USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester > Rural retrospect: a parallel history of Worcester and its Rural Cemetery > Part 4
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Front Street was still dominated by the big mansion where Rejoice Newton had once lived. When Mr. Newton had moved to the house on Court Hill, Osgood Bradley had in turn bought the home on Front Street. It stood between the Union Church and the Crystal Palace, the latter a variety store featuring low-priced incidentals valued to a dollar. Shaped like a modern quonset hut, the building was fashioned mainly of glass. Directly beside it ran the tracks of the Worcester and Norwich Railroad toward their destination at the Foster Street depot.
On the same side of Front Street, nearer Main, the Horticultural Hall was situated. It had been built in 1840. Nearby Sumner Pratt conducted a thriving business. An Oxford native, Mr. Pratt had come to Worcester in 1843 to make cotton thread, but he had sold his shop two years later to Albert Curtis and had himself become one of New England's most prominent dealers in cotton and wool machinery and mill supplies.
Also on Front Street was the undertaking "parlor" of George Sessions. George had come to Worcester when he was seventeen years old to work on the farm at the State Lunatic Asylum. He had later ventured into the making of shoe-maker's tools, but in 1850 had been appointed the City's undertaker and sexton and had then established his business on Front Street.
At the south end of town, soine of Worcester's largest and most fashionable homes were being built. This shifting from the north had been encouraged by the activities of Eli Thayer. On Goat Hill, west of South Main, he had built Worcester's most spectacular building, Oread Institute, the first women's college in America. Smith, Welles- ley, Vassar, Bryn Mawr were still to be founded. Oberlin, a co- educational school, was the only college that had admitted women students before Oread.
Eli Thayer had previously bought the old Worcester Manual Labor High School at a time when it had been faced with financial failure. He had become a teacher in his institution, then its principal.
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The school's name was changed in 1846 to the Worcester Academy. Across the street from the school he had bought ten acres of land and started his dream castle for which he was his own architect.
A castle it certainly was in every definition of the word. During the many weeks in which this mediaeval structure was evolving there was an air of mystery about it which Mr. Thayer enjoyed and fostered. Townspeople nicknamed his project: "Thayer's Folly." Not once did he disclose his intentions until the north tower of the castle was finished. Originally he had expected to build a quadrangle, but only two wings, north and south, were ever completed. They were made of stone, quarried from the very hill on which they stood.
In 1849 the school had opened with fourteen pupils. In less than four years there were one hundred and fifty students and twelve teachers. Oread Institute was always an independent, private venture of the Thayer family. Once Mr. Thayer announced: "We sell educa- tion at cost. . . If our merchandise is not worth our price we ask no one to share our loss."
This Eli Thayer was the same gentleman who is remembered so prominently in American history books-not perhaps so much as the founder of this picturesque school on one of Worcester's hills, but as the "Father of Kansas." It was he, who, while in the Legislature, originated the plan of "organized emigration" as an antidote for the threatened enslavement of Kansas. He had preached his theory, then matched the energy of his words by setting out with a party of twenty- nine persons for the western state. Later, five thousand men and women followed this first group. He did a similar work for West Virginia. President Taft once said that there is no greater hero in the history of our country than Mr. Thayer who "almost alone and single handed entered upon the work of peopling a vast territory with free and brave men so as to forever exclude slavery from its limits."
In 1856 Mr. Thayer was elected a member of the United States Congress. His school on the hill continued for thirty-two years, until it was forced to close because of the ill health of his son, John Alden, who had succeeded his father as principal.
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The stone fortress stood for many years, cloistering within its hidden chambers the many romantic stories of its own history. One of the tales concerned a certain young student who, caught in the rain on Worcester's Main Street one day, was rescued by a young man with an umbrella. The two walked all the way back to Oread Castle, becoming so well acquainted on the way that they were later married. Still later, the young man became President of the United States- William Howard Taft.
