USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Petersham > One hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Petersham, Massachusetts, Wednesday, August the tenth, 1754-1904 > Part 2
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Consider his first steps here. The township granted, John Bennet is authorized to convene the proprietors. Duly warned, they first meet at the inn of Thomas Carter, in Lan- caster, on May 10, 1733, choose their first moderator and clerk, vote a survey of the township and the laying out of a portion of it into lots of fifty acres each to be drawn for by
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the proprietors, pass the orders and rules, and appoint the committees required for settlement of the plantation accord- ing to the terms and conditions of the grant, which were, in general, in all these towns, that a certain number of proprie- tors should be settled within a specified time, that a meeting- house should be built, a lot set apart for the first settled min- ister, a gospel minister installed, and due provision made for schools -religion and education planting themselves under the very foundation-stones of early New England.
The march to the township begins. There are no roads and no vehicles. The settler packs upon his own back or the back of his horse his scanty clothing, provisions, and uten- sils, shoulders his axe and gun, and, scouting around Wachu- sett, clambering over the Hubbardston hills, fording Burnt- shirt River, and crossing Moccasin Brook and the little begin- nings of Swift River, comes to his allotted acres on these hills of ours-his food, wild game; his drink, the waters of the streams; his shelter, a blanket and the boughs of trees; his home, a howling wilderness; his neighbors, wild beasts and savages; and not yet the friction-match with which to light the dead-wood of his first fires. Then follows the log hut, the little clearing and the little mill, men working in groups for safety, their guns near at hand in readiness for wild beasts and savage men.
A few of the hardiest brave the severity of the first winter, the rest returning to their families. The next spring brings these back, and others with them. Seed is sown, vegetables are planted, the hearthstone is laid, the meeting-house begun, roads are made, and woman's hand begins to busy itself with bread-stuffs, the needle, the spinning-wheel and loom, and in all the manifold ministrations which make and maintain her foremost place in the hearts and homes of men.
For a time meetings continue to be held in Lancaster and Groton. At length they are appointed for the meeting-house here. The first one in June, 1735, and, as the principal ap- proach to the place is from Lancaster, it is voted that Captain Jonas Houghton have five pounds out of the treasury for ma-
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king the road from Lancaster, along the north side of Wachu- sett, to where it meets the path on the south side of the moun- tain, near Burntshirt River, so passable as to carry comfort- ably with four oxen four barrels of cider in a cart at once.
It would be interesting to know why such comfortable car- riage of so much cider was made the test of utility, and we may wonder what cider-carrying capacity the governor now requires as the standard of efficiency for the State roads the Commonwealth is building for everybody except ourselves, but we must not stop to ask him.
The plantation, because granted, as we have seen, to vol- unteers under Lovewell and White, was, in the beginning, sometimes called Volunteer's town; but, until its incorpora- tion, in 1754, under its present name, it was generally known as Nichewaug, the Indian name of the hill on which stand the houses of Mr. Gay and Mr. Carter. The first allotments of land included those along the crest of the hill, in the gen- eral direction of our main street. To these, from time to time, were added others until the whole grant was taken up.
The first meeting-house, fifty feet long by forty wide with twenty-one feet stud, was built by the old churchyard, on the east side of the Common, near the site of the brick school- house. The minister's lot was the land on which is the dwell- ing-house of the late Sanford B. Cook. The first inn was lo- cated a little northerly of the Nichewaug. The first school- house in the centre of the town - afterwards removed, and converted into the present dwelling of Mr. Job Lippitt - stood near the site of the present one. The first mills were probably by the pond on the Barre road, in the pretty val- ley known in my boyhood as "Slab City."
Preaching began in the spring of 1736. The first article in the warrants for the proprietors' annual meetings related to the salary of the minister, who was hired, paid, criticised, discussed, approved, condemned, called, and dismissed un- der legislation of the proprietors' meeting - parent of the town meeting, the American unit of popular government un- til the evolution of the machine and the party boss.
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In the absence of fences, cattle and swine were, for many years, allowed to run at large, the swine, in the language of the records, being yoked and ringed according to law.
