USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Standard history of Essex county, Massachusetts, embracing a history of the county from its first settlement to the present time, with a history and description of its towns and cities. The Most historic county of America. > Part 107
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After they had established society, the civil and religious inter- mingling, they next divided the lands, except those which, for the time, were to lie in common, and woods and pasture lands, and those left for specific purposes, as twenty acres of thatch for free roof- thatching ; or those granted specifically, as five hundred acres had been to Richard Dummer, to induce his settlement. The division was with justice to all, keeping in view the public good and the future growth of the settlement. Every person had his four aeres for a house-lot, his right to pasturage, and his part of the salt-marsh, which was then, and ever since has been, esteemed by the farmer. To every person who paid the transportation of himself and family were given fifty acres. Fifty acres were allotted to any person who sent out an able-bodied man, so that adventurers or speculators at
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home might become land-owners. Two hundred aeres were allotted to any person who should invest fifty pounds in the common stock. This was an invitation to men of means, who evidently improved it, for Richard Dummer had 1,000 acres. John Clark, the first physician, who was exempted from taxes on account of his profession, had 540 neres. Edward Rawson, a man of learning and worth and wealth, the first local judge, a man in much public business, had 501 acres. He afterwards built what is now the Pillsbury house, which was pur- chased of him and has remained in Pillsbury hands ever since, in ward six of Newburyport, on High Street; and back of that he had his farm in the " new town," when that was laid out. Afterwards, being appointed secretary of the Province, to their great loss he removed to Boston. He was one of the most accomplished among the first citizens. Among his descendants is Judge Taft, of Ohio, ex- Attorney-General of the United States Henry Sewall, who was the first importer of cattle, the ancestor of the Judges Sewall, had 630 aeres ; and thence they went down to ten acres, the lowest.
Two events we notice in 1635. The first white child born was Mary, daughter of Thomas Brown, who afterwards married Peter Godfrey, and lived to be eighty-six, " of good repute as a maid & wife, and a widow." The first boy was born the next year, Joshua, son of Edward Woodman, who lived to his sixty-seventh year; and from these two cases we may believe the place not to have been un- healthy.
The next event was this : Francis Phimer was licensed to keep a tavern. He was the ancestor of a stalwart race, who have multiplied, and many of them became distinguished in different States. The first white child born in Pennsylvania, west of the Alleghanies, was of his lineage ; and of members of Congress, thirty years ago, five had sprung from him. One of them was Gov. Plumer, of New Hampshire, the only elector of 1816 who cast his vote against James Monroe. To establish the tavern was no small affair, and we may believe that he was of excellent character and good standing in the church, or he would not have been selected. The colonists had been accustomed to town-life in England, and they were not willing to endure the soli- tude of the winter's day and the long nights without the solaces and pleasures of the "ordinary." We must remember that they had no club-rooms, no daily mails with letters, no newspapers, no lyceums, no caucuses, no places of amusement, and the tavern was the only week-day place for gossip and discussions, and, when they were in their happiest moods, for planning future industries. It was an "insti- tution " for a wilderness settlement, to which there was no road, where in the solitude every man carried his matchlock with him to the church or field, and where from the summit of the hill a sentry kept a strict look-out over land and sea, against invasion. They were undoubtedly pleased to hear the voices of Parker and Noyes, but in a town where it was contrary to law to live more than a half mile from the meeting-house, and John Kelly, for building a house on the north side of Oldtown hill, was told, by vote of the town, that his blood should be on his own head if he lost his life in consequence, the vil- lagers were not to be denied the associations and pleasures of the tavern. So Francis Plumer was licensed, and we imagine he stood next in rank to the preacher and the teacher.
The next year (1636) the town was more fully organized by the choice of selectmen ; the seven wise men who were to act " from quarter to quarter." They were : Edward Woodman, John Wood- bridge, Henry Short, Christopher Hussey, Richard Kent, Richard Brown. John Woodbridge was register or clerk. Selectmen had a wider field of operation than now. They were to keep order, punish offenders against rules, and be the advisers in many transactions. The Court also provided for moderators of town-meetings, and or- dered the mode of business. By law the voters were obliged to attend town-meetings, and fined if they did not. They were to leave, only on permission, and in an orderly and decorous manner. John Pike, who with his son, Robert, and three others, had been fined, in 1638, for being absent, " having due and fitt warning," was less than three months thereafter fined 28. 6d. for departing from the meeting with- out leave and contemptuously.
