USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Manchester > History of the town of Manchester, Essex County, Massachusetts, 1645-1895 > Part 9
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1 The last surviver, probably of this expedition, passed away the last summer (1894) as appears from the following notice in the local prints:
Uncle George Babcock rounded out his 89th birthday on Saturday, June 30. Mr. Babcock is still quite strong and active, working about the neigh- borhood doing odd chores, sawing wood, etc. Although only about eight or nine years old at the time, he took part in the repulse of a British force from the shores of Manchester, his native town, during the war of 1812, when he helped drag a cannon to the beach. - Beverly Times.
Mr. Babcock was a resident of North Beverly and intended to attend the gathering of the elderlies this year, therefore the news of his death this week was received with great surprise. He was ill but a few hours. - Manchester Cricket.
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two barges being made ready for a chase. When they reflected upon the damage they might inflict on the unpro- tected village, they resolved to run inside of Misery Island, and endeavor to reach the protection of the forts below Salem. But the wind became lighter and the barges were gaining so fast it was decided to run her on shore, which they did at Mingo's Beach in Beverly. The men landed under cover of the vessel, but as they reached the high land near the road they were fired upon by their pursuers.1 The English used every effort to get their prize afloat, but, failing in that, they took some of the goods, stripped the sails and set her on fire. The militia from Beverly and Manchester soon arrived, extinguished the fire and hastened the departure of the barges by some musket shots. The vessel was afterwards taken to Manchester and repaired.
This narrative is confirmed by recollections of several old inhabitants of Salem and Beverly, pub- lished in the Beverly Times a few years ago. The late Capt. Thomas Leach witnessed the affair with his father and grandfather, with whom he rode to the scene of action in the " square-topped chaise." All witnesses agree as to the main facts of the case. The presence of the Manchester company is estab- lished beyond doubt, although one witness did not see it; a case in which positive evidence outweighs negative.
Although the town did not suffer from any descent of the enemy upon the coast, the presence of the cruisers in the Bay caused a good deal of alarm at times, especially among the women who were often alone, and who hurried with their children and val-
1 An interesting relic of this affair, a swivel shot, about two inches in diameter, picked up just after it was fired from the barge, is in possession of Mr. Oliver T. Roberts. It was long used as a pestle to break corn in a mortar.
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uables to the woods on the first alarm from the coast- guards. There is a somewhat apocryphal tradition that one good woman on reaching a place of safety, found the spoons all secure, but in the haste and trepidation of flight the baby had been left behind. The story may have originated in the disordered brain of some unfortunate bachelor.
Added to this constant and wearing source of anxiety, provisions were scarce, and no money was to be had. Labor commanded very small wages - it was in fact almost a drug in the market ; and the wages, such as they were, when there was any em- ployment at all, were paid in " orders " on the stores. A peck of meal was considered an equivalent for a day's work ; and there was no ten hours' law in force, a day was from sunrise to sunset. But we sel- dom or never hear a word of complaint. Our fathers, amidst all their privations and hardships, " bated not a jot of heart or hope, but still bore up and steered right onward." It was left for a simpering and luxurious age to ask, " Is life worth living ?"
The War did not close without its thunders reach- ing this little hamlet. The famous fight between the "Chesapeake " and "Shannon " was seen by many from our heights, as the smoke of the guns rolled down Boston Bay. It was witnessed at closer quarters than was altogether pleasant by the late Stephen Danforth, who, as he told the writer, had a near view of the beginning of the engagement, when a boy in his father's fishing-boat near the scene of action. Manchester, too, furnished her recruits for the naval service. Serving on the " Chesapeake "
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was Lambert Flowers, a man of herculean build and great strength and courage ; he was wounded in the battle, but lived to serve many years as a boatswain in the Navy. During the fight he boarded the enemy, but finding himself unsupported he made his way back to his own ship undetected. Many stories are told of his prodigious strength. It is said that he once reefed a sail that defied the strength of four able seamen ; and on another occasion picked up a cannon that required four men to lift and carried it across the deck. He is said to have been on the " Constitution " when she captured the "Guerriere." He was a quiet, inoffensive man, never provoking a quarrel. He was never married, and died suddenly and alone in his lodgings in Boston. Stories of similar feats of muscular power are told of Paul Leach, a ship-carpenter, and others. Some of them are probably mythical, but not without a foundation in fact.
