Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 32

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

USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people > Part 32

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Retrace on Orne St .; L. from Orne St. on Franklin St.

15. The Parson Barnard House (open by arrangement with its resident tenant), 7 Franklin St., was the home of Marblehead's second and most famous pastor, during his 54-year ministry from 1716 to 1770. It was Parson John Barnard who schooled the rude fishermen in the foreign commerce which brought such great prosperity to the town before the Revolution. And it was Parson Barnard who declined the presidency of Harvard University, referring the Committee of Invitation to his rival pastor in the town, the Rev. Edward Holyoke, who accepted. When Marblehead objected strenuously to losing either clergyman, Parson Barnard appeared in his colleague's pulpit and told the Holyoke flock in no uncertain terms how great was the honor to their leader. A visitor afterward inquired for Mr. Holyoke, and was told, 'Old Barnard prayed him away.

L. from Franklin St. on Front St.

16. Fort Sewall, at the end of Front St., was erected in 1742 and did good service in keeping the British at bay in the Revolution, but has long been abandoned to the pacific uses of a small seaside park.

Retrace on Front St.

17. The Old Tavern (open), 82 Front St., corner of Glover St., was built in 1680 and is now an antique shop. Its clapboards long held British shot fired at it from the harbor after a Marblehead patriot had disarmed several British officers in its bar by fencing with a mere stick against their rapiers.

R. from Front St. on Glover St.

18. General John Glover's House (private), II Glover St., built in 1762, bears a tablet recording the General's crossing of the Delaware and other military services. Glover was actually a sailor rather than a soldier, and his privateer vessel, the 'Hannah,' manned by Marble- headers, was the first ship of what came to be the American Navy.

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Medford

MOTOR TOUR - 4 m.

W. from Washington Square on Washington St .; L. from Washington St. on Atlantic Ave .; L. from Atlantic Ave. on Ocean Ave.

19. The Causeway and Bathing Beach (bathhouses) continue Ocean Ave. from Marblehead to Marblehead Neck. On the left is Marblehead Har- bor, gay in summer with yachts. On the right is the long sandy, shelving beach, facing Massachusetts Bay.

Ocean Ave. bears (R) around the ocean side of the Neck, which until the Civil War was one great cow pasture, dotted alongshore with an occasional fisherman's shack. It is now the home of an exclusive summer colony.

20. Outstanding among the residences at Marblehead Neck is the Gove House on Ocean Avenue, designed by Smith and Walker of Boston after the ancient Castle of Carcassonne in Southern France and built about 1934 for the daughter of Lydia Pinkham.

21. The Churn, on Ocean Ave., reached by an unmarked path leading through a field (R) where the latter makes a short turn west, is a fissure in the rocks at tide level from which under an east or northeast wind great billows of spray rise to a height sometimes of 50 feet.

22. Castle Rock, adjoining the Churn (R), a rugged granite bluff rising sheer from the sea, offers a beautiful ocean view with a long line of shore breakers.

L. from Ocean Ave. on Follett St.

23. The Lighthouse (open daily 10-12 and 2-4) is a circular iron tower at the tip of the Neck. From the rocks at its base is obtained the best view of the yacht races. Just offshore, northeast, is Children's Island, its rocky reaches covered with the buildings of a hospital for tubercular children.

MEDFORD. Rum, Ships, and Homes

City: Alt. 12, pop. 61,444, sett. 1630-35, incorp. town 1684, city 1892.

Railroad Stations: Tufts College, Boston Ave .; Medford Hillside, Boston Ave. and Winthrop St .; West Medford, High St., for Lowell Division of B. & M R.R.

Accommodations: Boarding and rooming houses; some tourist places.

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Main Street and Village Green

Swimming: Municipal pool, Tufts Park, Main St.

Riding: Bridle trails through Middlesex Fells Reservation.

Information: Public Library, 117 High St.

