USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Brookline > History of the town of Brookline, Massachusetts > Part 26
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Charles Lyon Chandler, the other lieutenant of Company A, became lieutenant-colonel of the Fifty-Seventh Massachusetts Regiment after service with his original command through the first battle of Bull Run and the Peninsular campaign. He was fatally wounded at Hanover Court House on May 24,
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1864, and was cared for by Colonel Harris of the Twelfth Mis- sissippi Regiment, who was responsible for conveying news of his death to his mother in Brookline. He stood high in the affections of officers and men, and his loss was deeply felt. His sister, as it chanced, was the wife of his comrade in arms, Colonel Candler.
Wilder Dwight, who had helped to recruit for the Second Massachusetts Infantry, became its lieutenant-colonel, and died of wounds received at Antietam, September 19, 1862.
CONCLUSION OF THE WAR
There is no room to doubt that the unheralded bravery and effectiveness of numerous others among the Brookline contingent reflected upon them credit as great as that ac- corded these better known characters. When the town had turned from anti-abolitionism to anti-slavery, the change had been a whole-hearted one. The campaign to free the slaves and to preserve the union had been whole-hearted, too. Everyone had given whole-heartedly - money, leadership, even life.
Governor Andrew proposed celebration of April 19 as a day of thanksgiving, commemorating both the day of Lexington and Concord in 1775, and the first bloodshed by Massachusetts troops of the Civil War, in Baltimore in 1861. But on April 19, 1865, the nation was mourning the death of Abraham Lincoln.
CHAPTER XI ANNEXATION CONTROVERSY AND EXPANSION
THREAT OF ANNEXATION
THE drain of the Civil War impeded but did not halt the march of progress in Brookline. For a few years, funds were diverted from public construction projects to more pressing military business, but Brookline had already gone so far before the war that Boston was viewing the town with covetous eyes and more than a tinge of regret that the village of Muddy River had been set apart in 1705. When national affairs had at last become less turbulent, the campaign for the annexation of Brookline to Boston began. It was to furnish the principal occasions of local excitement through the decade of the 'seventies.
In 1870 Brookline was notified of a bill in the legislature 'That such towns and parts of towns lying within six miles of the City Hall of the city of Boston, on the southerly side of Charles River, may be annexed and incorporated as a part of said city of Boston.' This was the move mentioned at the close of Chapter IX, and successfully opposed by the selectmen under the town's orders.
There were those who, in the heat of argument, declared that the next attempt sprang from treason. Some of Brook- line's own citizens, headed by Willard A. Humphrey, actually petitioned the legislature to annex the town to Boston. By a vote of 243 to 82, the inhabitants at a special meeting on Jan- uary 23, 1872, again instructed the selectmen to oppose the project, and to employ counsel to protect the interests of the town. This resistance was effective.
The next year, however, matters went further. On May 16, 1873, the legislature went so far as to pass an act 'to unite the city of Boston and the town of Brookline,' subject to the ap- proval of the voters affected. They had, thus far, shown them- selves firmly opposed to annexation, but there were some leading citizens who evidently feared the worst. These, whose confidence in their neighbors was a little shaky, included T. P.
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Chandler, Augustus Lowell, Ignatius Sargent, John L. Gardner, Amos A. Lawrence, Robert Amory, T. E. Francis, James S. Amory, John C. Abbott, and Isaac Taylor. They sought to enjoin the change on the ground that it would deprive the people of Brookline of the popular form of government guar- anteed them by the state constitution, and substitute a repre- sentative government, which was something quite different.
By the terms of the constitution, the General Court was authorized to set up city governments, with the provision 'that no such government shall be erected or constituted in any town not containing 12,000 inhabitants, nor unless it be with the consent, and on the application of a majority of the inhabitants of such town, present and voting thereon ... ' There seems cer- tainly to have been a good argument that to make Brookline a part of Boston would be equivalent to changing its form of government in substantially the way described; and as the population was only about 6700, and no application had been made nor previous consent given, by a majority of the voters, it would scarcely have strained the court to grant the prayer of the petitioners. However, it seems to have been thought that the inhabitants could consent as well after as before the passage of the bill in the legislature, and the fate of the town was again left to rest in the hands of a special town meeting. There, on October 7, 1873, Brookline was preserved by a vote of 707 to 299.
