Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 26

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802

USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people > Part 26

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

19. Grapevine Cottage (open as tearoom), a gambrel-roofed cottage, has a tablet identifying it as the home of Ephraim Wales Bull. For many years a trellis against the cottage wall supported the original Concord grapevine. Recently this was winter-killed, but the present vine is a shoot from the same root. On the trellis is a tablet inscribed with a

217

Dedham

quotation from Bull's journal: 'I looked to see what I could find among our wildings. The next thing to do was to find the best and earliest grape for seed, and this I found in an accidental seedling at the foot of the hill. The crop was abundant, ripe in August, and of very good quality for a wild grape. I sowed the seed in the Autumn 1843. Among them the Concord was the only one worth saving.'

20. A tablet, junction of Lexington Rd. and Old Bedford Rd., indicates the Site of the Attack made by the Minutemen of Concord and neighbor- ing towns upon the British while they were retreating from North Bridge, April 19, 1775-

POINTS OF INTEREST IN THE ENVIRONS

I. Walden Pond Reservation, 1.5 m. S. of the village (see Tour 1 C).

2. Concord Reformatory, W. Concord (see Tour 2).

3. Middlesex School for Boys (1901), about 3 m. N. of Concord on Lowell Rd., is a college preparatory school with fine modern buildings, dormi- tories and equipment.

DEDHAM . The Sober-Minded

Town: Alt. III, pop. 15,371, sett. 1635, incorp. 1636.

Railroad Station: Dedham Station, off High St., for N.Y., N.H. & H. R.R. Bus Station: 380 Washington St. for New England Transportation Co.

Accommodations: Inns and boarding-houses charge reasonable rates. Information: Board of Trade, Hartnett Square.

FEW towns in Massachusetts have changed as little in their basic char- acteristics between the time of settlement and the present day as has Dedham. In its earliest beginnings and through the pioneer period it was known as a sober-minded and solid community full of the well- recognized virtues of citizenship; and this reputation still endures, embodied in the substantial architecture of its center and the comfortable residential uniformity of its surrounding districts.

The permanent character of the town was determined at its very genesis by the character of the men who settled it. The Dedham settlers were not religious enthusiasts or sentimental visionaries. They cared for all

218

Main Street and Village Green

the solid respectable things of life. For many of them the new land promised primarily social and economic advancement. So they chose a place on a pleasant river, well watered by subsidiary streams, and blessed with a fruitful soil. The town covenant announced their purpose of being 'a loving and comfortable society.' And in the word 'comfort- able' they certainly meant to include physical comfort. It is significant that in their petition to the General Court they requested that their town should be named 'Contentment.' These were sober persons who wanted security, a congenial group, and the goods of life.

Moreover, the founders had a penchant for law and civic regulation. The Dedham town covenant antedated the first code of colony laws by several years.

Had the new town been situated on the shore, a spirit of adventure might have been stimulated. Men who go down to the sea in ships learn to take chances; the infinite variability of wind and sky and season accustoms them to change. No such salty alchemy wrought upon the men of Dedham. It was sheltered from the buffetings of circumstance. Even the Indian wars hardly touched it.

Other settlements of Massachusetts might be more conspicuous, self- assertive as leaders of Colonial development, finally revolutionary; the Dedhamites went sanely and solidly on their way, laying the foundations of a prosperous industrial and residential town.

TOUR - 6 m.

W. from Dedham Square on High St. (State 135).

I. The building of the Dedham Historical Society (open weekdays 2-5), 612 High St., erected in 1887, contains a collection which includes among many notable items, a mother-of-pearl tea chest, exquisitely carved, brought from China before 1775 and donated by the Quincy family; a Simon Willard clock with an unusual astronomical base made about 1780; wallpaper depicting a Roman chariot race, taken about 1819 from the dining-room of the Dickson House on High St .; and a steam jack in use about 1765 and probably the first steam machine in the country. The jack is composed of a water-compartment and an arrangement of cogs attached to a roasting-spit. The water-compartment was bedded in the fire on the hearth. As the water boiled, the spit turned and browned the roast. Among documents preserved in the vault is the original manuscript of a diary (1726-29, 1729-75) kept by Dr. Nathaniel Ames, Jr., the editor of an almanac which rivaled Benjamin Franklin's in popularity in its time.

