USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Old landmarks and historic fields of Middlesex > Part 36
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HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX.
mimic conflagration roars on the hearth. A bowl of punch is brewed, smoking hot. The guest, nothing loath, swallows the mixture, heaves a deep sigh, and declares himself better for a thousand pounds. Soon there comes a summons to table, where good wholesome roast-beef, done to that perfection of which the turnspit only was capable, roasted potatoes with their russet jackets brown and crisp, and a loaf as white as the landlady's Sunday cap send up an appetizing odor. Our guest falls to. Hunger is a good trencherman, and he would have scorned your modern tidbits, - jellies, truffles, and patés à fois gras. For drink, the well was deep, the water pure and spark- ling, but home-brewed ale or cider was at the guest's elbow, and a cup of chocolate finished his repast. He begins to be drowsy, and is lighted to an upper chamber by some pretty maid-of-all-work, who, finding her pouting lips in danger, is perhaps compelled to stand on the defensive with the warm- ing-pan she has but now so dexterously passed between the
frigid sheets. At parting, Boniface holds his guest's stirrup, warns him of the ford or the morass, and bids him good speed.
Our modern landlord is a person whose existence we take upon trust. He is never seen by the casual guest, and if he were, is far too great a man for common mortals to expect speech of him. He sits in a parlor, with messengers, perhaps the telegraph, at his beck and call. His feet rest on velvet, his body reclines on air-cushions. You must at least be an English milord, a Russian prince, or an American Senator, to receive the notice of such a magnate. It is a grave question whether he knows what his guests are eating, or if, in case of fire, their safety is secured. His bank-book occupies his undi- vided attention. "Like master, like man." Your existence is all but ignored by the lesser gentry. You fee the boot-black, tip the waiter, drop a douceur into the chambermaid's palm, and, at your departure, receive a vacant stare from the curled, mustached personage who hands you your bill. At entering one of these huge caravansaries you feel your individuality lost, your identity gone, in the living throng. Neglected, heavy- hearted, but lighter, far lighter in purse than when you came,
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A FRAGMENT OF KING PHILIP'S WAR.
you pass out under a marble portico and drift away with the stream. Give, O publican, the stranger a welcome, a shake of the hand, a nod at parting, and put it in the bill.
Coming from the direction of Marlborough, at a little dis- tance, the gambrel roof of the Wayside Inn peeps above a dense mass of foliage. A sharp turn of the road, which once passed under a triumphal arch composed of two lordly elms, and you are before the house itself. On the other side the broad space left for the road are the capacious barns and outhouses belong- ing to the establishment, and standing there like a blazed tree in a clearing, but bereft of its ancient symbol, the sight of which gladdened the hearts of many a weary traveller, is also the old sign-post.
The interior of the inn is spacious and cool, as was suited to a haven of rest. A dozen apartments of one of our modern hotels could be set up within the space allotted to his patrons by mine host of the Wayside. Escaping from a cramped stage- coach, or the heat of a July day, our visitor's lungs would here begin to expand "like chanticleer," as, flinging his flaxen wig into a corner, and hanging his broad-flapped coat on a peg, he sits unbraced, with a bowl of the jolly landlord's extra-brewed in one hand, and a long clay pipe in the other, master of the situation.
Everything remains as of old. There is the bar in one corner of the common room, with its wooden portcullis, made to be hoisted or let down at pleasure, but over which never appeared that ominous announcement, " No liquors sold over this bar." The little desk where the tipplers' score was set down, and the old escritoire, looking as if it might have come from some hos- pital for decayed and battered furniture, are there now. The bare floor, which once received its regular morning sprinkling of clean white sea-sand, the bare beams and timbers overhead, from which the whitewash has fallen in flakes, and the very oak of which is seasoned with the spicy vapors steaming from pewter flagons, all remind us of the good old days before the flood of new ideas. Governors, magistrates, generals, with scores of others whose names are remembered with honor, have been here to quaff a health or indulge in a drinking-bout.
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HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX.
In the guests' room, on the left of the entrance, the window- pane bears the following recommendation, cut with a gem that sparkled on the finger of that young roysterer, William Moli- neux, Jr., whose father was the man that walked beside the king's troops in Boston, to save them from the insults of the townspeople, - the friend of Otis and of John Adams : -
" What do you think Here is good drink Perhaps you may not know it ; If not in haste do stop and taste You merry folks will shew it.
