USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Shirley > Shirley uplands and intervales; annals of a border town of Middlesex, with some genealogical sketches > Part 5
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*1780, March 31. I went to Sawtell's vendue of Dehougherty's farm Wallace Little bid it of for Lemuel Parker.
1783, April 7. 'The Dougherty farm let .- James Parker's Diary. +Samuel Longley.
ĮNo. 75.
JAMES DOUGHERTY'S HOUSE, HAZEN ROAD
20 11MIN
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house passed in 1815 to Samuel's son, Thomas, who never lived in it. Mr. Samuel Longley writes: "My first recol- lection of the Joseph Hazen house was its being occupied by Abijah Sanderson as a tenant. When there was any work to be done on the farm Uncle Tom Hazen came up with a gang of men and attended to it. One time when they were there at work Ann Longley passed by near them. Uncle Tom, after taking a good look at her, turned to one of his sons and said, 'Joe, ther's a gal for you; if you will marry her I'll give you this farm.' " Joe took the hint, married Ann, and lived on the farm for the rest of his life. Mrs. Holden tells us that Ann Longley was her schoolmate and that she "knew her very well, as a fine, good sensible woman, very energetic and with uncommon judgment."
One of the strangest remains we have is a row of very small cellar-holes along the Great Road. Rather soon after the Revolution, two "persons of color," as Priest Whitney tactfully calls them in his records, came to the northern part of town. These two were Peter Boston and Jacob Mitchel, who lived on the Great Road, and had a very numerous progeny. Just why there was an influx of negroes at that time does not appear, for until then the only one in town had been William Bolton, Jr.'s slave, Violet. Anyhow they came, and were followed by Charles Treadwell, Joseph Moffet, Thomas Ransellar, Daniel Giger * and Thomas Hazard. The baptisms signify that they were religiously inclined, but their births gave good Doctor Hartwell much trouble. He kept records of all the babies that he brought into the world, and scattered through are entries like this: "Son
*Pronounced Jidger.
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of a negro gal at Boston's," "son of widow Mofet's daughter," "daughter of a black gent at Gigers," and many more.
Peter Boston's son, Hiram, tried to marry a girl named Almira Travis, and the banns were called in church. It is recorded that his father forbade the banns because he was a minor, and Almira married "another" named Daniel Giger and joined the settlement along the Great Road. The Bostons, they say, were mulatto; the Mitchels, black; but the Gigers were "black as a coal."
Two of our good New England girls married into this black colony: Betsy and Fidelia Kezar married two Messer brothers. Betsy's children married Hazards.
Later the settlement began to be abandoned, and, as each family moved away, the rest burned their house the night after. The last family to leave was so nervous over this interesting custom, that the day before they left they moved out into the open, tore their house down, and spent the night out of doors. This accounts for the fact that not one negro cabin remains to show to a younger generation what they looked like. Peter Hazard came back after many years, and lived to be a hundred and one. Some one of the Bostons also lingered with us; for Mrs. Wyman says that her grandfather tells how Boston was once in her grandfather's house at a meal. The soup was good and Boston consumed great quanti- ties, whereat grandfather exclaimed, "Eat, Boston, eat, there's more in the pot." She remembers Solomon Harris, too, a great black, over six feet tall, who scared her by talking to himself as he walked.
On a back road, just over the border in Lunenburg, is a small cellar-hole where dwelt another Hazard, about
JOSEPH HAZEN BORN 1804
ANN LONGLEY WIFE OF JOSEPH HAZEN
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1839. He was only a small boy of eight or nine, living with his mother, who was a widow. His father was Emerson Hazard, and his mother, Caira Boston. The small boy's name was Nahum Gardner Hazard, but he was always called Gardner. William Little, then old, and "deaf, and obscene," plotted with two others, one a Virginian, to make money by selling Gardner, his brother, and one of the Mitchel boys into slavery. They deceived the mothers by telling them that the boys were to get good pay, good schooling, and good situations in a hotel in "Little Washington." When Squire Little came to the house to get the boys, the older Hazard, and the Mitchel boy hid in the woods, and could not be found, so Gardner was taken alone. Little con- veyed him in a carriage part way, delivered him to his nephew, James Shearer, in Palmer, who in turn delivered him to the Virginian, Wilkins. Finally Hazard arrived in Richmond, and was put in the pen with others to be sold. He played marbles with the other boys for a time, but finally tiring of that asked for a book to read. He says, "I had been put into a pair of pants of coarse cloth, a shirt made of old bagging, a blue swallow-tail coat with brass buttons, several sizes too large for me, and on my head wore an old stovepipe hat." His request for a book caused great astonishment and led, of course, to questions as to his name, and place of residence. He proved that he could read, and persisted in telling the truth as to his home and name, despite the threats of Wilkins, who had rechristened him.
