USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Shirley > Shirley uplands and intervales; annals of a border town of Middlesex, with some genealogical sketches > Part 11
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Up on one of the hills is a stone which they set up in an enclosure. I don't know just what it signifies, but they ever after called the hill "Holy hill." The inscrip- tion runs:
Written and placed here by the command of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Engraved at Harvard Erected, July 15 1844
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THE "SHAKING QUAKERS"
In later years the Shakers were a most valuable part of the town. Their cleanliness, their thrift, their hon- esty, appealed to the better element, and were a fine example to all. Elder John Whitely, our last resident elder in Shirley, was a most dignified and picturesque figure. He was born in Huddersfield, England, and mi- grated with his wife and family. He and his wife re- mained faithful to the end, but the children went out into the world. He was a large man with long white hair; he always wore butternut-colored homespun trousers and coat, made in a by-gone fashion, and a very broad flat-brimmed hat. All the town respected him and loved him, and we have a park in the village named for him. Dr. Samuel A. Green, Boston's octogenarian ex-mayor, used to drive over every Fourth of July to dine with Elder John and the sisters. He said it was the only quiet spot that he could find on that day. He enjoyed their hospitality to the full, and they enjoyed the advent of a man of the world to sharpen their wits.
The Shakers always stood for honest work, though I doubt if many now realize that they stood also for prog- ress. They were the first to make cut nails, and wire nails; they were the first to sell "yarbs" commercially prepared. They invented a musical instrument much in demand before congregations had bass viols or organs and while the hymns were still lined out by a precentor. The instrument had one string so arranged that it could give any pitch desired. The Shakers invented the apple corer and a machine to cut green corn from the ear. There were many other things they did, but the list grows too long.
In Shirley they built a quaint long house where they
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made "Shaker apple sauce" to sell; they had a broom shop, a mop shop, a blacksmith shop, and a house where they prepared herbs. Besides they made their own furniture. I think that few who have once seen their furnished houses could fail to pick out their furniture afterward. It was always the extreme of solidity and plainness, though the lines were often graceful. The houses partook of the same characteristics, and every- where one finds the most careful work. They, too, were very plain, but plain in so characteristic a way as to be almost a distinct style. Usually the only ornamentation on a brick building was in the cornice.
In 1830, Caleb Butler's survey shows that the North Family had but one house. This had three stories, three chimneys, eight windows, and was of brick, painted yellow. The house still stands near the road on the right-hand side as one goes toward Lancaster. The Shakers all say that Elijah Wildes, Sr.'s house was here too. If they are right Butler has ignored it. The Church Family, then as later, was the largest. As one travels toward Lancaster there was, first, a house on the right, with one story, two chimneys and four windows, also painted yellow. Next, on the same side of the road, was a long two-story house with three chimneys and eight windows. This was white. Directly opposite stood the church, which had two chimneys, one at either end, and two doors at either end also, two for the men and two for the women. There were five win- dows toward the street. The church was the only building which had a gambrel roof, except one barn. Next came what I believe to have been the two Wildes houses, Ephraim's next the church, with one story, two
THE CHURCH, BUILT 1790, SHAKER VILLAGE
THE APPLE-SAUCE HOUSE. SHAKER VILLAGE
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chimneys, and two windows, one on either side the front door. This was the same type as David McLeod's. Opposite was Elijah Wildes Jr.'s house. There was one other building, the office, which was like Ephraim Wildes's house, except that it had but one chimney. All the Church Family houses but one were painted white.
