USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Middlesex County manual, history from 1878 > Part 4
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*On Indian Civilization, see Mallory's Calender of the Dakota Nation.
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Territory-Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, etc .- with that at the time of their inspection by Commissioners John D. Lang and Samuel Taylor thirty-five years ago. The result shows a most gratifying and surprising advance. The array of facts and figures proves that in agricultural wealth, good order in self- government, education, and even religion, those Indians who have been left for even a compara- tively short period without being driven to desperation by governmental injustice and white incursions, can stand a favorable comparison with our average frontier population.
The New York Nation ( No. 642 ) com- mends this lecture as "one of the recent works about our native American race which show sense instead of sentiment, and observation of facts instead of theorizing about the red man being fere naturæ and withering at contact with the white." Referring to the increase in our Indian population, the Nation adds : "This truth, when appreciated by the people and Con- gress, will do much to require a permanent improvement in our Indian policy. While the civilization of the race seemed hopeless and their extinction imminent, their claims might be slighted, but not when they certainly can be made a considerable and useful part of the com-
.
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF
munity. The plan hitherto has been a mere temporary adjustment of pressing difficulties for the supposed advantage of Government or selfish greed of speculators ; now it must be the preservation, reclamation, and final elevation to citizenship of the race entrusted to our national custody. If that race can furnish, with no unreasonable delay, a goodly number of tax- paying citizens, it is obviously better than to expend both citizens and treasure in wars occasioned by unjust coercion, dishonoring our character both for integrity and good judgment."
No one has yet attempted to trace the many correspondences in the lives of the Rev. John Eliot and the Rev. John Wesley. But in their zeal for the salvation of men, and especially of the Indians; in their lives of unremitting toil as preachers ; in their devotion to learning and to literary labor; in that genius which makes man supreme above his accidents, and enables him to project plans of usefulness and beneficence which live for ages,-in these and in many other things, Eliot and Wesley were remarkably alike. The mild Calvinism of Eliot could not have been offensive to the Arminian- ism of Wesley who gave such a wealth of love to Whitefield. It is a wonder the great Meth- odist body have not claimed Eliot as an earlier
THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX. 67
Methodist-as one born, like the apostle of old, "out of due time."
The biographer of the immortal Wesley, referring to his employment of lay preachers, says : "The step he took was momentous ; and marvelous is the fact that the very Church, which so branded him for such a departure from Church order, is now actually copying his example." He thinks it a notable incident, that in May, 1869, "Dr. Jackson, Bishop of London, formally authorized eight laymen to read prayers, and to read and explain the Holy Scriptures, and to conduct religious services for the poor in schools, and mission rooms, and in the open air."" Yet this was no more than Eliot had done several generations before.
The catholicity of Eliot was exemplified in the visit which he received from the Rev. Gabriel Druillettes, the Roman Catholic missionary to the Indians on the Kennebec River, of which visit another Roman Catholic missionary gives the following account :---
Dans ce voyage le Père visita, à Roxbury, le ministre Eliot, appelé par les Anglais l'apôtre des sauvages. Ce ministre dut être fort étonné en voyant le missionnaire Jésuite, qui parlait la langue sauvage aussi bien que les sauvages
*Tyerman's Life of Wesley, vol. 1, p. 371.
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF
eux-mêmes et dont "l'habit et l'équipage le rapprochaient plus d'un sauvage que d'un Français de médiocre condition." Cependant il le reçut avec bienveillance; "Le Ministre," écrit le Père, "nommé maître Héliot, qui ensei- gnait quelques sauvages, me retint chez lui, à , cause qua la nuit me surprenait, et me traita avec respect et affection, et me pria de passer l'hiver avec lui."
Il visita anssi quelques bourgades sauvages. Il put s'entretenir longuement avec ces sauvages parcequ'ils parlaient la même langue que les Abénakis." **
How great was the joy of these saintly men, on finding that the language of their copper- colored converts, on the Merrimack, and on the Kennebec, was one and the same.
When the Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury, a graduate of the Theological Seminary at Andover, and the first Indian missionary of the American Board, began his labors among the Chickasaws and Choctaws, on the Yazoo River, in 1818, he remembered "the Apostle of the Indians," and called the town Eliot.+
*Histoire des Abenakis, depuis 1605 jusqu'a nos jours. Par L'Abbe J. A. Maurault.
