USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Malden > Memorial of the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Malden, Massachusetts, May, 1899 > Part 20
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It is a humble story, but in the great scheme of life and progress it may be as important as the story of the birth and rise of a. empire ; for in it, in its own humble degree, may be found the operation of
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forces that have made and unmade kingdoms and ruled the world. From the unpretending lives of common men, blindly reaching out for a hold upon better things, came great events.
Out from the crumbling crusts of stern and rigid creeds came the independence of the churches and the freedom of individual thought. The civil and ecclesiastical powers, stifling in their mutual servitude, burst the bonds which cramped them, and thenceforth walked together for the preservation of justice and liberty and the conservation of purity and truth. From the soil of the popular mind, made fertile by the blood of martyrs and harrowed by many woes, came a little plant that kings and rulers scorned ; but it bore a bud, a groping wish for liberty, that blossomed into the freedom of a people and the growth of a great empire, whose farthest bounds we of to-day are powerless to measure, and in which may lie hidden the leaven that in God's providence and time may give abiding life and peace to the struggling nations of the earth.
An uncouth wilderness, traversed by wild beasts and more savage men ; a few scattered plantations in the midst of a primal forest ; a sparse gathering of farmers struggling, year by year, with the bitter problems of life ; a little country town with some indications of grow- ing industries and a promise of better things ; a suburban and increas- ing community with the sounding wheels of larger industries and a people with a wider outlook and a firmer grasp upon the affairs of life ; a prosperous city, herself the mother of cities, a city of homes where dwell abundance and content, whose people hold in honor the better things of life, a home of intelligence, of public spirit, and private benefactions, of good-will and peace.
Such are the successive pictures which appear in the story of the growth of this old town ; and it is fitting that we welcome with loud acclaims and heartfelt joy the day which marks the close of her first quarter of a thousand years. In the enjoyment of present blessings, and in the anticipation of those that are to come, let us remember, with reverence, the lives and deeds of the fathers, who through priva- tions, by hard and earnest lives, in pain and blood, laid deep upon the firm rock of puritanic faith and principle those civil, religious, and educational institutions in which lie the glory of the past, the pride of the present, and the hope of the future.
The ode which followed the address of welcome was written for the occasion by one whose brain and pen have contributed much to the enjoyment and interest of many local public events. The circum- stances of its production are elsewhere stated. Its stirring lines were worthy of the day; and the familiar music, which for nearly forty years has held the power of exciting the enthusiasmn of the hearer, and
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has sounded above the din of many battle-fields, was rendered with spirit by the chorus, the immense audience rising and joining in the refrain with vigor.
THE ODE, BY JOHN LANGDON SULLIVAN, M.D. Music, The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Day of days, thy gala day is breaking, lovely Mystic Side ; Sun, with soft caressing splendor, shine from dawn to eventide, Smiling on our happy city, like a bridegroom on his bride ! Praise God, our fathers' God ;
Chorus : - Glory, glory, hallelujah, Praise God, our fathers' God.
Joy-bells peal and cannon thunder, mirth and music crown the scene ; Choral anthems of thanksgiving rise the roar and crash between ; For the promise of the future, for the blessings that have been, Praise God, our fathers' God ; etc.
Praise Him for a steepled city, where the scattered cabins stood, Din of labor, hum of traffic, where was once a silent wood ; Holy chime and chiding school-bell, praise the Giver of all good, Praise God, our fathers' God ; etc.
Praise him for the quenching of the fiery bolt that treason hurled, For our sires' immortal Charter, for the flag they first unfurled, Winning, while they wot not of it, freedom's battle for the world, Praise God, our fathers' God; etc.
THE PRESIDENT. - To one who, though not a native of Malden, was adopted by her in his youth and has ever since been her loyal son, has been assigned the duty of speaking of her life of two hundred and fifty years. Himself a descendant of a long line of Puritan ancestors, he has studied the lives and characters and has imbibed the spirit of the fathers. He who has served you in many honorable trusts needs no introduction to the people of Malden. To you, who have been long absent and are strangers to the later life of Malden, I have the pleasure of introducing the orator of the day, the Hon. Arthur H. Wellman.
