USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Brookline > History of the town of Brookline, Massachusetts > Part 5
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In the first place, Muddy River was a pivotal point in west- ward traffic. From the earliest settlement of the town until the opening of the Mill Dam Road from Charles Street, Boston, across the bay and marshes to Sewall's Point in 1821, the present Washington Street (in Brookline) was the only way to and from Boston in this direction. Furthermore, Muddy River was an important place of transit for all communication by land with Cambridge, Watertown, Dedham, and beyond. Finally, there were local reasons for demanding immediate highway facilities and fixing their location, for convenient access was needed to the common lands, the marshes, and the river.
The first official recognition of these requirements was in 1640, when William Colborne and Jacob Eliot were appointed 'to lay out the high Wayes at Muddy River, towards Cambridge,' and in October of the same year Peter Oliver's name was added, and the three appointed to supervise the construction of a bridge, presumably the second 'to be made at muddy river.' In the summer of 1642 more extensive undertakings were con- templated, and a committee of three was selected to join with Dedham, Cambridge, and Watertown to lay out appropriate
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HISTORY OF BROOKLINE
ways to join these towns across the Muddy River area, as well as to prepare 'private wayes' to landing places along the river 'or otherwise.' What was accomplished under this mandate remains uncertain, but by the spring of 1651, Peter Aspinwall was appointed surveyor of highways for Muddy River; the following August, lands were again viewed for a proposed road into the marshes; and in the spring of 1654, another committee was named to join Cambridge in laying out a road through Muddy River to that town.
Apparently, then, down to mid-summer of 1654, none of the public ways had been completed; but it is certain that paths, lanes, and elementary roadways had been assuming shape from the earliest times. Not only do the fragmentary references gathered above point to considerable interest and development, but the area had been settled for twenty years and traffic within it as well as across it had surely come to conform to some sort of routine.
In the spring of 1657, however, perambulators were appointed to determine the waste lands at Muddy River, and were given the additional duty of laying out a highway to Watertown mill. Perhaps the actual need was greater, or perhaps the committee- men were simply less dilatory than their predecessors. In any event, the work was finished within less than a month, and the notice of its completion is the first record of a publicly con- structed highway in Muddy River:
Notice given both to Watertown and Cambridge, that they might depute some to joyne with ours deputed to lay outt a high way from muddy river unto watertown mill, and upon ye 21st of this 2nd month it was (by partys deputed by the sd towns) performed, the sd way is four rods in Breadth and directed by markt trees.
It was this road that became Brookline's present Washington Street, and while on the official records it may be regarded as the oldest in the town, it is very likely antedated by another, both in construction and use. As has been indicated, there was no way of avoiding Muddy River in the course of land travel to the west. All communication from Boston in this direction passed by way of the present Washington Street (then Newbury
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THE COMMUNITY SPIRIT GROWS
and Orange Streets), across the Neck near the present junction of Washington and Dover Streets, thence through the present Roxbury Street, Tremont Street, and by Huntington Avenue to Muddy River. Here the road went across the stream and into the 'Village,' leading from which to westward was the Sherburne Road, the oldest highway in Brookline and one of the oldest in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
A meeting of the selectmen of Boston on June 8, 1658, gave notice that a highway had been laid out across land owned by John White (formerly the Thomas Oliver grant), through Thomas Gardner's farm (part of the Thomas Leveritt grant), and thence to the farm of Isaac Stedman (the three-hundred-acre grant to William Hibbins in the southwest corner of Muddy River). It was declared that this road should be known as the town's highway, and 'the other way in the land is hereby relinquished.' This was in effect a relocation of the Sherburne Road.
It soon became plain that the new highway, cutting as it did across the farm of John White, had never met with the entire ap- proval of that landowner, although he had had a part in laying it out. Difficulties had been partly anticipated by allowing him either to 'fence outt' the new road or to set appropriate gates, presumably at his property lines. But a few weeks after the road was opened, White built a stone wall across it, and a fine of twenty shillings for each day's obstruction was ordered against him. He made repeated claims for damages to his property, and the selectmen finally allowed him the abatement of his town and country rates for the ensuing four years in full satis- faction of his claims.
