USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Franklin > Resident and business directory of the town of Franklin, Massachusetts 1890 > Part 2
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
Dr. Emmons' dwelling-house stood on the north corner of the present Main and Emmons streets. It was removed some years ago, and it now does duty as a tenement-house, as historic buildings are wont to do in our hurrying age. June 17, 1846, a granite monument, paid by a public sub- scription, was erected with public services near the centre of the Common, across which the venerable pastor had traveled to and from his church for more than half a century. An address was given in the church by Rev. M. Blake, and then the large company adjourned to the Common, where the dedicatory address was made by the then pastor, Rev. T. D. Southworth. These addresses were printed.
A few years ago this monument was moved into a new part of the cemetery, out of public sight and contrary to the unalterable provision of the society which procured, located, and erected it on the Common.
The ecclesiastical history of the precinct, which in those early years was practically identical with its civil record, here practically ends.
PRECINCT CIVIL HISTORY .- In 1740-42 movements were made in the precinct to petition Wrentham for leave to be- come a town by themselves ; but lack of maternal sympathy quieted them till March 4, 1754, when a petition was actually presented to and refused by Wrentham. Discouraged by this rebuff,and absorbed in the political events which preced- ed the Revolution, the people postponed further action, and continued to journey to Wrentham to vote or stayed at home. But the question soon came up again in earnest. War meet- ings became more frequent and important, and the ride of five to eight miles to Wrentham so often was wearisome for man and horse. The population of the precinct had also in- creased, and was fully large enough to justify a separation. Therefore, Dec. 29, 1777, another petition was addressed to Wrentham "for liberty to be set off into a distriet township, according to grant of court that they were at first incorporated into a precinct, with a part of said town's money and stocks. Deacon Jabez Fisher, Esq., Jonathan Metcalf, Samuel Leth- bridge, Asa Whiting, Dr. John Metcalf, Joseph Hawes, and Capt. John Boyd, chief men of the precinct, are put in charge of the matter." In response to this petition, Wrentham sent
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
nine men as a joint committee to consider the matter. Feb- ruary 21st they reported that " Said inhabitants be set off as a separate township by themselves." The process of division was speedily begun. It involved many and complicated mat- ters of importance. The men already raised as the whole town's quota for the Continental army were proportionately accredited to each section. Fire-arms and military stores were also similarly divided. The salt allowed by the General Court and all other properties were duly adjusted. Even of the five solitary paupers dependent upon the whole town, two were assigned to the forthcoming town. All preliminaries being thus arranged, another committee was elected to pre- sent their petition to the General Court. The charter of in- corporation, granted in answer to this petition, appears among the acts of 1778, and is dated in the House of Representatives, February 27th, and in the Council, March 2nd. It is as follows :
" State of Massachusetts Bay.
" In the year of our Lord 1778.
" An Act incorporating the Westerly Part of the Town of Wrentham in the County of Suffolk into a Town by the name of Franklin.
" Whereas, the Inhabitants of the Westerly part of the town of Wren- tham in the County of Suffolk have Represented to this Court the Difficulties they Labor under in their present situation, and apprehending themselves of sufficient Numbers and Ability, request that they may be incorporated into a separate Town.
" Be it Therefore Enacted by the Council and House of Representatives in General Court Assembled and by the Authority of the same, that the Westerly part of said Town of Wrentham separated by a line, as follows, viz., Beginning at Charles River, where Medfield line conies to said river; thence running South seventeen degrees and a half West until it comes to one rod East of ye Dwelling-House of William Man; thence a straight line to the Eastwardly corner of Asa Whiting's barn; thence a straight line to sixty rods due South of the old cellar where the Dwelling House of Ebenezer Healey formerly stood ; thence a due West Cource by the Needle to Bellingham line, said Bellingham line to be the West Bounds, and Charles River the Northerly Bounds, Be and hereby is in- corporated into a District and separate Town by the name of Franklin, and invested with all the powers, privileges, and immunities that Towns in this State do or may enjoy. And be it further enacted, by the author- ity aforesaid. that the Inhabitants of said Town of Franklin shall pay their proportion of all State, County, and Town charges already granted to be raised in the Town of Wrentham. and also their proportion of the pay of the Representatives for the present year; and the said Town of Wrentham and Town of Franklin shall be severally held punctually to stand by and perform to each other the Terms and Proposals Contained and Expressed in a vote of the Town of Wrentham passed at Publick Town-meeting the sixteenth Day of February, 1778. according to ye plain and obvious meaning thereof; and Be it also Enacted by ye authority
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
aforesaid, That Jabez Fisher, Esq., Be and he hereby is authorized and required to issue his warrant to one of the principal inhabitants of said Town of Franklin, authorizing and requiring him to Notifie and warn the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of said Town to meet together at such time and place as shall be expressed in said warrant, To choose such officers as Towns are authorized by Law to Choose, and Transact other such Lawful matters as shall be expressed in said warrant. And be it further enacted, that the inhabitants living within ye Bounds afore- said who in the Late 'Tax in the Town of Wrentham were rated one-half part so much for their Estates and Faculties as for one single Poll shall be taken and Holden to be Qualified and be allowed to Vote in their first Meeting for the choice of officers and such other meetings as may be Called in said Town of Franklin until a valuation of Estates shall be inade by Assessors there.
