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 148

Author: Tracy, Cyrus M. (Cyrus Mason), 1824-1891, et al. Edited by H. Wheatland
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Boston, C. F. Jewett
Number of Pages: 450

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 148

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The Baptist church at the Neek was erected in 1826, and the society was constituted Oct. 12th of that year, by twenty-five brothers and sisters, who had been dismissed from the church at Beverly for the purpose. The first pastor was the Rev. Charles Miller, of Scotland, who was settled April 4, 1833. The present pastor is the Rev. A. D. Gorham.

Wenham appears to have had no public school until the close of the seventeenth century. In 1700, a complaint was made against the town on this account, and, Sept. 9th of that year, the selectmen voted that Capt. Thomas Fisk should keep a school for the year ensu- ing. In 1713 William Rogers was school-master, and "55 shil- lings were voted him for his allowance." There was but one school in town till 1719, when a second was established. In 1739, £30 was appropriated for the support of the public schools. In 1772, the first school committee was chosen. There were three schools in the town in 1770, when a grammar school was established. The present num- ber of schools is five, consisting of a grammar, primary, and three mixed schools. The largest number of scholars attending the past year was 165.

Wenham is essentially a farming town, and contains no prominent manufacturing industries. Its population in 1875 was 911, and is estimated at present (1878) at 950. The number of polls is 247. The valuation of personal estate is $125,950 ; of real estate $410,950 ; the number of dwellings is 181.

WEST NEWBURY.

CHAPTER I.

ITS ORGANIZATION - TOPOGRAPHY - GENERAL CHARACTER.

The town has little distinctive history. In connection with New- bury, the mother town, and Newburyport, with which its early rela- tions were very close, it is historic, since its old families date back to the Parker settlement in 1635, and some of them very early came within the present corporate limits, which were formerly the West, or Second, Parish of Newbury, organized near the close of the seven- teenth century. The Browns, Plumers, Littles, Smiths, Shorts, Cokers, Ordways, Woodmans, Bartletts, Poores, Emerys, Moultons, Jaqueses, Cheneys, and others, being of the original settlers of New- bury, or coming soon after. They helped to make the old town one of the most famous in the State, and of themselves they have made the "New Town " - West Newbury -one of the most pleasant and prosperous in Essex County. But the whole life of the town is cov- ered by the memory of many of its inhabitants still living, and not very old.

With roads all built, with carriages and other modes of easy and quick travelling, and with all danger from aboriginal savages removed, we can have very little conception of what distance was to our ances- tors, where they limited the building of houses to one-half mile from the meeting-honse, and went not up to the worship of the Sabbath- day without shot-guns in their hands. From the original settlement on the river Parker - Quascacunquen, as they called it - before Row- ley was settled, the wilderness was unbroken to Ipswich, and when travelled on foot, many must have been the misgivings, the fears, of danger from wild beasts and savage men; and for long years to the founding of Andover and Haverhill, which remained frontier set- tlements for two generations, there were few people at the north and west of what is now Newburyport. So it happened that in the first division of lands, little account was made of the western section of the town. In 1642, it was ordered that all commons and waste land, above the farms of Richard Dummer, in what is New Byfield, and of Edward Rawson, who lived near the Belleville Church, should lie perpet- ually common, the meadows only excepted. This, of course, comprised mueh land now in Newbury and Newburyport, and the whole of West Newbury. They called it a " perpetual common " " waste ground," " the upper woods," and the " upper common." Here were, in fact, the best farming lands in their thirty-thousand-acre grant, on the beautiful rolling hills and in the sweet vales ; but so far away did they seem, that they voted them solitudes and waste places, which one might only attempt to redeem from the wilderness at his own personal risk and peril. And so for a time they remained, save where the hardy settler built his cabin upon the highlands, or gave the rich pastures by the running waters to his flocks and herds. -

When a further division of lands took place in 1686, it was voted, forty-three to thirty-eight, -that was a vote of freemen ; that is, those qualified by their oath to vote, and of freeholders, those already owners of real estate, and therefore not large, - that each freeholder should have twenty acres of land laid out in the " upper commons " on the Merrimac River, and on the south-west side of the "upper commons." It appears from other votes, also, that then, in the sec- ond half-century from the settlement, that most of the lands above the .Artichoke River were unfenced and common. Occasionally timber was granted to individuals for building uses, and some complaints were made of timber stealing. That same year, Constable Moses Pills- bury seized and delivered to Joseph Pike forty-one oak-trees, found cut near Long Hill. This Joseph Pike - "Sergeant " was his title - was the man who built a bridge over Indian River, near where he had a saw-mill, the foundations of the structure or the dam remaining to this day.

