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 112
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It is not surprising that these material surroundings, contributing so much to desirable mental conditions, have not only impressed persons born in the town, and waked in them the deepest and most abiding love for their birth-places, but made them what they have been in all our history,-active, ambitious, proud, cultured, poetic ; enterprising in business, bold in action, and imaginative in writing. So this locality has been the home of many poets, who have lived here or have here had their family roots : like Longfellow and Lowell and Lunt, John Pier- pont and Albert Pike, W. W. Caldwell, Richard S. Spofford, Lucy Hooper, Mrs. George Lee, and a host of others. Nor are we any more surprised that it has been a desirable residence for men famous in letters, oratory, law, and politics : so that, in its judges alone, it numbers Bradbury, Parsons, Wilde, Thatcher, and Cushing, all on the Supreme bench ; Greenleaf and White, who made the Probate Court distinguished ; and Tyng and Livermore, who honored the Com- mon Pleas ; while among the lawyers of its bar have been Rufus King, John Lowell, Stephen Hooper, Samuel L. Knapp, John Pierpont, Ebenezer Moseley, George Lunt, and many others, living or dead, worthy of honorable mention. Scholars sought here a home, with physicians and clergymen in love with the place; and merchants centred here their business, where they could combine pleasure with the toils of life : and so man has combined with nature to make Newburyport what we see it to-day.
In 1796 Dr. Dwight wrote of it: "Newburyport is built on a declivity of unrivalled beauty. The slope is easy and elegant ; the soil is, rich, the streets, clean and sweet, and the verdure, wherever it is visible, exquisite. The streets are either parallel or right angled to the river, the southern shore of which bends here to the south-east. None of them are regularly formed, still there is so near an approx- imation to regularity as to awaken in the mind of the traveller, with peculiar strength, a wish that the regularity had been perfect .. . There are few towns of equal beauty in the country. The houses taken collectively make a better appearance than those of any other town in New England. Many of them are particularly handsome. Their appendages are unusually neat. Indeed an air of wealth, taste, and elegance is spread over this beautiful spot, to which I know no rival."
This description was written when Newburyport was one of the large seaports of the country, and its importance in wealth and trade, and the intellectual and moral standing of its people, were acknowl- edged at home and in foreign lands. Mrs. E. Vale Smith, in her history, published nearly sixty years later, says of High Street, over- looking the scene described by Dr. Dwight : -
" The many tasty dwellings located along the entire length, together with the beautiful foliage intermingled with the waving elms, the sturdy oak, and the majestic forest trees of a century's growth, arch- ing their spreading branches in luxuriant grandeur, united with songs of the forest birds, and enlivened by fragrant and aromatic breezes constantly sweeping their course from hundreds of highly cultivated exotic plants in gardens on either side, cooled by refreshing air from the ocean, contribute to make the avenue of our city a delightful promenade and fashionable retreat during the summer season. The number of shade-trees on High Street, embracing that portion within the limits of Newburyport, -from the Three Roads on the north to Marlborough Street on the south, -is eleven hundred and forty- seven." The number of trees has been increased since her date (1854), and the residences also ; though there is little improvement in appearance to be made to the square, three-story, white houses, with green blinds, and suitable shrubbery around them, as they were fifty years ago.
As a place of residence, Newburyport has many natural advantages ; as in its drives through the country Dr. Dwight describes. Louis Philippe, king of the French, said that all Europe did not afford so
fine a drive as that along the Merrimac on the north bank, between the Powow River and Rocks Bridge. Little inferior is it on the south river-bank to Haverhill ; or from the eity over the Parker River bridge to Rowley ; and almost any direction will take one through shady dells, where he is as much alone with nature as he would be a thou- sand miles from civilization ; or over gentle hills, ascending which a vast panorama of beauty is unrolled. Sir Edward Thornton, the British minister, spent two seasons on Moulton Hill, which he declared afforded prettier views than were elsewhere to be found between it and Washington. Brissot de Warville made a similar declaration concerning Pipe-stave Hill, when he there received the hospitalities of the Daltons and Hoopers ; and Bayard Taylor was not less enchanted with the quiet beauty of Powow Hill ; while any of the above-mentioned localities is fully equalled by Indian Hill.
