USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Haverhill > Some memories of old Haverhill in Massachusetts > Part 2
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Of the spirit of sacrifice of our elders I think there is no more tender evidence than this: when Clarence Woodman, an idolized youth, slain in the conflict, was brought home for burial, one of the papers of the town quoted as the spirit in which the dearest were given for the life of the Nation, these patriotic and pathetic lines from Cato :---
" Thanks to the gods! my boy has done his duty! Welcome, my son! There, set him down, my friends, Full in my sight that I may view at leisure The bloody corpse, and count those glorious wounds. How beautiful is death when earned by virtue!
Who would not be that youth! what pity 'tis That we can die but once to save our country! Why sits this sadness on your brow, my friends? I should have blushed if Cato's house had stood Secure and flourished in a civil war."
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For some years the circus pitched its single tent on Wingate's field, the land between Wingate and Granite streets just back of the school, and on such days, though our eyes might be on our books, our real selves followed the clown or the strident calliope about the streets, or in imagination witnessed the fairyland that the canvas hid from our actual gaze.
Advancing trade displaced the old dwellings of Washington street that were within neighborly dis- tance of the school house. Some were torn down, some were moved back, some were burned in the great Haverhill fire of 1882, and some journeyed to new neighborhoods. Next to the schoolhouse, on the east, was a house kept immaculate by its mis- tress. The garden back of it bore fruit tempting to the eyes on the other side of the board fence. But the house stood prim and proud, and a bit disdain- ful of its neighbor with the swarming school child- ren. The day of its ill fortune broke upon it. Moved to the junction of Washington and River streets, as if broken in spirit it became at first shabby, then somewhat dilapidated, and then, as if abandoning all pride, it went to complete ruin in a debauch of dirt and neglect. And have I not seen in human lives, "so weary with disasters, tugg'd with fortune," such downward course with ever in- creasing speed to Ruin?
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Some Memories
VIII
Little river was originally the West river, and northeast of its junction with the Great river-the Merrimac-was the site of the village of the Pen- tucket Indians, Pentucket meaning "the place by the winding river." When Washington on his mem- orable visit to Haverhill, November 4-5, 1789, stood here by the junction of the greater and the lesser streams-
" And he said, the landscape sweeping Slowly with his ungloved hand, 'I have seen no prospect fairer In this goodly eastern land, ' "-
a little bridge, twenty feet wide, spanned the smaller stream, and the view up and down the Merrimac was unobstructed. When as a school boy I went my way to the old High School-now the Whittier School-the north side of Washington square was open, and here I was wont to lean over the railing to watch the waters of Little river dimple and sparkle as they flowed beneath the overhanging trees, or the gundelows that had brought up the fragrant salt hay from the Salisbury marshes, or the swift swirling waters when the spring floods swelled the peaceful stream to an angry torrent. Some- times on Sundays I stood with the reverent throng
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on the south side of the square and watched the rites of baptism as those who followed the old Christian custom were immersed in the clean and cleansing waters of the Merrimac. On the north- west corner of the square, where the Hotel Webster now is, stood the Christian Union Chapel, after- wards the South Church. For many years the minister of this church was Elder Henry Plummer, a man of noble countenance and commanding form, who in all the years of his preaching never received a regular salary, believing that there should be no bargaining about the proclaiming of the gospel, and relying for his support upon the free-will offerings of his people. He believed, too, that the true message of the preacher was directly given by God, and that to make careful preparation, especially to write a sermon, implied doubt of the Inspirer. I have seen him rise in the pulpit and say, "Brethren, the word has not been given me," and then the meeting became one of prayer and testimony by the brothers and sisters. He became an earnest be- liever in the extreme Advent doctrine, and on one occasion when an excited meeting of kindred be- lievers was being held in his own home and all seemed to expect immediate ascension to Heaven, his witty but somewhat impatient wife called to her youngest daughter, "Run, Abbie! hist the scuttle
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Some Memories
and let 'em go up." When Elder Pike, of Newbury- port, appeared in the pulpit in exchange, everyone was on the alert, for he was one whose quaint utter- ances now moved to tears and now provoked to laughter, and his swift shafts of wit spared not the individual members of his audience. "If those who wrote the scriptures were not inspired by God," he said once, "they were no better than-,"-here his eyes searched the congregation,-"than-you are, Brother R-, and the Lord knows you ain't any better than you ought to be," and the brethren, swift in response, cried "Amen! Amen! that's gospel truth!" In later years a minister temporarily oc- cupied the pulpit, who had the peculiarity of never hearing a long word without being possessed to use it in his next sermon. A pupil studying aloud once used the word parallelopipedon in his presence. He, knowing nothing of the terms of mathematics, appropriated the word as the name of some mon- strous animal, and his next Sunday's discourse con- veyed the startling assertion that "the sinner would hear his doom with the awful fear produced by the roar of the parallelopipedon in the aboriginal forests of Africa."