THE CAMBRIDGE ROAD
As has been seen, a highway to Cambridge had been among the first projects proposed, but agreement between the towns appears to have been difficult, and the spring of 1661 arrived before they came finally to an understanding. Peter Oliver and Peter Aspinwall were then selected to act with Cambridge representatives to lay out a road connecting Muddy River with its neighbor on the northwest. They do not seem to have functioned effectively, however, for some ten months later, in January of 1662, a meeting was arranged at the home of John
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HISTORY OF BROOKLINE
White in Muddy River, at which Thomas Savage, William Davis, and Edward Rainsford were given authority to make ar- rangements with a committee from Cambridge for a highway to connect the towns. Evidently in anticipation of new difficulties, a third committee of Roxbury men was appointed to meet at the same time with the Boston and Cambridge delegates and act as arbitrators in event of a deadlock.
The following month the meeting took place, and the dele- gates made a fresh start by agreeing to disregard all former un- derstandings about the road. But after struggling for a long time, the committees found themselves getting nowhere, and the dispute was submitted to the advisers from Roxbury. These gentlemen pronounced their conclusion 'that the said way shall goe without the common feild by Goodman Devotions and Goodman Stevens houses and soe to Cambridge bounds as the ould way now runneth, whereunto the committee of Boston concurred having left the same unto us ... '
Even then, results were not immediate, but in the middle of the summer, Alexander Becke was allowed fifteen shillings for expenses incurred while 'measuring the Towne high way be- twixt Boston and Cambridge & to be allowed out of Muddy Ryver rate.' This seems acceptable evidence that the project was at last carried through. The road, long known as 'the way to the Colleges,' is now Harvard Street.
The year 1662 thus found the three principal highways of Muddy River established: the Sherburne Road (Walnut, Warren, Boylston, and Heath Streets), the Watertown Road (Washing- ton Street), and the Cambridge Road (Harvard Street). In addition, the records of the last quarter of the seventeenth cen- tury afford evidence of many minor projects.
PUBLIC SERVANTS
Boundaries, fences, and highways are essential parts of the physical equipment of community convenience; but they are a great deal more, too. In them the political observer sees in- dicators pointing ever toward the directive force we call self- government. Such services do not attend to themselves, and neither do isolated settlers habitually conduct their affairs with the propriety necessary to social harmony.
THE GARDNER-GODDARD-STEARNS HOUSE Built in 1718 by Deacon Thomas Gardner on the old Sherburne Road (Boylston Street)
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THE COMMUNITY SPIRIT GROWS
In almost every case in early New England, towns started political life with a constable. 'There have been towns in Mas- sachusetts,' wrote Herbert Baxter Adams, 'without selectmen, without Ministers, without a Church or Common School, but there never was a Town without a Constable.' He was the earliest and most essential symbol of corporate life, the first colonial officer to have his duties codified by the General Court (so soon as May, 1658, they were varied enough to include twenty-six provisions), and the most universal and persistent of all public servants.
But Muddy River, as a part of Boston, and for twenty years a very sparsely populated part, relied upon the parent commun- ity for the police protection that other places were forced to sup- ply for themselves from the beginning. In the fall of 1640, Thomas Grubb and Jarratt Bourne were chosen fence-viewers for Muddy River by the selectmen of Boston. For more than a decade no other officers were supplied, until in the spring of 1652, John Kendrick was chosen constable for the area and Peter Aspinwall surveyor of highways. From this time the choice of constables for Muddy River is practically an annual matter, and fence-viewers and highway surveyors are constantly selected for the hamlet.
A change arose in the late sixties, when public officials not only became more numerous, but were chosen with due re- spect for the local preferences. In the spring of 1662, Alexander Becke was made a special officer to see to the proper yoking and ringing of swine in Muddy River; a few years later Edward Kibby was appointed clerk of the market; Peter Aspinwall, Edward Devotion, and John White were made special officers to see to the enforcement of an order of the General Court re- specting the excessive and illegal use of liquor; and in the spring of 1680, Thomas Gardner, Sr., John Winchester, and James Pemberton were chosen tithingmen for Muddy River.