"' In the House of Representatives " Feb. 27, 1778.
'. This Bill having been read three several times, passed to be en- grossed. Sent up for Concurrence,
" J. Warren Syke. · " In Council. "' March 2nd, 1778.
" This Bill, having had two several Readings, passed a Concurrence, to be engrossed. "Jno. Avery, Dpy. Sec'y."
In the original draft of the charter, as preserved in the State archives, the name of the new town is written as Ex- eter. Why its name was first written Exeter is a conundrum, whose answer is inaudible among the echoes of the past. Why it was changed to Franklin is apparent. After the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Benjamin Franklin with two others was sent forthwith to France, to arrange for a treaty of alliance with Louis XVI. The king dallied with the ambassadors until the close of 1777, when the capture of Burgoyne settled his doubts, and a treaty of amity and com- merce was formed with them in January, 1778. News of their success reached this country while the petition of the new town was waiting decision. The charter was doubtless amended in honor of that event, and Exeter was changed for the honored name of Franklin, the first of the twenty-nine towns in our States who have since followed her example in calling themselves by the same name.
Dr. Franklin showed his appreciation of the compliment by sending the town a valuable library of one hundred and sixteen volumes, selected by Rev. Richard Price, of London, a strong friend of Franklin's and of American liberty. Of these mostly folio volumes, the most secular and sensational was " The Life of Baron Trench." These one hundred and
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN,
sixteen seed volumes were subsequently increased by a social library to some five hundred, and have since multiplied to four thousand or more, constituting the present Public Lib- rary, for which maintenance annual grants of money are made by the town.
TOPOGRAPHY-Franklin, in the limits of its original char- acter, included 17,602} acres, or 27.6 square miles ; lying longer north and south than its width east and west. It is twenty-seven and a quarter miles southwesterly from Boston by the New York and New England Railroad.
The earliest map of the territory of Franklin was made in 1735, by Samuel Brooks, surveyor, and is kept in the town office of Wrentham. It contains only the four ponds, Uncas, Beaver, Popolatic, and Long, two or three short streets, and the names of the first settlers. The outline of the West Precinct is dotted within it, and follows nearly the present
boundaries of Franklin. A later map is in the archives of the State-House at Boston, and is dated May 27, 1795. It was from surveys made by Amos Hawes and Moses Fisher in September, October, and November, 1794. Nov. 2, 1795, the selectmen were directed to have another map of the town drawn on parchment, but if this was done the map cannot now be found. In 1832 a map of the town was surveyed by John G. Hales and lithographed in compliance with an act passed by the State Legislature in 1830. No survey has been made since by the town.
Charles River forms its northern boundary and receives the overflow of the ponds that lie, like bits of broken mirrors, among its hills. Chief of these ponds are Beaver, Uncas, Popolatic, and Kingsbury's, with their outlets of Mine Brook and Stop, or Mill River, drawing their surplus waters through Charles River into Massachusetts Bay and the sea. The geological formation of the town is sienitic, though very few ledges of rock appear on the surface. Traces of limestone have been found, and a deposit of amethysts, now exhausted. Green meadows, deep, shady valleys, and sunny hills make the natural scenery of Franklin beautiful. It is one of the highest towns in the county, and from some of its elevated highways the blue hills of Milton and the round head of Mount Wachusett, in Princeton, are visible.