ORATION, BY THE HON. ARTHUR HOLBROOK WELLMAN.
IT would not be possible in the brief time allotted to this service, even were I fitted for the task, to recount, to any considerable extent, the deeds of those who have dwelt in Malden ; but happily this is un- necessary. The history of Malden has been written by the loving hand of one of her own sons, and all who need to know concerning
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those who once lived in the places we call our own will owe a debt of gratitude to the masterly work of our honored fellow-citizen, Deloraine P. Corey.
Without attempting, therefore, any ambitious project, may I ask you to follow me, as in a brief and somewhat desultory and fragmen- tary way, I attempt to trace the growth and development of the spirit of liberty in a New England town.
The story of the early settlements along our coast begins across the sea. The great virgin queen, although she made some advance beyond her predecessors, still held fast to the old and kingly view that it was perilous to the throne to allow more than one form of religion in the kingdom. There were many of her subjects who desired to use a simpler form of worship than that adopted in the royal church, and to place more emphasis on a godly life than had been customary.
Prior to Elizabeth's time, many of these men had fled to the con- tinent to avoid persecution, and in her reign some of the Puritans, as they were then called in derision, asked leave to go to a " foreign and far country which lieth to the west from hence," that they might worship God as they were " in conscience persuaded by his word" they ought to do, but permission was not given, and they remained in England.
When, in 1603, James of Scotland took his seat upon the throne of the Tudors, it was hoped that, remembering the traditions of the land whence he had come, he would reverse, or at least modify, the policy of the queen who had signed the death-warrant of his beautiful but unfortunate mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. But the king soon showed how little relief the lovers of liberty were likely to get from him. " I will have none of that liberty as to ceremonies ; I will have one doctrine, one discipline, one religion, in substance and in cere- mony." "I will make them conform or I will harry them out of the land, or else worse." Thus spoke the king, and he was as good as his word. He forbade free discussion of religious matters in public, and those who for so many years had been looking forward to religious liberty in England reluctantly began to turn away from the land of their fathers. Some crossed to Holland and other European coun- tries, among them those who afterwards came as Pilgrims to Plymouth; others waited yet a little longer in England, hoping against hope for better days, but things looked darker rather than brighter after the second Stuart had ascended the throne.
In 1628, the Council for New England made a grant to some men who desired " to plant the gospel " in the western land. It was under this grant that Endicott came to Salem. The party interested in the settlement seems to have grown larger, and in 1629 they were formed
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into a corporation under the name of the " Governor and Company of the Mattachusetts Bay in Newe England." The territory covered in the charter was from three miles south of any part of Charles River and of Massachusetts Bay to three miles north of the Merrimac, and from the Atlantic on the east to the South Sea on the west. Others followed Endicott, and in 1630 Winthrop, having been elected gover- nor, brought over the charter. He landed at Salem, but later ex- plored the Mystic for a few miles from its mouth, and settled in Charlestown, whence he soon removed to Boston. Plantations sprang up in one place after another, and towns began to be formed, and soon people came over the Mystic from Charlestown.
Just when the first house was built on Mystic Side, or where it was located, is not known. Mr. Corey is convinced that it was in what is now Everett, either at Sweetser's Point or Moulton's Island. Be that as it may, we know that in 1640 there were houses in that neighbor- hood, and in 1648 dwellings were scattered from the Mystic near Charlestown (at Island End) to Wayte's Mount and beyond.
Let us pause for a moment to look at the little community. On the south, there was the marsh stretching down to the river ; beyond, to the north, perhaps some open uplands, and then, with the exception of a clearing here and there, came the great woodland reaching away over the Middlesex Fells and the country beyond to Saugus, Reading, Woburn, Concord, and the unknown wilderness to the west.
