USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Old landmarks and historic fields of Middlesex > Part 29
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Clashing interests between the society and the lot-holders soon called for new measures. A small beginning had been made with the proposed garden, but the income from the cem- etery, greater than had been expected, promised to increase beyond the calculations of the most sanguine. It became evi- dent that the whole tract would be wanted for a cemetery. The idea of separation from the parent society under a government of its own suggested itself, and was at length proposed by Marshall P. Wilder. The discussion on this point was warm and protracted ; so much so that Judge Story, who acted as chairman of the cemetery committee, one day took his hat and left the meeting in anger, but was induced to return. The terms of separation were finally arranged and incorporated into the charter of the Mount Auburn Association. The society relinquished its rights upon payment, annually, of one fourth of the income of the cemetery, after deducting a fixed sum for its expenditures.
This most popular of our societies has already received a very large income from this source, - sufficient to enable it to ex- pand and beautify with its touch the most remote parts of the Union. Taste is developed. A hanging garden is suspended above the door of every cottage, and Hesperides gives up its golden treasures at our command. Not the least of its benefits is the inauguration of Mount Auburn, where the weary
" Choose their ground And take their rest."
In his address on the occasion of laying the corner-stone of Old Horticultural Hall, in 1845, Mr. Wilder well said :-
" And be it ever remembered, that to the Massachusetts Horticul- tural Society the community are indebted for the foundation and consecration of Mount Auburn Cemetery, -that hallowed resting- place, that garden of graves."
We entered the cemetery with a funeral cortège, and we now depart with one. Once past the gate the staid and solemn collection of carriages becomes dismembered, and its sinuous
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black line parts in fragments. The driver cracks his whip, the horses break into a rattling pace, while the countenances of the so-called mourners are cleared as suddenly as if a cloud had passed from beneath the sun. Here comes the hearse to join the homeward race, and even the still weeping, reluctant friends are whirled away in spite of themselves. Is it a burial with military honors ? At entering the band plays a dirge, the com- rades following with arms reversed, downcast eyes, and meas- ured tread. The coffin is lowered into the grave and a volley discharged. Once beyond the gate arms are shouldered, the music strikes up a lively air, and the company marches away as gayly as on a field-day. Decorum would seem to challenge such observances. The contrast is somewhat too strongly defined ; the revulsion from grief to joyousness something discordant and unworthy.
Emerging from Mount Auburn, we take counsel of the swinging sign pointing to the lane leading to Fresh Pond, which lies but a little distance away, embosomed among the woody hills. In England our ponds would be called lakes, and our lakes might vie with Caspian or Euxine. But our ponds have this advantage, that, while bearing their miniature billows in summer, they become in winter solid acres of ice, to be harvested within the huge storehouses on their banks. Nature has fixed these reservoirs where they may best slake the thirst of the cities, so that whether ten or twenty miles away we may drink of their waters.
Fresh Pond seems to be the natural source of numerous underground streams, which are found whenever the earth is penetrated to any depth between it and Charlestown. Its shores have been looked upon with peculiar favor for country- seats by such as have known its natural advantages ; we would not attempt to fix a period when it was not a famed resort for recreation. Big-wigged magistrates and college students came here under the Colony, boating, angling, or haunting the cool groves. It was from the effects of exposure during a fishing excursion here that poor Governor Burnet got his death.
Historically the place has its claims as having served as a
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refuge for the panic-stricken women and children of the neigh- borhood on the 19th of April, 1775. One of these fugitives thus relates her experience : -
"A few hours with the dawning day convinced us the bloody purpose was executing ; the platoon firing assuring us the rising sun must witness the bloody carnage. Not knowing what the event would be at Cambridge at the return of these bloody ruffians, and seeing another brigade despatched to the assistance of the former, looking with the ferocity of barbarians, it seemed necessary to retire to some place of safety till the calamity was passed. My partner had been confined a fortnight by sickness. After dinner we set out, not knowing whither we went. We were directed to a place called Fresh Pond, about a mile from the town ; but what a distressed house did we find it, filled with women whose husbands had gone forth to meet the assailants, seventy or eighty of these (with number- less infant children), weeping and agonizing for the fate of their husbands. In addition to this scene of distress we were for some time in sight of the battle ; the glittering instruments of death pro- claiming by an incessant fire that much blood must be shed, that many widowed and orphaned ones must be left as monuments of British barbarity. Another uncomfortable night we passed ; some nodding in their chairs, some resting their weary limbs on the floor."
