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 3
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The records of the town invite a full reading as the decla- ration of the "semi-republic" of Petersham, three years be- fore the famous Declaration of 1776; but they can be quoted only in part.
On Jan. 4, 1773, five days after the meeting of December 30 referred to, the committee reported as follows:
The town having received a circular letter from the town of Bos- ton respecting the present grievances and abominable oppression. under which this country groans, have therefore taken into their most serious consideration the present policy of the British govern- ment and administration with regard to Great Britain and their col- onies; have carefully reviewed the mode of election and the quality of the electors of the commons of that island, and have also atten- tively reflected upon the enormous and growing influence of the crown,and that bane of all free states - a standing army in the time of peace.7 and, in consequence thereof, are fully confirmed in the- opinion that the ancient rights of the nation are capitally invaded and the greatest part of the most precious liberties of Englishmen utterly destroyed ;- and, whereas the parliament of Great Britain. by various statutes and acts, have unrighteously distressed our trade, denied and precluded us from the setting up and carrying on of man- ufactures highly beneficial to the inhabitants of these territories; re- stricted and prevented our lawful intercourse and commerce with other states and kingdoms; and have also made laws and institutions touching life and limb in disherison of the ancient common law of the land; and, moreover, have, in these latter times, robbed and plundered the honest and laborious inhabitants of this extensive con- tinent of their prosperity by mere force and power; and are now drain- ing this people of the fruits of their toil by thus raising a revenue from them. against the natural rights of man and in open violation of the laws of God: This town, in union with the worthy inhabitants of the town of Boston, now think of their indispensable duty to con- sider of the premises and the present aspect of the times and to take such steps as, upon mature deliberation, are judged right and ex- pedient, and hereupon the town Resolved, That, with a governor ap- pointed from Great Britain during pleasure, with a large stipend dependent upon the will of the Crown and controlled by instructions from a British Minister of State, with a council subject to the nega- tive of such a governor, and with all officers, civil and military, sub-
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ject to his appointment or consent, with a castle in the hands of a standing army, stationed in the very bowels of the land, and with that amazing number of place-men and dependents, with which every maritime town already swarms, no people can ever be truly virtuous, free or brave: +
Resolved, that the parliament of Great Britain, usurping and ex- ercising legislative authority over, and extorting an unrighteous rev- enue from these colonies against all divine and human law and the late appointment of salaries to be paid to our superior court judges, whose creation, pay and commission depend upon mere will and pleasure, completes a system of bondage, equal to any ever before fabricated, by the combined efforts of ingenuity, malice, fraud, and wickedness of man:
If we have an eye to our posterity, not only in this world, but in the world to come, it is our duty to oppose such a government and ... this people, for the obtainment of a speedy redress of these mighty grievances and intolerable wrongs, are warranted by the laws of God and Nature in the use of every rightful art and energy of policy, strategem, and force, and they appeal to the throne of the great God for that spirit of valor and irresistible courage which shall occasion our aged and our youth to jeopard their lives with joy in the high places of the field for the preservation of this goodly heritage of our fathers, for the sake of the living children of our loins and the un- born millions of our posterity.
These resolutions, with instructions of like tenor to the representative in the Legislature, received the unanimous vote of the town and were widely quoted in this country and abroad, where they were printed in full in a "History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States of America," published in London in 1788.
Do they not stir our blood to-day, after the interval of more than a hundred years, and may we not wonder how this dec- laration of the little Petersham in Massachusetts at first sounded in the ears of that other ham of St. Peter in the sub- urbs of London ?
The spirit of these resolutions prevailed in all after-action of the town, in spite of the heated opposition of a considerable
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number, embracing some of the most respectable and influ- ential persons among its inhabitants, who, loyal to their es- tablished government, covenanted that they would recognize no congresses, committees of correspondence, or other un- constitutional assemblages of men, and pledged themselves to resist the forcible exercise of all such authority, repelling force with force, in case of the invasion of their rights of person or property.
