Proceedings of the 250th anniversary of Old Bridgewater, Mass. at West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, June 13, 1906, Part 9

Author: Old Bridgewater Historical Society (West Bridgewater, Mass.)
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Bridgewater, Mass. : Arthur H. Willis, Printer
Number of Pages: 182


USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > West Bridgewater > Proceedings of the 250th anniversary of Old Bridgewater, Mass. at West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, June 13, 1906 > Part 9


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The rapid means of travel has so enlarged the lawyer's field


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of work that it usually covers several counties, and he may con- duct cases before the courts of all the counties in the State as easily as formerly, perhaps, in his own shire town. No less has the rapidity with which he can work been increased by the tele- phone and the typewriter.


The nature of his practice itself has changed. Questions growing out of our complex business and mercantile life are claiming first attention. The court dockets are crowded with suits against the big corporations for accidents arising from the use of modern machinery and of our railroads and electric cars. The most lucrative field of practice is possibly that of organizing and directing the huge industrial corporations which characterize our day. More and more is the lawyer becoming the expert business man.


Whether Old Bridgewater shall continue to bring forth lawyers equal in character, ability and training, to the famous men of the past, Mr. President, will, I believe, depend largely upon the development of the business life of this community- upon whether the opportunities offered here shall be sufficient to keep the youth at home. But whether here or in some other section of our beloved country I doubt not that from the descen. dants of the Old Bridgewater families there will arise in the future, as in the past, lawyers, jurists and statesmen, who shall be leaders in preserving and developing the sacred institutions bequeathed to us by our fathers.


Mr. President, I seem to hear the voice of past ages chal- lenging us, and asking if the blood of the Puritans is today as virile and true as in the past, and naming as their champion, that scion of Old Bridgewater stock present on the anniversary occasion fifty years ago, that greatest of Massachusetts' Chief Justices, that jurist with but two or three peers in American history, whose name will be known and revered throughout the English-speaking world so long as the system of common law prevails-Lemuel Shaw.


That challenge I take up and repeat to coming ages as I name for our champion that man of this generation, recently deceased, sprung from the stock of Bridgewater's first settlers, that greatest of American diplomats who has safely guided our


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nation in its awakening to a conscious participation in world politics, who has brought peace and mercy to oppressed races, and who has set for the world the example of applying between the nations of the earth the same principles of honesty, justice and righteousness which he had learned from his Puritan fore- fathers-our late Secretary of State, John Hay.


Our Business Men.


Our Merchants and Manufacturers have kept abreast with the progress of the age, and by their skill and foresight have enriched themselves and their several communities.


Responded to by Hon. James J. Dowd, City Solicitor of Brockton.


I was surprised at being requested to respond to this toast, because lawyers, not being directly concerned in the production and distribution of commodities, are not generally included in the term business-men. Still, as a lawyer, I think that I can appreciate as keenly as can anybody the debt which we owe to our business men. Installed on a barren soil, the agricultural resources of Bridgewater were soon exhausted, and with the advent of steam power, and the consequent competition with the agricultural products of the West and South, the old town should have languished in poverty were it not that its bold, sturdy manhood forsook the soil and entered the marts of trade. The spirit of independence and enterprise which animated the colonists has always actuated their descendants and nowhere in this broad land have the business men been more persistent and successful or have accomplished more for their communities than they have in the old town of Bridgewater.


In the early sixties the iron industry was started here, and grew so rapidly and extended so largely that in a short time the Bridgewater Iron Works became known the country over as the


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largest and most successful plant of its kind in the country. Here were accomplished mechanical feats that were never accomplished before, and during the rebellion much of the machinery which propelled our navy came from here, while the anchors which enabled that same navy to ride the storm were forged at the Bridgewater Iron Works.


It is no discredit to our business men that this industry languished, for the crumbling walls and empty stacks all over New England amply attest the impotence of business men to stem the tide of destruction which has befallen it.