There were others of the sons of Manchester in the National war vessels and in the privateers which wrought such destruction upon British commerce. It is impossible now to ascertain who or how many of the inhabitants of the town served the country on the seas. Mention has recently been discovered 1 of three Manchester men in an engagement between the schooner "Sword Fish " of Gloucester, 156 tons, twelve guns, 100 men, and two unknown British ships, Aug. 24, 1812.
" We lay closely engaged with the two for twenty min-
1 Communicated through the kindness of Major David W. Low of Gloucester.
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utes, and finding the ships too heavy for us, and not being able to board on account of the sea being too high, were obliged to haul off. In the action, Joseph Widger of Man- chester, seaman, was killed with a round shot ; Mr. Nathan Lee, Jr., of ditto, prize-master, was dangerously wounded by a splinter which entered just above the left eye ; Archer Holt, slightly." 1
With Perry on Lake Erie, and McDonough on Champlain, were Ephraini Clemons, John Babcock, Joseph Camp and William Camp. The last two were reported " missing," and are supposed to have been killed. Major Henry Story, Capt. Isaac Lee, Benjamin Leach and Ezekiel Leach were at one time in the famous Dartmoor prison. Mr. Thomas Dow, Senior, was taken prisoner by a British eighty- gun ship while on a coasting voyage.2
The War resulted in the country taking a high place abroad and winning great respect as a naval power. It achieved a second time the Independence of the United States. For generations the eastern seaboard had been famous for its ship-building ; bet- ter vessels and faster sailers had been turned out from the Yankee shipyards than even England could place upon the seas. The shipwrights of Manchester had been at work for a century, and fishing craft of from ten to one hundred tons, and if tradition is to be trusted much larger vessels, includ-
1 A Transeript of Journals of Vessels haring letters of Marque and Reprisal, etc., reported to John Kittredge, Collector of District of Gloucester.
2 Mr. Dow overheard some of the petty officers talking in a rather supercilious way about the Yankee frigates, when the old Captain said to them, "Young gentlemen, you do not know what you are saying. I know Commodore Bainbridge, and I tell you he knows how to handle a frigate." The wise heads in the British navy had great respect for American sea- manship.
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ing one or two ships, had borne witness in the ports of Europe to their skill and energy. George Nor- ton had been a well known builder; others, whose works praised them in the gates of the Mediterra- nean and the West Indies, had laid down the keels of schooners and brigs that traded from Portsmouth to San Domingo, and run to Bilboa and Cadiz.1 Whole fleets of American sea craft, mostly schoon- ers, swarmed along the coasts of America, sailing to the West Indies and the Spanish Main. Every bight and bay and estuary was a lurking place of buccaneers, and the merchant vessels fought their way often to their destination and back again. Sea navigation became an instinet, and sea fighting a profession and science to these brave men.
All this experience stood us in good stead in the War of 1812, a war which was largely fought on the Ocean and the Great Lakes. The land conflicts were insignificant, and mostly disastrous to the American cause. But on the water the skill and prowess of our seamen made the young Republic the wonder and admiration of the world. With a naval force hastily improvised and equipped, and often greatly inferior in weight of metal to the enemy's ships, we were victorious in many a sharp encoun- ter.2 In the first six months of the War, three
1 Besides the frequent voyages to Southern ports and the West Indies, Manchester had some direet trade with Spain. In September, 1807, the schooner "Three Sisters," Hooper, from Alicant to Manchester, was spoken at sea. Voyages to Lisbon were common, and many Manchester men were lost on these transatlantic passages.
2 On Feb. 20, 1815, the Constitution, 51 guns, captured the Cyane and Levant, fifty-five guns, after a four hours' eontest by moonlight, in which the American loss was fourteen to the British of seventy-seven, proving the superior gunnery of the Yankees.
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British frigates and three sloops-of-war were cap- tured or destroyed by American vessels of the same class. The great sea-fights made the names of com- manders like Hull, Decatur, Stewart; Bainbridge, Porter, Dale, Perry and McDonoughi, and of ships like the Constitution, United States, Essex, Wasp and Peacock, familiar in song and story to coming gen- erations.1 "The effect of these victories was out of all proportion to their real importance ; for they were the first heavy blows which had been dealt at En- gland's supremacy over the seas."?
