USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Newton > Tercentenary history of Newton, 1630-1930 > Part 13
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During the year 1862 Massachusetts sent out the Thirty-First, Thirty-Second, Thirty-Third, Forty-Fourth, and Forty-Fifth Infantry Regiments and the Third Cav- alry, in which Newton men had two companies. Com- pany K of the Thirty-Second was recruited in Newton by E. S. Farnsworth, later major. Its captain was J. Cushing Edmands, who was advanced subsequently to colonel of the regiment and brevetted brigadier-general. The Thirty- Second had a long and honorable record. It went to the front in May, 1862, and served through the war. It was
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present at most of the worst engagements of the war, including Antietam, Gettysburg, Spottsylvania, North Anna, and Petersburg, and lost ninety-six men killed in battle, including nine of the Newton men, and one hun- dred and ninety-four more died of wounds and disease. More than once the impregnable defence of the Thirty- Second Massachusetts saved the day. When Lee sur- rendered his infantry at Appomattox it was the Thirty- Second Massachusetts that was detailed to receive the formal surrender. The Thirty-Third Massachusetts was distinguished by the gallant leadership of its colonel, Adin B. Underwood of Newton, who was severely injured at the battle of Raccoon Ridge, near the base of Lookout Mountain. He was brevetted for his valor to the rank of major-general.
The Forty-Fourth Infantry of Massachusetts of nine months men contained ninety-five Newton men, the larg- est number supplied by the town to any of the regiments during the war. The regiment was promptly under fire and manfully stood its ground without flinching. It did good service in North Carolina and in the defence of Wash- ington. When Company B returned home stores and schools were closed and the whole town turned out to do it honor, a grand procession took place, speeches were made in a pavilion near the Public Library, and a collation was served in Eliot Hall. The Forty-Fifth Regiment also was enlisted for nine months. It contained twenty-seven from Newton. It was hotly engaged. Nine troopers served from Newton in the Third Regiment of Cavalry, which served nearly three years from November 1, 1862, when it was mustered in, at first as an infantry regiment. The regiment was in thirty engagements, including service in the Southwest, and made a record of which it was not ashamed. None of the Newton soldiers lost their lives.
Two more regiments with Newton men included left
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Massachusetts in 1864. The Fifth Cavalry was composed of colored men principally ; eighty-one names were recorded from Newton. They did not see much fighting, but suf- fered from exposure and much hard work. Twelve men from Newton were numbered in the Sixty-First Infantry, which was a one-year regiment, and they arrived on the field in time to share in the battles about Petersburg. Forty-one sons of Newton were enrolled in the Navy dur- ing the war, including Lieut. Joseph B. Breck of the ship Niphon, who died shortly after the close of the war. Eight- een of the students of the Newton Theological Institution enlisted in the service, and twenty-nine of the alumni either joined the forces in the field or served as chaplains.
Nor should the Newton physicians be forgotten who found their way to the fields of conflict and ministered to the physical needs of the soldiers. Dr. Allston W. Whit- ney was practising in Framingham when the war broke out. In the summer of 1861 he became surgeon of the Thirteenth Massachusetts Regiment and served for three years not only in the regiment, but part of the time also as surgeon of the brigade and medical director of the Second Division. After the war he settled in West Newton. Dr. Joseph H. Warren had lived in Newton for three years and had gone to Dorchester. He was among the first to vol- unteer his services to the Army and was made a brigade surgeon, serving until he was disabled and had to resign. Dr. Charles F. Crehore of Lower Falls was surgeon of the Thirty-Seventh Regiment, serving more than two years, and for one year of that time he held the responsible posi- tion of surgeon-in-chief of the First Division of the Sixth Army Corps and medical inspector of the Corps. Dr. Henry M. Field was in practice in New York City when he left it to go into the Army in 1862. He was graduated recently from the medical school, but was appointed assist- ant surgeon. He was soon disabled for continuous service
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by ill health. Dr. Jesse F. Frisbie graduated from the Har- vard Medical School in 1861 and a year later entered the Navy, but eventually was compelled to leave it on account of ill health. Dr. Edward A. Whiston was a classmate of Dr. Frisbie. His health made longer service possible. Promoted from assistant surgeon of the Sixteenth Massa- chusetts Infantry, he became surgeon after a year and a half of the First Massachusetts Volunteers, where he remained more than a year. Later he was inspector of camps of the Veteran Reserve Corps. Dr. T. S. Keith, a young homeopath, served in hospitals and on shipboard.
