USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Brookline > History of the town of Brookline, Massachusetts > Part 18
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After he retired from the sea and settled in Brookline, Cap- tain Cabot was elected to the United States Senate, where he served from 1791 to 1796. Subsequently his great-grandson, Henry Cabot Lodge, was also to be a senator from Massachu- setts. According what seems to have been a proper deference to his practical experience as a sailor, President John Adams in 1798 appointed George Cabot to be the first Secretary of the Navy.
George Cabot's descendants played an increasingly im- portant part in public affairs. His daughter married Presi- dent Kirkland of Harvard; one of his sons became the grand- father of Henry Cabot Lodge. Much of the family's distinction has gone unacknowledged because of the marriage of daugh- ters and their assumption of new names; but the Cabots were among the first of the Boston merchant families to find a happy retreat in Brookline, while the town's charm grew with the acquisition of such residents.
It was, then, men of this caliber who reached out from the wharves of Boston day after day to feel the pulse of the world, and whose daily diagnosis of world markets accounted in time for so many of the splendid estates of residential Brookline. A home in this most beautiful and most accessible of rural sub- urbs was well worth striving for, and if there were some who felt the call of business so insistently that Brookline could be only a summer refuge for their families, there were others who looked upon it as a haven of retirement.
Thomas Handasyd Perkins was a Boston merchant who, after wide success, made Brookline his home. He was one of eight children whose widowed mother possessed both domestic and commercial talents. His eldest brother, James, went as a young man to San Domingo in a ship partly owned by their mother. There he established a business house in which
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Thomas later joined him, eventually to be replaced by an- other brother, Samuel. Thomas returned to assume charge of the Boston end of the business, and began to be active in the tea trade with Canton. When the slave insurrection in San Domingo in 1792 ruined the Perkins business there, the bro- thers turned their attention to the north Pacific coast and China, and in time established a branch house at Canton. Both James Perkins and Samuel G. Perkins also became residents of Brookline.
In fact, most Bostonians who rejoiced in a sense of spacious- ness, in the beauty of sweeping lawns and spreading elms, in rural charm at its most gracious - were attracted to Brook- line. Many who possessed abundant fortunes made the town their home, contributing liberally to the attractiveness as well as the wealth of the community. And thus commerce, if some- what deviously, helped to make Brookline what it became.
STREETS AND HIGHWAYS
A more direct reflection of the influence of growing trade and the concern of wealthy residents for adequate trans- portation, was manifest in the demand for more convenient access to various parts of the village, as well as to Boston and the country to the west and north. It is significant that, dur- ing the earlier agitation for turnpikes or toll roads, as in the case of a number of railroads, Brookline opposed the devel- opment.
In 1825 the selectmen were instructed to remonstrate to the Legislature against the proposed turnpike to Holliston through Brookline. But if the Legislature was unimpressed, then the town's representative was to 'be instructed to make the best terms he can for the accommodation of the Inhabitants of the Town.' Again, in 1833, a committee was appointed to ap- pear before the county commissioners and oppose construction of a road from Dorchester to Boston through Brookline. This attitude presumably indicated, not a lack of interest in good roads, but a conviction that citizens would not derive sufficient advantage from the proposed construction to justify the added expense to which they would almost certainly be put. For one thing, the routing of a turnpike through the town meant more
MRS. SAMUEL CABOT (1792-1885)
THOMAS HANDASYDE PERKINS (1764-1854) Father and daughter, from whom many prominent citizens of Brookline have descended
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traffic and an increased burden for the maintenance of streets over which that traffic passed.
But there was an undeniable need for communication with the country to the westward. Before 1690 a half-dozen towns had been settled in the Connecticut Valley, to say nothing of numerous others in the eastern half of the state, and by the time of the Revolution the greater part of the intervening lands had been taken up. Commercial intercourse with these settlements was inevitable. Worcester had been founded in 1684, but was temporarily abandoned, and not actually established until after 1720. By 1806 it was a sufficiently important center to justify the General Court in incorporating the proprietors of the Boston and Worcester Turnpike, and that same year Colonel Isaac S. Gardner, Ebenezer Heath, and Jonathan Hammond were made a committee to confer with the turn- pike agents about the road 'from Mr Goddards land to Mr Heath's corner and to do what in their Judgement may be most for the Benefit of the Town respecting the Same.'
