USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Bellingham > History of the town of Bellingham, Massachusetts, 1719-1919 > Part 3
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They were both men of strong and independent character, and both belonged more to the Rhode Island Colony of that time than to Massachusetts, as was true of most of their neighbors for a long time. They were border men who belonged outside the strict Puritan Colony. In fact Bellingham was largely a Rhode Island town that happened to fall within Massachusetts territory. That decision may seem unimportant in these days, but it was not so then, and the fundamental difference of the two colonies is by far the most important fact in the early history of the town.
What Massachusetts was at that time, is quickly seen from the early acts of its General Court, as the legislature of the colony was called. A company of men had been chartered in England to trade in the new world, whose members were all Puritans, but they turned their trading company into a theocracy, or rule of God on earth, and the commonwealth became a church, "administered for and by God."
At the beginning, in 1630, the General Court ordered that ministers of the churches be supported at the public expense. After 1631 no man could be admitted as a
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freeman or voter unless a member of one of these churches. After 1635 every person absent from a church service must be fined or imprisoned. After 1636 no new church could be formed without the approval of the magistrates and the existing churches. In 1638 the ministers advised the General Court that it could punish heresies or errors of church members that might be dangerous to the state. In 1640 a jury found Hugh Buet (later of Rhode Island) "to bee guilty of heresy & that his person and errors are dangerous for infection of others." He should "bee gone out of or jurisdiction by the 24 present upon paine of death & not to returne upon paine of being hanged." When Governor Winthrop in his last sickness was asked by the Deputy Governor to sign an order for punishment under these laws, he refused, and said he had "done too much of that work already." So the "Rule of the word of God" meant persecution. Rhode Island, the reactionary neighboring colony, became the refuge of the victims, the Baptists and Quakers.
The Massachusetts churches baptized infants by sprinkling, but Baptists considered this an unscriptural and useless ceremony, because the infants could not under- stand it. The sect of Anabaptists arose in Germany about 1521, and it was suppressed by the government for its disturbances of the peace. They insisted that no one should join a church without being rebaptized when he reached years of understanding. This is the requirement of Baptists generally, who also prefer the immersion of the whole body to sprinkling. Those who declared that a true church must be limited to members baptized in this way were called close communion Baptists.
The Massachusetts law of 1644 for Anabaptists was in part: "Forasmuch as experience hath plentifully and often proved that since the first arising of the Anabaptists,
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about a hundred years since, they have been the incen- daries of commonwealths, and the infectors of prsons in main matters of religion, and the troublers of churches in all places where they have been and that they who have held the baptising of infants unlawfull have usually held other errors or heresies together therewith, and whereas divers of this kind have, since our coming into New England, appeared amongst ourselves. It is ordered and agreed, that if any person or persons within this jurisdiction shall either openly condemne or oppose the baptising of infants, or go about secretly to seduce others from the approbation or use thereof, . . every such per- son or persons shall be sentenced to banishment." But a Baptist meeting was started in Boston, in 1665, and though its members were fined and imprisoned, yet after a few years it was recognized as a Christian church, and its supporters became free from religious taxes.
The other great sect that troubled the Massachusetts authorities was the Quakers. Its founder was George Fox, who began to preach without ordination in England in 1648. His followers wished to abolish oaths, all cer- emonies that made distinctions among persons, church sacraments, and war; they used extremely simple worship, and hoped for the conscious presence and control of the Holy Spirit in each man's life. Fox traveled and preached in this country also, and some of his followers felt con- strained to protest publicly against the ceremonies in church and state which they disapproved. The Massa- chusetts law for these disturbers of the state was made in 1656:
"Whereas there is a cursed sect of hæretics lately risen up in the world, which are commonly called Quakers, who take uppon themselves to be immediately sent of
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God, and infallibly assisted by the spirit to speake and write blasphemouth opinions, despising government and the order of God in church and commonwealth, speaking evil of dignities, reproaching and reviling magistrates and ministers, seeking to turne the people from the faith and gaine proselites to their pernicious waies, . . . this Courte, taking into serious consideration the premises and to prevent the like mischiefe as by theire meanes is wrought in our native land, doth heerby order that . . any Quaker coming into this jurisdiction shall be forth- with committed to the house of correction, and be severely whipt, and be kept constantly at work, and none suffered to converse or speak with them during the time of their imprisonment, which shall be no longer than than necessity requireth. Any person proved to have the haretical opinions of said Quakers, or their books or papers, shall be fined forty shillings; for the second offence four pounds; for still offending, to be imprisoned till banished."
