USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Shirley > Shirley uplands and intervales; annals of a border town of Middlesex, with some genealogical sketches > Part 12
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It is hardly fair not to say that the maligned Spauldings were people highly esteemed by their neighbors, and came to be among Townsend's best respected citizens.
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XIV AN ANCIENT LITIGATION
FOR many years before the Revolution broke out there had been a militia company in Shirley, which had musters of its own and on special occasions went to Groton or Lancaster to swell the muster there. Mus- ter was evidently a hilarious time, and all sorts of things happened when the men had had a little too much rum and grew reckless. On October 24, 1770, James Parker tells us that he "went to Groton trooping, & shot a Pistell full, & hurt my hand, & stayed all Night at my Mothers, & Wallace Little with me."
Two years after, the training was at Shirley on October 2Ist. "Wee had a Training, a Raney Day; I had about 15 men to Breakfast with me, Sert Hazen with 3 men, Sert Fletchur with about 8 sholdiers, Bisides spektators; Sert Holden gave a dinner and then home." Samuel Hazen became captain of the troop and Parkerlieutenant, but for some reason they do not seem to have been pleasing to the public, for Parker writes, November 15, 1774, "was Training; the Old & young met, and Put out Capt Hazen, & I, & Egerton, & Put in Holden, & Obadiah,* & Richards, t for their offercers, & chose their minut men. Sol Smith had about 20 men." And so the fight began, for Parker and Hazen were very much disgruntled by being expelled, and the following March, at town meeting, the two factions met and fought it out.
* Obadiah Sawtell,
t Charles Richards.
OBADIAH SAWTELL'S TAVERN, THE GREAT ROAD
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AN ANCIENT LITIGATION
March 6. Was March meeting; Obadiah,* Francis,t & Asa, į Selectmen, & Walker, Treasurer; they layed Hog § a road as they Purtended, so they carried on the meeting as they Pleased.
March 14. Was Training in order to view Arms. Capt. Holden meet at the Meeting House; Capt Hazen, with our Partey, meet at M' Ivorys with about 41 men, so we Trained there all ye afternoon.
March 18. In ye afternoon I went to town meeting. They turned out Mª Ivory from goin Delegate, & put in Capt Harris, & turned out Mª Livermore, & put in Haskell & Walker; so they served the Devil High.
The times were getting too disturbed just then for the fight to continue, as the real outbreak of war was at hand. On April II there was a general muster in Groton; "it begun to Snow in Deed, Cold, raw weather." Most of the men of Shirley marched out on the nine- teenth, and tradition has it that only five were left in town. Parker is a little incoherent in his story of that time, and he omits to tell us how they got the news.
April 19-20. The Regulars this morning, well they came up as far as Lexington, killed eight men; from thence to Con- cord; ye 19 at 12 o'clock I sot off, & went as far as Lincoln, from thence to Cambridge ye next day. I saw a great Num- ber of Dead men lying on the road Both our men & Regulars; a great number of men gathered together at Cambridge.
April 21. I was in Cambridge. Multitudes of men of all ranks; it is judged there was killed & wounded of our men about 50, & regulars killed & wounded Between two and three hundred.
April 22. I went over in Rokbury, and stayed there all night; there was a muster in the evening.
*Obadiah Sawtell.
¡Francis Harris.
¿Asa Holden
§ Joseph Longley. The road ran through Parker's land, hence the bitter- ness.
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April 23. Was the Sabbath. I came back to Cambridge & heard Preaching in ye afternoon. In ye afternoon 6 of us sot of to come home; all work going on this day as much as any Day in ye week; a shocking Day in Deed as ever was seen in this Part of New England.
And so for some time it was a tale of enlisting, and of needless "larms." He records the Battle of Bunker Hill in language so inadequate as to be almost laughable. "This Day Charlestown was set on fire by the regulars, & a Number of our men killed in the Battle, & a number of regulars, A Very warm siege in Deed for the time."
Meanwhile our brave captain and lieutenant were keeping well at home, and far from the strife in Boston. Parker went down in February, and stayed through the last days of the siege of Boston. Part of his regiment was ordered to New York, but he was among those left behind in Boston till the first of April. He complains that "our Duty was very Fortiagueing & hard untill our time was out," but adds that provisions were "very good, & a general time of Health Throughout the Camp all the time we was gone."