The War of 1812 has never received the attention which it deserves from modern story-writers, having been eclipsed by the greater apparent romance of the events of the struggle for Independence and of the Civil War. Yet it has been pertinently said that " If the war of the Revolution was a war for inde- pendence, that of 1812 was one for nationality, and its results, while perhaps less apparent, were none the less real." 3
The year 1815 dawned upon a land that had looked across the seas for months in hopes of a ces- sation of hostilities to follow the negotiations of the
1 Few pieces were more popular for " speaking " a generation ago than "Old Ironsides," by O. W. Holmes -
" Ay ! tear her tattered ensign down !"
a lyric which saved the gallant old ship from destruction, and made it the pride and glory of the nation for years.
2 History of the English People, Green, B. IV, ch. v.
3 The younger generation of readers will get an insight into the condi- tions of the times of 1812, a history of the second war with England, with the results upon national life that followed it, in The Search for Andrew Field, by E. S. Tomlinson (Lee & Shepard, Boston), a story of American boys, full to the brim of love of country, mauly in tone, and written by one thoroughly familar with the ground.
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
Peace Commissioners at Ghent. It is true, the re- sult of the embargo had been to turn the attention of the country more to manufactures, and there had been much progress made in this direction since the opening of the century. But there had been a gen- eral stagnation of industry, and upon the seaboard especially there was much poverty and distress. When news arrived in New York in February that the terms of peace had been concluded upon, there was universal rejoicing, and a general sense of relief. As the tidings spread through the land, there were bonfires on the hill-tops, firing of cannon and great jubilation. In Manchester, the event was celebrated by a great dinner at the tavern, where " the emotions of the people found vent in speeches, patriotic songs, and shouts of merriment until the small hours of the coming day."
Through all these chequered years, in light and shade, Manchester had been advancing on the whole in material prosperity. The steps are not easy to trace for want of contemporary records, but a long way had been traversed between the close of the Revolution and the close of the War of 1812.1 `The people had learned the benefits to a community of a variety of industries, and they no longer restricted their energies to the seine and the fish-flakes.
Women shared in the general activity and enter-
1 In 1816, there were in town, three grist-mills, three lumber-mills, one mahogany veneering-mill, one bakery, twelve carpenters, one cooper's shop, one wheelwright three painters, one tailor, one brick-yard, six shoe- makers shops, two blacksmiths, one manufacturer of ship steering wheels, ten furniture shops and one tannery, and the following farm products and stock : 2,500 bushels of eorn, 450 bushels of barley, 290 tons of English hay, 160 cows, 60 oxen, 40 tons of salt hay, 28 horses, 59 swine, 35 tons of fresh meadow hay.
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prise. Wool that was grown to a considerable ex- tent ' on pastures now overrun with brush or grown up to wood, was carded, spun and woven by the wives and daughters, carried to Warner's Mill in Ipswich to be fulled, and then made into substantial clothing, good not only for common but for Sunday wear. At a later period, straw braiding and the making of palm-leaf hats gave employment to women, and in many a frugal home "Hannah " might be found " binding shoes." Idleness was one of the cardinal sins. Boys were bred to the sea or put to a trade. Girls were taught household duties and simple arts ; they knew how to bake and brew, to sew and darn, to spin? and weave, if they could not dance the latest cotillion, or trim their gowns in the newest Parisian style. They read the Bible, if they knew nothing of Browning; they were familiar with Pilgrim's Progress, if they were ignorant of Balzac and Kipling; they could sing counter and treble in the village choir, if they could not play Gounod and Wagner.
There has never, perhaps, been a more industrious community, since the days when " Adam delved and Eve span," than was Manchester down to the mid- dle of this century. The people did not die of ennui and nervous prostration. They did not need for the building up of their constitutions, athletic clubs, classes for physical culture or polo grounds.
1 On June 12, 1783, eight sheep were " empounded" by Aaron Lee, and advertised by written notice for a claimant.
2 The spinning-wheel was an important article of household furniture in almost every family. It was quite as common as the sewing machine to-day.
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
They had their play-times, but they did not make play the business of life.
