USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Gloucester > Memorial of the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Gloucester, Mass. August, 1892 > Part 12
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The establishment of the State government and the general feel- ing of security which pervaded the people after the formation of the Union and the election of the first President, gave impulse to local as well as to national life. A new and vigorous period of enterprise emerges about 1790. The first Gloucester vessel goes to Surinam in this year, and thus begins a line of successful commerce which accounts for many of the three-storied square mansions which are still seen on our streets. The owners and captains of these vessels, and of those which touched many points in Europe and the West Indies, were the grandees of the town. So vigorous was the commercial spirit of these times that forty vessels were engaged in foreign commerce, and the registered tonnage was greater than in 1855.
Meantime the general life goes on. We get a custom-house and a post-office, with their respective officers. A semi-weekly, afterward a daily, line of stages connects us with the metropolis. The rage of party runs high. It seems as if the Guelphs and the Ghibellines are here. The war of 1812 divides the sentiment of the people, but the town is put into a state of defence, and gives no quarter to the enemy, who lands at various points on our coast. Some of our vessels are seized and property is pillaged. Our seamen are imprisoned - some are brutally treated and set free.
But after the war the fisheries revive. The bounty act of 1819 fires the sailor's heart, and the Gloucester Fish Company is founded with a capital of fifty thousand dollars. The town does not forget the times of yore, and has at least one grand holiday in Election Day, when the Gloucester Artillery exhibits its proud manœuvres, and the Drum Corps is out, and the engine companies parade, and the boys cele- brate with 'lection cake and root beer. The Gloucester Bank is formed, and gives, in the character of the men who incorporate it, a solid guarantee of its strength. The intellectual life of the town is quickened by the Gloucester Lyceum, which for more than thirty years
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maintains a high reputation through the ability of its speakers. Physi- cians of quality and character become domesticated in the town, and give to it a generous public interest. The quarries open their trade (1824), and in 1825 we have the first great year of the mackerel traffic, which enlarges until, in 1830, over four hundred and fifty thousand barrels are packed. There is no room for newspapers founded to ventilate small isms or cheap and vagrant political issues. But the Gloucester "Telegraph " appeared, and was the only journal for many years. Sunday schools nourish the children, and temperance societies begin their unending battle. Our first century closed with the division of the original parish. The second closes with the division of our original domain. Sandy Bay becomes the town of Rockport in 1840. The number of inhabitants in both places is about nine thousand.
The last fifty years have been the marvellous years in the history of Gloucester. The development has been too marked to need restate- ment to those whose life has been passed within these borders. A large part of the active career of the citizens whom I have the honor to address is included in the half century which comes to its close to-day. It is not wise to attempt to note all the specific lines of progress, nor is it necessary. The memory is the best historian. If memory be lacking, the monuments of growth are visible at every turn. The Gloucester of other days has been born again in this advancing era. New denominations of Christians, - the Catholic, the Episcopal, the Swedenborgian, -have been added to the religious circle, and the old denominations have enlarged and colonized, until now we number twenty-two places of worship. Even more noteworthy than the growth in religious life is the advance which has taken place in the matter of education. The two centuries preceding closed with schools probably comparable with those in the average town of the Commonwealth. Not lack of funds, so much as lack of definite and aggressive methods, full of intellectual fibre, has been the chief defect in the years which are gone.
In his history, Mr. Babson speaks of the change that was made in 1849, from the outgrown and incompetent district school system to the admirable form now in operation here. But his modesty prevented him from giving the public the full facts in the case, nor has any tongue or pen ascribed in anything like adequate measure, the praise due our accomplished historian for the remarkable work - even more extraor- dinary than his history, exact and exhaustive as it is - he performed in the renewal and readjustment of our common schools. In maturing this admirable service, Mr. Babson had valuable coadjutors, -indeed
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the whole town, inspired by a new intellectual impulse, rallied to his support. Education was the rising theme. The Gloucester Lyceum, then at its zenith, furnished a wide platform, and the finest thinkers and ablest instructors of that time spoke from its rostrum. Horace Mann was moving from one end of the State to the other, like a flame of fire, and broad-minded men who had caught the spirit of the free and universal scholarship of Germany were summoning Massachusetts to her opportunity. So strong was the public feeling in the matter, and such the confidence of the citizens in Mr. Babson's judicious leadership, that with an opposition too insignificant to be noticed, the old tardy system, long dead but not buried, was laid to its rest, and a new world began. If any one wonders how it happened that so many of our schools wear names suggestive of our local history, he need be reminded only that the gentleman who was largely instrumental in effecting the change in our schools is also he who knew better than any other citizen the story of the past of Gloucester, and whose labors, broken in upon only by the hand of death, have made every student of our annals a grateful debtor.