Here was a steady increase in public functionaries as well as in public functions, and the closer contacts and increased supervision that such circumstances predicated, aroused in the hamlet the desire for a larger measure of local control. At a town meeting in March, 1668, accordingly, a proposal of importance in this direction was acted upon: 'Whether the
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HISTORY OF BROOKLINE
Constables of Muddy Ryver & Rumny Marsh shall be here- after chosen by lifting up of handes or putting in of papers left to future consideration ... '
LOCAL ELECTIONS
Now voting in the town meeting was an important matter, and while in this early period it was probably in the main by acclamation, more precise methods were soon necessary, and 'election by papers' or the lifting up of hands was frequently resorted to when the issue was close. Election by papers did not require the ability to write, according to Thomas Lechford, who in Plain Dealing explains that a paper with any mark on it favored, and a blank paper opposed, the proposition before the meeting.
But in the case of Muddy River the difficulty went a little deeper. The inhabitants were approaching that period of civic adolescence where they wanted to have a positive and even dominant voice in the selection of their local officers. There were not enough of them, even when they shouted their loudest, to carry the Boston town meeting by acclamation. Counting individual votes did not increase their advantage. They sought not only a definite record, but a means of impressing the larger community; they wished to nominate their own officers with confidence that the town meeting would act in little more than a ratifying capacity. Consequently, in March, 1669, this impor- tant concession was made:
Ordered that the constable of Muddy river and Rumney marsh shall be chosen by lifting up of hands and yt the next yeare before the day of publique election, the select men apoint the Inhabitants of Muddy river and Rumney marsh to meete together & nominate constables & other officers proper for each place and the present constables bringe in their names to the next publique meeting on ye day of elec- tion there to be put to vote.
This is the first order permitting Muddy River to act as an independent political unit. Not only was the choice to be made by a counting of individual votes, but provision was made for the selectmen to call the inhabitants together before the annual election to nominate their own constables, and - better still
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THE COMMUNITY SPIRIT GROWS
- other appropriate officers. These were to be the only names before the town meeting, and they might be certain of election unless in some very exceptional case.
TAXATION
Closely connected with the choice of officers as a requirement of local autonomy is the equally important business of the con- trol of taxes. From the beginning Boston bore heavy financial burdens, and administered them in much the same manner as other towns in the colony.
The selectmen usually determined the total tax within a stated maximum, but property valuation was fixed by a special commissioner, who acted with the selectmen though he was chosen by the town meeting. The levy was always on general property, including items familiar to the community. Taxes were collected by the constables, and sometimes expended by them.
The rate was of two types. There was the country rate, or province tax, which rose steadily from forty-eight pounds in 1633 to well over a thousand pounds at the close of the charter period. And there was the town tax, usually exceeding the 'countrey levy,' which by the close of the colonial period amounted to some six hundred pounds 'rate pay' each year, most of which went to maintain highways and free schools, with a residue to pay official salaries, care for the poor and sick, and maintain public property.
Muddy River is first treated as a separate fiscal unit in the spring of 1662. In March of that year, a country rate of about ninety-six pounds, payable in wheat or barley 'att 4s. 6d. p. bushell, and peas att 3s. 6d. p. bushell, or if in monny rebating the fifth part thearof,' was levied by the selectmen of Boston. To the order was appended: 'Alsoe [a rate] for Muddy River to the summe of £4. Is. 6d. to be leued as above sd. ye aboue mentioned raites Committed to the severall respective Con- stables.'
During the next decade there are five assessments against Muddy River, rising as high as twenty-five pounds in 1671, and varying from about two and one half to five per cent of the total country and town rates that fell on the people of Boston.
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HISTORY OF BROOKLINE
In 1674 there is mention of a special assessment, with an order to the constable of Muddy River to erect a new pound 'within thire precincts.' Then in November of the following year the heaviest single assessment of the colonial period fell on the ham- let - £184 17s. to pay the almost ruinous costs of King Philip's War. In the fall of 1679 the first detailed statement of the Muddy River rate is spread on the records of the Boston select- men:
To the Constable of Muddy River, payable alsoe To the Towne Treasurer the severall rates as above For 4 single Countrie rates and 4 for the towne 1/2 pte. abated to pay mony For I single Countrie rate to be pd. in graine without abatem 9. I. 5.