CHAPTER II.
THE HISTORY OF THE TOWN FROM 1764 TO THE REVOLUTION.
Previously Newbury had been entitled to two representatives in General Court. One was retained by Newbury, and the other as- signed to Newburyport. Daniel Farnham was the first representa- tive. He had been active for the incorporation of the town ; his name was second on the petition ; and he was the moderator of the first town-meeting. He filled important municipal offices ; but his family, like many of a hundred years ago, leaves little more by which they can be remembered than what is found on the headstones of the grave-yards. On the slab which covers a tomb on the Old Burying Hill, Daniel Farnham is called a barrister at law ; and that is a title not found on any other tombstone in the town. It is a distinction not known in the State to-day ; but was applied to the highest class of men- bers of the bar in the old Province of Massachusetts Bay. It was held by Judge Bradbury and Chief Justice Parsons, of the Supreme Court, and attached not to any other person in the county at that time, Mr. Farnbam built and lived in a house opposite the head of Market Street, on the site now occupied by the Kelley School-house.
In the very first year of the town, the British Parliament passed an Act for raising revenue in the Colonies, by internal taxes. By it the duties on sugar and molasses were increased, to the great injury of our trade with the French and Spanish West Indies ; and, worse than that,-to the great annoyance of our commerce,-every naval com- mander was made a revenue officer, with power to search and seize American vessels if in his judgment necessary. This was a severe check to the prosperity of the new town, and the first of that series of acts which induced that rebellion of the Provinces which, being successful, we call the Revolution.
The next year, Parliament enacted the Stamp Law, which was odious ; for it interfered with all business, public and private, and the whole people were in opposition. The town instructed its representative, Dudley Atkins, to oppose all his influenee to the enforcement of the law; and in those instructions they set forth that Parliament was at- tempting to deprive them of the rights they had inherited as English- men,-" rights descended to us in the Great Charter, and enjoyed by our fathers, even back to the Alfreds and Edwards of immortal mem- ory." " Are we to be treated as slaves ?" asked they.
While they appealed to the eivil and legislative authorities, it was a matter on which they would not wait for others to act. And when they added to this declaration, "it is the desire of the town that no man in it will accept the office of distributing the stampt papers, as he regards the displeasure of the town"; and that the town deem such person an "enemy to the country," they set up a higher law, and one more binding than the British Parliament could enact,-a law which no citizen could ignore without peril.
So when Boston, Salem, or Newburyport said let no man distribute " the stampt papers," no man did it ; and when they added, a man so doing shall be deemed an enemy to his country, every one knew that he would be regarded and treated as a traitor.
The people were in a fever of excitement, and determined to execute their own will. In Boston, houses were broken open and property destroyed. Here the stamp distributor was hanged in effigy ; which was afterwards burned by the ship-carpenters near the foot of Federal Street, where gathered an immense erowd, while the bell rang, and the citizens hooted, crying, "So perish all the real stamp distributors."
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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.
Then formed companies of young men, who paraded the streets at night, hailing every passer, "Stamp or no stamp?" and the answers were unvarying, "No stamp." One person, a stranger, not knowing the inquisitorial party, replied, "I am as you are !" and was cheered for his ready wit. These demonstrations had the desired effect, or the Revolution might have begun ten years before it did. The law was to be operative in November: but, when that month came, the stamps and the stamp distributor came not with it; aud. on the March following, the law was repealed. The announcement of the repeal created such joy that July 24th was set apart for thanksgiving, and no thanksgiving has been so observed from that day to this.
" The people were mad," writes one, "with drink and joy." New- buryport did not stop for her thanksgiving. "By beat of drum and word of mouth," the town was assembled, as soon as the news reached here. The town-house was illuminated, and six half barrels of powder supplied the guns fired from the heads of Patch and Bartlett wharves,-the longest wharves, from which the glad news was thun- dered to all the surrounding country. Lacking the cirenmstanees, one can hardly conceive, at this day, of the feelings which actuated a country verging on revolution, and still restrained within the nominal bonnds of peace. The fagots were piled for the fire, and all waited the hour to apply the torch ; many looking and longing for the moment when the light should gleam upon the clouds.
