Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 41

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

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L. from State St. on Alton St.

30. Blunt Park is a grove with picnic tables and fireplaces, rustic shelters, and nature trails.

TAUNTON . Largest City for its Size

City: Alt. 37, pop. 37,355, sett. 1638, incorp. town 1639, city 1864.

Railroad Stations: Central Depot, corner of Cohannet and Washington Sts., for N.Y., N.H. & H. R.R .; Whittenton Station, Whittenton St. (flag stop). Bus Stations: City Square for Eastern Mass. Street Ry. and Greyhound Line. Accommodations: Six hotels.

Information: Chamber of Commerce, 35 Summer St.

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Main Street and Village Green

ABOUT the Green, an elm-fringed rectangle, is concentrated the business and civic life of Taunton; but for fifty square miles the city stretches out in fertile acres, broken by rocky outcrops and dotted by quiet residential sections and factories. Not excluding Greater Boston, Taunton is the largest city in point of area in Massachusetts. Its manufactures include textile machinery and products, machine drills and tools, marine engines, electrical specialties, minor hardware, silver jewelry, Britannia metal- ware and pewterware, stoves, stove linings, ceramic products, leather novelties, and medicines. But it has plenty of elbow room, and that is why despite its busy manufactures the city has an air of tranquil leisure and placidity.

Records are somewhat at variance as to the actual first settlers of Taun- ton. The city's seal, however, adopted January 1, 1865, bears on a central shield the figure of a woman negotiating with Indians, and above the shield the inscription ('Æneid,' I, 364), 'Dux Femina Facti' (A Woman was the Leader of the Things Accomplished). This commemorates an early proprietor, Elizabeth Poole, in whose hands tradition places a jack- knife and a peck of beans, regarded as symbolic of industry and agricul- ture.

The story of Taunton's 'Things Accomplished' dates back to the fisher- ies in Mill River, which had long been visited by the Indian tribes, and from which the first white settlers obtained their livelihood. It is quite possible that the stories of the fabulous herring-runs in April of each year, when the fish swarmed up the Cohannet and Taunton Rivers to spawn, attracted many of the first colonists. With the building of mills and the consequent pollution of the river waters the herring-runs diminished - a cause of bitter controversy between the fishermen and the early mill operators.

Some ten years after her alleged purchase of Cohannet, Elizabeth Poole formed a joint-stock company capitalized at six hundred pounds for the manufacture of bar iron; and in 1652 the town of Taunton imported three men from Braintree to assist in the erection of an iron bloomery, believed to be the first successful one in America, two previous ones in Quincy and Braintree having failed. The manufacture of bar iron and ironware was for many years one of the town's principal industries. During a scarcity of specie at the time of King Philip's War, when there were few Bank of England notes in circulation and no paper money had as yet been issued in Massachusetts, bar iron manufactured in Taunton became an accepted medium of exchange.

As early as 1684 the townsfolk replied to demands of Governor Andros for poll and property taxes that they did not 'feel free to raise money on the inhabitants without their own assent in assembly.' For transmitting this message the town clerk was fined twenty marks and held in jail for three months. On his release, however, his fellow townsmen presented him with one hundred acres of land.

In October, 1774, a Liberty Pole, 112 feet tall, was erected on the Green,

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bearing a Union Jack lettered with the words 'Liberty and Union; Union and Liberty'; and nailed to the pole was a bold declaration of the rights of the colonists as free and independent people. The claim is advanced locally that Taunton Green, and not Faneuil Hall in Boston, was the true 'Cradle of American Liberty.'

In 1699 the building of the first shipyard launched Taunton on its way to fame as a seaport. A lively coasting trade was soon built up. Small sloops and shallops of ten and twenty tons, laden with brick, hollow ware, and iron, sailed to Providence, Newport, and New York. As early as 1800 there was remonstrance against the construction of a bridge below the Weir because of the fact that sixteen coasting vessels were berthed above the Weir, which had, in the past year, freighted out 3,000,000 bricks, 800 tons of ironware, and 700 tons of nails. By the first decade of the nine- teenth century the name 'Taunton' was painted on the sterns of more ships than that of any other New England coastal town. The first multi- masted schooners along the coast were Taunton-built and owned.