For several years Henry D. Perky, the man who invented and introduced Shredded Wheat to the world, operated a domestic science school in the Castle. This was a unique institution, supported entirely by Mr. Perky who invited the Governors of all the states in the Union to send two female students to be educated at his expense. It is probable that Mr. Perky had an ulterior intention, that of training the girls in the use of Shredded Wheat, for his ideas for advertising were always elaborate. This was before the era of the Niagara Falls plant. Shredded Wheat was being manufactured in one of Worcester's small factories, and Mr. Perky's objective was not to promote Shredded Wheat as a cereal, but as an ingredient in other foods. His menus included such tempting items as Shredded Wheat in mashed potatoes and stewed tomatoes.
It was during Mr. Perky's stay at Oread Castle that he persuaded a friend to publish a woman's magazine, presumably to spread the gospel of Shredded Wheat. This magazine developed into Good Housekeeping.
Henry Perky's product was still being laughed at by many who called it "baled hay." He, himself, before he sold his stock in the company, announced his intention of doing so when he could "find someone fool enough to buy it."
When he died his financial affairs were in a hopeless tangle. Oread Castle passed into the hands of the wealthy soap manufacturer known as Fells the Soap King. He had been a partner of Mr. Perky's in another venture, a single tax community in Maryland, which inci- dentally was named Oread.
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Oread Castle in Worcester became an abandoned legend. For a short while it became a riding school. Then in 1934, a sad year for the romanticists, Oread was torn down and its stone walls removed from the area.
Although it was Oread Castle that first focused attention on the south end of Worcester, the fact that Ethan Allen lived there also helped to brand the section a fashionable one. Earlier Mr. Allen had lived on Nobility Hill (in the mansion built for the leather mer- chant, Levi Dowley, in 1842), but in 1853 he had built a new home on Murray Avenue, just off Piedmont. His old house, too, had moved to the south of town and was occupied by Ransom C. Taylor.
Ethan Allen had long before securely nailed his name to the plaque of America's industrial immortals. As early as 1831 he had made cutlery in Milford, then knives and shoemaking tools in Grafton, but his fame was guaranteed when, two years later, he started to make guns and pistols. In this small arms business he preceded all other Ameri- can manufacturers.
Ethan Allen invented the "pepper box" revolver used in the Mexican War, several forms of revolving pistols, and, in fact, a greater variety of firearms than any other company in the country. He also made the machines to make the guns and cartridges.
By 1847 Mr. Allen had established his business in Worcester's Merrifield Buildings.
Mr. Allen's coming to Worcester has continued to be a fortunate boost for Worcester's industrial reputation, but it was a man by the name of William Trowbridge Merrifield who literally created the cradle for Worcester's manufacturing interests.
He was just the man to do it, for he was a carpenter.
To William Merrifield many large industries owe their existence, for without the setting which he provided they could not have survived.
In retrospect his idea seems simple enough. Perhaps it was simple even then, because the more ingenious an idea, the less complex it usually proves to be. In brief, what Mr. Merrifield did for Worcester was to build large factory buildings, then rent power as well as space in them.
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Oread Castle, a college for young women
1
I
View from the south window of William Merrifield's observatory on Trowbridge Road, looking west. Highland Street cuts directly across picture, and the Fair Grounds are just beyond
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This was a period when the abundance of inventive ideas far out- balanced the resources of experience or capital, creating for manu- facturers a difficult production problem. In a large measure, this problem is what William Merrifield solved in Worcester.
Mr. Merrifield was a Worcester boy, born on the Mountain Street farm of his father, "Deacon" Alpheus Merrifield. Alpheus had inherited this home from his father, which shows how old a Worcester family the Merrifields were. The farm was at the north of town, on the old turnpike that led to Lancaster and Boston.
At the other end of town, on the southern boundary, William Merrifield's other ancestors, the Trowbridges, had dominated the section of Worcester known as Trowbridgeville since 1739.
William learned the carpenter's trade from his father, and together these men built many of Worcester's finest homes and public buildings. Their early activity also reached to many localities outside of Worcester.
It was in 1839 that William Merrifield bought land on Union and Exchange Streets and there built brick buildings four stories high and covering two acres. He put up a sign with the strange words: "Rooms with Power to Rent." Even today, the Merrifield sign reads the same. Through the years it has remained as a continuous reminder of Worcester's industrial initiative.
At first, Mr. Merrifield offered steam power with his rooms. Later, it was electric power. As early as 1851 George Crompton was manu- facturing looms in the Merrifield Buildings. These were the fancy power looms invented by his father, William Crompton, on which complicated designs could be made. Until this invention all such patterns had had to be woven by hand.
