USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Manchester > History of the town of Manchester, Essex County, Massachusetts, 1645-1895 > Part 4
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As to the Puritan table, the fare was coarse often, but in general, plentiful. Higginson speaks of lob- sters weighing twenty-five pounds, and says that " the abundance of other fish was beyond believing." Oysters and clams were to be had for the trouble of digging. There were fruits and vegetables, and a good supply of game. Wild turkeys sometimes weighed forty pounds apiece, and Morton says they came in flocks of a hundred. A dozen wild pigeons sold dressed for threepence. In 1684, beef, mutton
1 Ministers had sometimes sixty cords of wood given them annually by the parish.
2 We must all agree with Hosea Biglow, that
"Our Pilgrim stock wuz pethed with hardihood."
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THE EARLY LIFE OF THE TOWN.
and pork were but twopence a pound in Boston. By Johnson's time, the New Englanders had " Apple, Pear and Quince tarts." Judge Sewall speaks in his Diary of " boil'd Pork, boil'd Bacon and boil'd Venison ; rost Beef, rost Fowls, pork and beans ; conners, hogs Cheek and souett; Minc'd Pye, Aplepy, chockolett, figgs," etc. The fare of the common peo- ple was, however, very simple. Fresh meat was rarely seen, but a hog or a quarter of beef was often salted down in the autumn, bits of which later on were boiled in the Indian porridge. The bread was Indian or Indian and rye, and the common drinks at meals milk and cider, very rarely tea.
People were much crowded in the habitations of those days. An old MS. of 16751 gives the size of families as 9.02 persons ; this included, of course, servants and dependents ; but families of ten or twelve children were not uncommon. The small- ness of the houses, and the number that often found shelter under one roof, even down to quite recent times, is matter of surprise. The increase in the number and size of houses in Manchester within two hundred years, has been out of all proportion to the increase of population.
The people were content with their simple, homely ways ; if they sometimes suffered privation they made the best of it; and they appear to have found comfort in circumstances that seem to have been en- tirely destitute of it. And so the life of the little town went on, generation after generation, with little
1 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. xxxix, p. 33.
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
change and with little desire for change. To use Burke's happy phrase, it was the existence of a peo- ple " still, as it were, in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone."
The town records give us glimpses of a very prim- itive mode of life. In 1686, " Rates " were made for the " use and support of his maiesties government in new england," levied upon thirty-one taxpayers, in sums varying from 6d. to 1s. 6d. A large part of the town's doings related to the allotment of the " coman land " ; then there was the " suport of a Gospill menestery," which was an ever present and pressing source of solicitude ; "Howards and feild Drivers " were to be chosen; penalties were enforced for " swyne fownd without the youke "; provision was made for a "Scoolmaster," for " seaviers of high wayes," for "fence vewers," and for "seateing the meting hous "; a vote was taken to " chuse a man to saveus in the Juri of triAles at salam," or to " send to the Jennerel Cort."
The life of the town was chequered with light and shade ; it was sometimes sombre and sometimes glad ; but it was never humdrum. The glint upon the sunlit waves and the boom of the ocean surge, the roar of the wind in the rocking pines and the weird sounds of the forest depths, the voice of prayer and psalm, the mysteries of birth and death, the in- fluences of a deep, all-pervading, awe-inspiring faith, invested the homely and prosaic with wonderful pathos and sublimity.
One of our oldest citizens, Dea. A. E. Low, well remembers the stories told around his father's fire-
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THE EARLY LIFE OF THE TOWN.
side in his childhood and youth, by those whose memory went back to the time of the French war, of "the toils and privations endured, the care, skill and rigid economy brought into requisition to sup- ply the wants of the family, the clearing away the forests, erecting houses and building vessels, work that involved a great amount of labor." The men and women of that time were hard toilers, rising early, "eating the bread of carefulness," accustomed to privation and hardship, knowing nothing of the luxuries and little of what we consider the comforts of life. " The story of their rugged lives would fill volumes." 1
It is not without a feeling of respect almost akin to reverence, that we think of those brave, indomita- ble pioneers. Barren as their lives seem to us of cheer and brightness, almost as barren as the rocks among which they dwelt ; lonely as were their lives, like the shore visited only by the sea-fowl ; limited as were their intellectual and social resources ; we must award them a high meed of praise for their patience, their piety, their pluck, their perseverance.