2. The Thayer House (private), 618 High St., a two-story yellow-painted clapboarded structure with two chimneys, brick ends, and a small ell, has grown shabby with the passing years, during which four generations

219

Dedham

of Thayers have lived and died within it; but on the door gleams a brightly polished brass Masonic emblem placed there in 1831 by Dr. Elisha Thayer at the time of a national attack on the Masonic Order, when Dedham Masons were being stoned in the streets.

3. The Norfolk County Courthouse (1827) is an imposing edifice of gray stone with a dome and frontal columns. Within its walls have been pleaded many interesting cases. First of these was the controversy be- tween the Natick Indians and the town over certain lands occupied by the Indians. The latter won but Dedham was allotted 8000 acres in the west (now Deerfield) in compensation.

A second noteworthy trial centered around the Fisher Tavern, later to be known as the Ames Tavern and finally as the Woodward Tavern (see below). Dr. Nathaniel Ames, Sr., married a Fisher. By a series of four deaths in rapid succession, the last that of an infant, the tavern came into probate court. Ames brought suit for possession and won his case, the first ruling in Massachusetts by which a father inherited a deceased child's estate.

Of prime importance was the litigation culminating in 1818 with an historic decision of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, which gave to the Dedham Parish, rather than to the church fellowship, the right to elect ministers, and thus paved the way for the rise of Unitarianism in Massachusetts.

The most notorious of all Dedham trials was that of Sacco and Vanzetti before Judge Webster Thayer in 1921. The injection into the trial of political considerations, the quality of the testimony, the attitude of the judge, the dragging-out of the trial over six long years aroused a world- wide storm of denunciation from pulpit and press, resulting in the ap- pointment of a commission headed by ex-President Lowell of Harvard. The commission reported that it believed the trial had been fairly con- ducted and had reached a proper conclusion. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed following the publication of this report. But ten years after the case, a play based on it won the Pulitzer prize, and a brochure on the report of the Lowell Commission was circulated at the Harvard Tercentenary Celebration in 1936. 'Though the tomb is sealed, the dry bones still rattle,' said Heywood Broun.

4. A tablet on the Norfolk County Registry, another large gray stone building, across from the courthouse, commemorates the Site of Woodward (Fisher) Tavern, where was held the Suffolk Convention for the drawing- up of the Suffolk Resolves. The legend reads in part: 'They lighted the match that kindled the mighty conflagration of the American Revolution.' Another tablet marks this site as the Birthplace of Fisher Ames (1758- 1808), a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention and a distinguished Federalist, author of the Lucius Junius Brutus papers written in denunciation of Shays's Rebellion.

5. On the Church Green at the southeast corner of High and Court Sts. is the stone Base of the Pillar of Liberty, erected in 1766 by the Sons of

Bussey

Charles

US I

Curve

River

Washington

Z-

Maverick

Bridge

Mt Vernon

Ave

Eastern

Ave

Village

& Court

Washington

Providence

Central Ave

WIGWAM

WIGHT

POND

Highland

DEDHAM

Pike

TOUR

Elm St

Jersey St

Highland

Lowder

High

East

Whiting

Ames

High

22I

Dedham

Liberty to glorify William Pitt for his vigorous opposition to the Stamp Act.

6. The First Church in Dedham (Unitarian) fronts on the Church Green. A dignified and simple type of American Georgian architecture, built about 1768, it is painted white and has a steeple and two round-topped doors.

7. A tablet in front of the church marks the Site of the First Free Public School in America (built 1649) to be supported by general taxation.