Newton was proud also of the record of Mrs. Rebecca R. Pomroy, who served as a nurse at the seat of war through many arduous weeks.
It is sometimes forgotten that it is as necessary for the people at home to carry on while the soldier boys are in the field. The steady support which was given by Newton and the morale of its citizens were sustained by the churches and by such individual citizens as David H. Mason and Thomas Rice. Mason was a lawyer who represented New- ton in the Legislature for three years. Though a Democrat he was a leader in supporting the President. Rice, a paper manufacturer at Lower Falls, where he prepared the paper used by the Boston Transcript, was a town selectman for eighteen years and was prominent in both branches of the Legislature. He frequently left his business and other interests to visit the front and encourage the soldiers of his town and state.
Such a bare catalogue of service as this does not begin to measure the patriotism and valor of the soldiers in the field or of the patience and loyalty of the folks at home. Days of weariness on the march and of discomfort in camp, carnage on the battlefield and suffering in hospitals and prison camps, tested the mettle of the soldiers. Extra burdens because of the absence of the heads of families,
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constant anxiety lest the reports of the next battle should bring news of the death of loved ones, the necessity of carrying on in spite of grief and sometimes of poverty, these all strained the endurance of those who were left behind. Upon all rested the sorrow of the fratricidal strife, of the terrible and long-continued civil conflict, so much worse to contemplate than an international war. The years wore on and the armies of the South wore out, and at last the end came. Only less clamorously than the soldiers who rested on their arms did the people of Newton rejoice when the news arrived that Lee had surrendered. With glad welcome they met the thousand who returned as they were mustered out successively, and erected a monu- ment in the new cemetery to those who lay in Southern graves.
Early in the war the town had unfurled a large flag on the Common at Newton Centre with impressive cere- monies. Staff and flag were paid for by public subscription. In the midst of the period of the war, soon after President Lincoln had issued his proclamation of emancipation, one of the leading citizens offered to give one thousand dollars for a monument on condition that others raise as much more. Twelve hundred dollar subscriptions were collected, and eleven hundred children gave ten cents apiece for the purpose. A lot of land in the cemetery was set apart, and on July 23, 1864, the monument was dedicated. It was a shaft of Quincy granite, rising twenty-eight feet above its base. It bore suitable inscriptions with the names of fifty- nine men of Newton who had given their last sacrifice to their country. Addresses were made by Thomas Rice, who had been one of the most energetic leaders in town in fur- thering the war, and by Prof. Horatio B. Hackett of the Theological Institution, and Dr. S. F. Smith contributed verse appropriate to the occasion. It was the first monu- ment for the dead of the Civil War in New England.
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Three years after the war was over the veterans organ- ized a Grand Army post, naming it after Charles Ward, a descendant of the early settlers, who conscientiously turned aside from a professional career to enter the army as a volunteer and who died on the field of Gettysburg. The post started with ten charter members, but subse- quently at the height of its career it numbered approxi- mately two hundred. The Grand Army of the Republic had as its purpose the perpetuation of the comradeship of the war, the encouragement of patriotism, assistance for needy comrades and their families, and the observance of Memorial Day in a fitting manner. It raised eleven thou- sand dollars for aid in forty years with the aid of public fairs. It found a home in the Masonic Building at New- tonville, where pictures and photographs were exhibited, and relics were kept in a room set apart for that purpose. Prominent military men from both North and South were entertained there from time to time. Auxiliary organiza- tions sprang up, including the Sons of Veterans who organ- ized into the J. Wiley Edmands Camp, and the daughters who called themselves the Mrs. A. E. Cunningham Tent of the Daughters of Veterans. Seventy-five prominent persons maintained an organization which was called the Associate Members of the Post. They were guests at campfires of the local post, and acted as its patrons at other times. The post established and maintained a sol- dier's lot in the Newton Cemetery, where those were buried who had no other place to lie.
