USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Shirley > Shirley uplands and intervales; annals of a border town of Middlesex, with some genealogical sketches > Part 3
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I, the subscriber, have this day agreed with James Parker to live and serve him one hole year from the twelfth day of this present April; for which said J Parker is to pay the signer, Leonard Sweirs, fifty five dollars for his service; said Leonard to have all his washing & mending dun free of charge, and to have training and muster days free; if said Leonard Sweirs leave said J Parker before the year is out, he agrees to pay said J Parker the rent of the oxen that William Sweir has now in keeping, of said Parkers, now in keeping we each agree to this
his WILLIAM + SWEIRS mark LEONARD + SWEIRS his mark JAMES PARKER
Shirley April 13th 1825 Attest BETSY WOOSTER
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THE BUSINESS OF FARM LIFE
Poor James Parker! In his later years these agreements were very frequent; perhaps he became harsh and crabbed or perhaps laborers were restless; anyhow his "help" were always running away, and he was con- tinually trying new men, whose tenure was but short.
I will here insert a real indenture of about a hundred years ago, which shows that at that time the vocation of an husbandman was as truly a trade to be learned as that of cobbler, miller, blacksmith or any other. Young boys were apprenticed to this trade of the soil. The custom, also, in large measure, solved the problem of help for the farmers of that day. The low wages paid the ap- prentices for their service gives some explanation of the acquisition of a comfortable living by many farmers. This indenture supplies a vivid picture of the duties of the apprentice and his master. The father's caution in demanding education "if the said apprentice is capa- ble to learn," shows how meagre the learning was in those days among the poorer classes:
THIS INDENTURE WITNESSETH, that David Atherton of Shirley in the County of Middlesex and Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Yeoman, hath put and placed and by these presents doth put and bind out his son David Atherton Jun™- and the said David Atherton Jun' doth hereby put, place and bind out himself as an Apprentice to James Parker Esqr of Shirley in the County and Commonwealth aforesaid to learn the art or trade of an husbandman; the said David Atherton Jun" after the manner of an Apprentice to dwell with and serve the said James Parker Esq" from the day of the date hereof untill the eight of January one thousand, eight hundred and twenty four, at which time the said apprentice if he should be living will be twenty one years of age-During which time or term the said apprentice his said master well and faithfully shall serve, his secrets keep, and his lawful com- mands everywhere at all times readily obey, he shall do no
Ho
ELISHA DODGE'S BLACKSMITH SHOP, CENTRE ROAD THE SITE OF TRINITY CHAPEL
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THE BUSINESS OF FARM LIFE
damage to his said master, nor wilfully suffer any to be done by others, and if any to his knowledge be intended, he shall give his master seasonable notice thereof. He shall not waste the goods of his said master, nor lend them unlawfully to any; at cards, dice or any unlawful game he shall not play, fornica- tion he shall not commit, nor matrimony contract during the said term; taverns, ale-houses or places of gaming he shall not haunt or frequent; from the service of his said master he shall not absent himself, but in all things and at all times he shall carry himself and behave as a good and faithful Appren- tice ought, during the whole time or term aforesaid-and the said James Parker Esq" on his part doth hereby promise, covenant and agree to teach and instruct the said apprentice or cause him to be instructed in the art or trade of husbandman by the best way and means he can, and also to teach and in- struct the said apprentice or cause him to be taught and in- structed to read and write and cypher to the Rule of Three if said apprentice is capable to learn and shall faithfully find and provide for the said apprentice good and sufficient, meat, drink, clothing, lodging and other necessaries fit and conven- ient for such an apprentice during the term aforesaid, and at the Expiration thereof shall give unto the said apprentice two good suits of wearing apparel, one for Lord's Day and the other for working days and also Eighty Dollars in good curant money of this Commonwealth at the end of said term. In testimony whereof the said parties have hereunto inter- changeably set their hands and seals this sixteenth day of October in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twenty.