And so he came home, where the old fight, held in check by the common peril, was brewing once more. They had a training and put in under officers, although Parker does not tell us of which faction they were. But in August the storm broke, for on the twenty-first he and Captain Hazen were arrested on some pretense or other. The fight seems to have been of the south against the north. Parker, Egerton and Hazen all lived south of the centre; Sawtell, Harris, and Holden lived north of the Great Road. Egerton seems to have escaped the enmity of the north end of town. And then we see William Bolton and his file of men marching up
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the hill from Sawtell's tavern, through the Centre and down the road to the Parker house under the hill, and marching back with Parker. Parker does not say who arrested Hazen, but we can well imagine the choice dish of gossip the scene furnishd many a household that night. Parker writes: "I was taken by a warrant Issued by Lt Colº Josiah Sawtell, by W“ Bolton & a file of men, & car- ried to Landod Sawtells at 8 o'clock to be Tryed by a Court Marshall. Capt Hazen was taken likewise. He was Tried this day; a great number of witnesses against us. My Case did not Come on this Day Until Next morning. I was orderd to Landlord Sawtells again." The next day he tells us that he "was Tried, & Brought in Judgment against us Both, in to be Cashiered by this Court Marshall; viz. Colº Sawtell, Capt Isaac Woods, Capt Thos Warren, Capt Jabez Holden, & Lieu Nathaniel Lakin. Ye Complainers a Great Number." They were by no means put down, for the next day "Capt Hazen & I went to Groton to Brigadier general Prescott, to Colº Sawtell, & So round in Order for recompence."
Parker does not tell us very much more in his diary about the fight, but his written complaint in conjunc- tion with Hazen is extant.
TO OLIVER PRESCOTT ESQE BRIGADIER GENERAL OF THE BRIGADE OF MELITIA IN THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX AND STATE OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY Sir
We Samuel Hazen jr and James Parker haveing been re- spectively Commissioned to be Capt and first Lieut of the Company of Melitia in the Town of Shirley in the th6 Regiment of your Brigade, in the faithfullness to Our Country, from a respect to Order and regularity and in Jestice to Our Selves, by the unwarrantable authority assumed and Exercised Over
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us by Josiah Sawtell Esq" Lieut Coll of the same Reigt, are Obliged to request, and we do hereby request you to appoint a Court Martial to Try the said Lieutt Co11 Josiah Sawtell, for Misdemeanures & Breaches of Deuty with which we herein charge Him.
Ever since the receiveing Our Commissions we have al- ways paid the readiest care and attention to Our Duty and the fullest Obedience to the Orders and service of the State; and still are ready and willing to Expose Our Lives and Estates in Defence of Our Country and in Discharge of those Offices to which we think Ourselves farely chosen And Honourably Commissioned.
It was therefore a Matter of the greatest Surprise when on the 21st Day of August last, we ware by the Order of Lieut Coll Sawtell Arrested and immediately carried before him at the House of Mr Obadiah Sawtell where he informed us, that a complaint been exhibited against us, for breach of Duty and thereupon he had Ordered a Court Martial to try us; which Court consisted only of Lieutt Co11 Sawtell (who ap- peared to set as president) of Capt Isaac Woods, Capt Jabez Holden, Capt Thos Warren, & Lieut Nathaniel Lakin. We assured Lieut Co11 Sawtell we ware not guilty of any breach of Duty :- however we desired a Copy of the charge against us. It was denied us, but Haveing other Learnt the purport of the Complaint, we informed Lieut Co11 Sawtell that if time Could be given us to git some witnesses we Could convince him that the charges against us were not True, and requested the Suitable Time might be allowed us for that purpose, this was also Denyed us. We then requested that some Persons who Happened to be present might be examined as witnesses and even this was denyed us. Here upon percieveing that no good was like to come of Lieut Co11 Sawtells Management of the affair, we Objected to the Legality of the whole proceeding, the Law requireing the court Martial in such Cases to Consist of the Majority of the Commissioned Officers of the Regiment. This Objection was also ruled aganst us, and we think by an Unsuffarable arogance and wanton Exercise of influence and power in Lieut. Cooll Sawtell. Then after Confineing us two Days, Circumstances of Unusual Severity Lieut Cool Sawtell Declared Us cashered,-and that we ware removed from Our Offices, and nothing more to do with Our Company, we have
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since made repeated application to Lieut Co11 Sawtell for redress of Our Injuries-But to no Purpose. These ex- trodanary proceedings of Liut Coo11 Sawtells, together with his since transmitting the orders of the State to an Improper Officer, hath greatly Disordered the affairs of the Company, Disquieted the Inhabitance of the Town and Dishonored our military government.
we there fore Charge Liut Co" Sawtell with Misdemeanors and breach of Duty .-
I. In a wanton & Lawless exercise of Power in appointing a Court Martial (by him so Called) to try us on the 21. Day of Augt last and acting therein illegally, Unjustly & partially.
