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 110
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The Byfield High School, for both sexes, was opened, 1838, in the seminary building, in opposition to Dummer Academy, by the people of Byfield, who became disaffected at the course of the trustees in the matter of tuition. It was taught by John N. Rollins, who for several years had been assistant at Dummer. It continued but one year, when a compromise was effected between the trustees of Dummer and the parish, on the basis of a quarter part the regular tuition, and the pupils returned to the old school.
In the same building, a second female seminary was opened, in 1844, and was continued with good success for three years.
The above comprise all the schools of Byfield proper, apart from the common schools, and those may have had a lower mark from them, the higher schools drawing away their pupils, especially within a few years since Dummer Academy has been opened to females.
The other part of Byfield, known as the Mills Village, has given less attention to education, probably from its want of a settled and permanent ministry ; of clergymen who regard the place as their home and the youth of the place as in their guardianship. Early there the Quakers were somewhat numerous, and a half century ago the Metho -. dists established a society under one of their preachers, named French, who said he was led to the locality by a dream, in which he saw the village, and was told of its needs. Be that as it may, he came there to preach, though he remained a resident of New Hampshire ; and in time a meeting-house was built, and a flourishing society is the fruit of his labors and that of his successor> ; but it is subject to frequent changes in the ministry, which has been disadvantageous to its schools. The common schools there have been good.
CHAPTER VI.
THE INDUSTRIES OF NEWBURY.
From the first, it has been chiefly a farming town, and one of the best of its class. Its large territory was beautifully diversified with hills and valleys, plains and meadows. It was well wooded and well watered, and abounded in marshes along the rivers, which our fathers especially desired, and which have continued to be a source of wealth. It has not, however, lacked enterprise, or a liberal spirit in encour- aging other industries. At first it used all its resources to attract wealth and population. As rich men were desirable, it granted lands to such as would settle in the town, as to Richard Dummer, in By- field, and Daniel Pierce, who purchased the John Spencer place just below Ocean Avenue. It needed ministers, physicians, schoolmas- ters, millers, ship-builders, pilots ou the Merrimac, people to carry on the fisheries, to build wharves for trade and commerce, and all of these it subsidized. To some it granted lands ; to some, exemption from taxes and military duty ; and to others it promised business, and gave protection in one form or another. So it was that Dummer and Spencer and Emery, and others, built their saw and grist mills ; so that Nicholas Easton built his first tan-yard at the river Parker, and John Bartlett built his at Bartlett Springs ; and Job Clement, in 1649, was promised frecholder's rights, if he would remove from Haverhill to Newbury, and carry on his trade as a tanner, for four years, giving a preference to the Newbury shoemakers in selling his leather, if they would pay as much as others. So Paul White built
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the first wharf, near the foot of State Street, and one of the Moodys made saddles, and another brewed heer ; and John Atkinson had the first hats for sale ; and so all manner of business was aided.
The first important industry was milling ; they must have lumher and meal ; and, in 1636, the town voted privileges to Richard Dum- mer and John Spencer ; and two years later, voted, that if Mr. Dum- mer would maintain the mill " fitt to grynd corne," no other should be erected in the town. This agreement was kept nine years, when, in 1655, John Emery and Samuel Scullard were vofed sixteen acres of land. and £20 in money, to build a second mill, which was in the First Parish. Then, in 1668, twelve aeres of land were granted John Emery, to build his mil! on the Artichoke. Eight years later, in 1678, there was great want of another corn-mill, which was erected on the Parker. a mile above Dummer's, which was Pearson's mill ; and subsequently three others, all owned by the Pearsons, were in the same neighborhood. Peter Cheney also had a mill, first at Little River, and then a second on the river Parker; and there was another mill, on what is now called "Peniornary "-a corruption of penny ordinary - pasture, where the remains of the dam and the foundation of the building are still seen .- in all nine grist-mills, of which Dummer's was as early as any in Massachusetts, run by water. There had been wind-mills before, and one or two water-mills were erected the same year.
Perhaps next in order was tanning, as there was an immediate de- mand for leather, and utilizing skins of wild animals. Nicholas Easton had the first tan-yard, at the Lower Green, where the remains of his vats could be seen to a very recent date. This became an important branch of business, and tan-yards were established in Byfield and along the Merrimac River, from the south to the north end.
