USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > Northfield > Puritan outpost, a history of the town and people of Northfield, Massachusetts > Part 20
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Northfield February 2nd 1798 Mr. Barnabas Billings, Treasurer of Northfield
Pay to Mr. Edward Houghton one Dollar it being his due for Two muggs Tod & Two muggs Flip for the Council on January 31st last and Charge the town of Northfield. Timothy Dutton, Reuben Smith, Caleb Lyman, Town Committee.
Mr. Allen remained in Northfield and turned to the study of law under John Barrett, who had become distinguished as an instructor.
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Meanwhile he had allied himself to the town by marriage. His first wife died soon after the birth of her third child, at the age of twenty- two, and less than three months later the minister married Molly Hunt, a daughter of Captain Elisha, and thus a niece of Rev. John Hubbard's wife, a romance that was followed later in the year by the marriage of the new Mrs. Allen's brother, Elsworth, to Mr. Allen's sister, Electa.
Revived as was the church spirit in Mr. Allen's brief pastorate, further improvement in the meeting-house was undertaken. The bell that for thirty years had called to worship and town-meeting and tolled out the age of the deceased at each funeral, was clangy and rather feeble. To replace it, money was raised by subscription to the amount of one hundred and nineteen dollars.
Among newcomers to town was a Boston family by the name of Callender, in which the oldest son, Benjamin, Jr., was an engraver by trade and an associate in the craft with Paul Revere, who was also a maker of bells. Everybody knew of Revere as the youth who had spread the alarm through Lexington and Concord in April, 1775. Benjamin Callender was entrusted to buy a bell of Mr. Revere. He did so in 1798 and, with the town's usual deliberation, was given an order two years later, which was not paid until after another year, for forty-one dollars and six cents, the amount "paid Paul Revere Esq of Boston for the meetinghouse bell."
The transportation was entrusted to Rufus Stratton and he was paid in February, 1799, the sum of "five dollars, twenty nine cents, it being the full of his reward for bringing the meetinghouse bell from Boston." The rest of the fund raised for the bell went to the rope- maker, Simeon Lyman, the blacksmith, Ezekiel Webster, for bands, gudgeons, bolts, nuts, staples, screws, strap for the pulley-block and lumber for the yoke, and to sundry citizens for lumber and work.
During the last twenty years of the century, the schools came to increased attention and expenditure, along with no end of controversy over their management. Outlying sections and neighborhoods had, in years before, been granted sums of money by the town to maintain teaching, sums of money "to be schooled out" as the orders ran. Early in the 'eighties the village, "the street," was divided into three districts but not until votes had been passed and meetings held under town warrant in the centre schoolhouse and in private houses to re-
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consider and rescind, then to ratify and always to have heated and highly personal debate.
The school districts lasted for a period, were then consolidated into two, and supplemented by the formal establishment of others about the town to the number of ten. Each developed into a little democracy, with its own school committee and its own formal meet- ings. The selectmen for a period kept an oversight over the schools but were succeeded by a superintending committee, which had to step lightly in its invasion of the district's territory.
The district school committees, in instances, were far short of edu- cational experts. They spelled as badly, in their accounts, as "eight- iene" "parte" "comite" "streate" and "scooling"; drew orders that read as intelligently as "Please to let Aron Morse have seven dollars out of the treasure .. . we say please to do the same"; and in 1798 one of the committee in the northwest district endorsed an order by mak- ing his mark. They could buy wood, hire teachers at such salary as twelve shillings (two dollars) a week, have them boarded at one dollar a week, and most prudentially see that the money allowed was cautiously schooled out. The district system was riveted on the New England towns in an excess of local self-government, until such time as in the throes of a terrific struggle it should give way to a central and broad-minded control. It was the period of the little red schoolhouse, destined to be celebrated in romance long after its crudities were bliss- fully forgotten.
