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 5
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
There is still one other salient point to note in this review of the place of the First Parish Church in the first hundred years of Dover's history. The First Parish Church was the center of the political life of the people. It was within the Meeting House that town affairs were conducted. It was here the fathers met not solely because it was their only public building; it was as much because their conception of government was so relig- ious that the Church was, to them, the best place in which to perform their political vows - votes. - (The word vote comes from a Latin word meaning vow, and is thus derivatively of re- ligious significance. )
God was author not only of that body called a church, but of that body called a town or state. And indeed, till the 19th century was one-third gone, Church and State were one and indissoluble. The democratic conception of the Church (all souls equal before God), carried with it the proposition all souls are free and equal in the State.
49
125TH ANNIVERSARY
There cannot be the least doubt that the association of gov- ernment so intimately with religion made for a moral dignity and quality in the officers of town and state not obtaining now. Citizens seem to have lost the sense of the divine sanctions of government as springing out of the same sacred human spirit as the Church. Men do not generally now " pay their vows unto the Lord" in their ballots. They too generally vote in a debased sense of the word.
This, then, was the place of the church (of which this First Parish Meeting House was an expression) in the heart of the generations that made the history of the town of Dover worthy to be written and kept in the story of the early and later hero- isms of New England's settlements.
There were heroisms in crises like the Revolutionary War (in which Dover took no small part), crises which we all rec- ognize, but we overlook the fact that the whole life of these people was heroic, living, as they did, every day under condi- tions that took hearts of steady greatness to endure and to en- dure cheerfully. Not in war then, more than in war now, is the truest heroism of life found and expressed, but in the un- failing spirit of fidelity to duty in the steady on-going of life.
I have dealt thus far with the history of this Church during its first one hundred years. I do not forget the fifty years of its existence since, for whatever of worthy story these later years have to tell, it must be of the general character with the pre- ceding life to which it has been related and by which it has been effected.
There is not time today to note the conditions, general and local, that have wrought great changes in the constituency of this church. What time remains is for lessons, for the present and the future, affecting you who now live on these hills for- ever made sacred by those whose life centered about this holy place.
The first obvious point affecting the present, in this review, is not the most important, because not the most spiritual, but im- portant enough.
This old wooden building is a sacred shrine which ought, by all who dwell in Dover, to be sacredly and beautifully kept. In form, as in association, it symbolizes the heroic spirit of the noble men and women whose hearts' aspiration and consecra- tion it expressed. This building is not one but three, for in it are embodied, as it were, the devotion and self-sacrifice that wrought the two earlier shrines.
50
DOVER, MASSACHUSETTS
It seems to me, that if any of Dover's residents have no least interest in the present spiritual content of this house, that, just out of reverence for the devoted souls who once reared it and its two predecessors, this place should shine with artistic touch through grateful contributions.
This building was for those hero fathers and mothers their shrine ; you must make it now their monument, if for you it has no further use.
But this building should be more than a monument. It should, with the church across the way, be, as of old, the center of moral power in Dover.
The church was the moral training school for our fathers, and, appealing to the testimony of experience in modern life, I do not know of any adequate substitute in moral training for us.
There has been much said of late about the moral inefficiency of the church, but let me say that, after twenty-five years' study of this particular matter, I find that the church is the home of spiritual ideals through which the great political or social heroes of ancient and modern times have been inspired and equipped. Where else could an Edward Everett Hale and others have caught their vision and been furnished with their zeal?
Even those who left the church and worked their work without the church's organized help, saw the vision and heard the voice of their commission within its walls. William Lloyd Garrison and other reformers were impatient of the comparatively dull moral sense of their associates. But it must ever be thus ; evolu- tion is slow in the average man, - the vision comes later, too late for immediate action.
But let me point out that the latest political and social reforms have been, and are being, wrought out by men who, with an exception or two, died within the church, or who are now living under its influence, and directly connected with it.
Take, for example, Civil Service Reform (I speak from per- sonal knowledge and association). The reform was born in the hearts of men deeply interested in some church, and it was carried forward to its beneficent completion, - complete, at least, in the Federal government, - through leaders and fol- lowers of intimate church relations, - again, with one exception.