The spirit which fired the public heart in the days of the subser- vient Andros, and the deep patriotic life which bounded with firm pulse in the Revolutionary epoch, were again quickened in the sad tumult of our Civil War. True to her ancestral blood, Gloucester was on the march by land and on the deck at sea. The sombre honors of Memorial Day attest the reverent gratitude and pathetic love in which are enshrined the deeds of the loyal soldiers of the town, and the various monuments are the silent witness of our epic age. Here, as elsewhere, sections, parties, denominations, nationalities, - all were sub- merged in the dense, hot patriotism of the people. Our very rocks grew warm, and the hills smoked with the fire of consecration to the country.
On the morning of Monday, April 15 (1861), news came of the evacuation of Sumter and of Lincoln's call. On the evening of that day, Company G was recruited, and the next morning it left for the seat of war ; and there followed, in the army and navy, fifteen hundred men. It was the people's war, and the people have no prouder or dearer memory.
Our fisheries still are the fount of our commercial prosperity. The little boats which lay in the offing in 1623 have long since gone ashore, but they were the flag-ships of that vast fleet which now sails the seas with the home colors at the maintop, and brings to our port the riches of the deep.
In this year of grace our tonnage is thirty-four thousand seven
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hundred and twenty-two and one half tons, and the cargoes of fish will amount to ninety-four million pounds.
Misfortune has befallen us in Fortune Bay, and diplomacy has made sad havoc with our once crowded nets. But insistance on what we understand to be our rights, and a resolute determination to reinstate ourselves in them, will restore the high line and the ample fare.
The shadow of this picture of enterprise is that cast by the weeds of the widow, and the picture itself is marred by the tears of the fatherless. It is a bitter price we pay for the food we lay on the tables of the nation. The ocean is our mausoleum, and few are the hearts here which look upon its floods without a shudder. Who can count the pangs of trouble or weigh the deep mysterious secret of sorrow as we say that the sixty years of our greatest commercial prosperity have been at the cost of the lives of three thousand two hundred and twenty- four hardy men?
In manifold forms our local life has been enriched. Associations of research have stimulated the mind and societies of charity have refined the heart. Our newspapers have increased in number and in intellectual force. By rail and by transport we journey to the capital. The ancient well is superseded by the aqueduct, and the electric fires light our streets and propel the cars. The old town house still stands to remind us of the days when the town meeting was the supreme power, but in its place we have a commodious City Hall, while close beside it is an ancient and noble residence which, transformed by the generous gifts of one who never lost his interest in his old home, and who being dead yet speaketh, opens the Public Library to all the people.
The quarry builds the heart of Gloucester in public structures all over the land, and the stone cutter and fisherman and farmer and mechanic and merchant by their thrift and industry have swelled our population to twenty-five thousand and five hundred souls, and out of the small hamlet built a city. Wooed and won by the varied and enchanted scenery of the forest and of shore, the stranger from afar also dwells with us for a brief episode of rest and takes back with him to quiet his winter fatigue and discontent a summer dream of this ancient and happy town.
This is the Gloucester of the past. What shall be said in the brief moments which remain of the Gloucester of to-morrow?
