USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Municipal history of Essex County in Massachusetts, Volume II > Part 3
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When the Civil War of 1861 inflamed the whole country and made appeal to arms necessary, the existing military organization of Haverhill was the Hale Guards, a company of militia organized in the Town Hall, July 19, 1853, by General Benjamin F. Butler. A little thread leading back to the Revolution was the attendance of this company in full ranks, by the order of Governor Emory Washburn, at the funeral of Jonathan Harrington, the last survivor of the battle of Bunker Hill, who died at the age of 96, and was buried in the historic town of Lexington.
In 1861 the captain of the Hale Guards was Carlos P. Messer. At a meet- ing of this company on January 23, the roll was called upon the question of willingness to serve in the imminent war, and every member responded "Aye." They occupied as an armory the third floor of the building at the corner of Merrimack and Fleet streets, and on the evening of their first meeting there, April 15, they requested that the name of their or- ganization be changed from Hale Guards to Company G of the 7th Regi- ment, M. V. M. On Friday, April 19, came the news of the attack on the 6th Massachusetts Regiment as it passed through Baltimore, and that the first victims of the war lay dead in the streets of that city. In mid-afternoon of Saturday, the ringing of the bells announced that the summons for the Haverhill company had come. They immediately gathered at the armory. There were farewell services on the Common, the gift of a Bible to each soldier, and the presentation of a beautiful silk flag made by Mrs. Nancy S. Buswell, a philanthropic and public-
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spirited woman, who had taken the colors from the silks of her milinery establishment and stitched them with her own hands. This company, Carlos P. Messer, captain, became, as Company D, a part of the 5th Regi- ment. This regiment went by way of New York, by steamer to An- napolis, to Washington, and was encamped at first at Camp Andrew and afterwards at Camp Massachusetts, near Alexandria, Virginia. Here they remained until near the end of the three months' service for which they had been sworn in. As the time of their return came near, the citizens at home planned to welcome them with the ringing of bells, an address on the Common, and the firing of a salute. On July 16, how- ever, General McDowell began moving the Union troops on from Wash- ington towards Richmond, intending to attack the Confederate army under General Beauregard at Bull Run. The division in which was the 5th Regiment, after a long and exhausting march, arrived at the scene of action on Sunday, July 21. The order was given that this regiment advance to a hill in direct range of the enemy's battery, and
with unbroken front they obeyed. Corporal Wallace of Company D bore the regimental colors, and by his side Lawrence bore the United States flag. A shot killed Lawrence, but Wallace sprang and seized his
colors, shouting, "Stand by the colors, boys." The Union troops, how- ever, were unable to withstand the mass of Confederates opposing them; they turned in retreat, and fled back over the weary road and across the Long Bridge into Washington. In this engagement fell the first Haver- hill victim of the war, Hiram A. Collins. Wallace was wounded, and James A. Shaw was taken prisoner. Nine days later, July 30, the com- pany reached home. They marched through the streets to Johnson's field on Main street, where they gave an exhibition of military drill. Two objects of great interest in the parade were a cavalry horse, with Con- federate accoutrements, captured from the enemy, and the flag which Wallace had seized from the hands of the dying Lawrence. This flag had been presented to the Medford company when they went to the war, and, doubly precious for the blood that stained it, it was borne by an honor guard of Medford men.
With the thrill of war in the air, the spirit of patriotism easily stirred men to enlist. On April 19, the day of the Baltimore massacre, a new company was organized in Haverhill through the influence of Henry Jackson How, who, by unanimous vote, was chosen captain. An- other company of volunteers, Company F, was raised through the efforts of Dr. Samuel K. Towle. Its captain was Luther Day. Other volun- teer organizations were the Union Guards, with William Taggart as captain, and the Irish Volunteers, with Michael McNamara as captain. Many sons of the town, too, sought service in the organizations of other towns and other states.