DAVID ATHERTON JAMES PARKER
In 1804, James Parker had completed most of the work on his house at the Centre and had moved in. The small jobs that remained he hired Aaron Lyon and Samuel Haynes to do. Three of the contracts for build- ing have been saved, and show that even this form of labor was paid for in all kinds of ways. The earliest contract is for the porch :
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SHIRLEY
We the subscribers have agreed for Aaron Lyon to fraim, raise, & finish a pourch on the front side of James Parker Dwel- ing house; sd poarch not to exceed ten feet in length, nor six in breadth; said Lyon to do all the work Handsomely and well workmanlike, and to find all the stuff to said porch, except the timber for the fraim; said Parker to find the glass, nales, & hinges sutable for to do said work, for which said Parker is to pay said Lyon thirty two dollars and fifty Cents at the Close of said work, in neet cattle, or rye, or specrey Notes on demand against other men, that are recoverable; said Parker to board said Lyon one month while doing said work.
AARON LYON JAMES PARKER
It takes some business acumen to make a man take, as pay, notes which have to be collected against a third party. But any one who reads James Parker's papers will be convinced that such acumen was not lacking in his character. He does not seem to have been unkindly but he did know how to make a bargain:
Memorandon, whereas Samuel Hanes hath Undertaken to build for James Parker his Garrit stairs, and lay said Garrit floor, & the sealing from the floor up to the roof, by the stoods; said floor & partitions to be well plained and Matched; said stairs to be made equal to the chamber stairs, and the partitions to be plained & Matched, and the Doors to be cased; all to be Don workmanlike to said Parkers acceptance by the 25 of March; for which said Parker is to board said Hanes sixteen days; and to pay said Hanes ten Dollars and fifty Cents at or before the first of December next
SAMUEL HAYNES JAMES PARKER
Att LEONARD M. PARKER N. B. Sd Hanes to help Drink 12 mug tod Every Day
& larth the way of the chamber stairs
Shirley Feby ye 10, 1804.
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THE BUSINESS OF FARM LIFE
The addendum to this contract leaves one somewhat mystified as to just how Haynes's help was to be applied. The last contract is one in March, 1804, for the finishing of his southwest room in the same manner that his southeast one had been done. For the work Parker was to give Lyon and Haynes each five dollars in cash and a "note he has against Eleazer Pratt for a yearling at their own risk and he, sd Parker, is to board each of them eight days; sd Parker is to find a good hand one day & half towards lathing." There is an addendum to this contract also to the effect that if Haynes and Lyon "do not get the pay for the Pratt Note within six months sd Parker will take it back & pay them three dollars."
The men were not the only ones who lived out as they did their work, going from one house to another. In looking through Parker's diary we find that nearly all the neighboring girls, and some from Groton and Lancas- ter, came to his house, and entered into the same sort of yearly contracts that the boys did. I suppose that in this fashion girls were taught housekeeping. Parker's eldest daughter, and in fact one or two of the others, went out in the same way. We wonder that they did not stay at home to be taught by their mother, instead of leaving their mother to be assisted by the neighbor- ing girls. Perhaps it was the only way a girl could see the world, and was an outlet for natural restlessness.
Perhaps these contracts are of no great importance, but they show the economic status of labor a hundred years ago. As such they are vital human documents.
IV COUNTRY ROADS
LOOKING back into the past is like a view of far-off hills on a September afternoon, when the haze hides all the ugliness, and lends romance even to the common- place. So the drudgery, the inconvenience, and many other hardships in the lives of our forefathers are hidden by time, as we look back.
Many a poet has sung of the open road and the joys of wandering, so true is it that every road always holds a mystery around the next bend for our discovery. It fascinates us by its apparent inconsequence, abruptly going down steep hills which might so easily be avoided; and then we realize that even here the past holds us, and that we are following the time honored and sacred bound of some old farm whose owner in the olden days refused to be "labored with" for the town's good, and persisted in holding his land inviolate.
The mystery of why country roads are as they are can never be solved, for changing conditions have obliterated the thoughts which were in the minds of the men who laid them out. At first, of course, roads were mere bridle-paths through the woods, sometimes follow- ing old Indian trails, sometimes merely determined by the convenience of neighbors, but always leading to the mill or fordway.