But it is in the shoe industry our business men have excelled most. Forty years ago the pride of every well dressed man was a pair of long legged calf boots, and, while up in Worcester County manufacturers were making boots and brogans, Bridgewater was experimenting with shoes and by per- severance and skill she finally drove boots and brogans out of the market and replaced them with her shapely and durable shoes. While Bridgewater is recognized as the cradle of the shoe industry, Brockton, which is within the confines of the old town, is given the distinction of being the largest producer of men's fine shoes in the country. Brockton manufacturers and Brockton shoes are known all over the country. Fantastic names have been given to the products of the different factories and these names have become the household words in every home in the land. The aid of the printer has been invoked and his plant subsidized at fabulous figures and the result is that the faces and products of our business men are familiar to the inhabitants of every State in the Union. The prosperity of our business men has brought prosperity to us all, and there is no like community in the world where the people are better housed, better clothed, better shod and better conditioned than are the people who live within the confines of the old town of Bridgewater.


Our merchants, to be sure, have served us honestly and faithfully, but they add nothing to our wealth. It is to our manu- facturers that we must continue to look for our prosperity. They have not failed us in the past and they will not in the future.


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We should honor them for what they have done and co-op- erate with them in the future, to the end that we may in the future attain to greater success than we have in the past and bring greater glory to the old town of Bridgewater.


Our Adopted Citizens and Their Children.


Our Adopted Fellow Citizens and Their Children-Their love for the country of their adoption has been attested by their blood upon the battle-fields of the Republic-and they have earned their full title to American citizenship.


Responded to by Prof. F. H. Kirmayer, of Bridgewater.


THE GERMAN-AMERICAN.


The number of Germans and their descendants according to reliable statistics is now a little over thirteen millions. The population of the United States without the island possession was in 1900 seventy-six millions. Therefore the Germans have quite a respectable representation here.


The Germans are much devoted to agriculture, horticulture and wine growing, and so we find that the German immigrant goes to those States were farming is extensively carried on, as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and the States of the Middle West, while the mechanics and trades people and those of the learned professions settle in the cities preferably north of the 37th Parallel.


That the Germans are good and thrifty farmers can be verified by any one visiting their farms from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The skill of their mechanics may be seen in any large shop where fine workmanship is required ; their high standing in statesmanship, in the army, in philosophy, in education shows itself in men like Schurz, Sigel, Muensterberg, Hanus, not to mention many who are distinguished merchants and bankers.


When we examine the social life of the Germans we find that he likes, wherever he may be, his Gemuetlichkeit, that is he


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and his friends go on an evening to the Gasthaus, Biergarten or Weinstube to read and discuss the news of the day and pass an hour or two in agreeable conversation. Here he expresses his opinion freely and openly showing his love of justice and truth, his love of the Vaterland and his hatred of all trickery and fraud. To this same manner of living he clings here as he did at home giving, to his adopted country undying love and support.


Before all things the German has respect for authority. This is infused into him in the home, in the school, in the church, in his military service, from which none is exempt except he be physically defective, or a criminal, or an idiot. This military service which is by some people considered a hardship for the German boys, is the best drill any young man can have for his after life. Here he learns and must practice prompt obedience, regularity, cleanliness, good bearing of the body, regular exercise of body and mind and respect for his superiors.


In regard to the religious life of the Germans much might be said, but this being a subject many do not like to discuss, although it is of vital consequence, it may be briefly stated that the drift of the Protestants is towards discrediting the Bible, that many pastors deny the divinity of Christ, that others turn to Sociology in their sermons and so lead their hearers gradually into Socialism which naturally tends to anarchy, while the Catholics stand firm by their old faith and try to stem the tide of the Freigeist. How much of these tendencies the immigrant brings to these shores a careful observer may readily detect.


Should we wish to know what political preferences the Germans here have, we would find that the German immigrant is a Democrat almost invariably, carried away by the name Democrat, which means in Germany as it ought to mean every- where, a man who believes that the people should rule and not kings, emperors, bosses, etc. After he has been here for a while he may and quite often does change to become a Repub- lican, Independent or Prohibitionist.