8. The Haven House (open as Dedham Community House; tearoom), 669 High St., was built by Judge Samuel Haven in 1795. Two venerable English elms standing in front of the house were set out by the judge in 1789, when he graduated from college.

9. The Dexter House (private), 699 High St., was built about 1762 by Samuel Dexter, member of the Provincial Congress, 1774-75. The in- terior retains its 18th-century features including the beautiful staircase with elaborate balusters, high paneled wainscoting and ample fireplaces.

Retrace High St .; R. from High St. on Bullard St .; L. from Bullard St. into Village Ave.

IO. St. Paul's Episcopal Church is an impressive edifice of rough granite. Most of the buildings of the business section of Dover, an adjoining town, are tenants on 999-year leases of lands bequeathed to this church in 1757 by Samuel Colburn.

II. Horace Mann's Law Office (private), 74 Church St., diagonally op- posite St. Paul's Church across Village Square, is now a two-and-a-half- story, broad gabled dwelling; its original character has been lost by re- modeling. Horace Mann occupied it from 1828 until 1835, while he was a representative from Dedham in the General Court.

L. from Village Ave. into Court St .; straight ahead into Ames St.

12. The Powder House, opposite 162 Ames St., is perched on a rocky knoll. A tiny cube, hardly bigger than a large closet and surmounted by a (restored) conical roof, it was built in 1766 of bricks formed of clay from local pits and baked in a local kiln.

L. from Ames St. on Bridge St.

DEDHAM MAP INDEX

I. The Dedham Historical Society IO. St. Paul's Episcopal Church

2. Thayer House

3. Norfolk County Courthouse

4. Site of Woodward (Fisher) Tavern

5. Pillar of Liberty

6. First Church in Dedham

7. Site of first free public school

8. Haven House

9. Dexter House

II. Horace Mann's Law Office

12. Powder House

13. Noble and Greenough School

14. Fairbanks House

15. Avery Oak

16. Dedham Pottery

17. Mother Brook

222

Main Street and Village Green

13. Granite gateposts mark the entrance to the campus of the Noble and Greenough School for boys, a non-sectarian institution originally estab- lished (1886) in Boston as a preparatory school for Harvard. In 1917 the Volkmann School was combined with it, and in 1922 it moved to Dedham. Well worth an extra ten minutes is the drive along the charming wooded lane with views (R) of a picturesque main building set high on a rocky eminence like a luxurious castle with red tiled roof and (L) of athletic fields, modern new buildings, and a small lake.

Retrace Bridge St .; R. from Bridge St. into Ames St .; L. from Ames St. into High St .; cross Dedham Square; R. from High St. into Eastern Ave.

14. The Fairbanks House (open daily 9-6, Apr. 19 to Nov. 1; contribution expected) stands at the corner of East St. Set on a mound lawn and shaded by giant elm trees this long, low, faded brown house stretches along in three sections, its lower story massed by flowering shrubs. The roof sags in two deep curves on each side from the great central chimney and slopes almost to the ground in the rear. The central block, built in 1636, with two wings of different architecture added at a later date, is generally conceded to be the oldest frame house still standing in America. Like Dedham itself in 1936, it celebrated its 300th anniversary. Furnished with family heirlooms, it is a shrine for 6000 Fairbanks families in- corporated as descendants of the builder, Jonathan Fairbanks. Five doors lead from a small entrance hall to other parts of the dwelling. The step down into the kitchen is a simple log, worn concave by the feet of many generations of Fairbanks.

L. from Eastern Ave. into East St.

15. The Avery Oak, 80 feet in height and 16 feet in circumference, stand- ing on the lawn of a modern frame house (R) half a block down, is under the protection of the Dedham Historical Society. This patriarch of a vanished forest was 'marked' in its prime to be used in the construction of the frigate 'Constitution,' but the Averys refused to sell it.