If quaint characters sometimes occupied the pul- pit, still quainter occupied the pews. One sat in the pew directly in front of mine, and made person-
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Of Old Haverhill
al the vivid descriptions of the wicked given by the minister by turning round and pointing her long fore-finger at me and such chums of mine as were with me, saying, "That's you, and you, and YOU." There was another, strangely lame like Vulcan whose gait convulsed the gods on Olympus, as ugly in feature as Victor Hugo's Quasimodo, his lengthy prayers but prolonged groanings, his testi- monies but strange and ludicrous malapropisms. ."The preacher spoke so suffectingly there wasn't a dry tear in the house," he said once. "Sinners, what'll you think when you wake up and find your- selves dead?" he would ask. "I've got some good nieces, all girls," he would explain. Late in life he married one who was the negative of all charms of character and person, a union brought about by some practical joker. "Mary Ann," he said as they came from the minister's after the ceremony, "you go on one side of the street and I'll go on t'other. "Taint assembly for us to walk together."
While I mention these oddities I am not forget- ful of the many sweet, humble Christian lives that hallowed the old church and made its influence in the town a helpful and uplifting one.
In the earlier days Washington square was some- times flooded when the spring snows, melting, swell- ed the river, but the highest flood was on March 15,
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Some Memories
1846. The ice, breaking up in the river, had form- ed a dam at Bradley's falls, a mile above the village, twenty feet high. This suddenly gave way and the huge mass of water swept down upon the village. At Washington square it rose twenty-three feet above highwater mark, swept the bridge away and down to Artichoke creek, and surrounded the church in which the worshipers were holding their Sabbath evening service. The old hymn which they so of- ten sung, "We are out on the ocean sailing to a home beyond the tide," was made almost literally true as the boats took them from the water-beleaguered church across the swelling and tumultuous flood to safety.
In the middle of the square was erected in 1857 a flag-staff 183 feet high, and when, after ten years standing, this was cut down, it was replaced by one 200 feet high. Here was the scene of many a smart contest as the fire engines vied with one another in the height to which the streams of water could be sent, the men crying as they worked the pumps, "Break-'er-down! Break-'er-down! Break-'er- down!"
The land where the post office now stands was part of the two hundred acres given as pasture land to the Reverend John Ward, and until it was sold to the United States in 1892 no deed of it had been
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passed for more than two hundred years. In 1883 the stone arch covering Little river was extended from the street line to the Merrimac river front. Here about an acre and a quarter of land was made by filling, and when the Park Commission was es- tablished in 1890, it was turned over to them for im- provement. And here the Park Commission began its work in 1890, with the simple equipment of a wheelbarrow, a hoe and a broom. Here of the de- sert has been made a place of beauty and fragrance and rest. The valuation of this land is about $325,000, and the cry has sometimes been heard that it should be sold; yet how infinitely poorer we should be with this money in our treasury but with this restful and delightful oasis in the busiest part of our city forever covered with piles of gloomy brick.
" A thing of beauty is a joy forever; Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breath- ing."
In 1849 A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, by Henry D. Thoreau, was published, but it met an unappreciative reception. To obtain the money which its publication required the author was obliged to use his ability as a land surveyor.
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Some Memories
In this avocation he surveyed for the heirs of Cap- tain Emerson of Haverhill the old Emerson farm, extending from Winter street to Washington square. Within this tract there was a beautiful grove adjoining Little river and sunny meadows lay contiguous. Long ago, in Indian warfare times, this land was owned by Captain Simon Wainwright. He was killed in the memorable raid of August 29, 1708, but a tradition lingered that he had buried a chest of gold on the farm, and treasure hunters often in days gone by have dug within the confines of this land, and especially with ardor and hope near an old oak tree that stood by the bars that led from Emerson's field into Washington square.