2. Fraud in the return of his proceedings therein to Briga- dier Prescott.
3. Aiding & promoting Mutinous & siditious Opposition to the reagular and leagual Command and government of Our Company.
SAM11 HAZEN, Capt JAMES PARKER, First Lieut - Shirley.
of the Company of Militia in
Shirley Jany 6 1777
Parker is rather reticent of the later aspects of the case. The two abused officers evidently got their case before the courts, for on June 21, 1777, he says, "I went to Groton, Capt Hazen with me, & Notify Josiah Sawtell of a Meeting at Littleton. I sumoned W™ Bolton, &c." Captain Hazen was tried in Boston, in early July, but Parker gives us no inkling of the result, merely, "I went to Capt Hazen's to see him after his Troyal at Boston, with G Prescott & old fife." Parker talks often of "old fife," but whether he means Josiah Sawtell by this name does not appear; but it seems probable, for in July, 1778, "Capt Hazen sued old fife for Damage, 1000£." In March, 1779, he was summoned to court in Concord, and Parker went with him. They stayed a day and a night, and Parker's only comment is, that
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he "bought a hat for Jam." In September the case came on again at Concord, and again Parker's com- ments are irrelevant. In November they went to "Cam- bridge Cort," and again there is no report of the case,' only that he "gave $5 dollars a mug for flip." For our satisfaction and for a good ending to the story, Parker does tell us what happened at the end.
March II. I went to Concord Cort with Capt H. He won the day of old Josiah Sawtell, £800 and all Cost. Ye next Day I came home from Concord, after 8 OClock at Night."
I fear that he and Hazen stayed late to celebrate their victory. His own satisfaction came later and is recorded on August 30, 1780: "met Old fifes and settled with him and took 1000 Dolors, the rest in Notes."
XV OUR OLIVER HOLDEN
WHEN the number of celebrities who were born in your town is meagre, you cherish most carefully the one or two you have. Shirley has not been much blessed by the advent within its borders of persons later known to fame; in fact Oliver Holden is almost its only claim on outside notice. Many famous ones have visited us, and many have later had well-known sons or grandsons, but the famous have succeeded in being born elsewhere.
Having but one great one we are most anxious to honor him in all possible ways. We sing his hymn, "Coronation," at all our gatherings of local or patriotic coloring. I, at last, have made a pilgrimage to the Bostonian Society's rooms to see his portrait, and the organ on which he used to play. He seems to have been a gentle soul, bound up in his music, and one who should justly be regarded as worth remembering, be- cause the pioneers of music in New England were so few.
Much as we may honor the man in the abstract, we would wish also to honor his birthplace, and that has been most difficult to do.
Some years ago a stranger came to our town, in search of local color. He knew that Oliver Holden was born in Shirley, and, in his haste, decided that the house of Amos Holden, on Townsend Road, was the birthplace of Oliver. The original house had been burned, but a picture of the more modern house occupying the site
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was taken, and published. The occupant of the farm, duly elated by the honor thus conferred upon him, put up a great sign on his barn with the legend, "Coronation Farm." I feel much thankfulness to this erroneous tradition, for without it we and ours should never have settled in Shirley. When we were still only engaged, our historian, John E. L. Hazen, wrote a note urging us vehemently to come out one Sunday, to talk the situa- tion over, to drive to the spot, and to see what he had found by delving in the records at Cambridge. So one perfect May Sunday we went, and in less than no time we were wholly convinced that the accepted "Corona- tion Farm" had no right to the title whatever.