Ship-building came in at an early day, beginning near the mouth of the Parker, on which stream vessels were built all the way to Thurlow's Bridge ; they were also built at Pine Island, and, after the " New town" was organized, they were found in process of construction all along the Merrimac, in such numbers that, at one time, at a later period, seventy-two vessels were in process of construction between the Pettengill farm, at the foot of Ocean Avenue, and Moggaridge's Point ; and a writer in " Hunt's Merchants' Magazine " said that one hundred were building on the Merrimae River at one time. Possibly there may have heen more than that, as the yards were along the river- banks as far up as Haverhill; and until within fifty years, next to farming, ship-building was the leading industry of the entire lower Merrimae Valley. Some of the vessels were large; Bancroft says they were built in the Province in 1643, within eight years of the settlement of Newbury, of 400 tons; but chiefly they were small, the larger numher for coasting and fishing vessels, from 15 to 25 tons. It was in their building that mechanics were called to what is now Newburyport, and gave the preponderance of population and wealth to that part of the town ; therefore we shall further treat of this topic under the head of Newburyport.
We may date the active business on the Merrimae from the grant of land to Paul White, in 1656, and the building of a wharf and dock, and a still-honse, at the foot of what is now State Street. This is the first notice of a distillery, giving a trade destined to increase and continue to our day. Subsequently, ten other distilleries were established, within one mile to the north and south of this point, six of which were running at one time since 1820. They grew out of our trade with the West Indies, which began prior to 1650, when we were receiving sugar and molasses, with cotton and tobacco, in return for our provisions, staves, lumber, and grain. Paul White, the first merchant at the "Port," who had come from Pemaquid, Me., two years before, was the first man to make New England rum, and the first man here licensed to sell it. We quote from the record of the General Court in 1662: Capt. Paul White licensed "to still strong waters for a yeare and sell by the quart " He built his wharf and commeneed business ; but before him, under authority granted to Gov. Winthrop, one Watts had built a cellar, and had a fishing station where the Market-house now stands, as one Ring had a fishing and trading post on the Salisbury side, on the island that bears his name. These fisheries were probably confined to the river fish, and partieu- larly to sturgeon, which were very plenty and very large. An Eng- lishman, Wood, as carly as 1633, two years before the settlement on the river Parker, wrote, "Much sturgeon is taken on the banks of the Merrimac, twelve, fourteen, eighteen feet long, pickled and sent to England." We can believe, therefore, that vessels came to and sailed from the Merrimac. even before Mr. Parker was at the Quas- caciquen, and that sturgeon were taken in both rivers and exported from the earliest days. A keg of sturgeon, ten shillings, was among
the charges for entertaining an ecelesiastieal council in Salisbury in 1656 ; and shortly afterwards, one Williams was sending them to Bos- ton. Men were licensed to catch and cure them ; as Thomas Rogers, in 1680, "provided he shall present the court with a bowle of good sturgeon every Michaelmas court." So early did legislative " junket- ing " begin. The price at which they might be sold was fixed by law ; as. in 1733, Capt. Daniel Lunt could sell in Boston, at twelve shillings a keg, "if he could get no more." and the same year they were ex- changing sturgeon for rum and molasses. One William Thomas had petitioned the General Court to grant him the exclusive privilege to pickle and put up sturgeon, attempting to monopolize the trade.
It is evident that Paul White had an ample field for all his enter- prise at the very outset, and that the wharf and doek were needed for trade already existing. The manufacture of rum was for dispos- ing of the molasses had in return for the fish. But he was not long without competition. " Marchant " Dole, as he was called, Daniel Davison, Stephen Greenleaf, Ahiel Somerby, who was the farthest north, at the foot of Market Street, and Benjamin Lunt, who was the farthest south, at the foot of Marlborough Street, soon built wharves, and all the intervening space was occupied with docks and ship-yards. The fact of their commerce appears in this : that a enstom-house was established in 1684. We also meet in the old records such indica- tions as these : in 1687, the brig " Merrimac." Kent, was captured by pirates in the Vineyard Sound; and, in 1703, Benaiah Titcomb had a vessel captured, coming from Antigua.