IX
Through the parsonage lands Front street, called Merrimack street in 1837, was laid out two-and- a-half rods wide in 1744. The land where so many beautiful shops now exist was an alder swamp, and the first attempts to pave the street failed be- cause of the insecure foundation. When the first Baptist church was built in 1766 on "Baptist hill," on the site now occupied by the Academy of Music, its location marked the extreme western end of the village. This first edifice is seen in the oldest pic-
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Of Old Haverhill
ture of Haverhill, that made in 1815. A second building replaced it in 1833, and the third structure, the one with the towering steeple familiar in pictures, built in 1848 and torn down in 1872, filled the more than a century of Baptist worship here. The strong- ly antagonistic feeling of denomination against denomination, happily now almost lost, in the earlier days is shown by the address of dedication of the third house, November 8, 1849: "This society in its earlier days, like all others, sprang up from the tyrannical spirit of the boasted Puritans, whose car of Juggernaut undertook to crush under its wheels all who did not worship the Savior of mankind according to their dictates." On the same oc- casion the pastor, contrasting its Gothic tower with the beautiful Corinthian spire of the Bradford church, said, "It is a source of great gratification that this church has been constructed on correct Christian principles, in contrast to the pagan temple on the other side of the river." But out from the verdant beauty of surrounding trees the white Corinthian spire of the "pagan temple" still rises, a "silent finger pointing up to heaven," while the Gothic structure has been long replaced by a play- house.
1781179
Of the lack of Christian amity between brethren of the same church there are many true stories.
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Some Memories
In one of the Haverhill churches a constant atten- dant was Mr. Butters, an excellent man of very im- pressive manner, who used to go up the aisle to his pew carrying a beautiful gold-headed cane and supporting his elegantly-dressed wife on his arm. In the same church was Cornelius Jenness, a man of witty devises, sharp tongue, and many animosi- ties, born, as someone once said, "otherwise minded." Mr. Butters had in some way offended Mr. Jenness, and so on the next Sunday as in characteristic state he went up the aisle, he was immediately folowed by Mr. Jenness, carrying in exact mimicry a stick with a huge door knob on it, and supporting on his arm his withered, bent and shabbily dressed housekeeper.
A bar, a stumbling block, a perpetual veto, this "otherwise minded" brother was the subject of frequent prayer. In one evening service a zealous member earnestly implored the Lord to make bro- ther Jenness more amenable, more in harmony, more pliable, or, if this seemed impossible, merci- fully to remove him. And Cornelius arose and said, "I won't go."
Farther down the street and a little west of Fleet street was a stately old mansion with its yard and stable, built by Dr. Nathaniel Saltonstall in 1789. Dr. Saltonstall was a younger half-brother of Colonel
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Of Old Haverhill
Richard Saltonstall whose home was the Button- woods, on Water street. On the death of his father in 1756, when he was ten years old, he was received into the family of his uncle, Meddlecott Cooke, Esq., of Boston. Here he grew up in sympathy with the patriots, and was thus estranged from his Haverhill relatives, who were tories. He inherited in Boston the land on School street on which the City Hall now stands. This land he sold, and with the pro- ceeds he built the mansion house in Haverhill. He married Anna, daughter of Squire Samuel White. His daughter Sarah married Isaac R. How, Esq., the grandfather of the late Gurdon How and of the late Mrs. Susan How Sanders. In 1871 the house was moved to a beautiful location north of Lake Saltonstall, where it still stands, retaining in its in- ward and outward appearance its colonial dignity and beauty.