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
Its own hills and rocks have retained but few traditions of their aboriginal owners and their deeds. Yet Indian Rock still records the story of the forty-two of King Philip's warriors, who stopped for a night and laid themselves down to sleep around its base. They had been on the war-path to Medfield, burning the houses of its settlers, and were on their way back to Narragansett. It is said a man named Rocket, in searching for a lost horse, found their trail, which he fol- lowed till he saw them asleep at Indian Rock. He hastened back to the settlement, and before daylight he was baek again, with a dozen men in command of Capt. Robert Ware, to watch and take care of the sleeping murderers. When the Indians arose at day-light a dozen bullets quickly found their mark. Their punishment was so swift and fatal that only one or two escaped to tell others of the steady and sure aim of the white man. Hence came the name of the ledge, which still rears its monumental head above the trees some five hundred yards east of the Common. The Fourth of July, 1823, was celebrated on this rock, and its stony breast is still marked with the graven initials of the managers of that celebration. They then proposed erecting a com- memorative monument on the site, but Franklin did not care to revive such tragic memories, and the trees have now hidden even the path to Indian Rock.
Uncas Pond also holds the tradition that the wiley Mohegan sachem, in some of his campaigns with the Pequots in this region, made the shores of this pond one of his occasional haunts, and the early settlers attached his name to the wood- sheltered sheet of water as a memento to the fact. But the settlement was too insignificant at the time of the Indian war to attract any massacres or conflagrations as befell its neigh- bors, Medfield and Wrentham, and it has to be content without its legends of savage warfare.
THE REVOLUTION .- The young town took her stand cour- ageously beside her older sisters in the troublous times of the colonies. Instead of the horn of Ceres, she must grasp for a while the sword of Mars. Many of her men had been enrolled two years before among the five companies of minute- men formed within the whole town of Wrentham. Some of her inhabitants were among those who, on the first alarm from Concord, " marched from Wrentham on the nineteenth
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
of April (1775) in the Colonial service." The exigencies of the Revolution demanded many town-meetings. Thirty-one were held in the five years between January, 1773, and Feb. 16, 1778, this being the last before the separation of Frank- lin from Wrentham.
At one of these meetings, held at Wrentham June 5, 1776, one day less than a month before the Declaration of Indepen- dence, a paper of instructions to their representatives to the General Court was, "after being several times distinctly read and considered by the town, unanimously voted in the affirmative without even one dissentient." This paper is inserted as a sample voice of the times, indicating the clear and decided convictions of that day, and the hopelessness of attempting to dragoon such sturdy yeomanry into duty.
" Gentlemen .- We, your constituents in full town-meeting, June 5, 1776, give you the following instructions : Whereas. Tyranny and oppres- sion. a little more than one century and a half ago, obliged our forefathers to quit their peaceful habitations and seek an asylum in this distant land. amid an howling wilderness surrounded with savage enemies, destitute of almost every convenience of life was their unhappy situation ; but such was their zeal for the common rights of mankind that they (under the smile of Divine Providence) surmounted every difficulty. and in a little time were in the exercise of civil government under a charter of the crown of Great Brittain. But after some years had passed and the Col- onies had become of some importance, new troubles began to arise. The same spirit which caused them to leave their native land still pursued them, joined by designing men among themselves. Letters began to be wrote against the government and the first charter soon after destroyed. In this situation some years passed before another charter could be obtained, and althoughi many of the gifts and privileges of the first char- ter were abridged by the last, yet in that situation the government has been tolerably quiet until about the year 1763, since which the same spirit of oppression has risen up. Letters by divers ill-minded persons have been wrote against the government (in consequence of which divers acts of the British Parliament made, mutilating and destroying the charter, and wholly subversive of the constitution :) fleets and armnies have been sent to enforce them, and at length a civil war has commenced, and the sword is drawn in our land, and the whole united colonies in- volved in one cominon cause; the repeated and humble petitions of the good people of these colonies have been wantonly rejected with disdain ; the prince we once adored has now commissioned the instruments of his hostile oppression to lay waste our dwellings with fire and sword, to rob us of our property, and wantonly to stain the land with the blood of its innocent inhabitants; he has entered into treaties with the most cruel nations to hire an army of foreign mercenaries to subjugate the colonies to his cruel and arbitrary purposes. In short, all hope of an accomnio- dation is entirely at an end, a reconciliation as dangerous as it is absurd ; a recollection of past injuries will naturally keep alive and kindle the flames of jealousy. We, your constituents, therefore think that to be
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
subject or dependent on the crown of Great Britain would not only be impracticable, but unsafe to the State. The inhabitants of this town, therefore, in full town-meeting, unanimously instruct and direct you (i. e., the representatives) to give your vote that, if the Honorable American Congress (in whom we place the highest confidence under God) should think it necessary for the safety of the United Colonies to declare them independent of Great Britian, that we, your constituents, with our lives and fortunes will most cheerfully support them in the measure."
