History of the town of Milford, Worcester county, Massachusetts, from its first settlement to 1881, Part 53

Author: Ballou, Adin, 1803-1890
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Boston : Rand, Avery, & co.
Number of Pages: 1328

USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Milford > History of the town of Milford, Worcester county, Massachusetts, from its first settlement to 1881 > Part 53

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The Town party was thus victorious in town-meeting; but when the fall came around, it was found that it was one thing to vote and assess taxes, and another for Clark Ellis to collect them. The Parish party, after holding a council of war, refused to pay their taxes, a part of which were for building the town-house ; and Clark Ellis had to distrain for them. So he attached the horses and chaises of the Parish nullifiers ; and the Parish common, at the time of the tax-sale, was black with them. The Parish men, as a band of brothers, bid in each other's property. In one of the years of disputed taxes, Clark Sumner arrested Col. Godfrey and Artemas Thayer for non-payment of taxes, and carried them to Worcester jail. The prisoners drove themselves ; the open wagon broke down, but the prisoners refused to escape, -it was too jolly a frolic to lose. They had the key turned on them in jail ; then, after the protest, paid the taxes and costs, and prisoners and officer came home together, the best of friends. Then, of course, everybody sued the tax assessors - David Stearns, Henry Nelson, and James Perry - for trespass ; and another batch of suits went into the law's mill to be slowly ground out.

Pearley Hunt and the Universalists of the Town party next vowed that they would have a meeting-house of their own, on their own ground ; so Pearley Hunt and Ebenezer Hunt, Arial Bragg, Henry Nelson, Darius, Ellis, and Clark Sumner, John Corbett, Alexander and Caleb Cheney, Zebediah Flagg, and Otis Parkhurst associated themselves together as proprietors to build it, Pearley Hunt taking one-quarter of the stock. They were bound to outdo the Parish, according to their notions. They built it of brick, a fraction larger than the Parish structure, and had a heavier bell, which I thought, as a boy, was a finishing stroke on our side. It was finished in 1820, and dedicated next year with great pomp. Hosea Ballou preached the sermon ; Thomas Whittemore soon after was installed as minis- ter. I remember well its capacious interior, with its large galleries, before it was razeed, and Hiram Hunt's store built in the lower story, many years afterward.

It was now the Parish's turn to do something to distinguish itself. So the next year, 1822, William Godfrey (his father had just died) opened a line of stages between Mendon, Milford, and Boston, in

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connection with a line to Hartford. It was a great event. The cen- tral office was Esquire Claflin's tavern, and the scene of great excite- ment at the arrival and departure of the stage. As the driver tooted his horn, cracked his whip, and drove his horses up to the door with a gallop, the bar-room loungers and the small out-door committee looked at him as a marvel, and the whole thing as prodigious. Mr. Godfrey was always promptly on hand as proprietor, with a look of satisfaction on his kind face.

Esquire Hunt, not to be long outdone, secured a post-office here in 1823, was himself appointed postmaster, and had the post-office at his store, where I had to go so often as a boy.

In the October term of the Supreme Court, 1823, in the suit of Milford vs. Godfrey and others, the court decided that the Parish owned the meeting-house, and gave a new trial in the suit of Thayer vs. Stearns and the other assessors ; and there were great rejoicings in the Parish. All sorts of technical points were raised in the suit against the assessors. In the following year, the court decided on one of them in favor of Thayer. So the assessors had been illegally collecting taxes for the town-house and other purposes, illegally seiz- ing horses and chaises, and taking people to jail, and were threatened with stacks more of lawsuits.

