USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Franklin > History of the town of Franklin, Mass., from its settlement to the completion of its first century > Part 5
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Under such men things move vigorously. The minute-men are equipped each " with a good fire-arm, bayonet, pouch, knapsack, and thirty rounds of cartridge by the twentieth day of February "- for they know not how soon Gage's mercena- ries may be after their two cannon, and the two captains are directed to " train and exercise the men in military exercise one half day in every fortnight to the 1st of April next, and from and after that time to the 1st of May next two half days in every week, four hours in every half day."* For this service the captains will receive 16d. per half day, each sub- altern officer 14d., four sergeants per each company 12d., four corporals, one drummer and one fifer, each 10d., and each private 9d.
But Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill are demand- ing more than minute-men, trainings, and letters of commit- tees of correspondence. Though our half of the committee of eleven be such men as Hezekiah Fisher, Joseph Hawes, Capt. Asa Fairbanks, Capt. Perez Cushing, and Joseph Whit- ing, yet the country wants men in the field. The town, there- fore, springs promptly to the call for fifteen battalions offered by Massachusetts ; and when volunteers lag, it orders, 8th July, 1776, the two companies to draft " whom they think
* For lists of Franklin's minute-men see military chapter in Addenda.
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
most Equal and Just to do a turn or half turn, reference be- ing had to what they formerly had done," who shall go, find a substitute, or pay £8 per turn to the officers to procure one. In the spring of 1777, as the conflict deepens into a war, 40s. per month, after the first year, are offered to three years' men ; or, if they prefer, £20 at once, in addition to the Continental and State bounties.
But the patriots had eyes to look sharply after home enemies as well as foreign ; and at the suggestion of the State Assembly they choose, May 26, 1777, Mr. Joseph Hawes to look after and report all tories to the proper court. The sol- diers' families are not forgotten, and a committee is chosen, September 3, to see that they are " supplied with the neces- saries of life at a stipulated price, at the town's cost."
The last vote of the whole town, previous to the incorpora- tion of Franklin, touching the war, was on Feb. 16, 1778, and is the acceptance of a committee's report that the full quota of the town, " being the full seventh part of the male inhabitants of this town, " has been secured by the enlistment of five men at £60 for each man.
With this clean record for liberty, the town of Franklin starts on its independent career.
Our records as a new town open with a copy of the act of incorporation and the order for a meeting to organize, issued by Jabez Fisher, justice of the peace, and addressed to Sam- uel Lethbridge " one of the principal inhabitants." That first meeting is held on Monday, March 23, 1778, at 9 o'clock, A. M ., and chooses its town officers and its committee of correspond- ence - Capt. John Boyd, Dea. Daniel Thurston, Lieut. Eben- czer Dean, Capt. Thomas Bacon, Joseph Guild, the leading patriots of the town -and then adjourns one month to look into and make up their minds upon the new State constitution. In no whit in any subsequent meetings was the town derelict to any call for aid from the State or the struggling nation.
Of the burdens of that time we have little conception. We have been restive under the expenses of the late rebellion
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
and the depreciation of our currency, and some resist resump- tion when it involves a fall of only one-quarter of one per cent. But in July, 1781, the ratio of paper to silver was as one to forty ; and in September, as one to one hundred and fifty. In February, 1782, the town paid £400 for ten shirts to Dea. Joseph Whiting ; who, of course, would not overcharge. In this same year of '82, the town expenses amounted to £100,765 1s. 6d .. in which the collector had unwittingly taken £51 counterfeit - relatively to the value of the rest, a very small offense! No wonder the town voted, March, 1784, that " the old Continental money and the new emission money in the town treasury shall go into a ministerial fund forever." It was a grim joke upon a paper currency, and explains, perhaps, why you cannot now find that fund.
But the fathers endured this bitter depreciation as the home part of the price of liberty. They also readily adopted the scale of prices recommended by the Concord Convention of 1779 - to keep down exorbitant charges - and chose a com- mittee to see to it, and they voted to publish in the Boston papers the names of all non-conformists to the prices. They voted also, that "the town will have no commercial dealings with such." It furnishes its quota of beef for the army - 33,908 lbs. in eighteen months - and supplies the men sent to suppress the Shays Rebellion of 1786.