In October of the same year, 1686, the town voted that one-half the six thousand acres of the npper commons, in quantity and quality, should be divided among the freeholders, in equal parts; and the

other half should be divided among all the inhabitants of the town, including the freeholders, according as their rates had been in the minister's tax. This was pretty broad land-grabbing, leaving the unbelieving or unminister-paying poor man a very slim chance of having land to live on, or be buried in. As might have been expected, this led to " great confusions, contentions, inconveniencies, and injuries "; but the land was divided, and lots cast for the divisions, and many of the " squatter sovereigns" undoubtedly had taken from them what they seemed to have, with the improvements they had made. The range of the lots began near the Artichoke and ran by the Merrimac River, to what is now the Groveland line ; or from Sergeant John Emery's farm unto John Gerrish's farm. This John Emery was the second John, son of the miller, who built the second mill in Newbury, run by water, on the Artichoke, and his original lands are in the hands of his descendants unto this day, as we find many of the lands in West Newbury have been so retained.

If we take it for granted that no people were living upon these lands, " the upper commons," and the "waste grounds," we shall deceive ourselves ; for not only do we find these lots running from one farm to another, but we have abundant evidence of quite a population. Indeed, the First Parsh is rich with historieal recol- lections of the Moodys, Baileys, Bartletts, Browns, Ordways, Saw- yers, and others,-names prominent in the history of the town from before that early date.

Look back two centuries ! There is Pipe-stave Hill, not as to- day with its verdant, closely-shaven lawns, but covered with heavy oaks, already falling before the woodman's axe, the timber to be used in ship-building, or rifted for staves, with which vessels loaded at the point where now is the landing, and sailed direct for the West Indies. From this we have the name "Pipe-stave," because there were the staves for pipes manufactured. Indian River is on the upper side, a larger stream than now, bridged for the travelled way, and dammed at its mouth for a water-power to run a grist and saw mill. On the other side below is the Artichoke, no inconsiderable stream, also used in the same manner for a mill privilege. Daniel Jaques lives on the hill, - Daniel, a young man, son of Henry, the carpenter, and who married Mary Williams. At the foot of the hill, where Moses Ridgeway's house stands, lived Caleb Moody, who was a large land- holder, wealthy, keeping a stock of sixty head of cattle, with flocks of sheep and goats. He was one of the chief men of the town, and a representative to the General Court. Him we find involved in the revolution against Edmund Andros, Governor, for which he was cast into prison, with Joseph Bayley. This was in 1688.

The next year Andros was deposed by the people in Boston, and, to aid in that good work, Samuel Bartlet, the basket-maker, fiddler, and farmer, who was of the Bartlet Springs family, rode to Boston so fast, says tradition, that his long, rusty sword, dragging on the ground, left a stream of fire on the rough roads, all the way. He was the grandfather of Josiah Bartlet, the signer of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, from New Hampshire.

The very next year after Andros was deposed, or in 1690, we find at this point a plot for an Indian invasion ; at the bottom of which was Isaac Morrill, from New Jersey, who endeavored to entice the negroes and Indians, slaves, to leave their masters, seize a vessel, and go to Canada, to join the French and Indians, who were to come down upon the towns, and attack Newbury on the rear, cutting off the English, and setting the negroes free. With him was implicated George Major, another Jersey man, and an Indian slave belonging to Caleb Moody, and a negro slave belonging to Richard Dole. Five years later, in 1695, an attack was actually made by five Indians, who fol- lowed up the Artichoke, and raided upon the house of John Brown, on Turkey Hill, capturing nine women and children, one of whom, an infant, was killed. Others were so injured that they died of their wounds. One person escaped from the house; and, the alarm being given, they were pursued by Capt. Stephen Greenleaf, with armed men, who rescued the captives, but not till Capt. Greenleaf had been

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

badly wounded, a musket-ball going through his wrist and into his side. This was the only instance in which an inhabitant of Newbury was attacked, captured, or killed, by the Indians.