And in special localities, like our cities, this and other civic reforms have been worked out, or are being, for the most part, worked out through the self-sacrifice of personal attention, as
51
.
125TH ANNIVERSARY
well as through gifts of money, by men who have owed their inspiration and ideals to some church.
A fair inquiry, in judging the church, is not whether all who are of it are morally efficient, but whether, as a fact, the church, through few or many, furnishes moral power for society.
Is there not an analogy between the church and the school as institutions, with respect to their essential importance in the upbuilding of society? While now and then, rarely, very rarely, a George William Curtiss will arrive at the stature of a recog- nized educated and cultured man, without a college or university, nearly every one comes to his intellectual attainments through all the grades of our institutions of learning.
So there are, undoubtedly, spiritual ideals and moral powers to be had through other means than the church, but is not the man who has these without the help of the church, even more rare than is the scholar without school and college?
I do not wish to take the time now to develop this thought further. (I shall do this at another time in printed form). But one other point on this topic I merely suggest. May we not, we who are living now in fairly good moral efficiency without the church, be living upon the moral capital of our forebears, who have left us, in part, the results of their own earnestly sought moral attainments ?
If the church, based upon supernatural sanctions, is rapidly passing away (and I believe it is). is there not more clearly revealed the church in the nature of things, - the Church spring- ing out of human nature as spring the Family and the State?
Once more. every community needs the Liberal Church for its educational power. I have myself seen people become quite liberally educated through the church and its immediate and auxiliary organizations. The spiritual and the higher intellectual life are intimately associated. For high-minded impulse, intel- lectually determined, the church is an agency not to be lightly considered.
Lastly - this church was never more needed than now, as a meeting-house. It seems to me. (and I would like to have you all think of this, whether it be not so), but it seems to me that it is wrong that there should be no common meeting-place for all the kinds of people who dwell upon these beautiful hills, where once lived men who felt in some way the obligations of brother- hood, and once a week shared in a common worship and looked into each other's faces, if between them passed no other greet- ing. It was, if nothing more, a very human, friendly thing to
52
DOVER, MASSACHUSETTS
do, to sit together, master and slave, rich and poor, educated and ignorant, in the consciousness of the "Oneness of Humanity " as Whittier called it.
Dover, like every other place, needs a meeting-house and what place so fit as the one in which the experience of the Fatherhood of God is correlated by the experience of the Brotherhood of Man?
We are here today, then, on the threshold of this " Old Home Week," marking the 125th anniversary of the Dover township, and looking back upon the essential meaning of this town's history.
We discover that meaning to be religious. And, gathering in this surviving meeting-house, we cannot but feel the spell of the earlier worship.
The spirits of the men and women of 1784 and of their sons and daughters of later years, seem to sit with us and witness with us to the imperishable elements of their and our common religion.
The Past, the Present, - yea, I have said, even the Future, - meet us here at this hour. We cannot look back without feel- ing the challenge of the spiritual Now and the To Be.
When, one hundred years hence, the story of your lives will be reviewed on some Old Home Week occasion in what esteem will they be held ?
" That apart from us they should not be made perfect." These men of 1784, and before and after, were not perfect men - far from it. But their faults were mainly of an age and a local environment, to which we in that time would also have been subject. They lived in the light they had and did their work faithfully, - imperfectly, to be sure, as must needs have been under those conditions. But they wrought in the faith that the coming generations would perfect that which they had begun.
Can we who live in so much more light than theirs, light religious, light scientific, light social, be less loyal to our vision than they to theirs ? What manner of men and women ought we to be, in every individual and co-operative endeavor to keep burning the altar-fires of "the Faith that makes faithful "?
EVANGELICAL CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH. Organized 1838.
The Rev. Harry C. Vrooman, pastor, preached an appropriate sermon. As his discourse was entirely extemporaneous a copy could not be procured.
53
125TH ANNIVERSARY
DOVER TEMPERANCE UNION. Organized 1872. ADDRESS: FRANK SMITH, ESQ.
A CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN TEMPERANCE IN DOVER.
