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 7
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born Feb. 25, 1757, for some time in partnership in mercantile business with his brother Charles; 11th, Sarah, born Dec. 14, 1758, married Sept. 14, 1780, Capt. John Stanton, Jr., who resided on the south corner of Main and Foster streets, in the house afterwards owned and occupied successively by Thomas Stevens and John W. Stiles, which was removed to Mechanic street, in 1843, when the first Universalist Church was built on its site ; 12th, Mary, born Dec. 25, 1759, married Oct. 29, 1785, William Sever, Jr., (father of Mrs. Gov. Lincoln,) and resided in what had been previously known as the "King's Arms". tavern ; 13th, Benjamin, born in 1761, drowned Dec. 16, 1775, with his brother Francis, two years younger, while skating on Red Mills pond ; 15th, Lucretia, born June 9, 1765, married Oct. 24, 1786, Rev. Dr. Aaron Bancroft, of the Second Parish (1st Unitarian) Church ; 16th, Thomas, born Jan. 11, 1786, graduated at Harvard in 1787, married Sept. 25, 1802, Eliza Davis, widow of William Dennie of Boston, was a mer- chant, and died here May 13, 1804; 17th, Elizabeth, born Feb. 20, 1770, married Dec. 2, 1786, Ebenezer Putnam of St. John, N. B., son of Hon. James Putnam, refugee.
Capt. John Stanton, Jr., above mentioned, kept store in a small wooden building which stood just south of his residence afterwards owned and occupied by Stevens, Stiles, Butman, and others, and he also had a pottery on the east corner of Front and Church streets, which after Capt. Stanton's death in 1796, was carried on by Daniel Goulding. Capt. Stanton, (son of John and Joanna Stanton,) was born in Boston in 1755, and came here about 1776. He commanded the old Worcester Artillery in 1789. Capt. Stanton's daughter Sarah, born in 1786, married in 1806 Lieut. Joshua B. Blake of Boston, brother of the late Hon. Francis Blake of Worcester.
The last Judge John Chandler, his sons Rufus, Nathaniel, and William, his nephew, Dr. William Paine, and his brother- in-law, James Putnam, were among those proscribed and for- bidden to return here a second time on penalty of death, on account of their adherence to the mother country at the out- break of the Revolution. But William Chandler and Dr. William Paine subsequently obtained permission and did re-
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turn and reside here, after the war. Others left voluntarily on account of their open and acknowledged opposition to the patriot cause. The last Judge Chandler died in London, Sept. 26. 1800, after an exile of a quarter of century, and was buried in Islington.
The vast estates of the Judge, which were confiscated, were assessed by the authorities here after his departure, at a total valuation of £147,659 (or about $738,295,) so that he must have been by far the wealthiest person in this section. The property was particularized as follows :
Homestead estate where his wife (Mary) afterwards resided, until her decease, bounded on three sides by what are now Main, Front, and Mechanic streets, (on the south-east by the " ministerial land,") on which were a large dwelling-house, two barns, a corn barn, large store building, etc., valued in all £5,000 ; Farm called the Mill Farm and Mill Spot, comprising 260 acres, (at what is now Quinsigamond Village, afterwards purchased by Hon. Levi Lincoln, senior, and subsequently owned and occupied by Col. John W. Lincoln, the principal part of the same, with the exception of the Mill Spot, being now owned and occupied by John S. Ballard.) the original valued at £12,000 : Farm where his son Rufus Chandler lived a few years previous to his leaving in 1775, near the prison, (being the last Judge Chandler's father's old homestead of 500 acres in the vicinity and east of Lincoln Square,) valued at £17.000 : also other real estate, in various localities, amount- ing to £87,530, including land to the value of £5,154, in Connecticut, £3,607 in Hampshire County, and numerous other estates in Worcester and many other towns in this county.
The Judge's personal estate confiscated amounted to about £600, or $3000. Of his whole estate, the homestead and per- sonal property were set off to the wife, with other property to the amount of £25,500, or nearly $130,000, as her dow- er, so she was well provided for during the remaining years of her life. After her decease. her old homestead became a hotel, kept for many years by Maj. Ephraim Mower, whose sis- ter married her son Charles. ·
Yet in the face of all this immense pecuniary sacrifice, made from a chivalrous sense of loyalty to the Crown, this properly
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termed " honest refugec," after his arrival in London, exhib- ited to the British Commissioners appointed to adjust the com- pensation to those Americans who adhered to the royal cause, a schedule estimating the amount of his confiscated estates here at the very exceedingly moderate sum of £11,067, and the losses of income from various offices, the destruction of business, etc., at about £6,000 more. He was impartial as a judge and magistrate, " cheerful in temperament, engaging in manner, hospitable as a citizen, friendly and kind as a neigh- bor, industrious and enterprising as a merchant, and success- ful as a man of business."