The assessors commenced paying back out of their own pockets. Their salaries as assessors did not warrant any such luxury, and their friends of the town party flew to their rescue, and voted to re-imburse them by an appropriation assessed in 1825; but before the tax was collected, the Parish party mustered in such force that they carried in town-meeting a motion to "reverse, revoke, and repeal " the vote to re-imburse the assessors. The collector, however, went ahead. Some of the Parish refused to pay, as before, and arrest and distraining followed as before. Esquire Claflin and Artemas Thayer (as I am informed by Messrs. Aaron Claflin and Thomas Thayer) were arrested by the constable in the March town-meeting, 1826, as they were going to vote. It was a close election. The two dickered with the constable, proposed to pay at Claflin's store, and slipped their votes in. All three went to the store. Young William Thayer was sent on the dead run up to the old homestead for his grandfather's money- bag. Claflin turned out all his silver, which was legal tender ; a hundred-dollar bank-bill would not do. They kept the constable counting fourpences and sixpences, and waiting for Thayer's silver, till the box was turned in town-meeting, and Esquire Claflin and his party were elected selectmen and to other offices, for the first time in several years, by one majority. The constable, who belonged to the

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GENERAL UNDERWOOD'S ORATION.

town party, had lost his vote ; so Mr. Carmel Cheney, still living, who was the constable, was badly outwitted.

The Parish being now in power, the unfortunate assessors could not get their money out of the town-treasury, sued the town; and that question was hung up for some years more.

The Parish, to keep up with the other concern, got a volunteer infantry company chartered in 1826, called " The Lafayette Guards." It at once became a formidable rival to the Artillery Company at many a training and muster, and on the Cornwallis days, for which Milford was quite distinguished. The Indians never scalped any- body.

The two companies and the organizations to which they belonged had as officers, and gave titles to, many of the leading citizens of Mil- ford. From the Artillery, Majors Pearley Hunt, John Claflin, jun., Clark Sumner, John Corbett, Levi Chapin, Samuel Penniman, Cap- tains Amasa Parkhurst, Rufus Thayer, Ezra Nelson, Henry Nelson, Clark Ellis, Hiram Hunt, H. N. Smith, Ziba Thayer, A. B. Vant, Colonels Peter Corbett, Adam Hunt, and my father, who, in 1842, was mustered out as brigadier-general, after twenty-one years' service. From the Lafayette Guards, Colonels Lewis Johnson and William R. Bliss, Captains Albert Newhall, Charles T. Eames, Aaron Claflin, Samuel Daniels, Morton Newhall, Washington Ellis, Augustus Thayer, and Timothy Ide, jun.

In 1827, if not earlier, the lower villageites opened an amateur theatre in the brick meeting-house, where their young men and women quite distinguished themselves for some years. Rev. Mr. Ballou was patron and general instructor. Mr. Seth P. Carpenter, chief man- ager, has preserved one of the play-bills, by which it appears, that, in the highly moral tragedy of " Remorse," in five acts, Mr. Carpenter played the part of " Don Alvar ; " Stephen A. Nelson, " Don Ordo- nio ; " J. Madison Barber, " Zulimez ; " A. French Pond, " Isadore, a Moresco Chieftain," the wild chieftain's wife being Miss Hannah B. Cheney, now my respected mother ; "Donna Teresa " being Miss Maria Nelson, now Mrs. O. B. Parkhurst. In the standard farce of " Fortune's Frolic," Mr. Nelson Parkhurst was " Robin Rough- head ; " Mr. Carpenter, " Old Snacks ; " Otis Parkhurst, Esq., afterwards lawyer, was "Rattler ; " Miss Nelson, "Dolly ; " Miss Cheney, " Margery." Miss Hannah B. Cheney played in all four plays during the evening. Mr. Warren Nelson, Hiram Hunt, Miss Lucy Hunt, now Mrs. Ballou, Miss Diana Barber, now Mrs. Carpen- ter, played on other evenings. Among the successful actors, Mr. Nelson Parkhurst showed that he was a natural-born one, and at one

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HISTORY OF MILFORD.

bound rose from " supe " to be principal star. To my latest day, I shall not forget his acting in the " Seven Clerks."

