USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > West Brookfield > Quabaug, 1660-1910 : an account of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary celebration held at West Brookfield, Mass., September 21, 1910 ; > Part 5
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During those "August days, whose grim renown,
A hallowed spot this crumbling hill has made;" when eighty-two were besieged for three days, crowded to- gether in four small rooms; with water scarce and not even the crudest sanitary conveniences; with no medical care; six wounded men to nurse, some of them dying; bullets flying through the walls and the roof often on fire; the head of one of their murdered neighbors on a pole under the windows; their houses burning around them; two wives gave birth each to strong twin boys and in less than a month's time carried them on foot to Boston.
In 1693, savages from Canada killed Joseph Mason and his older boy with others before his wife and carried her away with a babe in her arms, taking also Daniel Lawrence, a youth of about eighteen. After a ten-mile march, finding
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the child an encumbrance, they killed it before the mother's eyes, and abandoning its body traveled three days with the two prisoners, nearly fifty miles through the wilderness, until the rescue by the soldiers sent by Colonel Pynchon. These found the young man "tired, amazed and dull," but the woman's spirit was unquenched. She said: "They were "cowardly afraid to meddle with her; that if she had any "weapons she thinks she might have made her escape." The shock of her bereavement and the pains of the journey had not kept her from employing her time in acquiring and memorizing information that could aid her and her friends. And all this she told her rescuers. They reported her as "a trusty and intelligent woman."
Margaret Otis and her mother, when the child was three months old, were carried to Canada by Indians who killed her father and sister in an attack on Dover, where she lived in 1689. She was educated in the Roman Catholic faith and at the age of sixteen married a Frenchman, Le Beau. When she was about twenty, he died, leaving her with three chil- dren. In 1714, Captain Thomas Baker came to Canada with a party to redeem the prisoners who had been carried there during the last quarter of a century. He was then the rich- est citizen of Brookfield, a large land owner, and when the meeting house was built bought the best pew. He was its first representative in the Legislature, its only representative until the election of Joseph Dwight twelve years after Baker's term. When he met her, Captain Baker was about thirty- two and had had a distinguished military career, during which he had been captured; twice recaptured after two escapes; preparations for his burning made by the Indians; ransomed by a Frenchman, who paid five pounds to save him from the fire, and on his third escape, with three others, reached home half starved through the wilderness, after a journey without gun or provisions, fed only by roots, nuts, buds, bark and such small beasts as could be killed with stones and sticks. The priests told the English prisoners
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stories, some of them probably not exaggerated, concerning the intolerance of the Protestants and the hardship of life in the New England towns. Most refused to return; but Captain Baker persuaded Margaret Le Beau to come back and marry him. Her mother and her confessor remon- strated; the French authorities insisted that her children should remain in Canada and that she should forfeit all her property there; but she yielded to the call of the blood. She was admitted to a Protestant church in Northampton, was married to Captain Baker and received a small land grant in Brookfield, conditioned upon her marrying and remaining in the province. Repeated attempts by the mother to obtain the possession of her three children failed, although, in 1722, she and her husband made a journey to Canada for that purpose. She bore seven children to her second husband, all but one of whom married and seem to have left descendants. About twelve years after she came to Brook- field, her husband, Captain Baker, quarrelled with one of its leading citizens, sold his land there and left the town. By the insolvency of the principal purchaser before the day of payment, he lost almost all his property. He first moved to Mendon and then to his wife's native town in New Hamp- shire. Her energy was not weakened by this new misfor- tune. She had obtained, in the province of Maine, a land grant held in trust for her by Colonel William Pepperell. Within a few months after they had arrived at Dover, she obtained from the General Assembly of New Hampshire, a statute authorizing her to keep a tavern there. She opened this, thus supporting her younger children and her husband until he died, eighteen years afterwards. She sur- vived until the age of eighty-four. Such were a few of the women of Brookfield.
But other anxieties than fear of the savages depressed the citizens. They were unable during the early wars to give such devotion to agriculture as could compel the land to furnish them with support. The colonial records are full
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of frequent petitions by them for aid and for fourteen years or more after the second settlement they were treated as soldiers and received rations and pay in that capacity. The following petition is one of a number that might be quoted:
"Brookfield, Dec. 14, 1704. "To His Excelancy, etc.