MEDFORD rum and Medford-built ships, once staples of world-wide repute, today are only legend. Still Medford thrives; a paradox accounted for by its proximity to Boston, its residential attractiveness, and a fine educational system reaching its climax geographically as well as peda- gogically in Tufts College. Its hustle and bustle over, today Medford has closed shop and settled back to its destiny as a community of homes.

In the early days of its settlement, rich loam near the river banks beck- oned farmers, and the surging tides of the Mystic River offered thriving fisheries. Shipbuilding was soon under way. John Winthrop, a year before settling on Ten Hills Farm at Somerville, had launched the 'Blessing of the Bay' at Medford. Then followed a century of depression, until the New England rum and slave trade sprang up.

Medford rum had its start when the Hall family set up a wooden still on the site of a spring, to which the special flavor of the rum was attrib- uted. The Hall formula, used for two hundred years, was finally de- stroyed by General Samuel C. Lawrence, when Medford distilling came to an end.

The navigable Mystic River was the direct cause of the other very substantial economic activity of Medford. Freighting produce to the State capital by boat became a bustling enterprise.

Medford developed into a supply shop for New Hampshire and Vermont, furnishing iron, steel, lead, salt, molasses, sugar, tea, codfish, chocolate, gunpowder, and rum at lower than Boston prices. In addition Medford merchants engaged directly in extensive trade with foreign and domestic ports. Barrel-making and slaughtering thrived.

One day in the year 1802, Thatcher Magoun, a youth on a holiday from a Charlestown shipyard, was rambling about Winter Hill. In a vision he saw a thriving shipyard on the river banks below him, himself its master. Excitedly he clattered down the hill and boarded a two-masted schooner lying alongside a distilling-house wharf. Breathlessly he plied the amazed captain with all sorts of questions. A year later he returned and laid the keel of his first ship.

Thatcher Magoun's project came at a critical moment. The English navigation laws, after the Revolution, ended American trade with the British West Indies, and New England merchants were frantically seeking new markets.

Finally Yankee ingenuity found a way out, in a new trade with China. Because their two hundred to three hundred ton capacity made possible the navigation of the shallow bays of the northwest coast, many Medford vessels were dispatched to the Pacific. 'Medford-built' found its way into the idiom of the sea.

28I

Medford

Such Medford builders as J. O. Curtis, Hayden and Cudworth, and S. Lapham had more fast California passages to their credit, in proportion to the number of clipper ships built, than those of any other town.

Sailing vessels became definitely unprofitable with the Civil War and the introduction of steamships. In 1873 the last Medford-built ship was launched. Nor did the distilleries long survive; by 1905 they, too, had ceased.

TOUR - 10.7 m.

W. from Medford Sq. on High St.

I. Three Hall Houses (private), homes of early Medford merchants and patriots, 45, 49, and 57 High St., offer an unusual chance to compare at close range varying details of Colonial architecture. No. 57, the most ornate, has the familiar broad, square lines and cornice of the prosperous town houses of the 18th century. No. 49 has a wood front and brick ends; U-shaped double end-chimneys which serve to add height and pride, and an ornamental rail across the sloping roof. No. 45, the smallest, of frame and clapboard, is the plainest.

R. from High St. on Governors Ave .; L. from Governors Ave. into South Border Rd.

2. Pine Hill is approached by a wooded lane (vehicles excluded) which skirts a small pond. A number of footpaths wind to the summit, from which there is an excellent view of the Mystic Valley.

3. Lawrence Observatory (marked footpath), an iron tower the summit of which is 310 feet above sea level, offers a beautiful panorama of pond- studded woodland and fields, with Medford and the Mystic River water- front in the foreground.

L. from South Border Rd. by foot on bridle path; R. from bridle path into first wagon path; L. from wagon path one-fourth mile to an open field.

4. A Cedar Tree, 15 ft. tall, growing out of a solid boulder, is a curious natural wonder. Its age is estimated at about 400 years.