With a liberality that did not admit a question as to the duty of the town towards the unfortunate, the town provided steadily for the care of the poor. It scanned closely the charges that were made by relatives for the support of the indigent but it did not spare needed money. In the warrant for a town-meeting held December 25, 1780, a date that suggests the common disregard of Christmas, an article was included "to take into consideration the high price Lieutenant Alexander has demanded for keeping E- H- considering the labour he had done." Six years later another item was "to choose a committee to wait upon Lieutenant Alexander and to desire to let them know how far the estate of E- H- is spent and what he supposes he can keep said H- for per week." There must be no undue gain in caring for a charge; what was needful would be provided.
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A veteran of the wars was the object of constant concern. Thomas Elgar had fought in the Revolution and before that in the Indian war. He had been first known as the Rev. Mr. Hubbard's servant but he had done valiant duty. Year after year he was sheltered and considerately treated. He was allowed to live on a little farm. The town bought him a cow, paid for grain and pasturage, and in time replaced her with another. He had a single sheep, to be fed. Leather was bought for shoes for his wife and a cobbler paid to fashion it, or again to make shoes for the veteran himself, and the tailor to make his clothes. Town orders beyond number were drawn in this old soldier's behalf throughout a period of over twenty years-for loads of wood, for one hundred and forty pounds of fresh pork, for keeping his cow, for hoeing his corn, for shirts, for the doctor's care, for "rhum" and brandy and again for five dollars' worth of Landlord Hunt's "sundries" -- all without stint or questioning.
Intolerant as were the people of any breach of the moral law, in one case after two special church meetings refusing to admit to bap- tism a child born "plump and lusty" seven months and three days after marriage, it was considerate, in another case, of an unmarried mother and her child. It paid, year after year, for the support in one and another family of Thankful M. and her child-"the M. girl and her child"-and met the doctor's bills, from the one in which he charged for a visit to the M. girl "and delivery," fourteen shillings, down through the years "for doctrin and nursing," as long as there was need of the aid.
In every instance of indigency, the town provided separately on the ground of personal need. It built a pest house, well out of the town, on the hillside of James Strobridge's farm, for the smallpox cases that were a product of the Revolutionary war period, but it harbored no proposal that the poor should be housed by themselves or have less than the comforts of at least an average household.
CHAPTER XXV GROWING INTO IMPORTANCE
Advance into a New Century with Complete Self-reliance
HOPE MIGHT NOW REVIVE that Northfield was to gain the im- portance that had seemed to be its destiny and its due. To be an "important town" in the classification adopted by geographers of the period, notably Jedidiah Morse, the Charlestown doctor of divinity, was to have a population of a thousand. There were but sixteen such in Massachusetts in the census of 1791-and Northfield had eight hundred and sixty-eight. It had every natural favor, with rich re- sources in its fertile meadows and its wooded hills, hardly more than touched; a town location of exceptional healthfulness, lifted above the damps and even the floods of the lower towns, expansive far beyond present occupation ; a degree of wealth, accumulated in many of its families through three generations of industry and thrift; a public spirit, supporting church and school; and a rare unity, the product of its singleness of race, for it was purely English, and the inter-relationships were the result of its detachment.
The town had suffered and been held back by its exposure to at- tack during its first century and by the constant drain upon its young manhood in the successive wars, including its full contribution to the support of the patriot cause in the late Revolution. It had shared the distress that followed in the period of debt and unsettlement when the new nation was struggling to its feet, and had come out of it unsmirched but burdened.
The town was now being drawn upon by migration to the regions farther up the valley; the pioneer spirit which had brought it into being was now moving its young men and some of its families north- ward to New Hampshire and the New Hampshire grants to the west of the Connecticut. And it had suffered by the loss of a third of its territory in 1741, through the drawing of a state line which the King of England out of ill-will towards Massachusetts had arbitrarily moved
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down the river forty miles from its rightful point. Just now a further encroachment was being made by the creation of a new town across the river to the south, to be named after the lieutenant governor, Moses Gill.
The new people coming into the town were of the same sort as now lived here. They were coming from the towns down the river, chiefly from Connecticut, which was the common ancestral country. They were, in the main, relatives. No ambition to grow and be "im- portant" was to be allowed to welcome undesirables. The process of warning-out doubtful new arrivals, persons or families that might be- come burdensome or uncongenial, was being freely used. In 1790, for example, twenty-five such families were read out of town, in 1792, six more and in 1793, of persons or families another sixteen. There was something more important than population-ability to be self-supporting and good neighbors.
