USA > Massachusetts > Bristol County > Somerset > History of the town of Somerset Massachusetts : Shawomet purchase 1677, incorporated 1790 > Part 4
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The land was prepared for clearing by mowing with a brush whip, a stubby wooden handle set at right angles with a sturdy blade. Swung with full force the brush whip would cut down even sizeable saplings. The rocks from the denuded
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HISTORY OF SOMERSET
land were then carried by hand or drag to dumping piles. Here the wall builders took them.
The wall builder worked with bare hands for the better and surer manipulating of the stones. His hands needed to be tough and he toughened them by soaking them in brine and then charring bits of woolen cloth, by laying them on hot steel, and rubbing the charred remains into his palms and fingers.
Where set with the approval of town authorities, usually the fence viewers, these walls were accepted as legal boundary lines and many of them still serve as such in today's land titles. That not all lots were bounded with walls is shown by repeated votes in the Record directing owners to fence their land where it faced on a highway. So essential did this seem to the common good that a person building fence was allowed to cut his posts and poles from any owners' land along the way.
The course of the original roads in Somerset can be traced closely by reference to the Shawomet Purchase plan of 1683. Votes entered in the Record carefully reserve the road, now County Street, thereon laid out from the northern boundary to Swansea street, now called Buffinton. Here it deflected to the west of the present Buffinton Green and swung up the course of Buffinton west to Prospect, following the course of Prospect street to the present Read street, and thence up Read street to the Swansa line. The highway down on to the neck followed the course of the present Brayton Point road.
The east and west road laid out across the Point is identical with the present Wilbur avenue and, passing as it did, the land of one of the first purchasers, Daniel Wilbur, was very early known by his name. From the eastern end of this Wilbur road a roadway early grew to connect with the ferry and form the curving highway later known variously as Wilbur Avenue, the Warren road, and Route 103.
Brayton Avenue was later laid out to connect Read street with Slade's Ferry and is probably the original Indian trail
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1675-1775
to Corbitant's ferry. Wilbur and Brayton avenues are among the first roads in the Purchase growing out of use rather than planning. Early in the Record a vote appears for another road which experience had found desirable: the road now called North Street, to connect Town Landing with the old Indian road, Elm Street.
Anyone comparing the Somerset map of today with that of the original Purchase must be impressed with how well, in general, the Proprietors foresaw the pattern of its future growth. Particularly interesting is to note the conformity of its east and west residential streets with the lot lines on the original plan.
The key to the history of Somerset lies in the pattern of walls slanting in parallels down its eastern slope, and the little docks between them at the river front. These walls mark the boundaries of the early farms. The docks are the wharves which each landholder very early built to load at his own dooryard for shipment near and far the crops he had raised. These docks and the little sloops and schooners built to serve them, by the farmers themselves or by such enter- prising families as the Gibbs', Walker's, Weaver's, Slade's and Brown's, were the beginnings of Somerset's fleets and the foundation of the capital with which the town has met the opportunities of its successive eras. These all but count- less little docks are the monuments of the founders.
Within twenty years of the first settlements in Shaw- omet, three villages had begun to define more or less the future three precincts of the town. These were the loosely clustered farmsteads of the Point, the settlement at the future Egypt, and Bowers Shore, the future Somerset Village.
First of these in time was Bowers shore, which followed the arrival of Jonathan Bowers, to establish a ship yard.
The fame of the white oak forests of Shawomet and lands adjacent made so strong an impression in England that by 1693 Thomas Coram had arrived in Dighton to represent one English firm in building ships; and Samuel Lee from New York to represent another. Coram began building in
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Dighton in 1693 and remained ten years. Before he left, Samuel Lee had settled on Brayton Point and had his first ship on the ways on the shore of the river that would ever afterwards bear his name.
It would have been strange, therefore, if Jonathan Bowers, trained in shipbuilding on the Clyde and come to Newport with several thousand pounds to set up for himself, had not been attracted to the same region.