Time out of mind the shores of the pond belonged to the Wyeths, and one of this family deserves our notice in passing. Nathaniel J. Wyeth was born and bred near at hand. Of an enterprising and courageous disposition, he conceived the idea of organizing a party with which to cross the continent and en- gage in trade with the Indian tribes of Oregon. He enlisted one-and-twenty adventurous spirits, who made him their leader, and with whom he set out from Boston on the 1st of March, 1822, first encamping his party on one of the harbor islands, in order to inure them to field life. The voyagers provided them- selves with a novel means of transportation, - no other than a number of boats built at the village smithy and mounted on wheels. With these boats they expected to pass the rivers they might encounter, while at other times they were to serve as wagons. The idea was not without ingenuity, but was
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founded on a false estimate of the character of the streams and of the mountain roads they were sure to meet with.
Wyeth and his followers pursued their route via Baltimore and the railway, which then left them at the base of the Alle- ghanies, onward to Pittsburg, at which point they took steam- boat to St. Louis, arriving there on the 18th of April. Hith- erto they had met with only a few disagreeable adventures. They were now to face the real difficulties of their undertaking. They soon discovered that their complicated wagons were use- less, and they were forced to part with them. The warlike tribes, whose hunting-grounds they were to traverse, began to give them uneasiness ; and, to crown their misfortunes, they now ascertained how ignorantly they had calculated upon the trade with the savages.
St. Louis was then the great depot of the Indian traders, who made their annual expeditions across the Plains, prepared to fight or barter, as the temper of the Indians might dictate. The old trappers who made their abode in the mountain region met the traders at a given rendezvous, receiving powder, lead, tobacco, and a few necessaries in exchange for their furs. To one of these parties Wyeth attached himself, and it was well that he did so.
Before reaching the Platte five of Wyeth's men deserted their companions, either from dissatisfaction with their leader, or because they had just begun to realize the hazard of the enter- prise. Nat Wyeth, however, was of that stuff we so expressively name clear grit. There was no flinching about him ; the Pacific was his objective, and he determined to arrive at his destination even if he marched alone. William Sublette's party, which Wyeth had joined, encountered the vicissitudes common to a trip across the plains in that day ; the only difference being that the New England men now faced these difficulties for the first time, whereas Sublette's party was largely composed of experi- enced plainsmen. They followed the course of the Platte, seeing great herds of buffalo roaming at large, while they experienced the gnawings of hunger for want of fuel to cook the delicious humps, sirloins, and joints, constantly paraded like the fruit of
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Tantalus before their greedy eyes. They found the streams turbulent and swift ; the Black Hills, which the iron-horse now so easily ascends, were infested with bears and rattlesnakes. Many of the party fell ill from the effects of drinking the brackish water of the Platte, Dr. Jacob Wyeth, brother of the captain and surgeon of the party, being unluckily of this number.
Sublette, a French creole, and one of those pioneers that have preceded pony-express, telegraph, stage-coach, and locomotive, in their onward march, had no fears of the rivalry of the New England men, and readily took them under his protection. Be- sides, they swelled his numbers by the addition of a score of good rifles, no inconsiderable acquisition when his valuable caravan entered the country of the treacherous Blackfeet, the thieving Crows, or warlike Nez-Perces. The united bands arrived at Pierre's Hole, the trading rendezvous, in July, where they embraced the first opportunity for repose since leaving the white settlements.
At this place there was a further secession from Wyeth's company, by which he was left with only eleven men, the re- mainder preferring to return homeward with Sublette. Petty grievances, a somewhat too arrogant demeanor on the part of the leader, and the conviction that the trip would prove a failure, caused these men to desert their companions when only a few hundred miles distant from the mouth of the Columbia. Before a final separation occurred, a severe battle took place between the whites and their Indian allies and the Blackfeet, by which Sublette lost seven of his own men killed and thirteen wounded. None of Wyeth's men were injured in this fight, but a little later one of those who had separated from him was ambushed and killed by Blackfeet.