"we hues names are underwriten do Humbly beage "your Excelancy's favor and that you wod consider our "weke condishone: the favor we beg is that we all ov us "not that such of us as find that are under such disad- "vantages that they cant subsist there might remove in- "to some other towne where they may worke for there "liveinge. by the deficulty of the times we are reduste "to such p'verty that we cant subsist except your onors "wil plese to grant us wages as solders & pay for our diat "for we raize litle or none of our provision by rezen of "our being drawn so frome our improvements of Lands. " our families are so large and our means are so small that "we cant live without sume other imploye than any we "have at presant. and if the honoured Cort se coaus to "put us in as solders we will as we do account it our duti "conform to the order of authority-but we rather if it "may be granted chuse to remove into other towns. "and we humble intrete that the onors of the Corte "would plese to grant us pay for our diat for the time we "have searve [d] as soldears. no more presant but we "remain youars as followeth."
They were also obliged to petition for spiritual suste- nance. The Reverend Younglove after the breaking up of the first settlement and the refusal to appoint him on the committee, did not return. The loss on that account was probably not large, since he was subsequently often directed by the Court to stop preaching. The new settlers could not support a pastor, nor even organize a church. For about twelve years, the annual stipend of £20 was voted by the
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General Court for the payment of a chaplain to the garrison at Brookfield. The third chaplain that was appointed also received the grant of a homestead with the accompanying lots both in plain and meadow. On October 30th, 1706: "The Humble Address of the Inhabitants and Soldiers " of Brookfield.
"Showeth our grateful acknowledgements to your "Honours, in that you did so consider our low condition, "in so much as your Hon's did the year past grant a "considerable suply of Moneys toward the maintaining "a Minister to preach the Gospel to us in this place. "We now humbly begg the gracious continuance of your "Hon's goodness and bounty to us for the insuing year, "els we shall starve & pine away for want of that spiritual "food with the which throw your Honours liberality we "were the last year so plentifully fed with."
All of these chaplains were selected by the committee and the inhabitants, the latter sometimes contributing to their support. There was no established church at Brook- field until 1717. Those who wished to become church members were obliged to go to Northampton and a special act of the General Court in 1691 authorized "Mr. Joseph Hawley of Northampton to joine persons in marriage at Brookfield."
The massacre of the haymakers was the last action on the soil of Brookfield that markedly distinguished its history from that of other towns of Massachusetts. Until the Peace of Utrecht, a garrison was kept there, at least while the leaves were on the trees; sentinels were posted to guard workers in the meadows and the worshippers at meeting, and nearly all the men were paid as "standing guards."
Shortly after the close of the War of the Succession in Spain, they organized a church, began the building of a meeting-house and employed a pastor. The meeting-house was forty-five by thirty-five feet with a gallery. Every inhabitant contributed labor or money toward its construc-
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tion. They voted the minister "for his salary 52 pounds "yearly for 3 years and to rise 40 shillings a year until it "comes to 70 pounds and there to stay"; besides a land grant fit for orchard and meadow; a house and barn to be built for him, he to provide the glass, nails and iron; twenty- five cords of wood a year and the right to require each man's work for one day yearly for six years. This seigniorial privilege was afterwards commuted. He accepted the town's house, which was already built opposite the place of the siege, allowing a credit of thirty pounds upon his salary, in return for the increased accommodation which this afford- ed and for six appurtenant acres, and the inhabitants dug and stoned for him a well, in return for a release of his right to have a new dwelling built him and to compel the yearly work from his parishioners. In October, 1717, the church was organized and the Reverend Thomas Cheney was or- dained after a day of fasting and prayer, set apart by what is described as "full and clear votes of the town to implore "God's presence with us in this solemn and weighty
"matter." The meeting-house was not yet finished. Be- fore its completion, the delicate matter of the distribution of the seats was arranged at a town meeting, held within two months of the creation of the town. The two best pews, each eight feet square, were given to Captain Thomas Baker and Thomas Gilbert; the former paying three pounds, the latter two pounds, for his pew. Pew room was granted subsequently to others, apparently in return for money or labor upon the meeting-house. The pew rent was forty shillings a year. A ministry pew was ordered on the right of the pulpit, and upon its left another "to be for Deacons' "wives, and said wives to sit in the pew during their "natural lives." The occupants usually furnished their own straight backed cane bottomed chairs, many of which are still treasured by their descendants. The rest of the meeting-house was filled "with strong plain seats." And a committee was appointed to assign the same, with instruc-