Surely there is no more appropriate way of closing the success- ful celebration of the 125th anniversary of the incorporation of Dover than by a consideration of the progress that has been made in temperance in this town during the last century. As there is nothing which adds more to the general health and material prosperity of a people than temperance, so there is nothing which injures the welfare of a community more than intemperance. I want, therefore, to direct your atten- tion to the conditions which have existed here from the earliest settlement of the town to the present time. In this review we shall see that the cause of temperance has had a growth, an evolution in the years that have passed. At the starting point everybody drank, men, women and children. Drunkenness was as common and as little considered as smoking is today. Even Robert B. Thomas, in his Old Farmer's Alma- nack, which from the first issue in 1793 to the present time, has been read around Dover firesides, recommended in the initial number the drinking of cider. He said: "See that your cellars are well stored with good cider, that wholesome and cheering liquor, which is the product of your own farms. No man is to be pitied that cannot enjoy himself or his friend, over a pot of good cider, the product of his own country, and perhaps his own farm."
Ralph Day, one of the early Dedham settlers, and the father of Ralph Day, Jr., who settled the Day homestead at the foot of Strawberry Hill Street nearly two hundred years ago, illus- trates in his will, made in 1677, the large part which cider and beer had in the early life of the people. He thought his widow, whom he expected to keep house after his death, needed the fol- lowing conveniences and utensils: the use of the oven and the room to brew and mash therein, as she shall see cause from time to time; the great kettle and the least one; the biggest skillet and the little iron pot, two pewter platters, four keelers, great trays or bowls and dishes and small trays to the number of three, three cider barrels, two beer vessels and one brewing keeler, and such dry casks as she shall see cause to make use of, to put in corn or malt.
54
DOVER, MASSACHUSETTS
The tavern was always built near the meeting-house for the accommodation of the worshippers and was considered second in importance only to the church. The tavern keeper was usually the only business man in the vicinity, and in those days a respectable rum seller was regarded as a great addition to a town. In 1671 the parish had completed its meeting house and Daniel Whiting provided a tavern, which was greatly appreciated by the citizens, as it was the source of all information to the community. On Sunday for half a century, the men during the noon hour gathered around the bar in the tavern and drank flip and toddy. When Capt. Samuel Fisher moved from Powisset, about the year 1800, to Dover Centre, having purchased the farm now owned by Mr. Eben Higgins, he invited all who could not conveniently return to their homes during the intermission on Sunday, to come to his house, where he furnished a lunch of bread and cheese. Many availed themselves of this privilege, and his hospitality had a good effect in reducing the attendance at the tavern.
Being off from the line of travel, Dover wasn't even a stage- coach town. For nearly a century the inhabitants had no con- tinuous daily connection with Boston. As occasion demanded, farmers drove into Boston, a custom which at least one resident has kept up to to the present time. In the old tavern, as we have seen, the parish folk gathered around the fire in winter, and in summer time met in the cool shade of the buttonwood tree still standing on Dedham Street, to discuss public questions ; the resistance of British tyranny, their crops, the weather, and to engage in local gossip, all of which was washed down by a mug of flip or a horn of toddy. The walls of the tavern were posted with notices of parish meetings, elections, school district meet- ings, bills of sale, and auctions. Here was witnessed the pathet- ic scene of auctioning off the town paupers (many of whom had been brought to this state through their indulgence in strong drink) to the lowest bidder. Such auctions, called vendues, were held by vote of the town as late as 1820 in this old tavern.
Here the Sons of Liberty met and advocated the doctrine of liberty. In after years the old soldiers of the Revolution gath- ered around the fire in the Williams Tavern and fought their battles o'er. Aaron Whiting used to tell how he stood by the side of his brother-in-law, Elias Haven, when he was shot down by a British musket ball near the corner of the Arlington Meet- ing-house on the afternoon of April 19, 1775. Daniel Whiting related his experience as a captain, at the battle of Bunker Hill,
55
125TH ANNIVERSARY
and as a Colonel in the Mass. 6th Regt., while Capt. Ebenezer Battelle described that wonderful work of fortifying Dorchester Heights, which compelled the British troops to evacuate Boston, a work in which many Dover farmers were engaged. Thomas Larrabee, as a member of Washington's Life Guard, told the story of the Continental Army; of the soldiers' exposure during that terrible winter at Valley Forge; Lieut. Ebenezer Newell described the life of the Dover farmers in guarding Burgoyne's troops during the winter of 1778; while Lieut. Asa Richards related his experience in doing guard duty in the old fort at Roxbury. Lieut. Lemuel Richards was in Rhode Island for a time and probably re-enforced the gallant army of Gen. Lafay- ette. Such were the men who gathered in large numbers and took their grog around the fire of the old tavern or in the store a century ago. And we were glad when the late J. W. Higgins, a few years since, re-opened the old store for a time, which en- abled some of us to lean on the old counters where our fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers had many times leaned before.