These royalists or tories were publicly censured, and the town ordered printed, posted at all the taverns, and broadly circulated, three hundred hand-bills, calling them "incorri- gible enemies of freedom and of their country," and forbade all commerce with them, as "traitorous parasites who were willing to enslave their bretheren and posterity forever."
These amenities obtained, in 1767, the following rhymed expression in the Massachusetts Spy:
"With minds eclipsed and eke depraved, As meek as any lamb, The wretches who would be enslaved That live in Petersham,
For you, ye worthless Tory band,
Who would not lawless power withstand,
The scorn and scandal of the land, Be endless plagues and fetters! Ye want abilities and brains, Though headstrong as a ram, And seem to mourn the want of chains, Ye tools of Petersham! For slaves like you the rod of power Is pickling for some future hour; The taste will prove austere and sour E'en to the wretch that flatters."
Such interchange of courtesies between old friends and neighbors did not end without violence, involving at one time a barricaded house, surrounded with shotted guns and men behind them, and at least two women in tearful sympa-
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thy over a pair of husbands-one within and the other with- out the barricade-among the besiegers and the besieged; but, fortunately, no very serious trouble followed.
A large majority of the people remained loyal to the cause of liberty and active in preparation for the impending strug- gle. Town-meetings were frequent, enlistments early, ap- propriations liberal, and, at length, on April 12, 1775, a week before the Battle of Lexington, the town voted that "every male inhabitant, from 16 years old and upward, be warned to meet at the meeting-house in Petersham with arms and ammunition," on the Monday following. Two days after this meeting, on that nineteenth of April that resounded with "the shot heard round the world," its soldiers were on the march for the defence of Boston. They were at Bunker Hill, at Bennington, at Saratoga, at the surrender of Burgoyne, and, throughout the war, wherever their country called them.
On that famous July 4, 1776, while the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were in session in Philadel- phia, the inhabitants of Petersham were assembled in their meeting-house, in active preparation for their part in the work which that Declaration involved and which only in- telligent, earnest, and unfaltering patriotism could have. achieved; and, everywhere and at all times, in the army, in the general court, in provincial congresses, and in the Con- gress of the United States, able and energetic representation of Petersham was to be found eagerly rendering any service reasonably required of it.
Following the war were consequences and conditions which, not long after its close, led to the insurrection in Massa- chusetts, known as Shays's Rebellion. Adequate consider- ation of this would require more than the time accorded us to-day, but, as that rebellion practically ended in this town, it is a matter demanding brief notice here.
It grew out of the results of the revolutionary struggle. A long and impoverishing war had produced grave public and private embarrassment not unlike that which accompanied the exhaustion of the Southern States at the end of our Civil
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War. People sought relief in trade. Goods were heavily im- ported, luxury appeared, specie disappeared, bankruptcy, distress, and litigation followed. The general government was under burdensome obligations resulting from the war. The State had incurred heavy indebtedness in carrying it on; the towns, in furnishing men; and individuals, in meet- ing the demands upon themselves.
During the war private interests were in a measure sub- ordinated to public considerations. When war ended and the courts resumed peaceful sessions all these obligations arose, swollen with accumulated interest, and demanded set- tlement. Nobody could wait, and nobody could pay. Con- gress pressed the States for their proportion of the national debt; the States became strenuous and individuals impor- tunate. This was especially true of Massachusetts, which had furnished one third of the effective force in the national service. Her debt to the general government, to the officers and soldiers she had sent to the war, and her other obliga- tions amounted to $10,000,000. The only sources of revenue were from diminished and diminishing importations and from estates and polls overwhelmed with embarrassment and less than 100,000 in number. Heavy taxes were assessed upon an impoverished, distressed, and disheartened people. These taxes and the thousands of cases pending for collec- tion of debts-a single attorney sometimes bringing a hun- dred suits in a single court-produced intense bitterness of feeling. Lawyers, in the simple discharge of professional duty, became objects of deep resentment, which extended to courts and judges and, finally, developed into armed com- bination to prevent the peaceful administration of justice. Against this the militia, themselves largely insurgents or dis- affected, were of no avail. Matters reached such threaten- ing proportions that rebellion was declared and an army of between four thousand and five thousand men was raised to suppress it.