Wyeth now joined Milton Sublette, the brother of William, under whose guidance he proceeded towards Salmon River. The Bostons, as the northwest coast Indians formerly styled all white men, arrived at Vancouver on the 29th of October, hav- ing occupied seven months in a journey which may now be made in as many days. The expedition was a failure, indeed,
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so far as gain was concerned, and Wyeth's men all left him at the Hudson's Bay Company's post. The captain, nothing daunted, and determined to make use of his dearly bought experience, returned to the States the ensuing season. His adventures may be followed by the curious in the pleasant pages of Irving's Captain Bonneville. Arriving at the head- waters of the Missouri, he built what is known as a bull-boat, made of buffalo-skins stitched together and stretched over a slight frame, in which, with two or three half-breeds, he con- signed himself to the treacherous currents and quicksands of the Bighorn. Down this stream he floated to its confluence with the Yellowstone. At Fort Union he exchanged his leather bark for a dug-out, with which he sailed, floated, or paddled down the turbid Missouri to Camp (now Fort) Leavenworth. He returned to Boston, and, having secured the means, again repaired to St. Louis, where he enlisted a second company of sixty men, with which he once more sought the old Oregon trail.
This was forty years ago. Since then the Great American Desert, as it was called, has undergone a magical transforma- tion. Cities of twenty thousand inhabitants exist to-day where Wyeth found only a dreary wilderness ; from the Big Muddy to the Pacific you are scarcely ever out of sight of the smoke of a settler's cabin. In looking at the dangers and trials to which Wyeth found himself opposed, it must be admitted that he exhibited rare traits of courage and perseverance, allied with the natural capacity of a leader. His misfortunes arose through ignorance, and perhaps, to no small extent also, from that vanity which inclines your full-blooded Yankee to believe him- self capable of everything, because the word "impossible " is expunged from his vocabulary.
Fresh Pond has a present significance due wholly to its limpid waters. In Havana, in San Francisco, and even in Calcutta, you may read the legend " Fresh Pond Ice." What, ice afloat on the Ganges ! New England winter transported in crystals to the bosom of the sacred stream! How wondrous the first transparent cubes must have looked to the. gaping Hindoo, and
-
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how old Gunga would have shivered had one of the solid blocks fallen into his fiery tide !
Little did John Winthrop and his associates dream that the ice and granite which they saw with such foreboding would prove mines of wealth to their descendants. The traffic in ice was originated by Frederick Tudor in 1805, by shipping a single cargo in a brig to Martinique. It was characterized by the sagacious merchants of Boston as a mad project, and the adventurer was laughed at by the whole town. The cargo arrived in perfect condition. The business prospered. Mr. Tudor found other markets open to him, but want of means prevented his extending his trade to the East Indies for nearly thirty years after he had shipped his first cargo. He leased or purchased rights at Fresh Pond, Spot Pond, Walden Pond, and Smith's Pond, - a railway being built to the former, solely for the transportation of ice.
In 1835 Mr. Tudor was unable to meet his indebtedness, but by favor of his creditors was enabled to go on and pursue with energy the business he had inaugurated. He discharged every obligation in full. His house owned property in Nahant, Charlestown, New Orleans, Jamaica, Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, so that it was almost possible for him who at twenty- two had founded a traffic so extraordinary to repeat the proud boast of England, " that the sun never set on his possessions."
Let us once more take the route of the old Watertown road. And first we greet the ancient hostelry standing in the angle formed by the intersection of Belmont Street. This was known in Revolutionary times as Edward Richardson's tavern, though, as we have seen, it dated much farther back. The house has been removed a short distance from its original location, and has experienced changes in its exterior ; but within are still in- tact bar-room, kitchen, and dining-room, with the spacious fire- place, beside which hung the loggerhead. This was one of the places where the Colony cannon and intrenching tools were concealed. It was also a famous place of resort for Burgoyne's officers, on account of the cock-pit kept on the other side of the road. Some of these gentlemen, from the West of England, 15*
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were very partial to this cruel sport. We relate the answer of a poor woman to whom they applied to purchase a pair of fine birds.
