USA > Massachusetts > Bristol County > Taunton > Quarter millinnial celebration of the city of Taunton, Massachusetts, Tuesday and Wednesday, June 4 and 5, 1889 > Part 7
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QUARTER MILLENNIAL CELEBRATION.
When ample justice had been done to the bountiful sup- ply of delicacies provided for the occasion, the President of the Day, Mayor Hall, introduced the post-prandial exercises in the following fitting words :-
Ladies and Gentlemen :-
We are observing to-day a festival of great interest to our city. Taunton may well feel proud of her long and success- ful career. Her sons and daughters returned home on this, her 250th Anniversary, may well exchange mutual greetings and congratulations.
Proper indeed was it to commence the festivities of this occa- sion by a historical review of our past, and the recital of our rec- ord in verse.
Proper indeed is it, then, to gather around these tables, to pledge the health of old Taunton and wish her long life and pros- perity. It is not for me, however, to occupy the time of the guests here assembled ; that duty falls to the lot of abler hands than mine. I have the pleasure to present to you our toastmaster, an honored citizen, Judge William Henry Fox.
Judge Fox, on being thus introduced, proceeded to say :
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen :-
Let me proceed at once to the duties assigned me, which consist chiefly in applying the torch to the howitzers all about me which are loaded to the muzzle and stand waiting to be fired. They will make a tremendous report, and doubtless hit the mark ; but we will not be alarmed, ladies, for they will fire over our heads and will not hurt us; for they are firing at their ances- tors to-day, and they ought to aim high. Our first sentiment is as follows :-
The President of the United States :- The chosen head of a nation whose corner stone is yonder Plymouth Rock.
"Oh, Land of Lands: to thee we give Our prayers, our hopes, our service free; For thee thy sons shall nobly live, And at thy need, shall die for thee."
The President, in response to an invitation tendered him to join these festivities, replies as follows :-
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EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
April 27, 1889.
DEAR SIR :-
The President directs me to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 24th inst., enclosing an invitation to attend the 250th Anniversary of the founding of Taunton, Mass., and to convey to the committee, through you, his sincere thanks for the courtesy.
He desires me to say that it would give him much pleasure to be present on this historic occasion, and he appreciates the friendly terms in which you urge his acceptance, but his public duties will most likely prevent him from leaving the Capital at the date of your celebration.
Very Respectfully Yours,
E. W. HALFORD, Private Secretary.
REV. S. HOPKINS EMERY,
Secretary of Committee of Invitation, Taunton, Mass.
The Vice-President who gave us strong encouragement to hope for his presence, has at last found it impossible to be with us. But he has sent us an interesting letter which I will read.
RHINECLIFF, N. Y., May 27th, 1889.
GENTLEMEN :-
I have delayed a reply, hoping to be able to accept the cordial invitation with which I have been honored, to be present and join in your Anniversary celebration on the 4th and 5th of June.
It would give me great pleasure to visit your beautiful and enterprising city on the 250th Anniversary of its settlement as it would also to visit your neighbors at Middleboro', where my ancestors and some of their descendants have lived since George Morton landed at Plymouth in 1623, but I regret extremely to find that it will be impossible for me to avail myself of the generously proffered hospitalities of the City of Taunton on so interesting an occasion.
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With the best wishes for the perfect success of your cele- bration, in which I naturally take deep interest, and hearty con- gratulation upon the marvellous progress of Taunton during the two hundred and fifty years that have passed,
I have the honor to be, gentlemen,
Very faithfully and truly yours,
LEVI P. MORTON.
Messrs. Richard Henry Hall, Samuel Hopkins Emery, John Williams Dean Hall, William Eddy Fuller, Henry Morton Lovering and George Albert Washburn, Committee on Invitations.
There is no more attractive town in New England than Easton, a part of our "North Purchase." We all know that she owes her prosperity and her beauty very largely to the thrift and enterprise and the munificent generosity and public spirit of the elder Oliver Ames, his sons and his grandsons.
