USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Royalston > Reflections on Royalston, Worcester County, Massachusetts, U.S.A > Part 9
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THE SAWYER-HOLMAN FURNITURE SHOP.
Whether Joseph Sawyer tried out a shop in connection with the little dam and pond or not, it is a fact that he built a shop at the location indi- cated by 30N on the map. It seems probable that he attempted to get power for this shop from the little dam. I cannot state through what kind of a wheel he sought to develop power at first. But about 1854, probably, after the Sawyers had turned the place over to the Holmans, and the shop built by Sawyer had been destroyed by fire and a new one built, the water wheel in use was, in my opinion, the same wheel that Sawyer had constructed and used in the shop that was burned; the fact of its water-soaked condition and other circumstances having prevented it from being destroyed in the fire, and it was repaired and retained in use in the new shop.
That water wheel, as I recall its appearance, was probably some- thing like 25 feet in diameter. The top of it extended fully to the level of the attic floor, which was open at that point, so that the diameter of the wheel was equal to the height of the two stories of the shop and several feet in the pit below the level of the basement floor.
In construction, the wheel consisted of a hub, from which iron rods or spokes extended to the rim, to which were attached wooden buckets or troughs. The wheel was much like an overshot wheel, but there was no power gained from the pressure of water shooting over the top of it. The water was brought to the shop in an underground tube and there arose in a "penstock" to about the height of the wheel, to which it was conducted in a trough, through holes in the bottom of which it spilled into the buckets on the wheel, at a point a little below the top. This water might have been retained in the buckets on fully a quarter of the circumference of the wheel before it was spilled into the raceway below. Those buckets might have been 5 or 6 feet long across the face of the wheel and of capacity to hold several cubic feet of water each. Water
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weighs more than 62 pounds per cubic foot, and it is easy to compute that the side of the wheel going down might have taken on tons of water to pull on that leverage from the center of the wheel. If that wheel could have been kept balanced it seems that the power developed by its motion would have overcome the resistance of a considerable amount of machinery in operation. But the wheel, when I knew it, was very much out of balance, due in part to the fact that when it was not in motion the part that was down in the pit was holding a large amount of moisture while the upper parts were drying out. Of course when the water was shut off the wheel came to rest with this water-soaked side down in the pit, and a large amount of water had to be spilled into the buckets on the upper side to overcome this extra weight and bring the heavy part up over the top; but once there, probably that side of the wheel went down without waiting for its buckets to be completely filled with water.
If Sawyer's pond was higher than that wheel, it might have fur- nished a water supply for it in the wet season; or he might have tried out the service of that pond on a smaller and lower wheel. But he needed a more continuous supply of water, and he went to Little Pond for it. He put in the canal, and the little dam or header, on the high
THE HOLMAN FURNITURE SHOP.
land near the shop, somewhat as it is indicated on the map, and from that he carried the water to the wheel by means of the underground tube, "penstock" and trough.
The canal was well put in, planked inside, and covered, so that the owners of the land it crossed could cultivate the soil above it. In my boyhood days, however, when I worked on those fields, in some places the top had fallen in, and discretion was used in crossing with a load of hay.
It was after the Sawyers had gone, and the Holmans were running the place, that George W. Holman contrived a way of getting the water along faster from Little Pond. He told me that he installed a crude Archimedes screw pump, consisting of a spruce log set at an angle with one end in the pond and hung on bearings at both ends, with strips of wood nailed on it in spiral form to make the threads of the screw. This he rotated by means of a tread-mill horse-power, with the result that a considerable amount of water followed the insinuosities of the screw and was thus lifted from the pond and spilled into the canal.
In these days, when electric power sufficient to operate more ma- chinery than was used in that shop can be sent anywhere on two or three wires as large as knitting needles, these efforts of a previous century seem almost pathetic. What will they have a half-century hence?