+See Bartlett's Historical Sketch of the Missions of the American Board among the North American Indians.
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THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX.
The generous General Gookin was severely censured by the General Court for licensing the "Imitation of Christ," of Thomas A'Kempis, of which Joseph Cook, the exponent of modern Orthodoxy, says :- "A sweet aroma breathes from it as from the earliest and most modest of the spring blossoms. A Romish work, if you please, but none the worse for that, so far as its devotional side is concerned. It it adopted everywhere by Protestantism, and linked, there- fore, to all ages, Romish and Protestant, back to the day when there was neither Romanist nor Protestant." This book was a favorite one of John Wesley, and strongly recommended by him to the Methodists.
In the early days of Middlesex, the affairs of the County were managed with great pru- dence and economy. There were checks upon expenditures, which, had they been continued, might have saved us from the losses and disgraces incident to the County Tweedism of more recent years. The regulations touching these affairs are found in the fourth volume of the Colony Records, (pages 184-186,) and deserve perusal and reperusal.
In 1685, power for the probate of wills and the settement of estates was conferred upon the County Courts. This business, which had been
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very loosely done before, continued to be transacted in a slip-shod manner until the time of Sir Edmund Andross. Whatever errors are chargeable to Governor Andross, we owe to him the method of procedure which has been practiced ever since his time in the probate of wills and in the granting of administrations. It is a modification of the practice which obtained at Doctors' Commons in England, with which Andross was familiar.
In the general rehabilitation of damaged reputations in our times, and when the dust has been brushed away from so many famous urns, I wonder that no advocate has yet moved to set aside the verdict of the people against Sir Ed- mund Andross. All the judgments of History are subject to perpetual appeal. Sir Edmund had the misfortune to be "born out of due time." Like Daniel Webster on another occasion, he spoke and acted, "not as a Massachusetts man, or as a Northern man, but as an American," struggling for an American Union : and under his ill-starred administration, all the Colonies from Nova Scotia to Maryland were united under one government. This is not the place to white- wash this long-departed and much-defamed Governor. I only allude to him to foretell the coming of one who will do for Andross what
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Walpole did for Richard the Third, and what Mr. Froude has done for Henry the Eighth.
The Courts of Common Pleas for this County were held by the Deputy Governor and Assistants until October, 1692, when a Court, consisting of a Chief Justice and sundry Justices of the Peace, was held for a single term, and its first regular term after its organization under the Province Charter seems to have been held De- cember 13, 1692. For several terms however, after that, for some reason, three or more Jus- tices of the Peace sat with the regular Judges when they held the court, though this custom was soon discontinued.
The first County Court House in Cam- bridge# was burned in 1671, with a volume of the County Court Records-1663-1671.
The following roll of the Judges of the old Middlesex Court of Common Pleas, with the dates showing when they began, and when they ceased, to serve, prior to the Revolution, was prepared by Judge Washburn, formerly of Lowell ; but I have taken the liberty to correct various errors, and supply various omissions, made by him, he not having the original records.t
*The present County Court House in East Cambridge was ereeted in 1816. Prior to that time the County buildings at Cambridge were located at Harvard Square. tJudicial History of Massachusetts, pp. 337-344.
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John Phillips, December 7, 1692, to 1715. James Russell, December 7, 1692, to 1709. Joseph Lynde, December 7, 1692, to 1719. Samuel Hayman, December 7, 1692, to 1702. Jonathan Tyng, July, 1702, to 1719. Francis Foxcroft, June, 1709, to 1719.
Jonathan Remington, December, 1715, to 1733. Jonathan Dowse, June, 1719, to 1741. Charles Chambers, June, 1719, to 1739. Francis Fulham, June, 1719, to 1755.
Thomas Greaves, 1733, to 1738, and from 1739 to 1747.
Francis Foxcroft, March 1737, to 1764. Samuel Danforth. July 1741, to Revolution.
Chambers Russell, August 1747, to 1752. Andrew Boardman, April 1752, to 1769. William Lawrence, June 1755, to 1763. John Tyng, September 1763, to Revolution. Richard Foster, March 1764, to 1771. Joseph Lee, May, 1769, to Revolution. James Russell, May, 1771, to Revolution .*
Charlestown, in which the first Courts were held in Middlesex, continued to be one of the regular places for holding courts till 1775. Regular terms of the Courts were held at Con- cord, from 1692 to 1859, and at Groton from 1778 to 1796. Lowell, I may here add, became one of the places for holding Courts in 1837.