The leading men, farmers, lawyers, doctors, merchants and others, became field drivers, hog reeves, deer reeves, and other officers of the town for its secular uses, and, for the seventh day, besides the minister, the deacons, and the man appointed, after the gift of a bell, to ring it an hour before meeting and to ring and toll it at the time of meeting and at the time of funerals and to sweep the meeting-house and pro- vide water for baptism, the town elected tithing-men, who are described as a "kind of Sunday constable, whose special duty it was, in the old parish meeting, to quiet the restless- ness of youth and disturb the slumber of age."
The meeting-house, which was also the town house, was slowly developed rather than built, and was for years the constant subject of town action and appropriation. There was no provision for warming it, and, in winter, the proprie- tors' meetings were generally adjourned to the inn. On Sun- days, when the temperature threatened a Christian serenity of mind, the women carried with them little foot-stoves filled with live coals, which contributed somewhat to the comfort of the pew, as did the old-fashioned warming-pan to that of the bed in the unwarmed room.
A story of the warming-pan is told of a home in which the so-called head of the house used to retire before his better half, who had a habit of warming her portion of the bed after the lesser fraction had taken possession of his. He so often protested, insisting that sooner or later she was sure to burn him, that, one night, she pushed the pan vigorously against him and sent him howling from the bed to find the cruel creature had filled the thing with snow.
But, like many another in these degenerate days, we are wandering from the meeting-house, which, in March, 1739, had advanced to a stage at which it was voted that the "Dea- cons do buy a descent cushing for the pulpit," and, in 1742, it was voted "to lath and plaster." The deacons apparently
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did not buy the "cushing;" for in 1748 it was again voted to buy a "plush cushing," and that Samuel Willard provide it.
The meeting-house had at first but one pew, that of the minister, and a deacon's seat in front of the pulpit. Later a row of pews was built around the house along the walls, at the expense of their owners. The intervening space was di- vided into two rows of seats fronting the pulpit. These were assigned to the inhabitants generally -the better ones to the owners of the larger estates, "with some regard," the records say, "to age." The women were placed on one side of the house and the men on the other. Committees were chosen from time to time, to "seat the meeting-house," which was a very delicate operation, often involving jealousies and em- barrassments.
In a neighboring town, it is said, some young men built. for themselves a pew behind the women's seats, which the town refused to allow to remain there. The reason is not given. Did it perchance divide the devotions of some young maiden, and make her
. . blush scarlet right in prayer When her new meetin' bunnet Felt somehow through its crown a pair O' blue eyes sot upon it"?
Occasionally merriment was provoked by the seating of the meeting-house. One man in a neighboring town, to whom had been assigned pew number 6, which was the last one to- ward the outer door, on the following Sunday, marched up the aisle counting aloud, in the reverse order, up to 6, which brought him to the pew in front, in which he calmly seated himself, as much to the amazement of those claiming the chief seats in the synagogue as to the amusement of all the others.
The meeting-house was at length completed and often filled to overflowing with worshippers who came, at first, with the musket, as did the minister, who, while having before him his sermon, with a sometimes sulphurous charge for his flock,
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kept by his side his gun, with another charge for the savage that might suddenly require more pungent preaching.
At length the old building -which was at one time offered to the General Court as an inducement for making a shire town of Petersham-gave place to a larger house, designed, tradition says, by Bulfinch, the architect of the State House front and of the-Old South Meeting-house in Boston. In the tower of this second house, a bell, cast by Paul Revere and presented by Eleazer Bradshaw, was in due time hung, and there voiced the motto cast upon it:
"The living to the church I call, And to the grave 1 summon all."
The bell, once cracked and recast, hung there until this sec- ond house, in its turn, was superseded by the present build- ing of the First Congregational Parish, in the belfry of which it was placed and still remains, its mission somewhat affected by the changes of time; for the old knell that added to the suffering of the afflicted as they bore their dead to the grave is no longer sounded, and, though to the church the living still are called, a diminishing few go in.