WM. MOLINEUX Jr. Esq. 24th June 1774 Boston."
The writer's hand became unsteady at the last line, and it looks as though his rhyme had halted while he turned to some companion for a hint, or, what is perhaps more likely, here gave manual evidence of the potency of his draughts.
A ramble through the house awakens many memories. You are shown the travellers' room, which they of lesser note occu- pied in common, and the state chamber where Washington and Lafayette are said to have rested. In the garret the slaves were accommodated, and the crooknecks and red peppers hung from the rafters. Unfortunately, the old blazonry and other inter- esting family memorials have disappeared under the auctioneer's hammer.
Conducted by the presiding genius of the place, Mrs. Dad- mun, we passed from room to room and into the dance-hall, annexed to the ancient building. The dais at the end for the fiddlers, the wooden benches fixed to the walls, the floor smoothly polished by many joyous feet, and the modest effort at ornament, displayed the theatre where many a long winter's night had worn away into the morn ere the company dispersed to their beds, or the jangle of bells on the frosty air betokened the departure of the last of the country belles. The German was unknown; Polka, Redowa, Lancers, were not ; but contra- dances, cotillons, and minuets were measured by dainty feet, and the landlord's wooden lattice remained triced up the livelong
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A FRAGMENT OF KING PHILIP'S WAR.
night. O the amorous glances, the laughter, the bright eyes, and the bashful whispers that these walls have seen and listened to, - and the actors all dead and buried ! The place is silent now, and there is no music, except you hear through the open win- dows the flute-like notes of the wood-thrush where he sits carolling a love-ditty to his mate.
The road on which stands the old inn first became a regular post-route about 1711, a mail being then carried over it twice a week to New York. But as early as 1704, the year of the publication of the first newspaper in America, there was a west- ern post carried with greater or less regularity, and travellers availed themselves of the post-rider's company over a tedious, dreary, and ofttimes hazardous road.
We have the journal of Madam Knight, of a journey made by her in 1704, to New Haven, with no other escort than the post-rider, - an undertaking of which we can now form little conception. She left Boston on the 2d of October, and reached her destination on the 7th. The details of some of her trials appear sufficiently ludicrous. For example, she reached, after dark, the first night, a tavern where the post usually lodged. On entering the house, she was interrogated by a young woman of the family after this fashion : -
" Law for mee - what in the world brings You here at this time a night. I never see a woman on the Rode so Dreadfull late in all the days of my versall life. Who are You ? Where are You going ? I'm scar'd out of my wits."
Who that has ever travelled an unknown route, finding the farther he advanced, the farther, to all appearances, he was from his journey's end, or whoever, finding himself baffled, has at last inquired his way of some boor, will deeply sympathize with the tale of the poor lady's woes. At the last stage of her route, the guide being unacquainted with the way, she asked and received direction from some she met.
" They told us we must Ride a mile or two and turne downe a Lane on the Right hand ; and by their Direction wee Rode on, but not Yet coming to ye turning, we mett a Young fellow and ask't him
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HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX.
how far it was to the Lane which turn'd down towards Guilford. Hee said wee must Ride a little further and turn down by the Corner of uncle Sam's Lott. My Guide vented his spleen at the Lubber."
No wonder that when safe at home again in Old Boston, she wrote on a pane of glass in the house that afterwards became that of Dr. Samuel Mather,-
" Now I've returned poor Sarah Knights, Thro' many toils and many frights ; Over great rocks and many stones, God has presarv'd from fracter'd bones."
The use of coaches was introduced into England by Fitz Alan, Earl of Arundel, A. D. 1580. At first they were drawn by two horses only. It was Buckingham, the favorite, who (about 1619) began to have them drawn by six horses, which, as an old historian says, was wondered at as a novelty, and imputed to him a "mastering pride." Captain Levi Pease was the first man to put on a regular stage between Boston and Hartford, about 1784.
The first post-route to New York, over which Madam Knight travelled in 1704, went by the way of Providence, Stonington, New London, and the shore of Long Island Sound. The distance was 255 miles. We subjoin the itin- erary of the road as far as Providence : -
"From Boston South-end to Roxbury Meeting-house 2 miles, thence to Mr. Fisher's at Dedham 9, thence to Mr. Whites * 6, to Mr. Billings 7, to Mr. Shepard's at Wading River 7, thence to Mr. Woodcock's + 3, from thence to Mr. Turpins at Providence 14, or to the Sign of the Bear at Seaconck 10, thence to Providence 4, to Mr. Potters in said town 8."
