USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester > Rural retrospect: a parallel history of Worcester and its Rural Cemetery > Part 5
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The list makes interesting reading:
Judge Ira Barton
Oxford
Judge Thomas Kinnicutt Warren, Rhode Island
Judge Henry Chapin Upton
Judge Alexander H. Bullock Royalston
Judge Pliny Merrick
Brookfield
Rejoice Newton
Greenfield
P. Emory Aldrich
New Salem
U. S. Senator George Frisbie Hoar Concord
Pliny Merrick was not only a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, but also a State Senator and Judge of the State Supreme Judicial Court as well as president of Worcester's Citizens Bank. Rejoice Newton was a Representative and State Senator, P. Emory Aldrich, the At- torney for Worcester County. George Frisbie Hoar was a young lawyer who had been a partner of Emory Washburn before becoming State Representative and Senator. He was destined for far greater national fame later as a United States Senator.
Among the industrialists from out of town, Ichabod Washburn had come from Kingston, Massachusetts, and his son-in-law, Philip L. Moen, from New York. Ethan Allen came from Grafton, the two
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THE ADOPTED CHILDREN 1838-1856
George Rices from Brookfield, Russell Hawes from Leominster, and Osgood Bradley from Andover.
The phenomenally active Isaac Davis (Mayor, State Senator, Representative, banker, industrialist, insurance executive, lawyer, and military man) had come from Northboro. Probably Mr. Davis was Worcester's busiest man. The only time on record when he said "No" was to the nomination as Assistant Treasurer of the United States. (The idea of being assistant to anybody could hardly have appealed to Mr. Davis.)
Harrison Bliss, banker, businessman and State Representative, had been born in Royalston, and Francis H. Dewey, recognized as having the most lucrative law business in Worcester, came from Williamstown.
Silas Dinsmore was another adopted son, but he had not come far ---- just from West Boylston. It was he who edited and published the Daily Transcript, Worcester's first daily paper. Compositors boasted of his copy which he prepared with great care, writing in an old- fashioned round hand as plain as print.
Mr. Dinsmore was a State Senator in 1853 and '54, Sheriff of the County in 1857. His political campaigns were always lively ones. Once he was defeated by John Milton Earle who was not only his political opponent but also his business competitor, for Mr. Earle was editor of the Spy. The following morning everyone was eager to see what comment Mr. Dinsmore would print about the election. "The editor of the Spy," he facetiously wrote, "has been elected to go to Boston this winter, and the editor of this paper has been elected to stay at home. The people knew which they could spare best."
To top the whole record of adopted sons, Emory Washburn was a Leicester boy who had definitely made good. He had become succes- sively a Massachusetts Senator, a Judge, then Governor of the Com- monwealth. He had made Worcester his home, however, since 1828, and had practiced law here for many years.
Let it not be said, on the other hand, that Worcester natives had been shirking public responsibility.
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THE ADOPTED CHILDREN
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Sleighing on Park Avenue, a popular Sunday afternoon diversion. White horse at left is being driven by Ransom C. Taylor, Worcester's wealthy real estate man
Conspicuous in this respect was Charles Allen, who had been State Senator and Representative, Commissioner of Massachusetts, Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and finally, a member of the Thirty-First and Thirty-Second Congresses of the United States. He had also served as a delegate at the Constitutional Convention of 1853.
Benjamin Franklin Thomas, grandson of the famous Isaiah Thomas, had been a Judge of the Supreme Court. His brother-in-law, Dwight Foster, had also served in the same capacity and later had become Attorney General of the state.
Worcester's social world continued to be bounded on all sides by members of the distinguished Lincoln family. The Ex-governor Levi had been appointed Collector of the Port of Boston, following George Bancroft in that position. (This was at the time when much of
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America's import was handled at Boston. With the position went great honor and responsibility.) Mr. Lincoln had also served in the State Senate and as a presidential elector-and of course, as Mayor of Worcester.
Among the ten children of the first Levi Lincoln, he was the only one left. Inscriptions on the Lincoln monuments in Rural Cemetery tell only the facts, but they also imply the heartache that must have accompanied them. Mrs. Levi Lincoln, Sr., had been the former Martha Waldo, daughter of the first Daniel Waldo, and her attempt to carry on her father's name was persistent but ill-fated. Her second son, whom she had named Daniel Waldo, had become a brilliant attorney but had died when only thirty-one years of age. Three other times she had named a little boy "Waldo." One boy died the same day he was born, one when he was three, and the other when he was just five.
