USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Dunstable > History of the town of Dunstable, Massachusetts, from its earliest settlement to the year of Our Lord 1873 > Part 23
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"To the white explorers these lands presented great attractions ; and so in 1659 and 1660, and on to 1673, grants of land were made in these regions from time to time to the explorers Davis and Johnson, to Mrs. Anna Lane, to John Wilson, to the town of Charlestown for a 'School
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Farm,' to John Whiting, to Phinehas Pratt and others. to Gov. Endecott, to Henry Kimball. to Samuel Scarlett, to Joseph and Thomas Wheeler, to the 'Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston,' and to others of less chivalry and less note. It was the proprietors of these farms and others disposed to settle here, who, in September, 1673, presented a petition to the General Assembly that they might be 'in a way for the support of the public ordinances of God,' for without which the greatest part of the year they will be deprived of, the farms lying so far remote from any towns." The petition was granted upon the conditions which were then universally inserted in the charters, viz., " that the grantees should settle the plantation, procure a minister within three years, and reserve a farm for the use of the colony."
HOW DUNSTABLE WAS FORMED.
The township of Dunstable, thus chartered, embraced a very large tract, probably more than two hundred square miles, including the towns of Nashua, Nashville, Hudson, Hollis, Dunstable, and Tyngsborough, besides portions of the towns of Amherst, Milford, Merrimac, Litchfield, Londonderry, Pelham, Brookline, Pepperell, and Townsend, and formed a part of the county of Middlesex. It extended ten or twelve miles west of Merrimack River, and from three to five miles east of it, and its average length north and south was from twelve to fourteen miles. The present city of Nashua occupies very nearly the centre of the original township. In 1674, because there was " very little medo left except what is already granted to the ffarmers," the easterly line of the township was extended to Beaver Brook by an additional grant from the General Court, and the town was called Dunstable. It received its name in compliment to Mrs. Mary Tyng, wife of Hon. Edward Tyng, one of the magistrates of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, who came from Dunstable, England. This extensive tract of land, thus incorporated and thus named, has been subjected to many divisions. In 1731 the inhabitants on the east side of the river petitioned to be set off, which petition was granted, and a new town was created by the As- sembly of Massachusetts, called Nottingham. In 1733 a part of the town lying west of Merrimack River was incorporated into a township by the name of Rumford, but soon after was called Merrimac. In 1734 Litch- field was set off and incorporated, because the inhabitants there had, as they said, "supported a minister for some time." In 1736 Hollis was set off from Dunstable ; and in 1734 Amherst was settled and incorporated. In 1732 Townsend was incorporated, taking in the southerly part of the town, including Pepperell. Thus township after township had become parcelled out from the original body of "old Dunstable," until in 1740 the broad and goodly plantation was reduced to that portion only which is now embraced within the limits of Nashua and Nashville, Tyngsborough and Dunstable. At length the boundary line between New Hampshire
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and Massachusetts was established in 1741, severing Dunstable very nearly in the middle, and leaving the town of Nashua within the limits of New Hampshire. To the township of Dunstable in Massachusetts, where we are now assembled, have since been added portions of the town of Groton, the first portion having been set off Feb. 25, 1793, and the second Feb. 15, 1820, for the convenience of the inhabitants, and that the bound- ary lines might be straightened.
EARLY SETTLERS.
Among the original proprietors of this land we find the names of many of the leading men in the colony, some of whom, with the children and friends of others, removed here and took up their abode at an early period. Of this number we find Governor Dudley, who married a daughter of Hon. Edward Tyng, of this town ; Rev. Thomas Weld, who was the first min- ister, and married another daughter ; Thomas Brattle, Peter Bulkely, Hezekiah Usher, Elisha Hutchinson, Francis Cook, and others who were assistants and magistrates. Many of the first settlers belonged to Boston and its vicinity, a circumstance which gave strength and influence to the infant plantation.