After the Revolution, industries sprang up overnight, more than two hundred of them in the first half of the century. Among the more promi- nent were the manufacture of iron, bricks, cotton, paper, and boxboards. The Taunton Manufacturing Company, an early industrial syndicate, was organized in 1823 for rolling copper and iron and the manufacture of cotton and wool. Reed and Barton founded an extensive silverware and plated-ware works in 1824. Isaac Babbitt, the inventor of babbitt metal, and John Crossman in 1824 produced the first Britannia ware, used in inkstands, shaving boxes, and mirror frames. The Taunton Locomotive Company, which claims to be the first to manufacture locomotives in New England, began in 1846 and in 1883 added printing presses. The Weir Stove Company, now the Glenwood Range Company, one of the largest producers of stoves in the country, erected its first buildings in 1879. The Rogers Silverware Company, which enjoys an international reputation for fine silver, was incorporated in Taunton in 1883.

POINTS OF INTEREST

I. General Cobb Boulder, Taunton Green. At the September, 1786, term of the Common Pleas Court an armed mob in sympathy with Shays's Rebellion approached the courthouse and demanded that the court be not held. General Cobb, one of the justices, appeared on the steps and shouted: 'Away with your whining. I will hold this court if I hold it in blood; I will sit as a judge or die as a general.' The mob dispersed, but at the October sitting of the Supreme Court they assembled again. This time they found General Cobb ready for them with 400 men and a loaded cannon on the courthouse lawn. The General declared: ' If you want those papers, come and take them; but pass that line and I fire, and the blood

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be on your own head.' This was the last instance of armed resistance in Bristol County.

2. The Memorial to Elizabeth Poole in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, Crocker St., was erected by the women of Taunton.

3. A Giant Oak Tree, White St. and Somerset Ave., is known as King Philip's Oak, and is believed to be more than 400 years old.

4. The Glenwood Range Company (showroom only open), West Water St., also called the Weir Stove Company, is one of the largest manufacturing companies of its kind in the United States.

5. The Old Colony Historical Society (open Mon .- Fri. 10-12 and 1-4; adm. 25g), 66 Church Green, occupies the Old Bristol Academy building, de- signed in 1852 by Richard Upjohn, a New York architect. This was formerly one of the country's leading educational institutions. The field-piece used by the militia to disperse the rioters during Shays's Rebel- lion is here, together with much local historical material, portraits, mili- tary uniforms, swords, and guns.

6. A Statue of Robert Treat Paine, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, designed by Richard E. Brooks, stands on Summer Street. Paine, a native of Boston, studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1757. He moved to Taunton and married Sally Cobb of Attleboro. From 1773 to 1778 he was a member of the Massachusetts General Court, and served as a delegate to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

7. The Meeting House on Spring St., transitional in plan between the meeting house and church styles of architecture, was designed by Charles Bulfinch about 1789 and completed in 1793. Showing typical contem- porary design in the belfry and spire, the church is interesting as a step in Bulfinch's development of the façade with projecting porch, and for the cupola belfry characteristic of his work.

WALT H A M . City of Five-Score Industries

City: Alt. 48, pop. 40,557, sett. 1634, incorp. town 1738, city 1884.

Railroad Stations: Waltham North Station, off Lexington St., and Waltham Station, off Carter St., for B. & M. R.R.

Bus Stations: 66 Main St. for Greyhound Lines; 509 Moody St. for Berkshire Motor Coach.

Accommodations: Two hotels at reasonable rates.

Information: Chamber of Commerce, 657 Main St.

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Waltham

WALTHAM, the home of the world's largest watch factory, is a prosper- ous manufacturing city situated near the headwaters of the Charles River, nine miles west of Boston. Rugged and picturesque eminences skirt the northern and western limits of the city; wild forest growth, thriftily cultivated farm acreage, and well-kept estates, all watered by ponds, brooks, and rivers, diversify the pleasant scene. The thickly settled part of the city is built upon an undulating plain, surrounded by hills and bisected by the Charles River, which divides it into the North Side and the South Side, connected by a series of substantial bridges. The river itself is the central artery of the city life. Not only has it con- tributed natural beauty; it has also supplied excellent facilities for man- ufacturing and has been a dominant factor in Waltham's prosperity.

