USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Shirley > Shirley uplands and intervales; annals of a border town of Middlesex, with some genealogical sketches > Part 4
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own tools convenient for said work, you are likewise to allow each man so working six pence per hour, and for a pair of Oxen four pence per hour and for a Cart or plough two pence per hour while at work. If any person or persons neglect or refuse to work out the sum set to there name or otherways pay the same your are to Distrain them, by there goods or chattles, or for want thereof, to seize the Body Proceeding therein, as the Law directs in cases of distresses; fail not and make return of this warrent, and your doings thereon, by the last day of October next -.
[Signed by the Assessors.]
This old warrant of 1789 is interesting aside from its disclosure of old methods of taxation, since it tells us what were then thought to be fair wages for a man, his oxen, and his cart. If a man worked the modern eight-hour day, he and his team would have earned $1.92. He, of course, worked ten hours and made about $2.40. A man today earns three dollars with a single team or five dollars with a pair of horses. Considering the difference in the actual value of money, labor seems then to have been almost as high priced as it is today.
The ill-defined bounds of roads have been a source of vexation and trial of spirit from days immemorial. They ran from this tree to that perishable stake in an easily removable heap of stones, or from a dead pine, already on its way to decay, to a stake that any ignorant per- son might use for a cane or a club some dark night. So sometimes the road, being poor travelling in its two-rod width, encroached on the nearby land which happened to be better "going," or the abuttor being grasping, encroached upon the road. There is the reminiscence of a picturesque quarrel over a road bound which comes down to us through the old Parker family papers. In 1762 a two-pole road was laid out, known as Green Lane.
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For forty years peace reigned and then one hot day in August a man, who had been troubled the winter before, awoke to the duties of his wrath, took his pen and labo- riously wrote as follows:
SHIRLEY Agust ye 10, 1804.
Sir the Road Near Mr. Stephen Hildreth house is so Narrow that it is at sum seasons of the year Very inconvenant, and Bad pasing by the snow Blowing in, and drifting; this is to Request you as one of the sovairs of Highways For the Town of Shirley, to see that the incumbrance are removed, to make the Road a proper width or as wide as it was laid out. To Lieut James Parker
NATHANIEL DAY.
Why should the snows of winter be so vivid to the mind of a man sweltering in the heat of August?
The "incumbrance" spoken of above was a stone wall which according to depositions had been built in the highway itself. One of these tells what happened to
1808
Stephen Millet
the wall, for Hildreth brought an action for trespass against the "Sovair" of highways, in 1808, to try to settle the matter:
I, Stephen Longley, of Shirley, of Lawful age Testify and say that sumtime in the sumer or fall of 1805 I saw Jonas Jannerson building a stone wall in said Shirley. I then ob- sarved that he was building said wall in the road, and ast him the reason of his building it thair, he said he was ordered to build it by stephen hildreth, and should do it according to his Directions. A few Days after I past that way,
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and the wall was almost Thrown Down. * I have frequently past that way, and have Viewed it several Difrent Times, where the wall was built, and whair the old fence formily stood; and as thair is in two places sum part of the foundation or Lower part of said wall, now plain to be seen, which hes not been moved, I am sartain that all the wall was built in the, road -.
STEPHEN LONGLEY.
Thomas Whitney, selectman and clerk that year, also testified to the fact that James Parker told him that the wall was being built in the road, and that he and Parker went up with the town-book, containing the record of the laying out of the road, and ordered Jennerson to desist. It was particularly galling, evidently, as Jenner- son was using Parker's own cart to carry the stone. Jennerson kept on and built the wall, and Parker,
*1805 Sept. 16. I worked at the highways removed a stone wall on the road by Jennerson sit'g recd Ill treatment by Moses & Jonas &c.
1808. Feb. 20. I at Esqr Longleys had a number of witnesses viz: Dea- con Hale [Heald] Deacon Nathan Willard Ivory Wilds Revd Mr Whitney Esqr Whitney Amos Day Stephen Longley Jam & Moody Parker & John Rockwood took their Depositions &c.
Feb. 23. I at Whitneys attending on Brazers & Luther Lawrence taking a Number of Depositions to the Nº of 15 or Asa Holdin Eben' Gowing Jonas Page Sam11 Hazen Jonas Livermore Levi Wilds Stephen Bar- ritt Abel Moors John Kallcy Moses Jennerson Benja Hartwell John Davis David Kilburn Oliver Laughton Walis Little - Butler Scribe. Feb. 28. I at meeting, good slaying &c Mr Whitney gave those a good dress that swore false last Satterday.