Retrace on South Border Rd .; R. from South Border Rd. on Governors Ave .; R. from Governors Ave. on High St.

5. The Medford Public Library (open weekdays 9-9), 121 High St., formerly the residence of Thatcher Magoun 2d, was built in 1835. With- in are several autographed letters of George Washington written to Medford patriots; and one of the 100 existing copies of 'The Catalogue and Investigation in Jade,' edited by George F. Kunz, Tiffany expert in precious stones, for the estate of Heber Bishop, a Medford collector of jade.

6. The Charles Brooks House (private), 309 High St., is a notable ex-

Brookings

George

Powder House

College

Summer

South

High

Ave

Valley

Mystic

ystic

Ave

Salem

Oakland St

Cross St

Water

Webster

Fulton

Salem

Park

Tainter St

Riverside

Pembroke St

Washington

MEDFORD

Spring,

TOUR

Governors

Main

Ave

Forest

Hall Ave

Ave

Walnut St

River

Parkway

Central

Ave

Otis

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Medford

ample of the white wood front and brick-ends type, with a pair of chim- neys at each side.

7. The West Medford Railroad Station, West Medford Square, is a bizarre structure built about 1880. In its outside walls were embedded, when it was built, various glittering minerals and semi-precious jewels, a whale's tooth, fluted seashells, and an eroded boulder which is supposed to bear a natural resemblance to the head of George Washington. Unfortunately the building has been denuded of most of its jewels, which have been picked out of their cement bed by souvenir hunters.

8. The Route of Paul Revere to Lexington is indicated by a board on a tree at the corner of Grove and High Sts., with the following addendum: 'On Grove St. was the home of Rev. Edward Brooks where the returning Minute Men were served with food and chocolate, BUT NO TEA.'

L. from High St. into Boston Ave .; R. from Boston Ave. into College Ave.

9. Tufts College, co-educational, crowns the summit of the hill. It was founded in 1852 by Hosea Ballou 2d, nephew of the famous Universalist divine of the same name, with endowment funds and land given by Charles Tufts. The Goddard Chapel (1882-83), of early Gothic style, is built of field-stone.

At one time consisting only of Ballou Hall, the college now forms an impressive group.

In the Barnum Museum (open weekdays, 9-5; Sat. 9-12) is the famous showman's extensive zoological collection, including the stuffed hide of Jumbo, an elephant be- loved by the circus crowds of a past generation.

Tufts College had its origin primarily in the fact that dogmatic proselyting was an approved function of the 19th-century American college. When someone asked Charles Tufts of Somerville, a man of open mind in sympathy with liberal religion, what he intended to do with the windswept heights of Walnut Hill, in a prophetic flash, he answered, 'I will put a light on it!'

Courses are given in liberal arts, theology, engineering and law. Of particular interest is the recently founded Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy adminis- tered in co-operation with Harvard University. Training is offered for government foreign service, international business, and research in international relations.

Tufts College is now affiliated with Jackson College for women. The total enroll- ment of students is 2,104, including those in attendance at Tufts Medical and Dental Schools in Boston.

Retrace on College Ave .; R. from College Ave. into George St.

IO. The Usher Royall House (open May-Nov. daily except Mon. and Fri.

MEDFORD MAP INDEX

I. Three Hall Houses

2. Pine Hill

3. Lawrence Observatory

4. Cedar Tree

5. Medford Public Library

6. Charles Brooks House

9. Tufts College

IO. Usher Royall House

II. Craddock Bridge

12. Old Sawyer House

13. Peter Tufts House

284

Main Street and Village Green

1-5; adm. 25g) is at 15 George St. A three-story mansion, it derives from the Usher nucleus; it was built before 1697 and is one of the few existing brick houses of the 17th century. Successive alterations, mainly before 1750, have created a three-story mansion, the gabled brick ends terminat- ing in tall chimney stacks, the wooden west front rusticated and adorned with a colossal order, the angles decorated with quoins (among the earliest examples) and the windows richly framed, with cornices - one of the most elaborate dwellings of its period extant in Massachusetts.