William Slade, at the ferry, had known Bowers in New- port and they must have discussed the matter together before Bowers arrived one summer's day to pick up Slade and go exploring for a site. They went up the bay and the Taunton as far as the Assonet river, investigated that, the Broad Cove and other shores and decided upon the stretch of future Somerset shore from the present Shellac works to the neighborhood of the later railroad station as the location for a shipyard. This area would be known for centuries to come as Bowers Shore.
Jonathan Bowers' first visit appears to have been in the year 1694. The next year, he returned, built a home and settled there with his bride. This house, built on Water Street, now Main, was the first frame house in the Village, and was soon followed by seven others on the same street, occupied by employes at the new shipyard.
In view of the universal skill of the early Colonists as shipwrights it is not probable that he had much difficulty in assembling labor. One unique source of manpower was available immediately at hand in the squatter residents of the sandy bluffs just around the point to the south. These were soldiers of King Philip's war who either had lost their homes and families and had no place to go, or had left the war informally and couldn't go home. A considerable colony of them had made themselves dwellings, like cliff swallows, in the bluffs. Some of them had hollowed into the hill until they had two-room abodes, reinforced with logs and stone to prevent caving. Here they had dwelt for several years. getting farm products from the Quaker Indians nearby and furnishing the Indians in return with game killed by guns
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which the Indians were not allowed to have. How many of these cliff dwellers went to work for Bowers is not known, but after his coming their squatter settlement soon dissolved.
Jonathan Bowers' first vessel was a sloop of 40 tons which came off the ways in the year of his arrival, 1695. In 1697, his yard produced the town's first ship. No list of the vessels he built exists. He built to sail as well as sell, and by 1735, when he died, had become one of the foremost merchants of New England, with a fine reputation and large credit throughout the Colonies.
Water street, which no longer exists, became the center of a thriving village. It was on Water street that the town's first industry other than shipbuilding was started. This was Somerset's first pottery, which was started in 1705. In 1715, the Village's first dock was built as the location of a try works with a fleet of small vessels bringing whales and smaller oil-producing fish from nearby waters. This dock later became the Mt. Hope Iron Works dock.
Before his death, Jonathan had built homes, considered very fine for the times : for David, the later "Black Block" in Bowers Lane; for Philip, the house still standing on South Street ; for Jonathan, the later Avery Slade house on County Street; and for Henry, the house now known as the Burgess House. His own house, on Water Street, he left to Benjamin. This was the Isaac Pierce house which stood until 1915, serving in its later years as the town's police station. For his sixth son, Jerathmel, he would build no house, having fallen out with him.
Benjamin succeeded his father at the shipyard. Henry concentrated on commerce and built his father's business to new dimensions and prosperity. It was during his career that many village wharves were built; storehouses were erected, Main Street laid out, the first rope-walk built, and many of the ancient elms of the present Village planted. Under him an extensive trade grew with the South and West Indies, and ships sailed regularly between England and Canton and Bowers Shore.
Gratitude is due the memory of Avery Slade, who knew
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men who had known the Bowers', for the information con- cerning them which his well known reminiscences preserve. The family were the founders of Somerset Village and the sponsors of its phenomenal early growth.
But growth at the other end of the town was steady and important, if not sensational. The Point was a normal agricultural community of early New England type, with broadening farms, a shipyard of its own, vessels often under construction all along its shores, the activity of through traffic across Slade's ferry, and a constantly increasing population.
In 1680, the same year as William Slade, Zachariah Eddy had arrived to take up actively his duties as constable and settle on land near Lee's river at the present crossing of Read Street into Swansea. His descendants at the end of this first century numbered 31.
In the same year, William Wilbur of Portsmouth had bought two lots along the road which now bears his name, and by 1710 his son, Daniel, having inherited the property, had settled there.
By 1707 Samuel Lee had begun launching a rapid series of vessels from his yard on the back of the Point, beginning with a ship of 120 tons, a large craft for the times. In 1708, he launched a brigantine of 50 tons and a ship of 170; the next year, two brigantines of 50 tons each, and in 1712 a sloop of 80 tons.