Another fact, as showing the population at that date, is this, that they built a meeting-house on Pipe-stave Hill, elose to where the Boynton house now is, in 1689. In 1690, the people petitioned the town to have two ministers, so that one might preach at the "west niceting-house "; or that the town would eonsent for them to have a minister at their own charge, and " lovingly " agree upon a dividing line for the two parishes. The town did not see fit to grant their prayer, and we may believe that party-spirit ran high on this question, and that their pious souls were deeply moved, for we find JJoseph Bayley indieted for calling the men appointed by the town to answer their petition " devils incarnate," and, in 1694, Joseph Bayley and five others were admonished for opposing their regularly ordained minister.

In 1693, in a petition to the General Court, they represented that they had three hundred persons, who had built a meeting-house at their own cost, and for five years had endeavored to establish public worship. As other parts of the town were not without inhabitants, this indicates that the " upper woods" were rapidly being peopled. As ever, "westward the star of empire " held its course.

It is noteworthy that population first gathered upon the hill-tops. For this there were various reasons. The most beautiful parts of the towns are the hills which characterize its topography ; not rough, barren, broken, and hard, but rising gently two and three hundred feet above the level of the sea. They furnish fine views inland and seaward. There is not a prettier view in the county than from Pipe- stave Ilill, before which and on either side unrolls the grand panorama of the Merrimac, -" child of the white-crested mountain," as Whit- tier terms it, "whose springs gush forth in the shade of the eliff- eagle's wing,"- which seeks the sea. meandering through rich mead- ows and between frowning hills more than two and a half hundred miles of its silvery tide. Here we overlook it from Haverhill till its waters mingle with the ocean beyond the sand-hills of Salisbury and Pium Island, over which the eye reaches to Cape Ann on the one band, and the Isles of Shoals on the other. So from the other hill- tops, - Indian, Archelans, Long, Crane-neck, and others, - from which full one-third of the towns in the county eome to view, with the mountain-peaks of the interior of this State, of New Hampshire and of western Maine. These hills are singularly well watered. There is not one of them where the water is not within thirty feet of the top, and some have their springs bursting up to the near surface. They are like the old wells of the Eastern deserts, causing fertility all about them. Henee, at first they were forest-hills, erowned with the old oaks and other trees furnishing heavy timber; and to-day the richest pastures and the finest fields for grain and corn erown the highest lands.

It was very natural, therefore, that Pipe-stave Hill should have attracted the attention of Caleb Moody, a elear-sighted and vigorons man ; and that, as early as 1711, fifty families lived within a half mile or so of the meeting-house, which graeed its eastern deelivity, while there were ninety-six families, indicating a population of five hundred, above the Artichoke River. That is about one-quarter of the population of the town to-day, and possibly the territory from the Deer Island bridge to Pipe-stave Hill was then as densely peopled as now. In 1716, the number of ratable polls in West Newbury, or the west parish, was 196 ; while there were only 437 in the first parish, and fifty-two about Dummer's Falls, or in Byfield ; and from a map of the town made in 1729, there appears to have been 184 houses and 183 families in the west parish at that date. Some of these families were rich ; for we find by the will of Daniel Emery, who died that very year, that he gave sixty pounds for the use of the ministry, -of which ten pounds were for communion plate ; twenty pounds for the first church that should be gathered in Chester, N. H. ; twenty pounds for Nottingham ; twenty-five pounds to the parish where he lived ; twen- ty-five pounds to Mr. Tufts, his pastor ; fifty pounds to his kinsman in Harvard College ; and one thousand pounds to his brothers and sisters, besides providing liberally for his widow. This was a large estate, when pasture-lands were only worth six shillings an acre. field- lands twelve shillings, and the whole valuation of the town of Newbury was about ten thousand pounds. Daniel Emery, therefore, dying at the early age of thirty-six, must have been among the richest men of this vicinity ; and more or less of the Emery family from the first have so ranked.

But if Caleb Moody and his neighbors saw the beauty, and appre- ciated the wealth, of Pipe-stave Hill and its surroundings, no less have

their descendants, the Moodys, Boyntons, Cokers, Downers, Newells, and Ridgeways, - all justly priding themselves of the Caleb Moody blood in their veins, and holding to their aneestral acres with strong hands.