We cherish high hopes for the future of our beloved city. We owe it to the buried workers of yesterday to build ever more grandly
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than did they. This is all consecrated ground. Not only is yonder burial place sacred, where so many of the known and of the unknown toilers now lie in the dust, but these lands and shores, these stony streets, these hills ribbed and stuffed with primeval rock, this ample harbor with its busy docks, all are sacred, for into them has been poured the best life our fathers had to give. Scant in income, they were fertile in device and generous in activity, and their work must continue. Not as well as they, but better, as comports with our improved appliances, our larger population, our increased wealth, our more varied industries, must we do, if we would make the centuries to be, more effective than those which are forever gone. First of all, it is due the pioneers, that this ancient plot of land, where now we are assembled, happily saved from the encroachments of architecture, should become the property of the public and be dedicated to the memory of the founders of the town. Here in the centre, surrounded by stately trees and in the midst of picturesque drives and attractive walks, should stand, as symbol of the earliest municipal life of our city, a statue, with pedestal of our own granite, of that exemplary man and sagacious leader, the Rev. Richard Blynman. His right hand should point toward the sea across whose waters he came to our lowly shore, while his face should be turned in silent thought toward the populous town, whose future lay in the wisdom of his creative mind. Thus should we pay a debt long due to the twin endeavor out of which our history has come. The park would preserve forever the " Fishermen's Field," and the statue would mark the abler beginning of that record of two centuries and one half, the leaves of whose sacred book we now close with the seal of history.
The old burial place has been rescued from the thorns and the vandals, and the reverend dead will be permitted to sleep in ground honored by our faithful care, even as they honored the life of which they made so important a part.
It seems fitting also that tablets of some enduring metal should mark the oldest and most historic places of the town. The probable location of the earliest meeting house, the Green where stood the second and the third churches, the sites occupied by the meeting houses of the second and third parishes, the spot where the first school- house stood, the Ellery house built and occupied for a time at least by the Rev. John White, who was settled in our First Parish in 1703, the Rogers mansion in which the minister of the Fourth Parish lived, and any and all of our oldest houses should thus be indicated. The land also on which " Tompson's frame " stood, if it can be made out, the dwell- ing place of Haraden, first settler of Annisquam, and in short every
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locality which possesses historic significance should tell its own story to the passer by.
We should remember, too, this is an age of roads. Massachusetts has put into the field - none too soon - a road commission for the improvement of the highways. In one of the quaint petitions, which the inhabitants of the town, through an honorable committee, pre- sented to the General Court in the last century (1760), respecting a bridge "over the Annisquam River att or neare ye place called Hodgkins Ferry," reference is had to the fact that the neck of land on which the town is situated is " verry rockey and mountinous" and consequently " the roades for more than five miles too and from ye Harbour ye most principall part of ye Town for Trade are very rockey and mountinus and incapable of ever being made Tollerably good." The hills do not look quite as high to our eye as they did to these venerable fathers who in their springless wagons were sadly tossed about as they moved to and from the centre of trade. But they would still find the roads " rockey," macadamized only as Nature in her rude way has done it. The next half century will witness the carrying for- ward on a large scale the work of improvement already happily begun. It seems surprising that the average New England town should allow itself to be surpassed at any point by the methods of the Roman Empire. Its local and transcontinental thoroughfares were built on a scientific plan and yet remain in Britain to spur the genius of a Telford. Our railroads are indeed our national highways, but nothing will ever take the place of the dray or the wagon. The summer tourist is everywhere and demands pleasant drives. The bicyclist is a civilizer, too. Good roads are not only an economy, they are an invitation and a rest.
A bad thoroughfare is as much behind the times as a " pinkey " or a " Chebacco boat" would be at the Grand Bank, or in the Bay of Chaleur.
In the matters of social and intellectual life, in the realms of edu- cation and religion, in the world of mechanical industry, in the brave enterprises of the sea, Gloucester will take no receding steps. Her face is toward improvement and the light. All her stars will burn with a brighter glow, and the essential factors in the life of a New England town will be nursed by intelligent and progressive men.
The forms of our national and of our local life may be changing, but its vital conditions will remain the same. Our elements are more composite than they were, but the foundations of the structure have not been altered.
