USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester > List of the soldiers in the War of the Revolution, from Worcester, Mass. : with a record of their death and place of burial > Part 2
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Mr. Mayor, we trust and believe that the present incum- bent of the highest office in the gift of the city, when his term shall close, will take an honorable position with those honor- able men who have preceded him. When the subject of decor- ating and marking these Revolutionary soldiers' graves was first brought to your attention, you took a deep interest in it, and it is largely, perhaps, owing to your influence that the city has to-day marked with appropriate markers fifty-four Revolu- tionary graves, and placed a tablet to commemorate those seven upon the Common. Ladies and Gentlemen, I know you will all be glad to hear from one who has taken such deep interest in this cause, and I take great pleasure in introducing to you his Honor, Mayor Philip J. O'Connell.
ADDRESS
BY
MAYOR PHILIP J. O'CONNEL.
Ladies and Gentlemen and Fellow Citizens :
It is very fitting that on this day set apart by the Common- wealth for the purpose of affording the people an opportunity of paying a tribute of love and honor to the men who, in the
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hour of the nation's peril, offered their lives in defense of country that we should assemble for the purpose of unveiling this simple memorial to the soldiers of the Revolution.
Though this recognition on our part of the valor and patriotism of the heroes of the Revolution is somewhat tardy after a lapse of a century and a quarter, it yet is no less appro- priate and opportune to-day.
Next to the love which I have for my country is my love for the Commonwealth and this beautiful city of Worcester, and it has always been to me a matter of the utmost satisfaction and pride to realize that the men who lived in this city in 1775 and 1776 were as brave and loyal and patriotic as they were.
When one stops to realize that the greater portion of the able-bodied men of the town of Worcester were at one time or the other enrolled in the army of Washington, then can be appreciated the spirit of the Worcester citizens of 1775.
The soldiers of the Revolution have done more than all other agencies combined for human rights throughout the civilized world.
They asserted and demonstrated beyond question the eternal truths of the Declaration of Independence, that all men were created free and equal and had an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This influence can be seen not only here in free America but in the democratic spirit that to-day animates very largely the people of England herself.
It can be seen in the liberalizing tendency of the people of Germany, and the example they furnish to the world was followed in the Republic of France.
To you, who, by virtue of your kinship to the soldiers of the Revolution are privileged to membership in the patriotic societies represented around me, I extend my congratulations upon the successful completion of your desires; and I con- gratulate the members of the City Government on their wisdom and foresight in erecting this memorial. It will long serve as an incentive to patriotic endeavor and as a reminder of the great debt which we owe to the men whose courage and valor made possible this free republic.
As the Chief Executive of this city, I can safely promise
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for myself and those who are to follow me in this honorable office to guard, cherish and protect it for the years to come.
SONG, " The Soldiers Grave."
PRESIDING OFFICER :
Strange as it may seem, but few of the members of our patriotic societies in Worcester are descended from Worcester's Revolutionary heroes. Those patriots, or their descendants, have passed to other places and the descendants of men who fought and enlisted from other towns and other cities have come to Worcester and have made this their home.
We have with us to-day one whose Revolutionary ancestor was at that time on the frontier of Vermont and took part in the Battle of Bennington. His father fought in our Civil War. He himself showed his love and devotion to his country when in our late war with Spain, he served as chaplain of a New Hampshire regiment.
I take great pleasure in presenting to you this afternoon the Chaplain of the 2nd Regiment, the Rev. Frank L. Phalen, of Worcester.
ADDRESS.
BY REV. FRANK L. PHALEN,
CHAPLAIN SECOND REGIMENT, M. V. M.
Sacred is the ground upon which we meet. Hallowed and glorious is the hour. The soil we stand upon is the peaceful sepulchre of American soldiers. It is the last resting place of those who faced danger and death that freedom might not die and that democracy might not be strangled in the womb of time.
We have assembled here to mark the graves and to com- memorate the deeds of the men of Worcester who fought and suffered and died in that long and bitter war which established the independence of this republic. The many years that have fled, and the mighty transformations that have occurred have
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not destroyed our admiration and affection for the brave soldiers who, over a century and a quarter ago, marched from this Common to defend and maintain the sacred principles of liberty and justice. Their deeds are our most precious legacy. Their graves are the shrines which awaken the noblest emotions which are native and honorable to the human heart.
