USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester > Reminiscences of Worcester from the earliest period, historical and genealogical with notices of early settlers and prominent citizens, and descriptions of old landmarks and ancient dwellings, accompanied by a map and numerous illustrations > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37
The report of this committee was accepted by the General Court, and its recommendations adopted, and Captains Daniel Gookin of Cambridge, Daniel Henchman of Boston, and Thomas Prentice of Woburn, and Lieut. Richard Beers of Watertown, were appointed a committee to carry them into ex- ecution, and have the charge of the settlement till it should become of sufficient growth to manage its own concerns .- Their first meeting was held in Cambridge, July 6, 1669, when a plan for the projected plantation was formed, contemplating the division of 2250 acres of its central portion into 25 acre lots, with reservations of land for the meeting-house, parson- age, school-house, common, &c.
FIRST ATTEMPTED SETTLEMENT.
In those early times, movements were necessarily slow. The most important step, after securing the government title, before venturing to build or plant, was the extinguishment of the Indian claim to the territory, which was done by a decd
13
Reminiscences of Worcester.
from Sagamores John of Pakachoag and Solomon of Tetaeset, dated July 13, 1674, the consideration for this whole tract eight miles square, comprising two and one-half towns, being the meagre sum of " twelve pounds lawful money." Previous to this year, however, one person, Ephraim Curtis from Sud- bury, had settled upon his claim, his lot or rather series of lots comprising land still in possession of his descendants, on Lin- coln street, between the City Farm and Adams Square, and he may thus be called the first actual white settler in Worcester.
During the year 1674, quite a number of others began to build upon and cultivate land taken up by them in different sections of the place, and during the following year, 1675, the work of settlement was prosecuted with vigor. Among those taking up lots assigned them, were Captains Daniel Gookin of Cambridge, Daniel Henchman of Boston, Thomas Prentice of Woburn, and Lieut. Richard Beers of Watertown, of the com- mittee chosen by the General Court in 1668 to have charge of the settlement until some form of town organization should be adopted.
Everything was going forward prosperously, the inhabitants "building after the manner of a town," when all their operations were brought to a lamentable close by the raging of King Phillip's war. Mendon, the nearest settlement south, was burned July 14, 1675 ; Brookfield, the nearest at the west, was burned Aug. 4; Lancaster, the nearest at the north, was at- tacked Aug. 22, when eight persons were killed ; and Worces- ter was so surrounded and attacked by the savages as to cause a desertion of the settlement. All the buildings erected after so much labor by those early settlers in this then wilderness were burned by the Indians, Dec. 2, 1675. Capt. (afterwards General) Henchman was commander-in-chief of the militia of the settlement in the fight with the Indians. Lieut. Richard Beers was killed near Northfield in September of that year, while battling with the savages. Lieut. Phinchas Upham, an- other of the early settlers, received a mortal wound in the attack on Narraganset fort, in December of that year.
The settlement here remained in a deserted condition for several years after this destruction, but the place subsequently
14
Reminiscences of Worcester.
rose, phoenix-like, from not only this, but a second destruction, many years later, to what we now behold it after two centuries of progress from beginnings so energetic and determined.
THE SECOND ATTEMPTED SETTLEMENT.
The second attempt at settlement was begun in 1684, the rights of those who had procured title to the soil having in the meantime been confirmed to them by the General Court, with inducements to the first planters to resettle, and encouragement to others to come. A vacancy on the committee having charge of the settlement, occasioned by the death of Lient. Richard Beers of Watertown, killed by the Indians, was supplied, on ap- plication of the survivors, by the appointment of Capt. John Wing of Boston.
A general resurvey of the 43,000 acres in this eight miles square tract was made in 1683, and the plan allowed and con- firmed by the General Court : and on petition of the commit. tee, Captains Gookin, Henchman, Prentice, and Wing, Septem- ber 10, 1684, the plantation was named WORCESTER, (it having been before known by its Indian name, Quinsigamond, from the lake bounding it on the east, where the natives were accus- tomed to hunt and fish.)
A lot of 100 acres was laid out for Capt. Daniel Gookin on the east side of Pakachoag Hill, overlooking what is now Quin- sigamond Village, and also another lot of 80 acres on Raccoon Plain, west of the latter, between South Worcester and New Worcester.