With meagre advantages at the outset, as com- pared with towns having more fertile soil or greater commercial opportunities, and with many obstacles to contend with in the smallness of its population and the great losses of property and life at sea, Man- chester was slowly forging ahead. She was keeping rank with her sister towns, considering the disad- vantages of her lot, with no unequal step. The close of the War with Great Britain in 1815 saw the little community entering upon a career of in- creasing prosperity. The pluck and courage of the people were meeting their reward. Communities, like individuals, often grow strong through hardship and suffering.
" Ever by losses the right must gain,
Every good have its birth of pain."
CHAPTER VIII. THE CABINET-MAKING.
" In all labor there is profit."
Proverbs.
"The only noble man that I know anything about is the honest laborin' man. Work is the law of natur' and the secret of human happiness. ... If there was less money in the world, an' more stiddy work, we should be better off."
Hiram Golf's Religion, G. H. Hepworth.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CABINET-MAKING.
HEIRLOOMS-FIRST MECHANICS -MR. ALLEN'S MILL - "THE GREAT FIRE" - A SOUTHERN SCARE -GALA DAYS - THE LYCEUM - THIE "SECOND ADVENT" - PROSPEROUS TIMES -A FADING MEM- ORY -NAMES OF MANU- FACTURERS.
T HE history of cabinet-making in Manchester is a history, like most things that have come to greatness, of small beginnings. For more than a century, the sea furnished the chief means of livelihood. Something was done in the cultivation of the soil, but little more than was necessary to meet the wants of home consumption. If Man- chester was to increase in population and wealth, it became evident that it must vary and enlarge its industries.
For a long time after the settlement of the coun- try, the better class of household furniture was brought from England. Much of it was in the shape of heirlooms; enough to freight quite a fleet of mer- chantmen " came over in the Mayflower." 1 For
1 A " chist " of drawers which had been in the Allen family for gener- ations and which may have been brought from England, is in the posses- sion of Mr. Josiah Allen Haskell of Beverly, a descendant of Josiah Allen, who was born in Manchester, April 28, 1703. Major Forster had some fine furniture from England, which is in possession of a descendant, Miss Bethiah Tappan.
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HISTORY OF MANCHESTER.
the rest, for plain, everyday use, carpenters made tables, stools, " settles " and " presses." When the "new departure " took place it was in a very quiet and humble way. It was born of no concerted action, and nursed by no municipal concessions ; it was built by no syndicate, and launched with no newspaper notices and amidst no applauding crowds.
The name of Moses Dodge leads the list of Man- chester's cabinet-makers. He began work about 1775, in the house lately occupied by Deacon Price, probably in one room, where he laid the foundations of the business carried on afterward by his grandson Cyrus Dodge, and at present by his great-grandsons, John M. and Charles C. Dodge. The next to enter the business was Ebenezer Tappan, born 1761, son of Rev. Benjamin Tappan, a Revolutionary soldier, who learned the trade in Portland,1 of his Uncle Wigglesworth. He was followed by Caleb Knowl- ton, who was here "previous to 1808." About 1816, John P. Allen opened a small shop on Union street. Larkin Woodberry worked for Mr. Allen as a journeyman. In 1834, Albert E. Low became apprentice to Mr. Woodberry. Such were some of the genealogical trees from which the workers in birch and cherry and pine and mahogany have sprung ; which for a time took deep root in the land and spread their branches by the sea. The preemi- nence which Manchester attained in the business was due to no one man exclusively. The town seems to have been noted for its many skilled arti-
1 Then called Falmouth.
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THE CABINET-MAKING.
sans. The same enterprise and "gumption " that had made Manchester " jiggers " famous in the fleet of fishing craft on the Banks and around the Grand Menan, when turned into manufacturing channels, produced mechanical results that soon took their place by the side of the most celebrated productions in the warehouses of Boston and New York. The cabinet-makers of Manchester are almost forgotten, but in their day they were an intelligent, wide-awake, ingenious, enterprising class of men. To single out individuals may seem almost invidious. But two at least should be specially mentioned.
