USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Manchester > History of the town of Manchester, Essex County, Massachusetts, 1645-1895 > Part 3
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The founders of New England belonged mainly to the middle ranks of life. There were among them a few of greater social position - as the Winslows, the Carvers, the Brewsters, the Winthrops, the Sal- tonstalls, the Endicotts - but they were largely descendants of the liberty-loving weavers of Flanders who had fled to England in the previous century from the persecutions in the Low Countries, and the small farmers of the southern and eastern counties.1 They were of the best stock of English Puritanism. They were not broken-down gamblers and roués. They were of the stuff of which commonwealths are made. They knew that public prosperity must rest on the foundations of intelligence and morality. They did not thank God, like Governor Berkely of Virginia, " that there are no free schools, nor print- ing." They were men who prized education, virtue and religion, and they gladly made great sacrifices to secure for themselves and their posterity these ines- timable blessings. Their character was of such a strain that it has transmitted its traits through cen- turies, and has made all succeeding generations its debtors.
The migration had become a serious matter to England, where there was then no surplus popula- tion. Lord Maynard wrote to Archbishop Laud of the " danger of divers parishes being depopulated."
1 Many names of towns in New England, especially upon the seaboard, as also the counties, Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex, Plymouth, are from these parts of England.
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THE FIRST COMERS.
Green says, " The Third Parliament of Charles was hardly dissolved when ' conclusions' for the estab- lishment of a great colony on the other side of the Atlantic were circulating among gentry and traders, and descriptions of the new country of Massachusetts were talked over in every Puritan household." In 1637, King Charles endeavored by royal proclama- tion to prevent " men of substance " from emigrating to New England.1 But if this had any effect in deterring the more wealthy and aristocratic from leaving the Kingdom, it resulted in New England being settled by the most substantial of emigrants, sifted out of the mother country by royal and pre- latical proscription.
The growth of the settlement was slow-it was "the day of small things "; but there were planted in a few years on these rugged and storm-swept shores by these plain, brave yeomen the seeds which in a century bore fruit in varied industries ; the forests slowly gave way, boat-building and the taking and curing of fish afforded employment to a frugal com- munity, axes swung and anvils rang, and the little hamlet showed unmistakable signs of enterprise and thrift. True to their instincts and their training, the settlers soon began to exercise a care for the higher nature ; a place of worship was built, around which the village gathered, thus fixing the site of the centre of the town for generations to come ; for
1 " The officers and Ministers of his severall Ports in England, Wales and Barwick " were commanded that " they doe not hereafter permit or suffer any persons, being Subsidie men or of the value of Subsidie men, to embarque themselves" . . . etc. A Proclamation against the Disorderly Transporting of His Maiesties Subiects, etc.
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
where the Puritan meeting-house was reared, there was the nucleus of social and civic life.1
It is difficult, after the lapse of two centuries and more, with the slight materials at our command, to draw a full-length portrait of a Manchester man of the seventeenth century. But from what we can gather from brief records and occasional letters that have come down to us, and from the few traditions that still linger, we shall not be far wrong if we conceive of him as in the main a religious and God- fearing man, one who ruled his own household well, a faithful husband and true friend, honest in all his business transactions, strenuous in his attachment to his religious and political beliefs, somewhat narrow and wholly uncultivated, but possessed of strong native character, and not ill-fitted by heredity and training to act his part in life.
From a general knowledge of the men and women of the time, we may fairly judge what Manchester men and women - ceteris paribus-must have been. They were of the average material of which the early New England colonists were made. They were neither great-minded founders of empire nor mere commercial adventurers. They were not religious separatists like the men of Plymouth, nor revellers like the men of Merry Mount. No doubt there were differences among them, as there are among their descendants; and, perhaps, whether conscious of it or not, most of them were actuated by somewhat mixed motives. There was on the part of many, no doubt, the desire to seek
1 For a time it might have seemed as if the eastern part of the town would be the " West End," the "Cove" having the start and for some years keeping the lead.
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THE FIRST COMERS.
" a faith's pure shrine " ; but there was as certainly, on the part of many, the desire to better the condi- tions of living. It is always safe, however, to esti- mate men by their works; and, judging the tree planted on " Cape Anne in Newe Englande " by its fruit, it must have been of sound, sturdy stock, its juices nourished by the best soil of English Noncon- formity in the times of the Stuarts.