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The manufactures of this shop under the Holmans, who probably followed along with the same lines that had been produced by the Saw- yers, consisted mainly of pine household furniture, including tables with folding leaves, bureaus, commodes, washstands, teapoy-stands, light- stands, and the like. Probably no bedsteads or chairs were ever turned out at this shop. But cradles were made in large quantities; and, as if to emphasize by contrast the extremes of the earthly career of human beings, the pine coffins for the proper burial of the bodies of most of the people who died in a large part of the town for many years were made at this shop; similar shops at South Royalston met the needs of a part. While it is not improbable that at times one or two coffins, suitable for a person of medium size or for a child, might have been kept made up, and in the case of an aged person or one dying from an incurable disease the need might have been anticipated and a coffin partially prepared in ad- vance, yet in most cases the coffin was made to order, clear from the boards in the lumber shed, after the immediate need of it was made known; and there was lively work getting the coffin made, stained and trimmed in season for the burial service.
I feel sure that the only available record of a part of the business of that shop lies in that old account book kept by my father. He was em- ployed in the shop, and he practically filled one page with charges against Sylvester Sawyer, on dates Oct. 6, 1849, to May 11, 1850. The work charged for included "setting up" 149 bureaus, of different styles and sizes, in lots of from 4 to 24, at 18 to 30 cents each; "getting out" 80 table leaves, $2.80; "making" 700 cradles, in lots of 50 and 100, at 9 cents per cradle; many days work at 85 cents per day.
Those 700 cradles were charged for in a space of a little more than 5 months, showing an average production of 5 cradles per day. This is merely the record of one man's part of the work. How many others were employed in getting the parts of those cradles ready for the "making" and of those bureaus for the "setting up," or what other articles were being produced, cannot be told.
That page of account with Sylvester Sawyer was the last one that was left in the account book for us to reckon by; the next eight pages, with whatever they might have carried of historical data, were removed from the book, and the remaining pages are blank.
Joseph Sawyer reached the age of 77 years in 1850. In the appendix to Rev. E. W. Bullard's centennial sermon of the First Congregational Church, we find in the record of the deacons: "Joseph Sawyer, chosen May 22, 1840, died Seth Holman, chosen April 4, 1851, died Nov. 26, 1860." From this, and from somewhat vague recollection of what I was told many years ago, I may say that Joseph Sawyer did not die in Royalston, but returned to Templeton, from whence he came, and died there. He might have been too feeble to attend to the matter of a for- mal resignation of the office of deacon, and as he died out of town, the date of his death was not secured and made a matter of record. But when he had removed in his old age, they knew that he would never re- turn, and chose Seth Holman as his successor, April 4, 1851.
Many years ago I saw in an old book an account of a firm consisting of David P. and Daniel Foster and John K. Frye, indicating that they operated that furniture shop for a time, presumably one year, and prob- ably between the time of the Sawyers giving up the business and the time of the Holmans taking it over.
It appears that the Sawyers were carrying a mortgage and that Seth Holman came into possession of the property through the mortgage; evi- dently the Holmans became the owners of everything that the Sawyers had accumulated, -the shop with its water privilege, the large house at 36N, the cottage at 35N, and the land with its improvements. Whether the Sawyers carried away as much as they brought to Royalston may not be told.
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It was the custom at this shop to push the light shavings through scuttle-holes into the basement, where they were allowed to accumulate. One night, in 1853, probably, George W. Holman went down into that basement carrying a little lighted oil lamp, which fell into the shavings. The shop went up in flames, and Mr. Holman barely escaped with his life by dropping through the floor into the raceway; he received burns the scars from which he could show to the end of his long life of 83 years. He died March 18, 1907, at his orange plantation in Florida, whither he had gone from his home in Fitchburg. The shop was rebuilt around the big water wheel, as told on page 74. The crude picture is the result of my efforts to illustrate the general features of that building.
Although there were no safeguards around that big wheel in the basement, nor over the open trough which carried the water to it near the head of the attic stairs, and children were allowed to run all over the building with very little restraint, I think no one ever received injuries as a result. The nearest to something serious came when Col. Whitney's son Charlie reached in and caught hold of one of the rods or spokes of the big wheel from the basement and was promptly lifted off his feet; he was encouraged by his companions to hold on, and he held on until the big wheel was stopped and he was released from his perilous posi- tion, uninjured, but somewhat soiled.