The old shipyard between Merrimack street and the river was a place of great delight to the boys of seventy years ago. As this was a generation before my time I borrow a description of it from the grace- ful pen of one who knew well the Haverhill of that early day, Dr. John Crowell :---
" Just below the "Baptist Hill," Sloping towards the river side, Where rolls today the busy tide
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Some Memories
Of labor's ceaseless ebb and flow, The ship-yard stood-we knew it well; I almost think I see it still, With shapeless timber and smoking tar ;- The hewer with his broad axe armed, Hewing away with measured swell, From Bradford shore that echoed far. · · O, what delight to the dreamy boy To creep and climb o'er the staging tall, Deeming it then his highest joy To watch the growth of the mammoth side Of the noble ship, as day by day The steaming planks encased her bows That swelled aloft in graceful pride. And now the calkers fill up the seams With oakum and tar, till all her beams And decks and hatches are water tight. Behold, upon the shaven side, The painter, drawing in brilliant rows The rainbow hues in living light, That soon shall show upon the tide, When she has kissed her native sea.
. . O, speed the ship, as down she floats Through shallow stream to meet the sea! O, welcome her with peaceful notes, For, lo! she comes to dwell with thee,- With thee, old Ocean, till her sides Are dim and worn with storm and brine And ceaseless ebb and flow of tides!
I close my eyes; the vision fair Comes like some dim, half vanished dream; The ship-yard rises, and the throng That shouted in the Autumn air, When the fair ship first kissed the stream,
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Of Old Haverhill
Make music like a childhood song.
Old voices come with saintly swell; My dream is gladdened with the sight Of far-off faces, and the night
Is mellow with the pensive note, So silver sweet, of "Baptist bell;"
I hear the cadence gently float- The sounds of childhood sadly sweet In melting tones my senses greet."
X
For eighty years the old Haverhill bridge was a more or less picturesque feature of the town. Built in 1794, and then without covering, it was consider- ed a marvel of strength and, with its graceful lines and its white gleaming woodwork, a structure of ex- ceeding beauty. Its early appearance has been pre- served for us by a sketch drawn by Robert Gilmor of Baltimore, a young man who made in 1797 a journey extending as far east as Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Returning he stopped in Haverhill for a few hours. The manuscript journal of his leisurely journey is in the Boston Public Library. In it he speaks of Haverhill as a particularly pleas- ant and beautiful little village, and he describes the bridge as follows: "Across this river (the Merri- mac) is thrown one of the new constructed bridges like that of Piscataqua, only this has three arches
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Some Memories
instead of one, and the work which supports the whole is above instead of being just below the bridge. I had time enough before dinner to step to the water's edge and take a sketch of it. While I stood there, with my drawing book laid upon a pile of plank which happened to be convenient, and in- tent on my work, I did not perceive the tide which rose very fast, and on looking down perceived my- self up to my ankles in the river. The water rose so gradually that I did not feel it."
(Robert Gilmor, a young man of wealth, born in 1774 and hence twenty-three years old when this journey was made, was of such eminent family that in his travels he had admittance to the best society. He called in Philadelphia on the Vis- count de Noailles, and was the guest while in that city of the wealthy Mr. Bingham. He called upon the artist Gilbert Stuart at Germantown, and found him engaged upon a copy- the first that he made-of the celebrated full length portrait of Washington, the original of which he had made for Mr. Bingham for presentation to the Marquis of Lansdowne. The copy that he was making was to be the personal property of Mr. Bingham, and Stuart told Gilmor that he had orders for as many copies at $600 each as would bring him $60,000. Stuart then had the appearance of a man who drank much, his face being red and bloated. Gilmor visited Mr. Craigie in Cambridge at the Craigie House, and in Boston he was an invited guest at the public dinner in Fanueil Hall to President Adams.)