The Judge's brother, the Sheriff, was one of those siding with the mother country at the outbreak of the difficulties which ended in the Revolution, but on being reprimanded, he reconsidered his action and was permitted to remain here, though he lost his office. He was a merchant until he became Sheriff in 1763. His son, Gardner Leonard Chandler, born in Nov. 29, 1768, graduated at Harvard College in 1787, studied law with the elder Gov. Levi Lincoln, and was afterwards a merchant in Boston.
A Convention of all the Committees of Correspondence in the county was held in Worcester on the 21st of September, 1774, in which, among other important action, it was voted " to take notice of Mr. Sheriff Chandler for carrying an address to Gov. Gage," congratulatory of the course of the latter, where- upon Sheriff Gardner Chandler presented himself before that remarkable body whose jurisdiction seemed supreme, and with some hesitation subscribed to the following declaration :- " Whereas, the Convention of Committees have expressed their uneasiness to the Sheriff of this county, now present before them, for presenting with others an address to Gov. Gage, he frankly declares it was precipitately done by him, and that he is sorry for it, and disclaims the intention to do anything against the minds of the inhabitants of this county, and had he known it would have give offence, he would not have pre- sented that address." This was an address signed by the Jus- tices of the Court of Common Pleas of this county, who pre- viously to the Revolution were all of the tory stamp, and Hon.
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Timothy Ruggles of Hardwick, Judge John Chandler, and Attorney General James Putnam of Worcester, Abel Willard of Lancaster, also a refugee, and Sheriff Gardner Chandler of Worcester, were appointed by the Court a committee to wait upon His Excellency Gov. Gage and present this address, which was delivered by the Sheriff in person.
Sheriff Gardner Chandler died in Worcester June 28, 1782, in his 59th year. His estate, appraised March 19, 1784, in- cluding the mansion house and thirty acres of land, where the late Judge Ira M. Barton lived, was valued at £1600, or about $8000. This is the estate before referred to, subsequently owned and occupied by the Messrs. Bush, Dea. Butman, and others. The statement on page 21, that Sheriff Chandler's es- tate was confiscated, was made from confounding his name with another Gardner Chandler, (son of the last Judge,) who mar- ried a daughter of the noted tory, Gen. Timothy Ruggles of Hardwick, and was among those proscribed and banished, in the legislative Act of the " State of Massachusetts Bay, in the year of our Lord 1778," entitled, " An Act to prevent the re- turn to this State of certain persons therein named, and others who have left this State, or either of the United States, and joined the enemies thereof: Whereas, John Chandler, Esquire, James Putnam, Esquire, William Paine, physician, William Chandler, gentleman, Nathaniel Chandler, gentleman, Gardner Chandler, merchant, of Worcester, in the county of Worces- ter ; John Murray, Esquire, of Rutland, in the County of Wor- cester, and many other persons who have left this State or some other of the United States of America, and joined the enemies thereof," etc., etc., "Be it therefore enacted by the Council and House of Representatives in General Court as- sembled, etc., that if any of the said persons or others of like mind and act, not mentioned, shall return to their native State, they shall be "transported back into some port or place within the dominions or possessions of the forces of the King of Great Britain," and if they should voluntarily return a second time they were to " suffer the pains of death without the benefit of clergy."
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Sheriff Gardner Chandler in command as major, marched Aug. 10, 1757, with Capt. John Curtis and a company of 54 men from Worcester, into the "extreme western frontier of the Province," there to await such orders as might be received from headquarters to check the advance of the French after the surrender of Fort McHenry. The men marched to Sheffield, 105 miles from Worcester, where intelligence was received from Gen. Webb that the enemy had remained contented with what they had already acquired, and our soldiers were disbanded and returned home.
In the family of the second Judge Chandler there had been a slave called "old Aunt Silvia," (afterwards in the family of his son, Sheriff Gardner Chandler, and his daughter, Mrs. Sarah Paine,) who lived to attain the greatest age of any per- son on record in Worcester, being over 107 years old at her decease in 1804.