When the factory buildings had burned in 1854, Mr. Merrifield had promptly replaced them, and since that date they have housed hundreds of Worcester's prosperous industries.
When William Merrifield became as prosperous as his renters, he built a large home for his family on Trowbridge Road, a street named for his grandfather. His thirty-acre estate stretched to Park Avenue on the west, to Joe Bill Road on the north, and to Highland Street on
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the south. Nearest neighbors were the Salisburys on Highland Street. The young Merrifield daughter, Harriette, attended Oread Institute.
The Merrifield house was on land that had originally belonged to Joseph Bill for whom the road had been named. This road cut a long line between the Merrifield land and property owned by Harrison Bliss, the erstwhile grocer who had invested so heavily in Worcester real estate. In the 1830's there had been an effort to discontinue this road, but Governor John Davis, who had owned the Bliss land at the time, had successfully fought the proposition. Years later, after a school was founded on the brow of its hill, its name was to be changed to Institute Road.
Although Mr. Merrifield was undoubtedly the first to rent small units to mechanics and manufacturers, he was not alone in this vision- ary contribution to Worcester. Stephen Salisbury shares honors with him in this respect.
The Salisbury mills were at the north of town, and in them Ichabod Washburn's wire business was prospering. Mr. Washburn had spent considerable time experimenting with the tempering of wire, and at the suggestion of Chickering (a piano manufacturer) he had produced samples of piano wire. The Worcester wire proved to be every bit as good as that which had always been imported from England. From that moment, piano wire was made in America-most of it in Worcester. "This," said Mr. Washburn, as he summed up his accomplishments, "was the greatest success of my mechanical life."
In 1847 the Washburns had built a rolling mill at Quinsigamond, and two years later the firm of twin brothers dissolved, with Charles taking over the rolling mill and Ichabod keeping the plant at North Worcester. Philip L. Moen, who had married Mr. Washburn's daughter, Eliza, became his partner.
The association of Washburn and Moen had resulted from a meet- ing of the American Board of Foreign Missions in Brooklyn. To this meeting Mr. Washburn had been sent as a delegate, as was also Philip Moen's father who lived in New York. In fact, Mr. Washburn had been an invited guest in the Moen home.
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In 1850 Philip Moen had married Eliza and subsequently taken over the financial part of the Worcester wire-making business. When this was accomplished, Mr. Washburn sighed with relief and com- mented later: "He has managed with rare ability our finances, a department of the business for which I never had the taste or inclina- tion, always preferring to be among the machinery doing the work and handling the tools I was used to, though oftentimes at the expense of smutty face and greasy hands."
Mr. Moen lived on the site of the old Lincoln mansion on Lincoln Street, near The Oaks, in a very large, handsome house built in 1852 by William A. Wheeler. The old Lincoln house had been sold to David Messinger (always alert for a business deal) and moved to the corner of Grove and Lexington.
Of course, the most important thing that had happened in or to Worcester was that it had become a city. But don't count its birthdays by its years, because Worcester formed its City Government on a February the twenty-ninth. The year was 1848. Giving the event its due dignity, Levi Lincoln was elected as the first Mayor. That same year, another Lincoln, Abraham by name, visited Worcester and the home of his distant kinsman, Governor Lincoln. Abraham was not accustomed to such lavish hospitality as that which was common in Levi Lincoln's mansion. Much impressed, Abraham Lincoln after- wards said, "That was a grand dinner, a superb dinner, by far the finest I ever saw in my life."
The first aldermen and members of the City Council were the pick of the city, including the most distinguished, wealthy, and capable citizens that Worcester had to offer.
Among the first aldermen were John W. Lincoln (Sheriff for Worcester County), the fabulously wealthy and influential Stephen Salisbury II, and Isaac Davis, the busy lawyer who had long been associated with Worcester's military affairs and who in 1854 had been elected as President of the Board at West Point. Also an alderman was Benjamin Franklin Thomas, appointed Judge of Probate, and in 1848, Secretary of the Electoral College. Later he was to become a Justice
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of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and a United States Congressman.