The schoolhouse was a thing of slower growth, for while the mother, sitting at her open door, could see wild beasts moving about with their young, and knew that, at any mo- ment, the Indians might be prowling near, she was slow to suffer her children to go unprotected from her side. But the schoolhouse, in due time, came.
The township was divided into what, at first, were termed "school squadrons," corresponding to our districts, which, in their turn, are passing away since the adoption of the pres- ent custom of conveying scholars from their homes to the schools in the centres of the towns.
Educated teachers were early here. The one most in evi- dence was Ensign Mann, long known as Master Mann, a Harvard graduate, the ancestor of Mr. George S. Mann, a lifelong friend of Petersham, who knows a good deal about it and ought to write its history.
Ensign Mann first came here as a candidate about 1767, a dozen years after the incorporation of the town, when con- . ditions were ripening for the outbreak of the Revolution. He was so warm an advocate and so zealous a worker in the cause of liberty as to arouse the opposition of the more con- servative people, among whom was the first "Gospel Minis- ter," the reverend Aaron Whitney, who refused to partici- pate in Mann's examination and withheld his approval; but the young candidate prevailed, entered upon his labors, be- came a leader of the patriots, and by his ardor aroused the increasing disapproval of the royalists, to whose arguments for his conversion he remained indifferent until he encoun- tered the eyes of Miss Alice, the minister's daughter. Under their fire he is said to have surrendered unconditionally, and to have passed, and loyally remained, under the yoke of his new allegiance.
Streams and their adjoining lands were granted to persons who engaged to build saw and grist mills and to keep them in repair ten years and to sell good pitch pine boards for forty shillings per thousand or saw to the halves during said pe- riod.
Ask the pulp and match companies where now are the pitch pine boards and the picturesque old up-and-down saw- mills-the pulp companies that supply the great newspa- pers, a single issue of only one of which consumes the spruce of acres; the match companies that send by the millions our sapling pines, riddled into splinters, to light the pipes of Europe and, for aught we know, the camp-fires of Russia and Japan. The teeth of their screaming blades are every- where tearing through the hearts of our trees and leaving, in their trail, sawdust and scattered branches to feed the forest fires that leave in ashes, desecration, and desolation the sighing groves, God's first temples, in which the thrush has sung his praise.
Some of us remember the old mills and how, as boys, we sat upon the logs and were hitched and jerked backward and. forward to the movement and the music of the dancing saw,
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and how, in the old grist-mills, while waiting for our grists, we popped corn on the old box stoves in full sympathy with the impatient lad who, eager to get away, said to the miller:
"I could eat that meal faster than your old mill grinds it!"
"How long?" asked the miller.
"Till I starved to death," said the lad.
In the early days there was constant laying out of roads, that led to store and mill and meeting, to neighboring farms and towns, to the county seat, and to adjoining States; and it appears that the economical fashion of "working out taxes" by leaning on the hoe-handle and swapping stories was early introduced, for we find it voted that "the surveyors shall judge whether the men that work at the roads do a day's work in a day."
Rewards were offered for the tails of rattlesnakes and the heads of crows and wolves, and for the discovery of the vil- lain or villains who broke the glass in the warrant and pub- lishing boxes.
During vacancies in the pulpit sums were appropriated to meet the expense of "riding after ministers," the need of whom was emphasized by the organization of a company of forty men, each to have a good horse, for the detection and punishment of thieves. The poor were sold, "by Vandue, to those who would keep them cheapest." Committees were chosen to get rid of the paupers coming from other towns, and to manufacture pearlash, sulphur, and saltpetre, and "in order to prepare kittles to make salt."
Provision was made for the purchase of firearms and for accumulation of flints, powder, and lead.
Some of us remember an old powder-house that stood, dur- ing our childhood, easterly of my farm barn, in the pasture which then belonged to my father. I have a vivid recollec- tion of the building, for it contained a large chest filled with munitions of war, from which, without orders from head- quarters, I one day took some cartridges and emptied them of powder, to which I applied a match to see if it would burn. The experiment was successful. The powder responded with
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customary promptness, burned to a crisp my woolen tippet, scorched my eyebrows and eyelashes, singed what hair it found below my cap, and left upon my cheeks two tell-tale blisters that soon after drew from me a reluctant explana- tion, under the cross-the very cross-examination of my father.