The rude and hard conditions of life which sur- rounded the earlier generations from the cradle to the grave left little room for the amenities and graces ; they repressed and dwarfed the sentiments ; . but they furnished a ground in which the hardier virtues grew. A church dignitary has recently said, " A young man can do better work on $4,000 a year than on $2,000, because he will not have to
1 The condition of the people, however, was better than that of the common ranks in England and France at this period. See Green, Jessop, Macaulay, Lecky, etc.
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
.
look so sharply after the dimes and nickels." The Bishop uttered a half truth ; the self-denial, frugal- ity and bravery, often necessitated by what Jeremy Taylor calls " a small economy," make up with many a component part of a noble character. It is at least open to question, whether a condition of comparative privation is not quite as favorable to sturdy and self- reliant growth as a condition of ease and opulence. Manchester has had some experience of both ex- tremes.
This infantile age of the settlement was not with- out its dread alarms. As early as 1637 the Indians began to show signs of hostility to the new-comers, and the Pequot War for a few years spread dismay and terror through the little settlements. In 1643, the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Con- necticut and New Haven formed themselves into a union, under written articles of confederation, " for mutual help and strength in all future concernment," a confederation which may be called the prototype of " the larger union of the colonies which conducted the War of the Revolution." 1
Although, from its location on the seaboard, Man- chester did not suffer directly from Indian attacks as did many settlements in the interior-as Ha- verhill, Medfield, Sudbury, Marlborough, Groton, Brookfield and Deerfield 2 - a constant apprehension .
1 Justin Winsor, article on Massachusetts, Encyclopedia Brittanica, ninth edition.
2 The same spirit of enterprise and love of adventure which peopled the Great West and the Pacific Coast, and in an earlier day overflowed the Alleghanies into " the Ohio," had sent out not only its scouts but its bona fide settlers into the Connecticut Valley before the last of the men who came over with Winthrop and Endicott had passed to their graves.
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THE EARLY LIFE OF THE TOWN.
of danger and false alarms made the life of the community for many years one of disquiet and trouble. The frontiers of New England were struck with fire and slaughter ; rapine and death fell upon peaceful settlements ; the outposts of civilization were driven in, and the very life of the English col- onies in the New World was seriously menaced.
It is impossible, on account of the loss of early records, to discover with accuracy what part the town had in the early Indian wars. But among the " flower of Essex " who served in the company of Captain Lothrop of Beverly at Bloody Brook,' the following Manchester men were slain : Samuel Pick- worth, John Allen, Joshua Carter, John Bennett .? Seventy men were later drafted for the Essex County Regiment, to fight the French and Indians. This Essex Regiment consisted of thirteen compa- nies of foot and one of cavalry.
The pay of soldiers was 6s. per week, and 5s. for "dyet." Prices of clothing were, "Wastcoats," 6s. ; "Stockens," 2s. ; Shirts, 6s. ; Shoes, 4s. The old " Matchlock " musket was the regulation weapon of
1 " On the 18th of September (O. S.), 1675, a large number of men who were spoken of by Colonel Winters as " the Flower of Essex," were am- bushed and killed at Bloody Brook, South Deerfield, Mass. The circum- stances were as follows. These men were doing garrison and patrol duty along the Connecticut River in the fall of 1675. On the morning of Sep- tember 18 they started from Deerfield to relieve the inhabitants of Hadley, who were threatened by the savages. Some four miles south of Deerfield, at the crossing of a brook, they were taken in an ambuscade and were all destroyed. This has been called ' that most fatal day, the saddest that ever befell New England.' The brook by which they fought, and on whose bank they were buried in a common grave, took from that day and from that incident the name of Bloody Brook." The Spirit of '76, November, 1894.