Oceasionally others, attracted by the advantages of the locality, have come in to possess and enjoy. The most noted of these was Tristram Dal- ton, the first senator in Congress from Massachusetts, and one of the most distinguished, cultivated, and patriotic citizens of New England. He had his residence on what is now the Moody farm, and his brother- in-law, Stephen Hooper, a rich merchant, owned the Coker farm ad- joining, and lived in the present residence of E. M. Boynton. Pipe- stave Hill was their country-seat, while their summer residenees were at Newburyport ; and down on the Merrimae, near the month of the Artichoke, they had a " retreat " for their hunting and fishing parties : for these men lived in princely style, copying the fashions of the aris- tocraey of Great Britain. Tristram Dalton, in going to the seat of government for his congressional duties, travelled in his private car- riage, with driver and footman in livery, and his body servant, African Cæsar, his slave, in constant attendance. He and Mr. Hooper had large estates in West Newbury, and spared no expense in keeping them under the highest eultivation, suited to their own style of life, their high rank in the community, and the social, political, and literary caste of the guests they there entertained; who were such men as Washington and John Adams, our first two presidents, Talleyrand, Lafayette, Louis Philippe, Brissot de Warville, and their like, - royal, titled, learned, and influential, whose names belong to the history of the world. The foot-prints of Dalton and Hooper are not yet effaced from that locality. They spent much money in grading the hill, and proposed the erection of two large houses, which were to be connected by a covered way ( for their relations were most intimate ) : but after MIr. Dalton went to Congress, and the seat of government was removed to Washington, he largely invested in real estate there, and suffered losses by depreciation of property and the mismanagement of his agent ; so that at the elose of his senatorial term he was in reduced cireuni- stances, and Washington, who was his intimate personal as well as political friend, appointed him surveyor of the port of Boston. Then in a great measure he was lost to Essex County, though he never eeased to regard this as his home, and, when he died, was buried in St. Paul's Churchyard, at Newburyport, where his father, who was a rich mer- chant, and others of the family, rest in their last sleep.

We may not follow the changes which have sinee come to the estates on Pipe-stave Hill ; but it is among the singular eireumstances, that, when Tristram Dalton was living on the hill in such prineely style, there was a boy, born in the Gardner house, at the foot of the same hill, Moses Brown, whose destiny was to increase as Dalton decreased. He became a wheelwright, and removed to Newburyport to pursue his ealling. The first work given him was the repairing of a carriage for Tristram Dalton, which he took from Mr. Dalton's estate on State Street, and drew by hand to his shop. Afterwards, when Mr. Dalton was poor, Moses Brown had become wealthy, and purchased and lived in the very Dalton house from which he had drawn that carriage. He became a merchant whose ships were on all the seas; a citizen of whom Newburyport was proud, and to-day points to the many build- ings he erected and the improvements he made. He was a man of mich ability, and a Christian gentleman, interested in and aiding what would tend to the advancement of his raee. Ten thousand dollars gave he to the founding of Andover Seminary, being one of the largest of its first patrons ; the Brown High School, of Newburyport, to found which he donated $15,000, bears his name ; and that same name often appeared with large sums of money against it for religious and charitable purposes. His large estate, now held by his grand- daughter, Mrs. S. J. Hale, in Newburyport, has been used in its in- comes for the same beneficent purposes.

Something similar might be said of the present successor to the Hooper estate, E. M. Boynton ; but he still lives, a young man, who, though he may traee his aneestry back through nine centuries, has been dependent upon his own hands and brains for his high position as a man of business and thought, of action and mind - for his fame. At New York, where his business is located, the Chamber of Commerce, though he was one of its youngest members, elected him to represent them in the convention of the Boards of Trade in London in 1876, where he acquitted himself with much honor; and the present year he was supported for a seat in Congress, with much enthusiasm, leading all the names on his ticket. But not here may we linger.

We have said that the first settlers sought the beautiful hill-tops ; and since of all the old Newbury families the Littles had the 1. " earth-hunger" strongest, we may not be surprised to find them on

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

Turkey and Crane-neck hills, where they have held to this date. The part of Turkey Hill in West Newbury, however, was settled by the Browns, sprung from Thomas Brown, weaver, whose daughter Mary was the first white child born in Newbury, in 1635. He was prob- ably the first settler in West Newbury ; since he lived there himself, and died there, by a fall, when eighty years old, in 1687, which was thirty-two years after his wife Mary, mother of that first-born child. He was grandfather of John Brown, whose house was raided on and robbed, in 1695, by the Indians, and ancestor of the Browns, who now own the same farm. The hill has its name from the wild turkey's which abonnded there.