One was Col. Eben Tappan, who was not only a cabinet-maker, but a house-builder and a manufact- urer of fire-engines and steering-wheels. He worked at one bench for over fifty-six years; his shop was always a pattern of neatness. One piece of his work, made in his old age, may be mentioned as a specimen of his ingenuity. It is described as " a square box frame, containing a drawer, which may be pulled out on either of its four sides; this box is about a foot square, and stands about six inches high ; it is made of black walnut, with a walnut burl top, and has a narrow moulding, and one or two narrow strips of barberry wood ; it is a remarkably hand- some and well made piece of work, which would do credit by its ingenuity and style of workmanship to any cabinet-maker in the country." Colonel Tappan died in 1875, at the age of eighty-three years.
John Perry Allen had worked for Caleb Knowlton before the War of 1812 ; but the " troublous times" led Mr. Knowlton to retire from this seaboard town
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and settle in New Hampshire. Mr. Allen set up business on his own account during the war, employ- ing one journeyman and one apprentice. In order to enlarge his business he carried two mahogany bureaus on a vessel to Boston. Purchasers were found, orders came in, and business prospered. A few years later he shipped a consignment of furni- ture to New York, to be sold at auction. This venture met with such success and resulted in such an increase of business that it was difficult to find enough skilled workmen to enable him to fill his orders. This was the time when mahogany and other veneers were very generally used. They were sawed from the log by hand, a tedious and expensive process. The attempt had been made in New York and elsewhere to use machinery for the purpose, but with little success. Mr. Allen was one of those who experimented in this direction, building a mill for the purpose in 1825, on the site of the old tide-water Grist Mill which he bought of the town for the pur- pose. The chief difficulty was in getting veneers after the first two or three cuts, that were not uneven and wavy; the heat caused by friction warping the saws. The cause was at last discovered by accident. Some of the teeth which were bolted to the iron frame-work of the saw became broken, and it was necessary to set out the sections of the frame to make the saw of sufficient diameter; this gave the needed room for expansion, and the machine now turned out smooth and perfect veneers. It is said that if the discovery had been made a few days carlier, Mr. Allen's machine would have been the
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THE CABINET-MAKING.
first successful one in the country. It appears that he narrowly escaped great fame.
The sawing of veneers now became a principal part of Mr. Allen's increasing business. His " plant " consisted of two upright saws, four veneer- ing saws,1 jig saws, turning lathes, etc. In 1835, Mr. Allen placed a steam engine in his mill, which sup- plied veneers for most of the furniture and piano establishments in the United States.
It was somewhere about this time, that Mr. Ben- jamin Lamson of East Boston, an extensive dealer in mahogany, sent a log measuring six feet and six inches in length, twenty-six inches in width, and thirteen inches thick, to Mr. Allen, with the request that he would have it planed on its four sides, split in the middle, and write him up an account of the condition in which he found it .? A few days after, Captain Mackie, a partner with Jonas Chickering, came to Manchester, examined the stick, and pur- chased it for one thousand dollars, having previously declined taking it at five hundred dollars, through fear that it might not prove sound.
It was while the business was at the height of its prosperity, and employing a hundred men, that a spark of fire, falling into some mahogany dust and smouldering for hours, broke out at night into a disastrous conflagration that swept away mill, shops,
1 " These saws were capable of dividing a plank four inches in thick- ness into sixty veneers. They were kept from public view, under lock and key, and all sorts of subterfuges were used by people from many parts of the country, who desired to see their operations that they might adapt the principle to similar purposes."
2 Mr. Allen is said to have been the best judge of mahogany in the Boston market.
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great stacks of lumber from Maine and Honduras, and reduced the whole establishment to ashes. The fire occurred Aug. 27, 1836, and is still remembered and spoken of as " the great fire." Mr. Allen's dwelling house and several other houses, shops and other buildings were destroyed. The Salem Gazette of August 30 gave the following account :
"It is with the deepest regret we announce that the thriving village of Manchester in our neighborhood, has experienced a severe calamity in the destruction by fire of its principal business establishments, by which upwards of 100 industrious men have been thrown out of employment, and several worthy individuals have lost their all.
" About 2 o'clock on Sunday morning the Steam Veneer- ing Mill of John P. Allen, situated near the centre of the village, was discovered to be on fire, and the flames spread with great rapidity, communicating immediately with the two cabinet-shops, and the handsome dwelling house and barn of that gentleman, and which were totally destroyed with their contents.
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