In 1738, after much agitation and considerable disagreement, the West Precinct of Watertown was incorporated as the township of Waltham, a name which means Forest Home, walt signifying a forest or wood, and ham a dwelling or home. As an outlying part of Watertown the growth of Waltham had been slow, but immediately following its birth as a separate town it began to thrive agriculturally, and so continued until, about the beginning of the nineteenth century, agriculture yielded to industry.

In 1813 the Boston Manufacturing Company was organized. This com- pany established a factory which was the first in America to manufacture raw cotton into finished cloth, carrying out the complete process under one roof. The enterprise prospered, and with it the town. In 1819 other mills arose, added to the original plant, and a bleachery was set up where cloth could be bleached by a chemical process.

There now sprang up various other manufacturing enterprises: an iron foundry; a laboratory where some of the first experiments were made with petroleum products; a factory for the manufacture of crayons, the invention of an ingenious citizen.

More important was the establishment in 1854 of the American Waltham Watch Company, which manufactured the first machine-made watches in the United States. This enterprise more than any other advanced the progress of Waltham, and extended its name over the civilized world.

At the present time there are one hundred and twenty-five industries engaged in the manufacture of such other diverse articles as knit goods, furniture, canoes, enamelware, plumbing supplies, paper, silk goods, silk screen art goods, traffic signs, vermin exterminators, salesbooks, shoes, batteries, and oil-burners.

Until about 1840 the population was entirely of native English stock, but with the change from a strictly agricultural community to a rapidly expanding industrial town, a supply of cheap labor became necessary. Accordingly such racial elements as the French, Irish, Poles, Russians, Jews, and Italians were brought into the town, with the ultimate result that of the present population about two-thirds are of foreign derivation.

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POINTS OF INTEREST

I. The Waltham Public Library (open weekdays 9-9), 735 Main St. (1915), is the work of Leland and Loring, and is a charming contemporary adaptation of the late Georgian style. In the Sears Room is a permanent collection of Woodburyana, the gift of the Misses Sears. Charles H. Wood- bury, born in Lynn in 1864, is one of America's noted marine artists.

2. Theodore Lyman House (private), Lyman St., screened by tall trees, is attractively situated on the shore of Lyman Pond. This manorial struc- ture, with two-story wings and hip roof, was built in 1798 from designs by Samuel McIntire. Like all his work, it shows strong Adam influence and is one of the few houses designed by McIntire outside of Salem. The severity of its masses is relieved by Ionic pilasters, roof balustrades, and much fine detail in the Adam manner. The east wing is an addition, and the house was altered in 1882.

3. The Old Mansion House (adm. 10g), Beaver St., stands on the hill of the Girl Scouts' Reservation, overlooking a maze of thick arborvitae, copied from the famous one made for Cardinal Wolsey at Hampton Court, England, in the sixteenth century.

4. The Walter E. Fernald School (open Wed. and Thurs. 2-5) (also known as the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded), Trapelo Rd., founded in 1848, is one of the oldest State institutions of its kind in the country, and was named for its first superintendent, a noted psychiatrist. It houses about 2000 mental defectives. Education goes through the first five grades and includes the following subjects: sense training, physi- cal training, music, dramatics, domestic science, and industrial training. The latter includes dressmaking, knitting, and beauty-parlor training for girls, and repair work, printing, and manual training for boys.

5. The Governor Christopher Gore House (open as tearoom, adm. 25¢), stands on Gore St., near Main St., behind an old stone wall, set back in a widespread lawn dotted with trees. As rebuilt between 1799 and 1804 it may be the work of Charles Bulfinch. It is among the comparatively few New England houses which exemplify the projecting elliptical salon derived from French influence. The main building with its two long low wings - about 200 feet in length - uses the salon as the focal point of the garden front. The façade of the entrance front is characterized by a triple arched doorway, and the long roof is surrounded by an eaves balus- trade illustrating the use, new at the time, of long solid panels with balus- ter openings only above the windows.

6. The buildings of the former Boston Manufacturing Company, between Elm and Moody Sts., which went into receivership in 1929, are now oc- cupied by several separate concerns. Here the No. 1 Mill (1813), now a shoe factory, still stands on the banks of the Charles, the first mill in the

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country in which all operations for making cotton were carried on under one roof.