Feb. 29. I notefied Stephen Hildreth to attend & Hear some Deposi- tions taken next Satterday at Esqr Longleys somoned D Brown Discorsed Some with sd Hildreth abot a Settlement.
March 5. I meet Hildreth & L Lawrence at Esq' Longleys to take some Depositions we begun took John Parkers & Deacon Brown & begun on Jonas Jennersons & to close the whole Law-suit Lawrence Whitney Hazen & Samson Woods Settled the whole matter and closed the suit and Hildreth & I accepted each other and came to Whitneys & took a good Drink. -James Parker's Diary.
Hildreth House
muting
House
con
laid out march 1 762 Town Road to013
North Town Road laid out February 28.1761
MAP OF GREEN LANE IN 1808 Showing site of the First Meeting House, where Robert Treat Paine preached
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equally determined, committed the act of trespass for which he was haled to court-that of tearing it down again. The case dragged on until the spring of 1808, when it finally went against Hildreth. Hildreth's one defence as recorded was to ask each witness in turn what relation he was to James Parker. As two, Stephen Longley and Thomas Whitney, were sons-in-law, and another was a near relation, he sat back in triumph, as if he wished to say, "See here! is not the conspiracy against me proved?" Unfortunately for him the judge did not agree with him. The last paper in the series is Hildreth's agreement that when he shall rebuild the wall which Parker threw down, he will do it in the proper spot. He also wrote an apology to his persecutor which is remarkable for its stiff-necked lack of sorrow.
So the world in the country wagged on for years, with the same beautiful, delusive roads winding here and there, and nearly always clothed on either side by trees and bushes, and the hardier wild flowers in their season. All must admit these roads were lovely, if one could ignore the dust or quaking mud beneath. All this beauty, whether seen or unseen by the traveller, was undisturbed until about seventy years ago when the rage for the toll-road loomed large in the minds of the country financier as a method of making money. The lure the toll-road offered was the shortest distance be- tween two points. Turning to geometry we find that the straight line is the only one which fulfils this condi- tion. And so these roads were built straight; no matter where they ran, no matter how steep or impracticable the hill, they held on their immutable way. They were broad like the "highway to destruction," and imposing;
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SHIRLEY
they were flanked by taverns, dealing in good Medford rum. In many ways they were like the highway men- tioned above. Many were the accidents on their steep hills; many were the men who were ruined in their taverns, and great, in most cases, was the destruction and ruin of their promoters. Few were really useful or profitable. Drivers preferred the old, easy graded roads that they had been in the habit of using, and the time they gained was no compensation for the toll rates. So gradually these roads became town roads like the rest-four poles wide to be sure, but otherwise indis- tinguishable. Shirley's turnpike began at the "Great Road" at the foot of Green Lane, and ran straight toward Flat Hill in Lunenburg. It saved a mile or more on the way to Fitchburg, but the grades were very steep, and, the novelty having worn off, the stage drivers went back to the almost level road along the Mulpus. Mr. Little had built a large house on his land to serve as a tavern, for he had in mind to catch the trade which his new road would turn from the old public house at Bull Run. Poor Little was never a popular man, and neither of his schemes was successful.
While our turnpike was still a country road, and its promoter, Wallis Little, was still a lad, the farm was isolated and lonely. The old Little house, small and one storied, stood on the opposite side of the road from the tavern under two oaks. After the autumn work was done, it was the custom of William Little, father of Wallis, to take a trip to Boston or perhaps Charlestown, to shop. Mrs. Little (Elizabeth Wallis), an Irish girl, was an emigrant like her husband. They say that as the time drew near for William Little's return she would
FREDONIAN HOUSES, FREDONIAN STREET
THE "GREAT ROAD" AT "BULL RUN," 1913
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go up to the top of the hill and wait. As darkness came on and her terrors of the wild animals grew, she would begin to call, with a true Irish crooning which rose to a wail "Latle, Latle, Latle," until Little appeared. Poor "Latle" was deaf and never heard her.