When Burgoyne's army was broken up, in the campaign in which Northfield soldiers had their share, there was turned loose on New England a contingent of stragglers, of whom Northfield received a few. If they were looked upon somewhat askance, some of them won their right to stay by satisfying the standards as to behavior and in- dustry. Others moved on and out, to fare well or ill in other towns. John Pinks, from Thetford in the old country, escaped deportation with the bulk of the Burgoyne captives by being at a New York farm- house, where he was carrying on his trade as a tailor, and later drifted into Northfield, where he set up a store in the village. After six years he turned tavern-keeper in the next town, Bernardston, and later found a place in the same business on the turnpike in Erving. Dennis McCarty, a Scotchman, stayed in the town, and made himself con- spicuous by explosions on the fighting abilities of the British, one time declaring that the army, from which he had been unfortunately de- tached, could wipe out the whole race of Pomeroys. Late in life he married Heziah Jennings but there were no children to perpetuate this accession of a warring and boasting race.
Another Burgoyne man was John Woodward, from old Norwich, who presently enlisted in the Continental army from Spencer, served in the Massachusetts line at West Point, marched through New Jersey and to Philadelphia, and after three years service was discharged at West Point by General Knox in 1784. He married in Spencer and
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drifted into Northfield, where his oldest girl, Polly, married into the Field family-to Billy, a great-nephew of the leading citizen, Squire Seth. Through his son, Mark, there was union with the family of another Britisher, by his marriage to a daughter of John Watton. John had an eventful career. He was born in Watton Edge, Eng- land, ran away from home, was cabin boy on an English ship cap- tured by an American cruiser, apprenticed to a nail maker, enlisted on America's side, witnessed the surrender of Burgoyne and landed in Northfield for the rest of his days.
The infusion of the blood of the Burgoyne men into Northfield families did not introduce a new strain. They were racially akin. The town was still undiluted in its Anglican origin. Its growth in population was chiefly through its own birthrate. Families continued large and children far outnumbered adults in the population. In 1785, there were thirty-three minors carrying the ancient name of Wright and an equal number of Alexanders, while within the same age were fifty-four in the Field families. James Merriam, who had arrived in town about this time as a cabinet maker, was then the father of the first in a succession of children who in time would num- ber twenty-two, equally divided between two mothers. Immigration was clearly not needed or if it came would conform to the fashion in fecundity.
Not everybody loved everybody else and was loved in return even in a town in which kinship was the rule and a general harmony pre- vailed. There was no kindly consideration by the veteran town treas- urer, Dr. Mattoon, for his reputable fellow citizens who undertook to collect the town taxes and in the lean years could not do it in rather a scandalous number of cases. He quite freely resorted to law and secured executions that had the possible outcome that Shammah Pomeroy or some other respected townsman should land in gaol. The allegation that a gross overcharge was being made for caring for a pauper was made in town-meeting against as good a man, and as widely related, as lived in the town. Town-meetings were stirred by unsparing denunciations of officials and hot words were passed in tones that shook the meeting-house rafters. The elections were not always tame and orderly tributes to men who aspired to office or were willing to serve out of a genuine public spirit.
In one of the late years of the century there was a violent over-
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turn, in town government. The old board of selectmen was made up of citizens who had high standing and had been honored in years of office-holding. The attempt to run them out succeeded. The entirely new board missed no opportunity to cast reproach upon their pred- ecessors. In an order given two citizens of the West Side for money that had been "schooled out," they went to the trouble to say, "This order was given in consequence of the order soposed to be lost which was said to be drawn for the Same sum by Capt. Hunt, Col. Lyman and Capt. Alexander selectmen." It was a satisfaction to the new board to reflect upon the loose methods and the "soposed" veracity of the old one. They improved the opportunity to attach further reproach when they found that Dan Freeman had been over-taxed, and painstakingly wrote into the order to Dan for "one dolar forty six cents" that it was "for one poll over Charged in a rate Capt. Hunt, Col. Lyman and Major Alexander made up." The oftener they could needlessly repeat the names of the three former selectmen, never omitting their military titles, when any act of theirs called for correction, the more the town would appreciate the choice of the reformers-themselves. The captain and the colonel never came back as selectmen, although the former was representative in the Genral Court for successive years.