In 18II Francis Cabot Lowell of Boston journeyed to Manchester, Eng- land, to study the cotton industry there. Although he was not allowed to make drawings of equipment, he successfully and ingeniously designed similar machinery from sheer memory. On his return he chose Waltham (1813) for the site of the Boston Manufacturing Company, which assumed at once an important place in American industry. At the height of its prosperity it had over 2000 looms with a daily capacity of 30 miles of cot- ton fabrics.

7. The red-brick buildings of the Waltham Watch Company (open daily 10-3), Crescent St., are also on the banks of the Charles River. In 1849 Aaron Dennison, one of the founders of the Dennison Manufacturing Company, and Edward Howard, who had previously tried to interest the former in making steam engines, established a partnership for the manu- facture of watches by machinery, the first attempt of the sort in America. Although there were industrial watch centers in Europe, in America the various parts were still produced by hand and assembled by single arti- sans. Dennison went to England; he also studied Eli Whitney's new methods as applied to the factory production of rifles with interchange- able parts; finally, after four years of labor and study, he and Howard were successful in designing and building a machine to create watch move- ments. In 1868 American companies began to manufacture other parts, such as dials, jewels, and hands. Such is the intricacy of the manufacture of watches that some of the fine parts have to be handled in wax and as- sembled under a microscope.

8. Perrine Quality Product Corporation (open), 55 Rumford Ave., manu- factured the batteries taken to Little America by Admiral Richard E. Byrd on his first trip.

9. The building of the Middlesex College of Medicine and Surgery (open) (chartered in 1850; moved to Waltham in 1928), South St., is an astonish- ing piece of architecture, styled as a Gothic castle and fashioned of vari- colored stones. Towers and cone-topped turrets rise high above the main body of the structure, while the rear is guarded by a high stone wall typical of those which surround ancient European castles. Stone stair- ways lead from the ground to the battlements above. From here a superb view reveals the industrial section of the city, flanked by a residential belt more and more sparsely settled toward the broad flat lowland fields and woods raggedly split by the upper reaches of the Charles River.

IO. Prospect Hill Park, Prospect Hill Rd., off Main St., a large wooded public reservation, is covered with small pines, oaks, and maples. It has two summits, one of which is the highest point in Greater Boston next to Great Blue Hill.

II. The City Hall, designed by Kilham, Hopkins and Greeley and built in 1925, is a fine contemporary adaptation of Georgian Colonial design.

WATERTOWN . Cradle of the Town Meeting

Town: Alt. 20, pop. 35,827, sett. 1630, incorp. 1630.

Railroad Station: Union Station, Market St., for B. & M. R.R. Bus Station: Watertown Square, for Greyhound, Victoria Coach, and Black Hawk Lines. B. & W. Lines are part of the National Trailways connecting the east and west coasts.

Accommodations: Rooming and boarding-houses. A few overnight tourist places. Information: Chamber of Commerce, 17 Main St.

WATERTOWN presents an example of a vigorous community cramped within boundaries no longer adequate to normal expansion. The original boundary included, besides the present town, the whole of Waltham and Weston, parts of Belmont and Cambridge, and the greater part of Lin- coln. Disagreement over the location of a meeting house led to the seces- sion of one faction to form Weston, and an argument relating to a school- house caused the origin of Waltham. Now Watertown is compressed into an area of approximately four square miles surrounding the falls of the Charles River.

It is a town in which the natural processes of growth maintain a wavering balance between the residential and industrial sections, and between racial groups. About one third of the inhabitants are descendants of American-born parents; a little less than one half are native born of foreign or mixed parentage, and about one sixth are foreign born. In all, thirty-five nations are represented, chief groups being the Irish, Italians, Canadians, English, and Armenians.

Though in material aspects resembling the rest of the Boston Metropoli- tan area, Watertown is distinguished by its spiritual fidelity to the past. Outwardly there is no semblance between these streets thickly lined with dwellings, stores, office-buildings, and factories and the cluster of primi- tive lean-tos scattered along the Charles River. Inwardly, the early Watertown spirit of impatience with prescribed forms and of self-determi- nation and self-expression in government exists both in the citizens' attitude and in the political symbol, the representative town meeting, which is still used.