In 1854, probably, my mother left her home at 13N, and taking her two children with her, became housekeeper at the furniture-shop board- ing-house in the Sawyer house at 36N for about one year. The place was in the hands of the Holmans, and Seth Newell Holman, son of Deacon Seth, and brother of George W., was the man of the house; and others who boarded there and were employed in the shop were Joseph B. Car- dany, who later became an extensive manufacturer of furniture in Athol; Jasper Brown, son of Artemas Brown; one or two of the sons of George Peirce; and perhaps others. Another worker in the shop, Leander Le- land, lived in the Sawyer cottage at 35N. A Mr. Twitchell also occupied that cottage and worked in the shop for many years. David P. Foster was employed in the shop through the greater part of its operations un- der both the Sawyers and the Holmans. He built and lived in the house at 9N, and later lived in the house at 13N, and died there April 5, 1903. John Kendall Frye, of the third generation from Captain John, one of the first settlers, was a worker in the shop, and later was a member of the firms of Barnum, Frye & Co., and Holman & Frye, manufacturers of office furnishings and show cases, in Boston. He died Oct. 15, 1908.
THE ANGEL GABRIEL.
Among the interesting things that I as a boy discovered in that old Sawyer house was that statuette of the Angel Gabriel, which we are told in Mr. Caswell's official history, was one of the embellishments of the second meeting-house, built in 1797. The story states that "when the structure was completed it was found that a balance of around $65, according to tradition, remained in the treasury," which the "good people" appropriated for the purchase of this image, which, we are told, was "beautifully carved by a skilful artist from a huge block of first growth pine, and is all in one piece with the exception of the slender trumpet in the right hand. It is 33 inches high and 19 inches in breadth across the wings. A niche was made high up in the wall back of the pulpit and in this recess the Angel Gabriel was placed and rested in security for nearly half a century, the cynosure of all eyes and the won- der of the rising generation."
In 1840 a new church was built, and the official story says that "after the old building had been completely dismantled, the Angel Gabriel was discovered one day by the good Deacon Seth Holman, according to his son's statement, 'on a pile of waste.' The Deacon rescued the discarded
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relic and carried it tenderly to his own home." And as no move was made for the placement of the image in the new church, the story says that "Gabriel, therefore, became a permanent member of the household of Deacon Holman and his posterity and accompanied them when the family removed from Royalston in the late sixties." The church build- ing of 1840 was destroyed by fire in 1851, and Gabriel escaped destruction. In 1903, on the occasion of Royalston's first "Old Home Day," George W. Holman restored the image to the old parish, and it was accorded a place in the present church, not as Mr. Holman had desired, similar to the position it had held in the old building, back of the pulpit, but on the railing of the gallery, at the other end of the auditorium.
Good Seth Holman should be canonized for having saved Gabriel from the utter abandonment of the rubbish pile; but Mr. Holman was not Deacon at that time, as called by the writer of the story, not having been chosen to that position until after the destruction of the church build- ing of 1840, or on April 4, 1851. Joseph Sawyer was chosen as deacon at about the time of the discovery of Gabriel in sore dereliction, or on May 22, 1840. This may have little to do with the discovery of Gabriel in the Sawyer house in 1854. In the sketch Gabriel is said to have been carried "tenderly to his own home" by Mr. Holman, and that home was at the saw-mill, nearly a mile from the Sawyer house; this perhaps bars good Deacon Sawyer from having had a hand or a finger even in poor Gabriel's salvation. The best that I can say is that perhaps the image was left at the Sawyer house in 1840, and never taken over to Holman's "own home" at the mill; but if it was actually taken over there, then it was brought back to the Sawyer house at some time before I discovered it there in 1854. The Sawyer place came into the possession of the Hol- ยท mans "around" 1851 or 1852; but good Deacon Seth Holman did not take up his residence in the Sawyer house until about 1857. I have a fairly good recollection that Daniel Foster occupied that mill place and run the mills for a year, which I think must have been the year before the sale to Maynard Partridge, in the spring of 1858, when the Holmans became permanently located at the Sawyer place.
The inventive abilities of the Sawyers were displayed on other things than little dams and big water-wheels. Joseph Sawyer is credited with having originated the machine for cutting cane for chair-seats and simi- lar work, which proved to be a very profitable thing,-for others, but not for Sawyer. In the same room in the Sawyer house in which I discov- ered the image of Gabriel, there were parts of musical instruments of the keyboard-reed variety, then or later called seraphines and melodeons; indicating that the Sawyers had contrived along that line.