These Pikes afterwards removed to Salisbury, where they mani- fested the same contempt for what they thought improper restraint, and Robert having declared that the persons who passed the law "restraining unfit persons from constant preaching," which was in- tended to punish the Quakers, " did break their oath to their country," was declared guilty of defaming the General Court, and disfranchised, disabled from holding public office, put under bonds to keep the peace, and fined twenty marks, which was between thirteen and four- teen pounds. This caused so great a commotion that, on petition of
the citizens of many towns, the sentence was remitted. Mr. Pike, known as the " Most Worshipful Major Robert Pike," lived to be very old, filled the most important local trusts, and died full of honors. Still the law remained and was often enforced. The town-meeting, however, was limited in its operations, as was the voting. It was no part of the mission of our fathers to establish equality among men. The freemen were the voters, and the right of the majority was the rule of action. Individualism was ignored. For the choice of the higher officers the law required all the freemen of the Province, that is, all who were qualified by taking the freeman's oath, to meet at the General Court of electors to choose the magistrates, of whom the governor and lieutenant-governor were the chief. This continued to 1637, and in that year we find that ten men walked to Cambridge on foot, to take their oath, that they might vote against the re-election of Sir Henry Vane for governor. We can believe that they vahied the right of suffrage, and that politics ran high, when men went forty miles on foot, with their mateblocks on their shoulders, to give their votes. The laws limited the governing elass to these freemen, and the town was fined for electing a representative not a freeman.
The General Court assumed the power to do whatever the public good, in their judgment, required, and they decided what a man might say ; what do; what eat ; what wear. They didn't like long hair, because the Cavaliers in England, who were also Papists, wore long flowing locks, while the Puritans cut theirs short; so long hair was devilish. They took into consideration the dresses of women, forbid- ding the use of lace, except as a binding or edging on costly cloth, unless it could be afforded. So when three Newbury women were before the Court for wearing silk hoods and scarf's, they had to prove, as justification, that their husbands were worth £200, while one, Mrs. Swett, not being able to do that, was fined ten shil- lings. So the men were restricted even to the buttons on their coats. Likewise the tongue was bridled, and a sailor having said that all were traitors and rebels who left the cross out of the royal colors, as some did in hatred of Papacy, was thrust into prison ; nor was he released till a written confession of his rashness was made. In the observance of the Sabbath they were exceedingly strict, tithingmen patrolling the streets with long, white-headed poles, to prevent any unnecessary work or travelling on Lord's Day ; a rule which came down to within a half century, for till then the tithingman had lived. In the church, they saw that all were in their proper places (for all families were to attend public worship regularly, and their absence to be marked) and that all behaved properly.
Aquilla Chase, who had been induced to remove from Hampton, and had a honse-lot, planting field, and marsh land allotted him, " if he would go to see and serve with his boat," that is, be a pilot on the river, was brought before the Court, in 1666, with his wife, and David Wheeler, her brother, and ordered to be admonished for picking peas on Sunday, their fines being remitted. From this Chase have sprung many noted men, as Philander Chase, a distinguished Episcopal bishop, and Salmon P. Chase, who was governor of Ohio, a senator in Con- gress, and Chief Justice of the United States. The house-lot given Aquilla Chase, on which he picked the peas, was near the Three Roads, now in the sixth ward, Newburyport.
