USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Kingston > Report of the proceedings and exercises at the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Kingston, Mass. : June 27, 1876 > Part 6
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But I cannot forget that to a Kingston man belongs the honer of having received the first naval commission in the war of our independence and that the vessel in which he sailed and fought was the first vessel placed in commission by the Provincial Congress and was built on the banks and launched into the waters of your river. I hold in my band the sword of that gal- lant hero, Simeon Sampson, the sword which he wore in one of the most bloody naval battles of the war, and which his captor,
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Capt. Dawson returned to him in recognition of his heroism and courage.
Nor must I fail to pay due respect to the memory of him to whom no more than justice has been done to-day, one of those immortal men with whom Washington " went shoulder to shoul- der into the Revolution, and on whom his great arm leaned for support." A physician of education and repute, a commander of provincial troops under Gen. John Winslow in the war of 1756, a delegate to the convention of Plymouth County in 1774, a member of the Provincial Congress in that and the following year, lieutenant-general in the provincial army, and brigadier- general in the continental army, Gen. John Thomas was selected to command the expedition against Canada in 1776, in which he lost his life. To have produced such a man, active yet judicious, resolute yet prudent, fearless yet sagacious, high- bred yet beyond ordinary measure kind to his men and thoughtful of their comfort and health, trusted and beloved by Washington and pronounced by the inexorable pen of Ban- croft to have been the best general officer in the colony, Kings- ton, on this her day of jubilee, may well be proud.
Nor must I hesitate to correct the modest claim of your historian, that Kingston furnished sixty-one men for the war of the Revolution. I have brought from my library a contempora- neous official record of the men raised by the various towns in Plymouth County during that memorable struggle, and I find in the manuscript which I hold in my hand the names of one hundred men whose enlistments attest your active patriotism. I also hold in my hand the original census of Plymouth county taken soon after the war, containing the names of heads of fam- ilies and the number in each family, and showing the popula- tion of Kingston to have been nine hundred and ninety-nine. Thus the record shows that from ien to twelve per cent of the
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whole population and nearly one half of the adult male citizens of the town took active part in the service of their country. If there are other towns in the commonwealth which can show a better revolutionary record, I challenge them here and now to produce it.
Of the part which Kingston performed in the recent war of the Rebellion, I do not propose to speak. I assure you, how- ever, I know it well, for no one had a better opportunity than myself of observing the patriotic liberality which characterized its citizens and the eminent ability with which its municipal affairs were conducted in meeting with full measure the require- ments of the war.
In thus alluding, sir, to the pages in the history of your town on which the record of its patriotic deeds may be found, and which I trust are closed forever, let me in closing express the hope that hereafter neither wars nor rumors of wars may dis- turb your people, but that for all coming time, peace, prosper- ity, and happiness may reign within your borders.
5. The Legends of Kingston.
SPEECH OF HON. JOSEPH R. CHANDLER.
Mr. President, - The gentleman who preceded me enriched his reminiscences of early years in Kingston with the pleasing fact that in his school-boy days he had a part in certain reci- tations and declamations, then not unusual in your public schools. I have a pleasing recollection of a similar occurrence, a recitation which, as it occurred nearly fourscore years ago, may fairly be set down as my first exhibition of oratory, and as this will probably be my last effort, I might to-day make a sort of da capo close, and say, as I then said,
" You'd scarce expect one of my age To speak in publie on the stage."
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But, sir, I am called up to respond to a sentiment, "The Legends of Kingston." Perhaps other towns in the Old Col- ony had their legends, and only lacked a historian to give them "form and presence." The descendants of those who yield belief or consent to the narratives of their seniors or the embellishments and additions of their cotemporaries may have forgotten in the tumult of social antagonism for wealth or place, a part or the whole of what had influenced their childhood. But I can bear witness to the fact that in this town almost every rock that guards your bay was deemed at times the residence or resort of the unearthly and the evil ; and that the lower, damp portions of land, which then were made dark by exuberant shrubbery, were sacred to spirits that held their ghostly Sabbaths in the shade.