In the beginnings of an inland town there were two great factors, the mill and the church. I name them in
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that order, because generally the mill antedated the church, as food temporal was after all more necessary than food spiritual. Therefore the mill and what was brought to the mill were of primary importance in the settlement. The mill was the rendezvous for all; so the first trails and the first roads followed the streams, and the intervales were seized first for tilling, for they often afforded natural meadows of very fertile land for the corn, wheat and rye. The pioneers had to have hay at once for their cattle, and meadow hay was the quickest to grow. So they felled the trees, and burned them and their stumps where they lay. In very early days, "Spruce Swamp," in Mr. Frank Lawton's pasture, was treated in this way, and Mr. Herman Hazen says that, when he was young, the half-burned logs, some forty feet in length, still lay there three deep.
As the mill must of necessity be set in a valley, so also must the church be set upon a hill-top, so that its steeple might be a reminder to all to live a godly life through the week. This divorce of the centres of activ- ity had its effect upon the roads of a town, and they became like the interlacing spokes of two wheels, with the mill and the church as their hubs.
From the first settlement to the present day there has been no more fruitful source of debate and quarrel- ing than this same subject of roads. In early times the trouble was the laying out of roads, and in the present day the best method of keeping them in order. Every man in a country town knows absolutely the best method, which each of his neighbors, and particularly the road commissioner, consistently ignores for some vastly in- ferior method of his own.
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COUNTRY ROADS
It is only by a chance vote here and there in the records of town meetings that one learns a little of the early inner history of the country roads. Quite early in the eighteenth century, if not in the latter part of the seventeenth, the various counties laid out through roads. These were almost invariably labelled "the great county road," the "great road" to the nearest large town, or some name equally significant. They were almost in- variably three or four rods wide, in distinction from the town roads which never boasted more than two rods and were sometimes only a rod and a half in width. The laying out of these "great roads" was of course soon followed by the building of a tavern upon them, in each town through which they ran. Thus the third social centre of the town was found. These roads were unique in their day, for they alone had bridges over the larger streams in fairly early times, while the brooks had to be forded. The town roads on the other hand seem for a time to have been the responsibility of the land owner. He was expected to do his part toward making the town easy of access. In 1754 Shirley "voted to free those persons from buying &c in the district that gives ways through there Land till Every man hath done there proportion in giving or buying highways."
When the town had grown large enough to have a church, a new era in road-making began. Many towns selected a site for a church in a most arbitrary way. A committee was chosen by the town meeting, consist- ing of a man from each of the extremes of the town, north, east, south and west, with one from near the geographical centre for a balance wheel. In Shirley on
DAVID BENNETT'S GARRISON HOUSE, GARRISON ROAD
·
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COUNTRY ROADS
September 20, 1753, it was "voted that Jonathan Gould, Samuel Walker, Jonathan Moors, William Longley and Jerahmeel Powers be a committee for to find a senter of the District and to find a Burying Place." Here we see the principle carried out. Jonathan Gould was living near where the church place was finally located, in the Centre; Samuel Walker on what we now know as the "Dodge place" in the east; Jonathan Moors, near the Lunenburg line; William Longley, at his mill in Shirley village, and Jerahmeel Powers at the north. He, Powers, was the owner of what was afterward the Holden* place for many years. Then these five good men, each with the desire in his heart to make his road to "meeting" as short as possible, endeavored to locate the centre of the town. Whether it was to be the geographical centre, or the centre of the populated district, tradition does not tell. Eventually success crowned their efforts, and after a lively town meeting their report was usually accepted. With the building of the meeting-house came the cry from many that they could not get to service. Then the town meetings show records like this:
"Moses Kezar t made application to have a road layed out for his family to go to meeting. Voted that he have a bridle road from his land south weast of his house across Mr. Asa Holden's land as the path is now trod, to heirs of David Bennett į decd, and so on weast as the path is now trod to a road from Asa Holden's to Hugh Smylie's, § one and one half poles wide." In this
* Nathaniel Holden.
t Moses Kezar lived at the end of Garrison Road in house No. 10.
# Edgar A. Jenkins, 1910.
§ Old Townsend road.
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case it seems to be the legalizing by the town of a "path" already laid out and used. The roads were literally bridle-paths, and though laid out a pole and a half or even two poles wide, they were not cleared to any such width for use. Travel was almost entirely on horse- back, and meal was often carried to the mill by the ox.