EARLY MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
Of the motives and manners and customs of those who founded this town let me here say a word. They formed a part of that large body of Dissenters, who, under various names, came to New England and settled the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. They came, it is true, to enjoy religious freedom, but they also sought a civil organization, founded upon the right of every man to a voice in the government under which he lives. In the charters of all the towns granted by the General Court, it was provided that the grantees were " to procure and maintain an able and orthodox minister amongst them," and to build a meeting-house within three years. " This was their motive. In all their customs they were obliged to exercise the utmost simplicity, and they voluntarily regulated their conduct by those formal rules which, in their day, constituted the Puritan's guide through the world. We are told, as an illustration of their character and manners, that by the laws of the colony in 1651, "dancing at weddings " was forbidden. In 1660 William Walker was imprisoned a month "for courting a maid without the leave of her parents." In 1675, because " there is manifest pride appearing in our streets," the wearing of " long hair or periwigs," and also " superstitious ribands " used to tie up and decorate the hair, were forbidden under severe penalties ; men, too, were forbidden to " keep Christmas," because it was a " Popish custom." In 1677 an act was passed to prevent " the profaneness " of " turning the back upon the public worship before it is finished and the blessing pronounced." Towns were directed to erect "a cage " near the meeting-house, and in this all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath were confined.
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At the same time children were directed to be placed in a particular part of the meeting-house, apart by themselves, and tithing-men were ordered to be chosen, whose duty it should be to take care of them. So strict were they in their observance of the Sabbath, that John Atherton, a soldier of Col. Tyng's company, was fined by him forty shillings for " wetting a piece of an old hat to put into his shoes," which chafed his feet upon the march ; and those who neglected to attend meeting for three months were publicly whipped. Even in Harvard College students were whipped for grave offences in the chapel in the presence of students and professors, and prayers were had before and after the infliction of the punishment. As the settlers of Dunstable are described in the petition as " of soberly and orderly conversation," we may suppose that these laws and customs were rigidly enforced.
MODES OF LIVING.
Perhaps a word upon the subsistence and diet of your ancestors may interest you here. Palfrey tells us that " in the early days of New England wheaten bread was not so uncommon as it afterwards became," but its place was largely supplied by preparations of Indian corn. A mixture of two parts of the meal of this grain with one part of rye has continued, until far into the present century, to furnish the bread of the great body of the people. In the beginning there was but a sparing consumption of butcher's meat. The multiplication of flocks for their wool, and of herds for draught and for milk, was an important care, and they generally bore a high money value. Game and fish to a considerable extent supplied the want of animal food. Next to these, swine and poultry, fowls, ducks, geese, and turkeys, were in common use earlier than other kinds of flesh meat. The New-Englander of the present time, who, in whatever rank of life, would be at a loss without his tea or coffee twice at least in every day, pities the hardships of his ancestors, who almost universally, for a century and a half, made their morning and evening repast on boiled Indian meal and milk, or a porridge, or a broth made of pease or beans and flavored by being boiled with salted beef or pork. Beer, however, which was brewed in families, was accounted a necessary of life, and the orchards soon yielded a bountiful supply of cider. Wine and rum found a ready market as soon as they were brought from abroad ; and tobacco and legislation had a long conflict, in which the latter at last gave way.
POPULATION.
