USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Dover > Old home day : proceedings of the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Dover, Massachusetts, Wednesday, July 7th, 1909 > Part 2
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Bragg, very unlucky He kept school in Dedham that winter. He makes other entries such as this: "April 13. Spent most of the night playing Bragg, a very enticing game." Thus, the antiquity of poker is established. On the 14th he was ". . . rebuked for acting a Play by our Parents."
On December 13th: "I began the Town Schoole," and June 15th: "Went Springfield." He does not tell us why he went to Springfield, but on August 11th of that year he enters "Actors at Providence," and on the 23rd: "Went Providence, saw Douglas acted." Anybody who has witnessed, or even read that dreary play known as Home's "Douglas" will feel that this was no frivolous dissipation. The next day he saw "The Dis- tressed Mother," and on the 25th returned home. He notes that he rode from Newport to Dedham in one day, which strikes me as "going some." On November 10th he went to Caryl's ordi- nation. Now, that is your old and famous parson Caryl whose sermons you still preserve.
February 20th, 1764, I find this most interesting historical note, which, though it does not directly concern Dover, I cannot forbear to quote it: "The Corcass Club is a set of men in Boston of the most influential who determine every year a little before March Meeting what men they will have for such and such an
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office & have not been known to fail for above 50 years past." This is the historical origin of the caucus, which we invented and gave back to England.
In April and May of that year was "a long uncomfortable Season of East Winds & cloudy weather," and on May 31 a "Great Frost." I should say that it was considerably like the year we are now celebrating. On August 9th is the first ominous political entry : "Alarming duties & taxes laid on America .. . " Next year the stamp tax was repealed, and on July 2 Dr. Ames "Went Boston bispoke Pitt's Head for Pillar of Liberty." The stone-masons must have been prompter in those days of no labor unions, for July 22, twenty days later, we find the note: "Pitt's Head erected-vast concourse of people."
The next entry relating to Springfield is a sporting one. Oct. 16, 1767 : "M. Brimmer, Fisher & I hunted squirrels from High Rock over to Springfield and so down the River." Dec. 16th : "4 Ladies came here from Boston in a booby Hutch," which is interesting as showing the antiquity of that expression also. The "booby Hutch" we now call a "sea-going hack."
In 1771 "Paul Riviere made me a nose syringe for two pis- tareen." Finally, on June 14, 1774, we have the entry: "Con- nubio junctus Reverendo, Dr. William Clarke,"-"joined in wedlock by the Reverend Dr. William Clarke"-but he conceals the name of the bride. Their wedding journey lasted one day. It is thus entered : June 15: "Went Watertown."
You will remember that at the battle of Lexington a Dover man was killed; Dr. Ames went and dressed the wounded, and on June 17th, 1775, he notes "Terrible Battle," and March 1, 1776, "Continued roar of Cannon Night & Day." April 18: "Boston opened yesterday." He rides in and finds the town gloomy and the shops all closed. On March 5th, he makes the entry : "Gen. Washington lodged in town," and on July 4th, 1777, the very first year, he notes "Anniversary of Independence celebrated." Thus, our ancestors had full consciousness of what they were doing, and already, in 1777, while every other colony but Massachusetts still bore the tread of what our ancestors called the "Regulars" we were here already sure that our liberty was an accomplished fact.
The liberty of Dover from Dedham, July 7, 1784, was cele- brated by the good Doctor in this manner, the last entry in his diary I shall quote: "July 7, 1784. Planted potatoes." There is no other reference to Dover,-or Derby, as it was first to have been called.
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John Jones' Book of Minutes covers part of the same period, but does not present the wealth of material that we find in the Ames diary. It is noteworthy that both he and the early ministers speak so often of earthquakes, which must, surely, have been a far more common occurrence in the Eighteenth Century than to-day. We have a sermon preached by Stephen Palmer on "The Glory of the Second Temple" at the dedication of the new meeting-house in Dover in 1811. We have also Dr. Sanger's two sermons, one in 1842, noting the deaths and the marriages, the church members, and the population, wealth, education and agricultural of Dover for thirty years. As to temperance, he quaintly remarks : "Earliest society did not conceive the idea of total abstinence," and, indeed, the first temperance society in the world is said to have been founded in Boston in 1813. Gov- ernor Strong of Massachusetts, and President Kirkland of Har- vard College were leading members, and it is noted that a reasonable amount of wines and spirits, notably Madeira and rum, was served at all their meetings. Then we have a sermon in 1853, covering a brief review of his ministry of the past forty years, and again largely, as was natural, made up of the births and deaths occurring in that period, and yet they have much to say about the climate, of earthquakes again, and of the condi- tion of the country generally. Pathetic, in this later sermon, is his enthusiastic view of the progress of the peace movement. With warm enthusiasm he traces the growth of societies for uni- versal peace, and predicts that now there shall be no more war or going to war. And this sermon was preached by Parson Sanger in 1853, just eight years before the most dreadful war of modern times! The surviving sermons of Parson Caryl are, alas ! entirely doctrinal.