Sept. 15, 1774, soon after the encampment of Gen. Gage on Boston Common, Wrentham voted to buy two cannon " of the size and bigness most proper and beneficial for the town," and ordered them to be made fit for action. Ammu- nition was also bought, and men were armed and trained in military exercise. The last vote of the whole town touching the war previous to the incorporation of Franklin, Feb. 16, 1778, was the acceptance of a committee report, that the full quota of the town, " being the full seventh part of the male inhabitants of the town," had been secured.
The First Meeting of the town of Franklin was called by Jabez Fisher, justice of the peace, and was held Monday, March 23, 1778, at 9 o'clock, A. M. The requisite town officers were chosen. They were Asa Pond, town clerk ; Asa Whiting, treasurer ; Samuel Lethbridge, Deacon Jona- than Metcalf, Asa Whiting, Hezekiah Fisher, Ensign Joseph Hawes, selectmen ; and Ensign Hawes was representative to the General Court. The Committee of Correspondence, who looked after the affairs of the war, were Capt. John Boyd, Deacon Daniel Thurston, Lieut. Ebenezer Dean, Capt. Thomas Bacon. After adjournment they meditated for a month upon the new State Constitution, preparatory to an intelligent and wise decision. Money as well as men were furnished often and heartily, and the town bore with marked unanimity the heavy expenses of the Revolution as well as the depreciation of the currency as their home part of the price paid for liberty.
The depreciation of money was rapid and severe in its re- sults upon values. In July, 1781, the ratio of paper to silver was as one to forty ; in September of the same year, one to one hundred and fifty. In the following February the town paid £400 for ten shirts to Deacon Joseph Whiting, who, of course, would not overcharge.
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
The patriotic little town looked sharply after its home enemies. It voted to report all Tories to the proper court. It directed the soldiers' families to be " supplied with the necessaries of life at a stipulated price at the town's cost." They voted not to deal commercially with any who did not conform to the scale of prices recommended by the Concord convention of 1779. They furnished their quota of beef for the army-thirty-three thousand nine hundred and eight pounds-in eighteen months, taking almost the cattle on a thousand hills. They voted in 1779-when the money credit of the government was rapidly sinking-that all who had money to lend, should " avoid lending to Monopolizers, Jobbers, Harpies, Forestallers, and Tories, with as much caution as they avoid a pestilence," and rather to lend to the Continental and State treasuries. There was the irrepressible spirit of liberty here.
Franklin has not preserved any muster-roll or other data to make up a list of its soldiers in the Revolutionary war. From the muster-rolls of Wrentham preserved in the archives of the State one can select the residents of Franklin proper only by similarity of name. But an examination of these rolls shows that they do not include all who should be on them, for the names of many men whose military record is known from other sources are not on the lists. Of the five companies of Wrentham, under the command of Capts. Oliver Pond, Benjamin Hawes, Samuel Kollock, Elijah Pond, and Asa Fairbanks, the last two of the companies were mostly of Franklin names, as follows :
CAPT. ASA FAIRBANKS' COMPANY.
Asa Fairbanks, captain.
Matthew Smith, private. Asa Metcalf, 66
Joseph Woodward, lieutenant.
Joseph Hawes,
Matthias Haws,
James Gilmore, sergeant.
John Fairbanks, .6
Joseph Hills,
Joseph Streeter,
David Wood, corporal.
John Adams,
Peter Adams. private. John Clark,
Philemon Metcalf,
66
Jesse Ware, 66
Asa Whiting, ..
Peltiah Fisher,
Abijah Allen.
Isaac Heaton. 66
Jonathan Hawes. 66
Peter Fisher, 66
John Pearce, ..
Elisha Harding, ..
Will Man,
Ebenezer Dean,
Levi Chaffee,
Nathan Wright,
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
William Sayles,
Asahel Perry,
James Smith,
John Clark, Jr., 66
Joseph Harding, 66
Joseph Hills,
William Gilmore, 66
Aaron Fisher,
Ichabod Dean, 66
Joseph Guiid,
CAPT. ELIJAH POND'S COMPANY.