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tions "to have regard to age, where it is honorable, and "to estate; taking the list that Mr. Cheney's Rate was "made by as a rule; having also regard to men's service- "fulness in the town." It was solemnly voted "that the "foreseat in the front gallery shall be equal in dignity "with the third seat in the body; and the fore seat in "the side gallery shall be equal with the fourth seat in the "body of the house." The irreverent may smile at the punctiliousness that our ancestors observed in arranging their stations while they worshipped God together; but many of us still remember when the possession of a pew near the front of the centre aisle was considered to be a sign of quali- ty. The daughters of the Puritans seem to have exercised a disturbing influence upon some of the younger worshippers; for, in 1733, there was a vote of a town meeting "that the "women that set in the front gallery in the meeting-house "be seated in some other convenient place in said house, "the pews only excepted." The men's eyes, like those of Jeremiah, were troubled by the sight of the virgins.
The year after the organization of the church, the fol- lowing petition was presented to the General Court:
"We undersigned, the Committee for Brookfield, after "many Disappointments by warr and otherwise which "for a long time the people have laboured under, by the "good providence of God are now so increased that they "are now near fifty families in the place, have near finished "a very convenient meeting-house, have settled a church "and ordained an orthodox & learned Minister-We "humbly propose that they be made a Township, to order " all the affairs of a Township, according to the directions "of the Law by themselves, & said Committee released,- "which we submit to the Court's determination."
On November 12th, 1718, it was "Read and Ordered, "That the prayers of this Petition be granted: and that "the Inhabitants of the Town of Brookfield be invested "with all the powers, privileges and authorities to direct,
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"order and manage all the affairs of the said Township that "other towns are or ought to be invested with; And that "the Committee be dismist from their care of them with "the thanks of this Court for their good & faithful service. "The said Town to lye in the County of Hampshire."
At the first town-meeting, when business of any impor- tance was transacted-that held January 5th, 1719-pro- vision was made by land grant for a school. Liberal provi- sion for education was made from time to time throughout the history of the town; although, up to the close of the Eighteenth Century, children learned to write on birch-bark paper, with quills plucked from the Brookfield birds, in home-made ink of alderbark. The inhabitants of Brook- field were not behind the other citizens of the State in their devotion to the public schools, which are the crowning glory of New England. Yet, when the first school was founded they were still in great poverty. Only, during the first of the twelve years succeeding the town's organization could they afford to send a representative to the legislature and the money for his salary was not collected till more than three years after his term had expired.
During Father Rasle's war, said to have been instigated in 1722 by the Jesuit in Maine whose name it bears, the inhabitants were continually on guard; but they were not molested, although the tracks of Indians were seen near the village and their hunting-guns often heard. The pastor wrote on May 25th, 1725: "I would by these humbly entreat "y" Honour would think of our Poor afflicted Town, and "that you would please to grant our Town some garrison "soldiers. I would beg y" Honour not to be Troubled "that I take upon me to request this favour of you to my "people, for their interest and welfare in a great measure "is mine; and if they can't have some help, by reason of "the danger of the enemy, they will not be able to improve "their lands, and so not to be able to live themselves nor "to pay me my sallary."
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He thus secured the detail of a garrison of ten men from the upper county. When the Indians attacked Rutland, Brookfield men marched to its relief. And for thirty years, a citizen of Brookfield boasted that he had taken part in "Lovell's fight," when only half a band of rangers escaped from an Indian ambuscade.
Long after the extension of the frontier relieved the settlers from daily dread of the tomahawk, they were still surrounded by the wilderness and in danger from wild beasts. Bears were killed in the township as late as 1747. In 1734, a bounty of forty shillings was offered for grown wolf heads. And in 1741, it was voted "that whoever "within 20 days shall kill any rattlesnake, and shall bring "the last joint of the tail thereof to the selectmen, and "shall solemnly declare that the said snake was killed in "or near our town shall have 3d. reward."