In 1714, Preserved Brayton, first-comer of the family thenceforth to be identified with the Point and all the surrounding region, arrived from Newport and built a home the stone foundations of which are still to be seen a little way up the hill from the later Homestead. His wife was Content Coggeshall, grandaughter of John Coggeshall the partner of William Coddington who had led the Ports- mouth group which had founded Newport and who had been the almost sucessful rival of Roger Williams for control of Rhode Island. By the end of the century they had four- teen descendants of the Brayton name living within the Purchase.
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Some twenty other families named in the preceding chapter had arrived early in this century and by its end there was a total of 68 different family names within the territory of the Purchase.
In 1729, William Slade died, the operation of the ferry passing first to his brother Jonathan and on his death to Jonathan's nephew Samuel, who in addition to attending the ferry managed a farm and ran a blacksmith's shop. When William's wife, who lived to the age of 97, died in 1761 there were 435 descendants of these two first settlers, living mostly in the Purchase.
Meanwhile, the central section which would later be called Pottersville was beginning to grow. Benjamin Weaver was very early a large landholder in this section, with his descendants engaging in shipping. By the end of the century families located here included Sherman's, Chace's, Luther's, Read's, Davis', Gray's, Butterworth's, Buffinton's, Wood's, Bourne's, Purington's and Gibbs'.
Captain Robert Gibbs arrived in Shawomet sometime before 1730 and built on the main road, now County Street, at the head of the lot now occupied by the Pottersville School and playground. The Gibbs family concentrated on coastal shipping, at one period owning eleven vessels registered from Somerset, with four members, representing three generations, ship captains.
In this future Pottersville section was located in 1701 the first church building built within the area of the future Somerset, the Friends' Meetinghouse, not far up the hill from Egypt on the location occupied by the present Friends' Church. This was attended by dwellers of all sections, as will be seen in the account of this church in a later chapter.
In 1728, the first school, financed by the proprietors, was organized. This was for a time held at homes in the three sections of the Purchase; then, from 1734, in a school- house "near to Mr. Robert Gibbs by the highway." There was already at the Village a private school supported by the well-to-do families there; but this was the first public school within the area of the present town. Its location was on
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the west side of County Street just south of the old Potters- ville school, now abandoned.
As the century ended, the first Massachusetts census was recording the population of Swansea as 1840. From the Swansea and Somerset figures of a few years later it would appear that an approximate half of this figure lived in Shawomet Lands. It was a substantial and vigorous community which watched the train of events, and con- tributed its own defiant part to them, leading to a break with the Old Country.
NOTES ON FIRST CENTURY
THE story of the cliff dwelling squatters in the bluffs above Bowers Shore is found in the "Sketches of Somerset Village" published in 1884 by Avery Slade, descendant of William Slade and born in 1818 when traditions of the previous century were still vigorous. Of them he says :
"When Jonathan Bowers first landed on this shore, the river bank rose much more abruptly than it does at present, and was dotted with huts and cabins of the most primitive type.
"These structures consisted of an excavation made in the bluff, and were lined and arched with walls of rough stone, and supplemented by a room in front, made of round logs, notched at each end to keep them in place, thus forming a sort of vestibule to the less exposed apartments. Whether this appendage was intended for use or ornament is not definitely known, but probably both. It was made tight in winter by filling the crevices with clay ; and perfect ventila- tion was secured in summer by its removal. This room was sometimes used for a dining room, but generally as a recep- tion room for neighbors and friendly Indians. From the centre of the rear apartment a hole in the ceiling was made, and from hence upward through the earth to the surface, which constituted the chimney.
"The occupants of these rude habitations were mainly refugees, or deserters from the ranks of Captain Church, who had been fighting against Philip. Fish and game were abundant and easily trapped, and from this source they drew their principal subsistence. The hill lying South and East of the Dublin schoolhouse was covered with a primitive growth of white pine, and was inhabited by a remnant of a tribe of friendly Indians, who were afterwards called Quakers because they refused to take up arms for or against
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Philip. Where openings were found in the forest they planted corn, and supplied the new settlement with seed which enabled them to add the luxury of corn bread to their liberal rations of fish and game.