There was, at the first, a high state of public mor- als. The slave-trade was prohibited ; even cruelty to animals was a civil offence. Imprisonment for debt was forbidden by law, except there was suspi- cion of fraud.1 The first settlers were almost with- out exception industrious, enterprising and frugal. The consequence was a thrifty, healthy, happy com- munity. Even Lechford, who was no friend to the civil or ecclesiastical government of the colony. frankly says, " Profane swearing, drunkenness, and beggars are but rare in the compass of this patent." ? There was respect for age and deference to author- ity ; the time had not come when " the child [should] behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honorable."
There were laws against lying, as well as stealing; against " meeting with corrupt company," against " tipling in ordinaries," against " contumacy and diso- bedience to parents " ; the court endeavored even to regulate the matter of courtship.3 The law made itself felt everywhere; one could hardly get away
1 Massachusetts Colonial Records, vol. II, p. 48.
2 In 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vol. III, p. 86.
s Massachusetts Colonial Records, vol. II, p. 207.
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
from it, even if he took to the woods ; in 1750, ox- sleds were ordered to be four feet wide, and all over were to be " cut off by any who shall meet them," which looks much like legislation run into the ground. There were laws that went to an extreme in the line of sumptuary legislation, as regarded dress and personal adornment, "excesse in apparrell," " new, strainge fashions," " superstitious ribbons," " immodest laying out theire haire," etc.1 But that many of the stories popularly current are untrue and a libel upon the Puritan legislation is abundantly proved.2 It is easy to laugh at such absurdities and trivialities as appear in our early legislation. But it was the very earnestness of our fathers, and their in- tense desire to found a " godly " community, that led to these blunders. They made the mistake of endeavoring to found a New England Theocracy, and incorporated into the statute-book the Old Testament code of legislation. But they had a high ideal, and strove nobly to attain it ; that they failed was duc more to the imperfection of human nature than to their special lack of wisdom. They were beclouded in their judgment by their training in the school of ecclesiastical controversy. They were mis-
1 Massachusetts Colonial Records, vol. III, p. 243.
2 Trumbull, Btue Laws True and False, 1876. The famous " Blue Laws" of which so much ridicule has been made are contained in a " His- tory of Connecticut," published anonymously in London, and ascribed to Rev. Samuel l'eters, an Episcopal clergyman and Tory, who had been sent back to England; a disappointed and malicious enemy of the colony, whose mixture of truth and fable made his work a mischievous one, and whose Munchausen-like tales of the " Windham frogs," the nondescript "Cuba " and " Whapperknocker," stamp his work as that of a mendacious story-teller. Peters admits that the " Blue Laws" were " never suffered to be printed." A copy of his book is in the Library of the Essex Insti- tute, Salem.
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THE FIRST COMERS.
led by the common habit of the time of taking prece- dents of action from the stories of a repealed econ- omy and examples of living from the heroes of a dis- pensation that had vanished away. As it was, how- ever, with all its mistakes and failings, this must be said, the Puritan commonwealth was a great advance upon anything that had preceded it, unless it was Calvin's autocracy at Geneva; it was a long step from the despotism of the Stuarts in the direction of light and liberty.1 It is not too high praise to give to the men who founded Massachusetts, the class to which our own forefathers belonged, to say that they made grand material for the foundations of the future state.
It has well been said by a former chief executive of this state 2 : " We owe it to them that Massachu- setts to-day is a state with such a form of govern- ment that she really governs herself - a common- wealth with a people so brave, so educated, so founded on principle and character, that they govern themselves. And so, while we do not forget the great advantage we possess, and the great gain we have made, we shall also do well if we maintain our ancestors' standard of high principle."
They cared little for patents of nobility or ecclesi- astical preferment. They were " nobles by the right of an earlier creation and priests by the imposition
1 Even the Episcopal lawyer, Lechford, unwelcome and obnoxious as he was to the fathers of the colony, and retiring disaffected from their discipline, wrote of them in 1642, " I think that wiser men than they, going into a wilderness to set up a strange government differing from the settled government in England, might have fallen into greater errors than they have done." Plain Dealing (To the Reader).
