USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Hingham > History of the town of Hingham, Massachusetts, vol 1 > Part 26
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Sergt. Jeremiah Beale was appointed ensign of the foot com- pany May 11, 1681, which remained under command of Captain Hobart until his death in 1682, when the periodical trouble which this company seems to have given the government whenever new officers were to be chosen again called forth a sharp reproof, with a reminder that an acknowledgment of error was expected. This time the difficulty was over the desire of a part of the command that Thomas Andrews be commissioned ensign instead of James Hawke. The magistrates, however, disapproved of both, and appointed Lieutenant Smith to be captain, Ensign Beale as lieutenant, and Thomas Lincoln to be ensign.
A reminder of " The late Indian Warr," as the old State paper terms it, is found in a grant dated June 4, 1685, as a re- ward for services, to " Samuel Lyncolne and three more of Hing- ham, and others of other towns, of land in the Nipmuck country."
Among the many interesting entries in Daniel Cushing's diary, from which not a little of the town's history has become known, is this: "1688, Nov. 5th, soldiers pressed 11 to go against the Indians." These men were perhaps a part of Sir Edmund Andros's small army of eight hundred with which he marched to the Penobscot, an expedition in which, it will be remembered, little was accomplished of value.
April 18, 1689, Gov. Edmund Andros was arrested by the peo- ple of Boston, who had risen against the tyranny and corruption of his government. The next day the conduct of public affairs was assumed by the Council of Safety, of which Bradstreet was chosen president. On May 8th, acting doubtless under the orders of this extraordinary body, the train band went to Boston where on the ninth were gathered the representatives of forty-three towns. Cushing's diary tells us that a town meeting was held on the 17th to choose a member of the Council. The choice fell upon Capt. Thomas Andrews, already distinguished in town affairs, and who had been a representative in 1678. It was a distinction wisely bestowed, and doubtless while performing the delicate duties of his new office in a critical period, attention was called to that ability which soon after gave him the distinguished honor of being selected as one of the twenty-one captains ap- pointed for duty with Sir Wm. Phips in his attempt at the reduc-
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tion of Canada. This officer, recently appointed high-sheriff of New England, sailed from Boston early in the spring of 1690 for Port Royal. The fort surrendered with but little resistance, and three weeks later Sir William returned to Boston to prepare for the more ambitious attempt upon Quebec. August 9th, he sailed with upwards of thirty vessels and two thousand Massachusetts men, among whom were Captain Andrews, Lieutenant Chubbuck, and other Hingham men ; how many we do not know.
October 5 the fleet dropped anchor beneath the castle which was commanded by Frontenac, an old and distinguished French officer. The attack commenced on the 8th, and was continued during the two following days, when the colonial troops retreated after suffering great loss. Sir William returned to Boston with the remnant of his army and fleet, arriving there November 19. At least one of our townsmen was killed in the attack upon Quebec, while another, Isaac Lasell, died a few days after, proba- bly of wounds, while Paul Gilford, Samuel Judkins, Jonathan Burr, Daniel Tower, and Jonathan May, and " two more of the town " were carried off by the small pox, which broke out in the fleet and added its misfortunes to the disasters of the expedition.
On the 25th of the month Captain Andrews succumbed to the dreaded disease : a stone in the old Granary burying-ground marks his last resting-place. The succeeding day Lieutenant Chubbuck died also. This ill-fated attempt was followed by the long struggle between France in the New World and New England and the colonies south and west, which only terminated a few years preceding the American Revolution. The history of the period is that of exasperating and wasteful incapacity, oftentimes on the part of British commanders in this country, of disastrous defeats, of glorious victories, of cruelties on both sides which we would gladly forget, of bravery, persistence, and enterprise by Massachusetts men of which we may well be proud, and of final triumph, due in very large measure to the arms of New England and the training of a soldiery under the laws of our own and the neighboring colonies which only made success possible. It is the history of Louisburg, of Fort Necessity and its gallant young commander, of Crown Point, Fort William Henry, Acadia and its piteous story, Shirley and Winslow, Wolfe and Montcalm, and the Heights of Abraham. During its telling we learn of Braddock's defeat, of Ticonderoga, of Fort Frontenac ; we become acquainted with the Howes, with Gage, Fraser, and a score of other English officers who afterwards played a part in the contest with the mother country. We first meet Washington and soon come to know why none other could have been the future American commander ; we see Gates and Putnam and Stark in their earlier days, while Franklin and Otis already are shaping the legislation and destiny of their respective States. During all this period, in all the wars, and in nearly every battle fought in the North we shall find, on
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sea and on land, the sons of Hingham creditably participating. They are in the contest as soldiers, as officers, as councillors and advisers, and in numbers which seem at times almost incredible considering the probable population of the town. It is interest- ing too, to note the individual names of those concerned in the later French wars, and afterwards to observe the use to which so many put the invaluable experience and knowledge then gained, in the subsequent service of the Revolution.