We have noticed events in this connection without regard to dates. But at the end of the second year we find the town well established, with its regular quarterly town-meetings, its selectmen and town clerk, its justice court, its stocks, and other means of punishing offend- ers, its military and its tax-gatherer ; and as its tax was nearly half as much as Salem, and a third as much as Boston, Newbury must have been a thrifty settlement. This was also indicated.by prices : corn brought 4s .; wheat, 6s .; cows were worth £25 or £30 and a pair of bulls or oxen, £40; and Dummer, Spencer, Sewall, Cotton and others, had many cattle, and broad fields sown to grain to supply the new families moving in. It was an era of inflation, without a paper currency ; but they had legal tender, as musket-balls, Indian wampum, cattle, beavers, grain, &c., at fixed values. The great influx of immigrants, twenty ships with 3,000 people coming in 1638, and new settlements forming all around, requiring merchandise, made flush times, and men grew rich. They pulled down their barns and builded bigger; they extended their fences and ploughed broader fields ; and every thing went swimming on to 1640, when changes at home and in England checked population, and revulsion followed. "Neither money or beaver were to be had," says Winthrop. Demand ceased, prices fell, corn was of no value, and cattle were unsalable. Even Gov. Win- throp himself so suffered, " in his outward estate," that the elders took subscriptions of £500, of which Richard Dummer paid one-fifth part, indicating his financial ability. Then, says Winthrop, the times
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were so hard that men could not pay their debts, though they had enough ; and he who three months before was worth £2,000, could not receive £200 if he should sell his whole estate. But as after the night cometh the morn, so better times followed this first depression as they have all the financial crises sinee, following each other like the waves of the sea, one at least in every quarter of a century.
The first homes must, as we have said, have been very rude-mere wigwams, made tight with elay ; the chimneys built of clay and sticks ; without windows, or hardware supplies ; and paint had not been men- tioned or thought of. So saw-mills must be built.
Richard Dummer and George Spencer built the first saw and grist mill at the "Falls," and from that came the lumber for the first farm- houses, which were well built, as the John Poore house, on the south side of the Parker, where eight generations of his descendants have followed him; and the Noyes house on Parker Street, the Putnam house on High, at the head of Marlborough Street, with others, which have seen more than two centuries, some of them possibly undergoing such changes as to leave little of the original materials.
It was about this time that Rowley, Salisbury, Hampton, and other new towns, drew many families from Newbury ; but others came in, not only to fill their places, but to start new industries. It was in 1639 that Anthony Somerby, the first school-master, came over, and the Lowells -John, Richard, and Percival -- from whom we have had jurists, clergymen, scholars, poets, manufacturers, of whom the State and nation have been proud. They were merchants, as were William Gerrish and Richard Dole, from Bristol, England. The last- named, from his business, was called " Marchant" Dole. In 1640, also, we had Robert Adams, Henry Jaques, and George Little, whose descendants have increased to this day, and hold the destinies and fame of the old town in their keeping. They all located on the Parker, or not far above it ; and as yet it is not mentioned that one vessel had ever been over the Merrimac bar, though undoubtedly some had. But there at Oldtown the first vessels were employed in the fisheries, and in the foreign trade ; and we hear of John Knight, that he should have a lot of land if he would follow fishing ; and of Thomas Mil- ward, who owned a " shallop "; and Capt. John Cutting, ship-master ; and all of these were encouraged by subsidies or exemptions. The ship-builder and the fisherman were excused from military training, and all estates employed in catching, making, and transporting fish, were exempted from taxes ; while lots of land were granted, called " fishermen's lots." There was, also, much improvement by building roads, which were no light burdens, the first great road being from the Merrimac River to Hingham, the most southern settlement, which in that day must have been equal to the building of the Boston and Albany Railroad in ours. They also provided ferries over the rivers. The first over the Merrimac was at Carr's Island, which had its name from George Carr, a carpenter, building vessels there, a quarter of one of which he sold to William Hilton, of Newbury, for James, an Indian slave, to be his servant forever. Carr built a floating bridge from the north side of the island to Salisbury shore, five feet wide and 270 long ; and that was the first bridge in Massachusetts. On the New- bury side Tristram Coffin was ferryman, who also kept a tavern ; and his wife, Dionis, was indicted for selling beer at threepence a quart, which was more than the legal price ; but she was discharged when it was proved that she used six bushels of malt to the hogshead, while the law only required four. This Tristram Coffin, after living in Newbury, Haverhill, and Salisbury, with other persons in the last- named town, purchased and removed to Nantucket. His descendants are numerous, and include many distinguished persons ; among them the British admiral, Sir Isaac Coffin.