Although the period from the grant of the township, in 1733, until years after its incorporation, in 1754, was filled with matters of local and personal interest, it is marked by few events of such importance as to justify extended com- ment here.
Noticeable facts, distinguishing the early from the pres- ent time, were the almost authoritative influence of the min- isters and the length of their pastorates. Denominational differences had not begun to organize and proclaim those diversities of view which defeat assent to any one belief and tend to discredit all, and individual disagreements had not yet destroyed the outward unity of church relationship. Town and parish were one. Meeting-house and town house were one. All subjects of common interest were there considered and generally acted upon without seriously affecting the dig- nity of the pastor or the sanctity of the pastoral office.
The settlement of the "Gospel Minister" implied a sort of marriage for the better or worse of a lifelong union, which often followed, and bore the fruitage of powerful and benign influence that held shepherd and flock in the bonds of a deep and abiding reverence and affection.
The first four pastorates in the town covered a period of nearly a hundred years, as was the case in many towns, a single pastorate not infrequently continuing for more than fifty years.
The first settled minister, Aaron Whitney, was installed in 1738, and occupied his pulpit until his loyalty to his king and his outspoken belief that the grievances suffered under the royal government were less than those to be anticipated from rebellion became so offensive to the majority of his people that the town voted not "to hire, bargain with, nor employ.
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the Rev. Mr. Whitney to preach" for them, and this vote was accented by appointment of a committee of ten "to see that the publick worship on Lord's Day next and all future worship be not disturbed by any person going into the desk but such as shall be put there by the town's committee."
When the reverend gentleman next attempted to enter the pulpit, tradition says he found the committee's instructions embodied in the form of a half-breed Indian behind a pitch- fork and in front of the meeting-house door. This pointed argument proved so persuasive that the venerable pastor withdrew and confined his after-preaching to his own house and to such sympathizing friends as cared to hear him there. But a few years after his death, when political bitterness had subsided, the town erected a monument at his grave "in token of their regard for him."
Mr. Whitney left a large family. One of his sons, Rev. Peter Whitney, wrote a history of Worcester County. Three of his descendants were, Professor Whitney, the eminent phi- lologist of Yale University, Professor Whitney, the equally distinguished geologist of Harvard University, and a brother of these, who was recently the librarian of the Boston Public Library.
Solomon Reed, Mr. Whitney's immediate successor, a notable man in many ways, remained in his pulpit until his growing tendency to confound spiritual and spirituous dis- tinctions led to the appointment of a committee to visit him and urge diminished indulgence. This committee, it is said, . encountered such urbanity and overflowing hospitality on the part of the reverend gentleman and his accomplished wife, who was famous for her flip, that all its members withdrew from their courtly presence having obtained what they termed Christian satisfaction, but with reputations for sobriety and efficiency as remonstrants greatly impaired. Let it not be forgotten, however, that this was before the evils of inten- perance were publicly proclaimed, at a period when slavery still existed in Petersham, when rum and sugar were among things provided for the ordination of ministers, and when
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common hospitality demanded the offer and acceptance of beverages of an ardent variety. His pastoral relation was finally ended at his own request.
He also left a large family who became valuable members of society. One of his daughters married Dr. Joseph Flint, a distinguished physician at one time in practice here, as the immediate successor of an eminent kinsman, Dr. John Flint, grandfather of the Misses Flint who recently owned the house now belonging to Mrs. Emerton, of Salem. Dr. Joseph Flint was the son of Dr. Austin Flint, of Leicester, and father of the celebrated Dr. Austin Flint of New York, a native of Petersham, who became president of the American Medical Society and died, not long since, on the eve of a visit to Eng- land to deliver an address as the official representative of his profession in the United States. The latter was the great- grandfather of Cuvier Grover Flint, a gentleman four years of age, known to some of you as a somewhat prominent res- ident of this town for the past few months.
