at the Centre and eleven at North Bellingham. Asa Partridge, my father, was included, for his service under the United States Christian Commission. The graves of his grandfather, Joseph, and great grandfather, Benjamin, are marked for Rev- olutionary Service.


In 1905 sixteen survivors of the Civil War were reported here.


The men now living in town who served in this war are Henry Otis Arnold, aged seventy-seven, Oliver Miette e ghty-one, John Miner seventy-nine, and Henry W. Pick- ering seventy-eight.


In 1864 the people of the Caryville School District made a public subscription of over $30 to extend the school term there.


The militia list of 1864 contained one hundred and forty-seven names; fifty were farmers, fifty-one worked on boots, seventeen were mill hands and mechanics, and the rest were scattered among many occupations.


In January, 1867, there was a great snowstorm; Hollis Metcalf wrote that no steam cars ran for a week.


Land was bought to enlarge the town house lot in 1870, making more room for the school yard, and $3000 was voted for a new building in 1873.


In 1875 a lockup for tramps had to be built; it was well filled for some years, and then became entirely unnecessary.


The justices of the peace in this town in 1876 were Andrew A. Bates, Nathan A. Cook, Dr. Roland Hammond, David Lawrence and Savel Metcalf.


The streets were named and their names were put up in 1878.


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HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM


In 1880 George H. Partridge of Medway was stabbed in a drunken brawl at North Bellingham, and Frank and Amos T. Adams were sentenced to the State prison.


The town voted against allowing women to be voters and town officers in 1881. In the same year a motion to build a union schoolhouse for Caryville and North Bellingham was lost by a vote of forty-eight to fifty-one. $3000 for a building at North Bellingham was voted instead.


In 1882 Charles O. Drake was killed by a runaway horse.


The town's appropriations in 1885 were $1800 for schools, for the poor $1500, highways $900, bridges $250, debt $800, interest $600, town buildings $450, town officers $400, incidentals $300, and for printing, guide boards and school incidentals $50 each. The eight school buildings were called worth $10,500.


In 1889 a permanent committee of three, one chosen each year, was formed to manage the cemetery fund and care for the cemeteries. Electric cars began to run this year by the Four Corners between Franklin and Woonsocket.


The Bellingham Grange of the Patrons of Hus- bandry was formed in 1891. It has the use of a good dining room in the town house, and it has often held an agricultural exhibition in the fall, which was a pleasant old-home day for many of our present and former citizens.


In 1892 the first appropriation of $50 for Memorial Day was made; it has been continued ever since.


Water pipes from Woonsocket were laid on Center Street the next year.


In 1894 the town accepted the State library act, and voted to join a district to employ a Superintendent of Schools, and to build a two-room schoolhouse at Crooks'


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TOWN AFFAIRS, 1819-1919


Corner for $3000 the next year. The town high school held its first graduation in 1896, but after a few years the high school pupils here were sent away to other towns.


Electric cars began to run from Caryville to Milford and Medway in 1897, and two years later from Caryville to Four Corners, and from Four Corners by Bellingham Centre to Milford.


The number of our men who engaged in the Spanish War in 1898 is not exactly known; there were five survivors of it here in 1905.


In 1900 a State highway was begun at Crooks' Corner, running towards the Center. The town made a liberal appropriation for its old record books this year, and they are in good condition.


$10,000 was voted in 1901 to be repaid $500 annually, to build a schoolhouse for North Bellingham and Cary- ville, and $3000 to add two rooms to the Center building.


The telephone reached as far as Scott Hill from Woonsocket in 1904, and gas pipes from that city were laid in Center Street the next year.


The South Bellingham schoolhouse was finished in 1906; it had cost $7500.


Electric lights were brought to Caryville and North Bellingham in 1907, and to the South End the next year.


Walter H. Thayer, the present town treasurer, was first chosen in 1909.


In 1910 $3000 was spent to fit up the lower floor of the town house for the town offices, a vault for records, dining room, etc.


Charles Burr, who lived alone at Box Pond, was found apparently murdered for money in 1915; no clue to the mystery has been found.