But they more feared the enemy of souls. The most important event in the half century following the meadow massacre, the one which, of all that subsequently happened in the town, lives most strongly in the recollection of the inhabitants, was the preaching by the great Methodist from the stone on Foster's Hill, which still bears his name. Happy is the village where life contains nothing more dramatic than a sermon! The great preacher was then only twenty-six years old; but his voice and gestures had roused thousands to religious enthusiasm, from Georgia to Massachusetts, as well as in England. The force of his eloquence is proved by the testimony of the most competent judges, including the unconverted sceptics, Bolingbroke and Hume. The following story is told by Franklin concerning Whitefield's charity sermon in support of the endowment of an orphan asylum at Savannah: "I did not disapprove of the design; "but, as Georgia was then destitute of materials and "workmen, and it was proposed to send them from Phila- "delphia at a great expense, I thought it would have been "better to have built the house at Philadelphia and
1903
PEAK THIS SPOT, THOMAS LAWRENCE, JOSEPH MASON ARD JOR HAS. JOSEPH WOLCOTT ANG THO SMALL CHILDREN, WERE KILLED BY INDIANS IN KY4693
IN MEMORY OF EBENEZER HAYWARD STEPHEN JENNINGS BENJAMIN JENNINGS JOSEPH KELLOGG JOHN GROSVENOR
. JOHN WHITE
SITE OF THE HOUSE OWNED AND OCCUPIED BY CEN.RUFUS PUTHAN 1761 -1781
KILLED BY INDIANS JULY 20.1710 ERECTED BY THE TOWN 1912
AUGUST:ISTE
HERE STOOD FORT GILBERT BUILT ABOUT 1688 TO PROTECT SECONO SETTLEMENT OF BROOKFIELD (CALLED QUABOAG) FROM INDIAN RAIDS
BY IVOHAV3 LYING & AMEN Ast 2 :474 *** ** *** **** THAN S4E HALF HIS MEN SLAN DA WOUNDED.
On "Old Bay Path" about one mile northwest of East Brookfield.
Near Wenimisset Brook and Indian Pond on road from New Braintree to Ware River R. R. Station.
THESE HISTORICAL MARKERS ARE LOCATED AS FOLLOWS:
Near home of Wilder U. Barnes on Rufus Putnam Road, North Brookfield.
At head of North Main St., West Brookfield.
In the Old Cemetery West Brookfield, near Lake Wickaboag.
About one mile west of New Braintree on "old cross road" near Wen- imisset Brook.
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"brought the children to it. This I advised; but he was "resolute in his first project, rejected my counsel, and I "therefore refused to contribute. I happened soon after "to attend one of his sermons, in the course of which I "perceived he intended to finish with a collection, and I "silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had "in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four "silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded, "I began to soften, and concluded to give the copper. "Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that, "and determined me to give the silver; and he finished so "admirably that I emptied my pocket wholly into the "collector's dish, gold and all. At this sermon there was "also one of our club, who, being of my sentiments re- "specting the building in Georgia, and suspecting a col- "lection might be intended, had by precaution emptied "his pockets before he came from home. Towards the "conclusion of the discourse, however, he felt a strong "inclination to give, and applied to a neighbour, who "stood near him, to lend him some money for the purpose. "The request was fortunately made to perhaps the only "man in the company who had the firmness not to be "affected by the preacher. His answer was, 'At any other "time, friend Hopkinson, I would lend to thee freely; but "not now, for thee seems to be out of thy right senses.'"