2 Dr. J. B. Felt, followed by Dr. Leach, gives the name Samuel Bennett.
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
the time ; it was an exceedingly cumbrous affair, and was so long and heavy as to require a " rest." The other equipments of a foot-soldier were a " Snap- sack," six feet of match or fuse, a Bandolier - a leathern belt passing over the right shoulder and under the left arm - containing a dozen or more boxes each holding one charge of powder; a bag of bullets and a horn of priming powder were also attached to this belt.1
The Indian uprising left its blood-stained mark upon our early history. But out of it came a brighter day for the colonists. At its close, the power of the red man was effectually broken. Men breathed more freely when they were no longer obliged to carry arms to church and field, and to watch every thicket for a lurking foe. The death of Philip, and the breaking up of the confederacy of which he was the head, marked the commencement of a new era of peace and prosperity for the English settlements. It was, however, a costly victory. In the loss of property, and the increased burdens of taxation, it was felt in the community for many years .? Of the ninety towns in the colonies " twelve were utterly destroyed, while more than forty others were the scene of fire and slaughter."3 Taxes in- creased from ten to fifteen fold; the debt incurred by the Indian wars has been estimated as high as fifty thousand pounds.4
1 Soldiers in King Philip's War, George M. Bouge, Boston, 1891.
2 " It was years before some towns recovered " from the blow. Barry, History of Massachusetts, vol. I, p. 447.
s The Beginnings of New England, John Fiske, 240.
4 Barry, History of Massachusetts, vol. II, p. 8.
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THE EARLY LIFE OF THE TOWN.
Perils and fears from wild beasts, also, were added to those from wild men. There were hypothetical " lyons " at Cape Anne, and veritable bears and wolves.1 On one occasion, the people at the " Cove " were alarmed by the sound of distant firing, and ap- prehended an Indian raid, but as nothing came of it, it was afterward supposed that some settlers were en- deavoring to frighten the wolves from their sheep- pens and barnyards. The town voted, July 8, 1754, that " the present Selectmen shall Draw From the Town Treasurer What Money they shall think ned- ful to Joyn with other Towns and Lay it out in such a way and manner as they shall think most Likely to Destroy those Devouring Wolves which are in or may be found in the Woods between Ipswich Gloucester Manchester Beverly and Whenham." If the wolves were such a trouble in the middle of the eighteenth century, what must they have been a hundred years earlier? A letter from Governor Dudley to the Countess of Lincoln, written in 1631, shows to what annoyance the first settlers were sub- ject:
" Uppon the 25 of this March one of Waterton having lost a calfe, and about 10 of the clock at night hearinge the howlinge of some wolves not farr off, raised many of his neighbours out of thir bedds, that by discharginge their muskeets neere about the place, where he heard the wolves. hee might soe putt the wolves to flight, and save his calfe; the wind serveing fitt to carry the report of the musketts to Rocksbury, 3 miles of at such a time, the inhabitants there
1 The wolves must have been particularly aggravating; as one chroni- cler relates, " They sat on their tayles and grinhed at us." The wolves have long since disappeared, and it is many years since the last family of Bears lived in Manchester.
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
took an alarme, beate upp their drume, armed themselves and sent in post to us in Boston to raise us allsoe. Soe in the morning the calfe being found safe, the wolves af- frighted, and our danger past, wee went merrily to breake- fast."
After more than half a century of struggle be- tween the colonies and the crown, the King an- nulled the charter in 1685, and Sir Edmund Andros was sent out to govern New England and New York. His administration proved so arbitrary and oppressive that the inhabitants of Boston rose in revolution in 1689, deposed and imprisoned Andros, and reestablished the colonial form of government. Manchester, it appears, was true to the interests of the colony, and put on record its determined action in this critical state of political affairs.
May 17, 1689.
We the inhabitants of the town of Manchester being met together on the day aforesaid to consider and advise about the present exigency, being very sensible and thankful to God for his great merey in giving us such a wonderful de- liverance out of the hand of tyranny and oppression, and rendering our hearty thanks to those gentlemen who have been engaged in so good a work as the conserving of our peace and safety and likewise very sensible of the present unsettlement of our affairs do hereby declare that we ex- pect our honored Governor,1 deputy governor and assistants elected by the freemen of this colony in May 1686, together with the deputies sent down by the respective towns to the Court then holden, shall convene, reassume and exercise the government as a general court according to our charter forthwith, for and in submission to the crown of England. We do hereby promise our assistance in persons and estates.
By me Thos. Tewksbury, Ck. in behalf of the Town.
1 Simon Bradstreet, who was elected in 1679, and, with the exception of the administration of Sir Edmund Andros, continued in office until 1692.
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THE EARLY LIFE OF THE TOWN.