In May, 1919, two persons from neighboring towns in an automobile were killed by a railroad train, near Bel-


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lingham Junction and Mrs. Elizabeth Foley was killed at the North Bellingham crossing in the same month.


For the World War our town subscribed more than its quota of bonds each time.


BELLINGHAM HONOR ROLL


Of these seventy-five men the forty whose names are marked A crossed the ocean.


John J. Allen, Aviation (A)


William H. Allison (A)


Herbert B. Arnold, Regular Army (A) William R. Mann (A)


Samuel W. Baader, Artillery (A)


John E. McMahon


George Baxter (A)


William M. McMahon, Naval Reserve George M. Melrose, Aviation


John Baxter (A)


Norman Baxter


Robert B. Melrose


Albert Bernier, Navy (A)


Hervie E. Miette (A)


Josaphat O. Bernier (A)


Joseph E. Miner (A)


Wilfred G. Bernier, Signal Corps (A)


Matthew F. Mooney (A)


Wilfred Boiteau


John J. Murphy


Alexander W. Brown, Artillery James N. Colt


Albert Ober


Harland Cook


William P. O'Connell Emil Paquin


Albert Deschacht (A)


Joseph A. Paquin, Aviation


Francis P. Diggins (A)


Cyrille Parenteau, Jr. (A)


Patrick Dore, Naval Reserve


Aliksander Piascik (A)


Tancred Dorval, Jr., Artillery


Edmund Rattier (A)


Joseph A. Farley


Frank Rattier (A)


Henry Fergelewski (A)


Joseph Reith Arthur A. Rhodes, Artillery


Daniel J. Fitzpatrick (A)


Joseph Rivard


Eugenio Rotatori (A)


Saverio Rotatori (A)


Harold G. Sackett, Naval Reserve


Daniel J. Sheehey


William M. Foley, Navy


Raymond Fontaine (A)


Frank T. Hoar, Artillery (A)


Cecil E. Howarth (A)


Frederick W. Hunter, Navy Robert H. Hunter, Aviation


Michael J. Kennedy, Naval Reserve


James W. Kennelly, Aviation (A)


J. Waldo Kennelly Patrick H. Kiernan, Navy Honorius Laudreville


Joseph A. Thibedeau (A)


William J. Walsh, Naval Reserve


Ralph G. White, Navy (A) William F. Wright (A)


Bernard J. Fitzpatrick (A)


Joseph M. Flannagan, Navy (A)


William V. Flannagan (A)


Cornelius J. Foley (A)


Fred D. Foley


Hugh F. Smith (A) John J. Smith (A)


Michael J. Smith


William A. Spear


Edward L. Spencer, *Pneumonia Joseph Tessier (A)


Ernest A. Nash (A)


Andor DeJony (A)


Henry Lemire Frederick E. Lipsett (A)


GOVERNOR JOHN M. THAYER, 1820-1905


CHAPTER XIII PERSONS OF PUBLIC INTEREST


BESIDES those already mentioned, there are other persons of whom some account should be given.


Gen. Eliakim Adams, 1756-1807, was one of our many Revolutionary soldiers. He was born and lived for some years in Holliston. April 19, 1775, he served as a private, and in April, 1777. In August of that year he was a sergeant, and he served in 1780. After the war he was active in the militia. In 1795 in the list of members of the General Court he is a major from Medway, and again the next year a colonel. He wrote in his resignation from the militia in 1803: "Having served three years as a Brigadier General, and two and twenty years as a Militia Officer without any compensa- tion, and am upward of forty years of age, I am desirous of being discharged." He is commemorated by a granite monument in front of the tomb of the North Bellingham cemetery.


Captain Laban Adams, 1785-1849, was born in West Medway and lived on Maple Street at North Bellingham. He had seven children born there, and one in Medway. He kept a tavern in Medway, and then the Washington Coffee House and the Lamb Tavern in Boston. This house was mentioned in 1746, and the first coach to Providence started here in 1767. He was the landlord in 1822, when a large brick addition was built, and until 1825. In 1830 he bought it, and


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managed it for eight years, when he leased it to another man for seven years. Then he returned again, and built a new hotel on the same spot, which he opened in 1846 as the Adams House, a name unchanged since then.