72. 17. 4.
For 1/2 rate to be pd in mony 4. IO. 8.
86. 9. 5.
And from this entry to the close of the colonial period, a fuller description of each levy is customary.
The actual tax lists for the Muddy River precinct that have been preserved, with their records of names and individual as- sessments, are few. The list of 1701 includes only the names of heads of families subject to taxation, with the number of polls for which each was responsible. However, the lists of 1693, one for the Muddy River poor rate and one for the country rate, indicate the taxpayers by name, the amount of each tax, and in the case of the country rate, a division of the the assess- ment between 'house and farme' on the one hand and 'estate' on the other. In both lists, Thomas Stedman and Benjamin White are the heaviest taxpayers in the community, with John Winchester, Samuel Aspinwall, John and Edward Devotion, Thomas and Joshua Gardner, Thomas Boylston, and Joseph Buckmaster among the leading contributors.
THOUGHTS OF INDEPENDENCE
From the physical viewpoint, maps a generation or two apart are striking summaries of development. Beginning with a simple and often abstract plot of land grants, from which a poorly understood terrain is unevenly apportioned among a highly mobile group of proprietors, there is derived a slow amalgamation of scattered properties, a recurrence of family
EDWARD DEVOTION HOUSE, HARVARD STREET Built about 1680; the oldest house now standing in Brookline
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THE COMMUNITY SPIRIT GROWS
names, a growing tangle of winding lines that circle hills and hug the stream beds to mark the first pattern of highways, and tiny symbols indicating known homesteads that will form com- munity centers for many generations to come.
With such development, moreover, there grows a sense of community consciousness that increases as the ties of continuous residence endear the land and its memories to new generations of proprietors, and as regularity and assurance are given to necessary services that are the simple requirements of a frontier settlement. Citizens who have won the confidence of the com- munity are chosen as public officers. Their selection becomes a matter of increasing importance as they touch the settlement in multiplying and widening circles of contact. There comes a time when a feeling of local solidarity requires that local officers be neighbors and residents, that tax rates be locally assessed and collected, that the officers be chosen by the citizens over whom their jurisdiction is to extend; and in this process of regu- lating its own life, the locality comes to be spoken of as a unit apart.
For half a century the hamlet of Muddy River showed signs of communal growing pains, and it came at last to a point in colonial history that marked a turbulent decade both at home and abroad. Pressure had been forming that was slowly to thrust the community into another stratum of self-government, a preliminary step toward that cherished field of complete local autonomy. This was a true departure to the people of Muddy River, and one as important to that day as the wider change of 1705 to the next generation. It took the form of a simple request that the hamlet be allowed to operate its own school, a motion that is first mentioned in the Boston town re- cords of March 8, 1687, as 'referd to the Selectmen to consider of and to make theire report of it to the inhabitants at ye next towne meeting.'
CHAPTER IV
A SEPARATE VILLAGE OR PECULIAR
A CRISIS BRINGS OPPORTUNITY
MUDDY RIVER had for two generations been an appendage of the great town of Boston, and had, on the whole, followed very closely the life of the parent community. Its men had served with Boston contingents in the colonial wars, its people had been allied with the Boston and Roxbury churches, its taxes had been determined and assessed through the Boston town meeting, and its officers and its projects had received at least nominal approval of the 'peninsula.' Occasionally a Sewall, Gardner, Sharp, or White brought attention to himself and his community, and the hamlet arose for a moment from the obscurity of a mere suburb and heard its name mentioned as a place apart. Slowly, elementary officers were designated as of Muddy River, taxes were assessed on the area as for an administrative precinct, con- tinuous perambulations gave definition to geographical boun- daries, citizens acted as a unit in the Boston town meeting and in church affiliation at Roxbury, and Muddy River entered the early sixteen-eighties with many evidences of civic identity, and a record of increasing efforts toward fuller self-expression.