We tread softly here, amid the thronging train of memories. We bow our heads before the God of Battles and of Nations, and thank him for the heroic men and the heroic deeds of the brave days of old.
This historic Common, this Memorial day,-the monument and witness of another mighty crisis and victory in the life of our Republic,-and this patriotic occasion, conspire to fill our minds with tender and grateful memories. The majestic spirit of the past speaks to our listening ears. The recollection of the great and terrible conflict through which our fathers and mothers fought their way to victory and independence, unrolls before our vision like a scroll. The over-arching sky, the firm and beautiful earth, and the very atmosphere in which we are embosomed, are eloquent with voices of heroic history.
" Wondrous and awful are thy silent halls, O, kingdom of the past."
The fair and patriotic women of Worcester who trace their ancestry to the soldiers of the Revolution, have done a noble service, the influence of which will abide through generations yet unborn, in undertaking and carrying forward the arduous yet commendable duty which brings us here on this memorable occasion.
We should be lacking in the qualities of appreciation and gratitude, if we did not pay a tribute of admiration to the patriotic women of this city, who conceived and have brought to completion this sacred and ennobling recognition of our dead but not forgotton soldiers.
Our city honors herself also, and adds another proud page to her patriotic annals, by lending her official sanction and sup- port to the respect we here pay to the valor and achievements of her faithful soldiers.
The memorial tablet we have here unveiled will perpetuate
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the names, the sacrifices and the achievements of the men who, in the times that tried men's souls, dared for a high cause to ven- ture their fortunes and their lives. Our words and our names may be forgotten. but the luminous fact that Worcester grate- fully remembered her soldiers of the Revolution and did honor to their memories will remain on the historic records, which will perpetuate the story of this eventful hour.
The veil which hides the past refuses to be lifted ; yet we are permitted to recall the fact that this goodly home of ours, now a proud and prosperous city,-rightly named "The Heart of the Commonwealth,"-was founded by men of sterling quality and high character. Here beside our beautiful lake, the early settlers of the 17th century built their primitive dwellings and established their homes. But the little village of Quinsigamond, which was the pioneer of our splendid city, did not escape the terrible and treacherous attacks of the Indians, who descended upon it on the second of December, 1675, and left its six or seven dwellings in ruins. But when the power of the Indians was broken by the death of their great chief Philip, there was a speedy renewal of the plan to settle and establish a town in this locality.
In 1684 the General Court granted the request of the com- mittee, Daniel Gookin, Daniel Henchman and Thomas Prentice, that their plantation at Quinsigamond be called "Worcester."
This is commonly supposed to have been in honor of the city of Worcester in England; "but," says Senator Hoar, whose authority I am now following, "there is a tradition that the name was given by the committee to commemorate the battle of Worcester, 'the crowning mercy' where Cromwell shattered the forces of Charles II, and as a defiance to the Stuarts."
I think we are justified in believing that it was the memory of the great victory for civil and religious liberty which God had vouchsafed to the Puritan over Charles Stuart, and not out of any loyalty to the English throne,-which was the great distinction of the English city that the three stout soldiers of the committee who founded this city "desired to perpetuate."
Accepting this interpretation of the origin of the name of
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our city, and taking it for granted that the spirit which ani- mated the founders was transmitted to their successors, we can understand why it is that Worcester has ever been at the front in every patriotic and righteous cause wherein the rights of humanity have been concerned.
In all those formative and silent years from the founding of the first plantation to the decade that preceded Lexington and Concord, the student of our annals will find that the men and women of this community were alive to the great political problems which were pressing for solution.
In his noble address on the 200th anniversary of the city Senator Hoar said :
"The people of Worcester knew well on what ground they stood. The great debate was conducted at every fireside. One spirit moved through them all. They debated the great ques- tion of resistance, as though God were hearkening; and they took counsel reverently with their ministers, and the aged, and the pious, and the brave, in their villages. The shire of Wor- cester, in August, 1774, set the example of a county Congress, which disclaimed the jurisdiction of the British House of Com- mons, asserted the exclusive right of the colonists to originate laws respecting themselves, rested their duty of allegiance on the charter of the province, and declared the violation of that charter a dissolution of their union with Britain."