This forest, filled as it was with wild beasts and inhabited by the strange, fierce race of red men, must have seemed vast and terrible indeed to the little band of pioneers who had camped on its borders. Of this forest we have left one solitary surviving tree, still reaching up into the sunshine, tossing with exquisite grace or battling with the storm in magnificent strength as it did a quarter of a millennium ago, - the only living thing which we have reason to believe has remained in Malden from the beginning of the town, - the Dexter Elm.
The approaches to Malden in those days do not seem to have been intended to attract travel. If the people from Charlestown or Boston came for timber, as they often did, they would most likely have taken a boat up Malden River to Sandy Bank ; if in haste, they would have crossed either Penny Ferry or Winnisimmet Ferry, and have come by the winding path through Everett and by Bell Rock ; or one might have gone up on the south bank of the Mystic to the ford near Cradock's bridge, and then followed the Salem trail, which led over a part of what is now Clifton Street.
It is impossible for us in these times of ease and comfort to realize the stupendous labors of the early settlers on these lands. There were the trees to fell, the stumps and stones to remove, the sterile soil to fit for cultivation, and the roads to build. Do not forget that
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tools were few and rude ; that horses and oxen were scarce, so that the great part of this work must be done by actual physical human labor. Surprise is often expressed that our roads were not made straight, but the wonder is that they were built at all, and the stone walls running along beside the winding ways are silent monuments to these early toilers.
All these facts must be taken into consideration when we view these men. Their lives were not spent in parlors, in studies, in elegant houses of parliament, or in great cathedrals. They wrung a scanty living from these rocky hills by the sweat of their brows, and had little time left for the elegances or the amenities of life.
The first step toward municipal existence in this little community was taken in 1648, when the organization of a church was suggested. As none but members of a church could be admitted to the corpora- tion as freemen, or hold the more important offices, a town without a church was almost impossible. The church in Malden was probably organized a little before the town, which came into existence by an act consented to by the deputies just two hundred and fifty years ago yesterday.
The body which gave Malden its municipal existence was in form a private corporation, chartered by Charles I. The charter pro- vided for a governor, a deputy governor, and eighteen assistants, all to be elected annually by the freemen. At first, all freemen attended the annual meeting, but soon of necessity the idea of deputies to represent them was broached, and thus arose the second branch of the legislature. While the government of the colony was in the hands of a business corporation, there is little doubt that the leaders were look- ing beyond mere profits to a wider religious liberty.
In the early months of 1649, great events had taken place in Eng- land. In the month in which Malden was incorporated, the news reached the colony that England's king had been led out of his palace at Whitehall to the headsman's block, and that great, rugged man of iron, Oliver Cromwell, ruled in his stead ; and so it came to pass that for the first ten years in the history of the new town, the colony was left to do much as it pleased.
The number of inhabitants in Malden in 1649 could not have ex- ceeded a few hundred, and they were certainly not rich in this world's goods.
The first act of the municipality was probably the holding of a town meeting. What a treat it would be had we photographs of the scenes in that meeting, with the speeches taken by a phonograph ! We have not even a description of it, nor do we know where it was held. It may have been in the little meeting-house near Bell Rock, or it may have been in some farm-house. We may hazard pretty
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nearly what was done. The townsmen or selectmen were probably chosen, also constables, men to see to hog order, fence-viewers, and very soon, if not at the first meeting, a deputy to the Great and General Court. Thus started the form of local government which, substantially unchanged, lasted until, in 1881, Malden became a city, under an act of another Great and General Court, which had taken the place of the private corporation of 1649.
The questions before these town meetings in early times for the most part seem trivial, and the money value at stake was certainly small. At a time when the highest legislative body in the colony heard and reheard the questions arising out of the capture of a stray sow, giving seven days to a single hearing of the case, when the governor made the matter the subject of an address and a pamphlet, when magistrates, deputies, and even the towns themselves joined in wild tumult over the tremendous issue, what was the size of the matters, think you, which were debated in the little town of Malden?