In darkness or in solitude men of stern mould passed through these scenes, consecrated with what you call super- stition, in shrinking dread of
"Forms unseen and mightier far than they,"
and occasionally they did homage to the great unseen by acknowledging their existence, which they would rather deny in broad daylight or in a crowd. If it be true that these superstitions have given way to the teachings of reason, and that men, women, and children no longer with awe listen to the stories of what was once a social and practical belief, then, without condemning the past, we may reckon this decay of faith or fear among the changes which are so obvious in Kingston, and to which I shall briefly allude. But before leaving the subject which is the keynote that your committee has sounded, let me say that a belief in the unearthly and of their interference in the affairs of life and in the direction of human beings distinguished all Massachusetts, and cer-
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tainly it, had its mildest form in Kingston where the traditions of witchcraft are not found; though I must confess that I recall the apparition of some beings, whose appearance was so influential that I am not astonished that even in this day, when we ridicule or lament the imputed power of old women witches, we are bound to confess that the spirit has descended to the young, and the charms of cultivated talent and beauty may induce and warrant the admission that witches have not failed from the land.
If the toast by which I am called up had reference to certain literary efforts of my own in which the peculiarities of belief of our native town were the staple of what was written, I can only say that they were the result of carly impressions, and, strange to add, they were imparted by an anxious, pious, widowed mother, who. having nothing of worldly wealth with which to endow her eccentric son, was led perhaps by Prov- idenee to bestow in her maternal solicitude a love of the mar- vellous, and to cultivate a habit of fanciful thought, for with the exception of that bestowal,
" When I arrived at man's estate ' Twas all the estate I had."
'But wealth would probably have fled or been lost in specula- . tion. The want of that wealth led to constant drafts upon the maternal bestowal, and though you may have profited little by my records of the " Legends of Kingston," yet they became to me the means of some little distinction, and I owe the pecuniary comforts of old age less to the commercial and polit- ical stages through which I have passed than to the uses which I made of the legendary lore with which my mother beguiled the hours of my early boyhood.
Though these wild scenes that I have tried to decorate with fancy are not now interesting to you, yet they are classical
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fields in my remembrance ; they are Gardens of Hesperides to my small experience and my inconsequential condition.
" Paulo majora canamus." Let me advance from myself and my doings to remark on some of the changes in Kingston.
Our goodly town was formerly distinguished by the amount of ship-building carried on, on what you called " the landing," - an amount truly great when taken in connection with the dimensions of the river at the points at which the work was performed. That was certainly the life of your place, for almost all other occupations were greatly dependent, directly or indirectly, upon that important specialty. The music of the broad axe, the adze and the mallet, was the daily, unremitted concert from the "flat rock " to the bend of the river, and it was most interesting to look at the hulls of vessels, in every stage of construction, from the day of laying the keel to the bustle of the workmen and the trembling complacency of the master-builder as he gave orders to knock away the "dog shore," which was to allow the mighty fabric to leave the blocks and become a floating palace.
But that music has ceased. Ships are the vehicles of com- merce ; commerce is the growth of successful trade. When the latter ceases, ships have little use ; they are cumbersome, costly possessions. And now your ship-yards, once the scene of so much' activity, silently, almost mournfully. await that business change which can alone renew their activity and recall that credit which the genius, the enterprise, and industry of Kings- ton once made so general.
Another change has come over your town. Not only has shipbuilding ceased, but the use of the small craft in the navi- gation of your somewhat eccentric river is no longer noticeable. The plan of constructing ships of commerce of iron, of course greatly injured your principal production, and the burning of
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anthracite coal in domestic uses diminished the demand for cord- wood, which made so important an element of the river and coast navigation, and the railroads finished what other new customs began. One consequence of the two changes which I have noticed is most observable ; that is the new growth of wood in your interior, so that the deer and other old denizens of your forests have returned to their former haunts in your neighborhood, and wood-craft is likely to take the place of wood-chopping.