The activity and patriotism of Worcester's men and women were so marked and noticeable, that General Gage, the British commander in Boston, sent his spies here; and "it was rumored in August, 1774, that he meditated sending part of his army to execute the regulating act, which forbade town meet- ings except by the written leave of the governor."
Think of the citizens of Worcester waiting to hear from a British governor whether or not they might be permitted to call a town meeting! We can understand the spirit in which they received these decrees of a government enthroned on an island beyond the Atlantic, when we learn that "they purchased and manufactured arms, cast musket balls, provided powder and openly threatened to fall upon any body of soldiers who should attack them."
It is no wonder that the hour came when a people so in
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love with liberty and so unwisely affronted by a stupid and foolish system of oppression and extortion, should have reached the point where they were ready with musket and sword to resist the British government. Let no one think, however, that the Revolution was a sudden or spasmodic outbreak of rash and thoughtless forces and men! It was nothing of the sort. It was the spontaneous and normal development of the free spirit of an enlightened and progressive people who would not submit to the arbitrary and tyrannical exactions of political despotism. It was the logic of events, and not the conscious purpose of the people which at last braced and heartened the colonists to attempt and to carry to a successful issue the war for independence. The first resistance was not intended to strike at the sovereignty of the British crown, but to vindi- cate the rights of the people ; and it was only by an inevitable and manifest destiny that the colonists came slowly to believe in complete independence.
The American Revolution was not the product of passion nor malice. It was the mature and deliberate protest of a peo- ple who were determined to maintain their rights whatever the cost. Our fathers did not unsheathe the sword in the stress and strain of that wild frenzy which sometimes seizes a nation and plunges it into a disastrous war. They resorted to arms with prayers on their lips, with the consciousness of fighting for a just cause thrilling their souls, and with that personal consecration to liberty which makes heroes of the humblest men.
In Lincoln's History of Worcester, there appears this stirring paragraph, which is of particular interest on this occasion :
Before noon, on the 19th of April, 1775, an express came to town, shouting as he passed through the street at full speed, To arms ! to arms ! the war's begun !' His white horse bloody with spurring, and dripping with sweat, fell exhausted by the church. Another was instantly procured, and the tidings went on. The bell rang out the alarm, cannon were fired, and mes- sengers sent to every part of the town to collect the soldiery. As the news spread, the implements of husbandry were thrown down in the field; and the citizens left their homes, with no
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longer delay than to seize their arms. In a short time, the minute-men were paraded on the green, under Capt. Timothy Bigelow,"-the brave soldier who sleeps beneath yonder monu- ment. "After fervent prayer by Rev. Mr. Maccarty, they took up their line of march to the scene of conflict."
Lexington and Concord aroused the colonies, and Worcester then (as later in the great Rebellion and the late war with Spain) was quick and vigorous in her efforts to put her brave sons into the field, commissioned by her prayers and sympa- thies to battle for the right.
What a picture it would be if we could reproduce that 19th of April, 1775, and see Worcester as it was in those heroic days, and see this Common, with Captain Timothy Bigelow and his brave companions-in-arms gathering here to begin their march towards Boston! Did I say Boston? Yes! And not only toward Boston but toward the glory and immortality which shall ever abide like a halo around the names and deeds of those who fought in that splendid struggle for liberty.
In that day Worcester was only a small town of about two thousand inhabitants, and yet before the conflict with Great Britain had ended, she had sent forth into the Continental Army almost four hundred soldiers. What a magnificent record ! What a testimony to the spirit which dwelt in our noble ances- tors !
On the 19th of April, 1861, yonder monument just men- tioned which guards the grave and perpetuates the memory of Colonel Timothy Bigelow was dedicated. "Only two days be- fore," says the record kindly furnished me by Mr. Nathaniel Paine, "the Worcester Light Infantry, who were expected to have joined in the exercises of the day, had started with the Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts Militia, for the defence of Washington, and at the very time the exercises of dedication were going on, they were bravely fighting their way through the streets of Baltimore."