While in the olden time much New England rum was sold over those old cracked and warped counters, yet, today, under our present civilization it would be impossible to buy liquor in any store in town. Not only did the store in the center of the town sell liquor, but all other stores as well. It was the great staple in every country store, and was sold by the gallon, quart, pint and gill. At this time a store in Dover supplied the wants of the people at what is now Charles River Village, while two stores sold liquor in the west part of the town. A set of copper meas- ures used in dispensing liquor in one of these old stores is still in existence. During the past year I have gone over the account books and papers of my grandfather, Isaac Howe, who was pro- prietor of the store and tavern here nearly a century ago. These old books have charges against the heads of families of the town which show that their purchases of rum usually exceeded in cost their purchases of the necessities of life, as the following bill shows :
1824-Calvin Newell to Isaac Howe, Dr .- Mar. 3, Rum & Sling -. 25; Mar. 5, Sling .08; Rum & Sugar-22; Mar. 9, Rum, sugar, etc., .40; Mar. 12, Tea, fish, etc .-. 48; Mar. 31, 2 Qts. rum -. 20; Apr. 5, Sling & bread -. 28; Apr. 13, Rum & sling -. 26; Apr. 19, Rum, tea, sling -. 62; Apr. 29, Rum & sugar -. 42; May 5, Rum & tea -. 38; May 14, Sugar, tea, to- bacco, -. 89; May 26, Sugar & Sling -. 30; June 17, Sling &
56
DOVER, MASSACHUSETTS
fish -. 29; July 1, Sling -. 09; July 3, Rum, salt, etc .-. 52. Lit- tle notes of hand abound, given for sums ranging from $1.25 to $10.00, which were probably given in settlement of drink scores. These notes were as good as cash for at this time a debtor could be imprisoned for a debt, however small. Statistics show that in one year between 1816 and 1820, seventy-five thousand per- sons were imprisoned for debt alone in New York State. The following is a good illustration of these notes of hand :
Dover, Dec. 20, 1825. For value received I promise to pay Isaac Howe or order One Dollar 25-100 on demand with in- terest.
Liquor was abundantly furnished on all occasions of public or private raising of buildings. It is no wonder that on such occa- sions accidents were frequent, and that men often fell from the scaffold and were killed or injured for life. When the second meeting-house was raised in Dover in 1810, liquor was abundant and one poor fellow, in consequence of it, fell from the great beam and received injuries which maimed him for life. As late as 1819 the town paid for drinks furnished to the carpenters while repairing the meeting-house. . The practice pertained in my boyhood days of giving to little boys the sugar left in the tumbler after the father had drunk his grog. In this way an appetite was often created for liquor. I have in mind men younger than myself who have had an insatiable desire for liquor all their lives, whose fathers and grandfathers gave them, from their earliest childhood, the sugar left in their toddy tumblers. This custom, I think, has entirely passed.