Nowadays the country road is shorn of much of its beauty. The state makes highways through, and the road under foot is fine. But alas! the trees along the edge are thinned to an irregular row; the bushes and wild flowers, the beggar-ticks, and burdocks have been covered with a deluge of gravel and have perished. The yeast man and the tea man and all the other itinerant advertisers make good use of the fences and walls, thus disclosed, without permission from the owner. Labels blue, and green, and yellow flaunt where once the aster and the goldenrod, Solomon's seal, and elecampane flourished. The road commissioners and the selectmen are cutting back the bushes and trees beside those roads which the state and county have not touched, because the automobilist, reckless from lack of supervision, makes the country by-roads dangerous to the driver.
So the march of progress is snatching from us many beauties; substituting wire fences for old weather-worn and picturesque stone walls, straightening and grading, so that gravelly sided cuts take the place of soft wood- land shades, and we are peering into the heart of the mystery of the open road, instead of letting the mystery enfold us and set us dreaming of the things that never again can be.
V CELLAR-HOLES
NEW ENGLAND has few ruins to mark its history and tell the tale of its past. More and more the old houses are yielding to the pressure of growth, and, unless the birth of some eminent man or woman makes if of inter- est, each old house in turn is doomed. This is more true of the city and its suburbs, where commercialism holds stronger sway; gradually from being a tenement, ill-kept and out of repair, it becomes a sort of tramps' roost; windows become the prey of the small boy with a stone; soon the door swings wide, and the roof shows holes. Sometimes the work is hastened by the relic hunter, and the paneling, front door, and stair rails, door casings, and mantels furnish a touch of the past to some modern dwelling.
Out in the country the destruction goes on nearly as surely. Many houses have already succumbed to fire, to wet and decay, and many more are following toward the same goal. The New Englander, who loved his homestead but who loved change and luxury more, has built anew, and his old house with the accumulated personality of years has passed to the hands of the foreign-born mechanic or mill-hand to whom it tells no tale. The same destruction has been true of the iso- lated farms of the country, so true that we all know the "abandoned farm." Just now the tide has turned and we of the city are buying back the farms and old houses that belonged to someone else's ancestors.
(n .-
JONAS PARKER'S HOUSE, GORDON ROAD
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CELLAR HOLES
New England's ruins are beneath the ground, and are mostly caved-in cellar-holes, more or less pictur- esquely overgrown. Our ancestors had learned from their ancestors in England to build well and strongly, and with the material they had at hand they erected houses for the future. At first they built log cabins until timbers could be hewn for building. The last log cabin in Shirley was Thomas Peabody's, near the Nashua at Mitchelville. The log cabin saw the birth of nineteen children and sheltered the old man until his death in 1827.
When the houses were framed they used huge wooden pins for nails and they made their studs twice as heavy as we do now. But in a great country like this where opportunities were constantly opening beyond, where horizons were so wide and alluring to the maturing boy, the homestead idea could not prevail against the unrest and wanderlust. So the years have seen one after another of these houses fall a prey to time.
From the old cellar-holes we can still gather much of the aroma of the past. Our forefathers were conven- tional and usually followed set lines. The chimney around which each house was built was the most im- portant thing of all. The base was always very large and set firmly on the ground. Most often this was of field stone until the first floor was reached, and in some early cases the whole chimney was of stone. Modern architecture has only reverted to the ancient form when it builds today its rubble-stone chimneys and hearths. The base of the old chimneys was on an average twelve feet square as far up as the middle of the second floor; there it tapered somewhat, but came 6
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through the roof fat and rather short and eminently comfortable. Nothing gives the old house such a look of home as its great chimney, like a plump motherly woman with a lap for all the children to cuddle on.
The great size had an object aside from the fact that the fireplaces were enormous to hold great logs. The warmth from the huge chimney pervaded the house and helped to heat it, as did the fires themselves.
The old hearth, I believe, was a curse in some ways, for the heat nearly all went up the chimney and left the family cold beneath. But perhaps, too, in those days it served as a blessing. If our forefathers hated to open their windows, as our country cousins do today, and sealed themselves hermetically when winter came on, it may be that the chimneys had their use in ventilating an otherwise unventilated house.