Doctor Benjamin Heywood, of the old Heywood family, was a member of the first Common Council, as was also a comparatively new man in town, Alexander H. Bullock. Mr. Bullock, trained for law, had become prominent as an insurance agent for various companies. He had also been editor of the National Aegis and State Representative and Senator.
Other members of the Council were Albert Curtis, the manu- facturer to whom Sumner Pratt had sold his cotton thread mill, William Trowbridge Merrifield, the contractor, and Freeman Upham of the Worcester pioneer family who were among the original grantees of the village. Horace Chenery, another Councilman, was a manufactur- er of cotton goods (with George T. Rice as a partner) at North Pond. Darius Rice, another, was descendant of Worcester's first permanent settler and had distinguished himself by being the first farmer to bring milk and vegetable products to market in Worcester as early as 1830.
Another Councilman was Calvin Foster. He owned C. Foster and Company at Main and Pearl Streets, the forerunner of Worcester's leading hardware store for years known as Duncan and Goodell Company. Mr. Foster also had considerable interests in railroads, and was founder and president of the City Bank.
President of the Council was Thomas Chamberlain. He owned a seventy-two acre farm on Salisbury Street where he practiced what he preached as founder and trustee of Worcester County Horticultural Society. He also served as Crier of the Worcester Court for seventeen years and was active in state militia.
Electing Levi Lincoln as Mayor, everyone knew, had been a gesture to honor him as well as the City. When time for the next year's election rolled around, Mr. Lincoln declined the nomination. The second Mayor was Judge Henry Chapin; the third, Peter C. Bacon. Mr. Bacon, a Dudley native, had taught in Worcester's old Latin Grammar School, then had studied law with Governor John Davis and Judge Charles Allen before establishing a law partnership with the distin-
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The home of Governor Levi Lincoln on Elm Street. This house was another designed by Elias Carter
RAILROAD CROSSING LOCK OUT FOR THE ENOIME WHILE THE BELL RINCO
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٢١١٣٣ FA
Lincoln Square. Gas Works is at right, Harrison Bliss home on left. Notice engine waiting at far left of picture
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guished Judge Ira Barton. In 1848, when Worcester became a city, Mr. Bacon had represented it in the State Legislature.
John S. C. Knowlton, Sheriff, had followed Mr. Bacon as Mayor, then George W. Richardson had been elected. Mr. Richardson had been Governor Davis' aide-de-camp, then had graduated to positions of Sheriff and President of Worcester's City Bank.
Elected as Worcester's first citizen in 1856 was Isaac Davis. Mr. Davis was, of all things, a Democrat. In fact, he had been one for many years, even when the word was considered an offense in Worces- ter's Whiggish homes. But he had persisted in his Jeffersonian and Jacksonian theories until the Democratic vote had steadily increased and in 1843 he was elected to the State Senate when his party for the first time obtained control of State Government. (From 1828-1860 he was a delegate to the national Democratic conventions.)
Two utilities had been added to Worcester's conveniences.
In 1845 the Worcester Aqueduct Company had been organized to conduct water from Bladder (Bell) Pond. The roster for the corpora- tion committee included such familiar names as Stephen Salisbury, Isaac Davis, William A. Wheeler, and Henry W. Miller. Worcester, as a new city, wasted no time. This water company was purchased by the Council in June, only five months after the City Government had been incorporated. Phinehas Ball, a prominent citizen, was employed to survey the project.
The other noteworthy event was the introduction of illuminating gas. This was noted as indicative of Worcester's prosperity and enterprise.
Gas was introduced to Worcester in the spring of 1849 by Doctor Joseph Sargent, a descendant of Digory Sargent, Worcester's pioneer, who was massacred by the Indians on Sagatabscot Hill. At Doctor Sargent's suggestion, Isaac Davis and George T. Rice met him at Mr. Rice's home to consider the formation of a "gas illuminating" com- pany. Subsequently, John W. Lincoln was elected as its first president.
A bigger Worcester meant bigger buildings, bigger industries. It also meant bigger churches. In seven years of time the number of
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churches had doubled. The Methodists had built a large church where the Bancroft Hotel now stands, and the Episcopalians, a church on Pearl Street. Edward Everett Hale had already preached for ten years in the Church of the Unity (Second Unitarian) located on Elm Street. Incidentally, Rural Cemetery held mortgages for many of Worcester's church buildings.