According to the charming book of Alice Jones, "Dover on the Charles," the Dover people were frugal and simple in their attire, which, alas, was not true of the parent town of Dedham, whose inhabitants, according to Dr. Haven's Memorial address about that time, "attracted the attention of the General Court and became amenable to the laws for excess of luxury in their apparel." Col. Jones, indeed, wore a scarlet coat of great splen- dor, according to Mrs. Stowe in our "Oldtown Folks," but she also tells us that he became something of a Tory and had to lie low during the Revolution.
Six years after the parish was created in 1754, your first meeting-house was built, afterwards destroyed by fire, and at that time or later the wolves still killed the sheep on Pegan
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Hill; deer, otter and bear were common in the woods, beaver dams in the brooks and salmon and alewives in the river. In- deed, down on the Charles, near where the brook goes in, the Indian "Noanet" built his weirs. His name must have been well known to the early settlers, because, besides the place called "Noanet Weirs" and "Noanet Brook," mills were established there in 1733, later called Noanet, and Noanet Hall was built half a century later. When I took the name for the romance in which I hoped to embody some of the tradition of the upper Charles, it was to me a mere name on the map; but it is odd that in the purely imaginary identification of the old Indian chief with the loyalist, Penruddocke, who conducted a rising against the Commonwealth in Devonshire about 1658 or 1660, I was making a more likely story than I knew; for it is well known that a lady of your town devoted some years to the ser- vice of Whalley and Goffe, the regicides. And I may say here, as some of you have asked me the question, that with the excep- tion of the imagination of Noanet as a refugee in disguise, car- rying his daughter, the heroine, with him, only disguised as an Indian, and the fanciful notion that the successive dams and flumes on Noanet Brook might serve as a defense against an explorer or an attacking party, all the geography or minor his- tory, and every incident of scenery or weather (what we now call "local color") is, in that book, taken from contemporary documents, even to a long passage quoted from an English High Church clergyman in Devonshire, and printed in a well- known ancient book, and which resulted in the somewhat ludicrous incident that the London Saturday Review picked out this authentic piece of old English as a passage which "could never have been written at the time or since!"
The brooks, I fear, had far more water in them then than now, or, at least a more steady supply. Noanet Brook would have been quite navigable for canoes, and, indeed, a hundred years later the "New Mill Company" was chartered to run an iron or slit- ting-mill on the brook where the fall now is, and was only abandoned after twelve years for want of adequate water sup- ply. We most of us can well remember the huge old wooden wheel rotting away in the waterway and making, with its water- fall, the most charming scene in Dover .- with the possible exception of the Dingle Hole, the gateway of the Charles, now taken for a State Reservation, and both of which I chose as pictures for the book. This old mill had one of the first "over- shot" wheels in the country, but was a failure as the water
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supply of Noanet brook decreased. It had buckets four feet long, and a wheel thirty-six feet in diameter. Sandham, the artist, came to Dover many times that summer, and every drawing, I think, even in the second edition, where there are a score or more, he made on the spot; though I confess one, that of the Noanet Valley as a vast and mountainous gorge, is a little bit exaggerated in perspective. Still, it may interest you to know that all the drawings that represented scenery were made by the artist upon the spot, and I have now the originals in my house in Dedham. But Oh! the trudging through hundreds of pages of books and sermons and diaries that one has to do, to discover one solid fact, one concrete observation, or anything but a dry abstraction-such, for instance, as that the trees in those days in what is now Dedham and Dover stood park-like as in English Parks, not in underbrush, as now, so that a deer in the forest could be seen a hundred yards away, and that the early settlers attributed this fact to frequent burnings by the Indians, whereby only the great trees survived.