The doors of the colonial tavern were open to all comers, with the exception of apprentices, negroes and Indians. While there is no evidence that liquor was sold to Indians, yet they frequented the Williams Tavern in large numbers, as it was a busy centre a century ago. The late Amos Perry, secretary of the Rhode Island Historical Society, who lived at South Natick when a boy, used to say that the first elephant he ever saw was an exhi- bition in one of the horse sheds at the tavern. A large crowd assembled from the adjoining towns to see the elephant, for which a fee of ten cents was charged. Of course, liquor was on sale, for in those days there was no entertainment or amusement free from this temptation. Liquor sellers resorted to all imaginable means of dispensing their goods. When I was a boy I used to hear my father tell, with great merriment, of an ingenious scheme introduced at the fall muster in 1838, held on Dedham plain, for the sale of liquor on the grounds. A " stripped
57
125TH ANNIVERSARY
pig," which had been imported, was placed on exhibition at a fee of fourpence, the price of a glass of New England rum. The exhibitors had the goods to deliver and each visitor received his glass of rum without further pay. This incident was put into verse and copies of the " stripped pig " were common in my boyhood days and, perhaps, may still be found in Dover homes. Writers of colonial times tell us of fathers who were so strongly addicted to the use of strong drink that they would sell the shoes from off their children's feet to get money with which to purchase liquor ; of homes where such indispensable articles as andirons, which were universally used in maintaining a fire, before the invention of grates and stoves, were entirely lacking, owing to the abject poverty caused by intemperance, which sold off everything of comfort to indulge its insatiate desire. We can hardly imagine such a condition as this today in our pleasant country life.
In the early settlement of the town apples were gathered in large quantities from trees grown from seed brought over from England. Orchards were early found on the Wilson farm on Strawberry Hill, the Chickering farm at the centre of the town, and on the Plimpton farm in the west part of Dover. From their apples the settlers made large quantities of cider, which soon took the place of malt liquors. Cider mills were set up as follows : In the east part of the town on the farms of Henry Wilson and Ebenezer Richards; at the centre, on Nathaniel Chickering's, also on Jonathan Whiting's farm on the Clay Brook road; in the north district on James Draper's, Jared Allen's, Michael Bacon's and Warren Sawin's farms; in the west part of the town on the Seth Wight and Henry Goulding farms; and in the south part of the town on the Bussey place, also at Jesse Newell's, on Centre Street. In addition, cider mills were close at hand in all the surrounding towns, many of them being located just across the line on adjoining farms, as on Reuben Draper's on Pegan Hill. Other farmers of the town either had an interest in the above mills, or took their apples to them, where, on payment of a toll, they were made into cider, and in this way all residents of the town had access to mills where large qauntities of cider was made. The first cider press was located, as one might expect, on the farm of Henry Wilson, the first settler. Here has been illustrated, in the years that have passed, the entire evolution in the process of cider making from the hand press of two hundred years ago, to the steam cider mill of yesterday. The first mill on the Wilson farm stood out of
58
DOVER, MASSACHUSETTS
doors, with only a roof over the press. This was the most primitive kind of mill, and by its use cider making was a very laborious process.
The amount of cider which farmers put into their cellars, and which was drunk by the household, was enormous. I recall an inventory of the personal estate of a resident of Dover, whose grandchildren and great-grandchildren are probably before me, which contained a list of a hundred barrels of cider. Of course, this cider was not all intended for drinking purposes, - much of it was made into vinegar or sold in Boston, - yet large quanti- ties of the best cider was always put into the farmer's cellar for drinking purposes. Holland described the scene :
Sixteen barrels of cider Ripening all in a row! Open the vent chambers wider! See the froth, drifted like snow, Blown by the tempest below.
The abolition of these cider mills, and the consequent passing of the cider drinking habit, has greatly sweetened farm life, as the drinkers of hard cider were always cross and quarrelsome. With the importation of molasses, which commenced about the time of King Philip's War, distilleries were set up and the manu- facture of New England rum commenced. It was made from molasses brought from the West Indies and was sold very cheap. At one time it retailed here for two shillings, or 33 cents a gallon. Later a lively shipping interest was built up and much New England rum was shipped to Africa, where it brought a much higher price, and the ship returned with a much more valuable cargo than it took out, namely : - negro slaves. This was the beginning of African slavery in America. The slaves were first kept in New England, but as they could not be profitably employed here they drifted southward. New England is in no wise guiltless of the sin of slavery. An institution which is generally thought of as belonging exclusively to the South. Slaves once worked on Dover farms. References to the ownership of slaves are found in the wills of John Draper, who lived on Farm Street, also in the will of Jonathan Battelle, who owned the M. W. Comiskey farm at the corner of Main and Haven Streets.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.