It is the true characteristic of genius to rise above the acci- dents of business, and Kingston, I think, has shown herself eminently capable of great expedients in using those gifts of Providence which had not been made familiar by circumstances. The cessation of shipbuilding, a business that influenced almost all other pursuits among you, and the decay of coast-wise com- merce, suspended no hope from individual industry, but rather drew attention to the capabilities which were around. Your enterprise lias known how to direct industry into other chan- nels, so that the suspension of one branch of business has led to the adoption of others. The best spirit of the century has been fruitfully operative among you. The multiplied streams, those specialties of your location, which (above tide) seemed only the highway of the migratory denizens of the flood, have been made subservient to the requirements of new industries, and from their sources to their lowest confluents, their power is utilized to the promotion of a multitude of manufactories whose production extends from the ponderous anchor of a majestic ship of war to the small but useful contributions to domestic convenience.
In few pursuits does Kingston present greater advances than in agriculture. I do not know what progress has been made in the production of cereals and other grains, probably not exten-
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sive, yet in the production of grasses undoubtedly there have been advances that but for the steadiness of the increase would have caused surprise to your own people. Single large fields now, I am informed, produce more English or artificial grass than was cut in the whole township sixty years ago. This is a true application of science to one of the most important of your industries ; and if "he is a public benefactor who makes two blades of grass grow where only one had been raised, " cer- taiuly a good many people of Kingston in more ways than one swell the list of philanthropists.
Nor should I overlook the wonderful progress which element- ary and practical education has made among you. Beautiful school-houses have taken the place of the airy structures, that, in years past, were devoted to the discipline of candidates for maturity. Few, I believe, ever looked at the old " district school-house," with its " looped and windowed raggedness," without feeling the force of the patriarch's exclamation, "Surely this is an awful place !" The advancing spirit of the people is now wonderfully illustrated in the excellent schools and these productive fields
" Giving blossoms to nature and morals to man."
I have said a word upon the effect which the cessation of shipbuilding and that of conveying hence ship-loads of cord- wood have had upon your upland forests. I have a little interest, arising out of events of other times, to ask, What is the effect of the increase of your public schools and of the improvement in the modes of education upon the pliant woods of the low lands? How is it with the birch ? "I cannot but remember that such things were and were most dear."
Perhaps opinions upon its applications have undergone prac- tical changes. The good man who administered the birch so
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lovingly, eighty years ago, was wont to quote, with infinite gravity,
"Just as the twig is beut the tree's inclined."
Well, the twig was bent very often, but I do not remember that any of its recipients were much inclined to its reception.
If the Kingston boys of those and later times deserved and received the flagellations of a good master, what kind of men would they make? That is a natural question. I answer in the language of the great architect's epitaph, "Look around."
It is to the immortal credit of Kingston, and to the honor and profit of her sons, that she never moulded a doctrine to suit a practice ; wrong was wrong, whoever was the perpetrator. The bad act she punished, and thus limited its effect; the bad theory she knew would perpetuate offence and foster crime.
Some changes have taken place in your means of public devotion. The small, original church or rather " meeting-house," with its disproportioned steeple and diamond-shaped window- glass, its high pews, the corners of which were surmounted by contrivances to sustain the cocked hats of the male worshippers, gave place to another, distinguished externally by two towers, and internally by extraordinary decorations along the galleries ; and that twin-steeple house gave place to the neat and beautiful edifice, whose cross upon the steeple catches the first rays of the rising, and reflects those of the setting sun, telling of the faith of those who rest in its shadow. Two other churches denote the freedom of thought exercised here, and that the restrictive creed of other centuries has given place to a better sentiment, which is not startled at the name of toleration, and demands and enjoys a perfect right to be or to do. And Kings- ton will find that just in proportion as she extends the liberty of religious views and indulges sound and religious freedom will be her harmony and her prosperity. Difference of opinion
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may be earnestly and sometimes intemperately discussed by men of different creeds ; that is undoubtedly an evil, but that evil is incomparably smaller than the heart-burnings and dis- quietude promoted by dissension among those who are of one profession.