Though the town had been exceedingly prosperous from the first, with the exception of the financial revulsion of 1640, and was rich in cattle and sheep, in its fisheries and agriculture, in its trade and its marshes which were especially esteemed by the early settlers, and have never ceased to enrich their owners, still we may not dream that this Arcadian settlement saw and feared no troubles. They faced many storms, and, in their ignorance of the country, feared many dangers. They went armed when no enemies appeared ; they watched for convulsions of nature that never came to harm them. Still their fears were not groundless, for there were stubborn facts. On July 5th, 1643, a cyclone swept over the place, crushing down " multitudes of trees," and lifting the meeting-house from its foundations when the people were there assembled. They discovered, also, that they were in an earthquake region, and as early as 1638 one broke upon them like a elap of thunder from a clear sky, and the earth shook violently. This was on the same day that Atna had a startling irruption, and the city of Euphemia, in Calabria, was swallowed up. Earthquakes are
always terrifying ; and they have followed in frequent succession from that day to our own ; as in 1643, 1663, 1685, and so down, one very violent being in 1727, when the sea roared, the earth bellowed like a stricken animal, and the heavens echoed back their cries. The chim- neys and stone-walls were thrown down, springs were dried up and new ones opened, great chasms were rent in the earth, from which was thrown a material that burned blue like brimstone, and to many of that day it seemed as though the end of the world was at hand and hell opened. A still greater and more terrible one occurred in 1755, when all nature stood aghast, and men and cattle were alike over- come with fear ; when the birds were frightened and the dogs howled, and no living thing knew what to do. That was of the same date of the destruction of Lisbon and other places in Europe. Hundreds of shocks have been felt here ; perhaps as many in the Merrimac Valley as anywhere on this continent.
Neither were our fathers without alarm on account of the climate, which, while it may have been milder, as a whole, before the forests were destroyed, at times was severely rigorous; and when Winthrop says, in 1642, that " all Boston bay was frozen over, so much and so long, as the like, by the Indian relations, had not been known for forty years, and it continued from the 1st of November to the 21st of February, so as horses and earts went over in many places where ships had sailed," we cannot help inquiring what did the people poorly clad and poorly sheltered, many of the houses without floors, and none of them having proper means of heating? and what did they at meeting, where no fires were had, and the services were hours in duration, the preacher never omitting a " thirdly " or a " tenthly " of his discourse for human accommodation? But all the winters were not like that ; some were milder than we have seen in a whole generation of this century. In the very next, in 1643, there was no snow, and very little rain, to the 3d of March ; and two years later, after ploughing every month, with no snow till February 16th, snow then fell so deep that the ways were impassable for three weeks. It is very unsafe, without examination, to say that it is the coldest or warmest winter ever known, for within ten years of the settlement of Newbury the record ran to each extreme, as far as within the last fifty years.
Nor was the moral condition different from to day. With all the laws to regulate life, among a people morally firm and religiously heroic, there were not only boyish pranks played in the face of severe manhood, the usual amount of gossip and scandal among the women, and lapses from virtue among the men, but quite frequently startling crimes. It was only two years from the settlement when William Schooler, having undertaken to guide and protect a poor maid, Mary Sholy, from the Merrimac to her master, dwelling at Piscataquack, mur- dered her before the journey was more than half accomplished, and was hanged therefor in Boston. So William Franklin, one of the first settlers in Newbury, but afterwards in Roxbury, was hanged for the murder of an apprentice whom most brutally he had treated. Human nature was the same with them as it had been with their fathers in the old world, and is now with their children two centuries after they are dead. The lights and shadows came and went then as now, and ever will ; only this, the severity of character and the sturdiness of conduct required, caused more convictions for violent crimes. Thus we find several women hanged for destroying illegitimate children, whose birth - no offence on the part of the children certainly - shadowed both mothers and offspring for life. One in Ipswich was hanged for that offence ; one here who killed two; and another in Haverhill, who killed three illegitimates. In the same grooves seems the race to run from age to age.
CHAPTER III.
FROM FORMING THE NEW TOWN TO THE INCORPORATION OF NEW- BURYPORT.