R. from East St. into High St .; R. from High St. into Pottery Lane.

16. The Dedham Pottery (open, guide provided) is an attractive brick building within which is made, by secret process, a famous blue-and- white porcelain reminiscent of old Chinese crackleware.

Retrace Pottery Lane; L. from Pottery Lane into High St .; R. from High St. into Washington St .; L. from Washington St. into US 1.

17. Mother Brook, believed to be the first canal in America, connects the Charles and Neponset Rivers. The narrow channel, long unused now, was dug, according to the tablet, 'before 1640,' to provide water for the mills of the early settlers, and was the basis of the town's in- dustrial growth.

DEERFIELD . A Beautiful Ghost

Town: Alt. 204, pop. 2963, sett. 1673, incorp. 1677.

Railroad Stations: Memorial St., Deerfield and Elm Sts., South Deerfield, for B. & M. R.R.

Bus Stations: Elm St. for B. & M. Transportation Co .; Billings Drugstore for Blue Way Line.

Accommodations: One hotel open summer only, Deerfield; two hotels open all year, South Deerfield. Tourist houses.

Information: See Greenfield.

IF IT is no exaggeration to say that Deerfield is not so much a town as the ghost of a town, its dimness almost transparent, its quiet almost a cessation, it is essential to add that it is probably quite the most beautiful ghost of its kind, and with the deepest poetic and historic significance to be found in America. Salem, with its somber echoes of the witch hang- ings, of the brighter pages of the clipper-ship trade with the East, New Bedford with its whale-ships, Concord with its bold patriotism and its almost unexampled literary flowering - these all perhaps have a greater 'importance.' But Deerfield has something to say which none of these say, and says it perfectly. It is, and will probably always remain, the perfect and beautiful statement of the tragic and creative moment when one civilization is destroyed by another. And the wonderful ghostliness of this mile-long 'Street' of grave and ancient houses, the strange air of unreality which hangs over it, arises precisely from the fact that the little town is really saying two things at once. It is saying, 'I dared to be beautiful, even in the shadow of the wilderness'; but it is also saying, 'And the wilderness haunts me, the ghosts of a slain race are in my door- ways and clapboards, like a kind of death.'

The air of unreality, moreover, is simplified and heightened by the fact that Deerfield is one of those towns which have literally and completely been forgotten by time: it has fallen asleep. To all intents, nothing has happened there for two hundred years; and the whole history of its greatness is crowded into the first three decades of its existence, the violent and dreadful years from 1672 to 1704, when it was the northwest frontier of New England, the spearhead of English civilization in an un- known and hostile country. The town of Dedham having been awarded a grant of land in 1663 (see DEDHAM), the site of Deerfield was 'laid out' in the Pocumtuck country just west of the Connecticut River in 1665. Not a single Dedham man settled there until 1669, when Samuel Hinsdell of Dedham, a squatter, began the cultivation of the fertile soil, where the Pocumtucks had grown their corn and pumpkins and tobacco; and by 1672 Samson Frary and others had joined him. After

224

Main Street and Village Green

two expeditions to Boston, Hinsdell got the consent of the General Court to form a township.

A minister was procured and the little town throve. In 1673 it had twenty families, and two years later its population numbered 125. But seeming peace and prosperity were to prove only an illusion: with the outbreak of King Philip's War began the interminable series of Indian and French attacks on Deerfield which for thirty years kept its inhabi- tants in constant terror. The two most famous of these - the Bloody Brook massacre of 1675 and the great Deerfield raid of 1704 - practically emptied the town: the first, in fact, wholly, and the second of all save its garrison. In 1675 the garrison was withdrawn, the families were scat- tered among the towns lower in the valley, and for seven years Deerfield's houses were empty.