The persecution of Quakers under this law had little success in keeping them away, and it led to such com- plaints to the King of England that he sent a Quaker mes- senger, himself banished from New England, with a letter requiring all Quakers then in jail to be sent to England for trial; the General Court became somewhat afraid, and wrote to the King as follows:
"Although wee hope, and doubt not, but that if his majesty were rightly informed, he would be farr from giving them such a favor, or weakening his authority here so long and orderly settled, yet, that wee may not in the least offend his majesty, this Court doth hereby order and declare that the execution of the lawes in force against Quakers, as such, so farr as they respect cor- porall punishment or death, be suspended untill this Court take further order."
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The King's reply commanded them to forbear to proceed any further therein, but to send the said persons, whether condemned or only imprisoned, to England to be tried there; still he instructed his commissioners to New England as follows:
"Wee cannot be understood hereby to direct or wish that any indulgence should be granted to those persons commonly called Quakers, whose principles being inconsistent with any kind of government, wee have found it necessary, by the advice of our Parliament here, to make sharp lawes against them, and are well contented that you doe the like there."
When the Massachusetts laws were revised in 1672, the banishment of Quakers was not omitted, and "If any Christian in this jurisdiction shall go about to destroy the Christian religion by broaching and maintaining any damnable heresies, . . . or shall openly condemn or oppose the baptizing of infants, or shall deny the lawful authority of magistrates to punish outward breaches of the first table (that part of the Ten Commandments which states men's duties towards God) or shall endeavor to seduce others, . every such person . . shall be banished ".
Another law as late as 1675 was: "Whereas it may be found among us, that men's thresholds are sett up by God's threshold, especially in the open meetings of Quakers, whose damnable Hoerisies, abominable idol- atries, are hereby promoted, embraced and practised to the scandall of religion, hazard of souls, and provo- cation of divine jealousy against this people; for pre- vention and reformation whereof, it is ordered by this Courte that every person found at a Quaker's meeting shall be apprehended and committed to the house of correction."
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So the Quakers had to suffer in both countries; in England twelve thousand were in jail at one time, and a tenth of them are thought to have died there. The Massa- chusetts men clung to their pious ideal of a theocracy as long as they could, and saw no lesson for them in Roger Williams' beautiful comparison of the officers of the ship of state with those of a ship upon the sea. He thought that men of all religions or of none could safely be allowed to be citizens as well as passengers, being controlled by civil laws alone. More than once the other colonies urged Rhode Island to suppress the Quakers. Its reply in 1657 was: "Wee have no law to punish any for declaring their minds on the ways of God, And we finde that where they are suffered to declare themselves most freely, there they least of all desire to come . . . And yet we conceive that their doctrines tend to overturning govern- ment among men if generally received."
The founder of the Rhode Island Colony,the refuge of these two sects, and its guide for almost fifty years, was this famous Roger Williams. He was a protesting clergyman of England, who refused to be the assistant pastor at Boston, when he found that the people there would not utterly condemn the English Church and separate from it. The Plymouth colonists were Separ- atists, and he served them for two years. But they found him "very unsettled in judgment," and were willing to have him leave them for Salem. He taught that magistrates could not enforce any religious duties, that the King of England could give the colonists no right to occupy the land that belonged to Indians, that the King had said what was not true, and that no man not a church member could rightly take an oath, nor the State require it of him. Finally he wrote a letter to the other churches, accusing the Massachusetts mag-
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istrates, and refused communion with his own church at Salem unless it would separate from the other churches, which would not join him in his controversy. Thus he was banished from Massachusetts in 1636, and went first to Seekonk, east of Providence. When he was notified in a friendly way that this land belonged to the Plymouth Colony, he crossed the river and became the founder of the present second city of New England, and of a state where "soul liberty" prevailed. The first agree- ment made there was to obey orders of the majority for the public good, "only in civill things."