Of course, you know that Dover had much to do with King Philip's War, when the neighboring town of Medfield was burned-this date, by the way, I had to alter for a few years in King Noanett, or my heroine would have been nigh forty when the hero found her again-and you know of the taking of a second Indian Chief, Pomham, in Dedham Woods. There is, as you know, a Pomham Point upon the Providence River, so that the range of this territorial chieftain must have been wide.
Let us hasten to more peaceful scenes, for the charm of Dover is its peaceful beauty and its gentle seclusion,-not that this has not sometimes been rudely broken. I remember, only a few years ago, being appointed on the staff of General Mat- thews and conducting, as a scout, in the annual militia maneu- vers, an attacking army up the northwest slopes of Pegan Hill. There a very smoky battle-we had no smokeless powder in those days-took place, between three batteries of artillery and some four thousand troops. I never shall forget how the Sixth Massachusetts, or, at least, two negro companies thereof, got so excited that when the defending companies, shooting from behind your stone walls, delayed their retreat, these negroes rushed at them with clubbed guns, and a real battle was, with some difficulty, averted. And after the cruel war was over, and Pegan Hill safely captured, Col. Shumway went with his regiment to the lady who owned the farm and asked if his sol- diers might drink of her well. A permission, after some delay,
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was granted, though she complained that twenty years ago she had chosen to buy that high farm for peace and quiet, and did not expect to have to feed four thousand fighting soldiers, with one battery of artillery on the hill in front and eight more can- non firing from the back yard.
Certainly Pegan Hill is one of the most beautiful hills of eastern Massachusetts of the English green-topped variety, as Noanet's country is the most romantic of rough rock and forest. One of the most famous American paintings, by the man most of us think our greatest landscape artist, Inness, is of the view of the Charles River Valley near Sherborn, taken from a place in Dover near Farm street. We cannot claim, as Medfield does, the northernmost habitat of the beautiful rhododendron, but we share in the beauty of the Narrows, and we own alone those wonderful sweet springs which gave our town its early name.
Fortunately, we are all convinced now of the value of mere beauty. We should all read Ruskin's famous definition of value, a word derived from ancient words which mean that which gives life or health. Do not confuse this noble word with "price," or money-value in exchange.
Dover has never been a manufacturing town. It is, in many respects, now, hardly agricultural. Its future is residential, that is to say, a place where one goes to live. Mr. Smith tells me that before railroads came, only two persons in Dover earned their living outside the town, and yet there has hardly ever been a mechanical industry. When, some years ago, in a neighboring town, I heard a citizen say to another that what we needed was a few "good, nice manufactories," I thought the observation short-sighted. There are some places in this world to be left for beauty, to be left to live in, not to work in or earn money in. I am not one of those who hold it a necessary advantage for a town, however it may be for the statistics-returns of the nation as a whole, to have vast numbers of operatives, herded in huge buildings, to make what Mill would call " Utilities fixed and embodied in material objects." I hold commerce, for the people, to be more broadening, more elevating, more educating and more health-giving, a vocation than manufacturing, aye, and agricul- ture, too ; while above all three is the art of highest living. The " value " of Dover is to give good life. Our ancestors, by their customs, were familiar with many foreign countries, many cities, many men. The recent tendency of our great Republic has been to stifle commerce for the benefit of manufacture, even for the manufacture of poor things, or of goods which can better be
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made elsewhere. At least, let us here not forget that the object of life is living; and wherever we earn our substance, we Americans more and more shall seek for our homes such a charming coun- try as you have about you here. Just as the great West, with its new fortunes, is coming back to New England to live, let all New England cling, more and more, to those favored spots where there are hills and fields and forests and clean rivers, - not shops and mills.
If I may forecast the future, I should urge you to remember this. Even from the point of view of personal profit, I doubt if my friend with his "good, nice, manufactories " was correct. Your land, in money, even, will be worth far more in a place of beauty, a sweet and quiet town with the best of schools and churches and of government, and, I may add, of neighborliness, than it would be worth as lots for tenements in a mill village. There is a limit to that value, even in price. There is almost no limit to the other. Your future, it seems to me, lies in keeping as you are, only better on the same lines, and, most of all, in keeping such people as you have, -only better on the same lines, if such a thing be possible. Mr. Smith, again, in his invalu- able manuscript notes* that he has kindly let me read, observes that Mason Richards planted that beautiful pine grove that still stands on Center street. "Forestry," he says, "is not letting the land alone, but it is the science of raising trees as crops." These Centre street pines were planted by Richards from the seed; and Mr. Smith tells us that such a plantation, with prac- tically no labor, only let alone, will earn the owner, net, some three per cent. per annum.