Elijah Pond, captain.
Benjamin Pond, private.
Asa Pond, lieutenant.
Timothy Rockwood, 66
Jonathan Bowditch, 2nd lieut.
Elias Ware, 66
Robert Blake, sergeant.
Elisha Bullard, 66
Timothy Pond, 66
Daniel Thurston,
Duke Williams, corporal.
Nathaniel Thayer.
Samuel Pond,
Peter Darling,
66
Amos Bacon, drummer.
Simeon Fisher,
66
Nathan Daniels, clerk.
Elisha Partridge,
Elisha Rockwood, private.
Simeon Daniels,
66
Abijah Thurston, 66
John Allen,
Robert Pond,
James Fisher, 66
Zepha Lane, 66
John Metcalf, 66
Eleaz. Partridge,
Elisha Pond,
Joseph Ellis, 66
John Richardson, 66
Elisha Richardson, 66
In Capt. Cowell's company, of Col. Benjamin Hawes' regiment, sent on a secret expedition, 23rd of September, 1777, occur the names of Michael and Timothy Metcalf and Benjamin Rockwood, Franklin men.
There were at least seventeen Ponds that flowed from Franklin into the American army and are not recorded. One Elisha Pond, escaped one night from the old Sugar House at New York, where he had been imprisoned and nearly starved by the British. Another Pond, Pennel, " died Dec. 16-17, in New York harbor on board a guard- ship, supposed to be poisoned by ye British doctors." So his only record says, written in stone in the City Mills graveyard. Philip Blake was blacksmith and commissary to a portion of the American army on Dorchester Heights, and was afterwards in Sullivan's retreat on Rhode Island, but his name is not on any roll. Some of the lists must have been lost. John Newton, an English soldier, impressed on board a British man-of-war, escaped from his ship in Boston harbor by swimming three miles on a dark and stormy night. He reached the shore too exhausted to walk or stand ; but when rested, he fled towards Dedham. He was met on the way and was asked, " Who are you ?" He only answered, John,
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
-going !" and he went on, beyond curious querists, until he reached Franklin. His first assumed American name he kept, and his decendents still live in Franklin with the name modernized into Gowen. John Adams, ancestor of the Adams family, was also a victim of English impressment who found a home among Franklin patriots. David Lane, after- wards called McLane, and a native of Attleborough, came to Franklin, and married a wife in 1786. Ten years after he started for Canada as general of a secret project, said to be originated by the French minister to this country to incite the Canadians to revolt against Great Britain, and thus to aid the United States. McLane's directions were to raise men in Quebec and seize the garrison and then capture the city. But McLane was betrayed by one of his men and taken as a spy. He was publicly executed on the glacis outside the city walls of Quebec,-the last and probably the only instance in America of the ancient brutal mode of hang- ing, drawing, and quartering a traitor. McLane was without doubt, more an unhappy lunatic than a criminal. But the spirit of those days was full of animosity and cruelty. The later wars of the Republic will find mention farther on.
THE SECOND MEETING-HOUSE .- The war at last ended, and the country had won for itself independence, and settled down to repair damages. The old town question soon pre- sented itself again,-whether to repair the house of worship or build anew. There were evidently two opinions in the town, for April 26, 1784, two hundred pounds were voted to buy material for a new building. But October 3rd of the next year the opposition carried the day, and the constable was ordered " to pay back the money collected for the meet- ing-house and return the tax-bill into the town clerk's office, and that the town clerk pull off the seal of the warrants and write on the back that they are null and void ; " and second- ly, " that a committee view the meeting-house and report what is best to be done to repair it." As a result, £6. 2s .- 10d. were spent in patching the shingles, supplying glass to the upper windows, and boarding up the lower. But this putting of new cloth upon the old garment was an economy. of short duration. A new meeting-house became more and more a visible necessity.
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
One question towards it had been settled January, 1784, in regard to the fixedness of the centre of Franklin. Two surveyors and three chainmen had, at a cost of £26 3s. 4d. (of which £1 12s. 11d. was " for lickquer "), discovered that "forty-seven rods from the centre of the west door of the meeting-house where it now stands " was the same un- moved centre found fifty years ago near the same Morse's mud-pond.
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