In the spring of 1828 the Parish scored one more; William God- frey, John Claflin, jun., Nathan Wood, and their associates were incorporated as the Milford Academy. It had a succession of able principals : Ira Cleaveland, jun., Henry Mellen Chamberlain, Charles Thurber, Messrs. Morse, Gorman, Wilmarth, Daniel Perry, Miss Clark, and Charles R. Train.

In the fall of that year, the court decided the suit of the assessors, against the town, in favor of the assessors ; and Henry Nelson, the only survivor, recovered his money. The temple of Janus for Milford was now shut. It had been open for war-purposes, and the town and parish clans had been on the war-path since 1819. It was some years, though, after outward hostilities ceased, before the effects of the strife passed away. No one who is not old enough to remember it, can appreciate the intense feeling and hostility that prevailed. One party completely ostracised the other, men, women, and children ; and, as a rule, there was complete non-intercourse, socially, reli- giously, and politically.

I mention one or two characteristic expressions of the sentiments entertained by the two parties to each other. Capt. Harwood of Oxford related to Dr. Cooke, that, meeting Esquire Hunt in Worces- ter one day, looking after one of the lawsuits, he asked him how things were going here. The esquire replied, "Well, whatever the other side get, they get by trick ; honors don't count!" Two sons of parish leaders used to go about the streets, they say, shouting " Heaven for the Parish, Hell for the Brick!" which was an anathema, not only on the Universalist party, but on their theology as well. I remember, probably more than ten years after the Nelson case was decided, that it was the duty of a lower-village boy to be a Universalist and a Democrat ; to believe in the brick meeting-house, Col. Sumner's tavern, the lower common, and Capt. Smith's or Ziba Thayer's artillery company. Even the old tumbril, as it rattled off to fall muster, had a very august appearance to me; and I think those two brass pieces inspired more awe in me than all the artillery of the Army of the Potomac did at Gettysburg. It was just as much a test of village loyalty to regard the parish meeting-house as all very well, but wooden, with a poor bell ; Mr. Long's allusions in his seventhly and lastly, in his sermons, as theologically unsound, at least; the parish common as not much of an affair ; the tavern not to be com- pared to Sumner's ; and the Lafayette Guards, although we had to admit they manœuvred well under Capt. Daniels, were not of much

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account with muskets beside the brass guns of the Artillery. The " Tippecanoe and Tyler too," of 1840, we did not take much stock in, or the log cabins and hard cider, and were sure of wiping them all out at the election, and were terribly crestfallen when we did not. Still, we met the boys of the other village at the academy or the private schools, played together, went to the same dancing and sing- ing schools, and occasionally exchanged churches. We found the other boys were very good fellows after all, came to joke even about our defeats in politics or base-ball, and really formed and cemented friendships that have followed us through life, and are a delight to our memories to-day. The boys were, in time, to unite the villages.

Several causes helped to assuage the bitterness of feeling with the older people, after the fight ceased. New issues sprung up ; new men came into town. Looking back to-day as descendants of the leaders or partisans in the contest, it does not seem to me there was any thing about it to regret, except the bitterness and the temporary estrange- ments. The rivalry was the secret of the business prosperity and growth of the Milford of that generation. It began the contest with a dilapidated meeting-house, used for town-meetings ; one sleepy tav- ern, the people going to South Milford for their mail, and elsewhere, on foot, horseback, or wagon, as they could afford ; and ended the race and the decade with two brand-new meeting-houses, a good brick town-house, two taverns where things were lively, a through stage-line, a post-office at home, a progress in manufacturing busi- ness that made it a leading town in its line, an academy that would have done credit to any community, and an additional military com- pany, making two live ones. What town about here can match that record from 1819 to 1828? It laid such foundations of prosperity that the younger men of that struggle, and a new generation, had great advantages when they came to devote their energies to the com- mon success and the building up of the town.