Captain Henry Jackson How, originally commissioned in the 14th Regiment, was designated by an order issued July 27, 1861, as Major of the 19th Regiment. With this regiment he departed for the front on August 26, and was in the engagement at Ball's Bluff, October 3. In the fearful six days' fighting before Richmond, in June, 1862, while val- iantly bringing up the left of his regiment, he was mortally wounded by a shot in the breast, Monday, June 30. Knowing his fate, he said: "Let me die here on the field of battle, it is more glorious," and then he added: "Tell my mother I died a brave man. I am willing to die in so good a cause. Wrap me in the flag that they gave me at home." The town in meeting, September 12, 1862, passed resolutions in his memory
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and honor as "a heroic champion, a gallant leader, and a chivalric, noble and generous citizen," and it requested of his family, his battle sword, as a legacy to his native place, be cherished and to bear this inscription: "The battle sword of Henry Jackson How, who fell in front of Richmond (at Glendale) while gloriously defending the Constitution and flag of his Country." The sword is guarded by the veterans of the war in which he died, Major How Post, 47, of the Grand Army of the Republic.
During the war Haverhill furnished about thirteen hundred men, including seventy-three commissioned officers. It raised and expended for the soldiers $188,135, and as State Aid, afterwards refunded by the Commonwealth, $114,452.
In the very beginning of the war a relief society of ladies, after- wards called "The Soldiers' Relief Society," was organized, its president being Mrs. Edwin P. Hill, and its beneficent work was continuous and so broad that it sought to meet every want. When the close of hostilities brought an end to its activities, the society gracefully suggested the erection of a soldiers' monument to commemorate the nobility of conse- cration and sacrifice of those who had given life for victory: "The Sol- diers' Relief Society, as is eminently fitting, at the conclusion of their legitimate service for the soldiers, turn with tender hearts and tearful eyes to the last kindly act allowed for the completion of their mission- the raising of a memorial to the heroic dead." At their meeting, July 12, 1865, they chose an advisory committee of gentlemen for the incep- tion of the work. In the following year, at the March town meeting, a committee, James H. Carleton, James V. Smiley and Elias T. Ingalls, were appointed to procure plans for a soldiers' monument, and in March, 1868, a design presented by Charles H. Weeks was accepted. A volun- teer soldier stands with musket at parade rest above a pedestal, on which are incut the names of one hundred and eighty-six honored dead. Above these names is the inscription: "1861-1865. In grateful tribute to the memory of those who, on land and on the sea, died that the Republic might live, this monument was erected by the citizens of Haverhill, A. D. 1869." The entire memorial is 26 feet high. Its cost was $8,000. It stands in a circular enclosure sixty-six feet in circumference, in the broad space where Kenoza avenue meets Main street. The monument was dedicated with impressive exercises on Monday, July 5, 1869. A dinner at the Town Hall followed. In the afternoon four bands gave a con- cert on the Common, and in the evening the blazing of a huge bonfire on Powder House hill formed the last feature of the celebration.
Among the sons of Haverhill whose services were given in other or- ganizations than those from the town, it is no invidious distinction that gives the highest place to Major General William Francis Bartlett. He was of eminent Haverhill ancestry, born June 6, 1840, the son of Charles L. and Harriett (Plummer) Bartlett, and the grandson of the Hon. Bai- ley Bartlett, a descendant of Lieutenant John Johnson, who was killed in the memorable Indian attack on Haverhill in 1708, and of William White, whose name is signed to the Indian deed of Haverhill. Educated in Phillips Academy, Andover, and in Harvard College until he joined in his junior year, June 17, 1861, the Fourth Battalion of the Volunteer Militia, he was almost immediately made a captain in the newly-formed 20th Regiment of Volunteer Infantry. At Yorktown, in April, 1862, he was shot in the left knee, and the leg was so shattered that amputation just below the knee was necessary. While engaged in the assault of Port Hudson in May, 1863, he was shot in the wrist and in the ankle.
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In the battle of the Wilderness, May 6, 1864, he was wounded just above the right temple. In June he was commissioned a brigadier-general, and in the fight before Petersburg he was captured by the enemy in the crater of the mine. Held prisoner until the autumn, he was then re- leased, shattered in health by his wounds and by fever. In 1875 he was both offered the nomination for lieutenant-governor by the Democratic party and the nomination for governor by the Republican party, but he was unable to accept either. He died in Pittsfield, December 17, 1876, at the early age of thirty-six. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, upon which his life conferred such lustre, placed a noble bronze statue of him in the Memorial Hall of her capitol. It was dedicated on May 27, 1904, the forty-first anniversary of the battle of Port Hudson. In a poem in his memory, Whittier paid him the highest praise, speaking of him as a son of old Essex.
"Good men and true she has not lacked, And brave men yet shall be; The perfect flower, the crowning fact Of all her years was he."