WESTWARD TRAVEL
The history of the old Worcester Turnpike may be taken as characteristic of that of the principal highways of the time, for it followed Indian trails of immemorial origin. Edward Wild Baker has stated 1 that the earliest English travelers were John Oldham and Samuel Hall, who, with two others, started for Connecticut in 1633 to seek a place for settlement.
Knowing of the trail used by the Indians [who brought corn from Woodstock, Connecticut] three years earlier, they followed it from Watertown, because they realized that it would be the easiest line of travel; would strike the fording or crossing-places of streams, avoid bad swamps, and, what was of equal if not greater importance, would take them by the Indian villages scattered along the route, where they could obtain food and lodging.
Other pioneers started out by the same route, and little by little the original trail became recognized as an established line of travel. Followed by larger parties and by those who
I Passages quoted here and in the succeeding pages of this chapter are from an account of the old Worcester turnpike delivered before the Brookline Historical So- ciety by Edward Wild Baker, and printed in its Proceedings for 1907.
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took their families, their horses and cattle, the faintly marked path became deeply worn and clearly defined. It was known as 'the way to Connecticut,' and the early records of grants of land in what are today Wayland, Sudbury, Marlborough, and other towns specify areas of more or less acres along the 'Connecticut Path,' as it was designated, which, after it became still more broadly marked, was named the 'Con- necticut Road.'
In what is now Wayland, formerly a part of Sudbury, the old path forked. The northern branch, passing through Marlborough, Worcester, and Brookfield, was known as the 'Bay Path,' and extended straight to the Connecticut River and the settlement of Agawam, now the City of Springfield.
The building of that first bridge at Muddy River was the initial step toward making this a serviceable wagon road west- ward from Boston. Then in 1640 it was laid out in crude fash- ion as far as Watertown, to be somewhat bettered in 1657, when the road to Watertown mill was made 'four rods in breadth and directed by markt trees.' By successive increments the road was pushed westward, at once obliterating and emphasizing the earlier trail.
ACCOMMODATION FOR TRAVELERS
As a necessity supplied creates another want, so the devel- opment of the old road by constant travel in both directions created the demand for stopping places at convenient points, where refreshment and lodging for man and beast could be obtained. The 'ordinary' of colonial days, as it was then called, and the 'tavern' of later periods, supplied the wants of travellers from Boston to all outlying points and distant places ...
Some of the early laws regulating the old inns, ordinaries or taverns, make interesting reading today. To mention only a few particulars: the law provided that 'all public houses shall be on or near the high streets, roads and places of great resort'; inn-holders were required to be furnished with suitable provisions for the refreshment and entertain- ment of strangers and travellers, pasturing, stableroom, hay and provender for horses, on pain of being deprived of their license; and 'no licensed person shall sell oats for more than one penny the quart'; taverners were forbidden to have or
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keep in or about their houses, out-houses, yards, gardens or places to them belonging, any dice, cards, tables, bowls, shuffleboard, billiards, coyts, cales, logats or any other im- plements used in gaming.
Apprentices, servants or negroes were not allowed to have any manner of drink except with their master's special order, and no inhabitant of the town where the inn was located, or from any other town, except travellers or persons upon busi- ness or extraordinary occasions, was to be permitted to sit drinking or tippling for more than the space of one hour. Taverners were strictly forbidden to entertain Pedlars, par- ticularly if they were selling indigo or feathers, and no drink- ing or tippling was to be permitted after nine o'clock in the night. Singing, fiddling, piping or any other Musick, danc- ing or revelling were not by law to be suffered or exercised in any tavern. If the Inn-holder saw fit to give credit, the law passed in 1726 said that all above ten shillings should be forfeited, and action to recover any such debt was barred. All these and many more regulations were intended to carry out the declaration of the law-makers of long ago, - that, 'Forasmuch as the ancient, true and principal use of inns, taverns, ale-houses, victualling houses and other houses for common entertainment, is for the Receipt, relief and lodging of travellers and strangers and the refreshment of persons upon lawful business, or for the necessary supply of the wants of such poor persons as are not able by greater quantities to make their provision of victuals and are not intended for the entertainment of lewd or idle people to spend or consume their money or time there, - therefore, Be it enacted, etc.'