" I swear now you shall have neither of them ; I swear now I never saw anything so bloodthirsty as you Britonians be ; if you can't be fighting and cutting other people's throats, you must be setting two harmless creatures to kill one another. Go along, go. I have heard of your cruel doings at Watertown, cutting off the feathers, and the poor creatures' comb and gills, and putting on iron things upon their legs. Go along, I say."
Suiting the action to the word, the old woman raised her crutch, and threatened to execute summary justice on the offi- cers, who did not consider it indiscreet to beat a hasty retreat. This tavern - subsequently Bird's, and also kept by Bellows - is now the residence of Joseph Bird, known through his efforts to discover a remedy for the prevention of conflagrations.
It is not known where Rev. George Phillips, first pastor of the church of Watertown, lies buried, but tradition having assigned the little knoll a short distance beyond the tavern and near the highway as his resting-place, Mr. Bird caused excava- tion to be carefully made there, without finding evidence of any remains.
A short walk brings us to the ancient burial-place of Water- town. It is not a garden but a field of graves. The stones are scarcely visible above the clover-tops and daisies. The red brick and blue slate contrast somewhat sharply with the marble and granite of the neighboring cemetery. If anything, the place wears an even sadder aspect of neglect than its contemporary of Old Cambridge. The very cedars seem dying. The mossy old stone-wall which forms one side of the enclosure is half concealed by climbing vines. One little pathway divides the ground in twain, giving thoughtless pedestrians a short cut from street to street. A short cut through a graveyard !
" Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare."
This graveyard is thought to have been used as early as 1642, although the situation before mentioned on the Bird
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estate was conjectured to have preceded it, - a supposition which the examinations of Mr. Bird may be considered to have settled. Opposite, and well withdrawn from the highway, is the house which tradition, that ignis fatuus of history, alleges to have been the home of Rev. Mr. Phillips, - perhaps that built for him by Sir Richard Saltonstall. This would place it in the front rank of old houses, where it clearly belongs, though it has for fifty years lost the distinctive English character it once possessed.
The second graveyard in the town, according to its present limits, is at the junction of Mount Auburn and Common Streets. It was established about 1754, the year the meeting- house afterwards used for the sessions of the Provincial Con- gress was built on the same ground. The neighborhood of the first cemetery is the supposed site of the first or second meeting-house, it being usually placed beside Mr. Phillips's house. The almost invariable custom of that day would seem to indicate its location within the limits of the old burial-place.
The church, to which the sittings of Congress gave political consequence, had a lofty steeple with square tower and open belfry. The entrance was on the east side. It had galleries, and was furnished with the old-fashioned box pews, having those movable seats which every one at the conclusion of the service felt obliged to turn back with a concussion repeated throughout the house like an irregular volley of small-arms. Rev. William Gordon, author of the History of our Revolution, officiated here as the chaplain of Congress. The vane which belonged to this house now adorns the pinnacle of the Metho- dist church.
Before you come to the bridge in Watertown, first built in 1660, there stood until recently, within the foundry-yard of Miles Pratt & Co., an old dwelling-house notable for its dilapidation. It seemed scarcely able to bear its own weight, and, as it encumbered the ground, was pulled down. During the work of demolition the workmen found a number of old copper coins, which had remained concealed in chinks or crev- ices a century or more. This is said to have been the old
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printing-office of Benjamin Edes, who removed his type and press from Boston in the spring of 1775. He printed for the Provincial Congress, and many of the old broadsides of the time bear his imprint.
Crossing the bridge, the first old house on the east side of the way - now the residence of Mr. Brigham - is the Coolidge tavern of Revolutionary times, kept by Nathaniel Coolidge from 1764 to 1770, and afterwards by "the Widow Coolidge." Con- temporary with this was Learned's tavern, on the site of the Spring Hotel. Nathaniel Coolidge's was known in 1770 as the " Sign of Mr. Wilkes near Nonantum Bridge." The house was appointed as a rendezvous for the Committee of Safety in May, 1775, in case of an alarm. President Washington lodged here in 1789, and styled' the Widow Coolidge's house a very indif- ferent one indeed.