The extremely small scale, as compared with modern days, upon which financial matters were carried on by the town in connection with its military interests, will doubtless have been observed. An interesting illustration is afforded by an entry in the Seleetmen's Records of 1691, as follows : - -
The first day of July, 1691, then received by the Selectmen of Hing- ham tenn pounds in silver money of Mr. Daniell Cushing, Sen., of Hing- ham, which hee, the said Daniell Cushing, lend to the Country for the carying one the present expedition against the Common enemys of the Country and is to have it payd to him, his heirs, exexutors, administrators, or asigns, in silver money on or befor the last day of September next insuing the dat hearof.
Cushing's diary, under date of July 14, 1694, says that " Edward Gilman was pressed to be a soldier to go out against the French army," and under date of October 29 of the same year we are informed " that Edward Gilman came home out of the country's service." This small draft from Hingham, if indeed it was all, was probably her proportion of the force raised to meet the harassing and incessant incursions of the Indians, incited by the French, which for the ten closing years of the century left no peace to the colony, and which had for its principal episode in that year the attack on Groton, July 27th. Captain John Smith, who died in 1695, was probably succeeded in the command of the company by Thomas Lincoln, who had long served as an officer, having been an ensign as early as 1681. At all events we find in the town records of 1697-98, the following : -
The town stock of ammunition is in the hands of the 3 commanders of Divs. viz., Capt. Thomas Lincoln 1 bbl. of powder and 198 weight of bullets and 260 flints : to Lieut. David Hobart, 1 bbl. of powder and 200 and a half of bullets, gross weight, & 260 flints : to Ensign James Hawks 1 bbl. powder & 190 weight of bullets, net, and 260 flints.
In 1702 a second company was formed in that part of Hingham which is now Cohasset, and which became what was formerly known as the Second Precinct.
In 1722 the colony declared war, owing to exasperating Indian depredations upon Ipswich and other places, and among the names of men serving under Captain Ward, of Scarboro', are
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those of John Murphy, a corporal, and Edmund Moorey, or Mooney, both of Hingham.
Murphy was again found serving against the French on behalf of Hingham in 1725, - this time upon a small vessel of which Lieut. Allason Brown was commander.
Among the many conferences held with the Indians of Maine in the endeavor to secure the safety of the settlements, was one by Governor Belcher, at Falmouth, in Casco Bay, in 1732, at which he was accompanied, as would appear from an account found in the Thaxter papers, by Col. Samuel Thaxter, Rev. Nathaniel Eells, and Ebenezer Gay. Colonel Thaxter was a very prominent and trusted citizen, was colonel of the regiment in which Hingham's companies were included, and held many
important offices. Among these was that of one of his Majesty's Council, in which capacity probably he acted as adviser to the Governor. On one occasion, while moderator of a meeting, he was grossly insulted by - Cain, who dared him to fight. Colonel Thaxter quietly ordered the constable to remove Cain. The meeting being concluded, however, Cain obtained all the fight he wished, for Colonel Thaxter found him, and administered a severe thrashing. It is probably safe to assume that, although frequently moderator of the town meetings, Colonel Thaxter was never subsequently troubled by personal challenges. This inci- dent recalls to mind the fact, that with the occupation of the new meeting-house of 1681, there followed the uses to which the earlier building had been applied, and that not only were the town meetings held in the same place as the religious services, but that the military character of the old belonged, at least to a degree, to the new building also. We should find in searching the yellow and stained records of the selectmen for the year 1736, an account of an inquiry made by those officials into the amount and places of deposit of the town's ammunition, and the discovery that in Colonel Thaxter's hands was a barrel of powder weighing two hundred pounds, two hundred and sixty-three pounds of bullets, and a thousand flints, besides a large amount held by Capt. Thomas Loring, and considerable by Mr. Jacob Cushing, all of which, together with other purchased by the town, "we removed into the ammunition house made in the meeting-house of the first parish in Hingham." In the absence of other infor- mation, this record may justify the inference that Captain Loring then commanded one of the Hingham companies. Of this, how - ever, there is no certainty. Captain Loring represented the town at one time in the General Court, and from his son Benjamin are descended some of the present Hingham Lorings.