Each tavern or inn was also required to have a sign affixed to the house or in some conspicuous place near the same, and if for any reason the license was revoked then the sign should at once be taken down.
The tavern was usually the only public place in town - except the meeting house on the days of worship - where the people were accustomed to congregate. Therefore the publishment board, the pillory, the stocks, and all other features of public interest centered about the tavern. If any amusement came into town or was arranged for by local citizens, it was at or near the tavern if possible. For ex- ample, this advertisement appeared in the Boston Evening Post of January 11, 1773:
'This is to give notice that there will be a Bear and a num-
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ber of turkeys set up as a mark next Thursday Beforenoon at the Punch Bowl Tavern in Brookline.'
There were two other taverns in Brookline, besides the Punch Bowl. Dana's Tavern stood facing the present Harvard square, approximately where Rhodes Brothers' store now is. It was burned in 1816. Richards Tavern, or Richards Hotel, as it was sometimes called, was built [on the Sherburne road] by Elhanan Winchester, Sr., father of the famous preacher, about 1770, with the assistance of his brethren of the 'New Lights,' as they were called. It was a large house and had a good-sized hall or room for their meetings. The house passed through the possession of Ebenezer and Joseph White to Ebenezer Richards, who kept it as a public house. It faced Heath street, near where Ham- mond street now crosses. The Worcester turnpike passed close by and just to the rear of the house, where was located one of the turnpike gates with the toll house for the gate- keeper ....
It must have been a busy place in front of the old tavern in Punch Bowl Village with all the through travel from the towns to the west. We can imagine the crowd of the idle, the curious, the news-gatherers and those with some definite purpose gathered about the tavern, in tap room and on the benches outside, watching for what was the event of the day, the coming, stopping and driving away of the New York stages.
TRAFFIC ON THE HIGHWAY
Post riders on horseback commenced a mail service in the first half of the century, which took about three weeks between Boston and Philadelphia. This time was cut to fifteen days in 1755, and in 1772 J. & N. Brown started their stage line be- tween Boston and New York on a thirteen-day schedule. That venture was short-lived, but in 1774 a weekly post service was undertaken between Hartford and Boston, through Worcester, a six-days' journey.
Then Levi Pease and Reuben Sikes, Connecticut men, com- menced in 1783 the first successful stage line, and operated it until railroad competition became too serious. Their initial rate was 4d. a mile. By 1786, says Mr. Baker,
the running time in summer had been reduced so much that
THE PUNCH BOWL TAVERN AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE TOWN Built about 1717; much enlarged later, torn down in 1833
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RICHARDS TAVERN, THE OLD STAGE TAVERN ON HEATH STREET NEAR HAMMOND STREET Built by Elhanan Winchester, Sr., about 1770. A toll house was at the back on the Turnpike
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a traveller could leave Boston Monday morning and reach New York the following Thursday evening, so that, as the advertisement reads, 'by this unparalleled speed, a merchant may go from Boston to New York and return again in less than ten days, which is truly wonderful,' and adds further for the information of the travelling public, 'it is the most convenient and expeditious way of travelling that can be had in America, and in order to render it the cheapest, the price is lowered from 4d. to 3d. per mile, with liberties to passengers to take 14 pounds 1 of baggage.' ...
For over one hundred and fifty years the 'great road' was the trunk line to Worcester, but the zenith of its glory was reached just one hundred years ago,2 when, so far as 'rapid transit' was concerned, it was rendered quite out of date by the building of the Worcester Turnpike in 1806 and 1807.
It was supposed that this turnpike would give the maxi- mum speed in the minimum time because it was laid out on the simple mathematical principle that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. The turnpike en- gineers paid little attention to grades, and seemingly forgot that the actual distance travelled may be as long over a hill as around its base, to say nothing of the greater effort to the traveller climbing up one side and holding back when going down on the other.