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Responded to by Mr. John S. Kent of Brockton.


IRISH-AMERICAN.


Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen :- As a descendant of an Irish-American, I am proud to respond to the sentiment you have proposed. There is nothing in their record of citizen- ship for which we must apologize, and there is much to say in praise of the part they have played in the settlement, develop- ment and progress of the nation to which they have sworn allegiance.


From all the countries of the earth have been gathered together here on this Western Continent, the oppressed, the lovers of liberty, the seekers after truth, and, in one composite body politic, has been formed the American nation.


We are a nation of immigrants, and, comparatively speak- ing, but a few years separate the coming of those of our ancestors who landed at Plymouth from the Mayflower and our more recent additions to citizenship who landed at East Boston from a Cunarder.


From the time of the coming of the first great immigrant- Columbus-down to the present day, there has been no trouble in assimilating the peoples of all lands who have come with an honest purpose of remaining here and assuming the duties and responsibilities of citizens, and sharing in the rights and privi- leges guaranteed them by the Constitution.


We need not fear for our Republic while we admit to these shores those home-seekers who come with clean hearts and clean minds, even though their national characteristics do not win our approval and their forms of religious worship may differ from ours. We have nothing to fear from the man with a reli- gion ; the danger lies in the man without one. An educational test will throw no safeguard around our people or our institu- tions. The Anarchist and agitator and criminal are not ignorant not illiterate.


The title-"Irish-American"-is applied to a native of Ireland when he becomes a naturalized American citizen ; when he throws off forever the claims of a government, under which his people have for centuries been oppressed, and is born anew


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in a land of hope, and opportunity and freedom. He is an American from choice, fully sensible of the privileges he enjoys, jealous of his rights, and willing to defend the flag and what it stands for with his life if need be.


He came to America to escape the tyranny of an unjust government at home, to better his condition in life and to worship God in accordance with the teachings of a religion that is a part of his life itself.


The same causes that led the Pilgrims to flee to Holland and afterwards to Plymouth led the sons and daughters of the Emerald Isle to leave home and friends and native land, and, with nothing but honest hearts and willing hands and a faith sublime in its steadfastness and trust, to build here their homes and their altars and to become an important factor in establish- ing on this continent a nation which has become the leader of all the nations of the world.


It is recorded that the first ship-load of Irish immigrants reached America in 1630. More than five millions have landed here since.


At the end of the Revolution, nearly one fourth of Wash- ington's Army was Irish. In every war since-whether on land or sea-the Irish-American has done his full share in up-hold- ing the principles of our government, establishing the blessings of freedom and insuring the preservation of the Union.


The first Irish settlers in the Old Colony were not received with open arms by the descendants of the Pilgrims. They, who had suffered so much for the sake of religious freedom, were not ready to grant the boon to others. Almost the first laws made provided that Catholics, Quakers and Baptists should not be allowed in the Plymouth settlement.


Unyielding, stern, relentless were these Pilgrim Fathers. Their rules of faith were hard and unlovely as the rock-bound coast on which they landed. They taught not mercy and forgiveness, but justice and exactness of the law. They never lied in bargain nor in promise ; they were no hypocrites ; they looked men in the face, clear-eyed, and showed in every act the courage born of firm conviction. They had no place for other creeds, and did not hesitate to tell them so.


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Small wonder then that the Plymouth Colony during the first two hundred years after its settlement saw little of the Irish Catholics, and that those who came to America settled in the Colonies of Maryland, Virginia and other localities showing a more tolerant spirit.


The history of the town of Bridgewater, like all the Old Colony towns, was largely a history of the Congregational Churches and the setting apart of the North Parish, as North Bridgewater was called, was for the greater convenience of the people attending church.


In like manner, the history of the Irish in this section is so interwoven with the history of the Catholic Church that it matters little which story is told.