These younger men had other notable advantages with which to begin their prosperous business careers. About this time new inven- tions were made in the process of making boots and shoes that really made a revolution in the business. One was the use of wooden pegs, instead of thread, - the invention of Joseph Walker of the neighbor- ing town of Hopkinton, whose son and namesake did what he could in uniting the two towns by marrying for his wife a Milford Chapin. Then the invention, as a necessary accompaniment, of a machine for making the pegs, by Mr. Samuel Goddard of Hopkinton, and the inven- tion of using crimped forms for boot-fronts instead of sewed tongues, either the invention of or first used by Lovett and Leonard, sons of

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Joseph Walker, sen. These combined inventions were at once adopted in Milford, and were for it what the invention of the cotton-gin was to the South. Rufus Chapin adopted the inventions, went ahead with great determination, enlarged his business, and his customers came from as far off as Charleston, S.C. New men started. Seth P. Carpenter, Adam Hunt, Silas Myrick, as partner of Lee Claflin, who began to manufacture boots ; and in 1829 my father began, in a shop that we should now call a coop, with $100 capital, carrying his few dozen pairs of boots when made, covered up in a wagon with a cow- skin, off to market. In 1835 the firm of Godfrey & Mayhew started in the currying business, later taking on the boot manufacture. Lewis Johnson began the tin business.

Then came 1837, the year of general failures. Rufus Chapin, "the boss," as he was called, had to succumb to it; surrendered every thing to his creditors, even his family's uncut dress-patterns, and paid, as his daughter remembers, 993 cents on the dollar. Fashions do change so! You never hear of that kind of failure nowadays ! That year 128,000 pairs of boots were made here, and 305 males em- ployed.

Milford at this period was quite devoted to amusements. It was famous for its base-ball playing, and had great matches. Wholly different from their fathers of the last century, the younger people from this time on devoted themselves to dancing with as much energy as they did to business. Parties began, though, at five P.M., and some- times at one.

The Parish opened a rival theatre in the academy building. Many of the actors are well remembered. Mr. D. S. Godfrey sang and danced to great acceptance the then lately introduced and highly popular song of "Jim Crow." In the favorite farce of "Fortune's Frolic " he played the part of Old Snacks with great power ; while Robin Roughhead, a success also, was a young native of the name of William Claflin, afterwards his Excellency the Governor of this Commonwealth and member of Congress for this district. I do not remember to have seen these two stars, - an irreparable loss to me ; but I do remember that Mr. Samuel Godfrey, as an actor, made a great impression on me. Unfortunately for his native town, he died young.

As to the academy itself, the teacher of my day is a vivid picture in my memory. I see him still, presiding over the hushed benches of boys and girls, which he ruled gently if he could, but by " force and arms " if he must, sitting in an easy-chair poised on two legs, behind a table, which in my memory seems to have been twenty-five

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feet long, with his nicely-fitting French boots resting precisely in the centre of the same, his eyes like an eagle's, that were certain to see every thing done by the mischievous, his talons as swift and unerring ; but to the studious and deserving, their ready help and best friend. Under him I received my first lessons in oratory, and had my first stage-fright (not my last one), and with trembling knees and ashy lips declaimed about the industry of "The Little Busy Bee," and took other youthful and awkward steps on the road to knowledge's hill. For his instructions, and his patience with such an unpromising subject, I express my deep gratitude to him to-day. With a grateful remembrance of these, I sought him afterwards to instruct me in the mysteries of Coke and Blackstone. My instructor, my associate after- wards for years, and my life-long friend, - the Hon. Charles R. Train, formerly member of Congress, and late Attorney-General of the State. " I am under great obligations also for several years' drill in Greek and Latin, and x, y, z, to another faithful teacher, who kept a migra- tory private school, sometimes in Mason's shop, sometimes in a vacant schoolhouse, - always an honored citizen of Milford, - Leander Hol- brook, Esq. A great many here are graduates of his school. The high-school in 1850 came after my school-days.