2 Hon. John D. Long.
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
of a mightier hand." They looked with contempt upon the claims of long descent. They knew that
" Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood."
They revered conscience as king. They feared no evil and they thought none. Men like George Wil- liam Curtis,1 Macaulay and Froude, who are not overfond of the Puritans, are compelled to admit that the social and civic virtues which they eulogize are the lineal and logical offspring of Puritanism.
The intelligence of the Puritans was in strong contrast with the ignorance and superstition - the fear of ghosts and fairies, the prayers to tutelar saints and the worship of images - that still pre- vailed in many parts of England as in the time of the Tudors.2
It is easy for us in our comfortable homes, sur- rounded by all the appliances and arts of civilization, to laugh at the foibles, the mistakes, the often crude ways of the pioneers. But if we rightly consider the circumstances in which their lives were lived, beset with difficulties and dangers behind and be- fore, with the perils of the wilderness on the one hand and opposition from over seas on the other, we shall be ready to accord to our forefathers no com- mon meed of praise.3
1 Literary and Social Essays, New York, 1895.
2 Sanford's Studies of the Great Rebellion. Orme's Life of Baxter. Fuller's Church History. Rushworth's Collections, ete.
3 " Patient, frugal, God-fearing and industrious ... obeying the word of God in the spirit and the letter, but erring sometimes in the interpreta- tion thereof -surely they had no traits to shame us, to keep us from thrill- ing with pride at the drop of their blood which runs n our backsliding veins." Alice M. Earle.
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THE FIRST COMERS.
" Homage, affection, we gratefully cherish; Peerless their fortitude; faith unsurpassed Wrought in them character, lustrous in virtues, Masterful, rhythmical, while time shall last."
Our forefathers were far from being perfect; they had about the average assortment of human failings. When we get near enough to them, we find that they were made of the same clay as ourselves. There is no need to idealize or apotheosize them. We may well be thankful that we had such ances- tors, and we may well be thankful, also, that in many respects we have been able, while imitating their excellences, to avoid their mistakes. With the advantage of their knowledge and experience, we may see farther and more clearly than our fathers, though less mighty men than they. They were ex- plorers who laid down on the chart many a rock and shoal on which they narrowly escaped making ship- wreck, that we coming after them might sail over smooth and pleasant seas.
To inquire whether " the former days were better than these " has been pronounced unwise, by one who had a large experience of mankind. And it is certainly hazardous to make sweeping generaliza- tions. In some respects, Manchester has witnessed a great advance; but some very desirable things have been wellnigh "improved " off the face of the earth. There was a manly self-reliance, a spirit of independence, a faithfulness to trust, a cheerfulness under the pressure of poverty and in the midst of discouragement, that put to the blush the fastidious and pretentious ways of a "gilded age." On the
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
other hand, there has been a gain in breadth, in in- telligence, in refinement, in the conveniences and comforts of life. The past teaches us that "the secret of true living " is not the monopoly of any one age.
" New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth.
Lo, before us gleam her watchfires; we ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the des- perate winter sea."
The following graceful and noble tribute to the " Pilgrim Fathers," from the Boston Daily Adver- tiser, Dec. 22, 1894, will serve, in the main, for the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay :
They believed that the invisible things of this world are greater that the things which are seen. They believed that eternity is of more consequence than time. They believed that he who should lose his own soul to gain the whole world would make a bad bargain. They believed that plain living is none too dear a price to pay for the privilege of high thinking. They believed that he to whom any precious and pregnant truth has been revealed must utter it, or else stand condemned of high treason at the judgment bar of the King of heaven. They believed that a true church may be instituted by the voluntary act of a body of Christian disciples organizing themselves into a communion, and a lawful state by the consent and cooperation of self- governing citizens. They believed these things practically as well as theoretically. They had the courage of their convictions. They dared to do. They feared nothing else so much as sin, and they counted no other shame so great
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THE FIRST COMERS.
as recreancy to their loftiest ideals. They said what they meant and meant what they said. For truth as they saw it, for duty as it was revealed to them, they braved the stormy, lonely ocean, endured poverty and exile, hunger, cold and death, a savage wilderness peopled by savage men. In thus believing, they set an unsurpassed example of faith. In thus choosing the better part, as between flesh and spirit, they made a like choice easier for all coming generations of the children of men in all the earth.