It is difficult to realize how feeble and few were the colonists at the time when this town was passing out of its confederation of farms into an organized corporation. There were then probably "in New England from forty thousand to forty-five thousand English people. Of this num- ber twenty-five thousand may have belonged to Massachusetts, ten thou- sand to Connecticut, as newly constituted, five thousand to Plymouth, and
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three thousand to Rhode Island. They inhabited ninety towns, of which four were in Rhode Island, twelve in Plymouth, twenty-two in Connec- ticut, and the rest in Massachusetts. Connecticut, according to the account sent home by the royal commissioners, had many scattering towns not worthy of their names, and a scholar to their minister in every town or village. In Rhode Island, they said, were the best English grass and most sheep, the ground very fruitful, ewes bringing ordinarily two lambs, corn yielding eighty for one, and in some places they had had corn twenty-six years together without manuring. In this province only they had not any places set apart for the worship of God ; there being so many subdivided sects they could not agree to meet together in one place, but, according to their several judgments, they sometimes associated in one house, sometimes in another. In Plymouth it was the practice to persuade men, sometimes to compel them, to be freemen, - so far were they from hindering any. They had about twelve small towns, one saw-mill for boards, one bloomary for iron, neither good river nor good harbor, nor any place of strength ; they were so poor they were unable to maintain scholars to their ministry, but were necessitated to make use of a gifted brother in some places. The commodities of Massachusetts were fish, which was sent into France, Spain, and the Straits, pipe-staves, masts, fir boards, some pitch and tar, pork, beef, horses. and corn, which they sent to Virginia, Barbadoes, etc., and took tobacco and sugar for payment, which they often sent for England. There was good store of iron made in the province. In the Piscataqua towns were excellent masts gotten, and upon the river were above twenty saw-mills, and there were great stores of pipe-staves made and great store of good timber spoiled. In Maine there were but few towns, and those much scattered ; they were rather farms than towns. In the Duke of York's province beyond the Kennebec there were three small plantations, the biggest of which had not above thirty houses in it, and those very mean ones too, and spread over eight miles at least. Those people were, for the most part, fisher- men, and never had any government among them; most of them were such as had fled hither to avoid justice. In Boston, the principal town of the country, the houses were generally wooden, the streets crooked, with little decency and no uniformity ; and there neither months, days, seasons of the year, churches, nor rivers were known by their English names. At Cambridge they had a wooden college, and in the yard a brick pile of two bayes for the Indians, where the commissioners saw but one. They said they had three more at school. It might be feared this college might afford as many schismatics to the church and the corpora- tion as many rebels to the king, as formerly they had done if not timely prevented."
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ACTION OF THE TOWN AFTER THE DIVISION OF MASSACHUSETTS AND NEW HAMPSHIRE.
The division of the original township and the adjustment of the bound- ary line between Massachusetts and New Hampshire by no means removed all the difficulties which had attended the course of the town thus far. On the 12th of March, 1743, a town meeting was held at the house of Ebenezer Kendall. not only "to raise money to defray ye charges of said town, and to support ye Gospell," but also "to choose a committee to treat with a committee in the District of Dunstable, if they choose one, to examine the debts and credit of ye town and to know how they stood before the line was run between ye Province of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire." Deacon John Taylor, Ebenezer Parkhurst, and Capt. John Cummings were the committee. A large part of the business of the town for several years, at the time I refer to, consisted in running lines, and endeavoring to adjust the debts and claims, interspersed with debates upon building meeting-houses and laying out burying-grounds. Now and then a young and ambitious community, which had started off and set up on its own account, expressed a desire to return to the old roof-tree; and it was found necessary to vote, in 1743, not to annex Nottingham, which had been set off but twelve years previous. The places for public worship seem to have been steadily provided, either in some private house or barn, or in a building erected for that purpose. Preaching the people would have at any rate. Of education, I cannot say quite as much. The burden was, perhaps, at times, a little too heavy for that primitive people, and so in 1769 they voted not to raise any money for the support of a school, at one meeting, but at another they voted to spend £20 for a school, and in the same breath, mindful of their dangers and necessities, they voted £6 and Ios. for ammunition. In 1771 they raised £24 for a school, and £60 for the highways. In 1774 it was voted not to raise money for schools. But in the midst of all the trials and the impov- erishment of the Revolutionary war, they voted, March 5, 1778, " to raise and be assessed £50 for the support of a school," recognizing the value of a cultivated mind in a community assuming the duties and enjoying the rights of a free people. I am also reminded by their record that they intended to hold their public servants to a strict accountability, for in 1751 an article was inserted in the warrant for a town meeting, "To choose a committee to search John Stealls account as town treasurer "; but John Steall, in spite of his name, turned up an honest man, and the article was dismissed from the warrant.
THE HEROISM OF THE TOWN.