* Stoughton.
+ Attleborough.
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THE HOME OF RUMFORD.
CHAPTER XX.
THE HOME OF RUMFORD.
" Fortune does not change men, it only unmasks them."
T T THE world knows by heart the career of this extraordinary man. Sated with honors, he died at Auteuil, near Paris, August 21, 1814. Titles, decorations, and the honorary dis- tinctions of learned societies flowed in upon the poor Ameri- can youth such as have seldom fallen to the lot of one risen from the ranks of the people. The antecedents and character of the man have very naturally given rise to much inquiry and speculation.
Benjamin Thompson was born in the west end of his grand- father's house in North Woburn, March 26, 1753. The room where he first drew breath is on the left of the entrance, and on the first floor. As for the house, it is a plain, old-fashioned, two-story farm-house, with a gambrel roof, out of which is thrust one of those immense chimneys of great breadth and solidity. A large willow which formerly stood between the house and the road has disappeared, and is no longer a guide to the spot. This ancient dwelling has a pleasant situation on a little rising ground back from the road, which here embraces in its sweep the old house and the queer little meeting-house, its neighbor.
A pretty little maiden deftly binding shoes, and an elderly female companion who had passed twenty years of her life under this roof, were the occupants of the apartment in which Count Rumford was born. A Connecticut clock, which ticked noisily above the old fireplace, and a bureau, the heirloom of several generations, were two very dissimilar objects among the fur- niture of the room. There are no relics of the Thompsons remaining there.
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HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX.
The father of our subject died while Benjamin was yet an infant, and the widowed mother made a second marriage with Josiah Pierce, Jr., of Woburn, when the future Count of the Holy Roman Empire was only three years old. After this event Mrs. Pierce removed from the old house to another which formerly stood opposite the Baldwin Place, half a mile nearer the centre of Woburn.
At the age of thirteen young Thompson was apprenticed to John Appleton, a shopkeeper of Salem, Massachusetts, and in 1769 he entered the employment of Hopestill Capen in Boston. While at Salem, Thompson was engaged during his leisure moments in experiments in chemistry and mechanics, and it is recorded that in one branch of science he one day blew himself up with some explosive materials he was preparing, while on the other hand he walked one night from Salem to Woburn, a distance of twenty odd miles, to exhibit to his friend Loammi Baldwin a machine he had contrived, and with which he ex- pected to illustrate the problem of perpetual motion. His mind appears at this period absorbed in these fascinating studies to an extent which must have impaired his usefulness in his mas- ter's shop.
A few doors south of Boston Stone every one may see an antiquated building of red brick, a souvenir of the old town, which was standing here long before the Revolution. Strange freaks have been playing in its vicinity since Benjamin Thomp- son tended behind the counter there. The canal at the back has been changed into solid earth, and sails are no more seen mysteriously gliding through the streets from the harbor to the Mill-pond. The facsimile of Sir Thomas Gresham's grasshopper, on the pinnacle of Faneuil Hall, is about the only object left in the neighborhood familiar to the eye of the apprentice, who, we may assume, would not have been absent from the memorable convocations which were held within the walls of the old temple in his day. The build- ing with which Rumford's name is thus connected forms the angle where Marshall's Lane enters Union Street, and bears the sign of the descendant of the second oysterman
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THE HOME OF RUMFORD.
in Boston, himself for fifty years a vender of the delicious bivalve.
Thompson's master, Hopestill Capen, becomes a public char- acter through his apprentice, whom he may still have regarded as of little advantage in the shop by reason of his strongly developed scientific vagaries. Capen had been a carpenter, with whom that good soldier, Lemuel Trescott, served his time. He married an old maid who kept a little dry-goods store in Union Street, and then, uniting matrimony and trade in one harmonious partnership, abandoned tools and joined his wife in the shop. Samuel Parkman, afterwards a well-known Boston merchant, was Thompson's fellow-apprentice. The famous Tommy Capen succeeded to the shop and enjoyed its custom.