Without venturing to discuss whence came the town meeting, we find it growing up in New England as the most natural form of local government under the circumstances. These people had left their homes beyond the sea, partly, at any rate, because the right to meet and talk over their religious views had been denied them. They sought to found churches, modelled after a plan they believed they had found in the New Testament, and this plan was democratic to the core. As freedom in religion was first in their thought, the church usually preceded the town, as in Malden. Some form of civil govern - ment in each community was a necessity. The general government under the charter could do little for the several plantations, and so in convenient centres the freemen from the vicinage met to govern themselves. It is not likely that they spent much time in looking back into history to search for models to guide them. They simply made use of such ideas as came to their minds from their experience in England, and did what under the exigencies in which they were placed seemed most fitting.
Those early town meetings in Malden, - what were they but little groups of poor, unlettered men, clad in uncouth, home-made garments, come together in some roughly constructed building, located almost beyond the pale of civilization, in an unknown corner of the world, to discuss in language so crude we of to-day should probably be unable to comprehend it, the petty business of a little settlement whose total wealth was doubtless less than one hundredth part of that of many a single citizen of Malden to-day. Yet we look almost with reverence on these assemblies and those like them, which have done so much to mould and guide the destiny of our nation.
In these gatherings, men learned to think on public affairs ; they
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intelligently criticised the acts of those attempting to control, and they did it the more justly because they in turn might be subjected to like criticism. They learned to detect sham and hypocrisy ; the dema- gogue did not thrive in open debate. Economy was a necessity ; the strictest honesty was insisted on. It was an attempt at self-rule with the ideal always in mind that government was for the good of all the people.
Those who in these meetings had guided the affairs of a town successfully had mastered the fundamental principles of free govern- ment, and also gained confidence in their ability to put those prin- ciples into practical operation. This sturdy independence showed it- self in the opposition which Andros met when he tried to tyrannize over the colony ; and he, on his part, showed how fully he appreciated the tendencies of the town meetings by prohibiting any town from holding more than one meeting a year.
In every crisis of affairs, the trend of the town meeting was toward freedom. In days when there were no newspapers and few books to be had, the town meeting was an educational institution planted in every community, where were tanght those things people most needed to know to help them to win civil liberty.
Let us make no mistake. A town meeting of ignorant, degraded, and vicious men would not have been a success. But our fathers were not such ; they believed there was something more in life than taking pleasure or getting gain ; they wished to found a state where they would be free to worship God in their own way; and this led them to feel that they must retain the power of government in their own hands.
They were deficient in many qualities of great value. But they had grasped grand, far-reaching ideas, and for them they were ready to sacrifice much which the world loves. To such men, the town meeting was a great opportunity. It was an apt and proper instru- ment in their hands to accomplish the ends they had in view. With- out New England men, the town meeting would never have won its great renown ; but had there been no town meeting, it is surely true that much of the unique glory of the land, of the Charles and the Mystic, of Plymouth Rock and Massachusetts Bay, would never have been.
The first important political contest in Malden related to a clergy- man. One great object in securing a town government was that the people might have religious worship without crossing the Mystic. To secure a minister, however, proved no easy task. At least nine calls were given and refused. But in 1650, Marmaduke Matthews preached in Malden, and was soon after ordained as minister. This was not done without protests from different churches and magis-
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trates, who had learned that Mr. Matthews was supposed to hold peculiar religious views. It was desired that the Malden people should " fforbeare ordination," but they, after requesting the objectors " to discover" to them " any sin either in Mr. Matthews or the church," and receiving no reply, went boldly forward.
Mr. Matthews soon preached sermons which were objected to by two of his congregation, who appear to have promptly reported to the authorities divers " weak and inconvenient expressions." The Great and General Court summoned Mr. Matthews to answer concern- ing " miscarriages of justice." The evidence seems to have related to the offensive expressions in the sermons. The two informers swore to what Mr. Matthews had said in his sermons. Mr. Matthews con- tradieted this evidence, and expounded his views at length, and five of the chief men of Malden stated under oath that what Mr. Matthews said as to his sermons was the truth.