According to the issue of the Brookline Independent next fol- lowing:
The scene that ensued beggars description. For more than five minutes the hall, containing nearly a thousand men, crowded together as close as they could stand, resounded with cheers of the most joyful band of men that was ever seen. Men waved their hats in the air, mounted on chairs to give more effect to their enthusiasm, and shook hands with every one that was next to them.
But the dragon was not slain. Within three weeks he again raised his ugly head in the town meeting, and again the town prepared to battle annexation. A committee was named for that purpose, authorized to draw whatever they might need
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from the contingent fund, and then provided, at the next an- nual meeting, with a contingent fund of $10,000. The town's annexationists obtained an injunction against this use of public money, but adequate private contributions were forthcoming.
CHARGES OF EXTRAVAGANCE
If Brookline's progress in many directions had made it an attractive morsel to the annexationist dragon of Boston, its unparalleled development during the 'seventies went to en- hance its desirability, while the attendant heavy expendi- tures made some of its citizens the more ready to toss the town down the dragon's throat. Alfred D. Chandler summarized the situation thus: I
That decade from 1870 to 1880 was one of violent fluctu- ations in the prudential affairs of Brookline. Its valuation then rose and fell by the millions as never before; in one year the expenditures trebled; the debt was increased six hun- dred per cent; for water, sewers, roads, and a new town hall, unexampled demands were made upon the town's bor- rowing capacity; in five years, from 1870 to 1875, the inter- est account increased over one thousand per cent. Over a million dollars were spent on roads and sidewalks in that decade; and notwithstanding this the depreciation of pro- perty, abutting on four streets alone, namely, Washington, St. Paul, and Marion Streets, and Aspinwall Avenue, all widened or made at the time, was nearly $450,000, between 1875 and 1879. The charge was pressed upon the Legis- lature that the town was governed by 'a ring,' that its gov- ernment 'was a failure,' and that the only relief was by uniting with Boston.
In a sense there was a 'ring' - probably the most honorable, upright, and wholly public-spirited 'ring' that ever existed. The government of Brookline had fallen into the hands of lead- ers who had a passion for superior excellence in public as well as private affairs. Progress, in terms of waterworks, schools, and streets, amounted to an obsession with them. They were themselves able and willing to shoulder the heavy financial
I 'Brookline, a Study in Town Government,' in New England Magazine, August, 1893, p. 784.
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burdens, and felt that their more conservative fellow citizens should be ready to march with them. This group would have, naturally, a large following among men of little property, who were appreciative of the advantages to be conferred, an insig- nificant part of the cost of which would fall upon themselves. With such an enthusiastic majority functioning efficiently, it is little wonder that the conservative group were taken with acute pains in the region of their pocketbook nerves, and were ready to adopt even so heroic a measure as annexation.
It was presumably the chairman of the selectmen, Charles D. Head, who wrote their report for the annual meeting in 1874. With the substitution of his metaphorical whale for the met- aphorical dragon mentioned above, it fits neatly into the preceding argument:
The town is once more called on to defend itself from being absorbed - a worse fate than befell the prophet Jonah, for he was swallowed singly, while if we go down we shall find previous competitors for internal advantages,1 and if dissatisfied with the want of accommodation, or if we dis- agree with our hospitable host, we shall not be likely to re- cover our liberty, or identity, as he did.
The business of girding for defense was wise, for the dragon - or, if you prefer, the whale - remained both unappeased and undismayed. In 1875 the proposal for engulfment was more insidiously stated; it was 'to reunite' Brookline to Boston. This made it sound more like a home-coming. But the inhab- itants of Brookline were not gullible enough to refrain from their usual precaution of instructing a committee to oppose the legislation.