There is a flash of fire in some of their resolutions of that day whose heat still lingers in their words - as when, in 1779. while the money credit of the government was rapidly falling, this town recommended by vote to all who had money to loan to lend it to the Continental and State treasuries, and " avoid lending to monopolizers, Jobbers, Harpies, Forestallers, sharp- ers and Tories, with as much caution as they avoid a pesti- lence." We look on such a record of our town with high sat- isfaction.
The record of its individual citizens is no less commendable, as will appear in the military history. But we must leave the camp to look again at the affairs at home.
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
It is no dubious proof of the pluck of our fathers that, ere the smoke of the Revolutionary War had hardly rolled away, they set about building a new meeting-house. The old house had stood over forty years, has become ragged with use, and strait for the increasing population. But what is the wisest to do, is a question decided first this way and then that. One point, however, must be settled - whether the center of the town may not have shifted with the independence of the country and the growth of its inhabitants. Two surveyors and three chainmen are, therefore, (in January, 1784,) set upon this old problem ; who find, after many days and at a cost of £26 3s. 4d. (of which £1 12s. 11d. are for " Lickquer "), this perplexing center of Franklin to be " N. W. 71º, forty- seven rods from the center of the west door of the meeting- house where it now stands ;" which lands it not far from the same Morse's mud pond as fifty years before. A committee is, therefore, sent out to perambulate that region and report what they shall find in its vicinity. They negotiate successfully with Nathaniel and John Adams for the present Common and its approaches. Another committee of thirteen present plans for a new meeting-house, all of which is accepted in December, 1787, and the meeting-house which arose out of so many votes and counter votes was completed by July, 1788, at a final cost of £1,054 9s. 2d. 1qr. That house served its purpose for over fifty years, until, in 1840, it suffered a removal and a trans- formation. The last service held in it was on Monday, Sept. 28, 1840; it being the funeral of the pastor, Dr. Emmons, who was ordained in this town sixty-seven years before. The next day after the carpenters began their work of alterations. That transformation was before the day of photographs, so that no picture remains of our old meeting-house, save the fading re- membrance which lingers in the memory of a few of us boys and girls of 1840. I have attempted to reproduce its picture as I recollect it, which the reader will find further on.
The house was sixty feet by forty-two, with a porch at each end fourteen feet square. It had fifty-nine pews on the floor
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
and twenty-one in the gallery, besides the singers' and boys' seats. The present Catholic church is the old house frame unaltered in size.
But what picture can produce its interior on some pleasant Sunday morning in June! Its high box pulpit and impend- ing sounding board, hung by a single iron rod, an inch square : the two pegs on each side of the pulpit window, on one of which sometimes hangs the blue-black cloak, and on the other always the three-cornered clerical hat ; by no means omitting the short, lithe preacher in the pulpit, with clear sharp eye, bald shining head, and small penetrating voice, and manu- script gesture. The square pews, too, seated on four sides, with a drop seat across the narrow door, and the straight cushioned chair in the center for the grandmother, filled, every one, with sedate faces, over which white hairs unusu- ally predominate ; and the long seats hemming the galleries, piled with hats against the two aisles, which a puff of wind from the porch entries sometimes sends down scattering upon the heads below. The singers' seats, filling the front gallery opposite the pulpit, in which nothing bigger than a pitch-pipe for years dared to utter a note ; and the boys' seats in the southwest elbow of the gallery, each boy with one eye on the tithing-man in the opposite corner, while the other eye wan- ders or sleeps, and both ears enviously open to the neighing of the horses in the sheds and the twitter of the birds in the Lombardy poplars near by !
But the spirit of modern reform in 1840 demolished every vestige of that picture and carried off even the frame of the building to a new foundation. As a result of that demolition, the top of the old sounding-board lighted upon a well-house in Ashland, the breastwork of the old pulpit landed in the lecture-room of the Chicago Theological Seminary, and if you would once again listen to the sound of the same old bell which called your grandfathers and grandmothers to meetings on Sunday and lecture-days, and tolled their departure to the grave, you can hear it still - or could -ringing out as elearly
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
as ever in the Congregational steeple in Paxton, and reputed as the most musical bell in Worcester county.