John Waldo Lincoln, who was prominent in Worcester town and county activities for forty years, had died in 1852; Enoch, Governor of Maine, very early in 1826, two months before he was to have been married; and William Lincoln, the youngest of the ten children, had died when forty-two. William had been in many of Worcester's societies and associations, had been an active lawyer, editor of the National Aegis, and had distinguished himself especially by his History of Worcester. He had never married, but legend has insisted that the only portrait of him in existence was a miniature which belonged to a girl he was at one time planning to marry. In truly romantic fashion, this portrait has never been found.
Of the two Lincoln girls, Martha, who had married Leonard Parker, died in 1822, and Rebecca, the wife of Rejoice Newton, in 1855.
In the following generation, Levi Lincoln, Junior, had eight chil- dren, three girls and five boys. There was also Lucy, an adopted daughter. The third Levi had died when thirty-five years old and Captain George Lincoln in 1846 at the Battle of Buena Vista. Another son, Daniel Waldo, had become a lawyer, State Representative and alderman as well as the enthusiastic president of the Worcester County
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THE ADOPTED CHILDREN
Horticultural Society. Edward Winslow Lincoln (his name was changed from John Waldo, perhaps to distinguish him from his uncle of the same name) was the Governor's youngest son. He had been editor and owner of the National Aegis and Worcester's postmaster for several years. It was he who was instrumental in the founding of Elm Park, the first land ever to be purchased for a public park in the United States. A plaque on one of the field-stone pillars at the entrance quaintly reads: "Thought and Wrought by Edward Winslow Lincoln."
Exceptions and the Lincolns notwithstanding, the balance of influence was leaning hard on the shoulders of Worcester's newcomers- those friends of progress who thought nothing at all of breaking tradi- tions and destroying old landmarks. But this must be said: They were consistent, taking care at the same time to shatter their own precedents.
Worcester was wanting to become a big city. They meant to see that it did.
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Twenty Acres CHAPTER IV
TWENTY EXTRA ACRES and ten thousand dollars?
The trustees of Rural Cemetery had exchanged wise smiles and without hesitation had accepted their charter with these limitations. Small chance, they agreed, of their ever wishing to exceed such limits. After all, they had no revolutionary new commodity for sale.
But only eighteen years later they found themselves already exceed- ing these restrictions-not much, to be sure, but it would have been embarrassing if anyone had happened to be too inquisitive. Their funds, although modestly invested in only four conservative stocks, totaled $10,329.43. Investments were in three banks-The Worcester, Quinsigamond, and Central-and the Worcester and Nashua Rail- road Company.
As far as land was concerned, twice they had made considerable additions. Three years after the Cemetery's incorporation, five and a half acres had been added, making a total of fourteen and a half acres. This new land had belonged to the Goulding family and had cost the Cemetery $245. (Other deeds were given at the time to perfect the title.) This new section was estimated to furnish three hundred lots.
Eight years later, in 1849, President Levi Lincoln complained, "The area of the Cemetery is very restricted in extent," prompting the trustees to buy more land on the north and east, again from Eli Goulding.
This extension made the Cemetery poorer by almost five thousand dollars, but added sixteen acres and fifty-one rods of land. At least
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Rural Cemetery's first monument, erected by Daniel Waldo
TWENTY ACRES
four acres of this land was low and swampy, covered with thick bushes. The rest of the area was high, sandy land which was im- mediately ploughed and sown with buckwheat. Opportunists that they were, the trustees later harvested 137 bushels of buckwheat which sold for eighty-two dollars. It was estimated that later this land would accommodate a thousand new lots.
By 1853 two miles of new roads had been made. By buying an- other small piece of land on which there was a great deal of coarse gravel, it had been possible to reclaim the swamp. Another small pond had been formed to take care of the springs at the border of the Cemetery, whereas the old pond had become almost full, with a large island in its center.
But Mr. Lincoln again com- plained: "All the lots in the orig- inal donation by Mr. Waldo and in the second purchase with exception of seven have been sold, and of these, three have been reserved from sale on account of the large trees growing in them."