A tract of 80 aeres was assigned to Capt John Wing, who built the first saw mill on the plantation, on the west side of Mill Brook a short distance north of Lincoln Square, near the ancient citadel or fortified garrison of the town, erected at this time. He afterwards added a corn mill.
The first corn mill in the place, was built by Elijah Chase, whose location was on the stream at Quinsigamond Village, near the present Iron Works.
Capt. Henchman's location was near Capt. Wing's, just north of Lincoln Square, and included the site of the present Worcester & Nashua Railroad freight house and Henchman street, his son, Nathaniel, living there after him.
15
Reminiscences of Worcester.
Digory Sergeant settled on Sagatabscot Hill, Thomas Brown near Adams Square, and others followed from year to year, but no definite account is now attainable of the extent of this sec- ond fruitless attempt at permanent settlement.
Capt. Henchman dying in 1686, and Capt. Gookin in 1687, both then ranking as Generals, their places on the committee having in charge the settlement were suppled by the appoint- ment of Capt Joseph Lynde and Dea. John Haynes of Sudbury, and Col. Adam Winthrop of Boston, a brother or near relative of Gov. John Winthrop.
Although the power of the savages had been temporarily crushed, predatory bands of Indians still continued to haunt the place, but the record of what happened here from 1686 to 1713, is very meagre and indefinite, except to show that the Indians caused a second desertion of the place. Their most serious irruption occurred during the raging of Queen Anne's war, beginning in the year 1702, among the victims being the family of Digory Sergeant, who was killed while valiantly de- fending his garrison house on Sagatabscot Hill, and his wife and five children were taken prisoners. Mrs. Sergeant was ruthlessly tomahawked while ascending Tatnuck Hill, on the way north, because of her inability to keep up with the others in walking, she being in ill-health.
The fate of Digory Sergeant, (then spelled Serjent,) was an exceedingly melancholy one. He had the extreme boldness to remain alone with his family in his elevated fortified garrison house, long after all the others then in the place had fled before the perils of the savage foe, during the summer and autumn of 1702, resisting all the importunities of the committee having the settlement in charge to seck safety by desertion or flight. During the following winter, as an armed force of twelve men under Capt. Thomas Howe of Marlborough, visited the place in pursuit of a party of Indians who had just committed renew- ed depredations there, on reaching the house of Sergeant they " found the door broken down, the owner stretched in blood on the floor, and the dwelling desolate." The foot-prints made by the murderous Indians in the snow indicated the course of their flight, in a northwesterly direction, and the trail was followed
16
Reminiscences of Worcester.
for some distance by the pursuing party, after which they re- turned and " buried Sergeant at the foot of an oak." Precise- ly where this spot is, is a matter of interesting speculation and conjecture. It was afterwards found that Sergeant's children were taken to Canada, and remained there a number of years. The oldest, Martha, was the first one redeemed; she subsequent- ly married Daniel Shattuck at Marlborough, Sept. 6, 1719, and returned to dwell again on the spot so full of sad reminiscences to her family, she having inherited, by the will of her father, made in 1696, his estate comprising the eighty acre lot on which he settled. She gave the following particulars of the awful and double catastrophe to her father and mother, of which she was a witness :
" When the Indians surrounded her father's house, he seized his gun to defend himself and family. He was fired upon and fell ; the Indians rushed in and dispatched him and tore the scalp from his head. The Indians seized the mother and her children-Martha, John, Daniel, Thomas and Mary-and began a rapid retreat. The wife and mother, fainting with grief and fear, impeded their flight, and while ascending the hills of Tatnuck, in the northwesterly part of Worcester, a chief step- ped out of the file, and looking around as if for game, excited no alarm in his sinking captive ; when she had passed by, one blow of his tomahawk relieved the savages from the obstruction to their march."
Of the other children, Daniel and Mary chose to remain with the Indians and adopted their habits ; Thomas was in Boston early as 1815 ; and John appears to have returned and been on the old homestead here in 1721 and in 1723, he and his broth- er-in-law, Daniel Shattuck, being soldiers in Kellogg's company from Worcester to fight the Indians.