It is evident that our forefathers were men of in- telligence, public spirit and patriotism ; they kept rank with the brave and devoted leaders of those heroic times. The moral and civic virtues were being nursed in every little village and hamlet which were afterwards embodied in such men as the Adamses, James Otis and John Hancock, and re- sulted in the independence of these United States.
With the relief that was experienced after the ces- sation of Indian hostilities and the high-handed acts of Andros, the colonists entered upon a more pros- perous career. Manchester shared in the general activity. New enterprises were undertaken, meas- ures of public utility were set on foot, and the com- munity emerged from the torpid condition in which nearly half a century of poverty and general disturb- ance had left it. About this time, a new road was laid out from Manchester to Gloucester. This began at the Common, went up Union to Washington street, thence through the burial ground, down Sum- mer street, to near the "Row " schoolhouse, and thence by what is now known as the "old road" it crossed the railroad track and connected with the road as now travelled near the top of the " great hill." Before this time the road was by Sea street, through the Towne and Dana estates, and crossed the present county road near the entrance to the most western of the " Dana Avenues."
At this period also, the first store was opened in town in the house now owned by Mr. Joseph Proctor on Sea street. The first tavern was built "for the entertainment of man and beast," on North street.
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
This old house was originally two stories in front, with a long sloping roof to the rear. The whole structure was remodelled about sixty years ago. It is now owned by Mr. Alexander Kerr. The second tavern was the old "Joe Babcock house," at the head of Beach street ; and the third stood nearly in front of the Priest Schoolhouse, and was kept by Dea. John Allen, "innkeeper," and afterwards known as the " Murray house." It formerly had over its door a gilt ball from which it received the name of the " Golden Ball."
But little is known of the first taverns or their keepers. No doubt these ancient hostelries bore an important part in the early life of the town. The tavern was " the secular meeting-house of the com- munity." In it affairs of moment were planned and discussed. It was the scene of many a warm debate, and of many an encounter between village wits. It held a position of influence and importance, which it lost with the passing away of the stage-coach and the advent of railroads.
In 1691, the old church was found too small, and the town voted to build a new one. The second schoolhouse, also, now appeared, with its "School dam " and "horn-book."1 A tide-mill had been built as early as 1644, " upon the river near the meeting-house " ; it was a one-story log structure.2
1
" books of stature small Which with pellucid horn secured are To save from fingers wet the letters fair."
These horn-boeks were studied by the children of the Puritans as late as 1715. They are referred to in Judge Sewall's Diary, and appear in the booksellers' lists in the early part of the eighteenth century. It is not known that one is now in existence. 2 It stood until 1826.
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THE EARLY LIFE OF THE TOWN.
In 1705, a small mill was built upon the site of the " old Baker mill," on what was then called " Brushie plain."
About the year 1700 the " Cove " had grown to be " quite the largest precinct in the town." Joseph Knight then owned there three hundred acres of land, on which were a saw-mill and blacksmith shop. Asa Kitfield built a large number of vessels, and was engaged in the fishing business and in the lumber trade. Capt. Nehemiah Ingersoll, a retired Boston merchant, owned " a nice hip-roofed house, hand- somely furnished," just beyond Wolf Trap Brook, where he resided with his daughters after the death of his wife. Here came Dr. Manasseh Cutler of Hamilton, one of the most accomplished men of his time, and a great factor in the settlement of Ohio, to talk botany with Miss Mary. It was here that Gif- ford Goldsmith lived, who held most persistently that the sun travelled around the earth, and that its distance as calculated by the shadow cast by his walking-stick was four thousand miles, and whose conclusive answer to all who questioned his cosmog- ony was, "Let God be true, and every man a liar."
The first half of the eighteenth century is gener- ally considered an uneventful one. The colonies grew and strengthened themselves, men planted and builded, married and were given in marriage, the seasons came and went in all their pomp. The peo- ple were mostly too busy in subduing the wilderness and reaping the harvest of the sea to trouble them- selves with the great conflict between England and
1
.
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
France, or with the great political movements that were taking place in Europe.