In the politics of those days, there were adepts in the noble art of log-rolling, as to-day. One of your citizens, long since gone, was a success in this line, and was in the zenith of his fame in log-cabin and hard-cider times, - Mr. Africa Madden. He knew how to pack caucuses in the innocent ways of those days, and to beguile the simple gingerbread-eaters at town-meetings to vote for his man, who was sure to be a Democrat. He knew how to manage hymeneal cam- paigns as well, and asked the important question for many a bashful swain (he asked his late in life) ; a faithful friend and a generous- hearted man.

They had a mild species of the tramp then. The lamented Alden Barrett had his regular rounds, and called at stated times for his quart of cider, and always wanted to see the picture at the bottom of the mug. He had the shrewdness of his class. When Mr. Stearns Godfrey once wished to know what he was going to do with a four- pence that he had asked for, as usual, he said to him, " How do you suppose I should look sleeping in Dexter Walker's barn without a cent of money in my pocket?" Mr. Jason Desper was not beneath ,chopping wood before he got his nine large potatoes for breakfast, just eighteen mouthfuls, on authentic testimony. Mr. Howe had his customers, and likewise "Black Billy," with his fourteens boots, - the gift of an admirer. That simple and vacant face and shuffling

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HISTORY OF MILFORD.

gait, - how well I remember them ! Nobody should think of leaving out of the Milford of that day " Mr. Discovery." Most everybody understood his device of looking for the peg in the bottom of his empty boot, where he had his supplies. The majesty of the law was then, or soon after, represented by Mr. John Erskine, the town Esquire. I used to envy the court his success in shooting rabbits and catching pickerel when the rigor of the law relaxed itself. The principal tailor our way was Mr. Ira Cheney. The doctors, as I remember, were Peck, Fay, Scammell, and, not long after, Leland. I never shall forget Dr. Fay's doorstep, and that old-fashioned instru- ment of torture for extracting teeth. The artist of that or a little later period was Mr. David Jones, justly celebrated for his great painting of "The Striped Pig."

No lover of the institutions of his native town then ever neglected an opportunity to visit the hermitage of the Twitchells.

In 1838 a company of "infantry," in both senses, was formed, carrying weapons not forged by Vulcan, but by Mr. Johnson, the tin- man, and some carpenter. I was a high-private. Our captain, who was as ready to lead where glory awaits as we to follow, was Capt. Samuel Walker, whom I have to thank for my first lessons in the art of war.

The success of Milford during the first quarter of the century under the men of that day-its Stearnses, its Godfreys, Hunt, Claflins, Bragg, Chapins, Parkhursts, Nelsons, Perrys, Sumners, Ellis, Dean, and others - was as nothing to that which it achieved during the next quarter from the ability, energy, pluck, and generous public spirit of the men who commenced business soon after this quarter began, with the advantages I have mentioned. When they began, the town bad a population of 1,300, and a valuation of $389,941, making less than 100,000 pairs of boots, with other industries in pro- portion. It was a far inland town, away one side from the great through-lines of travel and transportation that were opening up now ; a dozen miles from the railroad lately opened ; with a soil so rocky and unfruitful that there was little prospect of the town's growing rich and populous in farming ; and at the end of the half-century, these enterprising men had made a town of 5,000 inhabitants, with a valuation of $1,196,792, making over a million pairs of boots, em- ploying 3,500 men and women, with a railroad running here trans- porting them and their goods to all the markets of the world, a bank of their own, a score of prosperous industries, furnishing supplies at their own doors, and the streets of the town built up with shops and houses of a busy and successful people. The different stages of this

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great success, and details about the men, my time and your patience do not permit me to particularize. Too many of you remember them, to make it necessary I should. Among those who are to be remem- bered to-day by us for achieving this great prosperity here, and the means for a greater in the second quarter-century, - I do not under- take to mention all, - some are, or were, Lee Claflin, David Stearns Godfrey, Aaron C. Mayhew, Aaron Claflin, Scth P. Carpenter, Adam and Hiram Hunt, Oliver B. and Nelson Parkhurst, Alfred Bragg, Dexter Walker, William A. Hayward, and, if I may be permitted to mention him, my honored father.