CHAPTER IV.
THE EARLY LIFE OF THE TOWN.
"The great eventful Present hides the Past, but through the din
Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in; And the love of home and fireside, and the legendary rhyme, Make the task of duty lighter which the true man owes his time."
Whittier.
CHAPTER IV.
THE EARLY LIFE OF THE TOWN.
SEA AND FOREST - "LIGHTS AND SHADOWS " - PLAIN LIVING - MUTTERINGS OF STORM - INDIAN TERRORS - "DEVOURING WOLVES " - STURDY GROWTH - LOUISBURG - BRIGHTER DAYS.
T HE smoke from the " catted chimnies " 1 of the log-huts that here and there broke the forest,2 arose in the air. A " fishing-stage " was set up, Sabbath worship was maintained, town meetings were called, the community took on outward shape and life. The beginnings of life are in all cases hard to describe. It is often impossible to trace, step by step, their slow evolution. In this, as in other instances, there was an almost imperceptible advance. The winters were severe, the soil was rock-bound, means of communication with the out- side world were of the most primitive kind, a cordon of dark and impenetrable woods hemmed in the little settlement, the ocean had its dangers and terrors - sometimes smooth in its treacherous calm, sometimes lashed with fearful tempests. The daily work was carried on with something of military precaution.
1 A term applied to chimneys built of wood, " cob-house " fashion, with the spaces filled with clay.
Ancient cellar-holes are still visible at "North Yarmouth." Where or by whom the first house was built is unknown ; probably several arose almost simultaneously.
45
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
Muskets were constant companions, and unrelaxing vigilance was the price of safety. The maps of the period, as those of Champlain (1613, 1632), of Al- exander (1624), of Sanson (1656), of Heylyn (1662), show that the knowledge of the interior was meagre in the extreme. Less was known of New England a little more than two centuries ago, than is known of equatorial Africa to-day. Life was a stern reality, and partook of the solemnity of the mysterious sea and the pathless forests. It is no wonder that the character of the early settlers took on a serious, not to say a sombre, coloring. The graces invoked by Milton in L'Allegro had small place in New England life or thought. What had men who faced the soul- depressing solitude of the wilderness, to do with " soft Lydian airs," or with
" many a winding bout Of linkéd sweetness long drawn out " ?
The needs of the people were simple and easily supplied. The woods furnished game, the sea and shore yielded a supply of fish ; ' wild fruits and ber- ries were abundant in their season, and potatoes, beans, corn and pumpkins were grown with little labor .? The implements of the farm, the fishery and the household were of the most primitive kind. There were few conveniences and no luxuries. The inventories left to us of household goods, of farm
1 " Some one boat with three men would take in a week ten hundreds [of exceeding large and fat mackerel] which was sold in Connecticut for £3,12 the hundred." Winthrop's Journal, 1639. But this was apparently an ex- ceptional season.
2 Francis Higginson gives a most glowing account of the fertility, cli- mate and natural productions of Massachusetts Bay. New England's Plantation, ch. xii.
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THE EARLY LIFE OF THE TOWN.
implements, and of apparel are often amusing illus- trations of the frugality, paucity and rudeness of their furnishings, which still were of such relative value as to be carefully appraised. Settles stood in the fire-place, box-beds occupied one end of the kitchen, great logs blazed on the irons, a huge crane hung in the enormous chimney ; a noon-mark served the purposes of a time-piece.
There was small variety in the way of literature. A few households might have a copy of the "Sim- ple Cobler of Agawam," " A Glasse for New Eng- land," " Meat for the Eater," " A Posie from Old Mr. Dod's Garden," or Michael Wigglesworth's " Day of Doom," which was printed on broadsides and hawked over the country. But they were hardly better off in the mother Isle.1 But if books and newspapers were "few and far between," the Bible 2 had been brought with the household stuff from England, and was the " present angel of the dwelling "; learning was as yet but little prized, many of the chief men of the town being unable to write their names ; 3 the language spoken was the racy, idiomatic English of Ben Jonson and Shake- peare, many so-called Americanisms being survivals of a usage current in the time of Queen Elizabeth.' It was the " age of homespun."