L. from George St. into Main St.

II. Craddock Bridge, a small concrete span over the Mystic River, takes the place of a timbered draw said to have been the first toll bridge in New England. To the right are replacements of the docks from which ships were launched and the famous Medford Rum was exported.

R. from Main St. into Riverside Ave.

12. Old Sawyer House (private), 306 Riverside Ave., is an unpainted story-and-a-half dwelling, with clapboarded front, shingled sides, and central chimney, typical of the more modest Colonial dwellings. It is at least 200 years old, and its present resident is a descendant of the original owner.

13. The Peter Tufts House or 'Old Fort' (open on request; adm. 25g), 350 Riverside Ave., sometimes called the Craddock House, is a landmark dating from 1677-80. It is interesting to architects as one of the earliest brick houses built from the start with a depth of two rooms in each story. Porthole windows from which to fire revivify in the mind the terrors of Indian attack. Some antiquarians believe this to be the house built in 1638 for Governor Matthew Craddock.

NEW BEDFORD . Thar She Blows

City: Alt. 9, pop. 110,022, sett. 1640, incorp. town 1787, city 1847.

Railroad Stations: New Bedford Station, 624 Acushnet Ave .; New Bedford Wharf Station, 41 Front St .; Weld St. Station, 81 Weld St .; all for N.Y., N.H. & H. R.R.

Bus Stations: Middle St. for Union St. Ry. Co .; Vineyard Steamboat Line Dock, Front St., for New England Transportation Co .; 'Times Lot,' 911 Purchase St., for I.C.T. Bus Co.

Piers: Homer's Wharf, from II Front St. to Acushnet River, for New Bedford Cuttyhunk Line; Vineyard Steamboat Line, from 41 Front St. to Acushnet River, for the New Bedford, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Steamboat Line.

285

New Bedford

Accommodations: Three hotels, adequate modern inns and transient facilities. Information Service: Board of Commerce, Pleasant and William Sts .; New Bed- ford Auto Club, 628 Pleasant St.

NEW BEDFORD, once a famous whaling port, now a textile center at the mouth of the Acushnet River, is made up of a number of interesting contradictions. Gone are the whalers, but the harbor is still busy with small Portuguese fishing craft, with steamers plying between New Bed- ford and Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, and with coastwise freight- ers. New Bedford, once the fourth in the United States, is still a busy secondary port.

Even the mills, employing large numbers of English and French-Canadian operatives, have not destroyed this nautical flavor, perpetuated by a whaling museum, a seamen's Bethel, and substantial old houses once the homes of captains and wealthy traders. Twelve thousand Portuguese live in the town. 'The Crowning,' a Portuguese religious festival, takes place the sixth Sunday after Easter and any Sunday thereafter through- out the summer. It takes its name from the custom established by an early queen of Portugal who, legend reports, performed miraculous cures of the sick by placing her crown on their heads. A heavy silver crown, a replica of the queen's, is kept at one of the Portuguese churches for repetitions of these crownings, performed by a priest. 'The Charmarita,' the other annual festival, is a summer carnival and food fair, the proceeds of which go to the church.

Until its incorporation as New Bedford, 'Bedford Village' was a part of the town of Dartmouth. Up to 1760 there were no more than a dozen scattered farms in the village, the homes chiefly of Quakers from Rhode Island and Cape Cod. But Joseph Russell, known as the 'Father of New Bedford' because he gave it its name in honor of the Duke of Bedford, a relative, was already engaged in whaling on a small scale, and soon afterward Joseph Rotch arrived from Nantucket, extended the industry, and presently attracted shipbuilders including George Claghorn, later to build the U.S. Frigate 'Constitution' at Boston. New Bedford's first ship, the 'Dartmouth,' was launched in 1767. In 1773 she was one of the ships whose cargoes of tea were dumped into Boston Harbor on the eve of December 16.