In 1767, Parliament laid a tax on paper, glass, painters' colors, tea, and other merchandise ; and immediately agitation commeneed in re- sistance similar to that which had led to a repeal of the Stamp Act. It was more universal against tea than anything else ; as that touched every town, and entered every house, affecting females as well as men. Various herbs were used as substitutes, and demonstrations of differ- ent kinds made touching the question. It is recorded that a party of young ladies gathered at the house of Rev. Mr. Parsons, who was the head and soul of resistance to British tyranny preceding the Revolu- tion, who preached them a sermon ; after which they spun 270 skeins of yarn, presenting the same to Mrs. Parsons, and drank liberty tea, as it was called, - that is herb tea. That was in April.
The following September, Joshua Vickery, a ship carpenter, on suspicion that he had given iuformation to the revenue officers, was set ou the stocks, five hours, on a sharp stone, till he fainted ; then he was revived, carted through the streets, with a rope about his neck, his hands being hound, and pelted with eggs. After that, he was kept in irons from Saturday to Monday ; then he was obliged to lead a horse through the town, drawing onc Franeis Magro, who, for giving information against a vessel in Portsmouth, was seized here, stripped naked, tarred and feathered, and exhibited to public scorn. No man could favor the execution of the law without being deemed a public enemy, and so jeopardized in reputation, property, and person. In later years, we have seen a similar demonstration against law in rela- tion to the fishing bounties, when the execution of the law was obnox- ions.
It was at this period, and before the "Mohawks" in Boston had tested whether tea would mix with salt water, that Eleazer Johnson, a ship-builder, who had succeeded his father, William, in building at the foot of Ship Street, led the carpenters in his employ to the de- struction of tea. For its safe-keeping. it had been stored in the pow- der-honsc. One day, Mr. Johnson, than whom there was not a more determined patriot in the land, a member of Mr. Parsons's church, where treason to royal prerogatives was preached every Sunday, standing upon some timber, called his men around him. "Few and short were the words he said," when the order was given, "Every man ready to do so will knock his adze from the handle, shoulder the handle, and fall into line." They all did so, and himself- a man of herculean frame, with iron will and iron nerve, so strong that he was known to carry onc end of a stiek timber over the bows of a ship against four ordinary carpenters - shouldered his broad axe, the em- blem of power, and his black hair floating in the wind, and his black eyes flashing, led the way to the place of tea deposit. A single stroke of the strong man's trusty axe shattered the oaken door, wheu, at his command, each man took a chest upon his baek, and in solemn, single file, not a word spoken, they wended their way to Market Square, marched around the meeting-house, which then stood where the town pump now is, broke the chests in a pile, and Eleazer Johnson lighted the fires of liberty with his own hand. Again, when the tea was reduced to ashes, like trained soldiers they formed, and returned to their work as silently as they had left it.
This was the first tea destroyed by the patriots in the Province of Massachusetts Bay ; and it has surprised us that the record has found no place in history, when the tradition has come down iu all its mi- | iujurions elaim.
nuteness, placing the fact beyond doubt. We had it from Elcazer Johnson's graudson, the town and city clerk for some forty years. The seizure and destruction not only took place as narrated, but was repeated, - the second burning being at the foot of Federal Street, in front of Mr. Johnson's house. This Eleazer Johnson is worthy of lasting remembrance in our hearts. He was the son of William, the first ancestor of the old Johnson family here ; and his mother was Mary, daughter of Daniel Pieree. before named. He lived from 1718 to 1792 ; and was in the pride of his manhood, a man of wealth and large business, at the date of the tea burning. He was distinguished for great energy and decision ; and, though not a learned man, was a lover of learning and piety, and educated his son, who was afterwards the first minister of the Second Parish of West Newbury, at Harvard, where he graduated in 1727. He was the close friend of the Crosses, Ralph and Stephen, and of Jonathan Greenleaf, eo-partners in the Revolutionary era, -all ship-builders in the same neighborhood, heroie chiefs of heroie men.