*Whitmore says the last term of this Court was held May 21, 1774. Mass. Civil List, p. 88. Washburn says, Commissious were issued, on November 2, 1775, to John Tyng, of Dunstable, Henry Gardner, of Stowe, Samuel P. Savage, of Weston, and John Remington. The Post- Revolutionary Judges of this Court will appear elsewhere in this Manual.
73
THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX.
The military events which took place in Middlesex during the War of the Revolution- the expedition of Major Pitcairn to Concord and the battle of Bunker Hill -- belong to National History rather than to County Annals ; and (like the fight at Sudbury and the massacre at Bloody Brook in Phillip's War), they have been told too often to require rehearsal here. I prefer paths less trodden by others-some of them, indeed, never traversed before-away from the noise of the bugles of battle, "the thunder of the cap- tains, and the shouting."
The Revolutionary War was followed by even greater stagnation in business than has occurred since the Civil War. The States and the Nation, municipal corporations and indi- viduals, were groaning under the burden of debt. Thousands of farmers, though owning extensive farms, were destitute of money, and powerless to save their farms from mortgages or from seizure under process of law. These and other evils were keenly felt by the people. The Commonwealth was in commotion.
Middlesex County was profoundly stirred ; still more were Worcester , and the Western Counties, which sprang from her prolific loins.
Conventions were held at Groton and at Concord, as well as at Worcester and other
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF
towns ; and organized movements were made to prevent the sitting of the courts, and thereby delay the entry of judgments against im- pecunious defendants.
How great was the distress, was partly indicated by the fact that, whereas only 120 actions were entered at the November term of the Court of Common Pleas in 1782, (which I assume to have been about an average number,) -no less than 360 actions were entered at the March term of that Court in 1786.
At three terms of the Court of Common Pleas, in 1784, there were entered 978 writs, and in the following year, 845 writs.
On the 12th of September, 1786, during Shay's Rebellion, an insurgent force of two hundred men took possession of the court house at Concord to prevent the sitting of the Court of Common Pleas there, in which they succeeded.
But the General Court at once passed a resolve providing that all actions and appeals which should have been returned and entered at that time, should be returned and entered at the November term of the same Court. So that the insurgents gained little by thus obstructing the Court.
As other counties suffered more than Mid- dlesex so in other counties the resistance to the
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THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX.
foreclosure laws was greater than in Middlesex : yet there is not a town of old Middlesex but might boast -.-
"Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood."
It has long been the custom to treat the "Shay's Rebellion" as a movement of knaves and fools. This is a shallow view of it. There was great and wide-spread distress. The natu- ral reaction of the Revolution came with a force a thousand-fold augmented by the burdens and the evils which that Revolution involved. Those who have suffered, or are now suffering, from the results of our Civil War, will appreciate the sentiments which found wild expression in "Shay's Rebellion." If Shays, Wheeler, Par- sons and Day, are to be stoned by any body, they certainly ought not to be stoned by those who passed the Savings Bank Stay Law of 1878, which is said to have been drawn by Charles R. Train, Attorney General of the State, and Counsel for the Home Savings Bank, and which is facetiously entitled "An Act for the better Protection of Depositors in Savings Banks.""
It is the fashion of our times. to complain of the rule of "rings,"-and there is cause for
*See chapter 73 of the Acts of 1878, and the criticisms of the Nation and New York Tribune thereon.
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF
these complaints. But the evil is not of modern origin. ()ne has only to look over the lists of office-holders prior to the Revolution to see that the offices were generally in the hands of a few families and that these families were closely allied by marriages. The influence of the pressure of this oligarchy, more offensive than that of King or Parliament, in producing the Revolution, has never yet been adequately set forth. I may add that one of the most clearly articulated causes of Shay's Rebellion was the disgust of the people on realizing that the Tory Gentry who bore rule before the Revolution had merely given place to a money- lending oligarchy that possessed none of the grace, but ten-fold the rapacity, of the ancient regime.