During the colonial period there were two.expeditions, at least, by Great Britain against the Spanish possessions in the West Indies in which New England actively participated, and in which, almost as a matter of course, men from Hingham served. The
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first of these was in 1740, when Governor Belcher received orders to enlist a force to be sent to Cuba to the relief of Admiral Ver- non, who was in need of reinforcements. Among the five hundred soldiers recruited in Massachusetts, there is much reason to believe that quite a number were recruited in Hingham. The rolls are, however, not only very imperfect in other respects, but they fail entirely to name the towns from which men served. We know, however, that among the officers was Lieut. Joshua Barker, who had declined a captaincy, and who now went as second in the company commanded by Captain Winslow. Lieu- tenant Barker was one of the very few survivors of this ill-fated expedition, in which, it will be recollected, was Lawrence Wash- ington and a Virginia contingent. The forces of Massachusetts and Virginia together stormed the castle of Carthagena, the prin- cipal town of the Spanish Main in New Granada. The place was not taken, however, and the expedition was a dismal failure. It is said that only fifty of the men from Massachusetts returned. Lieutenant Barker afterwards, as Captain Barker, served in all the wars of his country from this time until 1762, when he was again engaged in the second and more successful attack upon the Spanish West Indies. He held a commission in the British service, and was a kind and able man. He resided upon the spot where now stands the Hingham Bank.
There was also a Nathaniel Chubbuck in this service, who may have been a townsman.
On the night of September 30, 1741, a number of the Spanish prisoners escaped from Boston with a large sail-boat. As they were armed, great fear was felt for the safety of the New Eng- land coasting vessels, and Capt. Adam Cushing, formerly one of Hingham's selectmen, and now an able officer, was ordered in pursuit, with special instructions to search the creeks of Hing- ham and Weymouth. There remains no account of his success or otherwise.
In 1740, a division of the town into the wards whose limits remain unchanged to this day took place, and it is interesting to note that this division was solely for military purposes, and that the ward boundaries were merely those of the several companies, which the town thereafter maintained. At this time Cohasset, which had been made the second precinct in 1702, continued to be so designated, while the third comprised what is now known as the middle ward, embracing that part of the town south of the town brook, as far as Cold Corner, the remainder lying in the former fourth, now the south ward. The first, or north ward, then as now, embraced the country north of the brook. The first powder-house in Hingham was built by the town in 1755. It stood a little north and nearly on the site of the New North Meet- ing-house. Afterwards it was removed to Powder-house Hill, near where Mr. Arthur Hersey's house now is, off Hersey street.
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Frequently in the archives of the State and of the various towns there are references to the " Old French War," to the " Ex- pedition to the Eastward," to the "Expedition to Cape Breton," and to the "Capture of Louisburg." The expressions are all rather misleading, because they were, and unfortunately still occasionally are, indiscriminately used in referring to each of the several attempts made at different times upon the French pos- sessions in the northeast provinces, or to either of the several wars between France and England in America subsequent to 1700. The mischief of the expressions becomes the greater when leading, as it sometimes does, to historical errors. Indeed, it is to this cause that the accurate placing of a number of our own citizens, as to the time and place of service, becomes impos- sible. The expression "Old French War" -and indeed the others mentioned also- more generally and more properly relate to the events in North America between the years 1744 and 1748, during which occurred that wonderful New England military expedition and crusade which resulted in the capture by some four thousand men, assisted by the English fleet, of the strongest fortified city in the New World, and which was considered capable of resisting an army of thirty thousand. In the limits of a local history it is impossible to give even the outlines of this romance of New England's arms. We can only tell the very little of which we have any record concerning our own townsmen's con- nection with the brave Sir William Pepperell, and Commodore Warren, and the officers and men who sailed from Boston in March, 1745, and entered as victors the "Dunkirk of America" on the 17th of June following. It is most unfortunate that the rolls of these troops are lost from the State archives, and that such as exist in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society are not only very imperfect, but are comparatively value- less, from the fact that the places from which the men enlisted are not given. It is probably owing to this that we are enabled to give the names of only a few as serving from Hingham. These are Thomas Lewis, Ralph Smith, and Edward Ward.