In 1708, the town had become of sufficient importance to need reg- ular post-office connection with Boston ; and the record reads, " This year Joseph Lunt rode post." He was. therefore, the first mail-car- rier and the first postmaster. In 1774, the riding post, by Joseph Lunt, had grown into the first stage-coach in the country, drawn by four horses, driven by Ezra Lunt, which made three trips to Boston a week. A two-horse coach from Portsmouth for Boston had pre- ceded this. In 1800, we find four stages daily, and this coaching grew into the famous Eastern Stage Company, and that into the East- ern Railroad, each in its turn indicating the progress of the people.
A new industry appeared in 1744, when John Crocker, an English- man, built a rope-walk on State Street, the head of which was near where the Whitefield Church nowy stands. With this, he commenced the spinning of hemp for rigging ; at first he merely took apart the strands and relayed them. Four years later, the town granted him permission to erect a rope-walk on the margin of Frog Pond, in what is now the Mall, above a wind-mill, which stood at the east end where the school-house now is. Here cordage was made from the hemp. With the growth of ship-building, other rope-walks were built, - eleven in all, we think. One was back of Frog Pond ; one ran north from State Street, with its head near the east corner of Pleasant Street ; another from Merrimac to Washington Street, just above the Eastern Railroad. Then we find one from Federal to Lime Street ; one from Water Street, where the Victoria Cotton Mills are ; and the remainder were on Bromfield and Marlborough streets ; but for ship-rigging none now remain. A change came in the method of manufacturing. and the old rope walks no longer exist. In their day they were important to the town, both for their production and the great number of persons employed - so numerous that they formed a class associated by their own interests, who celebrated St. Catherine's Day as the shoemakers did St. Crispin's.
Another industry, and one of the earliest, was the manufacturing of silver and gold into buckles, beads, spoons, thimbles, which com- menced with the Moultons. near Moulton's Hill, and has been continued in that family through all their generations in this country. They were silversmiths in England, and made their settlement here in 1637, on lands hy the Merrimae, which are owned by their descendants at this day, and they have never been out of the trade. They discovered silver on their own lands, smelted it, and made it into spoons, two hundred years ago, though Watts, who built the "cellar " at the Market, - of whom something more ought to have come to us than has, - is named as the first man finding silver in that section of the town. At first in the poverty of a new colony, there was little trade in silver-ware ; and the Moultons were also iron and copper workers. But later, when knee-huckles were in fashion, to fasten the short clothes of gentle- men, and also for shoes, and then, when all ladies wore beads and other ornaments of gold, the manufacture of gold and silver went up to $1,000 a week or more in this town.
But while the " River-side " was most stirring, the people about the Falls of the Parker in Byfield were not idle. Among the active young men of the first generation was Peter Cheney, a miller, who, in 1663, purchased a mill and a mill-house on the Little River. To him
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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.
the town granted a half acre of land, in 1670, if he would add wind to his water-power, for the grinding of corn when the water should fail. Later, in 1680, he received a grant of land for a saw-mill in Byfield, where now is the Mills Village, which has been continued to this time ; a few years subsequently, in 1687, he proposed a fulling- mill, to full " ye towne's cloth, at ye same terms that Mr John Pear- son doeth full cloth ;" so that, at this early period, there were two fulling-mills in the town. His mill was purchased by John Pearson, and has been continued to the seventh generation of the Benjamin Pearsons of that family, principally used for the dressing of home- made cloth.
In 1794, the first incorporated woollen company in the State built a factory at Dummer's Falls, the machinery for which was made in Newburyport. It manufactured the first broadcloth made in America. William Bartlett, of Newburyport, whose enterprise projected, and whose wealth fostered many industries, was the principal proprietor. It labored under the disadvantages of all pioneer works, and failed to pay.