The Revolution temporarily halted local expansion, and New Bedford saw the first clash between the British and the Colonials on water. Gen- eral Gage, isolated in Boston since April 19, 1775, had sent ships of war scouting southward for food supplies, and one of these, the 'Falcon,' seized two sloops in Vineyard Sound for use as decoys, and advanced slowly toward New Bedford. An unknown messenger made a gallant ride from Wareham with the news. Twenty-five men in a small vessel at once set out to intercept the British, and on May 14 and 15 captured both sloops, thereby discouraging the 'Falcon.' Thereafter, New Bedford Harbor was a rendezvous for American privateers, who turned the tables by preying upon British shipping. This fact prompted a British invasion

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Main Street and Village Green

of the town on September 5, 1778, with five thousand soldiers, who met with little resistance and who burned all patriot homes, vessels, and business houses, but spared those of the Tories.

Nantucket was the leading whaling port until after the War of 1812, but by 1820, with a population of 3947, New Bedford had outstripped it and thereafter led the industry, gradually absorbing almost the entire whaling of the Atlantic seaboard. The year 1845 saw New Bedford's greatest receipts from its fleet - 158,000 barrels of sperm oil, 272,000 barrels of whale oil, and 3,000,000 pounds of whalebone. Ten thousand seamen manned the ships.

While this industry brought wealth to certain sections, to the waterfront it brought rough living and exploited vice. A notorious district known as 'Hard Dig' was burned in 1826 by a mob of zealous citizens.

The discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania in 1857 spelled the doom of the whaling industry, hastened to some extent by the growing scarcity of whales. Today almost the entire product of blackfish oil (derived from a species of small whale and by sailors called porpoise jaw oil), a lubricant for clocks and watches, is refined here.

In the years just before the Civil War, New Bedford was a station of the Underground Railway for smuggling runaway slaves into Canada. Aboli- tion sentiments were fostered by the Quakers and by Frederick Douglass, a distinguished Negro orator, who aided in recruiting Colonel Robert Gould Shaw's Negro troops. New Bedford had a number of ships in the Stone Fleet which blockaded Southern ports by sinking vessels laden with granite at Southern harbor entrances.

The Wamsutta Mills, the first important textile plant, were chartered in 1846, but the industry grew slowly, owing to the fact that whaling was still dominant. New Bedford shared, however, in the New England textile boom of 1881-83, and from that time on the city was in the front rank as a manufacturer of fine cotton fabrics. Its mild damp climate is favorable to the handling of cotton.

About 1921 came the turn. Even before the general business depression of 1929, low-cost Southern production began to cut into New Bedford's business. A number of mills went into liquidation; others operated on greatly curtailed schedules, creating a major unemployment problem.

Matters were precipitated, April 9, 1928, by a ten per cent cut in the wages of all textile operatives except those of the Dartmouth and Beacon Mills. A six-months strike followed in which twenty-seven thousand workers were involved. About three thousand skilled workers in the Textile Council of the American Federation of Textile Operators joined with the United Textile Workers during the strike in order to gain the support of the American Federation of Labor. The more radical workers, chiefly unskilled and foreign-born, found leadership in the Textile Mill Committee, a national organization. During the course of the strike, the latter joined the vertically organized New Bedford Textile Workers'

287

New Bedford

Union, which later became the chief local of the National Textile Workers' Union, an industrial union.

A summary of national press comment showed practically unanimous country-wide sympathy with the workers. Settlement was eventually made on the basis of a five per cent reduction in wages, to be restored as soon as conditions might warrant; agreement by the manufacturers to give thirty days' notice of any future reductions; and agreement of the operatives to co-operate in a study designed to increase, if possible, the efficiency of production in the mills. Several plants, however, failed to resume operations and eventually went into liquidation.