Some one has said that Daniel Webster considered New Hamp- shire "a good State to leave." Certainly, I think Kingston a good place for a youth to leave. He might lack adaptation of talents to the peculiar requirements of his native town, that kind of ability which her business necessities employ and reward. But it is in another light that I view the advantages to a youth of having come from Kingston. He is likely to take with him some of those simple, pure manners that distinguish the place, some of those unyielding principles of right that he has learned from his parents, and especially those habits of industry and per- severance that he has seen in constant illustration by his seniors. He may, indeed, fall into error, but he has never been taught that those errors may be justified. Surely, Kingston has been honored by such emigrant youth, whose after-fame has been part of her boast to-day, and by some whose later liberality has added to your means of high usefulness and beautiful charity. The admirable High School building, that decorates another part of your town, is due to the local love of a son of Kingston ; and a charity that distinguishes only between the needy and the possessor is due to the enlarged benevolence of one who went poor from this place, taking with him the simple habits of his virtuous ancestry and the pure principles of his townsmen. I knew him and loved him in his infancy and childhood and fol- lowed with deep interest his manly steps, and was delighted to think he was our townsman.
" But greater gifts were his, a happier doom, A brighter genius and a purer heart, A fate more envied and an earlier tomb."
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Kingston has produced distinguished men, but none of them ever forgot his birthplace ; none of them ever felt a breeze of praise or prosperity but he was delighted to think it reached his native town. In peace or in war her children have done their part in social or public service, and pointing to them and to Kingston the world may say,
" This man and that man were born in her."
Others will do justice to the exalted work of those who were born in Kingston and maintain their residence. Your orator to-day has done justice to men who in the hour of trial offered their services and themselves to the nation's good. The very prosperity of your town amid the prevailing gloom of decayed commerce and paralyzed enterprise, the happy hearths, the smiling edifices, and the fruitful fields show that while men of genius and activity were carrying out the means of wealth for themselves they felt and enjoyed the beautiful consequences to others which their own gallant enterprise was diffusing.
The very spot on which your festivity is held affords a most splendid outlook, for, from this very pavilion we may survey the historical points of river and bay, and catch a view of the houses of .Cobb and Bradford, that seem to defy (as did the former) the tooth of time. Those hills beyond the gurgling first brook are associated in my recollection with the pleasure and profit of summer exercise. There, a surface wealth abounded which was more valuable in the domestic economy of a virtuous, quiet neighborhood than that which the Black Hills of the Sioux Country is said to afford. There in its season the industry of the young gathered the hills' annual tribute of succulent huckleberries, of which one of your New England poets has sung that they are
" Great in a pudding, glorious in a pic."
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The love of my native town has existed and strengthened with many years of absence and often with many leagnes of distance, and while I have enjoyed the recollection of her interesting scenery, I have enriched that recollection with the memory of those who made that scenery most dear. If few or none of them are left, their successors have an easy task to build their own credit upon the solid virtues derived from their predecessors. With the recollections of such an exigent soil and such scenery and the knowledge of the actors, it is natural for the absent, in indulging their pride of carly home, to exclaim,
" Low lies the land and rocky is the soil, Her sous are honest and her daughters fair."
That sun which now in unclouded majesty is sinking below the western horizon has never witnessed in this place such a ceremony as it smiles upon to-day. Half a century hence it will shine upon a celebration, influenced by the same motives and sanctified by the same emotions of gratitude to man and praise to God. There will be no changes there but the change of improvement. Other forms may be con- sistent with future celebrations, but what we love and what we laud will be the stimulants. It will be Kingston, repre- seuted as now in her children, sending up anthems of thanks- giving. .