That old restriction of "twenty acres" kept presenting its frustrating barrier, to say nothing of the guilty feeling it gave the trustees, who knew full well they had already exceeded their limits by at least two or three acres.
"Shades of respectability!" shuddered men like Ex-governor Levi Lincoln and Judge Thomas Kinnicutt. "We'd better make this legal."
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In 1856 the State Legislature agreeably amended the original charter by taking off all restrictions, land-wise and money-wise. "The Corporation," Mr. Lincoln sighed with relief, "may now hold as much real estate as their purposes may require and any sum of money they may become the possessors of."
In later years, other restrictions such as city expansion were to prove just as frustrating as had the original charter in the limiting of land acquisition. But little did Mr. Lincoln, or anyone else for that matter, realize the importance of the freedom granted in 1856 for the growth of Cemetery funds. By that provision, the whole future of Rural Cemetery was assured.
The man who gave the original nine acres, and who has been remembered as the Cemetery's founder-Daniel Waldo-was not alive to witness the changes.
In 1845 when he was eighty-two, Mr. Waldo just quietly slept away one night, saying a quiet "good-bye" to the town he had helped to make. As his friend Levi Lincoln wrote in Mr. Waldo's obituary, he had relinquished his town to "younger men whose character he had assisted to form and whose worthiness he approved."
His death caused more than common comment. He had not only been one of Worcester's most respected citizens, he had also been very wealthy. A young lawyer, J. Henry Hill, wrote in his diary at the time: "The man of half a million in a community like ours is looked upon as princely rich."
Of course, the young Mr. Hill was only speculating about the extent of Mr. Waldo's fortune. There was no one to know how wealthy Mr. Waldo really had been, for as fast as money had come to him he had silently and secretly passed much of it along to others. There were many public benevolences, but there were many more instances when people had anonymously benefited from his generosity. When he died (he never married), his estate was distributed to many good causes, both charitable and educational.
The first monument in Rural Cemetery had been placed there by Daniel Waldo himself.
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TWENTY ACRES
Frederick W. Gale, a young lawyer in the office of his uncle, Isaac Davis, had written about this monument in a letter to his sister. The letter had been written a few months after the Cemetery was dedi- cated-as a matter of fact, on Patriot's Day, April 19, of the following year. "I took a walk this forenoon," his letter reads, "out to the Cemetery ground which is about a mile from our office, and it is really delightful to get out into the open fields. . . . Our new Cemetery contains one monument of an elegant and tasteful character. It is large, of white marble, perfectly snowy, surmounted by an urn and is made in good taste. It belongs to the Waldo family."
Daniel Waldo had always been a quiet man, quick to act on generous impulse, but slow to talk about it. The few words he did use were wise and simple. In matching simplicity, Mr. Lincoln concluded his obituary with the solid words: "Thus has passed the long and useful life of this good man." Mr. Waldo would have liked that.
Again and again Mr. Waldo had declined offices offered in defer- ence to his position in the community. Conspicuous exceptions were the forty-one and seventeen year terms he served as president respec- tively of The Worcester Bank and the Worcester County Institution for Savings.
Mr. Waldo had not even been made a trustee of the Cemetery the first year of its incorporation. In the following year, however, Joseph Kendall relinquished his post to Mr. Waldo, who, for that year, was president of the corporation. It was a short-lived presidency, for at the next election he insisted that Mr. Lincoln resume the office.
Trustees of Rural also missed the keen twinkling eye and wit of William Lincoln. Comparatively young, he had died in 1843, when only forty-two. From the beginning, he had been clerk of the corpora- tion. He was, by nature, a historian. In his fastidious carefulness he had written in 1842: "Nearly four years have passed since the Rural Cemetery in Worcester was consecrated by the prayers of the living for the repose of the dead." It seemed, he went on to say, that it "would not be unacceptable to the proprietors to review the history of their association and to collect into one paper these facts which may be
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The Paine home on Lincoln Street. Mr. and Mrs. Frederick W. Paine are in middle foreground
useful or interesting for future reference before they have faded from recollection."
The proprietors undoubtedly appreciated his extra effort, and it's safe to say that at least one person has had recent reason to be extremely grateful for his thoughtful trouble.