We welcome our Chief Magistrate to-day, not merely on account of the high office which he so gracefully fills, but also because he is a son of Easton, and so, by derivation, a son of Taunton. I give you-The Commonwealth of Mas- sachusetts ;- and present to you His Excellency the Gov- ernor.
RESPONSE BY GOVERNOR AMES.
Friends and Neighbors :---
For three months past, by the advice of my physician, I have denied myself the pleasure of attending many gatherings of my fellow-citizens, and against his protest I am here to-day. Hav- ing had my residence from my birth in the town of Easton, which for over sixty years was a part of your territory, known as the Taunton North Purchase ; being familiar from my childhood with all that affects you ; knowing a large number of you personally and a larger number by reputation; I could not refrain from joining with you in celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the founding of the town of Taunton.
I am here to-day as Governor of the Commonwealth, and in her name I bring to you the congratulations of all her people.
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They see in your city an example of what a New England com- munity should be, and with you they rejoice that you have had so many years of corporate existence, that you have employed them so usefully, and that there is so much of promise for you in the future. The future of a community in which the distinctively New England qualities of thrift, enterprise and honesty are en- couraged and maintained cannot be doubtful.
But I come to you to-day as a neighbor and friend, as well as Governor of the Commonwealth, and I desire to say to you a few friendly words, rather than to talk to you officially. During my boyhood and early manhood I saw much of Taunton and its people, and I have always taken an interest and felt a pride in all that concerns them. Forty years ago, Taunton was the place at which my father's firm shipped much of their manufactured goods, and at which they did their banking. I was constantly visiting it in their service. Although the building of railroads and other causes have so changed the channels of business that Taunton is of much less importance to me in a business way, still I see here a centre around which cluster not only the memories of the past but the living interest of the present.
As time has gone by I have seen your village grow into a city and your prosperity steadily increase. I have watched the growth of your manufacturing interests, and I have seen them grow from small beginnings to a magnitude of which any community may well be emulous. Your business men are enterprising and public spirited ; your workers are energetic and cheerful; your homes are comfortable and happy; your streets are safe and peaceful ; you have the advantages which churches and schools and other educa- tional agencies provide. You are, as a whole, a prosperous and happy people and in your prosperity and happiness your neighbors share.
Your mission is not by any means ended. You have seen two hundred and fifty years of growth and prosperity. While your people remain what they have been and what they now are, you will continue the career of usefulness and prosperity upon which you have so well proceeded.
The Judiciary of Massachusetts :- Honored at home ; respected wherever the English language is spoken. With affectionate pride the mother town receives back to his childhood's home to-day, a son whose distinguished career
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has added luster to an already eminent name. I have the honor to present our Chief Justice, the Honorable Marcus Morton.
RESPONSE BY HON. MARCUS MORTON.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen :-
One of the blessings of an occasion like this, is that it opens the hearts of all the inhabitants of the town and makes them hospitably and kindly disposed, not only toward each other, but especially toward us who are present on this interesting anniver- sary, revisiting the home of our fathers. I have been deeply touched, as I have moved about among you, by the hearty hand shakes and the cordial welcome which I have received on every side. As Judge Fox has said, I am Taunton born and bred ; this is my native place, the home of my youth, and as I stand here to-day, I feel deeply the truth of the poet's thought, that however far we may wander, whatever new ties and associations, and inter- ests we form, the heart turns fondly to the old home.
It has been assigned to me to respond to the toast to "The Judiciary of Massachusetts." I might enlarge upon the dignity and importance, the duties and responsibilities of that important department of our government.
But, to-day, naturally, Taunton is uppermost in the thoughts of all, and I have thought that it would not be out of place if I devoted the few minutes allotted to me to the pleasant task of calling to your minds the part which Taunton has had in furnish- ing judges for the service of the commonwealth since the adop- tion of the constitution.
Two of your citizens have been judges of our highest judicial tribunal, Robert Treat Paine and Marcus Morton. The former was a justice of the Supreme Court, from 1790 to 1804, when he resigned.
Judge Bennett in his interesting and exhaustive address, de- livered before you this morning, has so eloquently set forth the great patriotism and judicial services of Judge Paine that it leaves nothing for me to add.