I have said that Dover could hardly be called agricultural, but it seems to me a place where the raising of trees for crops might well be tried. You have a wonderful chance here. With small necessary expenses, adequate wealth to meet them, a compact territory, a home of genial population, and the path already blocked out for you, you should study for good roads and grand forests and clean, sweet fields, and be our leaders in the paths of beauty, and, as your Parson Caryl hoped more than fifty years ago, and I still shall hope, also in the paths of peace.
The President: The Committee on original poems has unani- mously awarded the prize offered by the General Committee to Miss Mabel Colcord of Dover, Radcliffe, 1895. I regret Miss
*Dover Roads and Farms.
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Colcord is not present to read her delightful poem. Her con- tribution to the occasion is as follows : -
ORIGINAL POEM.
Dover, we give thee greeting, Thy children gathered here, Returned from near or distant paths To share Old Home Day's cheer.
Unfurl the flag, deck out the hall, Make gay this common ground,
Let hand clasp hand, and hearts be warm, And joy be without bound.
Dear Mother, long, long years have passed Since seventeen-eighty-four,
When demure Springfield Parish Took the name of old Dover.
A joyful birthday was that first, And we give thanks remembering The deeds our fathers since have wrought, Midst trials beyond numbering.
Brave men were they who raised our homes, Fought off the Indian, killed the bear
Cleared the rude forest, blazed our roads, And made our fields so fair.
Valiantly, loyally they fought
The wars our country waged,
Standing for right 'gainst England's might, Wresting to free the slaves.
Nor was their God forgotten In the midst of all the strife, This Meeting House came early To be part of all their life. 1
Caryl and Sanger's names are dear To many here to-day, Men of great faith and foresight keen, Who saw the better way.
And they must, just as we do now, Have loved to roam thy hills, Finding thy pastures pleasant, A balm for human ills.
Who e'er forgets or can forget The sun from Pegan seen, Old Trout Brook and her boiling springs, The Charles-the spot first green?
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And who forgets the stories Of Old Williams and the pike, Or of the Tale of Tubwreck, And all the other like?
Thou hast not lost the old charm, Dear town of modern days, Thou haven of sweet rest and peace, Amidst the busy ways.
To know thee is to love thee, And to honor deeds well done, And proudly are we come here To do homage, everyone.
The President: We are all interested in " America," not only as our national hymn, but also from the fact that the distin- guished author, the Rev. Dr. Samuel F. Smith, was at one time a frequent preacher at the Baptist church in Dover. Will you all rise and unite in singing
AMERICA.
My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty,- Of thee I sing : Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrim's pride, From every mountain side Let freedom ring !
My native country, thee,- Land of the noble free,- Thy name I love: I love they rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills; My heart with rapture thrills Like that above.
Let music swell the breeze, And ring from all the trees Sweet freedom's song ! Let mortal tongues awake ; Let all that breathe partake; Let rocks their silence break,- The sound prolong !
Our fathers' God, to thee, Author of liberty,- To thee we sing : Long may our land be bright With freedom's holy light; Protect us by thy might,- Great God, our King.
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125TH ANNIVERSARY TOWN HALL, 2 P. M.
Violin Solo - Mrs. Harold Shaw.
The President: The Governor of the Commonwealth is descended on both his paternal and maternal sides from Dover stock. His grandmother, Abigail Richards, was born and reared on that beautiful farm which lies on either side of Noanet Brook, north of Dedham street. This estate is now owned by Mr. Augustin H. Parker, Secretary of the General Committee, who will read a letter from His Excellency Governor Eben Sumner Draper.
Letter of Governor Draper : -
COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT. Boston, June 16, 1909.
MR. FRANK SMITH,
My Dear Mr. Smith: -
Your very kind letter of the 15th instant is received and I assure you I am very sorry that I cannot accept the invitation to be at Dover on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of its incor- poration.