The venerable ex-Governor Lincoln, speaking on that day, was introduced as one who had a distinct personal recollection of Colonel Timothy Bigelow, and inasmuch as there are many here who at this hour remember Governor Lincoln, a few words from his speech may serve to make us feel that, after all,
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Colonel Bigelow and the soldiers of the Revolution buried on this Common are not so far removed even from the Worcester of to-day as we sometimes think.
"Colonel Bigelow," said Governor Lincoln, "was a type of a generation now passed away. Of such, in patriotism and valor, were the corps of minute-men under his command, and the Train Band of the brave Captain Benjamin Flagg, who alike, on the 19th of April, 1775, at the horseman's cry 'To arms!' hastened with no delay but for prayer and benediction, to join their brethren of Lexington and Concord in resistance to tyranny and the oppressor's sword. Such was the towns- man and friend of Captain Bigelow, the intrepid and beloved Captain Jonas Hubbard" (whose brave and noble story Mr. Kent has just told you), "his inferior only in rank, his com- panion and comrade in the dreadful winter's march through the wilderness to the siege of Quebec; who in the midst of hardships and privations almost unequalled in the experiences of human suffering, uttered the noble declaration, 'I do not value life and property if I may secure liberty for my children ;' and who, when mortally wounded at the foot of the ramparts, in the storming of the fortress, said to his men who sought to remove him from the field, ' I came to fight with you, I will stay here to die with you.' And he did; and beside him, under the frowning walls of Quebec, and in the midst of a fierce snow storm, died two other of Worcester's patriot soldiers."
At Saratoga, at Valley Forge, at Monmouth and at York- town, the soldiers of Worcester were among the bravest of the brave, and earned not only the commendation of Washing- ton and the praise of their contemporaries but the perpetual gratitude of all who shall ever enjoy the liberties and blessings they so heroically and victoriously vindicated. Surely no higher patriotic service could have been done by the Daughters of the American Revolution than to summon the people of Wor- cester to stand by the graves of these modest yet brave Continental soldiers to whom we render with deeper apprecia- tion as the years fly away, our reverence, our love and our praise.
"On Fame's eternal camping ground Their silent tents are spread, And memory guards, with solemn round, The bivouac of the dead."
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Now, as in the years that are gone, the women of this community have been the pride and inspiration of every move- ment or reform looking to the uplifting and ennobling of humanity. The spirit that animated their hearts in 1775 lives in 1901. It cheered and sustained the soldiers of the Union in 1861-1865 and it burst forth again in 1898.
God be praised for the soldiers who have fought for our flag and our rights on every field, or on the sea, but praise and love to our women, living and dead, whose devotion and patriotism chasten and strengthen our hearts.
O, Worcester! thou art the guardian of a glorious past ! Thou art the interpreter to children yet unborn, of the storms and trials through which, under God, our fathers and mothers advanced to peace, and power and prosperity. Once thou wert a weak and humble daughter of Massachusetts; Now, thou art grown to noble womanhood with the consciousness and respon- sibility of material and political superiority. May thy proud boast in future days (as it is thy joy to-day) be, like that of the mother of the Roman Gracchi, who could say that her most precious treasures were her children.
Men and women of Worcester, there are no dividing bar- riers of creed, or color, or race, as we stand here to-day beside these graves of our heroes. In the fervent gratitude and affection of our patriotism, all political, social and religious distinctions are ignored and forgotton. We only remember that we share the same holy memories and are heartened by the same great hopes. In the language of our martyred Lin- coln, we here "dedicate ourselves anew to the majestic ideals of liberty and democracy, pledging our faith to the principles of our fathers, that a government of the people by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
"Our Father's God from out whose hand The centuries fall like grains of sand We meet to-day, united, free, And loyal to our land and thee.
"O, make thou us, through centuries long, In peace secure, in justice strong ;
Around our gift of freedom draw The safeguards of thy righteous law ; And, cast in some diviner mold,
Let the new cycle shame the old."
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PRESIDING OFFICER :
It was our intention, had these exercises been held on the Common, by the Col. Timothy Bigelow monument, to have unveiled the tablet which has been placed upon the fence in memory of the seven Worcester soldiers who lie buried upon the Common and whose graves were levelled when the old cemetery was removed. After the singing of another song by the school children, we shall be pleased to have all those who desire, go and view the tablet, which is now covered with a flag.
Now let us all join with the school children in singing that grand old song, "America."
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