Of the numerous sons of the last Judge Chandler, Gard- ner, who married Elizabeth Ruggles, was one of those proscrib- ed, but returned by permission after the war, resided a while in Hardwick, and Brattleboro, Vt., and died in Hinsdale, N. H., in 1811. Of their three children, Elizabeth Augusta married Dec. 14, 1794, the late Hon. Francis Blake, then of Rutland, father of the present Francis and H. G. O. Blake of Worcester.
Clark Chandler, the tory Town Clerk, left Worcester in June, 1775, reaching Boston by way of Newport, returned by way of Canada to Worcester in September, surrendered himself up to the authorites here, and was committed to prison on suspicion of having held intercourse with the enemy. On account of a dangerous sickness brought on by too close confinement, he was permitted, Dec. 15, by the Provincial Assembly, to reside at Lancaster, on his parole that he would not leave the limits of that town. He returned to Worcester after the war, and kept store in the old " Compound." He died June 1, 1804, aged 60. He was very odd and singular in his personal appearance, which often provoked jeers, but he repaid the au- thors of them with compound interest. He became at last nearly blind.
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During the hostile attitude of France in 1798, which required energetic preparations for defence, a company of sixty, rank and file, was organized in Worcester under Capt. Thomas Chandler, son of the last Judge, called the "Worcester Volun- teer Cadets," holding themselves ready to march on the re- ception of orders. They were stationed at Oxford during the following winter. This Capt. Chandler kept store in the old building previously owned and occupied by Jobn Nazro, corner of Main and Pleasant streets, and boarded at one time with John Farrar, corner of Main and Park streets, and his death was occasioned by injuries received by falling from the stoop of that house, (afterwards owned and occupied by Daniel Clapp and Judge Charles Allen.) on to which he had got in his sleep. At one time, while residing in the " green house " about a mile out on the Leicester road, (afterwards owned and occupied by Dea. David Richards and S. S. Gates,) Capt. Chandler gave a " Sillabub Party," long remembered by those who were present. The recipe for this beverage, then considered the nicest thing drinkable, was, " Put port wine and sugar into a pail and milk the cow directly into it."
Maj. Charles Chandler, who married Sarah (or Sally ) Mower, died April 9, 1798, aged 44, and his wife died Dec. 7, 1801, aged 30 ; and their only daughter, Sarah, born in 1796, who succeeded to the possession of her grandfather's estate, (after- wards the Jaques farm,) married in 1818, Col. Samuel Ward, grandson of the Col. Samuel Ward of Lancaster, who married her aunt Dorothy Chandler, daughter of the last Judge. Col. Samuel and Sarah (Chandler) Ward removed from Worcester to Boston in 1837, where he died March 1, 1842, and she still lives in Boston. Of their four children, Sarah, born May 5, 1817, married in 1840 H. G. O. Blake of Worcester. The latter's daughter, Sarah Chandler Blake, born March 22, 1841, married in 1866, Alonzo A. Hamilton, Jr., from Saco, Me., a merchant in Boston. Col. Ward's daughter Harriet, born in 1821, mar- ried her cousin, Charles Stanton Blake ; his daughter Francis, born in 1824, married Robert W. Lord ; and his son Charles, born in 1828, resides in Boston.
The brothers Samuel and Charles Chandler at one time man- ufactured pearl and pot ashes on the then estate of the latter,
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(the Jaques farm,) their works being partially burned July 4, 1791.
Dr. George Chandler of this city, (whose great-grandfather was brother of the first Judge John Chandler,) graduated at Union College, Schenectady, N. Y., received the degree of M. D., at Yale, commenced medical practice in Worcester in 1831, and March, 1833, began service as Assistant Superintend- ent of the State Lunatic Hospital of this city, then just opened, of which the late Dr. Samuel B. Woodward was the first Su- perintendent. Dr. Chandler continued his duties as Assistant Superintendent here until May 2, 1842, when he resigned to take the superintendence of the Asylum for the Insane at Con- cord, N. H., then just erected upon a plan submitted by him. After establishing that institution upon a self-sustaining basis, Dr. Chandler resigned his position there to assume the super- intendence of the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester, vacated by Dr. Woodward in July, 1846, which position he filled with great acceptance for ten years. Since retiring from official and professional duties, Dr. Chandler has several times visited the old world, and been engaged more or less in literary pur- suits. He is author of an elaborate work on the " History of the Chandler Family," most of the printed copies of which were unfortunately burned in the great Boston fire of 1872.