This is a disappointment to me for personal reasons, because several of my ancestors on both sides lived in the town of Dover. James Draper lived in Dedham, but I understand it was that part of Dedham which is now Dover. My great-great-grandfather, Josiah Richards, lived in Dover and had eight sons, all of whom took part in the Revolutionary war, including my great-grand- father, Lieutenant Lemuel Richards, who also served in the last French and Indian war.
Under these circumstances it would be peculiarly pleasant for me to be with you at the celebration, but I find that I am obliged to decline many of the invitations which I receive if I am to give the proper amount of time to my duties at the State House. I am sure your celebration will be interesting and successful, and the town certainly has my best wishes for a future which shall be as truly American as its past has been.
Very truly yours,
EBEN S. DRAPER.
The President : I remember as a little boy hearing the discus- sion of the farmers in the west part of the town as they worked out their highway tax on the road. I recall one who was ever
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ready to advocate the principal of temperance; he is with us today in his ninty-third year, a living witness of the fruit of temperance, neighborly kindness, and good will. Last year he ran his mowing machine to cut all the grass on his productive farm and I can assure you that he is not afraid of the machine today. I present Deacon Asa Talbot.
Mr. Talbot was loudly applauded and bowed his acknowl- edgment.
The President: The people of Dover and Natick for more than a century and a half have been closely associated in school, church, and trade affairs, and in most things, especially in trade, it has always seemed to me that Natick got the best end of the bargain, but today the tables are turned and a resident of Natick is to give us of his wisdom and eloquence. I have the pleasure of introducing Congressman Charles Q. Tirrell of Natick.
ADDRESS: HON. CHARLES Q. TIRRELL.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I have been a resident of Natick for a long time and as Dover and Natick are contiguous territory I am naturally interested in this Anniversary Commemoration. Probably I am as familiar with the streets and physical characteristics of your town as a majority of its citizens. Times without number I have driven over them. The sylvan beauties of your hills and valleys have been a great attraction. As you approach this town from Sher- born and ascend to the southerly bounds of Pegan Hill, there opens up a view that appeals to the imagination. Off to the right sweeps a vast track of woodland from the valley below to the ridge beyond like a forest primeval of long ago. No houses are visible, not even the long line of road from Medfield, that penetrates the forest. Solitude reigns, as it did when the first settler erected his habitation. Or from the opposite direction along the banks of the winding Charles one can drive amid the ferns and trees with the glint of water on one side and the " aisles of the deep wood " on the other. Around you here and there in other sections are no indicia of a throbbing life, of bustling commerce, of industrial development, but elegant, at- tractive or comfortable homes. Well is illustrated, in Dover, the famous words of Bryant -
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" To him who in the love of nature Holds communion with her visible forms She speaks a varied language."
Except in the artificial loveliness which wealth has here created and the accessories of modern life which have been added, Dover is exceptional among the towns near Boston, in reminding us of Colonial days. No one would dream you were in the suburbs of Boston. For now, as of yore, yours is a small and scattered population, much less even than many of its neighbors during the first settlement. Here is the
" Sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, The never failing bloom, the busy mill The decent church that tops the neighboring hill."
Therefore, it seems pertinent to draw comparisons between the old and new conditions which surround you amid scenes whose general characteristics are the same as when the emigrant blazed his way and found an abiding place within your precincts.
Doubtless most of your roads date from many years ago, for among the first things done was to make a way of access, even although it accommodated few. But no such roads as you have today and no such methods of communication were afforded. The roads were cart paths, narrow, rocky, with deep ruts, with- out bridges and almost impassable at times. In 1756 a stage line was started between Boston and New York. It took seven days to make the journey . At first two stages and twelve horses suf- ficed to do this work. The ordinary journey was forty miles in the summer and twenty-five in the winter. One pair of horses only seldom averaged over eighteen miles a day. The traveller would arrive at a hostelry at about ten o'clock at night and be aroused early in the morning to resume his journey. Often he would be eighteen hours a day jolted and thrown about, at times in danger of being pitched upon the highway. Men sometimes made their will in fear of the consequences before venturing so far from home. Families parted, as now they part, when a trip around the world is in contemplation. The stage was a long carriage with four benches and with a light roof, supported by eight slender pillars, four on each side. The sides could be protected by a leather covering in case of storms. There was no place for baggage. You placed it wherever you could find a vacant space. You entered the stage any way you could get there, there being no openings for that purpose, and so usually the traveller got into them over the other seats the best way he
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