A CONTINUING STRUGGLE
In 1876 came the suggestion that a metropolitan system of parks and sewers was a very necessary thing, and could of course be best assured if Brookline were swallowed up in Boston. The town dismissed the proposal with the pungent resolution 'That a committee of five be appointed by the Mod- erator to oppose the annexation or union of the town to Boston,
1 West Roxbury and Brighton had been annexed to Boston in 1873. - J. G. C.
HARVARD SQUARE, BROOKLINE, AND THE RAILROAD BRIDGE IN 1885 Looking toward Village Square
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there being at present no desire on our part for such union, and to resist the scheme for a metropolitan system of sewers, drains, and parks, because our scheme for a main sewer will work harmoniously with any one which a metropolitan board would be likely to adopt, and we have no money at present, or in the near future, to expend for a system of parks.'
The annexationists and their opponents went through the same ritual in the spring of 1879, and the final struggle came that fall. Then a new petition for annexation was submitted to the legislature, bearing 333 signatures of Brookline inhabi- tants who thought they would be better off as Bostonians. Eight of the signatures were in duplicate, which left 325. Of these 74 were not included on the voting or property lists of the town; in fact, only 210 represented legal voters in the final analysis.
Perhaps these facts gave courage to the home rule advo- cates, or it may be that with ten years of wrangling the subject had begun to lose interest. At any rate, when a special town meeting was called in January, 1880, the total vote on the subject was materially less than had been cast in 1873. Annex- ation was repudiated by a majority of 541 to 272, and the usual committee was appointed to make the customary represen- tations to the legislature. Norfolk County, to which Brook- line belonged, despite its territorial insulation, viewed with alarm the prospect of losing a third of its tax revenue and accordingly made representations on its own account. The interests of Boston and of the state were also elaborately an- alyzed for the benefit of the legislative committee on towns, which finally reported against the bill, having concluded that none of the interests concerned would be advanced by annexa- tion. Since this defeat, Boston's annexationist impulses have been comparatively quiet.
FROM WELLS TO WATERWORKS
Fundamentally, all this trouble might be traced to the urge for modern sanitation. As the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies had been dominated by the church, and the nineteenth century down to the Civil War by the new concept of edu- cation, so the main concern of the reasonably prosperous
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householder in the last three decades of that century was running water - water which not only ran into his house, but also out. The more metropolitan the character of a com- munity, the less satisfactory were back-yard wells, and rural sanitation; while at the same time, the larger were, the costs of obtaining an adequate water supply, laying the necessary mains and service pipes, and providing a sufficient system of sewage disposal. Forehanded, Boston had already appro- priated the nearest available surface-water resources, and when Brookline got around to action, it faced the problem of supplying a town of more than 7000 inhabitants from a numerous group of wells.
That plan, however, was not hit upon until the various other possibilities had been exhausted, and 'the subject of supplying the town with pure water' had been discussed from every possible angle. The committee which made its report in January, 1872, considered the purchase of water from Boston, erecting works in connection with West Roxbury, and the construction of an independent system. Boston, however, had no water surplus, and was little interested in the Brookline proposal. The project to draw water from the Charles, with West Roxbury, was blocked by the fact that Boston claimed the river. However, a remarkable group of springs was avail- able, not far from the Ward school house, which was estimated to be adequate, even in a time of prolonged drought, to supply a town of 10,000, and this at an estimated cost of $166,000, including nine miles of mains and seventy-five hydrants for the fire department. The committee thought the town would probably outgrow such resources, but the pipes would continue valuable in connection with any other service, and the imme- diate cost was moderate.
There had evidently been talk, however, about the possi- bilities of Jamaica Pond, and the subject was therefore referred to the committee again, with instructions to confer with the pro- prietors of the Jamaica Pond Aqueduct Company, one of the private waterworks organizations already in business. But before anything was done in this direction, Boston appears to have precipitated the situation by asking the permission of the General Court to take water from the Charles and Sudbury
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Rivers. The Brookline selectmen hastened to urge the claims of their town to similar consideration, while at the same time they suggested to the March meeting of 1872 the possibility of Brookline's obtaining some of the surplus which Boston would presently have, without the expense of building inde- pendent waterworks. This, it was argued, would be no more than fair, inasmuch as Boston water mains had been laid through Brookline streets for twenty-five years with no com- pensation and considerable inconvenience to the inhabitants.