There were still many drawbacks. Great incon- venience, if not suffering, was caused by the unset- tled financial condition. According to the Suffolk Probate Records, the price of silver rose between 1720 and 1745, from 10s. to 36s. per oz., and gold from £8 to £24. The money market was in a con- stant state of disturbance, owing to the irredeemable " fiat " currency. But there was peace if not pros- perity. " Fear of change " might perplex monarchs and statesmen, but the lot of the people of Man- chester was a comparatively quiet one. The rumored massacre of some of their number by the savage Indians at Pemaquid, or a large haul of cod on the Banks, excited more interest than the great Marl- borough's victories. The community lived largely within itself. At last, however, an event occurred which stirred to life the English colonists, especially those of the seaboard towns.
In 1745, the far-famed fortress of Louisburg, on Cape Breton, a strategic position of such importance that it had received the name of "the French Dun- kirk in America," was besieged by a combined Brit- ish and American force under the immediate com- mand of Sir William Pepperell. After a vigorous siege and assault, the stronghold surrendered, June 17, and the English became masters of the whole North American coast. The roster of the men who served from Manchester has not been preserved. But it is known that Lieut. Samuel May was in the engagement ; Jacob Morgan and John Hassam were
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THE EARLY LIFE OF THE TOWN.
killed ; William Tuck was a sailor on a British frigate ; Jacob Foster was at the siege and not heard from afterwards ; Benjamin Craft was attached to the Commissary Department, kept a journal, and wrote beautiful, Christian letters home to his wife; 1 and David Allen kept a journal of the expedition, of which unhappily nothing remains. 2
The expedition to Cape Breton and the siege and capture of Louisburg has well been considered the most daring and marvellous feat in all our naval history. "The New England sailors had no fear to anchor on the open coast, close in shore, and they landed their guns, and by their handy use of ropes and tackles, transported them over creeks, swamps and morasses, and mounted them on platforms and opened fire." 3
The great thunder-peal to the eastward was fol- lowed by an after-clap which echoed on our own shores. On Sept. 26, 1746, we are told, there was great alarm in town, lest an attack should be made by a French fleet ; a company was raised at Cape Ann, a watch-house was built, people were in great fear, and many secreted their effects. The storm- cloud, however, passed off to sea, and its mutterings subsided into calm. The fishing-boats pushed out from the inlets, the brown sails slipped over the horizon's rim, blanched cheeks took on color again. and the grim sentinels went back to the caulker's shops and shipyards.
1 Appendix K.
2 Dr. Leach gives the names also of Daniel Foster and Thomas Jones at Louisburg.
$ Admiral F. A. Roe, Wooden Walls and American Seamen, The Spirit of '76, March, 1835.
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
In his "Oration on the History of Liberty," at Charlestown, July 4, 1838, Edward Everett made mention of " a citizen of Manchester " as then living, who was at Braddock's Defeat, July 9, 1755, and who well remembered Washington's appearance and almost miraculous escape, at that disastrous rout. But as eighty-three years had elapsed since that date, any one present at the battle must have been one hundred years old or more, in 1838. There were no soldiers living at this time in Manchester, as Mr. W. H. Tappan has ascertained, over ninety years of age. The distinguished orator had evidently been misinformed, and Manchester loses the honor of having been represented, so far as is known, in the ill-starred expedition to Fort Duquesne.
With the fall of Louisburg, followed by that of Quebec (1759), the supremacy of France in the New World passed into the hands of her great rival, and the colonies were freed from a constant menace. The overthrow of the French arms meant also the weakening of the strength and courage of the Abo- rigines to such an extent, that they gave little trouble in future to the whites. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle left many things still unsettled - questions as to boundaries and the possession of islands off the coast of North America -but the struggle which from the first had kept the colonie's in an almost continual state of excitement and per- turbation was transferred from New England soil. The imagination no longer saw in the sunset glow the glare of burning villages, or heard in the cry of the screech-owl the dreaded war-whoop. With the
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THE EARLY LIFE OF THE TOWN.
brightening of the horizon after the capture of Louisburg, came a general advance, improvement in the style of living, increase of towns, better build- ings, larger trade and more prosperous times.
" Over the roofs of the pioneers
Gathers the moss of a hundred years; On man and his works has passed the change Which needs must be in a century's range; The land lies open and warm to the sun; Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run; Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the plain, The wilderness gladdened with fruit and grain !"
Below is a list of the early residents, as near as can now be ascertained, with the date of their con- nection with the settlement.
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