Bartlett Hill takes its name from the Bartletts, who there resided for generations ; the first, Capt. Richard, dying there in 1749 or '50, in his seventy-fourth year, and probably his ancestors were there before him. They were shoemakers, and a long-lived race, -few dying at less than threescore and ten, and some approaching near to five- score, by reason of their great strength. Josiah Bartlett, son of Richard, died in 1802, in his eightieth year, and his son Josiah, in 1826, at seventy-four ; and his sons at more than eighty. Five of the surname Bartlett came to Newbury in 1635, the first year of the town. They are from Adam de Barttlot, who went to England with William the Conqueror in 1066. He was of small stature, called the little baron, and that is what the name means.

Another of the earliest settlements was at Ilsley's Hill, where, in accordance with the custom of selecting high ground, perhaps as affording a look-out for the Indians, Solomon Holman took possession of the land and built a log-house, about 1695. He afterwards purchased the property, the considerations being a fat heifer. When a young man he deserted from a British man-of-war, at Bermuda, where he married the daughter of a farmer upon whom he had foraged for sup- port during his concealment ; and, coming to Newbury in a vessel of his own construction, he led a seafaring life for a short time, when he retired to his West Parish farm, where he died, 1753, in his eighty- third year. The Ilsleys succeeded him, and have held since.

Indian Hill, which is one of the finest estates in the county, has its name from the Indians, who made it a grand resort, and retained pos- session to the last of their proprietorship in West Newbury. In 1650, Great Tom, Indian, who, Mr. Coffin thinks, was Masconomo, the Saga- more of Agawam, deeded Indian Hill to the town of Newbury for three pounds. The deed included his planting lands, fenced in, and his rights to all woods, commons, and other lands. Soon after, the same property was granted to Samuel Poore, who began the first settlement in that part of the town. That farm has remained with the Poores to the present time, and is now owned by Maj. Ben : Perley Poore.

This is one of the most distinguished families in the town, Maj. Poore's father being one of the first merchants in New York, who lost his life by shipwreck on the coast of China, when he was seeking to open commerce between that empire and California ; and his grand- father, Dr. Daniel Noyes Poore, a distinguished physician. Maj. Poore has himself a wide reputation and an honored name. He was born in 1820, representing the seventh generation on Indian Hill. He was educated at Dummer Academy, but early went South, where his father had large estates ; and at eighteen became editor of the "South- ern Whig," at Athens, Ga., which position he held till 1841, when he was appointed attaché of the American Legation at Brussels. While abroad, he was appointed Historical Agent for Massachusetts in France, the result of his four years' labor being ten solid volumes of illustrated MS., covering the period from the discovery of America to 1780. While travelling in Europe and the East, he was foreign correspond- ent of the Boston " Atlas ;" and on his return, in 1850, became editor of the Boston " Bec," and editor and proprietor of the " American Sen- tinel." Since 1854 he has resided in Washington during the sessions of Congress, where first he was clerk of the Senate Committee on For- cign Affairs when Charles Sumner was its head, and formed the ac- quaintance of all the representatives of foreign powers at Washington, and is now clerk of the Committee on Printing, secretary of United States Agricultural Society, and editor of its journal. He is the oldl- est Washington newspaper correspondent, having been connected with the " Boston Journal " since 1854. He is the author of the " Rise and Fall of Louis Philippe," " Life of Gen. Taylor," " Early life of Napo- leon," " History of Essex County Agricultural Society," "Conspiracy Trial," " Political Record and Congressional Directory," with many novels and miscellaneous and political works. He is among the most prolific writers of our day.

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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 148

Author: Tracy, Cyrus M. (Cyrus Mason), 1824-1891, et al. Edited by H. Wheatland Publication date: 1878 Publisher: Boston, C. F. Jewett Number of Pages: 450

Author: Tracy, Cyrus M. (Cyrus Mason), 1824-1891, et al. Edited by H. Wheatland
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Boston, C. F. Jewett
Number of Pages: 450