Marcus Morton was a justice of the same court from 1825 to 1840, when having been elected governor, he resigned his office as judge.
He held the nearest and dearest relation to me and it is more fitting that others should speak of him; but I hope I may say that his services in this great office and in the other public trusts committed to him, were such as to reflect no discredit upon
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the town of his adoption and love. Coming to the other courts, I can speak with less reserve. I can add nothing to the just and glowing tribute paid by Judge Bennett, in his address, to the pat- riot, soldier and jurist, David Cobb, who was a judge of the Court of Common Pleas in the latter part of the last century. A few years later another eminent citizen, Samuel Fales, was for several years a judge and chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas. This court was then a county court, having jurisdiction only in the County of Bristol. In 1821 our judicial system was reorgan- ized and the Court of Common Pleas for the Commonwealth was established. The governor was to appoint "four meet persons, " to be justices, who, in the quaint language of the statute, " shall be men of sobriety of manners and learned in the law. "
Of the four justices first appointed, John Mason Williams of Taunton was one. He served as justice until 1839, when he was promoted to be chief justice and continued to serve in that capacity until 1844, when he resigned. Judge Williams met the requirements of the statute in every respect. He was a man of abundant learning in the law, and of the highest character, of un- impeachable integrity and purity, of great dignity of demeanor and of unfailing courtesy of manner. It may sound like very high praise, but I have heard members of the bar, who practiced before him, assert that we never had, in our courts, a man who on the whole, was more competent and satisfactory as a nisi prius judge. Permit me to read a short extract from an address made to him on the last day on which he presided in court. It was made on behalf of the bar by the Hon. Samuel Dunn Parker, who was one of the ablest lawyers of the state, a man of severe judgment and not given to flattery. Speaking of the impending retirement of the chief justice, he says :- "This is an event we cannot but deeply lament, as we in common with others in every county of the commonwealth have for a quarter of a century admired the . undeviating impartiality, the extensive learning, the gentlemanly courtesy, the sound and lucid exposition of the law, the perennial dignity, the uncommon ability and untiring industry with which for that length of time you have discharged the judicial function to the satisfaction and benefit of your fellow citizens. "
These are very eulogistic words, but not strained or undeserv- ed. They express the sentiments and feelings of the bar. Taun- ton has reason to be proud of Chief Justice Williams, as one of her most useful and eminent citizens.
Chief Justice Williams resigned in 1844. In the following year Harrison Gray Otis Colby was appointed a judge of the Com- mon Pleas Court, Although at the time a resident of New Bed-
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ford, he is most known as a member of the bar of Taunton where for many years he was an able and successful lawyer. He remain- ed upon the bench but two years and was an able and useful judge. From this time for many years, Taunton had no represen- tation upon the bench.
In the meanwhile, in 1859, the Superior Court was established to take the place of the Court of Common Pleas. This is a court of great dignity and importance. It is the great trial court of the Commonwealth. Of all the jury cases tried in the state, I presume ninety per cent. are tried in this court. There is no position in the civil service of the state in which it is more im- portant to have for judges men, not only learned in the law, but of sound sense and good judgment, and especially of the capacity rapidly to apply the principles of law to the ever varying circum- stances of the cases as they arise before them. The state is fortu- nate in having on this court so able and efficient a body of judges.
To this high position Chester Isham Reed of Taunton was appointed in 1867. Many of you will remember him as an ac- complished and genial gentleman, and as an able and successful lawyer. He carried to the bench the same genial and courteous traits of character and was respected and beloved as a judge. Unfortunately he remained upon the bench but a few years, resign- ing in 1871, but long enough to demonstrate his capacity to make one of our most useful and able judges.
In speaking of the judiciary of Massachusetts, I ought not to overlook one branch of the judicial department, which is by no means of secondary importance, I mean the Probate Courts of our several counties. When you reflect that as often as once in every generation of men the whole personal property of the state passes under the administration of these courts, you will appreciate their value and the importance of having learned and able judges, of good sense and judgment and knowledge of affairs to preside over them. I feel some delicacy as to what I am about to say, as it touches one who is present with us to-day. But surely in at- tempting to speak of the wise and able judges which your town has furnished, it would be an act of injustice to omit that ac- complished citizen of Taunton, who for nearly a quarter of a cen- tury was the Judge of Probate of the County of Bristol. Massa- chusetts never had a better Judge of Probate than Judge Edmund H. Bennett.