Elected to serve as Mr. Lincoln's successor as clerk was Henry K. Newcomb. Mr. Newcomb was married to the granddaughter of the
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Rev. Thaddeus Maccarty and had built a large house across from Levi Lincoln's estate on Elm Street (where the library now is) in 1854. He had been accountant in The Worcester Bank, the first secretary of the Worcester Mutual Fire Insurance Company, and Crier of Courts for Worcester County for many years.
In 1850 Clarendon Harris became clerk. Mr. Harris had given up his bookstore to become secretary of the State Mutual Life Assurance Company when it had been organized in 1844. Ten years later he had also become the first treasurer of the Five Cents Savings Bank.
Judge Thomas Kinnicutt, the man who named the Cemetery, had been elected as a trustee to replace John Lincoln who served seven years until his death. Other members of the Board were George T. Rice, Stephen Salisbury, and Henry W. Miller. Isaac Davis, one of the original trustees, had served for six years until he was elected a Demo- cratic State Senator.
Three of the Board members-all born in 1800-were, easy to figure, just fifty-six in 1856. They were Clarendon Harris, Thomas Kinnicutt, and Henry Miller. The senior members were Levi Lincoln who was seventy-four, and Frederic W. Paine who was sixty-nine.
It was conceded by everyone that Mr. Paine was the worker of the lot. Because of his intense interest in horticulture, he worked long and patiently to make the Cemetery beautiful. This was no easy task. Individual lots were taken care of by their owners, and this usually resulted in a motley landscape arrangement. The monuments were just as varied. They were, according to the record, "neat and plain or elegant and expensive, according to the taste and wealth of the pro- prietor." Some were rough stones, others were of hewn granite, and a few of polished marble. Each lot was required to be fenced, and five chestnut posts were placed on every lot to promote this project. The corporation agreed to pay for the setting of a stone curbing around each lot, but insisted that the proprietors buy the stone.
It was Mr. Paine who first tried to centralize the landscape plan- ning, and in 1844 it was voted that he, George Rice, and Henry Miller be a committee to supervise the ground. At a later time there were
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substitutions for the other two members, but always Mr. Paine re- mained on the committee. Two years later the committee was dignified by naming it "The Executive Committee," in quotes. Years later, the name was still in quotes.
In 1851 Mr. Paine was very ill, though not fatally so by any means, and the trustees were panicky with apprehension at their annual meet- ing. He had had the principal direction and management of the grounds, as well as the responsibility for the disbursement of funds. This not only made the annual report unavailable at the moment, but also provoked an extravagantly complimentary speech from President Lincoln:
"It would be unjust not to add that NO ONE, nor indeed, to ALL TOGETHER, is the corporation more indebted than to Mr. Paine, who from the beginning, with a heart devoted to the object has given much of his time, season after season, to a personal superintend- ence of all the labors of the place intermitting no attention and fore- going no opportunity to hasten on its improvements, and conform the harmony of design to the attractions of this consecrated plot."
The capital letters for emphasis were written boldly into the record.
In a general way, Mr. Paine's attitude set a precedent. Ever since, no matter how active all the trustees have been, there has always been one to take an especially personal responsibility for the welfare of the Cemetery.
Most of the work of the early years resulted from the parcels of land which were periodically acquired. Many trees had to be cut "from the ancient forest"; other trees had to be relocated. Gravel was carted in great quantities to the low land. Compost was placed around the roots of the trees, and a small nursery was started.
Let it never be forgotten that the trustees did most of the work.
There was no regular help at all, except for one person who locked the gates from "sunset to sunrise, and on the Sabbath." This, it was explained, was "to guard against the inroad of cattle, as well as against the improper driving of carriages for recreation and amusement on the Lord's Day."
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Notices were posted forbidding "fast driving," and other restraints were announced. "There are complaints," observed Mr. Lincoln, "that rude scenes of boisterous mirth, and of otherwise unbecoming conduct are not infrequently witnessed; and that this place consecrated to the dearest memories and of sacred associations of the living with the dead has become too much a resort for the unreflecting and idle."
For years, the biggest problem of Rural Cemetery was its fence. Every annual report contained some mention of it, and rarely was the mention favorable.
In 1850 the original posts of the picket fence surrounding the grounds were found to be rotting away. The trustees recommended stone posts for their replacement and even went so far as to express confidence that eventually corporation finances would warrant con- struction of an iron fence.