The authorities finally wrote to Mr. George Barrett who kept the store at Shirley Centre. The story so wrought upon the good people at the Centre that they
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commissioned Major Brown of Lunenburg, then selling palm-leaf hats in the South, to go to see Gardner Hazard. Poor little Gardner was afraid of everyone, and refused to know a friend in Major Brown, whom he had never seen dressed for his travels. Finally he told Major Brown that he would believe in his identity if the Major had a sore on his leg which had not healed and prevented him from stooping. Gardner knew this sore well, because he had often been hired to pick up the potatoes that the Major hoed. Convinced at length that the Major was to be trusted as a friend, he started for home, and passed the rest of his days in peace. He had had some pitch or wax poured on a shaven place on top of his head; the wax was branded while warm. It took many months to remove this and it was long before the hair grew again. Wilkins was convicted and sentenced, but escaped from jail by the connivance of his brother who was a turnkey. Shearer was sentenced to five days solitary confinement, and seven years hard labor. He afterwards kept an hotel in Springfield. William Little saved himself by money and by pleading that he was so deaf that he had not understood the real nature of the bargain. Gardner Hazard died in Leominster in the summer of 1913, a much respected citizen.
Far in the woods, if your nerve is good and the horse a peaceable beast, you may ride through pine and oak, poplar and chestnut over a ridgy, winding road. This road is banked by laurel and the wood-thrush sings thrillingly, and at last it emerges through a long disused lane onto a grassy knoll. Here on the knoll is a beauti- fully preserved cellar-hole, with a great elm growing in it. A hundred and fifty years ago it must have been as lovely as it is now.
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Hugh Moore came here with his bride and his very aged parents, John and Agnes. They were Scotch-Irish folk, and the transition from the fertile north of Ireland with its fields and hedgerows to the middle of the New England forest must have been severe indeed. The aged couple soon died and rest side by side in our old cemetery. For some years the young people lived in peace, and children were born to them in the rough wilderness. One day the father felled a tree, and saw that in falling it would strike his five-year-old son. He jumped and rescued the child, but was killed himself. Our forefathers showed the same liking for striking inci- dents that we do today, for he is the only Shirley man for many years before or after 1758 to be mentioned by the Boston papers. The widow stayed and struggled, brought up her five children and then moved away to West Boylston. The Moores have passed from our history-they and their Scotch-Irish neighbor, Nathaniel Gordon-and the cellar-hole is known as that of Jonas Baker who lived there next. Poor Jonas! all we know of him is his cellar-hole and his three wives. He came from Concord, and tradition has it that he wandered much, having great difficulty in living at peace with any of his wives.
The town at last took a hand in trying to solve his difficulties for him. It voted, in 1806, "that the men who have the Deed of Mr. Baker's farm in trust should dispose of the same as they think best." The next year the town voted to have "Mr. Jonas Baker go on his farm." The trustees were to keep the deed. Nothing more is heard of him for seven years, and then the town took drastic measures. It was voted to pay Benjamin
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Osgood, Esq. what Baker owed him, and to take a deed of the farm in the name of the town. Baker could re- deem it within three years by paying the sum, and its interest yearly. When the three years were up, Baker was as far as ever from owning his farm, and the town granted him another three years in which to try to regain it. History is silent as to the final outcome.
But why go on to enumerate these by-gone homes? It only makes one realize that the old New England country population is on the wane; that there are almost as many cellar-holes as houses, and that more and more our cities are drawing, drawing. The old homes of in- dependence and self-reliance, of work in the better sense, are dying out, to make room, as my neighbor tells me, for summer folk and Poles. Less and less does man go back to communion through labor with old mother earth; less and less do men realize the peace from nerve-racking worry that weeding one's onion-bed yields. Less and less do we try to know nature, her changes, her moods, and her wild things, except through the amateurish curiosity of the nature hunter. We have no time now to watch the nesting bird through all her family cares; to watch the young fawn grow, and be interested in the families of the woodchuck and pheasant which destroy our crops. We look at them through a glass, once, and are gone, and we forget that it is by quiet and watching and loving that we gain peace.