I will detain you no longer. I have accomplished my pur- pose if I have shown that our good old town has a right to feel a just satisfaction and pride in the able judges which she has fur- nished to the service of our Commonwealth.
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MORTON HOSPITAL, Formerly the Residence of Gov. Marcus Morton.
CITY HALL.
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The Pilgrims :- Two hundred and sixty-eight years ago, perhaps this very month, Cohannet first felt the step of the white man. It was then that Edward Winslow and Stephen Hopkins took their long and perilous tramp from Plymouth, through these wilds, possibly across this very field, to the shore of Narragansett Bay, to meet King Massasoit. My history fails me here. They may have been reporters going to interview the King on the tariff question, but in the light of modern history, it seems to me more likely that they were seeking for office under the new administration. But there is a learned gentleman present who can tell us more about the Pilgrims than the rest of us have ever dreamed of and I take pleasure in presenting the Rev. Dr. Henry M. Dexter, who will speak for them.
RESPONSE BY REV. DR. HENRY M. DEXTER.
I assume, sir, that in the few moments allotted me there is no desire that I thresh again the old straw of a general historic ques- tion. By this time the world, so far as it has appetence for such matters, has learned :- In the first place, that the Puritans were serious-minded Englishmen of the 16th and 17th centuries, who felt that the great business of life is to serve God, while such genuine service demanded that those ancient forms which the Church of England had inherited from Rome be pruned of excres- cences, purged of idolatries, and vitalized by fresh genuineness and zeal. In the second place, that the separatists were Puritans who saw no other way of sincere living but to leave their old church, even if they had to leave their old homes, that they might obey the word of God. And in the third place, that the Pilgrims were Puritan separatists, who, not content with a tolerated and toler- able, yet restricted and unfruitful existence among the somewhat meager, if kindly, hospitalities of Holland, yearned to live again under their old flag; to render service, on some remote shore, even to that conceited bigot who occupied the English throne, whose sense of justice and whose utmost stretch of royal benignity exhausted themselves in the surly suggestion that possibly he might turn his majestic head the other way and not see them if they fled across the sea; and to do something, if God would help them,-even humbly and but as stepping stones unto others-for
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the performing of so great a work, in advancing the kingdom of Christ among the savages of this wilderness. Such Puritan separatists as these, were the Pilgrim Fathers of this Old Colony.
It is usual to take a text for a sermon. I reverse the pro- cess, and take a sermon for my text.
I hold in my hand an original copy of the first discourse ever preached in Taunton which attained to the dignity of type; deliv- ered here so early as on Thursday, 23 July, (2 Aug.,) 1640. This, you will observe, was a few days more than nineteen years after the first white feet-of Edward Winslow and Stephen Hopkins-passed this way on their rough pilgrimage to the wigwam of Massasoit at Sowams, and but nine days more than a year and a month later than that formal settlement of Cohannet which we now com- memorate.
It is entitled, New England's Teares for old England's Feares, by William Hook, sometime of Axmouth in Devon, now of Taun- ton in New England; and was delivered-it may have been under a spreading oak-it being " a day of Public Humiliation, appointed by the churches in behalf of our native country in time of feared dangers." You will recall the circumstances which led the way. Charles I., obstinately bent both on doing foolish things, and on doing all things in a foolish way, had reduced himself to penury by one brief campaign against the rebellious Scots. After the longest interval known to English history-an interval crowded with every conceivable form of illegal exaction-Parliament had met again at Westminster, simply because money must be had, and could be had only by an act of the Commons. But vexed be- cause they talked of grievances instead of voting subsidies, the hasty and petulant monarch suddenly dissolved the session and sent the members home to breed discontent in all the land. The last ships which had come over had brought tidings of this-of the popular commotion; of the fact that the king was raising an- other army to march into the north, having squeezed the money therefor-which London flatly refused to lend him-by a forced loan from the nobility and gentry; and that the whole air of England was thick with premonitions of civil war. Archbishop Laud was still on his high horse, and the star chamber was recklessly fining whom it pleased thousands of pounds, setting them in the pillory, cutting off their ears and slitting their noses-for daring to act as if their souls were their own.