This army, in which was the company of Captain Park Holland, of Petersham, was under command of General
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Lincoln, who had been an able officer in the War of the Rev- olution. He marched first to Worcester and enabled the courts there to hold their sessions. Thence he proceeded to Springfield, where the insurgents, under Captain Shays, were concentrated with the intention of capturing the arsenal, which was guarded by General Shepherd.
Having in vain exhausted all peaceful appeals to Shays, Shepherd finally opened fire upon the rebels and forced them to retreat to the neighboring towns. After the arrival of Lincoln and some days of ineffectual parleying, Shays again retreated-this time to Petersham, where it is supposed he expected to find recruits and, if necessary, make a stand.
Lincoln immediately followed with infantry, cavalry, and artillery, as hotly as may be predicated of an all-night pursuit, in the bitter cold of winter, in the face of a pitiless snow- storm, without food, rest, or shelter, on an uninterrupted march of thirty miles, which has been likened, in hardship, exposure, and suffering, to the retreat of the French from Moscow.
Fortunately, no one actually perished, and, early Sunday morning, Feb. 4, 1787 (Col. Ephraim Stearns, ancestor of Mrs. Jas. Stowell, leading the government troops), Lincoln's army was on our hill, to the utter amazement of Shays, one hundred and fifty of whose men were taken prisoners. The rest, leaving in some cases their hot coffee, hats, and muskets, hastily retreated towards Athol, taking the road which passed the house now occupied by Miss Letitia Davenport, and the back of the rebellion was broken. Such of Shays's men as did not lay down their arms and return to their homes scat- tered in different directions but made no serious further dis- turbance. Leaders were indicted, convicted of treason, and sentenced to be hanged; and glorious old Sam Adams, who had no sympathy or patience with armed opposition to the laws of a republic, would have sent them all to the gibbet. But another feeling prevailed. Great consideration was felt for men many of whom, having borne arms for their country in redress of grievances suffered under British rule, were
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misled into the belief that the then existing hardships were grievances of the same character, to be redressed in the same way.
Two commissioners were appointed, one of them General Lincoln, with authority to pardon except in a few cases. Am- nesty became general and finally universal, including even Shays, of whom ran the old rhyme:
"My name is Shays; in former days, In Pelham I did dwell, sir, 1789065 But now I'm forced to leave that place Because I did rebel, sir."
For the half-century following little occurred to affect the quiet and prosperity of the town which, on July 4, fifty years ago, celebrated the centennial anniversary of its incorpora- tion, when the late Rev. Edmund B. Willson, of Salem, a na- tive of Petersham, delivered here an able and interesting ad- dress which contains the fullest existing town history, from which I have freely borrowed for the present occasion.
That period, as already intimated, marks the beginning of the decline in population and material prosperity which has gradually brought us to existing conditions. Shortly be- fore that date, and until a destructive fire, in 1847, swept nearly every building from the west side of the Common, there were here a large factory for the manufacture of lasting buttons, several places for pressing and boxing for market palm-leaf hats, which were then braided here in considerable quantities by the women and children of the town. There were shoe-shops, tailors' shops, a harness-shop, a jewelers' shop, two stores, two doctors, two lawyers, - one of them trying as many cases as any other in Worcester County,- three carriage-builders, a half-dozen blacksmiths, large and profitable farms, three comparatively well-filled churches, two hotels, and two six-horse daily mail-coaches going re- spectively to and from Worcester, Greenfield, and Brattle- boro. Those then engaged in the various callings referred to were the men who celebrated the anniversary of a half-cen-
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tury ago. They are gone, and their very names, with few ex- ceptions, are well-nigh forgotten by all but a few of us gray- heads who then were boys and girls.
At that time colored men, women, and children were bought and sold like cattle, by public auction, in the capital of this great republic, by citizens proud of their Constitution, ordained and established to secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity. The country was again upon the brink of that hell of war that opened, not long after, with the first shot at Sumpter, as did the War of the Revolution, nearly a hundred years before, with that first shot that an- nounced the struggle for liberty.