Nevertheless, New Bedford's textile history is by no means a closed chapter. During readjustment a number of new industries have been at- tracted to the city, including needle industries employing thirty-five hundred in the manufacture of cotton garments.

In addition, the development of truck transportation has made New Bedford a modern fish-shipping center. Many fishing boats from Cape Cod waters which formerly unloaded their cargoes directly in Boston or New York now trans-ship their haul at New Bedford. Ten million pounds of fish were brought here in 1934.

FOOT TOUR - 1.5 m.

S. from Middle St. into Pleasant St.

I. The Public Library (1856) (open 9-9), between William and Market Sts., an impressive building fronted by massive columns, contains a col- lection of Quaker relics and whaling logs. Established in 1852, it is one of the oldest free public libraries in the country.

2. The Whaleman Statue, executed in granite by Bela Pratt, stands on the north side of the Library lawn. It was dedicated (1913) to the whaler's motto, 'A dead whale or a stove boat.'

L. from Pleasant St. into School St .; R. from School St. into Front St.

3. The Bourne Office Building, end of School St., is a large three-story stone survival with boarded windows, old-fashioned wooden shutters, and tightly locked doors. Jonathan Bourne, the most successful of all the whaling merchants, opened offices in this building in 1848. His counting-rooms, covered with the accumulated dust of half a century, remain today as he left them.

The first floor contained chandlery shops and storage rooms for whaling outfits. Lofts and rigging lofts occupied the upper stories; the counting- rooms were on the second floor, with counters and iron railings fencing off the tall mahogany desks at which the bookkeepers stood up, or sat on high stools. There were few luxuries. About the walls were models of whaleships and whaling prints.

Maxfield

North

Ave

(16)

Middle

Morgan

Union

Park

Ash

Arnold

(5)

Seventh

Is chool

Fr ont

Tremo

E Hawthorne

Pleasant

Purchase

Page St

Bedford

Allen

Grape St

Grin

nel St

Second

County

Acushnet

Rivet

Bonney

Cove

Ave

Ruth

CLARK'S COVE

Blvd

Mott St

NEW BEDFORD TOUR

Rodney French

Rock dale

Cove

Blvd

ACUSHNET

Bolton

"E Rodney French

RIVER

Oak

Dartmouth

Swift St

Spruce

289

New Bedford

In the heyday of whaling, oil casks were loaded upon the dock in front of the building, where they were carefully covered with seaweed to pre- vent the sun from drying them out and spreading the seams. A pen was then built around each collection until such time as a buyer could be found.

Retrace Front St.

4. Along the east side of Front St. is the Waterfront Area, centered about the State Pier, and utilized today by a large fishing fleet.

L. from Front St. into Union St .; R. from Union St. into Johnny Cake Hill. 5. On the crest of the hill stand the Museum of the Old Dartmouth Histori- cal Society, and the Bourne Whaling Museum (open daily; adm. 25¢). The chief exhibit here is a half-size reproduction of Jonathan Bourne's favorite vessel, the whaling bark 'Lagoda.' The main floor contains smaller models and half models of hulls made by master shipbuilders to guide their workmen. Around the walls are harpoons, darting guns, lances, and other implements used in the chase. There are examples of scrimshaw work made by the whalemen in their leisure time out of whales' teeth and bone. Six hundred logbooks reward research with an almost inexhaustible yield of local color and detail.

6. The Seamen's Bethel (open), facing the Museum, was dedicated on May 2, 1832, to give moral and religious inspiration to the thousands of sailors, native and foreign-born, who frequented the city. It was im- mortalized by Herman Melville in 'Moby Dick' and has been little changed since Melville's time. Still adorning the walls are the black- bordered, marble cenotaphs inscribed in terms of bitter and hopeless grief; still from the ship's-prow pulpit resound the chaplain's salty sermons.

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Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 32

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