Boston's next move was to confine her application to the legislature to the use of water from the Sudbury River, and West Roxbury, Newton, and Brookline all put forward their claims to the Charles. The town's committee still thought well of their original proposal, but acknowledged that it must be a temporary expedient at best. They therefore urged an en- deavor to buy water from Boston and, failing this, an inde- pendent development of the Charles.
Negotiations were slow, and resulted at length in nothing more satisfactory than a vote of the Boston Water Commis- sioners, not binding on the city, to the effect that they thought, when their additional plant was installed, they would probably be able to supply Brookline with 500,000 gallons of water a day. Meanwhile, authority from the legislature being had, the town voted to take 750,000 gallons daily from the Charles and a year later, in 1874, declared an intention, according to the terms of the statute, to take twice that amount. The imme- diate demand, of course, was not so large, but a liberal expro- priation might safeguard the future.
OPPOSITION TO PROGRESS
The vote of March 19, 1873, to take three quarters of a mil- lion gallons of water daily was by no means unanimous. The sensitive pocketbook nerve had grown jumpy under the pro- spect of a $400,000 appropriation, and there were only 303 voters in favor of a water supply, as opposed to 288 who thought they could afford to do a lot of back-yard pumping for that amount of money. But this majority of fifteen was sufficient to put the program over, and to authorize $400,000 of 'Brookline Water Scrip' at a rate of interest not exceeding seven per cent.
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A busy month followed, with partisans determined to get out every possible vote. When the bond issue came up for a second consideration on April 14, it was defeated by 421 to 343. For the majority of Brookline citizens, a Saturday night tubbing in the kitchen was going to be good enough, as it had been good enough for their fathers.
On May I they started all over, with the appointment of a new committee 'to consider the question of obtaining a supply of pure water for the use of the town; what measures, if any, need to be adopted to carry off the waste of such supply; the method and cost of the introduction and distribution, and the number of households that will take a share of such supply when obtained.' This committee marched pretty much in the tracks of their predecessors, and on October 28 the appro- priation of $400,000 was voted again. The first water com- missioners had already been chosen, and they were now instructed to do nothing about waterworks until after the adjourned meeting should be held, but to go right ahead with the expenditure of not more than $200,000 to lay mains in the following streets:
Alton Place, Andem Place, Aspinwall Avenue from Har- vard to Toxteth, Beacon from Winchester to Pleasant, Beacon from Hawes to C. K. Kirby's house, Boylston from Cypress to Washington, Brookline Avenue from Washington to north end of Pearl Place, Carlton, Chestnut from Walnut to High, Clyde, Colchester, Cypress, Cypress Place from Cypress to R. S. Davis' house, Davis Avenue from Cypress to Washing- ton, Davis Place, Dudley, Essex from Mountfort to Brighton Avenue, Francis, Grove, Harvard from Washington to Wil- liam J. Grigg's house, Hawes, Harvard Avenue, High from Chestnut to Irving, Holden, Irving from High to Walnut, Ivy from Gregory's house to Guild's house, Kent, Linden Place, Longwood Avenue, Monmouth, Mountfort from Prescott to Essex, Newton from Grove to Clyde, Park, Pearl Place, Perry, Pierce from Holden to Prospect, Pleasant from Harvard to Egmont, Prescott, Prospect, School, Sewall from Walnut to middle entrance to Sewall Place, Sewall Place from Sewall to last house, St. Paul, Summit Avenue, Toxteth, Village Lane from Walnut to Guild's house, Walnut, Walnut Place, Washington from Roxbury line to Park, Webster Place,
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White Place, Winchester from Beacon to omnibus stables, and place off Washington Street near Pond Avenue.
All of which defines with some exactness the part of the town in which the spirit of the modern, or sanitary, civilization was thought to have made such inroads that all of the finer ele- gancies of modern plumbing would soon be in demand. To this plan there may have been charges of favoritism, for a later vote authorized the water commissioners to extend the pipes 'in all streets in the town where there will be immediately water-takers sufficient to pay an interest of one per cent on the cost of such extension, provided such cost shall not exceed one thousand dollars.' More expensive projects were to be submitted first to the commissioners for their opinion, and then for approval by the town.