VI TAVERNS
ROMANCE is a strange enchantress, gilding some things in the past, and leaving others in their unvarnished ugli- ness. Often as we seek a reason for this discrimination, it is hard to find, but usually it seems as if it were the haunts of men and the movements of men that we think of as romantic. Taverns, for some such psychological reason, seem especially romantic, and appeal to persons whose refinement and culture would inevitably cause them discomfort and worse had they been subjected to the scenes and events which took place within their walls. For some reason the conviviality, the rosy cheeked bar-maid, the hospitality of mine host, the winding passageways, the steps up and the steps down, the life and movement, push to the background the coarseness and disagreeableness which were also compo- nent parts of an old inn. The New England inn was so many things to the population of a town, and was so large a factor in its daily life, that almost before there were settlers at all there was a tavern. Some were very small and some were large and imposing, and each town contained more than one. To many of us moderns the tavern or "ordinary" represents the same thing as a modern saloon, for it was licensed in much the same way. But the modern saloon is so different from the early New England ordinary, that we are forced to wonder
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whether we have made our ideals higher or lower as time has gone on.
The tavern keeper, a century and more ago, was one of the most respected citizens-in fact he had to be to have a license granted to him at all. In 1817 Lieutenant Francis Hall writes: "Inn keepers of America are in most villages what we call vulgarly Topping men, field officers of militia, with good farms attached to their taverns. · The daughters of the host officiate at tea and breakfast and usually at dinner."
Here in our little town the tale was as true as elsewhere. The tavern keeper was a man of some importance. Our first inn was naturally on our first road, the Great Road along Mulpus Brook, but at its western end near Lunen- burg, almost across the town from the mill. Sometime between 1728 and 1739 Jonathan Holden, about whom both history and tradition are rather silent except for the fact that his grandfather was Nathaniel Lawrence of Charlestown, put up a house just south of Mulpus Brook on sixty acres he had inherited from his Grand- father Lawrence. The cellar-hole can still be seen, sur- rounded now by great pines, north, east and west, and if it indicates anything, it shows that the house was large and substantial. Jonathan Holden lived here until 1739, and then he sold to a rolling stone from Groton, David Gould. Gould in his lifetime lived first in Tops- field; he married in Beverly, and afterward lived in Gro- ton, Shirley, Lunenburg, Hadley, Sunderland and Am- herst. There he is lost to view. His stay in Shirley was short, and he sold the house and land to William White of Waltham, our first known inn-keeper. He was licensed retailer in 1752, and his brother, Thomas, from 1753 to
5
NATHANIEL HOLDEN JR. BORN 1800
RHODA MARIA LONGLEY WIFE OF NATHANIEL HOLDEN JR.
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1755. White's term was short, but was either prosper- ous or reckless, for he sold two houses and a barn with the place. Subsequently it passed into the hands of William Bolton, Jr., of Reading and ceased to be an inn. This William Bolton, Jr., was the only Shirley man who was ever recorded as having owned a negro slave. Her name was Violet, and the record of her baptism can still be seen.
The next tavern keepers were James Brooks and Obadiah Sawtell. Which came first no one can now say, but as Brooks was the older we will assume that he did. He was a Concord man, the son of Joseph Brooks and Rebecca Blodgett. He was born in 1723, and his wife was Elizabeth. The Brooks tavern was on no public road, but stood in the corner of the field now owned by Mrs. Grace Winslow on the road from Pound Hill to Ayer. The road was laid out much later. Tradition is very silent about James Brooks and his doings, and we know almost nothing of him. No births or marriages are recorded of his family, and Mr. Chandler does not mention his name. The tavern was sold in 1777 to Samuel Hazen, Jr., and thereafter ceased to be a tavern, but underwent many vicissitudes. Two cellars were dug for it on the other side of the road, one almost oppo- site and a second farther east, when the oldest Hazen girl, Sarah, married Asa Longley. The house was shorn of its upper story, and was moved to the eastern cellar-hole, where the young couple started housekeep- ing. Later another story was added, and so it stands today, owned by Mr. Boutilier.