David Stearns Godfrey, grandson of the leading man in the close of the last century and beginning of this, may be said to have been the leader of his time here, without any disparagement of the rest. Energetic, public-spirited, whole-souled, generous-hearted, cultivated, gentlemanly in the best sense, he entered with enthusiasm into every enterprise for the public improvement or the bettering of his neigh- bors and friends. He was too large-hearted and liberal to be influ- enced by the old Town and Parish jealousy, and did as much as any one man to end it. Unpretending and unaffected in his way, caring less for his personal appearance always than the kindly greeting of friends and neighbors, he won the confidence of all. While Messrs. Mayhew, Carpenter, A. Hunt, A. Bragg, my father, and other busi- ness men of Milford, were working hard to secure the railroad and then the bank here, he entered with his whole soul into the enter- prises, and gave weeks of his valuable time, as did others, before legislative committees. He was a constant and reliable as well as powerful friend, as it was my privilege to know. In many ways he devoted the best energies of his too short life to his native town, dying at forty-one years of age, in 1853.

The signal prosperity that Milford had attained in the middle of this century, through the instrumentality of such enterprising and public-spirited citizens, continued increasing for the next decade from the impetus thus received and from the fresh energies of new busi- ness men, who just before or soon after 1850 came on to the scene, - most of them natives here : such men as Samuel Walker, Benjamin D. Godfrey, Elbridge Mann, Otis Thayer, E. F. Battles & Broth- ers, William H. Comstock, J. P. Daniels, Charles F. Claflin (son of Aaron), A. J. Sumner, Homer Ball, John Goldsmith, Bainbridge Hayward, Rufus Claflin, A. B. Vant, Alden & Harrington, the sons of Arial Bragg, J. H. Clement, George D. Colburn, John Erskine, jun., William Walker, George W. Johnson, J. D. Hunt, E. Whitney, and others, in the boot business ; J. H. Barker, Thayer & Smith,

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Heath & Dyer, Chapin & Gleason, Ellis & Howard, B. E. Harris, Ebenezer and George Draper, E. C. Claflin, William Crocker, Thomas B. Thayer (son of Artemas), G. W. Stacy, Z. C. Field, L. H. Cook, and many besides in other branches ; Leander Holbrook, J. S. Scam- mell, T. G. Kent, George G. Parker, H. B. Staples, Esquires, of the lawyers ; Samuel Hayward, deputy sheriff; G. Dickinson and the Cookes, dentists.

Then came the Rebellion ; and if Milford did not make any money during that period, it is greatly to her credit. But she did do her full share in the nation's defence, as she had done in every war before. She sent twelve hundred men with thirty-five commissioned officers in all - more than her quota - into the field ; fifty of her men were killed in battle, some of them on as hard-fought fields as any in the war. Four organized companies went out, one after the other. The Davis Guard, under Capt., afterward the lamented Lieut .- Col. Robert Peard, and then the brave O'Neil, Co. H, 9th Mass. ; the infantry company organized here in 1863 ; a company in 40th -New York regiment, under Capt., afterwards Lieut .- Col. Lindsay ; Co. B, 25th Mass., under Capt. Willard Clark, afterwards Capt. Wil- liam Emery ; Co. C, 28th Mass., Capt. Britton, then Capt. Cooley ; Co. F, 36th Mass., under Capt., afterwards Brevet Brig .- Gen. W. F. Draper. A majority served in organizations not identified with the town. The good and able physician, so well remembered by many of you, Dr. Francis Leland, served as surgeon in the 2d Mass. infantry so faithfully as to earn the gratitude of the entire regiment, as I know; was wounded in battle, and came home with health im- paired, to die in your midst.

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History of the town of Milford, Worcester county, Massachusetts, from its first settlement to 1881, Part 53

Author: Ballou, Adin, 1803-1890 Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Boston : Rand, Avery, & co. Number of Pages: 1328

Author: Ballou, Adin, 1803-1890
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Boston : Rand, Avery, & co.
Number of Pages: 1328