Nehemiah Holden, the father of Oliver, had a more romantic life than his brothers and sisters. He was adventurous, and in early life went to Louisburg, lured by the tales of the older men who had fought in the campaign, and who had seen the expulsion of the Acadians. In Louisburg he fell in with a young couple named Mitchell, who had come from Ireland, bringing with them a young sister of Mitchell's. Nehemiah courted the sister and married her. The four then settled on the Island of Cape Breton, where a son was born to the Mitchells. Mrs. Mitchell was a niece, tradition says, of the Earl of Carbery, and had run away with the handsome gardener, Mitchell. Soon after, Holden and Mitchell enlisted among the soldiers of the King, to fight against the French and Indians. During the campaign Mitchell was murdered in a particularly brutal and hideous manner, and his death so wrought upon his sister, Mrs. Holden, that she died also. Not many months later, Nehemiah married the Widow Mit-
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chell. One daughter, Elizabeth Mary Stevens, was born in Louisburg, and then the young couple came to Shirley to live, and there the rest of their children were born. Oliver was the fourth child, born September 18, 1765. Mrs. Holden was Irish, and both her race and gentle birth gave offense to her Saxon neighbors. She had been well educated and was able to give much better teaching to her children than was enjoyed by her neigh- bors' boys and girls, dependent entirely upon the district school. The hardships of pioneer life must have been difficult for one of her gentle rearing, but she must have been of fine temper, for her picture, painted in later life, looks serene. Oliver resembled his mother.
By consulting the records, it is evident that the farm on which Nehemiah Holden lived was along the inter- vale of the Squannacook River. He bought a hundred and sixty acres and a "small dwelling house" from his elder brother, Caleb. The farm and the land next west had belonged to Nehemiah's father, John; when the elder Holden died, his son, Amos, was given the western land as his share, and Caleb the eastern. Both brothers had settled on their land before 1747, when the petition for the division into a new town was signed. Four of Caleb's children were born on the farm, and then, having sold to Nehemiah, he disappears from this chronicle. Nehemiah's land lay just east of the ancestral Bolton acres, formerly belonging to Amos Holden, and that constituted our right of interest in the matter. We wandered about on that lovely May Sunday, and Mr. Hazen showed us where he thought Oliver was born. There is what appears to be a cellar-hole just at the end of Longley Road, facing Groton Road, a little to the
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east of their junction. It is on a high and rocky eminence, looking out to the east over the valley of the Squannacook, far below.
Last autumn, on a crisp and sunny Sunday, we went cellar-hole hunting, and, strangely, led by chance, we came upon another cellar-hole on Nehemiah Holden's land. We were in search of the Thomas Hazard and Charles Treadwell cellar-holes on the Squannacook Road. These two negroes lingered in town after many of the others on the Great Road had moved elsewhere. The Holden cellar-hole is just back of a more modern house, built in the side hill and now occupied by Mr. Jarvis and his daughter. The hole has been filled, but not so much but that in a dry season the depression and the outline in dry grass can be seen. A poplar tree grows in the middle, and is now the only monument to mark the place where Oliver Holden was born. After sifting all the evidence, Mr. Hazen agreed that this is, without doubt, the site.
In the early days, when Shirley represented the " com- mon lands" of Groton, John Holden was granted some very large tracts of land, which, luckily for him, were very near together, in fact formed a very irregularly shaped piece with the Squannacook as its eastern bound. The earlier settlers of a new area invariably chose cer- tain lands first, as more desirable. Of course one can- not be very positive about what happened two hundred years ago, but the man who probably settled in Shirley as early as any, after our first miller, Eleazer Gilson, was John Kelsey, who came as early as 1731. He chose the broad intervale of the Nashua, just north of the Fitchburg Railroad tracks, and just across the river
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from Major Simon Willard's "Nonacoicus Farm." The General Court considered that it was paying Major Wil- lard well to grant him the broad intervale, on what is now the Ayer side of the Nashua. The fact is that the intervales and meadows along the Nashua, Squannacook, Mulpus and Catacoonemug, and those around Spruce Swamp, "Reedy Meadow," Boardman's Swamp, the "grassy pond called the Horse Pond," and the little Horse Pond, were the most desirable lands. Meadow hay grows very quickly, and intervales are more easily cleared, and richer to till.
Now John Holden's land had two fine meadows upon it, one along the Squannacook, the other west of Longley Road, later known as the "Bolton meadows." John Holden had three sons, who were already married when he died in 1751. John, the eldest, stayed in Groton on his father's farm. Caleb took the land along the Squannacook, and put up his "small dwelling." Amos, the third son, took the Bolton meadows, and a piece of fourteen acres north of Groton Road. Amos had sixteen children, among whom was little John, the fifer boy, of whom Miss Helen M. Winslow has written. Later in life, Amos sold this farm, and moved over to the Townsend Road, to our false "Coronation Farm." Caleb, as has been said before, sold his farm to Nehe- miah, on his return from Louisburg. Now Caleb and Nehemiah lived in the house on the Squannacook Road .* The other cellar-hole on the hill was upon Nehemiah's land, but it is impossible, from the layout of roads, from maps, or any other source, to prove that a house stood there. The only thing that points to a house
*No. 9 on the map.