Daniel and Martha (Sergeant) Shattuck resided afterwards at Westborough, where they had five children, of whom Sarah, born about 1724, married Elijah Rice in 1744, whose grand- father Thomas, was brother of Jonas and Gershom Rice, first permanent settlers in Worcester. Sarah (Shattuck ) Rice learned the sufferings of her grandparents and their children from her mother, who told her that " the Indians required her to carry
17
Reminiscences of Worcester.
her infant sister Mary for two days on their march, when, she becoming troublesome, they took her from her arms and with- drew her from sight, and she never saw her again ; and that while in Canada, where she was detained, seven years, she was compelled to see many prisoners burned at the stake, the Indi- ans dancing around and making the forests ring with their war whoop, and telling her that on such a night they should have another dance when she would be the victim !" ELIJAH SARAH (SHATTUCK ) RICE, Of the five children of Daniel and Martha (Sergeant ) Shat-" tuek, born at Westborough, Daniel, jr., born in 1745, married Sarah Childs ; Martha, born in 1747, married Solomon Childs ; Elijah, born in 1750, married Peggy Patterson ; Sarah, born in 1760, married Capt. B. Whitcomb ; and their descendants are numerous, located principally in Henniker, N. H., where the. above all settled after their marriage. Solomon Childs and his sister Sarah were from Grafton.
This unfortunate Digory Sergeant, originally from Malden, who was one of those here in 1685 to aid in this second attempt at settlement in Worcester, was undoubtedly of the same fam- ily with Jonathan, Nathan, Joseph and Thomas Sargent, from Malden, who were among the earliest settlers in Leicester, and ancestors of the Sargents in this county. The slight change in name (from Serjent to Sargeant) is no more than often occurs in the same family in the course of two hundred years.
3
CHAPTER II.
Third and permanent settlement-General Court sends a Committee to adjust claims of former settlers, and make new allotments-some account of the prominent settlers, their residences and location-First death-First bridge-Roads and paths.
THE THIRD AND PERMANENT SETTLEMENT IN 1713.
In the spring of 1713, the proprietors, encouraged by favor- able prospects, and undismayed by former failures, made a third attempt to settle the town. Oct. 13th of this year, Col. Adam Winthrop, Jonas Rice, and Gershom Rice of Marl- borough, who had previously been here, addressed the General Court in behalf of themselves and others interested, represent- ing their desire to " endeavor and enter upon a new settlement of the place from which they had been driven by the war," and praying " for the countenance and encouragement of the Court in their undertaking," for protective measures in case of a new rupture with the Indians, and asking for a proper com- mittee to direct matters in the plantation " till they come to a full settlement." In response to this petition, Col. Adam Win- throp, Col. Wm. Taylor of Malden, Col. Wm. Dudley of Bos- ton, and Capt. Thomas Howe of Marlborough, were appointed the committee, who, after attending to the several duties thus assigned them, presented a detailed report of their doings in adjusting the claims of former settlers, &c., stating that they had allowed thirty-one rights of former settlers and admitted twenty-eight persons more to take lands on condition of paying twelve pence per acre, this being the amount per acre paid by the original settlers, and 40 acres were to be as- signed to each member of the committee, as compensation for their services. This report was accepted by the General Court and received the approval of Gov. Joseph Dudley, June 14, 1714.
19
Reminiscences of Worcester.
Jonas Rice, who had been a planter during the second settle- ment, returned Oct. 21, 1713, with his family, being the first to come back under the new order of things, and from this day is dated the third and permanent settlement of the town. He located on Sagatabscot Hill, latterly called Union Hill, his farm including some of the lands formerly cultivated by the unfor- tunate Digory Sergeant. The house of this first permanent settler in Worcester stood on Heywood street, nearly opposite the corner of Winthrop and Granite streets, and a little south- cast of the present residence of George Crompton. The old homestead remained for five generations in the family, the or- iginal house being torn down about fifty years ago, by Jonas Rice's great-great-grandson, Sewall Rice, who then erected upon its site the present house now owned and occupied by Edward L. Ward. Jonas Rice's family were the solitary inhabitants of this then wilderness of woods and swamps for fifteen or twenty miles around, from 1713 till the spring of 1715, when his brother Gershom Rice, the second permanent settler here, came to join him. Gershom Rice located two and a half miles southwest of his brother, on Pakachoag Hill, in the north part of Auburn, where his great-great-grandson, Ezra Rice, still resides on a portion of the old homestead estate.