Not to be discouraged, the survivors in 1678 presented a petition to the General Court asking leave to return. They had their way, the town was re-established in 1682, and in 1686 was held its first town meeting. John Williams, destined to become Deerfield's most famous citizen, came to take over the church in the same year, induced by the handsome offer of 'sixteen cow-commons of meadow-land,' a 'homelott,' and a house 'forty-two foot long, twenty foot wide, with a lentoo.' Of Williams's part in the great raid of 1704, during Queen Anne's War, when half the town was burned, 49 inhabitants killed, and Williams himself with IIO others taken captive to Canada, it is sufficient here to say that Williams's own account of it in 'The Redeemed Captive' remains the best.

With its slow rehabilitation after the great raid, Deerfield had really ended its active life, and began to become the long reminiscence which it seems destined to be. Agriculturally, its importance died with the open- ing of the West, though it still grows its tobacco and cucumbers; a de- velopment of handicrafts late in the eighteenth century was of short duration; and a revival of them again in the early part of the present century - needlework, hand-weaving, basket-making - is only now (1937) making headway. Actually, the town's chief industry is its schools. Deerfield Academy is one of the oldest boarding-schools in the country : this and Eaglebrook, a preparatory school for boys, and Bement, co-educational, add about five hundred to the town's population.

TOUR - 1.5 m.

I. Old Deerfield Street, a mile long, contains none but old houses, most of them Colonial, beside a church, two schools, and a post-office. The shops of the town are elsewhere, and this one long street gives an effect of being the entire village, with glimpses of open country, fields, and far hills beyond. All the way along it, spreading elms, two hundred years old, form an arch; a setting once frequent in New England, but now rare. Some of the houses are singularly handsome and still prosperous; others

225

Deerfield

are plain but well tended; still others are on the verge of romantic decay. Two-leaf front doors, characteristic of the Connecticut Valley and rare elsewhere in New England, are to be seen here on many of the dwellings.

2. The Frary House (private), in the Town Square on the southeast corner of Old Deerfield and Memorial Sts., was built - at least its north end - in 1689, and was one of the very few to escape being burned in the most disastrous Indian raid of New England. It is a long, massive, L-shaped structure of two and a half stories, of unpainted, darkly weathered clap- boards, with a white portico, white sashes, and white dentiled cornice. Samson Frary, who built this old house, was murdered by the Indians. Later it became a Revolutionary tavern, where Benedict Arnold closed a contract which afforded his army much needed supplies.

N. from the Town Square on Old Deerfield St.

3. The Willard House (private), built in 1768 and sometimes called the Manse, is one of the loveliest houses in Deerfield, a square Georgian Colonial mansion of yellow clapboards with white trim, set imperiously on a banking, and adorned about its doorway and windows with all the decorative detail the general conception will stand. The curious gam- brel-roofed red ell in the rear was originally a separate building, the oldest in Deerfield. The Manse was the home of Dr. Samuel Willard, one of the ministers of the First Church across the way and a pioneer in the Unitarian movement in Massachusetts.

4. The Meeting House (Unitarian), built in 1824, was probably designed by Isaac Damon. The brick body of the church, with arched doorways, is surmounted by a pediment, roof, and closed cupola of wood, which lighten the somber dignity of the design.

5. The Joseph Stebbins House (private; about 1772), marked by a granite tablet in the grounds, is a massive three-and-a-half-story white Georgian Colonial house with wood quoins and gambrel roof. The front and side doorways match, except for an arched hood over the front door. Each has a top light of five panes cut in the rare pattern of a triple hood (sim- ilar to the tops of many old gravestones), the center hood rising above the two flanking ones.

6. The 'Indian House' Reproduction (open daily 9-12 and 1-5; adm. 10g), with its dark weathered timbers and second- and third-story overhangs, illustrates a special type of the earliest Colonial architecture. It takes its name from its survival of the Indian raid of 1704. The original house was torn down in 1848, but its door, with a hole caused by a tomahawk, may be seen at Memorial Hall. The present structure was erected in 1929 by the Deerfield Historical Society, and on a Millstone in the yard is inscribed the history of its predecessor. The rooms are furnished in Colonial style, and one of them contains an exhibit of handicraft and paintings by local artists.