The population of Haverhill in 1860, just before the outbreaking of the Civil War, was 9,995; her valuation, $5,450,732; in 1865, the year of the closing of the war, her population was 10,660; her valuation, $4,- 443,107.
A city charter was granted to Haverhill by the Legislature in 1867, but the measure failed because the town did not contain the requisite number of inhabitants, 12,000. In the following year, 1868, the re-enact- ment of this charter was sought, and, the number of inhabitants being then sufficient, it was granted. This charter was accepted on May 15, 1869, by a vote of 671 yeas opposed by but 141 nays. The selectmen divided the town into six wards, and on December 6, the first city elec- tion was held. The first mayor of the city, then chosen, was Warner R. Whittier, and on January 3, 1870, the first city government was inaugu- rated.
The change in the form of administration sharply marks the line be- tween the old Haverhill and the new. The shade trees on Merrimack street were cut down (1871) and business blocks displaced the old-time residences there; Washington street, adjoining Washington Square, changed from a village road, with cottage houses, to a street of brick manufactories; the hay scales and the old town pump, with its iron "calabash" for drinking, in front of the City Hall, were swept away (1872) ; the tall liberty pole in Washington Square-the highest in the State, erected by the Torrent Engine Company-was cut down; the First Baptist Church, on Baptist Hill, that once marked the western boundary of the village, where the Academy of Music now is, was demolished; the historic "Christian Chapel," the old South Church on the corner of Wash- ington and Essex streets, was torn down; the memorable Atwood house on Crescent Place, consecrated by the birth there of Harriett Atwood Newell, the missionary, by the founding there of the first Sabbath School in 1817, and by the forming there of the Haverhill Benevolent Associa- tion in 1818, was destroyed (1872), and the first town school house, close by, was removed in the following year, and on the site arose a new High School building; the age-browned Haverhill bridge, antique and musty, but quaintly interesting, built in 1794, rebuilt in 1808, and made a covered bridge in 1825, was removed in ten days, and a new iron bridge
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built to replace it, was opened for carriages first on January 1, 1874.
On January 29, 1873, the Hon. E. J. M. Hale, a son of the town, and a wealthy and generous mill owner, addressed the mayor and the Muni- cipal Council, offering to found a public library, giving therefor a lot of land on Summer street as a site for the building and the sum of $30,000 if the city would raise a like amount of money for this purpose within six months. The offer was accepted and the condition met. The library building was at once begun, and was built at a cost of $49,543.32. It was dedicated November 11, 1875, Whittier writing for the occasion the poem "Let there be light." The first librarian was Edward Capen. He remained librarian until 1899, when he was succeeded by John Grant Moulton, whose term of office terminated with his death in 1921.
Ezekiel James Madison Hale, the founder of the Public Library, was born in Haverhill, March 30, 1813. He was educated under Benjamin Greenleaf in Bradford Academy, when that institution admitted both sexes, and in Dartmouth College, from which he was graduated in 1835. He entered upon the study of law as a profession, but finding a business life more in harmony with his desires, he connected himself with his father's woolen mills. In 1859 he purchased the mill privileges and the factory in South Groveland, and this establishment he enlarged until he became the largest private manufacturer in the United States. His business acumen made him a very valuable member of many corporations, and he acquired a large fortune. Stern in his manner, brusque, un- emotional, he had a heart that was tender to worthy charities, and his quiet and unvaunted benevolences were many. He died June 4, 1881. In addition to his large gifts to the Public Library, he made provision for a city hospital, purchasing therefor a site and leaving by his will $50,000 for a hospital fund. Upon this financial foundation the Hale Hospital is built. Mr. Hale stipulated that each of these institutions should be administered by a board of trustees of seven members, the mayor of the city being ex-officio the chairman, but the other six members holding office for life, and, in case of a vacancy, the vacancy being filled by elec- tion by the remaining members.