Almost no one used a cart in those days, for few owned one. In the early nineteenth century, licenses were granted under the excise law of the United States to those who owned chaises. This tax was to help raise revenue during the war of 1812. The tax lasted only about three years, from 1813 to 1816 approximately. So far as can be ascertained but two of these licenses were granted in Shirley, one to Stephen Longley who owned a wooden spring chaise, and one to James Parker, which is quoted below. Probably the Hazens and Whitneys, and Nathaniel Holden owned them too, but not many could afford them.
No. 1469
January Ist, 1814.
THIS IS TO CERTIFY, That James Parker Jr. of the town of Shirley in the County of Middlesex, in the tenth Collection District of Massachusetts, has paid the duty of two dollars for the year to end on the 31st of December next for and upon a two wheel carriage for the conveyance of persons with wooden springs-called a Chaise owned by him.
This Certificate will be of no avail any longer than the afore- said Carriage, shall be owned by the said James Parker Jr unless said Certificate shall be produced to the Collector by whom it was granted, and an entry made thereon, specifying the name of the then owner of the said Carriage and the time when he or she became possessed thereof.
GIVEN in conformity with an Act of Congress of the United States, passed on the 24th day of July, 1813.
H. W. GORDON Collector of the Revenue for the tenth Collection District of Massachusetts.
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It seems as if this discrimination could have done little to foster a democratic spirit, and a man and his wife must have felt very fine to drive in state to meeting or muster.
The early roads have two tendencies or characteris- tics: they follow the line of least resistance, and are prone to follow a stream; the latter characteristic is, perhaps, included in the former. Where there was no "path" already trodden to follow, it was often a long and bitter struggle to determine where the road should run and what damages should be paid. A record in 1758 gives us a hint of the method pursued.
Richard Harrington, Stephen Holden, and Francis Harris, a committee, agreed with Amos Holden that 40 shillings was "full satisfaction for the above named rode to which we have jointly agreed and interchangeably set our hands; it is further agreed that said Holden shall cut all trees and lumber on the rode and keep up his Barrs accross said Rode seven months this present yeare." Sometimes the agreement was not arrived at in so peaceable a way. Joseph Longley * and James Parker t had a long fight over a road across Parker's land. By 1780 it had reached the stage where "arbatra- tors" had been appointed. In June, Parker sent in a bill for £20:16:10 to the "Gentlemen Arbatrators" to settle "the Cost and Dammages that I James Parker have Sustained from Joseph Longley by his Protending to have a Road a Cross said Parker's land." At the end of the long itemized bill he adds: "N. B. Gentle-
* Lived opposite C. K. Bolton's house-the well is still there.
t James Parker lived at the end of Valley Road, occupied by Emerson S. Parker, his great grandson.
5
JOHN WHITNEY'S HOUSE, TOWN MEETING ROAD
(41
minithi
ʻ
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COUNTRY ROADS
men I have Had many a Fortiaguing Hour and Miles Travel Time and Money spent that you in your wisdom will consider." By August they were sufficiently friendly to agree to the bounds of their land,* but the original difficulty remained unsolved. In May, 1781, the arbitrators made their report. It was decided that the costs of the arbitration, £3: 0:5, were to be divided equally, and that Joseph Longley pay Parker 328 4P in silver money and that "the sª Parker & Longley for Ever here after Drop all Disputes & Controversies Re- latin to the Road Laid out by the town through sd Parker's Land for the benefit of sd Longley as Well as all Trespases which the sd Longley may be Seposed to have made upon sd Parker's Land." They were to forfeit "one Hundred Paper Dolers of the New Emission" for failure to agree to the terms. Happily for harmony they both signed, but like all cautious New Englanders, Parker added a clause that though he would have no further fight with Longley, he reserved the right to sue any one else. t
After the road bounds had been determined upon with more or less trouble the trees were cut, the stumps were drawn, and its construction went on to the next stage. A plough was run lengthwise all over it to make it as soft and convenient as possible for horses and teams to sink into in wet weather. Afterward it was harrowed to further the good work; as much of the soft
*1780, Aug. 21. "Col Prescott Came to my House to Settle the Line between Joseph Longley & I, we spent all ye Day on it and made New Bounds &c."