"A hole cut in the surface of a flat rock, in which they pounded his corn, remains to this day (1884) and pestles of stone and arrowheads were frequently found in this vicinity by the early cultivators of the soil."
A large stone pestle was found on the high school play- ground when it was graded in 1938.
BUFFINGTON'S CORNER
While there is no knowing when the name of Buffing- ton's Corner first became habitual with the town, its residents descended from a dweller in Shawomet who was here sometime before 1729, the date of his tombstone in the Bourne cemetery, and whose son bought land at the Corner, lot 24, as early as 1712.
This first of the Buffington's "with a G" was Thomas, a man with a personal history which is one of the town's traditions.
He was born in Scotland, and when a young man was seized by a press gang and forced aboard a British man-of- war bound for the New England colonies. When the ship reached this side and put into Salem harbor young Buffing- ton was determined to escape from the bitter slavery of the impressed sailor and on a dark night escaped the sentry's eye and slipped overboard and swam ashore. Death was the penalty if he were seen escaping or afterwards apprehended, but the first man to whom he was forced to speak as he lay exhausted and hungry under a haystack when morning came was a Quaker who assisted him to dry clothing and food, hid him until the ship left, and then helped him find a job.
Thomas repaid the country which had given him sanctuary by serving in the Indian wars, and afterwards married a widow, Sarah Tidd of Salem, who inherited a substantial property from her father.
He now settled down to practice his trade of mason but his experiences were not over. Going into Salem town
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one day he was pulled off his ox team by the authorities and taken to court charged with practicing witchery. He asked the officers who had complained of him on this charge and they pointed out a woman sitting in court. He walked over to the woman and laid his ox whip on her until she ran out of the court and he, following, laid on the ox whip whenever he got the chance. Then, according to the custom of those days, the officers went up and down the street asking each person whether he was for Thomas or against him. So large a party clustered around Buffington that the officers did not dare touch him.
Thomas Buffington's first residence in Somerset is said to have been a log cabin. When his son Benjamin followed him to Shawomet and bought 60 acres of John Blethen he assisted Benjamin in building the first house at the Corners, which had a rear wall of field stone which was torn down in 1884 and used for the foundation of the 1885 high school building.
The son, Benjamin, was called to the ministry of the Friends Church in 1731, and served it for 29 years, until 1760. He was killed by the falling of a beam while raising a store for Henry Bowers. Benjamin's grandson Jonathan built a grist mill which stood where the later Buffington icehouse, now gone, once stood. This Jonathan's son built the foundation for the town's first rolling mill and several of the town's docks, including the long wharf in front of the Peterson house.
TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE
Henry Bowers is noted in one reminiscence of the town as a large owner of slaves. Sometime after 1760, one of Henry Bowers' captains brought him a splendid young black captured in Africa and reputed to be the son of a native king. There was something in the mien of this spirited. black which made the neighbors uneasy and they finally prevailed upon Bowers to get rid of him, which he did by sending him on one of his vessels to the West Indies.
Some years later the same captain, on another trip to the West Indies, determined to visit Hayti and meet the
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Toussaint L'Ouverture whose military skill in leading a rebellion and setting up a Republic had won the world's acclaim. When he came face to face with the liberator the Somerset captain recognized him. Toussaint L'Ouverture was the former slave of Henry Bowers.
As great and wise a governor as he had been an able general, Toussaint had given his new republic a code of laws and a system of education, and had embellished his career with philosophical writings which had attracted attention in France and may still be read with profit. In the interval between his Somerset days and the captain's visit he had been sent out by his master to school in France, trained in letters and military science and returned to lead his people to freedom. His first name was given him by his French master: the second L'Ouverture was a title of honor meaning, "The Liberator."
At Toussaint's death John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem of stirring tribute, including the lines :
"For the time shall come Yea, even now is nigh When everywhere thy name shall be
Redeemed from color's infamy ;
And men shall learn to speak of thee
As one of earth's great spirits, born
In servitude and nursed in scorn, Casting aside the weary weight And fetters of its low estate In that strong majesty of soul Which knows no color, tongue or clime."