But not in matters relating to the religious and civil and educational interests of the town alone were your ancestors engaged, from the earliest settlement in 1655 to the period to which I have now arrived. The lands
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were too fertile, and the rivers too fair, and the forests too well stocked with game, to be abandoned without a struggle on the part of those abo- riginal occupants who had enjoyed their possession for many generations. The popular rights there asserted, as the town grew into a definite civil organization, were not to be established without a blow; and later still, the integrity of that government which had been founded at such a vast expense of blood and treasure, and by the exercise of so much study, sagacity, and wisdom, was not to be preserved except by the devotion and valor of loyal men in arms. In every crisis occurring within a century and three quarters of its existence - now in struggle with a savage foe, now in strife against the tyrant and the oppressor, and now in deadly con- flict with the traitor - Dunstable has always done her duty well. As early as July 5, 1689, your ancestors were called to arms against that savage band which, having attacked Dover and having killed Major Waldron and his men, turned their bloody attention towards this town. In the summer of 1691 this attack was renewed, and in the month of September of that year, one hundred and eighty-two years ago, the entire family of Joseph Hassell was slain, - the first sacrifice offered up here in the cause of civ- ilization, - whose simple monument has long since been obliterated by the hand of industry, and whose sad and touching story alone remains. The town now became a garrison. The General Court granted aid for the support of its church, and made a liberal abatement of its State tax. Upon Jonathan Tyng, that name so long honored and beloved here and so con- spicuous for generations in the annals of our country, fell the duty of pre- serving the very existence of the place, as commander of the fortifications erected to protect it. That this war, which lasted until 1698, was full of thrilling and painful incident in this town, we have every reason to sup- pose, although we find no written record, and the tradition was long ago forgotten ; but we do know that here Joe English performed his won- derful exploits, and that Mrs. Dustin, who was captured at Haverhill, and who slew her captors, ten in number, at the mouth of the Contoocook River, found her first refuge as she wandered down the valley of the Mer- rimack on her way homeward, in the house of old John Lovewell, " father of worthy Capt. Lovewell," which stood on the side of Salmon Brook, a few feet northeast of the Allds Bridge.
When, in 1703, the Indian hos- tilities were renewed, and the General Assembly offered £40 for every Indian scalp, it was Capt. Jonathan Tyng, of Dunstable, who first accepted the tender, and made a good winter's work by going to their headquarters at Pequawkett, securing five scalps, and receiving therefor £200. It was in this war that the family of Robert Parris was massacred, two little girls alone escaping by fleeing to the cellar and hiding in a hogshead (who cannot hear their little hearts beating in agony amidst the terrors which surrounded their dark and narrow retreat ?), one of whom was preserved to become ancestress of the useful and distinguished family of Goffes, so well known here and in New Hampshire. It was in this war that a band
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of Mohawks surprised your garrisons and murdered your people, and in which, I am proud to say, the men of Essex County came to your rescue and defence. It was in this war, which lasted until 1713, a period of twenty years, that the population of this town was reduced one half, but thirteen families and eighty-six persons remaining ; that the entire popu- lation was obliged to live in garrison ; and that fear and desolation reigned everywhere, as the savages hung upon the skirts of the English villages "like lightning on the edge of a cloud."
LOVEWELL'S FIGHT.