Among a number who signed a voluntary agreement to engage in a hazardous attempt to storm the Island battery in the harbor of Louisburg, we find the name of Ebenezer Beal, presumably a Hingham man. Israel Gilbert, who died later in the service, is said to have been a soldier in the " Old French War."
Samuel Lincoln and John Stephenson were also at Louisburg in some capacity, and received pay for assisting in "wooding the garrison." The following were also soldiers at Louisburg, and there can be little doubt were Hingham men . John Lewis, Joshua Lasell, Thomas Jones, Samuel Gilbert, and John Wilder.
By the terms of the peace of Aix-la-chapelle, concluded in 1748, Louisburg was surrendered to the French, and the work of taking it had subsequently to be done again.
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The peace was, at least in America, more nominal than real, and the usual encroachments of each party upon the claimed possessions of the other, with all the attendant barbarities of border war, recommenced almost with the signing of the treaty. Nevertheless, the fifty years' conflict between the civilization and aims of the Saxon and the civilization and aims of the Latin was drawing to its close, and the year 1754 saw the beginning of the end. In the South its first notes were heard in the conflict between the Virginians under Washington and the French on the Ohio ; in the North the real signal was the march of an army of eight hundred Massachusetts men, under Gen. John Winslow, to secure by forts the passes from Quebec to New England, although negotiations were carried on between France and England even months later for an amicable settlement of all disputes between them. General Winslow fortified several places on or near the Kennebec. In his regiment, in Capt. John Lane's company, were Sergeant Elijah Cushing, Ephraim Hall, and Isaac Larrabee, of Hingham.
Engaged in this same expedition probably, was the sloop " Mermaid," of eighty-five tons, of which Samuel Lincoln was master, Samuel Johnson mate, and Charles Clapp and James White were sailors. Clapp's residence is unknown. The others, as well as the sloop, undoubtedly belonged in Hingham. Samuel Lincoln was styled Captain in later life.
In the spring of the following year, negotiations having been broken off in December, troops and transports began to arrive from England, and in April Shirley and the other colonial gov- ernors met Braddock in consultation. The events which fol- lowed can be scarcely more than named. Parkman, in his " Montcalm and Wolfe," has related them with a charm and grace which give to the hard facts of history the enchantment of romance.
Yet with many, perhaps nearly all, of the occurrences in the North and East, Hingham was so closely and intimately connected, through the very large number of her sons who participated in them, that some brief explanations, expanding occasionally into narrative of what has elsewhere been better told, may be allowable here. If the rolls of participants in the first taking of Louisburg were incomplete, and the numbers serving from this town were apparently meagre, the fulness of the former and the length of names making up the latter, which are to be found in the Commonwealth's papers, at once sur- prise and gratify, although the task of eliminating repetitions in the different returns, and crediting the men properly to the places to which they belonged, is extremely difficult. After the death of General Braddock, Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, became for the time the commander of the British forces in America, and among the several expeditions planned by him was
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one having in view the capture of Crown Point on Lake Cham- plain. To this end a large number of men were recruited in New England, New York, and New Jersey, the burden, as usual, fall- ing principally upon Massachusetts, which voted both troops and money with a liberal hand. To William Johnson, afterwards knighted for his services, was given the command. On Sep- tember 8, Baron Dieskau, with a force of French and Indians, attacked Johnson near the head of Lake George, but was defeated. The attempt upon Crown Point was however aban- doned for the time, and the troops went into winter quarters at Fort William Henry. For this expedition there was enlisted in Hingham a company commanded by Capt. Samuel Thaxter, and attached to Col. Richard Gridley's regiment. A note in Hon. Solomon Lincoln's private copy of the "History of Hingham " says that this company marched September 23, 1755, with fifty- five men, and that they were at Fort Edward. Besides the Hingham men there were undoubtedly many from Weymouth and other towns in the neighborhood.