A year or more after coming to Providence, he became interested in the Baptists, though his preaching had not included their views before. He "repented" of his baptism in childhood in the Church of England, and was now baptized by a poor man who had never been baptized himself, after which Williams baptized him and ten other persons. But within a few weeks he concluded that this new baptism of his was unlawful and invalid. His followers, however, then founded the Baptist Church of Providence, the first one in this country. He became interested in baptism by immersion about ten years later.
Referring to Williams' loss of influence in his own colony at one time, John Cotton said, sarcastically, that he was "superseded with the rabble by a more prodigious minter of exorbitant novelties than himself."
Williams went to England twice for the charter of his colony, and wrote several books of religious con- troversy. In spite of his many strange ideas and his great fondness for dispute, he was a lovable man, and Winthrop, the Massachusetts Governor, was always his friend. In one of his many letters Winthrop wrote, "We have often tried your patience, but could never
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conquer it." When the Indians offered Williams the island of Prudence to keep swine on, he proposed to Winthrop that they buy it together, for twenty fathoms of wampum and two coats, which they did. Its next owner was the grandfather of two of the first settlers of Bellingham, John and Sylvanus Scott.
Williams always kept the friendship of the Indians, and served both them and the white men many times in his long life as a peacemaker. In King Philip's War when the people of the main land generally fled to Rhode Island itself, and the citizens of the town of Warwick even set up their town government there on the island, he remained at Providence unterrified with twenty-seven other persons. He tried to tolerate all kinds of difference of opinion in both civil and religious matters as men do now, and his colony welcomed many a man who found either Massachusetts or Plymouth uncomfortable.
Cotton Mather scornfully said: "Rhode Island was occupied by Antinomians, Anabaptists, Quakers, Ranters and every thing else but Christians; and if any man has lost his religion, he may find it in this general muster of opinions, this receptacle of the convicts of Jerusalem and the outcasts of the land." Another witness of that time, who could not appreciate religious tolera- tion, a Dutch minister in New York, wrote of Rhode Island, "where all kinds of scum dwell, for it is nothing else than a sink of New England."
The first man to come from Massachusetts was the mysterious William Blackstone. When the first white settlers reached Boston in 1630, they found him there apparently living alone. He took the oath of a citizen the next year, but never joined the church as the law after that time required. In fact he was an ordained clergyman of the Church of England, who had escaped
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to this wilderness to be alone. In 1634 he grew tired of his neighbors, sold nearly all his land for thirty pounds, bought cows with the money and moved to Rhode Island. There he built a house that he called Study Hall, near Abbott's Run, close to the great river later named for him, and lived in seclusion, not without quarrels with his neighbors, as court records show, for forty years. He married a widow in 1659, and his descendants were few and lived rather solitary lives. He used to preach in Providence at times, and he gave children whom he met apples from his own trees, which were the first ones planted in both colonies. When he was old he used to ride down to Providence on a tame white bull. He died in 1675, just before King Philip's War, "which laid waste his fair domain." He had some three hundred acres of land and one hundred and eighty-six books. The house was burned and these were all lost. When Blackstone left Boston he said: "I came from England because I did not like the Lord Bishops, but I can not join with you because I would not be under the Lords Brethren."
About four miles from the home of this strange man, settled John Bartlett, the father of the first known inhab- itant of Bellingham. He had lived in Weymouth and Mendon before. His house was near the present Lonsdale Railroad station, and he was one of the richest men of the colony, for his inventory in 1684 amounted to thirteen hundred pounds. His son, Jacob, our first citizen, grew up in a home of comfort and even more, where "soul liberty" was the first principle of society. The first land bought in Bellingham was purchased in 1696 by a man who believed that that government is best which governs least, and whose first public religious duty was to protest against the forms of the church. How could he then choose his home on land of the strictest Puritan
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colony? He probably hoped to live outside it, and some of his deeds to his sons long after this time describe the land sold as being in either the Plymouth or the Massa- chusetts Colony. In fact his first purchase may now lie in Rhode Island, for the colony bounds were disputed even fifty years after his coming, and Bellingham seemed to lose almost a third of its valuation in 1746, when as a part of Attleboro Gore it was given by King George II to Rhode Island under the name of Cumberland. It was a No Man's Land that James Albee of Mendon sold to Jacob Bartlett of Providence in 1696, for five pounds, described as nine cow common rights undivided in the common land between Wrentham and Mendon. This deed was recorded in 1736, just forty years later. The purchase was confirmed to him by the Dedham vote of 1698. In 1713 again he received thirty-six acres by a vote at Dedham, and the book of records calls this their first grant of land. He acquired several other tracts here in the next twenty years.