The second Judge Chandler's wife Hannah (Gardner) died Jan. 5, 1738, when she had her tenth (still-born) child. His last wife, Sarah, (Clark,) who was mother of Hon. Timo- thy Paine, survived her husband some sixteen years, the property set off to her from her husband's estate being valued at her decease at £25,500, (or $127,250,) including household property appraised at £612, (3,060.) By her will, dated July 31, 1778, she bequeathed four-fifths of her estate, in equal parts to her sons Timothy and Edward Paine, her daughter Sarah, (wife of Thomas Droune,) and her grand daughter Sarah, (wife of Ephraim Curtis); and the other fifth to her grand children, John Chandler, Jr., of Petersham, and Dolly (wife of Samuel Ward of Lancaster), children of her daughter, Dorothy (Chandler) Paine.
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The last wife (Mary Church,) of the last Judge John Chand- ler, died Sept. 18, 1783, eight years after her exiled husband left here, and seventeen years before his death in London.
The last Judge's son John, who married Lydia Ward and settled in Petersham, had four children : John, who lived and died in Petersham, without issue; Nathaniel, who lived in Lan- caster ; and Clark and Lydia, who resided elsewhere. There were thus in all, six generations of John Chandlers in succes- sion, from the first, Dea. John of Roxbury and Woodstock, to the last one in Petersham. The latter was an exceedingly pe- culiar man, of remarkable natural ability, but of insane mind during his later years. Many of his extravagant expressions and doings are well remembered by many of our older citizens, with whom he came in contact in various ways. He graduated at Harvard University in the same class with John Quincy Adams, afterwards President of the United States, and ahead of the latter in his class, and had he made the best use of his talents, might have shone as brilliantly as his illustrious class- mate on the pages of American history. This grandson of the last Judge Chandler died Sept. 21, 1846, in his 80th year. He was own cousin of Mrs. Gov. Lincoln, Mrs. Gov. Davis, and the Hon. George Bancroft. His singular (and too often irrey- erent) eccentricities were in marked contrast with the judicial dignity of his distinguished ancestors of the same name. His wife was Elizabeth Greene, whose sister, Dolly Greene, was wife of his brother Nathaniel.
Gen. Samuel McClellan, born in Worcester, Jan. 4, 1730, who died in Woodstock, Ct., Sept. 17, 1807, was probably son of Wil- liam MeClellan, the constable in Worcester, by his wife Jen- nie, and grandson of James McClellan, the Scotch-Irish emi- grant, who was on the first board of Worcester town officers. Samuel MeClellan settled at Woodstock, was a merchant there, and married first, Jemima Chandler, born Nov. 16, 1757, daughter of Capt. William and Jemima (Bradbury) Chandler, and granddaughter of the first Judge Chandler ; married,. second, March 5, 1766, Rachel Able ; and married, third, July 3, 1798, Eunice Follansbee of Worcester. In a graveyard in Putney, Vt., is inscribed on a tombstone, "Eunice, wife of Gen.
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Samuel Mcclellan, died Nov. 7, 1839, a. 89." Immediately on the news of Lexington fight, April 19, 1775, reaching Wood- stock, Samuel McClellan, then Captain, marched his company of 48 mounted men, and got as far as Oxford on his way to the scene of conflict, when news reached him that the British foe had retired to the confines of Boston. He was great-grand- father of Gen. Geo. B. McClellan.
THE PAINE FAMILY.
Timothy Paine was one of the most distinguished and influ- ential men in Worcester county during the last quarter of a century preceding the Revolution. He was the youngest of seven children of Hon. Nathaniel Paine of Bristol, R. I., and great-great-grandson of Stephen Paine, the founder of the stock in this country, who came from Great Ellington, Norfolk Co., England, and settled in Rehoboth, Mass. This Stephen had a son Stephen, who was the father of Nathaniel, also of Rehoboth, who settled in Bristol, R. I., and filled important civil offices there. This second Nathaniel, (father of Timo- thy,) came to Worcester in 1738, with his daughter, Dorothy, when Timothy was eight years old. Here Dorothy became the wife of the last Judge John Chandler, and Timothy, the next year after his graduation at Harvard College in 1748, married Sarah Chandler, the Judge's sister. The family first located on the west side of Lincoln street, in the old house still standing behind two huge elm trees just north of the site of the old " Hancock Arms" tavern. The father died in 1740, and Timothy continued to reside in the old homestead until he built, just before the revolution, the elegant mansion farther up on the same street which has since been in possession of the family for five generations.