Meanwhile, on the Great Road east of White's Tav- ern and at the end of the road down the hill from the
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church, Obadiah Sawtell, known as "the old landlord," built his house. His wife was Mary Gould, but not a daughter of David. Sawtell was a great man in his day: selectman, delegate to the Provincial Congress, first representative to the General Court, and holder of many minor offices. Among these latter he was town clerk, but a poor one, for his writing and spelling stand out as extremely bad even for that time. He seems to have been a large and jovial man, a great factor in the social and political life of the times. His tavern was the resort for all the northern end of the town. Here they all gath- ered after every occasion to discuss and, I am afraid, to drink more than was good for most of them. They say that Timothy Bolton, who lived north across the brook, used to boast that he always got his gun across dry after muster-because he threw it over first, but he left his own condition for the imagination to picture.
The tavern was the great club house of the time, with an unlimited membership. Here the farmer could swap yarns of great pumpkins and other crops; here the vet- erans of the Indian wars could tell their tales, an op- portunity our Civil War veterans have but once a year; here local politics were threshed out and the articles in the warrant debated upon. Here, finally, was the hot-bed of sedition which caused England to lose her colony. Then too, it was a place where outsiders stopped on their way through and one could glean news of what the larger towns were doing to prevent "taxation without representation." So that local opinion, largely moulded by the minister, received a broadening touch from with- out. Here was an able second to the town meeting, in giving all men the opportunity to discuss and to know.
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Shirley, like other towns, voted retaliative measures. On March 21, 1774, the town voted in meeting "that we will neither Buy, sell, drink, nor suffer to be drank in our Families any tea that is subject to an American Duty."
The old tavern still sits comfortably on a green lawn, facing a steep hill, with its back to the brook, at this point rather broad and sedgy. The Great Road, which became the stage road from Boston northwest, runs close in front. It is a great square house with a square front porch of the kind that were added to many houses in the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was clap- boarded on three sides and the rear was shingled. Close by is the old fashioned barn, straight boarded up and down. Long ago the Great Road was very populous, but now there are as many cellar-holes as houses, and the newer houses are grouped very close together just east of the old tavern, and around the third house on the Great Road used for that purpose. They say that in one parlor of the old tavern, under the paper, the walls are sten- cilled in squares with broad wreaths of roses. Very probably when Obadiah Sawtell kept his tavern there, the sides of the house were bare of clapboards and of shingles too. Almost all the houses of the eighteenth century, of which tradition tells us, were double boarded and sheathed within. Plaster was by no means so com- mon and often when outer walls were plastered par- titions were but broad pine boards.
Again we must turn to Parker's diary for a true pic- ture of those days. In reality almost everything of a public nature, which was not done in the church, was done at the tavern. All the town committees met there
ESR
THE DOORWAY OF HAZEN'S TAVERN, SHIRLEY VILLAGE
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to discuss their problems; soldiers were enlisted there for the army all through the Revolution. Captain Nathan Smith, of Shay's Rebellion fame was a near neighbor, and it was at Sawtell's and Dickinson's taverns that this inflammatory soul, filling his hearers with "Dutch courage," fired his followers to take up arms
1783 Obadiah Sautell
against the state. In Sawtell's tavern the courts, which arbitrated local quarrels, were often held, with the toddy near by to cement newly made friendly feeling. There were other apparently more festive occasions when there was a "shooting" at Sawtell's. This was a con- test and not a bloody affray. After Training, the officers always dined at Sawtell's in great state.
The tavern changed hands many times after Sawtell left, before Stephen Barrett, Jr., bought it in 1801. It seems he was something of a swell, and we rather sus- pect that he added the final touches of plaster and sten- cil, of clapboard and porch.
The mantle of tavern keeper for a time fell on James Dickinson, a carpenter by trade, who with Francis Har- ris had a saw-mill at the first mill site in town. He married Harris' daughter when well over thirty and settled down as tavern keeper. His land, of which he had a very large amount, was just out of the Centre and his house* faced south on the Horse Pond Road with two great elms in front. He had an enormous well, ,
*The land is now owned by Mrs. Hattie P. Holden, 1914.