The year after Caleb Butler surveyed the town a trav- eller came along who was so impressed by the settle- ment that he wrote a long article in the Salem Gazette for August 5, 1831. Part only of this article I will quote, for it is too long to give the whole:
The appearance of the village is very pleasant, and as neat as that of other clean country towns. The families re- side in three large, commodious, old-fashioned houses, op- posite the meeting house; another is a no great distance beyond, and a fourth is just within the borders of Lancaster. The dwelling-houses are painted yellow, with chocolate-colored roofs; the meeting house is of pure and brilliant white, with also, a dark roof. A small building like a vestry stands by the side of the meeting house. On entering the house [the church] by the door to the male part of the congregation we were struck by the delightful cleanness of the hall. The floor was smooth and white as polished marble, indicating that what are nautically called holy stones and elbow grease are not spared. The whole area was open, without fixtures of any kind, except a small stove at one end. Moveable seats painted a chocolate color were provided in sufficient number to accommodate both spectators and members of the So- ciety. . All their shoes [women's] were high in the quarters, and had the little, high, uncomfortable wooden heels which are perpetuated in the portraits of our great-grand- mothers. In point of beauty it did not strike me that the world had suffered any great loss from their exclusion, for, not to be ungallant, a plainer set of girls and women could with difficulty be found. Their dress, except only their shoes, was of the purest white, with a neat cap of becom- ing plainness, and a kerchief thrown triangularly over the 14
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shoulders, concealing the neck. The devoted enthusiasm of the "Milleniel Church" manifests itself in a rigid simplicity, and the wooden hall had no other ornament than neatness. Its melody would have been improved if the initiation of the Hebrew demonstration had extended to the introduction of the harp, the dulcimer and psaltery; but their want of taste is a misfortune [with] which I do not believe either you or I have any right to reproach them.
He tells also of the only negro who was a Shaker, with her broad beaming face and great enthusiasm. This was Chloe Harris, a sister of Solomon, who lived on Clapp Road. Solomon's wife was Saloma Adeline Boston! Chloe and Solomon were the children of Melvin Harris, a colored man from Lunenburg, and Ruth, daughter of Silas Davis, a white girl. Silas Davis lived almost on the Lunenburg line, on beyond the "Pest House" and the house of Jonas Parker. Chandler says of him that no one knew whether he lived in Shirley or Lunenburg, but he claimed citizenship with us. Caleb Butler ignores his house completely.
The Shakers still wore the dress that had been the fashion when Mother Ann Lee came to them in 1781. I say wore, because as the settlement dwindled year by year the dress of the "world" crept in, and the uniform was worn less and less, except on journeys or at gather- ings. Their quaint religious dances, their primness, their "yee" and "nay," have appealed to many writers in their hundred and thirty years of plain and righteous living. William Dean Howells stayed with the Shirley community for some time, and there wrote his "Un- discovered Country," whose plot centres around this village. He spent his summer at their "Tavern," just over the Lancaster line, now popularly known as "The
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Brick." Also you can find an article about Shirley in his "Three Villages." The Shakers always treasured the memory of that summer, and an autographed photograph which he left behind. They were very proud to have known him.
As the Shakers were a celibate community their only hope of increase was from the outside. Many poor unfortunates came to them, as to a convent or monastery, either for peace or for support, and while none was ever turned away, each one desirous of joining had to prove his sincerity by a long novitiate. Some, of course, were lost to them when love claimed its victims there as elsewhere, and a brother or sister went out into the world to join the common lot. So to augment their numbers they took in many children of the poor, and many orphans, giving them a good education, intellec- tual, moral and manual, in the hope that their early training would induce them to join the "Milleniel Church" and stay with them forever. For many years they flourished, but at present their recruits are very few, and as the elder members die there is no one to take their place. A generation hence, and the Shakers will be known only by tradition. Their placid lives have given them very sweet faces; they have not had to worry for their daily bread. Each had a duty to perform as a part of the general whole; beyond that their respon- sibility ended.
Their tradition of extreme neatness and cleanliness they kept intact, but they added to it neither grace nor art. Their costume and their houses, being very simple and usually dull in color, induced in them a desire for garish coloring in whatever they made for their little
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shop. They seem very childlike in their love for crude color. As the society in Shirley dwindled the few sisters and the one brother, Henry Hollister, subsisted chiefly on what they grew, and the money gained from selling their milk in the village. Thirty years ago Brother Bennett Bolton was a familiar figure, as he peddled the milk through the village. He smoked a villainous che- root for asthma, and took snuff, but sister Josephine as- sured us that "Bennett was a good man." In 1861, he had some sort of an adventure, for the town granted him "$40.00 in full for damage received by being thrown into the River."
The few sisters augmented their slender means by a small store, which they kept in a room at the back of the office building. This room was always most care- fully darkened except when a would-be purchaser was within. Here you could buy candied flag-root and orange peel, oval wooden boxes, baskets, mops, braided rugs, small bottles of "composition" which was war- ranted to heat red-hot the coldest stomach, crocheted and knitted mats, and fifty other things. The Shakers lived so out of the world that a glimpse into their store was like going into a shop of our grandmother's time. Shirley Shakers never made the lovely Shaker cloaks which the Lebanon Society and others have made for so many years.