11780, Oct 20. "I mended fence Between Joseph Longley & myself; said Longley struck me with his fist and Lamed my Bool badly &c."- James Parker's Diary
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dirt was shovelled toward the middle as possible in the honorable intention of making a watershed. In reality they made the dirt and mud the deeper. Repairs were made by replowing, and by shovelling back to the centre the part washed into the gutters by the rains. Such a road was dust knee-deep in summer, and a quagmire in the spring when the frost was coming out of the ground. Within five years I have seen Centre Road, repaired in the same way for generations, become so dangerous in spots that brush was set up in it by public minded citizens to show the navigable courses. Over marshy places a log-road was used before the era of filling began. Traces of a log-road, they say, are still visible in front of the old house where Joseph Thompson lived for many years, and where the first town meeting was held. The road now called Town- send Road then joined the Great Road farther west, and ran over the dam in front of Thompson's house, and so on up over the hill to Townsend. There is a low place north of the dam where there was a long piece of corduroy road. Over nearly all small streams the mill- dam was used as a roadway instead of a bridge. If ruins are of any value as indications these dams were all very heavily built of field stone.
Another characteristic of the old road can still be seen-the ford. Now it is debased by the bridge along- side into a watering-place. Such watering-places or fords were of great importance in the old days and were the cause of many a neighborhood wrangle. One pauses at times to wonder at the litigiousness of our fore- fathers, and to ask what under heaven there was that they could not find actionable. In 1756, a quarrel
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COUNTRY ROADS
between two men, John Kelsey and Samuel Walker, who lived near Trout Brook at the east, was settled in town meeting. The town designated just where the road was to run-evidently where Walker wished-and compensated Kelsey by the clause, "provided that Walker leave a convenient watering-place at the old fordway [just abandoned for a bridge] for sd Kelsey and also free liberty to pass at such times as when the water is so high as to prevent passing over the crossway."
It was about this time that the fordways over the brooks were given up in most villages. Town meetings became lively again when there were bridges to be built. Here entered in the reactionary spirit of the older towns- men who had used a ford all their lives, and saw no reason in the great outlay for bridges. So many a com- mittee was named in the various towns "to see if it is necessary" that such and such a "bridge be maintained."
Bridge building seems to have been as quaint in its methods as road making, and the enormous cost of construction makes our modern extravagance dim its ineffectual light. Shirley voted in 1755 for a bridge over Mulpus Brook, a considerable mill-stream in its territory. They "voted to give Hezekiah Sawtell and Seth Walker £6:15:4 for to build said bridge to the [satisfaction of the] committee chosen for that perpose; Jerahmeel Powers, Joseph Longley and Jonath" Moore choosen a com- mittee to oblige them to build said bridge." The ex- travagance of thirty-two or thirty-three dollars for a bridge is appalling! A few years later the same town struggled to build a bridge over the Nashua, which makes its eastern boundary, and two bills sent in to the town treasurer show the cost of construction and its method of raising:
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To Lt James Parker Treasurer, Pay Abijah Frost one pound ten Shillings for three string peaces for the River Bridge, and his Recept Shall be your Discharge from the Town for the same.
[Signed by the Selectmen.]
The second is more enlightening still :
To Lt James Parker Treasurer, Pay James Dickinson eleven shillings, it being his Due in Part for Rum that was used Shall be your Discharge for so much. at the Raising the Bridge by Mr. Abija Frost, and his Receipt [Signed by the Selectmen.]
James Parker, the treasurer, they say was one of the most respected men in town. He was so smart that he could always command a dollar a day for his services.
The maintenance of roads in those days was a serious problem, and as large an item in the expenses of the town as it is now. Every citizen then was liable to a highway tax which he might either pay in money or "work out." There were three or more surveyors of highways in town, but generally three, who had charge of the work of repairs. The surveyors seem in their turn to have been controlled by the assessors, who annually sent to each surveyor a document such as this:
In the name of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, you are required to levy and collect of the several persons named in the lists committed unto you, each on his respective propor- tion therein set down of the sum total of such list it being your part to collect, it being a highway Rate voted by said Town for the present year, to be worked out in manner follow- ing for repairing the highways within the same, and you are to keep in Repair, all such ways and Bridges within your district hereafter mentioned. * * *
And you are to warn the several persons named in your list to work out the sums set against there names and to find there
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