The third one to come was Nathaniel Moore of Sudbury, and Daniel Heywood soon followed. These two were the first dea- cons of the Old South Church from its foundation to their decease, some fifty years, and all four were prominent citizens of the place, and were upon its earliest boards of town officers for many years, and filled other prominent positions. Their descendants are numerous among us,
Other settlers soon followed. One of the first things done was the erection of a garrison house of logs, on the west side of what has since been Main street, on the rising ground near Chatham street. Another was built by Daniel Heywood, near the head of what is now Exchange street, where he had a tav- ern. Besides these, there were others, including the old fort north of Lincoln Square, near the saw and corn mills built by Capt. John Wing, afterwards owned by Thomas Palmer and Cornelius Waldo, father of the senior Daniel Waldo.
20
Reminiscences of Worcester.
A block garrison honse and fort was also built northeast of Adams Square, where a long iron cannon was mounted to give alarm in case of danger from the Indians. During the French war this gun was removed to the green near the meetinghouse. On the commencement of the Revolution, it was posted west of the Court House. On the receipt of the news of the march of the British to Lexington, April 19, 1795, its peals aroused the people to arms.
Joshua Rice, a cousin of Jonas and Gershom, built a garri- son house near the upper end of what is called the "Joe Bill road," then a portion of the old traveled highway from Boston through Marlborough, Worcester, Leicester, and Brookfield, to Springfield, coming hither by the old Shrewsbury road from the north end of Long Pond, joining the road from Lancaster at Adams Square and crossing Mill Brook by the old fort and mills just above Lincoln Square to the "Joe Bill road," from which a pathway extended through the valley of Beaver Brook by a circuituous route to New Worcester. Joshua Rice rc- mained here but a few years, returning back to Marlborough soon after 1722, where he died in 1734, aged 73. Some vesti- ges of the old cellar hole of his residence are still visible.
Capt. Moses Rice from Sudbury, whose father was a cousin- of Joshua and Jonas, removed to Worcester about the year 1719, and built a tavern on the site of the late "United States Hotel," on which spot a public house continued to be kept by different parties, in three different structures until 1854, with the exception of the period between 1742 and the Revolution, when Judge John Chandler resided there. Capt. Rice was commander of a cavalry company, and engaged in numerous battles with the Indians, who continued to haunt the early set- tlements in Worcester, Leicester, Rutland, &c., for many years. He removed to Rutland about the year 1742, where he was killed by the Indians in 1755, aged 60. On the site of Major Rice's hotel was the residence of the last Judge John Chand- ler, whose mansion was afterwards owned and occupied by a family connection of the Judge, Major Ephraim Mower, and his nephew, the late Capt. Ephraim Mower, as a hotel, under the name of the " Sun Tavern," with a swinging sign in front,
21
Reminiscences of Worcester.
on which were represented the setting sun and a dying oak .- The old house is still standing on Mechanic-st., opposite Spring st. The late William Hovey, who purchased the estate in 1818, built upon the old site the structure long known as the "United States Hotel," afterwards owned and occupied successively by James Worthington and William C. Clark, and continued as a hotel until Mr. Clark built thereon his present block in 1854.
Obadiah Ward from Marlborough, (whose brother William Ward was grandfather of Major General Artemas Ward of rev- olutionary fame,) located on Green street and built a saw mill, on the site of the Crompton Loom Works, to the possession of which his son Richard succeeded on the death of his father in 1717. The well-remembered "Old Red Mills," torn down twenty years ago when Mr. Crompton built there, long occupied this site.
Major Daniel Ward, (son of the above named Obadialı,) who came here with his father and brother from Marlborough, located on the west side of Main street, opposite the Common, erecting his house a little northerly of the site of the late Judge Barton's residence. He was grandfather of the late Artemas Ward, Register of Deeds from 1821 to 1826, and great-grandfather of the present Daniel Ward. His estate comprised about thirty acres of land extending west and south from Main and Pleasant, nearly as far as Austin and Newbury streets. After occupying it about thirty years, Major Ward in 1750, sold the estate to Sheriff Gardner Chandler, (brother of the last Judge John Chandler,) who subsequently erected thereon the ancient mansion house torn down when Taylor's block was built in 1870.
Sheriff Chandler owned and occupied the estate until the outbreak of the Revolution, in 1775, when he was obliged to leave the country with his brother tories. His confiscated homestead was subsequently owned and occupied by John Bush and his sons Jonas and Richard P. Bush, who added to the structure its third story, and in 1818 sold the whole thirty acre tract to the late Benjamin Butman for $9000. This was quite an advance in price over the £326 paid by Major Ward to Sher-
22
Reminiscences of Worcester.
iff Chandler sixty-eight years previous, for the same estate, but immensely out of proportion to the millions the same land would now be valued at, exclusive of the numerous and costly business blocks and dwellings standing thereon.