Leonard Wheeler, the blacksmith and wheelwright, whose shop was at the location indicated by 22N on the map, used an up-and-down jig- saw in the basement of the Sawyer shop for cutting out wheel-fellies and other parts of vehicles. A Mr. Rice, who made baskets in that basement, while watching the operation of the jig-saw, told Mr. Wheeler that if he had the means he could make a great improvement on that saw, and de- scribed what has since been made very valuable by other parties,-the endless band-saw. Little did he realize that within a few years a large four-story building would be erected near that Sawyer shop, which would ultimately become a manufactory of all kinds of saws, including the endless band-saw, of his dream. This Mr. Rice, who had been making baskets from splints made by pounding a log, invented a better process of producing splints by cutting, which he and a Mr. Lewis utilized some- what secretly.
Deacon Seth Holman died Nov. 26, 1860. George W. Holman had removed from Royalston several years before that time. Seth Newell Holman continued the furniture business for a few years. The water power failed gradually, due probably to the caving in of the covering and banks of the canal. There was talk about installation of steam
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power, but steam power was not installed. Before 1865 the business was discontinued, and the building had been removed to Orange, where Seth Newell Holman had acquired business interests.
After the removal of the Holmans from the large Sawyer house it was owned and occupied by William Fordyce Bigelow from 1871 until his death in 1890; Henry O. Curtis was its owner and occupant for sev- eral years; Charles H. Brown has owned the place since 1914, and has made it his home for the last few years. Some of the owner-occupants of the small Sawyer house at 35N, since the closing of the furniture shop, have been Herman M. Partridge, Henry C. Reed and Frank Curtis.
THE FIRST AUTOMOBILE.
Sylvester Sawyer appeared on Royalston Common on the occasion of the Centennial Celebration, August 23, 1865, riding a "horseless buggy." He had arranged a wood-burning steam engine for power, and it was told that he made the trip from Fitchburg under steam from his engine, but found it necessary to stop at nearly every farm-house on the way and "wood up." Mr. Caswell gives his readers to understand that it was Joseph Sawyer who rode the new invention into town, as he makes no mention of Sylvester Sawyer and probably never learned that there was a man of that name connected with Royalston affairs. Joseph Sawyer, if living at that time, would have been 92 years old; but without doubt he had gone to his rest many years earlier.
According to Mr. Caswell's story, "Mr. Sawyer came up from Fitch- burg with his newly-invented vehicle," and "drove down the Common at a good rate of speed until he collided with a tree and the machine was demolished." I did not see that machine or witness its exploits; but what I heard about them was that the machine ran into a tree and was broken; I did not understand that it was destroyed, or that the operator was not able to get out of town with it under its own power.
Some 20 or 25 years later than this experiment of Sawyer's I saw a horseless buggy gliding over the streets of Fitchburg, the invention or product of Irving W. Colburn, probably. It seemed to be a pretty neat affair, the principal objection to it being that it frightened horses,-the poor half-blinded animals not understanding how such a vehicle could be running around without the assistance of one of their kind.
It may be noted, as of possible interest to some of those who may peruse these pages many years hence, that steam was never found to be a very satisfactory power for road-driven vehicles, although there is a type of automobile propelled by steam power and using gasoline for fuel for generating steam. The direct gasoline engine has been generally used as a most convenient motor for automobiles for many years, the fuel being easily supplied and obtainable not only at numerous places in all cities and large towns, but also in small villages and at cross-roads and other points along all routes taken by automobilists. Electric power has been found to be a very satisfactory means of propulsion for auto- mobiles, and cars so driven appear to be more easily managed and run more quietly than those equipped with gasoline motors. Electricity is furnished for the motors through storage batteries carried on the cars, and the necessity for occasional changing or re-charging of these bat- teries restricts the use of electrically driven vehicles to localities and distances within which that matter can be properly accomplished.
The early settlers came to Royalston on horses' backs and with ox- carts. Visitors at the Centennial Celebration in 1865 came in easy-riding horse-drawn vehicles, and Sylvester Sawyer came in a steam-propelled auto-wagon. Many hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of people came to the Sesqui-Centennial Celebration in 1915 in swift and easy-gliding auto- mobiles, of which Sawyer's machine was a prototype. How will they come to the Bi-Centennial in 1965?