Conventionally, also, the houses always faced the south. The first houses were built upon one pattern. There were two rooms below, one on either side of the chimney. The chimney and its fireplace occupied the middle of the wall in each room. The space between the rooms on the south was utilized by a hall opening · by the front door directly upon the great doorstone; and the part toward the chimney by winding and very steep stairs. At the back of the two rooms the more well to do and ambitious built a kitchen usually the whole length of the house, sometimes roofed by a lean-to, or "linter" as the old deeds have it, and. in rare cases covered by the main roof. Above-but why pry into our neighbor's business-sometimes there were two rooms finished, but often there was one huge attic around the chimney where most of the family slept, if it were large.
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CELLAR HOLES
Sometimes the houses were built with only one room above and below on one side of the great chimney, waiting the time and money to build the other two. Mrs. Francis Harris, in the "east," lived in such a house, but she set to work to earn her other rooms. Palm-leaf hats were then much in vogue, and finally this industry built her two rooms, we hope to her undying satisfaction .* This is the house of which the story is told that one winter when a flock of geese were flying over, a goose fell down the chimney. The Harrises kept it several days.
When we look into these old cellar-holes along a road still travelled and still a through highway, we wonder why farm after farm shows houseless. Always we can see the old apple trees run wild; always the great lilac bush covering a greater area year by year, and upholding the homestead feeling bravely; and generally bouncing bet flaunting its ragged pink blossoms and proclaiming widely the old garden long since passed away. Once in awhile a brave magenta phlox will cling near the moulder- ing sill, or an old pink rose which once climbed the doorway will wander disconsolately through the grass. The meadows will be mowed for their grass and the cellar-holes, alas, are often the chosen dump of the nearer neighbors.
Houses that were burned seem seldom to have been built again-the family found it easier to move than to rebuild-that is the case even now, and the woodlands are growing in on once cultivated fields. Trees grad- ually fill the old holes, and then the wind and the rain, and the grass and time all band together to obliterate
*Now Mr. George F. Buxton's, but raised.
STEPHEN HOLDEN'S HOUSE, HOLDEN ROAD
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CELLAR HOLES
the spot where many have lived and died and struggled toward better things.
The town is full of cellar-holes that we have grown so accustomed to see that we hardly notice them as we pass by. Many roads that were once populous are now deserted from end to end, and if the roads did not lead from somewhere to somewhere they would long ago have been discontinued.
Almost as interesting in their history as the cellar- holes are the migrations of the houses which stood upon them, for fire and decay are not entirely responsible for the cellar-holes remaining. One of the houses on our farm, that of the Kelsey family, was moved a mile away to the Village and is now the orthodox parsonage. Nearby in the Village stands the house which was once its nearest neighbor .* A mile farther up the road stood "Priest Whitney's" house which he built for himself in 1762, when the town finally settled a minister. That, about a hundred years later, was taken to pieces, and it also went Villageward. There it stood for many a day, and still stands, the home of our first Catholic priest. Opposite the Suspender Shop is the old "Nat Holden house, "t moved from almost the most northern farm in town, and now a two-tenement house, made useful for years to come. It originally stood opposite the other Holden house on the Townsend Road, where one can still see the steps that led up to it. The fact is that our houses seem to migrate almost as easily as our young men.
Along the Squannacook is a row of deserted cellar-
* Next Odd Fellows' Hall on the west.
t J. Fred Brown's, once the Eaton house.
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holes overlooking Heathy Meadow to the north. On the southernmost lived Isaac Hall, the bass-viol player and hatter, who made our grandfathers' tall hats. He was a picturesque character in both capacities. He played his bass viol with such energy in church, that he has remained a very lively recollection to all who heard him. Reuben Hartwell said that his hats were "peculiar, because the fur never came out on 'em until they was two years old." Isaac had eleven children, the young- est of whom was a daughter, Rebecca. She "on be- coming a widow, joined the Shakers; and, after a trial of four or five years-during which she abounded in zeal for the new sect, declaring its members the only elect of the earth, and all others heretics against reason-she became enamoured of one of the brethren, William Smith, whom she married April 29, 1861, and returned to what she had deemed 'the beggarly elements of the world.' "* Next beyond Isaac Hall, lived Thomas Benson, near the old artificial Squannacook Pond, which has long since degenerated into marshland. We know little of him except that he married, in 1825, Mrs. Abigail Robbins. No children are recorded as having been born to them in Shirley. In the next house beyond, in 1830, lived Simon Page, oldest son of the Simon who came from Groton to settle on the most eastern mill privilege on Mulpus Brook. The younger Simon bought the house from Simon Holden, who had lived there many years. There are two cellar-holes on this place side by side; the older, the Holden-Page cellar-hole, is of the old fashioned type. The house which stood there was moved away. Simon Page came to a tragic end.