The late sheriff, Calvin Willard, in 1825, purchased of Mr. Butman the old Chandler mansion with an acre of land around it, and resided there till 1834, when he sold the property to the late Judge Barton. The old barn attached to the estate, like the mansion, a venerable relic of a century and a quar- ter ago, is still standing on its original site.
Aaron Adams, (who with Jacob Holmes and Daniel Ward performed the duties of " hog-reef" with unquestioned fidelity during the first year of the town's municipal existence,) lo- cated on Plantation street, his dwelling being the ancient farm house still standing on its original site near the new State Hospital barns, formerly owned and occupied by Charles Bowen, the venerable structure bearing evidence of its extreme age. This Adams was a relative of Samuel Adams.
Of others beside those mentioned above, who were here pre- vious to 1722, Benjamin Crosbec and Isaac. Miller located on opposite sides of the road near the present City Farm build- ing ; James Miller and James Knapp located near the upper end of Plantation street ; Ichabod and Thomas Brown and Henry Lee near Adams Square ; and John Curtis, son of the original Ephraim Curtis, upon land of his father, on Lincoln street, still in possession of his descendants, where Tyler P. Curtis, great-grandson of John Curtis, now lives. Colonel Stephen Minot's location was a little west of the latter, as was also that of Thomas Haggit, father of the first white female born in the settlement. The Grays and Knights locat- ed north-west of Curtis and Haggit. James Rice, a broth- er of Jonas and Gershom, settled in the south-east part of the town, as did also James Holden ; and Zephaniah Rice, son of Joshua, located south of his father, in the valley be- tween him and New Worcester. John Hubbard and the first Palmer Goulding lived in the north precinct, (afterwards Hol- den.)
Dec. 15, 1717, occurred the first death after the beginning of the permanent settlement, that of Rachel, daughter of
23
Reminiscences of Worcester.
John Kelogth, sometimes spelled Kellougth, probably after- wards Kellogg.
Before Worcester was settled, the valley of Mill Brook, for some distance above a dam which had been constructed by the beavers where the Front street bridge now is, was more or less flowed with water during the wet season. At this fording place a bridge of logs was constructed by the first settlers.
The road now called Plantation street, was opened previous to 1722, from the north end of Long Pond southerly by the houses of James Taylor, Moses and Jacob Leonard, Aaron Adams, Nathaniel Moore, and James Rice, to the Hassana- misco (Grafton) road and the settlement of Jonas Rice on Sagatabscot Hill. This and the "Joe Bill road," and a path which led from the garrison house of Joshua Rice near the end of the latter to New Worcester, forming a connection with the old roads from Marlborough and Lancaster at Adams Square, were the two first great highways of the town. What is now Main street at first probably went no farther south than the Common, but the direct route to New Worcester was soon opened to the settlements in that direction .*
A path led across the Common, from the old meeting-house down the lower end of what is now Front street, to the residence of Jacob Holmes which stood on the site of the present Union Depot, and was probably soon afterwards ex-
* The first settlers from Boston to the Connecticut Valley, where Springfield and Hartford were founded as early a 1635, and Northampton in 1654, passed south of Worcester, by the Nipmuck road, through Grafton. Not long before 1674, " the country road," so called, was laid out, which led more directly from Marlborough to Springfield through Worcester and Leicester by the trading- post at Broofield, which began to be settled soon after 1660. Some authorities affirm that the route was as above described, over the "Joe Bill road," but others contend that it was through Main Street to New Worcester. There is no doubt that the direct. route through Main Street was adopted very soon after the permanent settlement of the town, from the fact that the Common and first meeting-house, the two first taverns, and two important garrison houses or forts were so near each other on the line of this direct route. The fact that the first temporary log structure used for a meeting-house stood near the junction of Park and Green streets, and that Obadiah Ward, one of the first to build, erected his residence and mills near the lower end of Green street, previous to 1717, indicates that travel at a very early date turned down that way.
24
Reminiscences of Worcester.
tended south easterly so as to connect with Plantation street and the old Grafton road. Another path also led across the Common towards Green street, where one of the earliest settlements was made, and it was probably soon extended up the hill beyond, over what are now Vernon and Winthrop streets, to the settlement of Jonas Rice, where connection was made with the old road to Grafton and Sutton.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.