Thompson, at nineteen, went to Concord, New Hampshire, then known as Rumford, and from which his titular designation was taken. At this time he was described as of " a fine manly make and figure, nearly six feet in height, of handsome fea- tures, bright blue eyes, and dark auburn hair." He soon after married the widow of Colonel Benjamin Rolfe, a lady ten or a dozen years his senior. Rumford himself is reported by his friend Pictet as having said, " I married, or rather I was mar- ried, at the age of nineteen." One child, a daughter, was the result of this marriage. She was afterwards known as Sarah, Countess of Rumford.
If Rumford meant to convey to Pictet the idea that his union with Mrs. Rolfe was a merely passive act on his part, or that she was the wooer and he only the consenting party, he put in a plea for his subsequent neglect which draws but little on our sympathy. His wife, according to his biographers, took him to Boston, clothed him in scarlet, and was the means of intro- ducing him to the magnates of the Colony.
The idea forces itself into view that at this time Rumford's ambition was beginning to develop into the moving principle of his life. The society and notice of his superiors in worldly station appears to have impressed him greatly, and it is evident that the agitation which wide differences with the mother
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HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX.
country was then causing in the Colonies did not find in him that active sympathy which was the rule with the young and ardent spirits of his own age. He grew up in the midst of troubles which moulded the men of the Revolution, and at a time when not to be with his brethren was to be against them. We seldom look in a great national crisis for hesitation or de- liberation at twenty-one.
Certain it is that Rumford fell under the suspicions of his own friends and neighbors as being inclined to the royalist side. He met the accusation boldly, and as no specific charges of importance were made against him, nothing was proven. The feeling against him, however, was so strong that he fled from his home to escape personal violence, taking refuge at first at his mother's home in Woburn, and subsequently at Charlestown.
Thompson was arrested by the Woburn authorities after the battle of Lexington, was examined, and released ; but the taint of suspicion still clung to him. He petitioned the Provincial Congress to investigate the charges against him, but they re- fused to consider the application. He remained in the vicinity of the camps at Cambridge, vainly endeavoring to procure a commission in the service of the Colony, until October, 1775, when he suddenly took his departure, and is next heard of within the enemy's lines at Boston.
In the short time intervening between October and March, -the month in which Howe's forces evacuated Boston, - Thompson had acquired such a confidential relation with that general as to be made the bearer of the official news of the end of the siege to Lord George Germaine. He does not seem to have embraced the opportunity of remaining neutral under British protection, as did hundreds of others, but at once makes himself serviceable, and casts his lot with the British army.
It has been well said that nothing can justify a man in be- coming a traitor to his country. Thompson's situation with the army at Cambridge must have been wellnigh intolerable, but he had always the alternative of living down the clamors
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THE HOME OF RUMFORD.
against him, or of going into voluntary exile. His choice of a course which enabled him to do the most harm to the cause of his countrymen gives good reason to doubt whether the attachment he had once professed for their quarrel was grounded on any fixed principles. Be that as it may, from the time he clandestinely withdrew from the Americans until the end of the war his talents and knowledge were directed to their overthrow with all the zeal of which he was capable.
From this point Rumford's career is a matter of history. At his death he was a count of the Holy Roman Empire, lieuten- ant-general in the service of Bavaria, F. R. S., Foreign Fellow of the French Institute, besides being a knight of the orders of St. Stanislaus and of the White Eagle.
Rumford had derived some advantage from his attendance at the lectures of Professor Winthrop, of Harvard University, on Natural Philosophy. With his friend, Loammi Baldwin, he had been accustomed to walk from Woburn to Cambridge to be present at these lectures. Being at the camp, he had assisted in packing up the apparatus for removal when the College buildings were occupied by the soldiery. In his will he re- membered the University by a legacy of a thousand dollars annually, besides the reversion of other sums, for the purpose of founding a professorship in the physical and mathematical sciences, the improvement of the useful arts, and for the exten- sion of industry, prosperity, and the well-being of society. Jacob Bigelow, M. D., was the first incumbent of the chair of this professorship.
A miniature of Count Rumford, from which the portrait in Sparks's Biography was engraved, is now in the possession of George W. Pierce, Esq. The Count is painted in a blue coat, across which is worn a broad blue ribbon. A decoration ap- pears on the left breast. The miniature, a work of much artistic excellence, bears a certain resemblance to the late Presi- dent Pierce, a distant relative of the Count. It is a copy from a portrait painted by Kellenhofer of Munich, in 1792, and is inscribed on the back, probably in Rumford's own hand, " Pre-
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HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX.
sented by Count Rumford to his much loved and respected mother 1799."