Newburyport was the first town in the province that agreed to the non-importation of foreign goods ; and this when she had more to lose than any other town, as she represented to the Congress, which she declared she would sustain, "let the sacrifices be ever so great," that her chief business was importations from Great Britain ; a large trade with the French West India islands, numerous distilleries, and ship building, -all of which were to be ruined by this measure, and the town impoverished. Without foreign trade, ships would rot iu the doeks, and those in process of construction, on the stoeks ; and her traffic of every kind must eease. Deliberately she gave up the bread of her life to resist oppression and secure freedom). The ships built for par- ties abroad - in Eugland, Scotland, Ireland - had been chiefly paid for in British manufactured goods, or the products of the West India islands. This merchandise had filled the warehouses and covered their wharves. It went to supply not only the surrounding towns, for which this was the port, but the towns, and even the plantations above, in the north of New Hampshire, and Vermont. Chiefly, the exchange of foreign imports for the farm productions of the interior was made in the winter, when the snow secured good travelling, and the ice bridged the rivers ; and persons now living can remember when from fifty to a hundred teams, driven from fifty to a hundred miles, would bring into the market, in a single day, pork, becf, wool, hides, tallow, butter, cheese, poultry, and grain, and take in return sugar, molasses, rum, iron, and dry goods. This was the mart of exchange ; and all such places derive profit both from their own industry and the labors of others. Newburyport sat by the sea, like Tyre in the most ancient times, or Veniee or Genoa when the commerce of the Mediterranean most flourished, or like London or New York to-day. It was one of the chief ports of the country ; holding relatively the rank of Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore now. But all these advantages she gave up. all these interests she abandoned, for the common good and the public liberties. Deliberately she strangled the business she relied ou ; destroyed the industries of her people ; closed her port ; de- nounced those who preferred trade to freedom as pests of society. - enemies to the country ; caught informers, and rode them through her streets elothed in tar aud feathers, that they might be infamous ; burned tea in her market-placc ; and sat down in her loneliness, that she might remain firm for freedom, and the right be maintained. She did more than that : when the Boston Port Bill, passed to punish and beggar Boston for her patriotism, she voted £200 from her treasury for the suffering inhabitants of that town ; and not a tax-payer objected, for not a Tory was within her limits. And, later, she collected over £200 for the same purpose, by voluntary contributions of the churches. Nor did she hesitate even there, but in town meeting voted unani- mously, " This town will stand by the Continental Congress, if it be to the stopping of all trade." Perish trade, she said ; perish commerce ; perish property ; perish all else : but live freedom, and live the man- hood which seorns life without liberty. Thus boldly stood forth a little town at the mouth of the Merrimac, of only three thousand people, daring British tyranny, and placing herself in the jaws of finan- eial destruction, before she would yield to oppression, or submit to wrong.
Her letter to the committee of the towu of Boston, adopted at a meeting of the freeholders and others, Dce. 20, 1774, has in it the true ring of the Declaration of Independence : "It is with astonishment that we refleet upon the unremitted efforts of the British ministry and Parliament, to fasten ruin and infamy upon these colonies. They not only claim a right to coutrol and tax us at their pleasure. but are prac- ticing every species of fraud to support and establish this absurd and . We lose all patience, when we consider
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that the industrious Americans are to be stript of their honest earnings to gratify the humors of lawless and ambitious men, and to support in idleness and luxury a parcel of worthless partizans, their creatures and tools, who are swarming thick upon us, and are ready to become a notorious burden to the community." Then they go on : "We are under great obligations to our worthy friends and brothers who have nobly stood forth in this important cause, and assure them that if they need our assistance in any emergency, we determine most readily to exert out utmost abilities, in every manly and laudable way, our wisdom may dictate, for the salvation of our country, and even at the hazard of our lives to frustrate all the designs of our enemies." If Newbury- port had been all of Massachusetts, or the thirteen Colonies combined, she could not have uttered braver words, - words soon to be backed by deeds not less brave.
The next year, 1774, Tristram Dalton, shortly to be a Senator of the new-born republic; Benjamin Greenleaf, so long the learned Judge of Probate for Essex County ; Jonathan Titcomb, who became a brigadier-general in the Revolutionary Army, and was a member of the first General Court in Boston after its evacuation by the British ; Stephen Cross, who had been a brave soldier in the expedition against Crown Point; and John Lowell, who soon after won a great name among American statesmen and jurists, - were the selectmen of the town. We give their names, because not, as we remember, before or since, have names of equal worth appeared; nor have we ever known five so distinguished to be the selectinen of any town. New- buryport appreciated the situation ; and her able and honored and patriotic inen were kept in the front. She felt that affairs hastened to a crisis, and for that she made ready.