Our first settler had little to fear from wild beasts. The town of Dedham had offered a reward of ten shillings for every wolf killed in early years, and this was increased to twenty in 1698, when very few were left. Six pence were offered for a rattlesnake in 1719, and twenty shillings for a wildcat, and they soon disappeared. The savage red men were gone, and Jacob Bartlett had only the strict laws of Massachusetts to fear; he escaped them for nearly thirty years, but found himself in Boston in prison at last for refusing to support the town church.
In 1738 he deeded his homestead to his son Joseph, who was very pious and was called a poet, and died in 1791. Joseph's brother Abner married Abigail Arnold in 1734. As a Quaker he was exempt from the Bellingham tax to support the town church in 1741. She died in
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1815, at the age of one hundred and four years. (Another Quaker, John Aldrich, of Mendon, had twelve children all alive when the youngest was sixty, and their mother reached one hundred.) A third son of our pioneer was Jacob, Jr., who bought a part of his father's farm, and made scythes.
This first family in Bellingham lived in a true pioneer's region, with little interference from church or state. None of their births are found in town records, for the Quakers kept their own. They disapproved of inscriptions on gravestones, as being too ostentatious. All men should be equal in the grave, they thought.
Two traditions of Jacob Bartlett have been found in the vicinity of his farm, now East Woonsocket. He had a sick child one very cold day in winter, and walked across the Great River several miles to Sayles Hill for some milk, and found the cow frozen dead. Again when a dear child of his died, he kept the body so long that one of the neighbors knocked on his door one dark night and said, "Jacob, Jacob, bury thy dead." The answer was, "Yea, Lord, I will bury him in the morning." Their family burying ground had about two dozen rough stones left in 1879, and the old house then stood at the end of a lane from the highway, supposed to be one hundred and eighty-three years old. When Cumberland went to Rhode Island none of this family were left in Belling- ham.
The intolerance of Massachusetts made trouble for Baptists as well as Quakers, and our second pioneer settler was a Baptist. His father, Walter Cook, like Jacob Bartlett's father, had moved from Weymouth to Mendon. With his sons John and Samuel he headed a temperance society there in 1685, promoted by Rev. Grindal Rawson, whose land joined his own. Nicholas
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Cook was born there in 1660 and died in 1730. He married Joanna Rockett or Rockwood in 1684, and again in 1712 Mehitable Staples, both of Mendon. In 1705 land was laid out to him east of the Great River (Black- stone), and on both sides of Peters River. In 1706 "Nicholas Cook in behalf of himself and several of his neighbors, being new beginners and some of them very poor," asked relief from town taxes in Dedham for two years, and it was granted. In 1708 he was chosen cons- table for that part of the town, which shows that he was probably the principal citizen there. In 1713 he deeded land to his son Nicholas, Jr., which was partly in Mendon and partly in Bellingham. The next year there was a meeting of the proprietors of the common land between Wrentham and Mendon at the house of Deacon Thomas Sanford in Mendon (later Bellingham), which he soon sold to Pelatiah Smith. Capt. John Ware of Wrentham was moderator, and Thomas Sanford was chosen clerk for one year. They then drew lots for their second division. Their third meeting came in 1717 at the house of Nicholas Cook, and Thomas Sanford was its moderator. It was voted to complete the first and second divisions already made by June 30, 1717, and to lay out the third division after that. Two or three acres were voted for a burying place, the South Bellingham Cemetery, mentioned as "the burying place" in a deed of Sylvanus Scott to his son Joseph, in 1725. Here is still to be seen the stone of Nicholas Cook, who "Died Dec ye 1st 1730. In ye 71st year of his age." In 1718 the proprietors chose a committee to ask some relief from their share of church expenses in Dedham, which was about twenty-five miles away, and to settle the line between their land and Wrentham. This action showed the need of a new town, and it is the last recorded public
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business for this territory before the new incorporation came.