But before we leave the old meeting-house, we must give. one word to the Common in front of it. It was, when bought of the Adamses, covered with pitch-pines. While the meet- ing-house was being built, in 1788, Samuel Lethbridge offered to clear it up and subdue it within five years, for one penny a poll of the parish and time to raise four crops upon it and dispose of the stones as he pleased. A different bargain, how- ever, was made with him for this work, for in 1793 he re- ceived £5 14s. 33d. for subduing the Common. But the conquest was so far incomplete that in 1797 another bill of $92.15 was paid for blasting powder, plowing, hay seed, victuals, and drink, from which deduct $31.24 credit for twenty bush- els of buckwheat, hay, and stones, and you have $60.91 ex- pended in completing the victory over Nature.
The platoons of Lombardy poplars which stood guard so erect and slim on three sides of the Common, and which fur- nished us boys with whistles on election days, were planted by vote of the town 6th April, 1801, by William Adams " at his discretion." *
No town has a larger or finer plat of publie territory for adornment, and in no town would a public park -tastefully set with walks, trees, and shrubbery, as this might be - add more to the beauty of its location. The local society for its improvement deserves, as I presume it will have, the cordial and visible co-operation of the whole town. Our Common should become a museum of every species of tree indigenous to the hills and valleys of this township, - where the young can study the characteristics of the forest while they talk of the century to come, and of the homes which they hope to build in the hereafter.
But my hour is over, and a score of perhaps more interest- ing topics must be relegated to the printed history in process. of immediate preparation.
* See its further history in the Addenda.
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
The uprise of other churches and religious societies in this once single precinet - of which there now are at least six in vigorous operation ; the industrial enterprises - from the saw-mill on Mine brook, laid out in 1698, now the site of one of the Rays' numerous felting mills : the humble straw begin- nings of Major Thayer, in 1800, to the present varied and ex- tensive manufactories of the town : the names and deeds of the veterans of the Revolution, and of the no less prompt volunteers to suppress the rebellion of 1861; the schools, and especially the honorable list of college graduates, the pro- fessional men and eminent citizens, native or resident - not forgetting the distinguished women, not a few - who have marked their day here or elsewhere ; of whom, as of Prof. Alexander M. Fisher of Yale, Judge Theron Metcalf, and Hon. Horace Mann, this town may well be proud, as her own native born - not forgetting the old Academy of 1835-40, whose memory shines yet as a bright morning in at least one soul ; these and other kindred themes must wait their opportunity. And not less the hundred and one other apparently little things which, nevertheless, give foliage and fragrance to history, as amongst the really developing forces of society.
I have simply eulled a few of the taller stalks from the harvest-field of a hundred years, to make a boquet for your centennial table to-day. It is a specimen only out of the years from which others might have gathered a much richer handful. But to me the eulling has been among familiar acres, and the work has been a labor of love. As such, I beg to lay it before you to-day, with the hope that you will excuse the omission of your favorite flowers, and accept it as my offering to the old town which has always rendered me far more honor than I feel myself to be worthy of.
May the patriotism, the steadfast integrity, the intelligence, and the harmony which beautify the history of the past cen- tury of this town, shine on clearer and purer into the coming centuries, as far and as long as the name of FRANKLIN, MASS., can be read !
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ADDENDA.
1
ADDENDA.
THE many matters of topography, civil, ecclesiastical, educa- tional, industrial, and military history, which could not properly have mention in the public address - valuable documents, statis- tics, etc., are here contained in some order of arrangement under their appropriate heads.
I. TOPOGRAPHY.
The town of Franklin, whose general history is given in the preceding address, lies in the southwestern part of Norfolk county, Mass., and is southwesterly from Boston twenty-seven and one- quarter miles by the New York and New England Railroad. It contained within its original limits. as measured by the survey of 1832, 17,6023 acres, or 27.6 square miles. In 1870 the north- eastern portion of the town was set off to the new town of Nor- folk, formerly North Wrentham. This area included about 1,653 acres, leaving some 15,949 acres as the present extent of Frank- lin. It has the rolling, hilly surface which belongs to the Syenitic formation of eastern Massachusetts, and affords many beautiful views. From some of its elevated highways the Blue hills of Milton are visible, and from others can be seen Mount Wachuset in Princeton. It is one of the highest towns in the county. its central depot being on the summit of the New York and New England Railroad, and is one of the most healthful towns in the Commonwealth. It has several ponds - Beaver. Uncas, Popolatic, and Kingsbury's being the largest - whose overflow ultimately reaches the Charles river and Massachusetts bay, through Mine brook, and Stop, or Mill, river.