Across the road from the office was a long woodshed, and in a room above Eldress Josephine Jilson had a curiosity room. Here she had gathered together all the best possessions that were left to the three Shirley families, and also everything which she knew to be essentially Shaker,-all the inventions which the mem-
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bers had made, the machines used in their particular industries; in fact, everything that might be of historical value. She had some very good old china and pewter, a Wildes chair, clumsy and homemade, that was over two hundred years old. There was a loom on which their palm-leaf bonnets had been woven for years, and a very tiny one on which the palm-leaf braid, about an inch wide, was woven. The bonnets were fashioned much like a straw sugar scoop, with a silk ruffle behind, of "Shaker drab." The eldress always wore a white muslin cap of the same shape, held out by white wire.
When the Shirley settlement was to be abandoned, deeded to the Commonwealth for an Industrial School for Boys, the Shakers sold their goods and chattels. The change was very sore for the good ladies, for many of them had never known any other home; but they felt that their broad acres were to carry on a work that they had begun and had to abandon-the giving of a good manual education to children who needed it. So now most of our houses contain their chests and bureaus, or their chairs, rush bottomed, with a queer half globe in- serted in the hind legs, so that one can tip back without injury to the floor. With sadness our Shakers went to live in the Harvard Family, and with sadness we saw them go, for they left a place that no one else can fill.
XIII ABRAM HARTWELL'S "FIRE "
SOME years ago, at an auction, I came across a unique pamphlet which gives a glimpse of the town in 1832. It was printed at Lunenburg that year, and is entitled "A Brief History of a Most Destructive and Tremendous Fire which has been Enraging in Shirley for Months. By Abram Hartwell." This sounds like the Boston or Chicago fire, but when one opens this wonderful book one finds that it is really a scandal. I've tried to para- phrase the tale, but so much is lost in the change from Hartwell's vivid language, that I have decided to give the story as he told it and let those whom it will shock blame Hartwell and not me. He began most heatedly, because this scandal was in the newly started Congrega- tional Church at the Centre, over which the Reverend Hope Brown held sway, and of which Abram Hartwell,* like many nearby Lunenburgers, was a member.
"A most tremendous and destructive fire broke out in Shirley last Autumn much like that unquenchable fire kept up in the Valley of Hinnon and from whence we have the word Gehenna or Hell. This Shirley fire has been spreading and blazing more and more ever since last Autumn and still continues to enrage with greater violence. I was much alarmed when this fire broke out and made use of all the means in my power to obtain
*He lived on the road from Shirley Centre to Flat Hill in a house now owned by Prof. J. Sturgis Pray, and north of his own residence (1914).
THE REVEREND HOPE BROWN'S HOUSE, PARKER ROAD
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help and have the fire quenched; but it was all in vain." After lamenting that "no man throwed a drop of water except when I forced him to do it," he tells us that many were setting new fires until the "Building is now all on fire at every corner, top and bottom, and I cannot put it out alone." Finally, after giving much good advice to those who own the building and the fire, he finds that they are ungrateful and care nothing for it, and soon tells us what "by this time you may begin to mis- trust what this fire, which has been enraging so long, means. 'I guess (said one) it is an orthodox fire, or quarrel.' Yes friend, you have guessed right the first time. This orthodox fire was first kindled in a Bible Class last Autumn by Mrs. Lucy Spaulding* much noted for her piety and goodness among the Orthodox and a member of that very little church lately got up in Shirley. For well known, however unjust reasons, the said Mrs. Lucy went to a number of members of the Bible Class, of which I was the teacher, and not only slandered but lied about me." Hartwell says that her conduct caused him to examine "Orthodoxy," with the result that he withdrew from the Bible Class and "they soon became unbelieving and dispersed like Jews."
" After false and slanderous stories had been told about me, by the said Lucy, and been in circulation for months, I wrote to her as I thought proper. I accused her of slander, falsehood, and reporting many other things which were derogatory to my reputation. What I wrote, the family highly resented; and hurried away to their Good Little Rev. Mr. Brown for advice in so desper- ate a case. He ordered them to get together and settle
*She was Lucy, daughter of Willard Porter of Shirley.