Nicholas Cook had been one of the chief proprietors. His inventory amounted to twelve hundred pounds, eight hundred and eighty-two pounds in real estate. His oldest son Josiah received seventy-two acres, Nich- olas, Jr., one hundred and five acres, and the most valuable part, thirty-seven acres valued at eight hundred pounds, went to the younger sons, David and Noah. Josiah was the first pastor of a Six Principle Baptist Church in Cumberland, not over two miles from his home, for thirty-five years, and his nephew, Nathaniel, called much superior to him, became his colleague in 1752, and served till his death in 1773 at the age of fifty-four, about a year before his uncle died. They found the source of their teaching in the sixth chapter of Hebrews: "Let us go on unto perfection, not laying again the foundation of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands &c. We are persuaded better things of you &c." William Blackstone was called the founder of this church. James Ballou, with two brothers came from Smith- field, Rhode Island, across the river to Cumberland, and he gave the land for the church in 1732. Here both uncle and nephew preached without a salary, and sup- ported themselves with their own hands like their brethren, as Roger Williams had always done. "Elder Cook's Meeting House" was afterwards called the Ballou Meeting House, and the building erected in 1749 has been thought to be the oldest church in Rhode Island.
Elder Nathaniel Cook's father was Nicholas, Jr., born in 1687, who married Elizabeth Staples. Five years after the land was given for his brother's church, the Bellingham Baptist Church was formed and he was its first deacon. He and his brother Seth, with their
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father, Nicholas, all signed the petition for the incor- poration of Bellingham in 1719.
John Cook was Town Treasurer from 1802 to 1808 and John Cook, 2d, was Town Clerk from 1827 to 1837.
One hundred and sixty births of this name were recorded in this town before 1850.
CHAPTER V EARLY SETTLERS
THE new town was made up of three parts. Rawson's Farm was the northeastern part and contained thirteen families at that time, from which at least eight men signed the petition for incorporation; the smaller northwest corner came from Mendon, and the heads of its four fam- ilies all signed; the remaining two-thirds of the area belonged to Dedham, and its twenty-three families were represented by twenty signers. Nine other families came within the next ten years, and including the two pioneers Bartlett and Cook we have some knowledge of more than forty men who made the new town what it . was in its early years.
RICHARD BLOOD
Richard Blood of Dedham, probably son of James Blood of Concord in 1639, bought in 1708 from several Dedham men "18 cow common rights in undivided land between Mendon, Wrentham and Providence," besides "three score & twelve acres already laid out in Rawson's Farm" for ten pounds sixteen shillings. In 1714 he bought from another Dedham man thirty-two acres belonging to four cow common rights in the first and sec- ond divisions still to be laid out. In 1736 he sold his homestead and one hundred and seventy-six acres in the south part of the town for twelve hundred pounds.
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He was evidently well off. His wife's name was Joanna, and four children were born to them in 1721-9. The estate of Joseph his son included two bonds of five hun- dred pounds and three hundred and fifty pounds, and a total of seventeen hundred and forty-eight pounds. He had five children, born in 1738-48, but there were no other births of this name in town after that.
THOMAS BURCH
He was one of the three purchasers of Rawson's Farm from the secretary's son in 1701, and he bought one-fourth of it. He died in 1722, and his homestead was sold by his son Robert in 1735, one hundred and ten acres for six hundred and fifty pounds, to John Metcalf and Eliphalet Pond of Dedham. It was on both sides of the Country Road, as Hartford Avenue was called then, bounded north by Holliston and east by Charles River, now that part of Caryville next to Medway. His will left all his land to his two sons Thomas and Robert. No births of this name are recorded here.
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