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having been there at all is the recollection of Mr. Herman Hazen, that in his boyhood a small negro cabin occupied the site. This must have been built after 1830, as Butler mentions no house there at that time. The cellar itself is in a place which looks as if it had always been wood and pasture land, for the soil is very rocky. Groton Road, moreover, was not laid out until 1774, nine years after Oliver's birth, and twenty-seven years, at least, after Caleb Holden's settlement. The road along the Squannacook was laid out twelve years earlier, in 1762, and followed a path already "trod," to the mill at West Groton, or "Tarbell's Mill." The description of the road is very interesting, because, after all the years that have passed, the landmarks are as easy to distin- guish as of yore. It was a highway, two rods wide, "beginning at the ridge by Tarbells Mill Pond, running across a Pine hill in Nehemiah Holden's land, so on across two Deep Gutters, so on by a ridge, and up a valley, where the Path is Now Trod. So on upon the northeasterly side of Holden's meadow til it comes to a Piece of common Land," and so on to meet the Town- send Road.
Aside from the fact that this road tells us just where Holden's meadow was, there is other proof of the an- tiquity of the house on Squannacook Road. In 1830, when the state ordered surveys of the different towns to be deposited in the State House, Caleb Butler, the historian of Groton, made a survey of Shirley. He made two maps, one of which went to the State House. The second, and by far the larger, is still in the safe in the Town Hall at the Centre. With this second map, he deposited a book giving a survey of the roads of the
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town, and a description of the houses along them. His method of picturing the house is unique. He tells the number of stories, the number of chimneys, and the number of windows in the front. If the house had but one story, and but one window, you have immediately a mental picture of a one-room house, with a door, and a window beside it. A two-story house with five win- dows, would immediately call to mind one of the type of Mr. Barnard's at the Centre, and so on. He also adds any facts, such as the color of the paint, if it had any. In his survey of Squannacook Road he started at Groton Road, and went north. This house stood on the right- hand side; it had one story, one chimney, two windows, and was "old." In other words it was the typical two- room house, so common among the early settlers. The word "old" is not applied by Butler to any other house in town, except Dickinson's Tavern on the Horse Pond Road, so that he was chary of that designation. All this is, of course, no absolute proof; but it is far more probable that a man would build his house in the open fields which he tilled, near water, and near the mill. It is far pleasanter to picture our little Oliver playing in the sunny meadow, getting lost in the "two Deep Gut- ters," which are still there, than on the bleak and rocky hillside on the Groton Road.
In studying Oliver Holden's career, one wonders whether it was not the union of the Celt and the Saxon, the gently reared and the strong pioneer, which made the son what he was. Certainly he was different from the other Holdens of his generation. In 1788, when he was twenty-three, and had learned his father's trade of carpenter, he went to Charlestown, where he spent the
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rest of his life. His activities were many and varied. He lived in a fine, square house on Pearl Street, with a large garden round it. This, when the nearby land was laid out in lots for sale, he called "the elegant reserve." He carried on his trade as carpenter and joiner at first, but much of his prosperity arose from shrewd dealings in real estate. He was connected with the First Baptist Church in its early days in Charlestown, but soon after joined another organization known as the Puritan Church. Mr. Holden was the head and preacher of this little organization, who followed the Bible implicitly, and made it the test of all their acts. They worshipped in a little one-story building on School Street, shaded by a great elm tree. In 1793, he published his first book of sacred music, "The American Harmony." He soon gave up his trade, and opened a music store, teaching music in his leisure hours. His "Worcester Collection of Sacred Harmony" was the first book of music printed on movable type in this country. Isaiah Thomas, the famous Worcester printer, imported the type from Europe. Holden died in 1844, leaving a name honored and respected by all, and one tune, at least, that will live for many years to come, "Coronation."
After the Holdens moved away from Shirley, the farm was owned by Samuel Walker, but who occupied it, it is difficult to say. In 1812, it had fallen from its high estate, and was occupied by the negro, Thomas Hazard. He had probably lived there since 1803, for Doctor Hartwell records the birth of five sons of Thomas between 1803 and 1812. He was a brother of Peter Hazard of Groton, who once occupied a cabin in Shirley on the Great Road, and who lived to be one hundred and
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one. His wife was Roseanna Tuttle, a "person of color" like himself, who died at the age of ninety-eight of the excitement attendant on his one hundredth birthday.
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