These were the tidings-thirty or forty days old. What might already have followed nobody dared to imagine; and such was the situation,
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There were then four and twenty churches within the bounds of the Massachusetts and the Plymouth colonies; eighteen in the former, and six in the latter. These churches appointed a day of fasting and prayer.
But it should be understood and remembered that in these colonies there was, and for sometime had been, remarkable pros- perity. The Pequot war ยท had been well ended, to great content. The "proud opinions" that a short time before had risen up to disturb everybody with the familistic troubles had subsided. The churches had peace. For plenteous harvests the land had never known the like, so that, so far as all new English affairs went a great Thanksgiving would have been in order, without waiting for the last Thursday of November.
But our Fathers appointed a Fast, and I tell you that a Fast meant something then. Base ball games, shooting matches, fishing excursions, hunting up summer board and the like amusements were as yet undeveloped as accepted methods of hallowing the occasion. To appoint a Fast then meant to the entire community the giving up of a whole secular day to public religious service. Gov. Winthrop tells us [Journal II:13] that the ship Mary Rose, of Bristol, Eng., recently come in from sea and lying in the stream, on 27 July, (6 Aug.,) 1640-and that was the Monday after the Thursday of this very Fast-blew up by the never accounted for explosion of twenty-four barrels of powder in her hold, killing the captain and nine or ten of his men, with four or five strangers, one man alone escaping with life. Winthrop intimates that "the judgment of God appeared in this, because, alone of all the ships in the harbor, this captain had neglected with his crew to attend the public Fast service, saying when remonstrated with, that " he had as good a service aboard as they had ashore."
Now, one can see a little what kind of men these first settlers of Taunton were, in this, that while their infant settlement was yet in the gristle, and every secular hour had its own pre-eminent vaule, they left their houses half-finished, their fences half-builded, their fields half-hoed, to devote one-sixth of a whole week of long July days, when they were in prosperity, to humble themselves and beg the Divine interposition to save from the horrors of civil war * that native land out of which most of them had fled for their faith and for their lives.
I get-let me say-from this discourse, a more exalted idea than some other facts suggest, of the quality and average mental condition of these Pilgrim fathers of Cohannet. It was sent over in manuscript to a member of the Honorable House of Commons, who thought so well of it that he had it printed "for the publike
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good." He says of it in his few prefatory words .- " If thou bring thy heart with thee to the reading of it, thou mayst find thy heart melting by reading of it, and then thou shalt have cause to bless God for it." You have had here and have within my knowledge, well cultured and very able men in your pulpits, but I confess to a doubt whether you ever had one, who, on the whole, could write a better sermon than this. In spirit, devout, tender, pitying and true ; shot, through and through, with the golden threads of scrip- ture thoughts and speech ; in language admirable, rising now and then into pathetic eloquence, and everywhere assuming not only new power of thought, but a considerable level of comprehension in the audience. I have always insisted that our Pilgrim Fathers were not great men by original position and culture so much as by character and achievement; that it is a mistake to try to lift them to a level in social position and training with the Massachusetts Company. But when I see William Hook, a Master of Arts of Trinity College, Oxford,-soon to be associated with the famous John Davenport in the care of the famous first Church of New Haven, a correspondent of Oliver Cromwell while here, and who went back to the old country in the days of the Commonwealth to be his domestic chaplain, and to lay his own bones in Bunhill Fields; when I see this William Hook in his narrow cabin near Taunton Green writing a discourse for his little congregation of Cohannet settlers, garnished with one quotation in the original Latin from the third Eclogue of Virgil, and two from the Phar- salia of Lucan, with another from an author whom I am not scholar enough to identify, together with a reference in the original Greek to the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, I am sure that he enter- tained no fear that his beaten oil wouldn't burn in the lamp of his humble sanctuary.
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