Over ninety per cent. of all the Irish immigrants were Catholic, and Catholics of no other nationality had settled here, so that in those early days the words Irish and Catholic became synonymous.


Previous to 1840, there were very few Irish settlers in the Old Colony, and in 1856, when the first Catholic Church was built in North Bridgewater, there were less than five hundred Catholics in all the Bridgewaters.


They were then the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, the farm hands and servants of the people among whom they came to live. They dug the ditches, they labored on the roads, they built the first railroads, they were among the first shoemakers and worked early and late in the little shops and laid the foundation for present great industry.


They proved themselves honest, industrious, loyal, God- fearing men and women, and they won the hearts of the people they had come among.


The barriers of prejudice and narrowness were removed ; the eyes of their neighbors were opened.


The fires of passions, kindled by know-nothingism in 1855, died out in the Civil War of 1861, when the Irish-American again proved his patriotism, just as A .- P .- A .- ism in the closing years of the last century was buried in an ignominious grave when the Catholic soldiers and sailors did their full share in for- ever ending the mis-rule of Spain upon the Western Hemisphere.


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We will never repudiate our debt to those noble men and women, who left family and friends in the old world and bravely went forth to win their way in this land of promise and enjoy the priceless blessings of liberty.


Eight hundred years of oppression in their own land had not crushed their spirit nor soured their temper. They began at the bottom and laid for their children a foundation for the future built upon industry, frugality and integrity.


Here they could rise to the full stature of men, with no tyrannical government to crush them.


Their thirst for education could be satisfied. Here thrift and economy could win a reward, and their homes would not be held at the mercy of rent-grasping landlords backed by merciless laws.


The legacy that the Irish-American has left to his posterity is a clear title to the word American, without qualifi- cation nor limitation, earned by his record of patriotism, proven by his unswerving devotion to our government and the princi- ples for which it stands, and confirmed by the sacrifices he has made on the altar of freedom.


We, who were born on this soil, need no hyphenated title to signify our degree of citizenship. We are Americans by birth and by every inspiration that seals our patriotism ; second to none in our love for this land, its institutions and its tradi tions.


Duxbury, the Mother Town of Bridgewater.


The Town of Duxbury-the Mother Town of Old Bridgewater-we revere her memory, and welcome her children to the festivities of this day.


Responded to by Laurence Bradford of Duxbury.


Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen :- When coming here I was in doubt, whether in my brief remarks, I would


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·


speak of the renown of our locality in patriotism, or in liberal religious thought, subjects concerning which, I am somewhat versed. Had the former theme been chosen I need not have looked farther for the beginning of my illustrations, than to our toast-master, who is a wounded medal of honor veteran.


Duxbury is my ancestral, while Bridgewater was my youth- ful home. My father was pastor of what I thought till today was the first church of the town,-that in Old Bridgewater, so-called, whose spire to my childish eyes seemed to reach the skies. My father's pastorate was before the fifties, and when the Anti-slavery feeling ran high, and he taking that side was forced out of his, place,-but I lived to see the statue of the leader of that cause, set up in the city amid acclamations, where before he had been mobbed in its streets.


All bitterness, with me, has passed away :- that was buried on the Southern battlefields, where the Republic was again made one. Pastor and parishioner have long since passed away, I believe, to those happy hunting grounds that are reserved for the blessed, and antagonistic though they were in life, in death are not divided.


The Church, I mean the Colonial one, as our talk today is of the historical, has always stood for liberal ideas, and for charity of belief and manners, ever from that time, when the old Governor invited the Catholic priest to dine with him, and it being Friday, respected the religion of his guest by having fish, then by following the injunction of St. Paul who admon- ished us to "be courteous."


Other localities have gone beyond us in material pros- perity, and we have been twitted,-that our ancient renown was the only thing of which we could boast. The causes for success are often beyond the ken of human knowledge. I have lived in Western places, where the gifts of nature were more bountiful, many times over than with us, and yet they had a much less prosperity than ours ; and we must not forget what the good book says,-that we do not live by bread alone, and throughout the land the churches of our bretheren daily pray that they may ·be like unto this.