It is needless to refer to the later ministers or the friction of their pastorates. The church records show the forefathers and mothers to have been very like the after fathers and mothers, and no less susceptible to the influence of weather and the various forms of indisposition that affect the modern zeal for church attendance, in spite of creeds, covenants, canons and catechisms, and of committees appointed to act upon the offence of non-attendance and neglect of ordinances.
One Lydia Blank, under examination by a committee, said her husband opposed her attendance. This he denied. Then she said the pastor had made a bet, lost it, and refused to pay, and that she could not, in conscience, thereafter hear him preach. As it appeared that she had neglected to attend before the alleged wager and when other ministers were in the pulpit, the defence was deemed inadequate.
Betsy Blank gave as her reason for neglect of duty that the church had made her unhappy by its attempt to punish her husband. This, too, was deemed insufficient. One man claimed his freedom because he had changed his views and
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considered his religion a matter solely between himself and his God. A revolutionary soldier objected to his pastor's in- terest in politics, and he was charged with becoming so bel- ligerent whenever visited by the committee as to induce the belief that he was without that wisdom which is gentle and easy to be entreated, and the committee declined further watch and ward over him.
Not many of the original proprietors ever permanently settled here. The names of Gates and Wilder are the only ones still borne by inhabitants of the town. But from the be- ginning Petersham attracted able and cultivated men, and the place had a rapid growth which gave it early prominence among the towns of Worcester County.
Its agriculture was profitable and its trade remunerative. Its leading farmers, merchants, business men, ministers, law- yers, doctors, and teachers were persons of intelligence, char- acter, reputation, and influence that extended beyond the limits of the town.
At the end of the eighteenth century the town had a pop- ulation of 1,800, more than double its present population, and its early prosperity was fairly maintained until the mid- dle of the century following, when the great manufacturing centres, the growing cities, the developing lines of railroad and sea-borne transportation, the opening up to settlement of the fertile prairies of the West, the new discoveries of the precious metals, and the many other appeals to youthful in- telligence, energy, and enterprise drew the young men from the hills and, throughout rural New England, slowly pre- pared the way for the deserted hearthstone and the aban- doned farm, where now, too often, are seen only the open or brush-covered cellar, the bucketless well, the clump of lilacs, and, perhaps, the hectic flush of a clinging rose, to mark the places where the forefathers fought the savage and the soil; where
"Ag'in the chimbley crooknecks hung An' in amongst 'em rusted The ole Queen's arm that gran'ther Young Fetched back from Concord, busted,"-
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and whence have issued their descendants to become the sol- diers, statesmen, engineers, lawyers, preachers, poets, artists, writers, and leaders who, throughout the land, have builded, in their manifold manhood, the noblest monuments of our modern antiquity of Old New England.
Fiske, in his "Critical Period of American History," speak- ing of the men trained in town-meeting and believing it all- important that people should manage their own affairs, says that the principle was carried so far in Massachusetts that the towns were like little semi-republics and the State a league of such republics. The truth of this finds notable illustration in the records of this town.
At a meeting held here Dec. 30, 1772, in response to the circular letter from the Boston Committee of Correspondence containing a statement of the rights and grievances of the province, nine of the leading citizens of the town were chosen a Petersham Committee of Correspondence to deal with these matters and to prepare resolutions for the town and instruc- tions for its representatives. This committee, answering the letter, congratulates the Boston committee on the virtue of Boston which led them to take the initiative in so good a cause, in the face of its exposure to the first efforts of the "iron jaws of power," and continues as follows:
The time may come when, if you continue your integrity, you may be driven from your goodly heritages and, if that should be the case (which God, of his infinite mercy prevent), we invite you to share with us in our small supplies of the necessaries of life, and, should the voracious jaws of tyranny still haunt us and we should not be able to withstand them, we are determined to retire and seek refuge among the inland aboriginal natives of the country, with whom we doubt not but to find more humanity and brotherly love than we have lately received from our mother country. We send herewith an attested copy of the doings of our town. If the nature of causes ever again bespeaks any more from us, we then again shall offer what then may appear right, for we read that those that were faithful spake often one to another and may God of his infinite mercy in his own time deliver us.
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