The history of Watertown dates from 1630, when Governor Winthrop's fleet arrived in Massachusetts Bay with a thousand souls on board. The flagship 'Arbella' carried Lady Arbella Johnson and her husband, Sir Richard Saltonstall and his motherless children, the Reverend George Phillips, the Reverend Mr. Wilson, and others.

Exhausted, ill, and weakened by privations and disease, the company rested for a short while in Charlestown. Then they split into two congre-

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gations and signed two church convenants. One group removed to Boston with the Reverend Mr. Wilson; the other, numbering more than one hundred families, followed the Reverend Mr. Phillips, to make the first inland settlement of the Bay Colony. In the 'Arbella' they sailed up the Charles River to the fertile lands near the head of tidewater, which they chose for their first homestalls. Because it was so well watered, they named the region Watertown.

The falls of the Charles contributed natural water-power suitable for in -- dustrial development. Shortly after the settlement was established a mill and dam were built by Thomas Mayhew and Elder Edward How. In the nineteenth century the same source furnished power to the mills and factories making soap, candles, paper, tan bark, cotton warp, and cotton-sail duck for the merchant fleets of Salem and Boston. A laundry and a dye-house prospered beside the river, and an ice company was established. During this period the beauty of the Charles attracted many Boston merchants, who established pretentious estates on its shores.

Immediately after the Revolutionary War, during the era of depreciated currency and high taxes, when many Boston fortunes vanished, the citi- zens of Watertown remained secure, their capital firmly invested in land.

A tremendous impetus was given to industrial development in 1816 by the choice of a site on the Charles River at Watertown for the United States Arsenal. During the Civil War the Walker and Pratt Company of Watertown supplied the Union with ammunition and gun-carriage castings. By 1875, the population had increased to approximately six thousand, but there it hung until the opening of the Cambridge subway, in 1909, brought a flood of newcomers and gave fresh impetus to the town's industries.

The founders' democratic and liberal spirit predetermined the character of the community's institutions and conduct. Three men initiated a democracy of government which has been consistently followed. They were John Oldham, an exile from the Plymouth Colony, Sir Richard Saltonstall, and the Reverend George Phillips. Oldham realized the mis- takes that had been made in Plymouth - lack of democratic spirit, ab- sentee control by proprietors resident in England, and the aristocratic pretensions of a few citizens. He was determined that these mistakes should not be repeated in Watertown. The first Board of Selectmen was elected in August, 1634, Watertown disputing with Charlestown and Dor- chester the honor of having the first such board in New England.

Under the Reverend Mr. Phillips and his successor the early church was as democratic as the town meeting. For this reason the Watertown church was constantly under fire. That there were no Quaker hangings in Water- town was a matter of deep concern to those neighboring congregations who regarded themselves as God's appointed representatives. It was still more distressing to the pious that Watertown was completely free of super- natural affliction when surrounding communities were having an epi- demic of witches and highly satisfactory persecutions. Neighboring

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churches finally became so concerned that the Reverend Mr. Oaks, then pastor of the Watertown church, was invited to visit Salem Village and attend the witch trials there, no doubt in the hope that Watertown might be educated to know a witch when it saw one. The spectacle at Salem Village was most convincing and Mr. Oaks returned perplexed and grieved; but Satan continued to ignore Watertown.

During the pre-Revolutionary decade the town was aflame with revolt against British tyranny. Boston was full of Tories, and many Whigs fled to Watertown for refuge. Among these was Printer Edes, publisher of the inflammatory Boston Gazette and Country Journal, which sent out political news of a strong Whig bias all over the country. Setting up his shop near the bridge of Watertown, Edes worked there unmolested for more than a year, printing and distributing his subversive literature.

About the middle of the next century a citizen of Watertown, Benjamin Robbins Curtis, then an associate justice of the Supreme Court, gave the dissenting opinion in the Dred Scott Case. Later, when Congress im- peached Andrew Johnson, Curtis secured the President's acquittal.

Though it flowered late, Watertown had a period of distinguished culture. Early in the nineteenth century the Reverend Convers Francis's study be- came headquarters for the Transcendentalists. Here Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, and others met to talk with him and his sister Lydia Maria Francis, whose published works include an Indian romance, an epic poem, a cookbook, 'The Frugal Housewife,' and 'The Progress of Religious Ideas Through Successive Ages.' With her husband, Dr. Child, she joined the anti-slavery movement.

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Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 41

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