In 1883, in the mayoralty of the Hon. Moses How, the stone arch over Little river at Washington Square was extended to the Merrimack river, a sea wall built, and the unsightly, weed-o'ergrown dump hitherto existing there, was, by filling, converted into Washington Square Park. The Park Act was accepted by the city in 1890 and a park commission appointed to take office, May 1, 1891. The Commission was fortunate in obtaining the services of Henry Frost as superintendent, and under his care and supervision, extending over a period of thirty years, the present wide system of parks and playgrounds has been developed. Washing- ton Square Park, containing 59,750 square feet and valued at $331,750; City Hall Park, containing 28,690 feet and valued at $71,725; Mt. Wash- ington Park, containing 48,000 feet, and Riverside Park, containing 35.40 acres, were earliest placed under the control of the Commission. At present there are under the charge of the Park Commissioners seven- teen parks, the Soldiers' Monument at Monument Square, the City Ceme- tery, Pentucket Cemetery, and Old Burying Ground in Bradford, the Soldiers' and Sailors' graves in all cemeteries, and the four playgrounds, Passaquo, Margin street, Bradford, and Primrose street. The beautiful tract of ground known as Winnekenni Park, bordering Kenoza Lake, was transferred to the care of the Park Commission by the Water Board, October 28, 1896. The picturesque castle within this park was built bv
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Dr. James R. Nichols, who then owned the estate, in the years 1873 to 1875, from stone found on the place,-stone that in the glacial period had been brought from the Franconia mountains. The Dudley Porter fountain within the grounds was formally presented by Mr. Porter's daughter and son on October 6, 1906, and the Tyler Shelter was the gift of Adelia E. Tyler in memory of her husband, Henry P. Tyler, Septem- ber 17, 1909. The playgrounds were established in 1909. The chair- men of the Park Commission have been: Thomas E. St. John, 1891-1896; Dudley Porter, 1896-1905 ; Albert L. Bartlett, 1905-1912; Henry H. Gil- man, 1912-1920; and Charles D. Porter, 1920 -. The present superin- tendent is Frederick J. Caswell.
On January 4, 1897, by an act of the General Court accepted by both municipalities, the old town of Bradford became a part of the city of Haverhill, forming its Seventh Ward, but retaining its own name as a designation. Despite its long and close relations with the city on the north bank of the river Merrimack, the town on the south bank had a dis- tinct individuality, strong local pride, a gentry of families long resident there, and an atmosphere of culture that came partially from the influ- ence of the First Church that had even been ministered to by men of education and intellectual activity, and partially from the presence of its early-founded and notably excellent seminary of learning, Bradford Academy.
The territory of Bradford, like that of Boxford and Georgetown and Groveland, was originally included in the extensive tract that con- stituted the plantation of Rowley. Among the herdsmen of the Rowley settlers were John and Robert Haseltine and William Wildes, sturdy but. uneducated men, who drove their flocks far from the settlement into the wilderness. In the remote stretches where they pastured their flocks, they made clearings, planted the English grains, and built themselves log houses. In the spring of 1649 the town of Rowley gave to these men grants in the "Merrimack lands" that were later known as "Rowley-by- the-Merrimack" and still later Bradford; in return for this, they were to look after the herd of cattle which the town of Rowley should pas- ture there, receiving a stipend of two shillings a day for such care. John Haseltine removed to Haverhill, but he retained his lands in Brad- ford, and in 1655 gave for the public use there a lot on which "to set their meeting-house, and for a burying place." This is the lot of land on Salem street that forms the old burying ground. John Haseltine, having been a deacon in the church of John Ward, a selectman of Haverhill for six terms, died December 23, 1690. William Warde removed to Ips- wich, where he died in 1662. Robert Haseltine remained in Bradford, dying there August 27, 1674.
To the attractive lands of "Rowley-by-the-Merrimack" other settlers followed the original herdsmen pioneers, and in 1675 the place was in- corporated as the town of Bradford, that name having been chosen in town meeting, January 7, 1672, in memory of the English town of Brad- ford in Yorkshire. In 1667 the Rev. Zachariah Symmes came to the settlement as a preacher and pastor. He was the son of the pastor of the' First Church in Charlestown, who came to New England in the ship that brought Anne Hutchinson, whom later he bitterly opposed. The son was graduated from Harvard in 1657, with the highest rank in scholar- ship, and his religious fervor was as notable as his scholarship. The town built for him a house in 1668, and a meeting house in 1670, placing it in the west corner of the lot given by John Haseltine. So here, where
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time has leveled the mounds above the ancient dead, and the mosses have sought to obliterate the inscriptions on the stones, in the earliest years, the activities of the town were centered. Here was the meeting house used for religious services and town meetings, while opposite was the manse; here, by vote of the town in 1672, the burying ground was established; and here, by vote of the town in 1685, the public pound was built, "with gate and lock and key."