Highways came into the range of town business as the use of horse carts and chaises increased in these years and as travel to other and often far-away towns developed. They introduced a fighting topic into town-meetings but in the main they were provided for by a special tax that the men assessed could work out at a rate fixed by the town. Travel to Boston from the lower towns of the New Hampshire grants -Vermont as it came to be in 1791, the first state to be added to the original union-took its course through Northfield, as did that be- tween the down-river towns and the valley sections of New Hamp- shire and Vermont. The item of "direction bords" crept into town orders in 1796, when Xenophon Janes turned the skill he had acquired in cutting the inscriptions on the gravestones his father manufactured to lettering in paint the direction and distance to Boston, eighty-three miles, to Hadley, down river, twenty miles, and across the river to Deerfield, fifteen miles. By 1799, the highway rate had reached the amount of eight hundred and eighty-eight dollars, ninety-nine cents and four mills, while that for schools was $423.3.
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The Great River was at once the hope and despair of the town. Its floods were a perennial benefit and its course to the sea a challenge to transportation, which could never be fully met until the falls and rapids were circumvented by canals. Within the town it presented the problem of communication between the west side and the street. The town's scows and "cannoos" were a constant care. The earliest by- laws were regulations of their use, such as provision of fines, the pro- ceeds to go to the town's poor, for leaving both boat and "cannoo" on the same side of the river, or putting a cart on the boat. Then the ferries came to importance and licenses were granted for their opera- tion at toll-rates fixed by the town, such as two pence per man and horse "and in that proportion for a footman and for teams." The important ones were at Bennett's meadow and at Moose Plain.
Ferrying came to be a privilege and a calling, somewhat running in the family. John Moffatt acquired the Bennett's meadow one, where the town had built a ferryman's house in the sixties, and his sister Mercy had married Edward Tiffany, who had the upper ferry, with the result that in time Tiffany came to be the lessee of the Ben- nett's meadow privilege. It gained in value and when, in 1799, the town tried to regain it a momentous legal struggle started, out of which the town discovered that it had parted for good and all with a public utility already worth the respectable sum of three hundred dollars a year. It escaped, however, constant outlays, such as pay- ments to Eb. Field, in 1794, for "going down to the Mill Brook and putting on the cannoo chain," going down three times "in ye May flood to take care of the vessels," "finding a peace and putting it on the scow to row by" and, at the season's end before the ice-bridge formed, "taking the vessels down into the brook," the winter harbor.
Such industries as had developed in the town and were expanding were, first of all, confined to the meeting of home needs. There was potash making, finding its material in the ashes of the fireplace. It had started in 1765, when Seth Field, justicia pacis, formed a com- pany to put up a potash house on one of the six by twelve rod lots that had been gained by narrowing the road leading from the street near Council Rock. Ashes were plenty at eight pence a bushel and the potash not needed in local soap-making was sent over the long road to Boston-the town's first commercial export.
Tanning had long been a home occupation but had come to be
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a special trade, first carried on by Gad Corse, who combined it with Indian fighting and messenger-riding in the last French war. Late in the nineties Jabez Whiting came down from the Warwick hills and set up bark-mill and tannery on the Mill Brook, to be followed soon by Jabez Parsons-as if Jabez were the exclusive pronomen for tanners-who migrated from Enfield, Connecticut, and set up his establishment farther up the same stream. Tanning and currying taken together were the most laborious of human tasks. They involved months of time in the process of the curing of the hides in great vats of ground bark and water and the working them into leather by hand over heavy beams. The product in calfskin and cowhide was next to indestructible. Here again, the market was found in Boston, the leather being carried in two-horse teams, four days to market, the return load being of hides which had come to be imported from South America.