What this war was, what it cost, what it achieved, and what names it gave to fame throughout the United States -for the soldier and patriot loyal to his highest ideals was found among the vanquished as well as among the victors -you all know. The story is in a thousand volumes, has been re- hearsed on many a Memorial Day, and will be so long as its heroes remain to receive the tributes of a grateful people.
What it meant to the anxious and stricken hearts in this town and in Barre, and to their Co. F of the Fifty-third Mass- achusetts Regiment (only this surviving remnant of which is with you to-day), is best told in the generous tribute to Captain Mudge and his shattered company delivered here, five years ago, by Mr. Simes, in his admirable memorial ad- dress, which had very much to say for the head and heart of both its author and his subject.
When John Green Mudge came to Petersham, in 1849, there came a brave, gentle, upright, unselfish, many-sided, and widely gifted man, who learned to love the town as have very few of its natives, and who, for forty years, served it in every relationship as did no other man. When he died, as Mr. Simes well said, something seemed taken out of Peters- ham that never could be replaced. The one labor of his life in which he took the most pride was his own and that of his company by the waters of the Mississippi, and the thing that most stirred the enthusiasm of his last days was the erection,
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at his instigation, in memory of the patriotic men who had served their town and country, of a public library which should afford to coming generations such knowledge of worthy achievement and such inspiration to worthy action as were not easily accessible to the youth of his earlier days.
He lived to see completed the building which contains our library of nine thousand volumes founded by the late Fran- cis Augustus Brooks, a native of Petersham, and grand- nephew of Eleazer Bradshaw, before referred to as the giver of the old Paul Revere bell. All of Captain Mudge's friends, - and all who rightly knew him were his friends -hoped he would live many years to see the usefulness of the Memorial Building and its well-selected and rapidly multiplying vol- umes, but, unhappily, its dedication was the good man's fu- neral.
Shakespeare said,
"The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones."
It sometimes happens that the good men do lives after them. Among the many grateful friends whom Captain Mudge left here was. Miss Lucy Flora Willis, an unfortunate woman who was for many years a great sufferer. Rheumatism had de- stroyed her eyesight, drawn her bones from their sockets, deprived her of all use of her limbs, and left her a bedridden, helpless, hopeless invalid, in total darkness and almost utter despair. Her suffering established the only needed claim to the benevolent man's sympathy and kindness, and the poor woman found in him such unfailing cheer, encouragement, consolation, and comfort that when, after he had gone, she directed the preparation of her will, she said, "What I have I shall give to the Memorial Library, which meant so much to Captain Mudge; for he was always most kind to me, and I think, if he were living, I could thus give him more pleas- ure than by any other use I could make of my property."
Before leaving the subject of our library, which forms the prominent public feature in the late development of the town,
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we must very gratefully mention the name of Mr. Francis H. Lee, of Salem. He is with us, and much of what would other- wise be said must be omitted. But we owe it to ourselves to say that to him, more than to any one else, we owe our library and its constant growth, as well as much else of great value to us. His generosity is sleepless and untiring. With him a good deed done means always another somewhere be- gun; and when -as we hope long hence-his active kind- ness to us shall cease, those who survive him here again will say something has gone out of Petersham which cannot be replaced.
There is a piece of railway in Germany on which it is said the modern engine has been driven at the rate of one hundred and fifty miles an hour,- a speed at which the passenger, looking at everything by the roadside, sees nothing, because all is blended in inextricable confusion.
I fear only such confusion will attend my effort to give you one hundred and fifty years of Petersham in sixty minutes - or thereabouts-for I perceive our old engine is not quite making schedule time.
There has been opportunity merely to glance at our periods of barren wilderness, of fruitful cultivation, of struggle and disaster, and of growth and decline from that dark time of the wigwam to this bright day of the summer cottage, from the isolation and deprivation of the beginning to this hour of rural delivery and the electric wire that bring to the door of the outlying farmhouse and to the ear of the farmer the written and spoken word of the whole planet, and enable the touch of a button in Washington to instantly start the massive ma- chinery on the opposite side of the continent.