In 1724 a contest broke out with the Indians, in which Dunstable seems to have been principally interested from beginning to end, and in which the warriors of Dunstable bore a most conspicuous part. The strife began with an attack by the English on the town, of Norridgewock, Me , during which a band of Mohawks turned upon this town, and commenced a story of cruelty, adventure, and valor hardly equalled in history. The capture of Nathan Cross and Thomas Blanchard began the fray, which resulted in the death of Lieut. Ebenezer French, Thomas Lund, Oliver Farwell, and Ebenezer Cummings, of Dunstable, whose burial-place is still marked by a monument not far from the State line. It was in consequence of this attack that John Lovewell, Josiah Farwell, and Jonathan Robbins, of this town, petitioned the General Assembly for leave to raise a company, and to scout against the Indians. Their petition was granted, changing the bounty for scalps from £50 to £100, and John Lovewell organized his expedition. His first successful march into the Pequawkett region was in December, 1724, from which he returned to organize another and larger expedition, on which he set out in February, 1725, and which resulted in the entire destruction of a band of Indians, on the 20th of that month, near what is now known as Lovewell's Pond. "Encouraged by his former success, and animated still with an uncommon zeal of doing what service he could," Lovewell marched a third time into the wilder- ness, intending to attack the Pequawketts in their headquarters on the Saco River. Early in May, 1725, he set forth with thirty-four men, of whom seven were from Dunstable, five from Woburn, seven from Con- cord, one from Andover, one from Weston, one from Londonderry, one from Billerica, seven from Groton, and two from Haverhill. These brave men, who, having reached the scene of action, and holding counsel on the subject of attacking a large body of Indians who lay in wait for them, declared " that as they had come out on purpose to meet the enemy, they would rather trust Providence with their lives and die for their country than return without seeing them," were ambushed and nearly all slain, Capt. Lovewell falling at the first fire, and his chaplain, Jonathan Frye, of Andover, lingering three days after the close of the fight, and dying of his wounds in the wilderness. Many a time have I, when a boy, paused to rest beneath the shade of a graceful, sturdy, and imposing elm-tree,
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which crowns one of the finest hills of my native town of North Andover, and I have mused there upon the sad and tragic story of that young man, Jonathan Frye, who, when he left his home to join Capt. Lovewell's expe- dition, planted that tree, that he might, as he said, leave his monument behind should he fall in the service. The memorial is, indeed, beautiful and significant, as in each returning spring, all through this century and a half of years, it has crowned itself in honor of his memory who planted it there; but the young man has a higher and more enduring monument still, in that it is recorded of him that "worthy and promising," a son of Harvard, he laid down his life to prepare the way for the dawn over that wilderness of the religion of his Lord and Master, to whom he had dedi- cated all his powers. The memory of Capt. Lovewell is as green as the opening springtime forest where he fell; and while man sets high value on courage and honor and devotion will the poet sing his praise, and the historian portray his deeds, and your town will be proud of her son. This chivalrous and touching and disastrous struggle closed the long series of Indian depredations, in which Dunstable had been threatened so often and had suffered so much.
During the French war, which broke out in 1755, the towns composing the original territory of Dunstable did valiant service, true to their tra- ditions, and faithful to the memory of their illustrious dead. In the adventures of that war, in which John Stark commenced his career in connection with the men of Dunstable, the names of Lovewell, Blanchard, Johnson, Farwell, French, and Goffe, names possessed and cherished by you still, are foremost. And now the great events of the American Revo- lution began, both in the council and on the field. I find that on Oct. 3, 1774, while this town "chose Capt. John Tyng to represent the town in the great and general court or assembly, to be held and kept at the court house in Salem, upon Wednesday, the fifth day of October," the inhabi- tants also voted that " John Tyng and James Tyng serve for this town in the Provincial Congress, to be held in Concord on Tuesday, the eleventh day of October," two for one in favor of the uprising patriots. With this, I think, we ought to be content.
On the eleventh day of January, 1775, John Tyng and James Tyng were chosen to represent the town in a Provincial Congress, to be held in Cambridge on the first day of February, and it was voted "that the following committee of inspection of nine persons be appointed to carry into execution, in the town of Dunstable, the agreement and association of the late respectable Continental Congress. John Tyng and James Tyng, Esqrs., and Messrs. Joseph Danforth, Nathaniel Holden, William Gordon, Reuben Butterfield, Jacob Fletcher, Leonard [Butterfield], and Joel Parkhurst were chosen as this committee." On the 12th of June, 1775, John Tyng was, on account of feeble health, obliged to resign his seat in the Provincial Congress at Watertown, and Joel Parkhurst was elected to fill his place. There are frequent indications on your town-
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books of the advancing spirit of your ancestors in the cause of independ- ence. Feb. 14, 1776, for instance, the town-meeting was called "in His Majesty's name " ; May 15 it was called " in the name of the Government and people of ye Massachusetts Bay"; Sept. 20, " In the name of the Government and People of the Massachusetts State "; and Oct. 3, 1776, the town voted to recommend the adoption of a State Constitution.
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