Along came the distillery. A Boston man, Brewer, who had opened a store on the street, established the first in a rear room and "new rum" entered more freely and cheaply into the town's life. Presently other and more extensive distilleries were set up about the town and an industry of great possibilities was developing. An oil-mill, supplied from the fields with flax seed and castor beans, was built on Miller's Brook. For the rest of the trades, there were the hatter, the cooper, the nail-maker, the saddler, the cabinet-maker, the forge-works, the jeweller, the clothiers, the shoemakers, all of them serving the town's demands and the customers who were finding the town their trading centre.
The town was clearly on the way to be "important." In 1797 it came to have a post-office. Stages had begun to run regularly to Boston in 1789, the route being through Warwick, Athol, Petersham, Barre and Worcester, and Worcester was the dispatching point for the mail that arrived once a week, two or three Boston newspapers and hardly a larger number of letters. The distinction of being the first postmaster fell to a graduate of Harvard College, class of 1787, who had come to Northfield as one of John Barrett's students in law and remained here in practice, Solomon Vose.
Next, in this progressive closing decade of the century, came the aqueduct. The General Court of 1797 authorized the incorporation by nine citizens, headed by the postmaster, of "The proprietors of
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the Aqueduct in Northfield, for the purpose of carrying water by subterranean pipes." The subterranean pipes were wooden logs, with a bore of two and a quarter inches, coupled by iron castings driven into the ends. The supply was found in a small brook some two miles east of the town, whose crystal water poured into the "string" with no more of a reservoir than was necessary to cover the end of the log at the point of intake. What was accomplished was to turn enough of the mountain brook into the aqueduct to keep it supplied. There could be no need of storage on a brook that was constant in flow and never so low as not to fill a two-and-a-quarter inch bore. Let the storage be provided in each household, where a cistern in the kitchen would replace the pump. The string of logs-and "string" was the word bound to replace "aqueduct" in common speech-took a straight course into the town along the turnpike, which meanwhile came into existence, for it was six years before the water flowed.
For some years, beginning in 1789, a stage had run from North- field to Boston. The next year the town became the station for chang- ing horses on the stage line starting at Bennington, coming over the Green Hills, down West River into Brattleboro and along the Con- necticut to cross at Prindle's ferry into the street. From Hunt's tavern, it had taken its course up the brook road to Warwick, thence to Athol over the Petersham and Barre hills to Worcester and through Shrews- bury on to Boston. It took its chances on such roads as the towns along the line saw fit to build and some of them, as a driver might have observed, had not seen so very fit. A better road to Boston was the need, and as travel was increasing, a pressing one.
Taking note of the example set in the eastern part of the state, certain enterprising citizens of Northfield, joined by others in Green- field, the rather new town which had been set off from Deerfield, and in Warwick and other towns to the East, secured from the General Court of 1799 a charter for the Fifth Massachusetts Turnpike Cor- poration. Five Northfield names headed the list of incorporators, the first selectman, Timothy Dutton ; two tavern-keepers, Captain Hunt and Edward Houghton ; the postmaster, Solomon Vose; and the law- yer, John Barrett. To mention the names is to suggest the accession of public spirit that the recent arrivals in town had brought. Captain Hunt was the only representative of the old families. Their project was a well-worked road, four rods wide with a travelled path of eight-
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een feet, to take a more direct line and connect with an existing turn- pike at Leominster. Northfield would be one western terminus and Greenfield the other, the roads from these towns joining at Athol, and running thence through Gardner and Westminster to Leominster.
The turnpike was the crowning enterprise of the century's end. It opened the world to the town to be connected by a good road and much quicker communication with the state's capital-and it was to be a paying project. The act set the toll rates to be collected at the gates, which in each instance were located near a tavern-the first at Mayo's in Warwick and so on, four in number, to Jonas Kendall's at the other end. At each the traveller would confront a schedule of rates all the way from five cents for the horseman to twenty-five for every "coach, phaeton, chariot or other four-wheeled carriage," plus four cents for each additional horse; one-horse vehicles at half the price, except curricles, which were to be taxed sixteen cents. A cur- ricle was a two-wheeled, two-horse carriage with a pole. Horses and cattle, led or driven, were to be rated at one cent each; sheep and swine, three cents a dozen. The most substantial men in the towns were the investors and they counted upon profits.
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