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THE BLACKSMITH SHOP.
Leonard Wheeler, the "village blacksmith," first operated the shop at the location indicated at 16W on the map of the Center Village. Not far from 1843, I think, he built a shop at 22N and the house at 18N, which was his home for the remainder of his life. I believe that he built the house at 21N. Mr. Wheeler was interested in the business of the car- riage manufactory, and probably the most of the iron work for vehicles constructed there was turned out at his shop. Several years after the carriage business had been discontinued he built a new shop at the loca- tion indicated by 24N on the map, a picture of which is given, from a stereoscopic view taken in 1873. The upper part of the Sawyer house appears in the background.
LEONARD WHEELER'S BLACKSMITH SHOP, 1873.
Warren Leonard Wheeler, youngest son of Leonard, born March 25, 1843, was his father's assistant before he enlisted in the civil war in 1861, and on his return in 1864 he continued with his father, and carried on the business for a number of years after the retirement of his father, and his death, July 14, 1889. Warren afterwards carried on a similar busi- ness in Athol and in Hudson for a few years, and about 1891 removed to Fitchburg, where he operated a shop until a short time before his death, Aug. 10, 1915. Some business was done in the old Wheeler shop by sev- eral different men at intervals, but it has been closed and the Center has not had the services of a blacksmith and wheelwright for several years. The building has been owned by Charles H. Brown and used for other purposes.
THE CARRIAGE MANUFACTORY.
From such information as I have gathered from various sources, I feel safe in saying that Ebenezer Cheney established the carriage man- ufactory at the location indicated at 26N on the map. He probably built the dam by which was held in a pond not only the water from the little brook on which, a little higher up, Sawyer built the dam, but also the water which Sawyer brought around from Little Pond, giving a fairly good supply for a small amount of business, under ordinary conditions. His water wheel was of a less ponderous type than Sawyer's.
Ebenezer Cheney was an important factor in the upbuilding of that part of the village, having built, besides his factory, at least two dwell- ing houses,- the one at 13N, which he sold to my father, Benjamin Bacheller Bartlett, in the spring of 1848; and the one at 14N, which he probably sold to Capt. William Chase, who owned and occupied it for
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many years. I think that the houses were built in the early forties, or perhaps around 1842. Leonard Wheeler built the house in which he lived at 18N in 1843, and the smaller one at 21N later, probably. Taking all matters into consideration we may assume that the carriage manu- factory was started early in the forties, or perhaps still earlier.
Ebenezer Cheney was the son of Elisha Cheney, who settled at the north part of the town, and kept a tavern and store there for several years. Ebenezer was born March 23, 1798. No marriage is recorded for him in the "Vital Records" copies; but two sons were born to him and a wife, Sarah R., in 1842 and 1844; Sarah R. died in 1846, aged 25 years, but she is designated as the wife of Ebenezer, Jr., of whom we have no pre- vious record of birth or marriage. Our Ebenezer, born in 1798, was old enough to have had a son Ebenezer, Jr., with plenty of time for him to have been the husband of Sarah R. and to have had the two sons by her, all in a perfectly natural, legal and legitimate way; that is, if Ebenezer became the father of an Ebenezer, Jr., in 1820, when he was 22 years of age, the son might have married Sarah R. in 1841, when he would have been 21 and she 20, and their sons have been born in 1842 and 1844, as
CARRIAGE MANUFACTORY
CARRIAGE MANUFACTORY AND PALMLEAF SHOP.
recorded. And it might have been this young Ebenezer, Jr., who built the houses and the factory, as, if born in 1820, he would have reached the age at which he could have legally transacted business before the building was begun. Just as easily, Ebenezer, plain, might have married Sarah R. in 1841, when he would have been 43 years of age and she 20, and thus have been the father of her two sons, rather than grandfather, as under the previous hypothesis. Bnt which of the two Ebenezers was concerned in the marriage intention recorded as of Ebenezer Cheney, Jr., and Jane Simonds, of Boston, Jan. 28, 1849?
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