In the Constitutional Convention of 1788, the votes of a majority of the Middlesex Dele- gates-17 to 25-were given against the adoption of the Federal Constitution. The Delegates from the ancient towns of Cambridge, Charlestown, Concord, Newton, Framingham, Lexington, Sherborn, Sudbury, Malden, Wes- ton, Medford, Stow, Waltham, Dracut, Dunstable, and Lincoln, voted for the Constitution ; while Billerica, Chelmsford, Tewksbury, Watertown, Woburn, Reading, Marlborough, Hopkinton,
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THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX.
Westford, Groton, Shirley, Pepperell, Townsend, Bedford, Holliston, Acton. Carlisle, Wilmington, Littleton, Ashby, Natick, Stoneham and East Sudbury voted against it.
The vote of the whole Convention was 187 to 168,- only a majority of 19 in favor of the Constitution, in Massachusetts. Had the Con- stitution been submitted to a vote of the people of Massachusetts, it is highly probable that it would have been rejected.
Seldom has a greater result depended upon so small a cause. The change of ten Delegates from the Valley of the Merrimack would prob- ably have defeated the adoption of the Constitu- tion of the United States. Such a change would clearly have placed Massachusetts against that scheme of government; and Madison, looking anxiously out of his Virginia home, wrote : "The decision of Massachusetts, in either way, will decide the vote of this State."
Those views of State Rights and State Sovereignty which culminated in our Civil War, were as strenuously maintained by thousands of the men of Middlesex and other Northern Counties, in 1789, as in Charleston or any other Southern City in 1861.
There is an ancient'saying, "Happy are the people whose annals are barren." The County
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF
Annals of Middlesex, since Shay's Rebellion, have been sufficiently dull, though lit up now and then by the flames of a burning Convent at Charlestown, or a burning Court House at Concord. The changes in the County Courts or in the County offices have not been great, and these are stated elsewhere in this Manual. The County has shared liberally in all the move- ments of the State and the Nation in peace and war; but these movements are beyond the scope of this sketch. Even the development of canals, railroads and manufactures, in which Middlesex was among the foremost, belongs property to other narratives than this, and there has been no lack of writers to record that de- velopment with all desirable fullness of detail.
CHARLES COWLEY.
FINANCIAL REFORMS
IN THE
COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX.
By the annexation of Charleston and Brighton to Boston in 1874, the County of Middlesex lost a population of forty-thousand . persons and a valuation of thirty-five million dollars. Nevertheless, in 1874, the County Commissioners called upon the General Court for an appropriation of $225,000-being $25,- 000 more than the appropriation of the previous year-for County expenditures. There being no apparent cause for this extraordinary in- crease, the author of this article, being then a member of the House of Representatives, introduced the following order :-
Ordered, that a Special Committee be ap- pointed, consisting of the present Committee on "County Estimates," with an addition of one
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THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX.
member from each county, to investigate the county appropriations asked for, and ascertain whether a reduction can be made consistent with public interest, and if any legislation is necessary in county matters.
Of the twenty-one Representatives compos- ing this Committee, eighteen reported favorably to the appropriation asked for by the County Commissioners. Mr. Charles Alden of Ashland and the present writer made a minority report reducing this appropriation $33,000. Convinced that $192,000 was sufficient for all the legiti- mate expenditures of Middlesex County, the House, by an overwhelming vote, rejected the majority report, and adopted that of the minority.
Suffolk County, with a population of 270,- 802 in 1870, yielded a revenue from this source in 1873 of $12,138.03. Worcester County, with a population of 192,718 in 1870, yielded a revenue in 1873 of 5,174.97. Middlesex Coun- ty, with a population of 274,353 in 1870, was at a loss in 1873 of $11,681,31.
At hearings before this committee Amos Stone, the County Treasurer, stated that the annual cost of all the criminal prosecutions in this county exceeded the income therefrom by about $30,000. Startling as the statement
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FINANCIAL REFORMS IN
seemed, it was true. Of the many thousand dollars paid by sureties on forfeited recogniz- ances, not a dollar had been paid into the county treasury since 1864. All the moneys collected on forfeited recognizances in Middlesex for ten years in succession had mysteriously disappear- ed : while Suffolk had yielded from this source over eighty thousand dollars, during the same period.