Colonel Loammi Baldwin, the companion of Thompson in early youth, and who manfully stood up for his friend in the midst of persecution, when the name of tory was of itself suffi- cient to cause the severance of life-long attachments, lived in the large square house on the west side of the road before you come to the birthplace of Thompson. The house has three stories, is ornamented with pillars at each corner, and has a balustrade around the roof. In front is a row of fine elms, with space for a carriage-drive between them and the mansion. The house could not be mistaken for anything else than the country- seat of one of the town notabilities.
Baldwin's sympathies were wholly on the side of the patri- ots, and he was at once found in the ranks of their army. He was at Lexington, at the siege of Boston, and in the surprise at Trenton, where a battalion of his regiment, the 26th Massachu- setts, went into action with sixteen officers and one hundred and ninety men. Wesson, Baldwin's lieutenant-colonel, and Isaac Sherman, his major, were both in this battle, leading Mighell's, Badlam's, and Robinson's companies.
Colonel Baldwin resigned before the close of the war, and was appointed High Sheriff of Middlesex in 1780. He has already been named in connection with his great project, the Middlesex Canal. He discovered and improved the apple known by his name, and if that excellent gift of Pomona is king among fruits, the Baldwin is monarch of the orchard. His son Loammi inherited his father's mechanical genius. While a student at Harvard he made with his pocket-knife a wooden clock, the wonder of his fellow-collegians. The Western Ave- nue, formerly the Mill Dam, in Boston, and the government docks at Charlestown and Newport, are monuments of his skill as an engineer.
Woburn was originally an appanage of ancient Charlestown, and was settled in 1640 under the name of Charlestown Vil- lage. Among its founders the name of Thomas Graves -the same whom Cromwell named a rear-admiral - appears. A
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THE HOME OF RUMFORD.
confusion, not likely to be solved, exists as to whether he was the same Thomas Graves who laid out Charlestown in 1629, and is known as the engineer. The admiral, however, is en- titled to the distinction of having commanded, in 1643, the " Tryal," the first ship built in Boston.
" Our revels now are ended ; these our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air ; And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind."
19
BB
INDEX.
A.
Adams, Hannah, 337. Adams, John, 68, 337. Adams, John Quincy, 226. Adams, Samuel, at Lexington, 365-368. Alcott, A. Bronson, his residence and family, 376-378. Alcott, Louisa May, 378.
Alcott, May, 378. Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 318.
Allston, Washington, residence at Cambridge, 193 ; works of, 193, 194 ; burial-place, 279. Amory, Thomas C., 93.
Anchor, the history of, 39. Andrew, John A., 409. Appleton, Nathaniel, 215. Apthorp, East, 197, 273, 274. Arlington, incidents of battle at, 398 - 405.
Arnold, Benedict, at Bemis's Heights, 133 ; at Cambridge, 257, 325 ; anec- dotes of, 258, 272, 309. Artillery, American, 152-155. Auvergne, Philip d', 358.
B.
Baldwin, Loammi, 81, 431, 432. Baldwin, Loammi, Jr., 40. Baldwin, Captain Jonathan, 187. Ballard, John, anecdote of, 354.
Barker, Josiah, residence of, 28 ; re- builds Constitution, 40; sketch of, 41. Barrell, Joseph, 172, 177, 178.
Batchelder, Samuel, 283; residence of, 285. Baylor, George, 300. Bayonet, history of the, 247.
Belcher, Andrew, 214. Belcher, Governor Jonathan, death and burial, 279 ; residence of, 285, 286. Belknap, Dr. Jeremy, 68.
Bennington battle, incidents of, 126, 127; trophies of, 128, 129; prisoners, 128. Bernard, Governor Francis, 228. Bigelow, Dr. Jacob, 330, 338. Bird, Joseph, 346. Bissell Trial, 397. Bond, William C., 201. Borland, John, 197. Boston, blockade of, in 1781, 35 ; naval battle in harbor, 35; Grenadiers, 178 ; bombardment of, 181, 182; relics of siege, 265.
Boston Frigate, armament of, 34. Bourne, Nehemiah, 12.
Boutwell, George S., 418.
Boylston, Nicholas, 225, 226. Bradstreet, Governor Simon, 351.
Branding, examples of, 171.
Brattle's Mall, 280, 281.
Brattle Street Church (Boston), ball in, 182. Brattle, Thomas, 281.
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