In 1642 there were thirty towns in the Province : and the next year it was divided into four counties : Essex, Suffolk, Middlesex, and Norfolk, the last-named north of the Merrimac, covering part of south-eastern New Hampshire. From that, when the boundaries of the Provinces were fixed, the three miles north of the Merrimac were added to Essex, making the territory of the county what it is and has been ever since.
In 1643 eame the confederation of the four Colonies,-Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, New Haven,-which was the precedent for the
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confederation of the States before the constitutional union. The league was for general purposes, and especially for protection in war ; and great care was taken to preserve its local rights to each. Ban- croft in his history notes that State rights date back to that compact, which existed only by the will of the parties thereto. The confedera- tion ended in 1665, when the white population of New England was 65,000, and of Massachusetts, 25.000.
The growth of Newbury was relatively more rapid than of the Col- ony, the population reaching in 1642 about 600. They were scat- tered over a large area, some seven miles from south of the Parker to the Artichoke River, and from the Merrimac to Dummer's Falls. Then commenced the agitation for the new town. They had discov- ered the superiority of the Merrimac, full of salmon and shad and sturgeon, and many other valuable fishes. It connected Newbury with Salisbury. Haverhill, Andover; was the natural route for trade ; and the " riverside " was in most of its interests distinct from the Lower Green village. Hence, a committee was raised to consider the com- mon property, and the division of the pastures. First, they deter- mined that six hundred acres, chiefly what is now West Newbury, should be a perpetual common. It was regarded as waste land, save the meadows and what might be needed for timber cutting. It seemed distant, and it should be remembered that for seventy years thereafter Haverhill was a frontier town. It was called the "Upper Woods " and the "Upper Commons." Three other pastures were made, of 563 rights each, for cows, oxen, and heifers; and those rights were divided among the freeholders, the lowest to any person being one, and the highest sixty-two aud a quarter, to Richard Dum- mer. All the land divisions were on the rule "unto him that hath shall be given."
The petition for the " new town" set forth as reasons the scarcity of plough land, "fencing stuffs," and remoteness of the commons ; and therefore a commission was instituted of eight men, for removing, settling and disposing of the inhabitants to such places as in their judgment might tend to their prosperity, and for exchanging their lands. A valuation of property was made, as a basis for division of lands. The house lot of each freeholder in the new town was to be four acres, and the residne to have a division on property as well as persons. The number of proprietors was 91, but was afterwards increased to 113. As the chartered, these proprietors, " com- moners," held all the wastes and commons. This was the last division of lands till 1686, when the town divided the " Upper Commons," one half to the freeholders in equal parts, and the other half among the inhabitants, and such freeholders as had paid taxes in the two years past, in proportion to what each man paid to the minis r's rate the year before. They also then divided 1,100 acres of the lower com- mons ; and subsequently other lands in the same manner.
We may remember, in this connection, that a freeman, one who had taken the oath and was entitled to vote for magistrates, was different from a freeholder, who might not be a freeman, but who was entitled to a share of the undivided lands ; and both different from the citizen, who could vote in a legal town meeting, but not in a freeman's meet- ing, or a frecholder's.
So we come to the "new town,"- a town within a town, and hav- ing no boundary in common except where it touched the Merrimac River. It extended from Parker Street, to which Parker and Noyes, the ministers, soon removed - on the south, to Jefferson Street, or Carr's Ferry, north, and, following down the river, came up to the Spencer or Stone house, on the Boardman farm, as it has since been called, comprising some 700 acres. The true reason for the formation of the " new town " had really nothing to do with the lands, but the fact that the people had reached a new industrial epoch - the era of manufactures and commerce. Bostou and Salem were in ship build- ing, so Newbury undoubtedly was, to some extent, on the Parker as high up as Thurlow's Bridge, and a very little on the Merrimac. George Carr, to whom Salisbury had ceded the island bearing his name, was then a ship-builder, as he certainly was in that business in 1659 ; and soon the Doles, Lowells, Gerrishes, Cuttings, and others, traders and artisans at home, moved up to the Upper Green, or above that, to pursue various occupations. They were called " river- side " people to distinguish them from farmers, though along High Street, Somerby, Kent, Rawson, Moody, and others had farms. The new town was also called the " port," to distinguish it from the "old town," and when Newburyport was incorporated, more than a century later, it included most of the " new town."
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