The lands lying north of Salem, between the Naumkeag river and the Merrimack, were claimed by Masconomet, sagamore of the Aga- wams, and from him John Winthrop, Jr., obtained for twenty pounds the territory of Ipswich. Long after Masconomet's death his heirs demand- ed possession of the other townships that originally were a part of Ips- wich. Bradford appointed a committee to treat with them, and, by the payment of six pounds and ten shillings, obtained, January 30, 1700, a deed of its territory. This deed was signed by the three Indian heirs, Samuel English, Joseph English and John Umpee, and, for the proprie- tors, John Tenny, Philip Atwood and John Bointon. The territory so acquired extended on the east to Newbury, and two communities de- veloped therein, East Bradford, which in 1850 became a separate town- ship, under the name of Groveland, and West Bradford, which retained the town name. Much of the early history of the township is connected with the east parish-Groveland-and will be found in the history of that enterprising town. The western division was largely devoted to agriculture, although a considerable business in the manufacture of shoes was carried on there in the years when the same business began to de- velop in Haverhill. Gradually this business was removed to Haverhill, and Bradford became mainly a residential town.
The first meeting house, within which a gallery had been built in 1690, after thirty-five years of use fell into decay, and in December, 1705, it was voted to build a new meeting house on a knoll a few rods east of the old one. By the side of this new but unpainted and unwarmed structure there was placed a "nooning house" with great fireplaces, where the people might spend the time between services. Within these olden- day churches the tithing men, one for each ten families, not only pre- served order, but prevented careless inattention. "It is indecent and irreverent," this church voted in 1723, "to lay down the head and sleep in the house of God." Before the door in the early years stood a guard with flint-lock musket, to watch against the attack of the red enemy.
Because of the distance which the residents in the eastern part of the town had to travel, and not because of any disagreements, a new parish was created-the East Parish-and incorporated, June 17, 1726, and a new church organized ten days later. In the old parish there was a succession of notable pastors, the successor of the Rev. Thomas Symmes being the Rev. Joseph Parsons, who came to Bradford in 1726, when he was but twenty-four years of age. He was one of the New England ministers who signed a protest to the Boston ministry against permitting Whitefield to enter their pulpits. His successor was the Rev. Samuel Williams, a man of profound scholarship, and especially inter- ested in scientific investigation. Many young men, afterwards dis- tinguished, were his pupils, among them Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, who has been classed with Franklin among the men of that period. His ministry lasted until June 14, 1780, when he was made pro- fessor of mathematics and natural philosophy in Harvard College. He was a fervent patriot during the Revolution, and he had the proud satis-
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX 'TILDEN FOUNDATIONS
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faction of reading from his pulpit the Declaration of Independence.
In Bradford Common there is a boulder of granite marking the site of the third meeting house, standing there from 1751 to 1833, and com- memmorating the organization in this building of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the first foreign missionary society formed in America. The inscription on the north face recounts that :
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was organized June 29, 1810 in the Church that stood here It has carried the Gospel into many lands and ministered to millions through churches, schools and hospitals
The institution that has given especial distinction to Bradford is the academy, Bradford Academy, which had its origin in a meeting held March 7, 1803, in the home of Joseph Chadwick in the outskirts of the village to consider how the village school system might be supplemented. In this meeting a resolution was passed that a building should be erected for an academy, and this resolution was vitalized by gifts that made the foundation of the school possible. A lot was procured, a building erected, a preceptor and preceptress were engaged, and in June, three months after the first neighborhood meeting, Bradford Academy was opened for its first term of twelve weeks, with an enrollment of fifty-one pupils, "fourteen gentlemen and thirty-seven ladies," coming from fifteen com- munities. The humble building that cradled this school stood in the lot so long used for school purposes on the south-west corner of Main street and Joel's Road, now Kingsbury avenue. The first preceptor, Samuel Walker of Haverhill, the honor man of the class of 1802 of Dartmouth College, received for his services for a single term $80 and his board; the first preceptress, Miss Hannah Swan, received $5 per week and her board, and for many years these wages were not exceeded. In 1804 the institution was incorporated. In the first eleven years of its administra- tion there were thirteen different preceptors. Most marked of these in his influence upon the school was the Rev. Abraham Burnham, preceptor from May, 1805, until February, 1807, who changed the spirit of the school from careless levity to earnestness and spirituality. The mis- sionaries, Harriet Atwood Newell and Ann Haseltine Judson, were among those strengthened by his influence.
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