.
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which is still open, though the house site is nothing now but a grass-grown cellar-hole. The house was like that in which Obadiah Sawtell kept a tavern. No distinct tale of this tavern has come down, and all we know of James Dickinson is that he too took part in town affairs, and was public spirited enough to give part of his land to eke out the Common, which had been much en- croached upon by those who lived near by. He had been a minuteman, and in our town is the man of whom the universal tale is told that he was about to feed his pigs when the news came that the British were marching on Concord. He dropped the bucket of food, "and those pigs ain't fed yet," they tell us still.
Just after the Revolution, Joshua Longley built a house a little south of the Common. It was a fine square house with a side door, which in those days led within to the bar. The room is now used as the dining room, and the only remnant of old times is a beautiful, heavy "wine chest," still treasured by the family. The wood of which it is made is quite unusual. Each board has light edges, with a dark mahogany-colored stripe through the middle. Only three of the dark brown high shouldered bottles remain of the dozen it once contained. In connection with the bar, the Long- leys ran a cider-mill for many years. Here their own supply of apples was turned into cider, and those of their neighbors, too. Squire James Parker says, in 1823, that Stephen M. Longley made him eleven barrels for his winter's use. An old cider-mill is still an interesting building. It was usually made into a side hill, with high stone walls and a roof. Within was the great vat in which the apples were ground. A heavy beam was at-
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tached to the grinder at one end and to a horse at the other; it was worked by the horse as he went round and round the vat. The Longleys kept a store too, if early deeds of land are truthful, in addition to their busi- ness as an ordinary; just how long they kept it, no one seems to know, but at the beginning of the new century a rival on the Common appeared.
About 1801 the minister's son built a great square, hip-roofed house on the Common with a long ell for a store, and there sold all sorts of commodities. He was a justice of the peace, and was "Squire Whitney" or "Squire Tom" as the case might be. Here was a rival to the tavern for many years, for a store is also a good place to while away time, and here too one could buy either Medford or West Indian rum. "Squire Tom" nearly lost one thumb because he always inserted that member inside the glass when filling it to save that amount of liquor. The thumb became so rum-soaked that some evil disease set in. But that thumb and the rum and the store made him the rich man of the town, and gave him the nice name of "Thumb Whitney." It came to pass that many a man had to mortgage his farm to the "Squire" and many farms passed into his possession. Among those unfortunate men was one David Atherton, they say "a ne'er-do-well, who yet had a wife and six children. He lived in the northern part of the town, but loved his glass. Whenever he came to the Centre his refreshment was long and deep. One dark night, when he was inside and his horse was tied outside in the dark, some mischievous boys turned his saddle round back side to. Atherton, being "under the influence," mounted and rode home with his head facing
ALMOND MORSE'S TAVERN, THE GREAT ROAD
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the horse's tail. When he reached home he put out his hand to catch the horse's mane and dismount, and, finding nothing, tumbled himself to the ground, exclaim- ing in drunken surprise, "Burn warm the devil! they've cut my horse's head off!" Poor David! drink and shift- lessness prevailed, until his wife sought relief from the town and had a guardian appointed for her husband who was wasting his patrimony and leaving her and her children to starve. The place was all sold to pay his debts, except his house and a little land, and among the family papers in town we find that "David Atherton & wife & 5 Children will be let out till the first monday in April next; the person who takes them may have the use of the house where they are now if they pleas and 7 Cords of wood if they stay there and board and nurse them in health and sickness and keep their Cloths in as good repair as they now are."
It was on David Atherton's farm, tradition says, that the old Indian sat in his wigwam and boasted that in the triangle formed by his tent and two great boulders, was that elusive "gold mine," mentioned in an early deed, but now long since lost. This Indian was the last to know, and the secret died with him.
Whitney's store later found two rivals. On the old Mulpus stage road, east of Sawtell's Tavern, Almond Morse built a long, two-story house with brick ends. In the second story is a dance hall, very largely patronized sixty years ago, and which, they say, is still very fine. Below was the tavern, also well patronized. One man says that he can remember when sixty to seventy teams were tied to the long bars in front, nightly, when the stage came in. After Morse a man named Lawrence kept it; he called it the Mulpus House.
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