Near the elose of the last century, the same building was used for the manufacture of cotton goods, and there was made the first cotton- eloth this country produced - goods that sold at seventy-five cents a yard. This was within a score of years of the invention of the mule- jenny in England, which combined the inventions of Hargreaves and Arkwright. Before the Byfield cotton factory there was a cotton-mill in Beverly, and Slater in Rhode Island was spinning yarn with the Arkwright machines, the twist being sold to weavers to be used in hand- looms ; but at Byfield the eloth was made in the factory, by one John Lees, an Englishman, who smuggled the machinery from England. We have then the first incorporated woollen-mill, and the first success- ful cotton-mill at the same place. A little later, Paul Moody, who was born close to this factory, and, perhaps, there obtained his first ideas of machinery, invented the power-loom used in Waltham, and became one of the founders of the city of Lowell.
Later still, we find Jacob Perkins in the same factory, setting up one of his machines for eutting nails, but he only operated it for the testing of his works ; still there were made the first eut nails, one of the most important of American inventions. The same factory was subsequently used for the manufacture of chocolate, which was largely used as a substitute for tea and coffee ; and more recently for the manufacture of furniture ; and then again it returned to the spinning of wool.
Other manufactures of wood and wool, of iron and leather, have been established at the " Mills" village ; and to-day it is one of the chief places in the State for the making of snuff; but principally the people are employed in shoe-making, which was established by Col. Josiah Titcomb in 1830, who to tanning and eurrying added the making of the leather into shoes. To-day there are several shops manufacturing on a large scale by machinery.
At South Byfield is a cheese factory which has been running some ten years, and is the first and only cheese factory in Essex County. Many varieties of business trace their origin in this country to Old Newbury, as carriage and comb-making, of which we will state under the head of West Newbury.
CHAPTER
NEWBURY IN WAR, FROM 1638 TO 1865.
The history of all English settlements, except that of Pennsylvania, is military history. The people came here with arms in their hands, as the Israelites went to the promised land ; and scarcely did they lay them down, unless to sleep, and then the trusty matehloek was at the bedside. As they tore up the tree-roots and broke the stubborn soil in the rude and wearisome culture of the fields, the musket was at hand. When they went through the woods, which rang with their pious psalms, the guns were upon their shoulders : they went not to the pastures for their cattle and their sheep without it, for the wild wolf and the wilder red man might be in their path. They trusted to God for the hereafter ; they trusted to their own courage and their skill in arms, which were carried even to the meeting-house where they wor- shipped, for the protection of their lives, for the safety of their homes,- the women at their work, and their infants in the cradles. Emphatically they belonged to the church militant, -- they were men of war, every one capable of bearing arms being held to answer the first alarm in
the town or the first call of the country. That first call was made before they had been two years on the banks of the Quascacunquen. One hundred and sixty men was Massachusetts to furnish against the Pequods in Connecticut. Of these, Newbury raised eight ; Ipswich, seventeen ; Salem, eighteen ; Lynn, sixteen ; and Boston, twenty-six. This levy shows the relative populations. It seems a very small num- ber - those eight men ; but possibly it was the largest draft ever made upon the town in proportion to its ability. The force left in April, and in May the Indians were attacked with fire and sword - the former being the most effective, and nearly the whole tribe of five or six hun- dred exterminated. Who escaped or were absent from the first encoun- ter, were destroyed before the end of the year. "There remained not a savage nor a squaw, not a warrior nor a child of the Pequod name." " A nation had dropped from the family of man," says Bancroft. This ended the first war, and without loss of life to Newbury.
In constant anticipation of evil from the Indians, training-days for drill were not omitted or neglected, and in 1675 eame the war with King Philip, which ereated immense alarm throughout the Province. " The minds of the English," says Cotton Mather, " were appalled by the impending conflict. At the time of the eclipse of the moon you might have seen the figure of an Indian scalp imprinted on the centre of its dise. The perfect form of an Indian bow appeared in the skics. The sighing of the wind was like the whistling of bullets. Some dis- tinetly heard the invisible troop of horses gallop through the air, while others found the prophesy in the howling of wolves." It was an age of superstition, and days of humiliation and prayer were set apart. It was on one of those, as the people were returning from the meeting, that nine whites were murdered in Swanzey. Then went forth the call for men, horses, arms, provisions, and before Christmas forty- eight men and forty-six horses were sent to the war. Edward Ever- ett, in an address on the battle at [Muddy ] Bloody Brook, stating the drain on Newbury for men and horses, says that it shows " the pro- digious severity of the military service of the Colony at that period,- vastly greater than at any subsequent period in the history of the country," but he omits that, by a later draft of the same year, twenty- four men were impressed, and January 28th, thirteen more were im- pressed, making the total from Aug. 5, 1675, to Jan. 2, 1676, eighty- six men, when the ratable polls were only 159. There was never a war before or since, and never will be again, in which the soldiers drafted exceeded half the polls.