MILES' BRIDGE
One hundred fifty years after its incorporation, the town still helps to support a bridge between two other towns across a river that nowhere touches Somerset. This is the Miles' bridge across the Palmer River, twice replaced and still, and probably forever, a liability under the terms of the charter of 1790.
As early as 1736, there was a wooden bridge across the Palmer River referred to in the records as "Miles' Bridge
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NOTES ON FIRST CENTURY
in a country road." By 1749 this original bridge had fallen into decay, and the town of Swansea representing to the legislature that it could not afford the expense of repairing it, the legislature on December 11 of that year authorized a lottery for the amount of twenty-five thousand pounds, old tenor, to rebuild it.
Ten per cent of the subscriptions to the lottery was to be paid out as prizes. "And in order that there may be no bubble or cheats happening to the purchasers or drawers of the tickets" the Town of Swansea was made answerable to the purchasers for "any deficency or misconduct of the managers according to the true intent of lotteries."
In the act incorporating the town of Somerset it is specified that "the inhabitants of the Town of Somerset shall forever hereafter support and keep in repair their proportional part of the bridge known by the name of Miles Bridge in the proportion that the Town of Somerset and and the Town of Swansea now pay on the present valuation."
The lottery bridge was replaced in 1876 by an iron bridge seventy-five feet long. In the hurricane of 1938, this bridge was washed away. A new one was built by the State.
THE FIRST SCHOOL
The Proprietors early set aside a school lot of several wooded acres running down the hillside easterly from the Highway (later County street) and adjoining the south side of the land of Captain Robert Gibbs whose property is now partly occupied by the Pottersville School
Dates of the first schoolhouse there, and of the first teacher, have to be inferred because the Record of the Purchasers is silent until January, 1734, when the teacher is reimbursed for buying boards and nails and repairing the schoolhouse at his own expense.
This is the first time the Record calls him by name but from then on "the schoolmaster William Hart" appears many times. An entry in the Record enjoins all to "cut no wood on the school lot except for firing and fencing;" the "proceeds of hiring out the school lot are to pay into the treasury for our schoolmaster."
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The proceeds were not up to expectation. On February 11, 1743, appears an entry: "Received of the Purchasers and Proprietors full satisfaction for my salary for about fifteen years last past as schoolmaster for Shewamock pur- chase only remaining, due me the sum of fifty pounds, six- teen shillings and eight pence Old Tenor to Dec. 27 Last. Witness my hand Wm. Hart."
This makes the date when the first school teacher in Shawomet Purchase began his work somewhere in the early winter of 1728. Whatever the character or date of the first schoolhouse it served only a part of the year as a school building, although evidently all the year as the schoolmaster's home. At the beginning, there were three school districts, indicated in the vote of May 27, 1758, that the schoolmaster, "shall begin the school the first four months at the middle school (his home), the second four at the upper school house (apparently a selected private home), and then compleat his year's service at the lower schoolhouse."
It is also voted at this time to repair his house, and on January 15, three years later, it is voted "to build a schoolhouse near to Mr. Robert Gibbs by the highway 15 feet square with a chimney."
William is getting sixty pounds a year, now, when he gets it. All his acknowledgements of salary received show a balance remaining due. In 1751, he tried for a salary increase, allowing it to be put to a vote before the Proprie- tors "whether William Hart the schoolmaster should have one hundred fifteen pounds for the year ensuing." It was, says the Record, "Voted in the niggetive."
In 1761, he is still teaching, but his signature, once marked by a fine flourish, is getting shaky. Then no entry for a year; and then in February of 1763, the Proprietors appoint Benjamin Slade, Samuel Slade and Israel Brayton a committee "to hire a schoolmaster or schoolmasters or school mistress at a price in their judgment," and that the widow, Mary Hart, have the use of half the schoolmaster's house to live in.
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NOTES ON FIRST CENTURY
WEETAMOE
In February of 1676, the Rowlandson garrison house at Lancaster was attacked by the Indians, and Mrs. Row- landson was captured and sold to Quinnopin who gave her to Weetamoe as a maid. Mrs. Rowlandson was well treated and able to observe calmly all she saw. After her ransom she wrote of Weetamoe :
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