William T. Adams, 1822-1897, was born at North Bellingham, the son of Capt. Laban Adams. He was the pioneer story writer for young people, famous under the name of Oliver Optic. At seventy-three years of age he had written one hurd: ed and twenty-six books and over a thousand short stories. Two million copies of his books were sold. For his first one he received $37.50. He is remembered as reading aloud some of his stories in the Hall at North Bellingham, and as a schoolboy there, while his family was living in Medway.


He traveled much to find material for his stories, and he was careful to make them useful as well as enter- taining. He was a member of the school committee in Dorchester where he lived, and was a useful citizen there.


John Albee, 1823-1915, was the literary man of the town. His father was a farmer, who died when John was a little boy. He began to work at twelve years of age as a farmer's boy, clerk, etc., but was sent away later to school and college, and graduated at the Harvard Divinity School in 1858. While he was a teacher and a preacher in Western Massachusetts he was married, and his wife, who was a nurse for love of the work, established a remarkable charitable hospital in Boston. They had a beautiful home on the seashore at Newcastle, N. H., where he wrote books of poetry and imagination. He was one of the chief supporters of the Concord School of Philosophy, lectured there, and edited the Portsmouth, N. H., daily paper awhile.


His second wife was a writer also, and their home-


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was at Tamworth, N. H. His "Confessions of Boyhood" is an imaginative autobiography, with pictures of life in Bellingham long ago. His home was not far from the. Scammel house at South Milford, and he never lived in a village here. Here are a few sentences from that book.


"The traveller, journeying through the highways of Bellingham, would see nothing to attract his attention or interest. It has no monuments, ruins nor historic associations; no mountain, nor hill even. The Charles River has travelled so little way from its source as hardly yet to be a river. The soil is stony and pays back not much more than is put into it. The fine forests of white oak have been mostly reduced to ashes. Scrub oak and gray birch have taken their places, but do not fill them.


No eminent sons have yet remembered the town with noble benefactions. It has had no poet and no mention in literature. The reporters pass it by. It is not even a suburb, last sad fate of many towns and villages. This is one of the reasons for my attachment - its unchangeableness, its entire satisfaction of sentiment.


Fortunate is the town with a river flowing through its whole length and boys and girls to accompany its unhasting waters. It was made for them, also for the little fishes and the white-scented lilies. For a few hours of the day the great floats of the mill wheel drank of it, sending it onward in the only agitation it ever per- mitted itself. Then there was Bear Hill, though never a bear in the oldest memory, yet the name was ominous to children.


Before cities and factories had begun to stir the ambition and attract the young by opportunities for fortune and fame, Bellingham was the home of an intelli- gent, liberty-loving people. It was the best place in the world to be born in. I thank Heaven for a town removed from the track of progress, uninvaded by summer


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visitors and business enterprises; land left sacred to its native inhabitants, a sluggish stream, unprofitable earth, huckleberry bushes and the imagination.


It grieves me that the Charles has never been cel- ebrated in verse or prose, but by one short song of Long- fellow, while the Concord, which rises on the same watershed and almost from the same spring, has had several famous poets and is historic in Revolutionary annals. Our stream wanders a hundred miles in its efforts to find the ocean, and it never has any headlong haste to arrive. It saunters like a schoolboy and stops to visit a thousand recesses and indentations of upland and meadow. It stays for a cow to drink, or an alder to root itself in the bank, or to explore a swamp, and it rather wriggles than runs through its eighteen townships. It is likely to stop at any one of them and give up the effort to reach the sea. For my part I wish it had, and actually, as in my memory and fancy, ended at the outermost shores of Bellingham."


Nathan A. Cook, 1823-1896, was a descendant of the pioneer Nicholas Cook. His father, Nahum, was for some years the only Democrat in town. Nathan taught school seventeen winters, and was a justice of the peace for thirty years. He settled many estates and was a member of the Legislature in 1882.


Hamlet Barber, 1785-1870, lived at South Milford, and was a popular dancing master. Later in life he became a strict Baptist. He was postmaster of Bell- ingham in 1829-1831.