For a long term of years the Middlesex County Commissioners made no returns to the Treasury for their services in locating roads for towns or for costs on petitions for highways not granted ; while in Worcester, the youngest of her virtuous daughters, thousands of dollars were returned, through her County Commissioners. What became of these dues, imperative by the law to collect, is unknown to me, nor could I learn from the blind records of these commis- sioners. Is it likely they were not collected ? Is it not more likely they were collected and divided ?
The railroads of our. times have so nearly superseded post-roads for general transportation, the expenditures of the County for highways might be expected to be diminished to almost the vanishing point. In fact, however, these expenses were augmented during ten years, (1864-1873), from $3,273.95, to $37,739.07.
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THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX.
From these amounts should properly be deducted such sums as were legally collectable from the localities specially benefited. After making these deductions, the following sums were taxed to the County for Highways :--
1864, 1865, 1866,
- $2,707.00 $2,476.54
$4,015.00
1 867, - $5,659.00 $4,170.00
1 868, 1 869,
$17,223.75
1870,
$12,371.85
$15,776.75
1871, I872,
- $27,832.62
1873,
$31,660.71
1874,
$31,622.39
1875, $18,494.51
1876, - $14,384.15
1877,
$8,640.69
The testimony of the County Treasurer before the Committee was doubtless true, "that these extraordinary expenditures were not for new roads, but mostly for widening and beauti- fying streets in villages in the lower part of the county." These expenditures being under the direct control of the County Commissioners, they cannot escape the censure which is due for having thus unjustly taxed the cities of
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FINANCIAL REFORMS IN
Cambridge, Charlestown, Lowell, and the northern and western towns in the County, for the comfort and convenience of villages in Southern Middlesex.
The cost of Tyngsboro Bridge across Merrimack River being considered, it was found that the estimated cost was $35,000. Responsi- ble contractors offered to build that bridge and furnish good and satisfactory bonds for its completion, for that sum; nevertheless, for some unexplained reason, the County Commis- sioners completed that bridge, and taxed the treasury over $92,000 for that "little job."
The General Statutes, chapter 43, section 2, provide, that "No petition for the laying out, altering, or discontinuing, a highway, shall be proceeded upon by the commissioners, until the petitioners cause a sufficient recognizance to be given to the county, with surety to the satisfac- tion of the commissioners, for the payment of all costs and expenses which shall arise by reason of such petition and the proceedings thereon, if the petitioners shall not finally prevail."
Whether any money from this scource was paid into the county treasury in the long period during which Mr. Leonard Huntress was the controlling mind of the board, I know not; but during the period covered by the investigations
4
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THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX.
of this committee, not a dollar is reported from this source. Yet Mr. Huntress himself testified that "ten or a dozen" such cases occurred every year.
It appears that in 1874, the year of the investigation, a small sum ($83.70) was paid into the treasury as required by this law. According to Mr. Huntress's statements before the Committee, there were then outstanding claims in favor of the County from this scource.
In view of the apparent irregularities in County affairs, the House appointed another special committee for the prosecution of this investigation, consisting of John Cummings,, of Woburn, S. O. Lamb, of Greenfield, Jonathan Johnson, of Lowell, W. C. Parker, Jr., of New Bedford, and Wm. G. Bassett, of East Hampton.
The report of this Committee1 was made to the General Court in 1875, and is House Document No. IS of that year. It should be read by all who would understand how rank were the abuses in County administration.
I do not charge, I have never charged, the Sheriff, or the Treasurer, or the Clerk of the Courts, with peculation, or with any irregularity in their own accounts. But I cannot forbear to censure the Sheriff for not scrutinizing more closely the acts of some of his deputies and the master of the House of Correction.
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FINANCIAL REFORMS IN
The County Commissioners for those years of fraud and corruption, the Clerk of the Courts, and the Sheriff, had every reason to know that moneys were often being paid on forfeited recognizances which never reached the Treasury. With such delinquencies existing before their eyes, they ought, as faithful public servants, to have made some active and even aggressive effort to correct these wrongs, and secure to the County what belonged to it.
Mr. Kimball's pretence that the moneys collected for forfeited recognizances were paid into the treasury under another head,-"fines and costs,"-will not stand examination. Mr. Stone is right, and he is wrong as to this. On Mr. Stone's testimony, the blame belongs to the District Attorneys-Isaac S. Morse and John B. Goodrich-and also to Sheriff Kimball.
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