The elevation of the town, the general beauty of its scenery. and its railroad facilities - to say nothing of its social advantages
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
- are rapidly attracting attention to it as a summer resort or a country home. The many other facts which constitute and de- termine its desirableness as a place of residence or of business, will find a place under their appropriate. heads in this supplemen- tary history.
II. CIVIL HISTORY.
The main facts of our interior life are contained in the histori- cal address. Upon the subsidence of the war for liberty, society rapidly assumed its normal state and began its normal develop- ment. Little has occurred in the history proper of the town de- manding especial mention. The regular town meetings were held, at which the necessary officers were chosen, of whom a list is given at the end, and the necessary expenses of the town were provided for.
Being mostly a farming community, the population increased very slowly. At the date of incorporation it was less than 1,100. Its census, at the several dates computed, has been-in 1790, 1,101 ; in 1800, 1.255 ; in 1810, 1,398; in 1820, 1,630; in 1830, 1,662; in 1840, 1,717 ; in 1850, 1,818; in 1855, 2,044; in 1860. 2,172 ; in 1865, 2,510 ; in 1870, 2,512 ; and in 1875, 2,983.
As the boundaries of the parish were territorially coincident with those of the town, the interests of the two were substantially one, and both interests were often acted upon in the same mect- ing. Hence the records do not discriminate between doings strictly civil and properly ecclesiastical. But by a statute of 1803, it was declared that such transaction of parochial business in open town meeting vitiated the proceedings, and a committee was chosen at the March meeting of 1804 to petition the General Court to ratify all past acts of town and parish, and to incorpor- ate the latter as " the First Congregational parish in the town of Franklin." Up to this date, therefore, are selected such acts from either precinet or town records as have interest for preserva- tion and have not been already quoted in the general history.
The first warrant for organizing the precinct was issued by Jonathan Ware, justice of the peace, to Robert Pond, Daniel Hawes, David Jones, Daniel Thurston, and John Adams, " to meet at the house the inhabitants of sd precinct usually meet in for pub- lic worship," Monday, 16th of January, at 10 o'clock, 1738. Meas-
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ADDENDA.
ures were immediately taken for selecting a site and erecting a meeting-house, and for procuring a minister. The church, being present, acted jointly with the precinct in these ecclesiastical mat- ters. The salary proposed was six score pounds, old tenor, to rise and fall with the value of money, and a settlement of £200; or, if preferred, £60 and the two parcels of land, containing sixty acres, granted by Wrentham at a proprietors' meeting 18th April, 1721. " whenever they be legally set off." Another £100 was, in July, added to buy woodland for the ministerial fires. The deed of an acre of land from Thomas Man for a meeting- house lot was accepted 11th September, 1739, and put for safe keeping into the care of Simon Slocum.
On account of the high price of provisions, the precinct voted, 22d December, 1742, a contribution. to be taken on the last Sab- bath of each month for four months, for the relief of the minister.
In 1762, when religious differences began to make votes im- portant, the right of franchise was by vote limited "to such as have a frechold in house and land lying within the precinct.' The same differences occasioned frequent and sometimes long meetings ; and it was ordered, 14th March. 1763, to put upon " the acre " a white pine stick for a trough and painted, proba- bly for the use of horses who had no interest in awaiting the long discussions of parish affairs. It was somewhat of a trough, cost- ing 44s. How it was filled with water no record reveals. Per- haps the sexton, who had 15s. for sweeping the meeting-house and " taking care of the chosen " (things), needed no instructions.
For many years discussions and perambulations of town boun- daries and laying out roads constituted the chief business of the town meetings. But the location of roads by marked trees, cor- ners of farms, etc., renders their present description useless. Guide-posts are not mentioned until 1795, March 23, when the selectmen are directed to erect them according to law. The records show that all minor matters of town thrift were properly looked after.