George W. Bosworth, D.D., 1818-1888, belonged to an old Bellingham family, and joined the Baptist Church here at thirteen years of age. He graduated at Colby College and at Newton Theological Seminary in 1841. He was the first pastor of a new Baptist Church at Medford for five years, at South Boston nine years,


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Portland ten, Lawrence four, and Haverhill ten. From 1852 to 1856 and again from 1879 to his death, he was the Secretary of the Massachusetts Baptist Convention, the official head of the denomination in the State.


Horace A. Brown, 1867-1918, had come from Maine to Milford when a boy, and he graduated at the Milford High School in 1885. After working in a shoe factory and a dry goods store, he entered the Home National Bank, where he remained for thirty years, and became its cashier. After his marriage in 1897, his home was in Caryville. He served the town on the school committee and was the leader in building the three new schoolhouses, the largest undertakings of our town in recent years.


Jeremiah Crooks, 1791-1864, came from Maine to live with his grandfather, Cornelius Darling, when he was thirteen years old. He came on a sailing vessel, and walked from Boston to Bellingham, spending one night in Medway on the way. He taught school, was a surveyor, and drove a stage to Providence. In 1834 he bought the tavern of Wright Curtis, and kept it for about thirty years. He was a militia captain and the town's Repre- sentative at the General Court in 1843. The name Crooks' Corner remains to us from his time.


Rufus G. Fairbanks, 1859-1907, was the son of William Fairbanks, the boot manufacturer. He studied at an academy and at Boston University Law School. He then worked and traveled for an educational paper till 1891, when he was admitted to the bar. His home was built at West Medway, where he was a trial justice. He was very active as a Republican, an Odd Fellow and a Mason, and no one did more than he for the Fairbanks Family Association. He wrote the chapter on Bellingham in Hurd's "History of Norfolk County," published in 1884.


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Cornelius Jones, 1727-1803, was the grandson of Elder John Jones of Mendon, the first man to use the water power at Hopedale. His father was an early settler in Bellingham, and he graduated at Harvard College in. 1752. He was ordained in a barn in town No. 3 in Berkshire County, later called Sandisfield, in 1757, and settled over its first church. He married a daughter of Thomas Sanford, living there, but left the place after five years on account of "a difficulty" in the church, and bought ten thousand acres of wild land near the present Fitchburg Tunnel, where he settled. He preached sometimes, but never had a church again. He became rich and was very patriotic and commanded the militia of the town of Rowe at the capture of Burgoyne. One of his sons was killed in a skirmish with Indians. His wife wrote to her sister in Newport that they feared losing their poor house in the woods by the attacks of Indians as much as the Newport sister feared the coming of the British fleet. Mr. Jones had just got a drove of cattle safely to the American camp, but lost his horse. In 1780 the resolute pioneer sold all his land and moved again, this time to a place near Whitehall, N. Y., where he ended his days.


John Metcalf, 1704-1791, bought part of Rawson's Farm in Caryville in 1735. He was the son of John of Dedham who had three wives and eighteen children, the son of Deacon Jonathan, the son of Michael, the first Met- calf in this country, who came in 1637. He had been a weaver at Norwich, England, was persecuted there, and came with his wife, nine children and a servant. He was the first school teacher and one of the selectmen at Dedham, where he died in 1639. His estate was 364£ 18 s. 5 d.


The second John had a large book, now in the library


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of the Massachusetts Historical Society, in which he wrote all sorts of memoranda, some of which are valuable.


"I John Metcalf Junr of Dedham on the 17 of May 1727 was with my Grandfather Deacon Jonathan Met- calf then on his Death Bed Being in the 77th year of his age & I in the 23d year of my age . . . I said to my Grandfather many have been wont to Set highly by the Blessing of their aged Relations, I Did So, I would be Glad if You would give me Yours, I Desire You too. he Said my Blessing is But a Poor thing & then said The God of Abraham &c. the foregoing is writ down Directly after it was Spoken Transcribed from the original writing Mar 8 1777 John Metcalf."


He had thirteen children, and his wife died in 1754. The next winter he wrote this letter to the widow in Dedham who became his second wife.




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