But in the qualities first mentioned, we are not denied an


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excellence, that is honored in every clime and in every age ; so let us in the words of Whittier :


Hold to our ancient heritage, But let the free thought of the age,


Its strength and beauty add To the stern faith the fathers had.


Massasoit and the Indians.


Massasoit-the unfailing friend of the Pilgrim Fathers. He was the owner of the Bridgewater lands, and for a nominal consideration conveyed them to the men of Duxbury.


We know not his resting place, but the descendants of the Pilgrims, long since erected in their hearts, a monument to his memory.


Responded to by Rev. Charles Edward Stowe of Bridgewater.


It is evident that the Pilgrims desired to deal fairly with the Indians, as is abundantly proved by the fact that all the laws passed by the General Court for the regulation of the sale of lands on the part of the Indians were for the protection of the latter. No land could be purchased from them without permis- sion, and careful investigation.


One of the first acts of the Pilgrims on landing was to appropriate to their own use certain stores of Indian corn and beans, but with the firm determination to pay for the same when opportunity should offer which, as Bradford adds, was in about six months.


March 16, 1621, an Indian named Samoset who had learned to speak English brokenly came into the settlement crying "Welcome Englishmen, welcome Englishmen." He informed them that the place where they had settled was known as Patuxet, and that all the inhabitants had been swept away by the plague, and that not man, woman or child remained to lay claim to it.


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Shortly afterwards he returned accompanied by another Indian named Squanto who had been kidnapped and taken to England by an adventurer named Hunt in 1614, and after many adventures had found his way back to New England. He said that the great king of the country, Massasoit, was near at hand and would like to treat with the governor.


Shortly after this Massasiot appeared on the top of a neighboring hill with about fifty followers. Edward Winslow was sent to meet him bearing presents and after some parleying he was held as a hostage in the hands of Massasoit's brother while the latter came into the settlement with about twenty of his followers all unarmed. A league of friendship was entered into which was faithfully kept for nearly fifty years. July 2 of the same year Hopkins and Winslow made a visit to Massasoit and were received by him with all the rude hospitalities of the savage, to whom they presented a red coat, which greatly delighted him as also his braves. Winslow and Hopkins shared the same bed with the barbarous monarch and his wife that night and were greatly discomforted by the fact that several of the chief men of his court turned in with them before morning making the miseries of the night greater than all they had encountered on their journey.


Two years afterwards Winslow was sent on another expedi- tion to Massasoit on the occasion of the severe illness of the latter. Winslow's medical skill and careful nursing restored him to comparative health.


It was fortunate that the Pilgrims secured the friendship of Massasoit, as he exercised authority over all the territory com- prised between Narragansett and Massachusetts Bays. Nine sachems were by him more or less unwillingly compelled to maintain peace with the whites.


The troubles that led to King Philip's war were due to the impossibility of making the savage Indian understand the tenure in land by fee simple after the English fashion. It was in vain to explain it to him, he simply could not take it in. He had no conception of the fact that he was parting with his lands and thought that he was simply giving to the whites such privileges as he himself enjoyed and hoped to continue to enjoy in way of


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hunting, fishing and rude agriculture. When he found himself being shut out from his own lands, as he thought, he was angry, and feeling that he had been deeply wronged committed acts of revenge that roused that awful Anglo-Saxon fury that extermi- nated him.


But for nearly fifty years it was the potent and beneficent influence of Massasoit that postponed the inevitable final catastrophe.


The most careful estimate of the number of Indians inhab- iting the territory now covered by all the New England States previous to the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth is only about fifty thousand. This was before a devastating plague had swept many of them away. This was no true occupation of a country now supporting many millions.


From Bradford's journal we learn that the Pilgrims regarded these savages as treacherous, cruel and blood-thirsty. In spite of this all their dealings with them show a strict regard for the very highest ethical standard.




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