Those from Hingham were -
Samuel Thaxter, captain,
Joseph Jones, private,
Thomas Gill, Jr., sergeant,
Joseph Lyon,
Samuel Joy, clerk,
Silas Lovell, 66
Thomas Hollis, corporal,
Geo. McLaughlin, 66
Lot Lincoln, corporal,
William Magnor, 66
Hosea Dunbar, corporal,
Nehemiah Blancher, private,
John Sprague, 66
Thomas Chubbuck,
Stephen Saulsbury, "
Joseph Carrel, 66
Benjamin Tirrell,
Joseph Dunbar,
Abel Wilder,
Seth French, 66
Jonathan Whitton, "
Thomas Hearsey,
Samuel Trask, 66
Mathias Hartman, 66
Richard Newcomb, "
In the mean time the expedition which finally resulted in the Acadian tragedy had been planned by Gov. Shirley, and sailed from Boston May 22, 1755. It consisted, in the main, of some two thousand men, under the immediate command of its lieu- tenant-colonel, John Winslow, Shirley himself being its nominal colonel. On the 1st of June the fleet and transports anchored off Beauséjour, the French fort at the small isthmus connecting Nova Scotia with the main land, and on the 16th the fort and garrison surrendered to the English. Within a few days after, all of Acadia fell into British hands. Then followed the removal of the unhappy people of this province from their homes, and their dispersion among the English colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia. The sad story has been the subject of poetry and romance ; the best and most just account is to be found in Park- man's pages, but there are local associations with the events whose relation properly belongs here. One of the most inter-
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esting of these is that Joseph Blake, whose father had been a resident of Hingham, was, although but sixteen years of age, an officer under Colonel Winslow, and was sent with a detachment of the French Neutrals, as the Acadians were called, to this town.
Lieutenant Blake, who afterwards came to live here, went to Crown Point the next year as an officer in Major Thaxter's com- pany. Little is known concerning the Acadians who came here ; even their names are for the most part unrecorded and forgotten. They were, however, generally very poor, and worked at almost any employment obtainable. Some of them were for a time lodged in the old Hersey house on Summer Street, now the prop- erty of A. H. Hersey and Mrs. Andrew, where within a few years a window was preserved upon whose small panes some of the exiles had scratched their names or initials with the stone in a ring belonging to one of them. In the field near this old house, so tradition says, these poor unfortunates were in the habit of meeting, to hold, in quiet and peace, religious services in the faith of their youth and their homes.
Another family occupied a part of the old Cushing house at the foot of the Academy Hill ; and still another what is generally called the Welcome Lincoln residence at West Hingham. The few names that remain to us of these people are as follows : Joseph and Alexander Brow, Charles, Peter, and John Trawhaw, and Anthony Ferry. Beyond the inhumanity of their expatriation, the treatment of the Acadians by the people of New England was often kind, and even sympathetic. Without a country, separated from the neighbors and friends with whom they had spent all their happy days, in some cases members even of their own families lost to their knowledge, their sunny homes destroyed, their lands forfeited to the stranger, deprived of the ministrations of their religion, hearing always a foreign tongue, seeing always un- familiar faces, watched, suspected, trammelled, poor, their condi- tion, let us be thankful, was at least not aggravated by extreme bodily suffering, or by the coldness, neglect, and indifference of their conquerors. Indeed, many of those who reached Canada looked back with longing eyes towards the land of the Puritans, where a kinder welcome and more generous charity softened their hard lot than that given by their compatriots.
The town records of Hingham contain many entries showing liberal disbursements for the benefit of such of these people as were in want ; and in the volumes devoted to the French Neutrals in the State archives, are several accounts allowed by the Province of Massachusetts Bay to the town for money expended in their behalf. Among these is the following in relation to a family which came here Nov. 29, 1755: -
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