The Boston massacre of March, three years previous, when three men were shot on the streets, was celebrated. The bells tolled at sunrise and sunset for the first blood of the struggle. The Rev. Jonathan Parsons, than whom there was not a man in the country more intensely patriotic, preached a sermon at the Old South, -a build- ing as much consecrated to freedom as was ever Faneuil Hall. Its walls echoed with words as full of treason as Patrick Henry's when he astonished the royal court in Virginia. Unfortunately Mr. Parsons died in the same month the nation was born, July, 1776; nor saw the full fruition of his labors and prayers.
In October, in giving instructions to Jonathan Greenleaf, repre- sentative to the General Court, the town said, "Armed ships and armed men are the arguments to compell our obedience, and the more than implicit language that those utter is that we must submit or die. . . We design not madly to brave our own destruction, and we do not thirst for the blood of others ; but reason and religion demand of us that we guard our invaluable rights'at the risque of both." Did they mean at the risk of their own blood, and that of others? Well did they so resolve ; and hence, October 24th, the town voted : "All the inhabitants are desired to furnish themselves with arms and ammuni- tion, and have bayonets fixed to their guns, as soon as may be." No call for volunteers ; no draft of a few ; every male inhabitant over six- teen years old was at once to be armed and enter upon military prac- tice and drill, that they might become expert; and the lands about Frog Pond were levelled for a training-field. When, on examination of the rolls, it was found that some names were not there, the select- men went around to every such man, with the inquiry, " What is the reason of such neglect ?" Subsequently the committee of safety divided the town into four military districts, having alarm-posts and sentinels. The first district included all below Federal Street ; the second, from Federal to State ; the third, from State to Market ; and the fourth, all above : and so the whole town was turned into a mili- tary camp, and the troops kept in such a state of preparation that when, on the day of the battle of Lexington, the news was brought to town, before 11 o'clock of that very night, without railroads or tele- graphs to assist, the re-enforcements from Newburyport were on their way to join their brothers in the bloody struggle.
To represent them in the Provincial Congress at Cambridge, the town chose Tristram Dalton, Stephen Cross, and Jonathan Greenleaf- the last named called "Silver Tongue," from his readiness, smoothness, and persuasiveness of speech ; a man learned, though he never attended a school ; a man from such poverty that, when he married Mary Pres- bury, his master's daughter, he had not andirons to support the chips that flew from his broad axe, and so used bricks ; but he had now attained wealth ; a man so important to the town that he held various offices from 1768 to 1792, and had the thanks of the town, in 1782, for his long aud valuable service as representative in the General Court. Those three men, with their co-patriots, -Jonathan Jackson, who was one of the first gentlemen in intellectual and social society, and a
member of the Continental Congress of 1780, the treasurer of the State for years, and full of honors ; and John Bromfield, a wealthy and honored merchant, - these men were a committee to meet with sim- ilar committees for other towns in Essex County, to act for the public safety. They mnet at Ipswich, and passed resolves taking issue with the British Parliament on all the principal points of the bill for the better regulation of the government of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, by which act the people were deprived of all voice in the election of a governor and council, by whom, royally appointed, the judges, mar- shals, sheriff's, &c., were to be had. The act also limited the town to one meeting a year, and its action to the choice of town officers. It took away the right of the inhabitants to choose persons for jurymen, and provided that an action at law might be tried in a county other than that in which it was brought. It was a bill of abominations. The convention resolved that the Act of Parliament should be set aside, " as a dangerous infraction of constitutional rights and a total subver- sion of the goverment"; and should be treated "as though it had never been made." They declared that persons holding offices under the charter and laws of the Province should continue, and the people support them. The town approved these resolves ; and further gave notice, that "if any officers of the court shall presume to act under the new and oppressive regulations, they must cease to expect support from us." One Nathan Brown, not heeding such a hint, accepted the commission of a deputy-sheriff; but, being waited upon by a committee of the town, discovered that his health of body and peace of mind forbade his acting, and formally renounced his position, and publicly promised that he would maintain the old charter privileges.
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