SOURCES OF SUPPLY
At the adjourned meeting after the appropriation was passed, nothing adverse to the construction of the waterworks came up, and the commissioners seem therefore to have pro- ceeded under authority of the ordinances passed on October 28, 1873, to govern their work. Although the engineers who assumed charge of the construction did not plan to take water from the main body of the Charles River, the town was dis- turbed at a proposal which threatened the purity of the sup- ply, and directed the water commissioners and selectmen to appear before 'the appropriate legislative committee and op- pose the pollution of Charles River by the diversion of Pegan Brook or other foul stream into it.'
While construction was proceeding, the needs of Boston were continually growing, so that by the spring of 1875 the relations of the towns were reversed in one respect. Anticipat- ing a surplus, the inhabitants of Brookline signified by vote their disposition to sell water to Boston. Such sale seems in fact to have been confined to Bostonians residing near the Brookline limits, and was not a wholesale supply turned over for distribution by the city.
The water, technically taken from the Charles, was really withdrawn from underground circulation just before it would
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have become part of the body of the stream. About one hun- dred and seventy driven wells were put down on the bank of the river, and from them water was pumped which would otherwise have issued as springs on the bed of the Charles.
Within three years of the time when the project was under- taken, and with an additional appropriation of $75,000, the waterworks were completed. True, some proprietors of mills on the Charles threatened suit because the river was low, and they blamed the withdrawal of water from the new wells; but altogether everything was very fine and the townspeople were full of mutual congratulations.
IMPURE WATER?
Then someone noticed some queer things in the water! Strange little growths, they seemed, and very definitely the sort of things that no one wanted to take internally. Had something gone wrong underground, so that the source of the town's water was not what had been supposed? Had the heavy expenditure for waterworks been wasted, and a 'supply of pure water' not been obtained after all? In October, 1878, the town named a committee to inquire into the cause of the alleged impurity of the water then in use.
It transpired that a lot of little plants of a common seaweed family called algæ, harmless but unpleasant to see, developed in this underground water if it was long exposed to the light while standing in reservoirs. On scientific advice that the algæ would get nowhere if the water were kept in the dark, the town experimentally built a covered reservoir on Single Tree Hill for the high-pressure service. This worked out so effectively that similar procedure was followed on Fisher's Hill for the rest of the town's water supply.
The only other major trouble was when something went wrong with the filtering gallery, and was finally attributed to fraud in its original construction. It was not fraud on a large, municipal scale, with public officials receiving cash con- sideration; someone had simply sought to economize on work in a fashion which inspection had not revealed. A committee appointed on April 6, 1880, to investigate reported a year later, in a manner most unusual for Brookline that they 'could
1
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not find out who were the parties guilty of the fraud.' Never- theless, the town at last had a water system that worked, and in 1932 was still working under its original superintendent, Fayette F. Forbes.
Year by year miles of new pipe were added as the growing population demanded a more extensive service. An arbitrary system of charges for water service was gradually supplanted by the introduction of meters, which were optional with the householder but much preferred by the superintendent of the waterworks, on the ground that they were fairer to the careful home owner, and helped to eliminate costly wastefulness.
A SEWAGE SYSTEM
With the extending network of mains and service pipes, an equivalent system to carry off wastes became an immediate necessity. The long accepted custom of burying unwanted things in the back yard or heaving them into the nearest brook, would no longer serve.
The first preliminary to a sewage system was the establish- ment of its grade - that is, fixing the bottommost level to be drained, below which cellars might not be dug except under special circumstances. As late as 1874, while the waterworks were in progress, the town was instructing the selectmen, in their capacity as the Board of Health, to arrange for the clean- ing out of the back-yard resorts which still served the com- munity in lieu of a sewage system.
Sewers were originally stream valleys or open ditches, always offensive to the eye and often to the nose. By 1876 matters were coming to a head. The water system was nearly ready, and the selectmen had outlined some plans for sewage disposal. In January of that year the town voted to refer the subject to a committee 'with instructions to consider whether the present system of sewers cannot be extended so as to meet the imme- diate necessities of the town until a more complete and exten- sive plan can be devised and executed; and also to confer with the Commissioners of Sewers and other proper officers of the city of Boston with reference to making such a system in con- junction with that of the city, and to consider the subject of freeing the natural water courses of the town from all sewage
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