Opposite Mr. Brigham's, and near the river-bank, is another old house, which is situated on ground belonging from the earli- est settlement to the Cook family. John Cook lived here during the Revolution, and some of the officers of our army boarded with him at the time of the siege, of whom Colonel Knox and Harry Jackson, bosom friends, enjoyed each other's companion- ship during brief intervals of rest. It was probably to this place Knox afterwards brought his wife. In a chamber of this house Paul Revere engraved his plates, and, assisted by John Cook, struck off the Colony notes emitted by order of the Provincial Congress. Lying contiguous to this estate along the river were the old fishing-wier lands of the town.
Our rambles extend no farther in the direction we have pur- sued than the vicinity of the "Great Bridge," so called in the day of small things. Newton, it is true, abounds in pleasant walks, while not a few of its worthies have made a figure in history. Of these Captain Thomas Prentice, the famous Indian fighter in Philip's time, may, in the order of chronology, justly claim precedence. Reputed to have been one of Old Noll's sol- diers, he was a sort of second Myles Standish, tough as hickory, seasoned in war, and of approved conduct. He is said to have killed with an axe, on his farm in this town, a bear which
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attacked one of his servants. This old trooper lived in the saddle all his life, and died at eighty-nine of a fall from his horse. His place was at the corner of the road leading to Brookline, occupied of later years by the Harbacks.
Joseph Ward, who built in 1792 the old mansion opposite the Skinner place, was appointed by General Heath his aide-de- camp the day after the battle of Lexington, and was the first to hold such a position in the American army. He was, in May following, with Samuel Osgood of Andover, appointed to a similar position by General Ward, subsequently holding the office of Commissary of Musters in the Continental Army.
Michael Jackson, colonel of the 8th Massachusetts, has been met with in our pages. Joining his company at the Lexington alarm, in the absence of commissioned officers, he was chosen to command for the day. He immediately stepped from his place in the ranks as a private, and gave the order, Shoulder arms, platoons right wheel, quick time, forward march ! When he got to Watertown meeting-house the officers of the regiment were holding a consultation. Finding they were likely to con- sume valuable time in speeches, he led all that would follow him where they could strike the British. He fell in with Percy's column, and that gallant gentleman received him with all the honors of a hot discharge of musketry. Jackson's men were at first demoralized, but rallied and gave shot for shot.
In the old Newton burying-ground the seeker will find the tomb in which were placed the remains of General William Hull and of his wife, Sarah (Fuller) Hull. A plain marble slab is inscribed,
" GENL. WILLIAM HULL An officer of the Revolution died Nov. 29th 1825 aged 72 years. MRS SARAH HULL died August 2d 1826 aged 67 years."
However he may read the history of the campaign which culminated in the surrender of Detroit, the student may not in this place withhold his sympathy for the misfortunes of a brave but ill-fated soldier. That he was not deficient in courage his
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conduct on some of the hardest-fought fields of the Revolution - Trenton, Monmouth, and Stony Point - sufficiently attest ; that he should suddenly have become a coward is as incredible as the charge of his being a traitor is absurd. Yet a military tribunal pronounced him guilty of cowardice, and but for the interposition of President Madison he would have been shot. Public sentiment was about equally divided in opinion as to whether Hull was the more coward or traitor, and current re- port had it that wagon-loads of British gold had been seen after the surrender going to his house at Newton.
This case has always presented to our mind a parallel with that of Admiral Byng, an officer of distinguished bravery, who, in obedience to popular clamor, was shot for cowardice on the quarter-deck of his own ship, meeting death like a hero. For- tunately General Hull was not called upon to refute a slander with his life. It is needless to recite instances of the fallibility of courts-martial, or of the power of a ministry or a cabinet to disgrace an officer for what is not unfrequently its own culpa- bility. No one need be reminded that the conqueror of Vicks- burg, of Chattanooga, and of Richmond was once on the eve of being permanently as he was temporarily superseded. The victor of Nashville and the present general of the armies of the United States were near meeting this destiny which others of lesser note are even now fulfilling.
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