IN. BURYING-GROUNDS.
Two had been provided at the beginning of the settlement by grants of land from the proprietors ; one for the convenience of the settlers around Stop river, and another for those who migrated from
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
Wrentham. These yards appear to have lain open and uncared for until 1768, when the precinct appointed a committee for each burial place, to clear up and fence them with good stone walls. In 1793, committees are appointed to again clear them, repair the fences, appoint sextons, and fix the fees for interment. In 1808, the south (central) burying-ground was enlarged by an addition of ninety-eight rods, bought of Simeon Partridge and an enclosing two-rail fence with sawed posts was ordered. These same ceme- teries, with subsequent enlargements, are now in use, and the chil- dren are laid where
" The forefathers of the hamlet slept."
A hearse was purchased by the town in May, 1803, and rules were adopted regulating its use. This black and somber vehicle was used until the purchase of a new one by the town in April, 1837, which latter was supplanted by another in 1853. The taste and requirements of the community led, in 1860, to the formation of the Franklin Cemetery Association, which purchased and laid out several acres on the west side and adjoining the Central bury- ing-ground. The town added six acres to its own yard, and the two cemeteries are now practically one. In 1867, Saul B. Scott gave land for an enlargement of the City Mills Cemetery. In 1864, J. L. Fitzpatrick and eleven others organized and secured a burial-ground called the Catholic Cemetery, of which the town ap- proved by vote, November 8.
It seems a proper place here to give a few facts about the
EMMONS MONUMENT.
While W. M. Thayer was a member of Brown University, Dr. Wayland, the President, suggested to him in a private conversa- tion, that Dr. Emmons deserved a more public monument than the village cemetery could afford, and that his many friends out of town were anxious to express in some permanent form their ap- preciation of his valuable labors for truth. The idea received a cordial response from the people of Franklin, and steps taken to realize it in stone.
A meeting was called and the Emmons Monument Association was ultimately organized, 5th March, 1844. The constitution, adopted 23d March, defined its sole object to be to erect a suita-
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ADDENDA.
ble monument to the memory of Nathanael Emmons, D. D., and that it shall be "erected on or near the spot where the old meet- ing-house stood - that spot, hallowed by his faithful labors of more than half a century, and that house where his voice was heard at its dedication, and in which the last services performed were his funeral solemnities." This article is made unalterable, except by unanimous vote of the Association. To this constitu- tion twenty-seven names of citizens were attached. In accord- ance with its provisions, a committee of three was chosen to select the precise site for a monument, and other committees necessary to secure funds, etc. The first committee, Rev. Drs. Wayland of Providence, Codman of Dorchester, and Burgess of Ded- ham, after viewing the available locations, reported that the " monument be erected on the publie ground in front of the church, if this can be permanently secured for the public, and the ground be properly graded, ornamented and enclosed. The reasons for this preference over the burying-ground are, that there is no room for such a monument in the latter place, and that, inasmuch as this is not strictly a personal memorial, but rather a publie testi- monial of the esteem in which his life-work and labors were held by his townsmen and friends, the most central situation and the most frequented, seems to us the most appropriate place."
The report was adopted and subscriptions immediately opened. Responses came from even distant towns, whose names there is not room to give ; and June 17, 1846, a granite monument was erected with publie services, near the center of the Common, across which the venerated pastor had traveled to and fro for over half a century. A large company gathered in the church, where an address was given by Rev. M. Blake, and then adjourned to the Common in front, where the dedicatory address was made by Rev. T. D. Southworth, then pastor of the church.
This monument remained a central and often visited object, un- til a new and inexplicable impulse moved it into the new part of the cemetery and out of public sight ; contrary to the unalterable provision of the society which located and erected it.
IV. THIE COMMON
was purchased of Nathaniel and John Adams in 1787. Unlike most towns, the proprietors of this town seem to have donated no
5
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
tract of land for a Common or training field. When the first. meeting-house became antiquated and contracted, the question of a new sanctuary raised also that of a larger and better site than " the acre " given by Thomas Man. As soon, therefore, as a new. · house was decided upon, a committee was chosen 3d December, 1787, to negotiate with John Adams for the purchase of " the 34- rod spot." On the 17th following they reported : -
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