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it. Then, agreeable to order, Mr. Israel H. Spaulding came to me and took me aside with his friend, and said, 'My wife received a letter from you last night. (Now this was a lie, for I learnt by the man, who carried the letter, that she received it that morning.) You have stated things in that letter against my wife, which if you do not prove, I will prosecute you. I have an hun- dred dollars in the house laid up, which I will spend unless you settle it soon.' I insisted upon his naming something in the letter which was not true. At length he said, 'You accused my wife of going up on to Negro Hill in Boston to visit Daniel Messer * in his shop unbeknown to me.' I asked him (Mr. S.), 'Is it not true?'-he said, 'No, I knew she was going, and she asked me to go with her.'" Abram then proceeded to mix Mr. Spaulding up and to prove that all he said was untrue, to his, Hartwell's, satisfaction; to prove, in fact that all the Spauldings were liars. "After Mr. Spauld- ing had caught himself quite a number of times, I re- quested his friend to take notice of what Mr. S. had first stated, for I probably should call on him to relate it at some other time. The reason why I followed Mr. Spaulding's wife around after the Messer Boys so last Autumn was because she said 'no one who was intimate with the Messers could be a Christian, nor have a Chris- tian spirit.' Mr. Spaulding pretended that he could not believe his wife could lie; and as to himself I suppose he thought it was utterly impossible.
"I asked him if he thought he had seen all the letters which his wife had sent to Daniel Messer? He answered,
* The Messers were a numerous negro family in Lunenburg. Two of our Kezer girls (white) in Shirley married into this family.
THE REV. HOPE BROWN
STEPHEN MELVIN LONGLEY
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'Yes, I know I have.' I then asked him how he knew? 'My wife told me so,' said he, 'and she will not lie.' I then told him of four letters which were then in Boston, and to my certain knowledge he had not seen one of them. Mr. Spaulding appeared so very important, that I thought I would ask him whether he believed that his wife ever told any person that she loved Daniel Messer's Little Finger more than all the Spauldings that she ever saw? And whether he believed she ever wrote in a letter to Daniel Messer, concerning him, that it was hard to give her hand where she could not bestow her heart? This rather blanked Mr. S. and he wanted to be going. So after notifying me according to law (or Orthodoxy), to attend court at his house on the last Tuesday in Feb. 1832, then and there to be held by his father, an Eccle- siastical Justice and very respectable Orthodox man, in and for the County of Middlesex-he cleared out like a white head."
Next the scene shifts to the court. Here we have Mr. Spaulding and his wife defended by the Rev. Hope Brown. Dr. A. Bard,* counsel for the defence, who was obliged to be absent, advised a plea for a continuance which was not granted. So Abram stood for himself, and told us the reason he submitted to this was that Mr. Brown stated that "he came there not as counsel for Mr. I. H. Spaulding and wife, but, as they belonged to the Church of which he stood at head, he considered it his right and duty to come and attend the court. This the Rev. Mr. said with a good deal of importance which I as well as others took notice of."
* The Lunenburg doctor, a peppery man.
THE "BRICK CHURCH, " PARKER ROAD
£53
min
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ABRAM HARTWELL'S "FIRE"
"The Plaintiff having neither remark nor evidence to offer, I had nothing to rebut, so I proceeded to show what her character was for veracity and propri- ety." Mr. Hartwell on this head began to ask Mrs. Spaulding a question which she denied was true, and which Mr. Samuel J. Cook* affirmed; and so Mr. Hart- well triumphantly remarked, "Here was one absolute lie proved out against the very pious Mrs. Lucy to begin with. And this, I tell you, dropped the important little Minister's head as tho he had had a butcher's knife stuck in the silver cord back of his neck.
"I inquired of Mrs. Lucy whether she ever told any person that I, not six months from the time the Bible Class was set up, was seen playing cards at Mr. Messer's? Reader, take particular notice here of the question I asked. The reason why I want you to take notice is because another orthodox woman come into the scrape. Now Mrs. Lucy answers the question very calmly, 'Yes, Mrs. Holden told me so.' This Mrs. Nancy Holdent is another very pious member of the same church with Mrs. Lucy Spaulding. I then asked Mrs. Holden if she ever told that story. She did not deny it but said, 'Abel Cook told my husband so.' I then called Mr. Abel Cook upon the stand. I enquired of him whether he had ever told such a story: he answered quickly no never such a word !! Now can you imagine what way Mrs. Holden took to get rid of this lie? No, you cannot.