The streams will move onward, even if the character of the waters
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be different. The formation of the land determines the trend of the current. The great principles of the past will still be operant in giv- ing direction to the movement of our social and civic affairs. In the ordering of Divine Providence great crises confront us. If they did not, we should grow limp and cease our vigilance. Emergencies are the parents of wisdom. It is the storm which teaches caution to the mariner. We have less to fear from impending perils than we have from the demagogue who wishes to make political capital out of them. The critical periods through which New England has safely passed have been more ominous than any which now threaten our domestic peace. The people still are the government, and the laws are the expression of their will. We must not invoke the aid of disorderly elements to quell disorder.
An able and intelligent and honest judiciary has always been the unerring safeguard of New England, and no great evil can long tor- ment us, unless our courts forget that they are ordained of God. Intelligence is power only as it is the friend of law, the handmaid of justice and equity. Suffuse it with moral life, and it will be like the angel who safely led Peter through the city; deprive it of ethical impulse, and Lucifer is as good a king. The old-fashioned virtues are accounted slow only by people who are fast. Wealth will not gather without thrift, and character will not come without personal honor. The traditions here are auspicious. Of great men we have had only a few, but of men eminent in moral worth, slow and solid in judgment, fixed in abiding convictions, brave and outspoken but not pretentious, rich in public interest and preciously fond of this quaint and homely and loyal town we have had and God has kindly given us, a full and noble share. Still may he bless us with such, and the Gloucester of to-morrow will be as successful as the Gloucester of yesterday. We shall take aboard no fear as we embark on the voyage of another century.
After an orchestral selection, "Tender and True," Moses, - Mr. Hiram Rich, a native of this city, and the cashier of the Cape Ann National Bank, then read the anniversary poem, the title being, " Day unto Day." The poem was a beautiful and touching tribute of affection and love to his native city and is as follows : -
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ANNIVERSARY POEM.
HIRAM RICH.
DAY UNTO DAY.
Gloucester (including Rockport), Cape Ann, Massachusetts. 1642=1892.
Let statue, picture, park, and hall, Ballad, flag, and festival, The past restore, the day adorn, And make to-morrow a new morn. - Emerson.
There was an island . . and sweet single roses. - Higginson's Journal, 1629.
When ships were divers leagues distant and had not made land, so fragrant and odoriferous was the land to the mariners, that they knew they were not far from the shore. - Scottow's Narrative.
I. "WE need a town," the Ages said, " Beyond the willing sea, Wherein to grow in other air Our infant, liberty.
" Though sorrow visit there the child, Though care may seek her door, Who hears her footfall once will hear And love it evermore.
" A homespun town we need," said they, " With honor in the web, And men who dare to build and sail, Let fortune flow or ebb.
" Divide your kingdoms where you may, Or hold the hills in fee, But lay no lien on the deep ! For all men own the sea."
LITERARY EXERCISES. Mr. Hiram Rich, Poet.
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II.
O mariners, who sail in quest, Untroubled there, the main, The deep-blue deep is all your own, -- What more is there to gain ?
What more is there to win, O ship? Ne'er let a chance persuade ! Thou 'rt sailing by a haven here As fine as God hath made.
Why sail this harbor by? Come in ! Some reef may be thy woe ; For thee the land hath waited long, For thee the roses blow.
The island-roses, captain bold, Invite thee and thy crew ; Their perfume is as sweet as if They drank of England's dew.
In vain, O valiant Captain Smith, Thy labors we invite : Now other hands will build the town And its proud records write.
III.
Old England had grown roses long As she had grown her men : Ah ! where were sweeter roses? Where Was manhood braver? When?
Old England gave her bravest, best, - Who else could rear the New? The land was not a land forlorn That grew the men she grew.
IV.
See Conant and his comrades build On this fair headland green ! Undoing all their hands have done, Alas ! they leave the scene.
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They leave the wilderness as wild As ever wildness were : Who now will build the town to stay And wear their heart for her?
V.
" Sweet single roses," blow your breath Beyond the harbor-line ! For men are sailing on a quest With thoughts of home and kine.
With thoughts of hearth and kine they come And cast their anehor down : These are the men with hope in hand To build your needed town.
Lured by a rose's breath, are these The men to hew and fell?
What armor of the soul have they To ward a witch's spell ?