7. Old Bloody Brook Tavern (open daily 9-12 and 1-5; adm. free), in the rear yard of the Indian House, is a long one-and-a-half-story frame build-

226

Main Street and Village Green

ing with giant central chimney, now the home of the Deerfield Art School. It was built prior to 1700, and was moved here from South Deerfield.

8. The Bardwell-Stebbins-Abercrombie House (private) is a charming two-and-a-half-story gray frame dwelling with a central chimney and a gabled roof. It sits on a banking above a field-stone wall. At the rear is a low ell porch, added later, but designed with the open arches of the early New England woodshed to conform to the style of the older part of the dwelling.

9. The Sheldon Homestead (open as an antique shop) is a two-and-a-half- story unpainted clapboarded structure. It was built in 1734, and has a gable roof, and a gambrel-roof ell. Its major interest, as often in Deerfield, is its narrow two-leaf front door, framed with ornamental pilasters.

IO. The Hinsdale House (visitors by permission) is a two-and-a-half-story frame house with hip roof, very well preserved, and interesting because of its unusual doorway, which has wide white paneling in the jambs and heads, framing a large fanlight and ornamental sidelights. The house was built in 1738 and remodeled in 1816.

Retrace Old Deerfield St .; R. from Old Deerfield St. on Albany Rd.

II. Deerfield Academy occupies several modern brick buildings in the Georgian style. It was established in 1797, and after several changes, including one period when it was a local public school, it is today one of the leading smaller preparatory schools for boys, having 275 resident students, in addition to day students.

12. The John Williams House (private) was built in 1707, a two-and-a- half-story brown frame dwelling of generous proportions and in a good state of preservation. The graceful and beautiful entrance has a broken- arch pediment over its two-leaf door. The house has a secret stairway. It belonged to the Rev. John Williams, 'The Redeemed Captive.'

13. The 'Little Brown House' (private) is a broad one-and-a-half-story unpainted clapboarded house with gable roof, interesting as an adaptation to a studio by means of a large window in the north front.

Retrace Albany Rd .; straight ahead from Albany Rd. on Memorial St.

14. Memorial Hall (open weekdays 9-12 and 1-5; adm. 10g) is a three- story brick building erected in 1798, the first building of Deerfield Acad- emy and now a museum of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association.

EVER E T T . Industrial Half-Sister

City: alt. 31, pop. 47,228, sett. 1649, incorp. town 1870, city 1892.

Railroad Stations: West Everett, West St .; Everett, off Broadway, for B. & M. R.R.

Bus Station: Glendale Square for B. & M., Grey Line, and Greyhound busses. Accommodations: Rooms in private houses.

Information: Board of Trade, National Bank Bldg.

EVERETT, an industrial city adjacent to Boston, today shows one hundred and forty-two manufactories with an employment roll of over five thousand, specializing mainly in coke and petroleum products, oils, chemicals, and shoes. Everett is the home of the New England Coke and Coal Company and the New England Fuel and Transportation Company, the latter one of the largest coal discharging plants in the east, with a storage capacity of two hundred thousand tons or more and with equipment to handle fifteen hundred tons hourly. Another of the city's notable enterprises is the Beacon Oil Company. A fleet of tankers plies constantly between the company's docks and Texas. Within the plant there is an underground storage room for one million barrels of crude petroleum; above ground are warehouses with storage facilities for 500,000 barrels of refined oil. The main supply of gas for Boston is manufactured on the Everett side of the Mystic River (but on Boston territory) by the Boston Consolidated Gas Company. A local plant of the General Electric Company turn's out castings, while another of du Pont de Nemours and Company produces a complete line of paints and varnishes. At the Mystic Iron Works may be seen in operation the only blast furnace in New England, and one of the few on the eastern seaboard. There are many other outstanding industrial firms.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 26

Author: Publication date: 1937 Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company Number of Pages: 802

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802