Two related banking institutions had been incorporated-the Mechanics Bank in 1848 (only four months after the City) and the Mechanics Savings Bank in 1851. These banks were founded by Francis H. Dewey and Harrison Bliss. Harrison Bliss had owned a grocery store on Main Street near Lincoln Square for many years and a flour store on Mechanic Street before starting his real estate business. Francis H. Dewey, son of a Williamstown Judge, had come to Worces- ter to enter into a law partnership with Emory Washburn in 1842.
President of the Mechanics Bank at the first election was Alexander De Witt; of Mechanics Savings, Isaac Davis. (Mr. De Witt succeeded him.) The two banks lived together at the south corner of Main and George Streets, not far from Daniel Waldo's old store and his Meeting House. Later the banks moved across the street to the Central Exchange building to occupy rooms vacated by The Worcester Bank when it moved to its new home on Foster Street.
This Central Exchange Building was comparatively new, the old one (which was really The Worcester Bank's building with a different name) having burned in 1843. It was at this time that the bell on the Unitarian Church had rung so hard and long that it cracked.
Next door to the Mechanics Bank, on the site of Daniel Waldo's mansion, was the new Mechanics Hall. Mr. Waldo's house had been moved to Waldo Street to make room for the new building, which was to date Worcester's most ambitious enterprise. It represented an investment of more than $270,000, with "Deacon" Washburn, the most ardent mechanic of all, contributing $20,000 of that amount.
The Mechanics Association had evolved from a preliminary meeting of thirteen purposeful men late in 1841. Anthony Chase's name had led the list printed in the newspaper the following day, and he had been
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secretary of the next meeting at which Mr. Washburn had presided. Within a few months, in 1842, the organization was completed and the 115 members of Worcester's Mechanics Association entered with spirit into the work of accomplishing their three objectives of presenting a lecture course, providing a library, and building a hall.
For the building of Mechanics Hall, Phinehas Ball had surveyed the lot, Elbridge Boyden had designed the structure, and H. N. Tower had been the contractor.
Worcester with its Mechanics Association was veritably becoming an association of mechanics. Industries were multiplying. Indus- trialists were gradually usurping the prominence which the lawyers had had in an earlier period.
For instance, two cousins-George T. and George M. Rice-were conspicuous citizens. The first, who had started as an apprentice in Daniel Waldo's store, had operated his own hardware business, then had begun making cotton cloth at North Pond and woolen goods on Green Street. The other George had also been a storekeeper before he had become a partner in the Howe and Goddard Company, manufacturers of paper-making machinery. In 1847 this company had changed its name to Goddard and Rice, with the Rice part mean- ing George M.
In this shop there was a young doctor who had given up his medical practice because of the pressure of inventive ideas on his brain. He realized his problems could not be solved by surgery, but only by the mechanical devices he could create with his own hands. At Goddard and Rice, Russell H. Hawes had invented and perfected, among other things, the first real machine for making envelopes. This invention later proved to be the beginning of the entire envelope industry. On a visit to New York he had seen the first handmade envelopes. (En- velopes were very new.) Later in Europe he had seen an envelope folding machine, and these two incidents sparked his own later inven- tion which was patented in 1853.
At the same time, up on Summer Street, not far from Ichabod Washburn's home, a young woman was inviting attention by conduct-
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ing a business-and a thriving one at that. Her name was Esther Howland, and her business was one of making valentines. Before she sold out to George C. Whitney at a later time, she was selling more than $100,000 worth of valentines a year.
Worcester had in 1844 voted for coeducation, establishing its first high school the following year at the corner of Walnut Street. This school was accorded the reputation of being the finest in the state. During this period the City streets were first paved, the first daguerro- types appeared, telegraphy was introduced to Worcester, and in 1842, John Crosby initiated the first taxi service in town. He offered to take anyone anywhere in Worcester for seventeen cents-and no tips.
As late as the 1830's, Worcester had been dominated by its native sons. One of the most revealing characteristics of the middle part of the nineteenth century was a shift of leadership to its adopted children.
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