Besides holding numerous and important town offices, for a long time, including that of Selectman for nearly 20 years, Timothy Paine was Clerk of the County Courts from 1751 to 1775, Register of Deeds from 1761 to 1775, Register of Probate from 1757 to 1767, and Executive Councillor from 1766 to 1773. He also represented the town seven years in the General Court, two of those years subsequent to the Revo-
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lution. He died July 17, 1793, aged 63, and his wife, Sarah, died in 1811, aged 84. Mrs. Paine, or Madame Paine, as she was styled by her cotemporaries, was a woman of uncommon energy and acuteness of mind, and greatly aided and encour- aged her husband . in his royalist views. No indignity offered to the King, in her presence, could go unrevenged. Her wit proved a match on one occasion, for even President" John Adams, when that distinguished advocate of the popular cause, before matters had reached their culminating crisis, was on a visit to his old friends and former pupils here. Mr. Adams was invited to dine with the Court and Bar, at the house of Hon. Timothy Paine, then holding several important county offices connected with the courts. When the wine was circulated round the table, Mr. Paine gave as a toast, " The King." Some of the Whigs were about to refuse to drink it, when Mr. Adams whispered to them to comply, saying, " We shall have an oppor- tunity to return the compliment." At length, when he was desired to give a toast, he gave, " The Devil." As the host was about to resent the supposed indignity, his wife calmed him, and turned the laugh upon Mr. Adams by immediately exclain- ing, " My dear, as the gentleman has been so kind as to drink to our king, let us by no means refuse to drink to his."
Having been a member of the Executive Council of the Pro- vince seven years from 1766, Mr. Paine was appointed by the royal Gov. Gage, in 1774, one of His Majesty's Mandamus Councillors, (with Col. John Murray of Rutland and Gen. Tim- othy Ruggles of Hardwick,) a position which he was forced to decline, so universal was the excitement raised among the mass of the people of the county against any compliance with the requisitions or demands of the mother country. The news of his appointment to and acceptance of that obnoxious trust having been widely circulated throughout the neighboring towns by their respective Committees of Correspondence, who summoned the friends of liberty to appear at Worcester on the 22d of August, 1774, upon a brief notice given from one town to another only the day previous, upwards of three thousand men in companies from the different towns headed by their own officers, marched into this town in military order, but without
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arms, before 7 o'clock in the morning of that day, and formed in lines upon the Common. Here, a committee of two or three from each company was chosen to wait upon Hon. Timothy Paine and demand a resignation of his office as Councillor, which they did by going to his house, where he agreed to re- sign that office, and in their presence signed an acknowledg- ment prepared by them, expressing his sense of obligation to his fellow citizens of the County for their past favors towards him, his reluctance to oppose their wishes, his sorrow for tak- ing the oath of acceptance of the new office, and a solemn promise that he would never exercise its powers. The Com- mittee then returned to make their report to their constituents upon the Common, when they found large numbers of them lining Main Street all the way from the meeting-house to the Court-house. The acknowledgment was considered satisfac- tory, but a further confirmation was required in presence of the whole body, upon the Common, and a sub-committee was commissioned to request Mr. Paine's attendance there, a re- quest which it was impossible for him to decline, and he ac- companied the gentlemen who delivered the message to the Common, where the people were found drawn up in two bodies ready to receive them, forming a lane between the two divisions through which the committee and Mr. Paine passed, and read divers times as they passed along, the said acknowledgment. Several other noted sympathisers with the king, found mixing in the crowd, were escorted through the ranks in the same way, halting at every few paces to listen to the reading of their sev- cral confessions of political transgression, which had been pre- pared for them to sign by the Committeee of Correspondence.
Sabine's "History of American Loyalists," in speaking of Mr. Paine in connection with this affair, states that "at first, Mr. Dennie, one of the Committee, read his resignation in his behalf. It was then insisted that he should read it himself, and with his hat off. Mr. Paine hesitated, and demanded the pro- tection of the Committee ; finally he complied, and was allowed to go to his dwelling. Tradition declares, that in the excite- ment attendant on the scene, Mr. Paine's wig was either knock- ed or fell off. Be this as it may, from that day he abjured
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wigs, as much as he had done whigs, and never wore one again The now dishonored wig in question, he gave to one of his ne gro slaves, named ' Worcester.' In the carlier days of the Revolution, some American soldiers quartered at his house repaid his perhaps too evidently unwilling hospitality, and sig- nified the intensity of their unequivocal feelings towards him, by cutting the throat of his fall-length portrait, which hung in his parlor." Mr. Paine at this time had not removed into his ele . gant new dwelling, (styled by his descendants " The Oaks,") it not having been entirely completed until after the Revolu- tion, although its erection was begun before these troubles came on.
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