They were the men to plant a town On this reluctant soil ;
The common weal was in their work As light is in the oil.
How soon they see in ev'ry oak The promise of a sill ! Their hearth-light in the pine they see, -- These men of sight and will.
In many a boulder, too, they seek The coming door-step stone ; How sweet to hew when what is hewn Becomes at once one's own !
And yet they thought it sweeter far To hear some brother's call, Then answer it and feel within, - One's own is not one's all.
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Saw they not more than hearth and sill. They had no sight, alas ! - The Lord they saw, as men should see, - For men are more than grass.
And so they builded to the Lord : They knew when all is known, Or give or keep, or sow or sing, One's all is not one's own.
VI.
O single roses, sweet, that lured These sailing men to land, - These men with sight and will to see, With hope in either hand, -
We thank thee for the men who threw Their idle anchor down, - Who felt thee as a breath of home, - Whose love begat our town.
VII.
O fields of by-gone battle-days, Where hold you now her sons? -
"'T was here the maddest charge was made That ever silenced guns :
"The day was deathful here, O God ! The turf is sweet and dear : Cape Ann, the tide of battle turned, - Thy fallen sons lie here."
O favored field, complete thy tale ! Was that day lost or won?
"No day was ever lost by him Who fell with duty done."
O famous field, bethink once more ! Was the day won or lost ? -
" The doubtful day is never won By those who count the cost !"
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Hear, hear, old Cape, from fields renowned Comes home the proud reply, - " Thy sons make sweet the turf they trod, And lustrous where they lie."
VIII.
Men know thy hidden grief, O Cape, Whose losses leave no scar : Thy looked-for sons who come no more, - By the sea ennobled are.
IX.
Ah ! truant sons and daughters, now, What shall your province be? -
A thousand hearts are here as one, - Keep you the happy key !
For you the lanes are all in bloom To lead where once they led ; You seek no by-way here alone, - To-day there are no dead.
Float down the golden harbor-tide Within the sunset glow ! The snowy squadrons cloud the bay, - For you their pennons flow.
Dream over all your dreams ! Beyond Their hills of lavender Are sails that never nearer come, - The ships that ever were, -
The dream-bound ships that seem to wait For something from the hills ; The lucky wind, that knows their need, To-day their coming wills.
O, seaport, look ! thy craft are not The waiting wealth of dreams, For flight is in their supple sails And sinew in their beams.
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X.
O, city dear, thy hammers find A purpose in the stone : Thy weal and woe are in the sea, - The sea, that mocks thy moan.
Come woe or weal, thy women mate Thy well-rewarded men : Now, where is woman dearer? Where Was manhood braver? When?
XI.
O, brothers, sisters, have we built As He would have us build? Hath heart or hand been loth to turn From heart or hand unfilled ?
Our fathers builded in their day Not for the day alone ; Their common love the common weal, Day unto day hath shown.
XII. " O, sons of mine, thy Cape hath been For centuries my stay ; Go, serve her well and love her well," - Let Massachusetts say !
Aye, Massachusetts, mother dear, We will be all we may ; - God keep thee, rare old COMMONWEALTH, From border-line to bay ! AUG. 24, 1892.
The chorus then sung, "To Thee, O Country," and the orchestra followed with the selection, " La Gioconda," by Ponchiello. Following came the original ode, written by Henry C. L. Haskell, Esq., entitled, "The Granite Shores of Cape Ann," the music by Osborne W. Lane, Esq., both being of Gloucester birth.
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ORIGINAL ODE. " THE GRANITE SHORES OF CAPE ANN."
BY HENRY C. L. HASKELL.
We can hear, if we listen, the music they make Rolling in, in their power and pride, The blue-crested billows that swell and that break Where old Glo'ster sits throned by the tide. What scene can be fairer, in Summer's warm ray, Beneath the clear sky's azure span, Than this pleasant picture that greets us to-day - The granite-rimmed shores of Cape Ann.
Upon roof and on spire, on valley and hill, The sun of the Summer looks down ; Her children have gathered with pulses that thrill With love for the sea-bordered town, And the faces of those who've been wanderers long Once more the salt sea zephyrs fan ;
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