This was objective Number One.
The next goal was to build a chapel.
And another ambition, the tired trustees agreed, was to hire some person on a full-time basis to care for the Cemetery grounds.
It was many years before the first two objectives were accomplished. But the last was effected comparatively soon.
The trustees were not men to put the cart before the horse or a man before a home. Before they hired Patrick Holden to take charge of the Cemetery grounds at $225 a year, they had bought a house for him to live in free of charge. (They later voted a yearly $25 bonus for him because of the increased cost of living.)
The house they bought in 1853 was situated across from the Ceme- tery on Grove Street. At the time, it was known merely as the Vose property and was bought for $1200. The price included a one-story house, a lot of 18,000 square feet, and a small barn.
A century later this house came into its own, historically speaking, when it was presented by the trustees of Rural Cemetery to Old Stur- bridge Village, New England's reconstructed eighteenth century village. The building's distinction lay in the fact that it had once been Isaiah Thomas' counting house. It had been built in 1784 and
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originally had sat proudly next to the Thomas printing shop. Later it had been occupied as an office by Edward D. Bangs, the man who had suggested the Cemetery. The house had become a bookstore, a painter's shop, and a barbershop, before being moved to Grove Street and converted into a home.
Patrick Holden did not know when he started to work for Rural Cemetery that he would be remembered longest for living in Isaiah Thomas' former counting house.
Across the way, in the "Garden of the Graves," as Mr. Lincoln sometimes called it, there were more and more monuments to add testimony to the transience of life.
One of the first stones to be erected was for Aaron Bancroft, the beloved pastor of the Second Parish. He was eighty-four when he died, the year after the Cemetery had been dedicated. Shortly before his death he had remarked: "I am the oldest man in the parish. I have been longer in a married state with one wife than any other living member of our community. I have outlived my generation."
On the stone erected by his parish for Mr. Bancroft there is reference to Lucretia, his extremely devoted wife, who "was not long separated from him by an earlier summons to her reward." She had died in April, less than five months before her husband.
There were stones in the Cemetery with familiar names of Flagg, Stowell, Thayer, Paine, Lincoln, and Salisbury. Some represented a three-score span of life. But there were others that told sad little stories of unexpected grief.
There was, for instance, the inscription for the two-year-old daugh- ter of the Rev. Seth Sweetser, the new minister for Mr. Waldo's Meeting House. She died in February, and in less than two months, so, too, had her little sister, six months old. In another case, the wife of Charles Washburn, the manufacturer, died, and six days later, her nine-day-old son. Ichabod Washburn's whole family-his wife and two daughters (one was the young wife of Philip Moen)-died within a three-year interval. His only son had died in infancy.
By 1856 Rural Cemetery was financially sound, an Act of Legis-
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Isaiah Thomas Counting House
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Its original location on Main Street, next to the Court House
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The house after being moved to Grove Street and with the addition of a French roof. At this time it was the home of the Cemetery superintendent
The house as it now stands in Old Sturbridge, a recreated eighteenth century village
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lature had released all restrictions for its growth, and the corporation owned a house for its new superintendent.
But the most significant event of the whole period since its beginning came when in 1856 the trustees recommended that "authority be given them to receive money in trust from any person desirous of providing in that way, for the care of their burial lots in future times."
In this casual way, the idea for Perpetual Care was first introduced to Rural Cemetery.
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Nothing Quite the Same CHAPTER V
NOTHING WAS QUITE THE SAME after 1868.
That was the year Levi Lincoln died. Almost as if the town had been waiting in deference to him, immediately afterwards it handed the reins to a younger and different group of men.
There were several factors involved-factors such as immigration, the Civil War, the entrance of Government into everyday affairs, and the natural progress of life toward a new generation.
Worcester was no longer a closed corporation, dictated in its economic and social affairs by a few influential men. Largely because of immigration, Worcester had increased fifty per cent in ten years. Time, with its twin hazards of life and death, had conspired with immi- gration, with the result that in 1868 Worcester had almost an entirely new set of citizens. It was a citizenry that was not exactly indifferent, but perhaps, shall we say, unimpressed by the social leaders of yester- day's Worcester. To them, such names as Lincoln, Paine, and Flagg meant no more than, if as much as, their own.
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