In London, men rose at four o'clock on winter mornings to hear him preach in a tabernacle lighted by lanterns carried by thousands. He had a voice so strong that it could be heard by thirty thousand when he spoke in the open, and yet so soft that it was said he could move congregations to tears merely by the pronunciation of the word Mesopotamia. Like the ancient orators, his wholy body was in action. He emphasized by stamping with his feet, as well as by the motion of his arms. The leading actors studied his gestures in the hope of being able to reproduce them on the boards. He was not wont to write his sermons; but he often repeated
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them to different congregations. And Garrick said that his art was such that they improved until the fortieth repetition. He would single out individuals and compel them to answer expressing their assent to his doctrines; at the same time keeping control of the whole assembly. His appeals affected scholars and men of the world, as well as those who could neither read nor write. No man of that century prided himself so much as Lord Chesterfield upon the control of his emotions. Yet, when he heard Whitefield's description of an old blind man who had lost his dog, wandering nearer and nearer to a precipice, the earl started to his feet and cried : "Good God, he is gone." When the preacher spoke at the collieries, the tears of the miners made white lines down the coal dust on their cheeks. Such of his sermons as can now be read make it impossible to understand his power. This is usual with oratory that affects the multitude. To make the written word effective requires far different art from that which charms when it is spoken. The repetitions which are usually necessary for a mixed audience, often changing, whose recollections of previous portions of the argument needs frequent jogging; the homely local and timely allusions which a tactful speaker uses with the greatest force fall flat upon the printed page and are usually omitted from the publication. Omissions of much that, to the reader, seems requisite for artistic symmetry, must often be made by a speaker who would avoid suggestions that to some peculiari- ties in his audience might be offensive. The voice of White- field, as it ran the gamut from whispered pleading to thun- derous indignation and melting emotion; the play of his features; the emphasis of his gestures dignified by his wig and gown; can be no better reproduced on paper than can be the convulsions he inspired in his hearers. The last were also heightened by his reputation and by the contagion of religious enthusiasm among them. On a day appointed for him to preach, a woman threw herself upon the ground, rolled over and over in the mud, shrieking: "Oh! Lord save
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me, save me." When she had recovered her breath, she said to a bystander: "What a great exhorter Mr. Whitefield is." "That is not Mr. Whitefield," said the other; "He has not preached yet. That is the minister who comes before him." "What," said she, "is not that Mr. White- field? Then I have dirtied myself for nothing." The Reverend Mr. Cheney resented the attempt of another pastor to feed his flock and at first refused to open the meet- ing-house for the itinerant preacher. The people, however, were resolved to hear Whitefield, who then said he would speak in the open air. When the force of public opinion compelled Mr. Cheney to offer him the use of the pulpit, a crowd had collected too large to be received in the meeting- house. So the preacher spoke on October 16th, 1740, from the place which has since been known as the Whitefield rock. The tradition of what he said, although distorted, enables us now to ascertain his text, which, curiously enough, has not been discovered by the scholarly speakers who have preceded me. I am so much indebted to their learning that I cannot resist the temptation to claim credit for my sole con- tribution to the town's religious history. It was from the verse preceding the Biblical story of Paul's discourse upon Mars' Hill; that famous sermon, the authenticity of which divines calling themselves Christian ministers had not then attacked. "And some said, what will this babbler say?"1 That was the period of the Great Awakening.
It may have been due to the early influence of the Pynchons that the records of Brookfield are free from illus- trations of the ill effects of religious bigotry. The Half Way Covenant, which afforded certain privileges to those who had conscientious scruples against professing all the
1 The address of Dr. Lyman Whiting on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Town Settlement contains the following passage: "The wonderful preacher began, kindly saluting them. He was glad to see them; and then passed to enquire for the motives drawing them there. 'Some of you come to hear what the babbler will say,' is a sentence remembered by a hearer who went to her rest during the ministry of Rev. Dr. Phelps." See Acts. XVII. 18.
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tenets of the dominant religion, was early permitted and allowed, at least in the church of West Brookfield, until the Nineteenth Century. It was the usual practice in the Con- gregational churches of Massachusetts to decide all important matters by the "silentius vote."2 No question could be considered without the consent of the minister. He presided at all meetings and put the motion in a form which required only a silent assent. No count of those for or against the motion was usually made. This gave the divines powers over matters of doctrine, discipline, the admission and exclu- sion of members whose share in the civil government was then usually dependent upon their right to communion, in comparison with which the powers of the speaker in a legis- lative house of our era seem infinitesimal. On January 30th, 1753, at a meeting of the Second Church of Christ at Brookfield, "The Question being asked whether any thing "short of a hand vote should be looked upon as valid in
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