Of the Newbury men named above, twenty-three were drafted in August, and were of the company commanded by Thomas Lathrop in the battle, or rather massaere, at Bloody Brook, in South Deerfield, Sept. 18, 1675 - the blackest day in the early history of our State. Philip was then on the Connecticut River, and this company of eighty men, " the flower of Essex," her hopeful young men, selected from the several towns for their vigor and daring, volunteered to go to Deer- field to thrash wheat and take it to Hadley. They had it on eighteen wagons, and were proceeding through the woods of South Deerfield, when they stopped to gather the purple grapes, hanging in thick elus- ters in the autumn forests ; and while so engaged were surprised, and Capt. Lathrop and seventy of his men were slaughtered. One writer says that not more than seven or eight escaped ; another fixes the dead at seventy-one ; and the names of sixty killed are given. How many of the Newbury men went into the one grave, in which Increase Mather says sixty were buried, leaving eight widows and twenty-six fatherless children, we know not. In the record of the dead, Serg. Thomas Smith comes next to Capt. Lathrop; and following are Sam- uel and John Stevens. Two, we know, escaped - John Tappan, who was wounded in the shoulder, but managed to conceal himself in a brook bed, then dry, and hauled grass and weeds over him, so that the Indians, who stepped over his body, did not see him ; and Henry Bodwell, a very strong man, who, having his left arm broken by a musket shot, seized his gun in his right hand, and, swinging it over his head, cleared his way of Indians who had nearly surrounded him. Of the other men sent to war that year, John Plummer was killed Aug. 25, and Daniel Rolfe Dec. 19; and five were wounded - Daniel Somerby, so that he shortly died ; Jonathan Emery, badly, by an arrow in the neek ; and Jonathan Ilsley, William Standley, and Jon- athan Harvey, all of Newbury.
During this, Philip's War, which was brief, 600 persons were killed, one man in eleven of the arms-bearing population; twelve towns utterly destroyed, and others injured; and six hundred buildings reduced to ashes. There should be no surprise at the "scare" which followed, when the General Court submitted to the seleetmen of the several towns a projeet to build a stone wall from the Charles to the Concord River in Billerica, to keep out the "red devils" from Middle-
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sex and E-sex counties ; but our selectmen reported in favor of a line of sentinels, of live men, with strong arms and trusty muskets, and reported to the Court that they had already ordered several houses to be garrisoned, and were about fortifying, for a mile and more, from the Parker to the Merrimac, which would enclose most of the houses and cultivated fields. But Philip was dead ; and, though the Indians were at times troublesome to New England, their great man now was gone, and their cause was lost.
Twelve years King Philip had been in his grave, and the Indians had given no great trouble, when Sir Edmund Andros, the tyrant of Massachusetts, being governor, there was oppression at home and war abroad. For uttering words defamatory to his administration citizens were seized in their houses, and fined and imprisoned. Among those suffering in Newbury were Caleb Moody and Joseph Bailey. Moody was one of the chief citizens, and representative to the General Court ; but that did not protect him.
At the same time Andros provoked the Castine War, so called from robbery of the house of the French baron, De Saint Castine, who had married the daughter of the chief of the Penobscot Indians. For that war some 800 men were impressed, and Newbury furnished her quota. What would have come from Andros, had not a change occurred in England, is not clear; but already committees of safety were formed, and revolution was at hand, when William and Mary were proclaimed king and queen of England.
Among the persons impressed to this French and Indian war was Capt. John March, who removed his family to the East, and was the defender of Casco Fort, for his losses at which the General Court voted him fifty pounds, " in consideration of his brave defence of his majesty's fort at Casco Bay, when attacked by the French and Indian enemy, and of the wonuds he there received." He claimed that his losses were $500.
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