Who have been the actors here in these years that, through- out the world, have produced greater changes than were wrought in all the preceding years of the Christian era ? There is hardly time to read a catalogue of their names, some of which might well have taken all our time to-day. There was Colonel Grout, a leader in all town affairs, a soldier in the French wars, a member of the Committee of Correspondence.
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a representative in both branches of our Legislature, in our provincial congresses, and in the first Congress of the United States; Colonel Doolittle, also a member of that committee, whose regiment was on the march to Cambridge on the day of the battle of Lexington and was at the battle of Bunker Hill; the Chandlers, members of the foremost family in Worcester County, graduates of Harvard College, pupils of John Adams, leaders among our earliest merchants and business men, an- cestors of Mrs. Dr. Ware, of Lancaster, of the late Mrs. Prof. Theophilus Parsons, of Cambridge, both natives of Peters- ham, and of Professor Chandler of the Institute of Technol- ogy, Boston.
There were the Willards, members of a noted family, dif- ferent branches of which furnished two presidents for Har- vard College, a pastor for the Old South Church in Boston, the architect of Bunker Hill Monument,- the still living Jo- seph Willard, for more than fifty years clerk of the courts of Suffolk County ;- the once widely known Samuel Willard, the blind preacher of Deerfield, and our own honored Deacon Cephas Willard, a strong, brave man, for more than a half- century officer of church, town, county, and state; trusted and trustworthy always and everywhere; declining service only once, and that when directed, as sheriff, to execute a criminal, his answer being, "I can resign, but I cannot per- form that act;" a man who could say, as he held the hand of his dying wife: "We have lived together fifty-eight years and I do not know that either ever spoke a word that gave the other pain." He died at 92, and when asked, near the end of life, the secret of his health and strength, said, "I always walked on the sunny side of the road when the choice was mine."
There were the Sandersons, strong, patriotic, and widely useful men, of integrity and influence; the Hollands, soldiers, engineers, inventors, one of their descendants, the late Dr. J. G. Holland, author and editor of Scribner's and The Century magazines; the Hammonds, capable and trusted men in many responsible places, one a graduate of Dart-
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mouth, who became president of South Carolina College, and his son Governor of the State and one of its United States Senators; the Neguses, prominent among our townspeople, a single family of whose gifted girls became: one, the wife of Richard Hildreth, the historian; another, the mother of Ful- ler, the artist; another, the mother of the late Thomas and Benjamin Howe (the latter of whom wrote of Petersham men and things many sketches that are among our most val- uable records); another, the mother of Corporal Benjamin W. Spooner, irreverently known as "Ben," our marshal to- day, and the only man in town whose homestead, built by an ancestor, has sheltered six lineal generations; and these were not all of those Negus girls.
Mary Ann Howe, who wrote the hymn sung at our former celebration. How familiar to some of us her big shears and goose and pressing-board and big steel thimble, that, for many years, went with her, from farm to farm, to cut and stitch and press the clothing of the farmer and his boys, at fifty cents a day! How her keen wits gauged his character and habits as her tape took measurements of his tabernacle of flesh !- an industrious and helpful being, the product of whose honest and ill-paid toil was many a generous deed in life and a handsome sum bequeathed at death. How rough her left forefinger, where the needle pricked it! And what conscience went into the jerk of her linen thread as she drew our buttons home to stay !- an altogether excellent woman, although it must be confessed she wrought such similarity of expression into the fore and aft of our trousers as to remind us of the breeches of the little chap whose mother said that, when too far away to see his face, she could never tell whether he was going to school or coming home.
There were also the Bigelows, Daniel and Lewis, eminent lawyers, the latter of whom wrote the first digest of the re- ports of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts and was at one time a member of Congress; the Mileses, father and grand- father of Lieutenant-General Miles of the United States Army; the Howes, Sylvanus, chairman of our famous Committee of
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