*Rev. Seth Chandler.
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CELLAR HOLES
Oliver Laughton, a neighbor on the next road, came over to borrow a gun to shoot a hawk. The gun was on the landing at the top of the stairs, and Page reached up and took it. It was loaded; the hammer caught on the stairs, and shot him near the heart, so that he died soon after. Later the place fell into the hands of Porter Kittridge, who was dissatisfied and moved the old house away. Then he bought Benson's or Hall's down the road, built a fine new cellar with granite underpinning and a great granite doorstone, and moved his new pur- chase upon it. He rebuilt it into a two-story house and lived there in some grandeur.
The Brooks house, near the centre of town, suffered strange happenings. It stood in a corner of two roads and in early times was used as a tavern by James Brooks. It was a two-story house at the time, but later when Asa Longley bought the farm he cut off the upper story and moved the house. Two cellar-holes were dug for it across the road. One was in too marshy land and was abandoned, and the second dug. The house stood for long as a one-story house, but later a second story was added, so that it returned to its former estate .*
The house next west of the Brooks tavern, owned for many years by the Hazens, was once occupied by a very interesting man. In 1729 Benjamin Prescott of Groton sold the farm, afterward bought by Asa Longley, to Nicholas Bartlett of Newtowne, as Cambridge was then called. Nicholas was a settler and built his house just southwest of where Mr. Boutilier now lives, near a cor- ner in the stone wall where a great chestnut tree recently stood. There he lived and died, and there his widow,
*William A. Boutilier.
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Elizabeth, also remained for the rest of her life, twelve acres and the house being reserved as her dower. In 1758, two years before her father died, Mary Bartlett married in Boston "James Dogharty." Five years later the pair came to Shirley and bought of John Bartlett, the executor of Nicholas, all except the widow's dower .* They built that year the nucleus of the Hazen house. It was rough, without clapboards, and had a lean-to roof to the west. The road ran north of the house in those days, and Dougherty owned only the land south of the road. The town records and the people all called him "Dehorte" or "Dehorty" but he always in the deeds signed himself as Dougherty. He owned besides the Bartlett land ninety acres on Centre Road, then known as the Solendine Meadows, now owned by C. W. Mar- shall. Almost immediately Dougherty began to mort- gage his property, for what purpose it is hard to say. He was a sea captain, and it may have been for trading purposes. His mortgages were mostly to Boston men, like William Coffin, Martin Gay, Francis Johonnot the Huguenot, and John Lucas. Strangely, one mortgage passed into the hands of Barlow Trecothick, the London banker and financier. In 1769 and 1770 the house and barn were mortgaged, and when seized by the mortgagees for debt Dougherty passed out of our knowl- edge. Tradition has it that he was a Tory and that, therefore, he fled. Certainly there was a Tory in town, for in 1775 the town chose a committee to see what should be done about a farm that some Tory owned. "Whereas information has been made to the Selectmen of Said Town that the farm in said Town on which Amos
* Henry Ware.
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CELLAR HOLES
Dole now Dwells Dose not Pay Taxes and that the said Dole Dose not hold the Possession of said farm by any Leagal rite but that said farm belongs to an emeny to this country, &c."* It is also said t that, after the Revolution, "two strangers came to town and dug for treasure said to have been buried by a departing Tory. After digging a certain time they took a sudden departure in such a way as to lead people to suspect that they were successful in their search." The place where they dug was not on the "Dehorte farm" but on the farm where Seth Walker once lived on Centre Road. The hole can still be found in Mr. Frank Lawton's pasture, back of a big upright stone in the wall. Be the Tory story what it may, the town owned the house for many years and there is more than one entry on the town records of its lease to some man or other. About 1800, Captain Samuel Hazen, Jr., moved into the Dehorte house. He had bought in 1777 the Brooks farm, and land from Charles Perrin in 1778, "where John Maddin now lives," which is the land formerly owned by Seth Walker.# Captain Hazen clapboarded the house, and they say that all the clapboards came from one tree and have never been changed. The one nearest the roof has a bevel on its edge. The roof was raised to its present form of hip-roof and the ornaments to the front door were added. Up and down each corner of the house is a heavy quoin or border, carved from a slab of pine. This
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