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The uses of your possessions may alter, and agriculture change yet more the face of your fields, and these affect the forms and locations of your dwellings, but time will not be a destroyer. The rugged rocks that give denomination to a portion of your territory are almost indestructible. And those lovely streams and beautiful lakes that characterize your town and give their names to their locations, shall not be changed. The lakes will for centuries reflect the blue sky froin their
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placid bosoms, and the streams with their charming cadence , shall know no cessation,
" They run and will forever run."
6. The Sons of Kingston in the State of Maine, - Stars of the East, the horizon adorning.
RESPONDED TO BY REV. WILLIAM A. DREW, OF AUGUSTA, ME.
Mr. President, - I am here to-day on a revisit to the home of my childhood ; to the scenes of beauty which first touched the springs of joy in a young heart ; and to recall the welcomed memories of a bright morning in life's opening day, - a day which, with the varied experiences of good and evil, has now entered the evening shadows of a setting sun. And if in the remarks I propose to offer, there should appear anything betraying the imbecility of age, I trust my native townspeople and many kindred present will pardon something to the playful spirit of the period I could wish to recall.
It is an old proverb, which dame Nature herself endorses, that the genus homo is " once a man and twice a child." Of course, then, he must have two nativities. I may, therefore, claim the singular honor of having two birthplaces, - one in Kingston, Mass., and one in Augusta, Me. This peculiarity, after all, is not so absurd as was the claim of the honest Hibernian who demanded the right to vote for Gov. Rice or some other Dem- ocrat ( !) because, having lived in Boston twenty-one years, he had become a " native American " since he left Ireland.
I was never ashamed of my first birthplace ; I always loved old Kingston. It was here my eyes first opened to the light of day ; it was here those sacred affections were formed which will endure forever. I can say as the Hebrew bard said of his Jerusalem, " If I forget thee, O Kingston, let my right hand
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forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth," and with the more modern British poet, -
" Where'er I roam, whatever lands I sce, My heart, untravelled, still returns to thec."
True, as a septnagenarian, my second childhood commenced in Augusta. Nor am I ashamed of that birthplace. It is a beautiful city, and the capital of that great State, the families in which, the sentiment just offered calls on me to represent.
Daniel Webster, a native of the Granite State, after he removed to Boston, said New Hampshire was a good State to go from. The emigrants from Massachusetts to Maine have found that a good State to go to. Indeed, before the "Great West" was discovered in the then far-distant valley of the Mohawk, " Down East " was about the only land of promise to which the Old Colony boys could go, to better their condition. The lands were largely owned by the Commonwealth and by rich proprietors at home. A large part of one township, now the town of Turner, was owned by Hon. Wm. Sever, of Kings- ton, at whose instance it was settled by several of the Gov. Bradford families. Another township, or a large part of it, given - by the legislature to Gen. Peleg Wadsworth, of Kings- ton, for his Revolutionary services, was settled by him, to which, on its incorporation, he gave the name of " Hiram," in honor of Hiram Abiff, the architect of Solomon's Temple, and the first Grand Master of Freemasons, to which order Gen. Wadsworth belonged. Many Plymouth County families are scattered all over the State, not a few of whom bear the Kingston names of Bradford, Brewster, Cushman, Prince, Adams, Wadsworth, Bryant, Holmes, Washburn, Stetson, Cobb, Mitchell, Dunham, Fuller, Bartlett, and Drew. Some
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of these names have risen to high honor in State and Nation, and all, with some exceptions, have proved themselves good and useful citizens. I never knew of but one Drew that was hung ; but he, fortunately for the Old Colony family, belonged to a tribe in New Hampshire that never saw Kingston. That exe- cution took place in Portland shortly before i entered Maine, and subjected me sometimes to the humiliating question, What relation was he to me? I could only say that he stood in the same relation to me that he did to the Adam family which originated in Mesopotamia, the father of which made a lady whom Milton described as " daughter of God and man, accom- plished Eve," the mother of all the human race. Our relation, therefore, was very distant.
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