The general act of legislature under which the Worcester Turnpike was incorporated, specified minutely the type of road which must be built, the manner in which it must be laid out, and the fashion in which tolls might be collected, at gates not less than ten miles apart. These were:
For each coach, chariot, phaeton, or other four-wheel spring carriage drawn by two horses - 25c., and 2c. for each additional horse.
For every wagon drawn by two horses - Ioc., and 2c. for each additional horse.
For every cart or wagon drawn by two oxen - Ioc. and if by more than two, 12 I/2C.
For every curricle - 15c.
For every chaise, chair, sulkey, or other carriage for pleasure, drawn by one horse - 12 I /2C.
I A weight possibly fixed because the English unit of weight called a 'stone' is 14 pounds. - J. G. C.
2 Mr. Baker's article was published in 1907.
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For every cart, wagon or truck drawn by one horse - 6 1/4C.
For every man and horse - 4c.
For every sleigh or sled drawn by two oxen or horses - 8c., and Ic. for each additional ox or horse.
For all horses, mules or neat cattle led or driven besides those in teams or carriages - Ic. each.
Swine or sheep - 3c. by the dozen.
Half-rate was imposed on wagons with wheels six inches wide or more, and from the rates above it appears that sleds and sleighs were regarded as wearing the Heaven-sent snow more than the man-made highway, with an according reduc- tion in tariff. Exemptions were allowed foot travelers, those going to or returning from worship, those on military duty, those living in a town where a gate was located, provided they were not going beyond the limits of the town, and those going to the grist mill or about other domestic concerns. Yet, despite all this, there seems to have been a good deal of unconscion- able evasion of tolls.
The total capitalization of the turnpike company was only $150,000, not a large sum for the construction of forty miles of highway. It contributed materially to the development and prosperity of the towns along the way, but very little to the proprietors. In 1809 they were permitted to erect additional toll gates, subdividing the road, and collecting a proportionate sum for the use of short sections, but even this device never made possible a dividend of six per cent, and eventually the entire capital was lost.
Norfolk County Commissioners in 1832 were petitioned by a committee of the turnpike corporation to take over as a public highway that section of the turnpike between the Kimball Tavern in Needham and the Punch Bowl in Brookline. The following year official steps were taken to accomplish this, over the objection of the Brookline town meeting, which felt that the cost of maintenance was an unwelcome added burden on the town. However, payment of five hundred dollars by the corporation toward needed repairs resulted in withdrawal of the opposition.
From that time down to 1870 there were numerous changes
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along the line of the road within the limits of Brookline. Parts were widened, relocated, changed in grade, but no sweeping revision was made. Then in 1900 the sum of $300,000 was spent on widening the way from Cypress Street to the Newton line.
THE WORCESTER TURNPIKE
As the Indian trail merged into the path and the path grew into the road [says Mr. Baker], as the road became the 'King's Highway' to be in turn succeeded by the straight-away turnpike, - so, in the evolution of transportation facilities, the turnpike, travelled night and day by the express stage- lines, filled its place in the history of that evolution, and, with some spasmodic resistance, succumbed before the iron horse, puffing and whistling along the steel-railed right of way.
Stagecoach and tavern days reached the high level of their development along the line from Boston to Worcester from 1830 to 1835, after which the once popular route took its place in history as the 'Old Worcester Turnpike,' its use- fulness almost entirely taken away by the completion of the Boston and Worcester steam railroad.
In 1831 and 1832, there were one hundred and six stage- coach lines running out of Boston in different directions, and time-tables of the various lines were published regu- larly. How many stage lines passed through Brookline [can- not be stated definitely]; but it was estimated that in 1831 the average amount of travelling between Boston and Worcester - the bulk of which passed through Brookline over the turnpike - was equal to 22,360 passages per an- num, for which the lowest fare was two dollars and the shortest time six hours.
In 1905 the electric lines over almost the same route - exactly the same until some distance beyond Framingham - carried 10,279,303 paying passengers, of which 401,478 were through travellers between Boston and Worcester.