If it had its season of graceful and fair youth when our great grandmothers and great grand-
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fathers were the belles and beaux of the town and leaned over its rails to watch the sparkling river, whispering love's lightsome messages to the rythmic flow of the tide, it had also a period of sturdy strength when time had turned its beams to a mellow brown and it wore the protection of a roof, when Slocomb's freight wagons went in long lines through its rumb- ling tunnel, and herds of Vermont cattle crowded it as, bleating and bellowing, they were driven to the Brighton shambles. If its twilight gloom, its musty smell, its dizzy footway, its general appear- ance of mild decay in its old age, live in the memory of old Haverhill boys, there lives also the remem- brance of its keen and witty tollman, Stephen Morse. Let one go by without paying toll, and Morse locked the gates and followed in hot pursuit. He was known to go in the chase even as far as Bradford Academy. "I suppose," said one haughty dame whom he had pursued to the further end of the bridge, "I suppose you would have chased me if I had been a skunk!" "Marm," he replied, "if you had been a skunk you would have left your (s)cent." On one occasion a young man haughtily passed him a ten-dollar bill. "Can you give me nothing smaller?" asked the tollman: "What right have you to inquire into my finances?" was the arrogant reply. The tollman silently locked
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Some Memories
the gates and went up the street for change. He sought the large old-fashioned copper cents, and wherever he sought them he stayed and chatted and enjoyed the warmth of the fire, for the night was bitterly cold. Finally weighted down with a thousand of them he went back to the half-frozen youth and proffered him nine hundred and ninety- nine. "Haven't you something larger that you can give me?" asked the youth. "By what right do you inquire into my finances?" said the tollman. "But where can I carry them?" "In the emptiest thing about you-your hat," was the last shot. The hat of the youth, however, covered the head of him who was later the brilliant senator of Kansas, the author of Opportunity, the Honorable John James Ingalls. A lover riding by with his lass in a "one-hoss shay," tossed pertly into the mud the coin from which the toll was to be taken. The toll- man picked up the coin without a word, but he left the change where he found the coin-in the mud.
At the Haverhill end of the old bridge was a fish house where "Jonty" Sanders boiled lobsters. The Haverhill patrons sometimes complained that when they went out of town there was no rebate, but when strangers came into town they received a (s)cent back at the fish house.
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"Our town's a pleasant one,"
sang Whittier,-
""Tis odd, however,
That strangers say so, since the first that meets them, When they have paid their toll across the river,
Is the old fish stand, whose vile odor greets them In such a style that I have wondered why, . With kerchiefed nose, each did not turn and fly."
At four-score, gray and decrepit, the old bridge was torn down. Hawsers were hitched to its beams and powerful little tugs with many a toot and whistle pulled its arches over into the river that it had so long spanned.
The Reverend William Bently of Salem, a wonder- ful scholar and a man of most facinating personality, the minister of the East Church from 1783 to 1819, kept a very minute diary, and one passage is de- seriptive of a visit to Haverhill four years before the old bridge was built. The town then had a popula- tion of 2,408, and a valuation of $1,519,000. Of the places of which he speaks, Harrod's tavern stood where City Hall now is; the Congregational Church was on the Common-"City Hall Park"; Assembly Hall was on Water street at the foot of Lindel; General Brickett's house was the one, now much changed, on the easterly corner of Water street and Carleton's court; Chief Justice
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Some Memories
Sargeant dwelt on Main street, where the Unitarian Church now is; and the Reverend Mr. Shaw oc- cupied the parsonage on the commanding site where now the beautiful High School stands.
"September 22, 1790. At 1/2 past 6 in the morning I went from Salem to Haverhill to attend at a Review of the Regi- ment, & to visit Capt. Elkins who is superintending the build- ing of a vessel. . I soon mounted a Hill, which gave me a sight of Haverhill steeple 4 miles before I reached the ferry. When I arrived at the ferry I found that the Review was to be on Bradford side. I found Capt. Elkins at Herod's Tavern below the Meeting House. The landlord was a neighbor of mine in Boston, & has a family of nine children ...... The Town has many good Houses, and an extensive prospect, be- ing situated upon rising ground, descending to the River, upon whose bank is the great Street. The Street extends a full mile but the group of houses is at the upper end & the dwell- ing Houses chiefly above the Street. At the lower end is an elegant Seat of the Saltonstals, now the property of Mrs. Wat- son of Plimouth. It has about 30 acres of land, an ancient row of elms and Buttons, and a most engaging prospect of the River and adjacent country. At the upper end of the Street is the Baptist Meeting House the only respectable assembly of that denomination in the County, & that is lessening. It was founded about 30 years ago during the ministry of Mr. Bernard, by a Mr. Hezekiah Smith who is the present pastor. It is much out of repair, as are houses in general of that denom- ination. The Assembly Room is in an unfinished building. Below is a Shop, & the entrance into the Room is by a flight of Stairs behind the Shop. As it is upon the Street, it opens into a Gallery with a handsome painted Balustrade. Over the fireplace at the opposite end is a loft for the Band, & the whole Room is finely arched and convenient. The Drawing Room is behind. The Congregational Church has a most ex- cellent site. It is facing you as you ascend a street leading
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