1 Macaulay, History of England, ch. iii.
2 The Geneva Bible was generally preferred by the Puritans, as giving less sanction to prelatical and kingly assumptions than the version of King James (1611). See Appendix I.
3 This was the case as late as 1716. See Town Records, vol. 1, 52, 133, 135, etc. Five, out of the thirteen original settlers of Rhode Island, in signing the contract under which Providence was governed, " made their mark." The settlers of Manchester were not unlettered above other men of their time.
J. R. Lowell, The Biglow Papers. Harper's Magazine, January, 1895.
1
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
The first road (one of the indexes of civilization) is said to have followed the sea-beaches as far as practicable, as a sort of natural highway. After- wards the laying out of roads was determined partly by private or local convenience. If something more elaborate than a cart-way was attempted, the surface soil was removed and some of the larger stones were dug up. Rocks too large for the crowbar were left in situ, and the road obligingly went round them. Such highways as that which caused a good deal of dispute between Manchester and Beverly, would hardly be accepted by County Commissioners at the present day ; but they answered for " the time then present." They were not built for "rustlers " or for skeleton gigs, but they could be made to do for ox-carts and for " the deacon's one-hoss shay." Our fathers had almost a contempt for material ease and comfort ; they sometimes preferred to go over a hill, when they might without increasing the number of rods travelled have gone round it. They learned not only to "endure hardness," but, it would seem, to enjoy it. What, indeed, was a little temporary inconvenience to men whose life was one long, toil- some journey, not to the New England, but the Heavenly Canaan ? The way to the Celestial City, as Bunyan had pictured it, was rough and difficult ; should the way to the next parish be made easy to the flesh ? The world was not made for Sybarites.'
1 This was good reasoning from the Puritan standpoint; as Whittier well puts it,
" Heaven was so vast, and earth so small,
And man was nothing since God was all."
Have we gained anything by overturning the pyramid? We have better roads, but have we more conscience? have we a higher sense of duty? do we hold a more sensitive balance of right and wrong?
LOW HOUSE.
49)
BAKER HOUSE.
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THE EARLY LIFE OF THE TOWN.
About 1690, the first mention is found of a " slay"; carriages appeared a little earlier, but they were very , rare. "Chairs "- two-wheeled vehicles without a top - and chaises, were the earliest style of carriages, next to the farm carts and wagons. Riding was almost entirely on horseback, by saddle and pillion, until near the close of the seventeenth century ; the roads, indeed, except in the vicinity of Boston, would hardly have permitted any more luxurious mode of travel.
About 1690, John Knight built a house at the " Cove " which was taken down in September, 1890, thus witnessing two hundred years of the town's life. It is thus decribed by Dea. A. E. Low :
The house was of one story, 18 feet long on the front, and 27 feet on the end. The front roof set on a plate three feet above the attic floor, with a long roof on the back com- ing down to the first story. The frame was of oak, covered with one and a half inch plank; the posts and beams were finished into the rooms. The lower part was divided into a living-room in the front, and kitchen and small living- room in the rear. This house had a cellar and represented the better dwellings of that date.
Until a few years ago it was occupied as a dwelling- house, and was apparently comfortable, though with " a general flavor of mild decay."
The house of Mrs. Abby Baker, on Pine street, built before 1690, and which is in good preservation, is another specimen of a class of houses which must have been rare at that time. The old chimney was taken down a few years ago; it gave the house a much more antique appearance.
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
The discomfort of the old houses in winter, even the best of them, was doubtless great. Judge Sew- all wrote in 1717: " an Extraordinary Cold Storm of Wind and Snow. . .. at six o'clock my ink freezes so that I can hardly write by a good fire in my Wives Chamber." And Cotton Mather writes in 1721, in his usual pompous fashion : " Tis Dread- ful cold, my ink glass in my standish is froze and splitt in my very stove. My ink in my pen suffers a congelation." There were "Dutch stoves " as early as 1700, but we know nothing of their con- struction, and they were probably in use only in the larger towns, as Boston and Salem, and among the wealthier people. Huge fireplaces which consumed an enormous quantity of wood,' but allowed most of the heat to pass up the chimney, were the usual means of warmth, and this at a period when, accord- ing to all accounts, the winters were far more severe than in recent times.2
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