Radiating from Worcester, connecting with the Boston stages, were many other lines, and they continued for years before the steam railroads supplanted them. The owner of the most important of these radiating lines, with one hun- dred and fifty horses and controlling stage routes aggregat- ing two hundred and eighty-six miles, was Ginery Twichell, who later resided in Brookline on Kent street, and became
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a member of Congress. He started as a postrider and stage- driver and gradually became one of the great men, not only in that business, but in the steam railroad business, which took its place. A lithograph was published in 1850 picturing a man galloping along the road in a driving snowstorm, en- titled, 'The unrivaled express rider Ginery Twichell, who rode from Worcester to Hartford, a distance of sixty miles, in three hours and twenty minutes through a deep snow January 23, 1846.'
Although many changes in Brookline have been noted, the turnpike road received little attention in the towns be- yond after the proprietors surrendered the charter and it became a public highway. It suffered the usual vicissitudes of the ordinary country road and repairs were made only when necessary. Other roads which avoided the steep grades and long hard climbs made true the old saying that 'the longest way round is the shortest way home.'
There was little if any through travel, and except for short stretches through the populous sections of towns, it retained not a shadow of its former popularity. Moss-covered stone walls or dilapidated weather-beaten fences marked its bounds; with here and there a turnout to enable the thirsty horses or cattle to drink from some clear-watered brook which flowed lazily under the roadway. The quiet and peacefulness along the way was undisturbed except by the clatter of the bell on some cow's neck as she fed along the faintly marked side-path on the way to and from the nearby pasture.
After more than a half-century of neglect, the old turnpike became the route of the interurban electric line from Boston to Worcester, and by 1930 this service had been abandoned, and the construction of the most modern type of dual, high- speed motor highway was in progress.
COMMUNICATION WITH BOSTON
If the history of the Worcester Turnpike is the history of westward movement over a period of nearly three centuries, it was by no means the only or necessarily the principal factor in the travel and commerce of nineteenth-century Brookline. The natural route to Boston was over Roxbury Hill and across the neck, a longish walk for shoppers from Brookline, though
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plenty of them negotiated it in that fashion rather than pay the twenty-five-cent fare exacted by Eliphalet Spurr who for a year or two, about 1816, had undertaken to operate a stage twice daily.
Application of the air-line principle of the turnpike en- gineers pointed out a very much more direct way between Brookline and Boston. Except that it was flooded by the tides, the route had a lot in its favor. Development of the Mill Dam Road came as a kind of collateral to an industrial project. It is described in a manuscript by Edward Wild Baker, in whose words the story may appropriately be told.1
It sounds paradoxical - but you know it is true - that we go down in the subway to take a train on the 'elevated.' It sounds equally paradoxical, but it is equally true, that we today go from Colonel Gardner's corner to the subway over the hills of Needham. You will understand the subway paradox, but what about the hills of Needham?
It seems almost impossible to realize that less than one hundred years ago the great basin of the Charles River spread its waters over all the area now bounded by Charles Street, Park Square and Pleasant Street, almost to Wash- ington Street, then by a winding shore line along the narrow Boston Neck to the uplands of Roxbury, close to the present Roxbury Crossing.
All of that area, and more, which was once covered by the tides, along the shores of which were the many public landing places for the traffic by boats, is now filled in - made land, so called - giving the city its West End and the fashionable 'Back Bay' section - all made by the skill and labor of man.
The first step in this great undertaking, which, more than any other event, determined the future of Boston and led to a complete change in its physical conformation, was the building of the Mill Dam, known to us today as Beacon street. This dam was built from the Common, at the cor- ner of Charles street and old Beacon street, across the great basin of the Charles River to the uplands in Brookline at Sewall's Point, a distance of 2640 yards, or a little over one and a half miles. The Boston and Roxbury Mill Corpora- tion began this work under the authority of the General I Mr. Baker's manuscript is quoted until otherwise indicated.
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Court passed in 1814. The purpose, in the minds of the pro- prietors, was to utilize the water power of the tides for man- ufacturing purposes; but, as Kipling says, that is another story.
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