*Mr. Cook lived on what is Groton Road in Shirley, but just over the line in Lunenburg. His son, Mr. Abel Cook, was one of the oldest sur- vivors in the neighborhood.
t Nancy (Kimball) Holden, wife of Jonas Holden, and sister-in-law of William Holden.
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But I will tell you. She started up and said, 'You do not understand it, Abel Cook told my husband within six months that he had seen Mr. Hartwell play cards there some time but did not tell when.' This Mr. Cook denied also ever telling Mr. Holden. But how little this looks like the question and answers which were distinctly heard over so many times. Justice Spaulding is an orthodox man himself, and he soon found that the more they paddled the deeper they were in the mire, and he gave the case in my favor without examining one half of the witnesses."
Mrs. Lucy had aroused Mr. Hartwell on another count which next came up in the trial. She had said, it seems, that the Bible Class "had better have a Christian for a teacher if he cannot explain so much." Hartwell says that by this time no one could remember anything; but Mr. William Holden,* standing at the court room door and hearing the question and the answer, for Mrs. Spaulding denied everything, said, "I know that to be a lie, for I heard her say it not a week ago myself." But this I did not hear nor know of until after the court.
"After Justice Spaulding had brought in the verdict and pronounced the said Lucy guilty, she very humbly acknowledged, and I could do no other but forgive her. Then to close Mr. & Mrs. Spaulding requested me to be again teacher of the Bible Class, and they would both agree to go; but I refused to make any such bargain. Now let me ask, how does it compare with the slander and falsehood they kept in circulation for months. A short time ago I was not Christian nor fit for a teacher; now they solicit me to be their teacher."
*Mr. Holden lived in a small house on the Little Turnpike just west of its intersection with Parker Road, known as the Putrin House.
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ABRAM HARTWELL'S "FIRE"
The last five pages contain a dissertation on the char- acter of some of the members of the church, with a partic- ularly virulent diatribe upon the Rev. Hope Brown, all so over-done, that you feel the poor man must have brooded so long upon his wrongs that he is not quite sane. Mr. Samuel J. Cook, who lived just over the Shirley line in Lunenburg, is the only man of whom he approved and who, he says, showed "what he professed to be, a meek and humble follower." Hartwell, like many another of narrow life, condemns the whole sect because he felt himself wronged by a few members, and he certainly does condemn them in no measured terms. At the end of all he writes:
"N. B. This history was prepared for the press in April, and I have been waiting ever since for them to quench the fire, and I would suppress the history. But as they seem to choose will rather than religion I must expose them."
One would like to know more of the dramatis personæ of this little tragedy, but they were all, so far as one can find, residents of Lunenburg about whom history is silent, except the Rev. Hope Brown and William Holden. One turns with wonder, after the excited denunciations by Mr. Hartwell, to read in Mr. Chandler's History that "Mr. Brown was a truly devoted pastor; was much
beloved by his people. .
. He was very active and faithful in the discharge of his parochial duties; was ready in season and out of season to offer counsel and exhortation. His separation from his parish and his removal from the neighborhood were very generally regretted, and many of his friends could hardly be rec-
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James Parker Leg.
Mr David Livermore
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Thomas Whitney txq.
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N286 18:17
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SHIRLEY COMMON IN 1830
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ABRAM HARTWELL'S "FIRE"
onciled to a policy that dissolved a connection that had been so long and so prosperously sustained." Alto- gether he seems to have been a good man and well liked. Unluckily for our pamphleteer he himself has left behind a reputation for crankiness and lack of balance which his "history" amply corroborates. Mr. Richard Bennett tells how, walking in the woods one day, he came upon Hartwell who was practising to becomea preacher. Hart- well carried through the whole service, waiting for his im- aginary congregation to sing the hymns. He never was able to succeed in his ambition, but had to content himself with teaching the "Mulpus School" in Lunenburg, and pulling an occasional tooth. He married, after the "fire" was over, Eunice Fairbanks. She was a spiritualist, and when she came to be buried, the funeral was held in the Unitarian Church at Shirley Centre. A spiritu- alist medium took charge of the service, "who stroked her forehead and shut her eyes and preached a strange dis- course."
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