Here, then, we find the Great and General Court trying the Malden pastor on intricate and abstruse problems of theology. So dark and deep were the points involved that no one at this day probably really knows, if any one ever did, what was the matter with Marmaduke Matthews. Under these circumstances, the legislature did what it has frequently sinee unwisely done (but never, perhaps, with less wisdom than in this case), - appointed a recess committee (possibly the first of its kind). Those who have followed the doings of such committees will not be surprised to learn that this particular committee convened at the famous tavern known as " The Shipp." A little later it was recorded that the colony had been put to "great trouble, charges and expenses in the hearing of the cause." Mr. Matthews was finally fined ten pounds for allowing himself to be ordained with- out sanction of churches or authorities, but as he had no property but books the fine does not seem to have been collected.
So far as this case was against an individual it has no great interest for us, but the Malden church was also summoned to appear for ordaining Mr. Matthews. The answer of the church is an able statement from the view of the Malden people, who seem to have been well-nigh unanimous in favor of the pastor, women as well as men taking part in the defence. They pleaded that they had offended against no law, and that " our laws allow eurie church ffree libertie of all the ordinances of god according to the rule of the scriptur and perticular ffree libertie of ellection & ordination of all their officers." The writers of this document showed their independence and their confidence that what they had done was legal. There seems to have been reason for this confidence. Joseph Hills, the first signer of the paper, had only a few years before been active in arranging for pub- lication an edition of the laws of the colony, and was undoubtedly
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FIRST CORPS CADETS, M. V. M. (1)
THE ESCORT
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familiar with the laws from the beginning, and he must have known that he was supported in his contention both by the Body of Liberties and the Cambridge Platform. This able defence, which was appa- rently unanswerable, produced little effect on the court, and the mem- bers of the church were fined fifty pounds. It was levied on the estates of three of the leading men of Malden, who were empowered to collect a fair proportion from the other members of the church who had consented to the ordination and had not given satisfaction. No money has ever been raised in Malden with more difficulty than this fine. The matter came before the court many times within a period of more than ten years, and it was long after the offending divine had left Malden and the colony that the last ten pounds of the fine were remitted, and the matter brought to an end.
This contest was a significant one. After the charter was brought by Winthrop to Massachusetts Bay, at first the magistrates exercised large power, but soon we find the freemen asserting their right to elect magistrates and to make laws. It was the freemen who insisted upon the adoption of that magnificent code called The Body of Liberties. The spirit of the code is seen in its preamble. "The free fruition of such liberties, Immunities and priveledges as humanity, Civilitie and Christianitie call for as due to every man in his place and proportions without impeachment and Infringement hath ever bene and ever will be the tranquillity and Stability of Churches and Commonwealths. And the deniall or deprivall thereof the distur- bance if not the ruine of both."
These men who thus pushed on to freedom came out of the local church and the town meetings, and the right of each church and town to govern itself rested in their minds upon the same foundation. The Malden people in the contest over Marmaduke Matthews were fighting for the independence of the individual church and also for local self-government. Heterodoxy was almost as unpopular then as it is popular to-day, so that the drift of opinion was naturally against Matthews ; but nevertheless there was a very respectable minority of deputies who saw the real issue and stood by the cause of freedom.
And when, a little later, a law was passed, apparently suggested by the Malden controversy, providing that no one should preach without the approval of the four nearest churches or of the county court, the protests were so earnest and numerous that a repeal soon followed. There is no reason to believe that the men and women of Malden, who fought so stubbornly for the right of church and town to choose their own minister and manage their own affairs, ever yielded their opinions so much as one hair's-breadth. In the battle in Malden they lost, but in the wider and greater conflict, which reached into the future, they won ; for the privileges for which they contended are
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