There was, moreover, a restless decade ahead for Massa- chusetts, the generative forces of which had been growing stead- ily since the Restoration in 1660. The government under the colony came to an end in October, 1684, and the quo warranto of the summer of the preceding year listed among its principal grievances an undue exercise of self-government. The newly appointed President of the Council, Joseph Dudley, gave as- surance that his régime would require few changes. Apart from restrictions on the taxing privileges of the towns, and the refusal to permit deputies to the General Court to be chosen, local politics continued much as under the old order.
But the arrival of Edmund Andros in December, 1686, seri- ously changed the situation. Exceptional taxes were imposed, land titles were threatened, town meetings were narrowly re-
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A SEPARATE VILLAGE OR PECULIAR
stricted, and the inhabitants of the country became increasingly uneasy in the presence of numerous and unusual laws.
The towns clung desperately to what they had. With protest and reservation they attempted to retain as much as they could of their old privileges. Boston, as was the case a century later, became the spokesman of the colony, and the record spread on the pages of one of her freemen's meetings was ominous evidence of a disturbed and stubborn public opinion:
It being put to vote, Whether the Freemen were minded that the General Court should make a full submission and in- tire resignation of our charter & priuiledges there in granted to his Majesties pleasure as intimated in the said Declaration now read. The Question was resolued in the Negatiue, Nemine contra dicente.
The hamlet of Muddy River was, of course, conscious of the troubled spirit of the times, but it seemed also to recognize opportunity in the circumstances, and make ready to seize it. History is full of episodes where great stores of accumulated as- pirations burst into flame from the spark of an unnoticed re- solution, and when Boston in April, 1683, made a purely routine provision for two free schools, the action seems to have had a wholly unintended effect. It unwittingly emphasized the ad- vantages of the larger community. It called attention to a con- dition of dependence that was rapidly growing irksome.
No one at this day can reconstruct the whole story, but the record of the March meeting of the town of Boston in I686 gives evidence that the inhabitants of Muddy River had de- cided that this was a good time to better their own situation. 'Muddy Rivers Motion for a Schoole [is] referd to the Select- men to consider of and to make theire report of it to the in- habitants at the next towne meetinge.'
BOSTON IN DIFFICULTIES
However, this did not assure any immediate action. Boston was plainly reluctant to release her precinct even for the minor political function of supplying a free school. The parent town was passing through a period of financial stringency. It had suffered a costly Indian war, the loss of eighty dwellings and
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HISTORY OF BROOKLINE
seventy warehouses by fire in 1676, a general 'failinge of trade,' and faced in addition further political and economic uncer- tainties that made any reduction in revenue a matter of con- cern. The maintenance of a free school at Muddy River, in- dependent of Boston, could hardly be regarded except as a step toward independence, nor be approved but in the face of ir- resistible demand.
Boston therefore proceeded to seek refuge in the familiar political devices of vacillation and postponement, with the probable hope that delay might dissipate the force of the re- quest, while promises of consideration would at the same time moderate the disappointment. The selectmen to whom the motion had been referred voted, in the latter part of the same month, that the matter be given consideration and that suitable steps be taken to inquire into the reasons for the Muddy River petition. On this a report was to be made to the general town meeting.
Thus the question was postponed, perhaps for a year, and might have been pigeonholed indefinitely had not the Boston strategy been based on a wrong conception of the force back of the Muddy River request. Far from soothing the petitioners or weakening their determination, it appears to have given them new firmness and larger notions.
Exasperated by the delay, they determined to take their grievance directly to headquarters, where they hoped for prompter and more sympathetic consideration. In conse- quence, a meeting of the Governor and Council in November, 1686, records an order 'that the Select Men of Boston meet with Mr. White of Muddy River on Thursday next at two in the afternoon to answer Mr. White relating to the schoole intended to be settled there.'
ENCOURAGEMENT FROM HIGHER UP
The expectation of a sympathetic hearing before the royal authority of the colony was probably well founded. Boston, even thus early, had evinced extreme dissatisfaction and even rebelliousness in the face of British policy; and it would be quite in keeping with His Majesty's wishes that so troublesome a town suffer some restriction.
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A SEPARATE VILLAGE OR PECULIAR
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