VI THE TRANSITION FROM TOWN TO CITY
RAPID increase of population created embarrassing problems for the town of Newton. It was leaping forward with the vigor of a pioneer settlement on the prairie. It was outgrowing its civic institutions as a boy in his teens outgrows his clothes. From a little more than five thou- sand in 1850 the population had increased to 12,825 accord- ing to the census of 1870, and within another five years it was to reach 16,105.
The village of Newton was still the principal centre. It had a population of 4,336 according to the state census of 1875. It had the largest church in town, the most public halls, the banks, two newspapers, and the prestige of its early settlement. West Newton was second in impor- tance, boasting 3,199 people in the village. It was the home of the Athenaeum, the Allen School, the Women's Educa- tional Club, the Newton Civil Service Reform Association, and the West Newton Village Improvement Association. West Newton was connected with Waltham by the Wal- tham and Newton Horse Railroad Company, which laid its tracks in 1868. Reconstruction of the road was soon necessary and it was not a paying proposition at first, but gradually the Company increased its earnings, and people began to talk about the possibility of extending the line from West Newton to Nonantum Square. But the Com- pany owned only two cars and eight horses, with two sleighs and a snow plough for winter use, and the plan did not seem feasible.
Newtonville was third among the villages, with a population of 2,283. There were the high school, Masonic
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and Grand Army headquarters, the Newtonville Women's Guild, the Every Saturday Club, the Young Men's Liter- ary and Debating Society, the Nonantum Cycling Club, and the Newton Philatelic Society. Auburndale had grown to a village of 1,258 people, proud of its leading citizens, of Lasell Seminary, and of its river border. All these villages had the advantage of being on the main line of the Boston and Worcester Railroad, with through con- nections to Boston on the one hand and Worcester and the West on the other. Twenty-six thousand persons were registered as boarding or leaving the trains at the Newton station alone in the year 1866, and a better building was soon required. Sunday trains were mooted, but there was decided opposition from those who did not wish to have their Sunday quiet disturbed.
The south side of town played its part in the general progress but the railroad service was so poor as to retard the growth of population. The Charles River Railroad had been opened in 1852, making the stages from Upper Falls to Boston unnecessary. The name was changed to the Hartford and Erie, but under the new name service was unsatisfactory, for the road had only a single track out of Boston and few trains were run. Its principal business seemed to be to transport gravel trains from Needham through the villages of Newton. For more than ten years after 1859 Norman C. Munson, a Shirley contractor, had been removing gravel from the Needham side of the river for filling in the Back Bay of Boston, and the gravel trains had run over the railroad day and night, greatly to the inconvenience of commuters whose passenger trains were delayed and to the distress of the residents of the villages along the line whose rest at night was disturbed by the noise. But Munson had bought a range of gravel hills near the Charles River, had leased a large building on the north side for machine shop and engine house with stor-
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age room outside, and had put in the necessary machinery. People could do little more than complain, therefore, though a train of forty cars was despatched at intervals of forty-five minutes through the twenty-four hours. Two hundred men were employed and more than one hundred acres were levelled. Phineas E. Gay was another con- tractor who in 1872 excavated sand and gravel at Upper Falls, and for two or three years was removing it for the same purpose of filling in the marshes.
Newton Centre was the most important village on the south side, with a population of 2,180. It possessed the old First Church of the Congregationalists and the old cemetery, the First Baptist Church and the Newton Theo- logical Institution. There lived Reverend S. F.Smith,D.D., and there were the Common and Crystal Lake. Newton Highlands was on the eve of a rapid advance, but only 315 people belonged there. Upper Falls with 1,520 surpassed Lower Falls with 940. They were still, with Nonantum, the industrial centres. At Upper Falls the Newton Mills with thirteen thousand spindles were weaving print cloth, turning out sixty thousand yards a week and employing three hundred workers, but ten years more of competition with the big fellows was to bring so serious a decline of fortunes as to drive the corporation out of business. The Pettee Machine Shops had about 175 on the payroll. A locomotive repair shop gave employment to more than one hundred. The Ellis Nail Factory had been leased to Benjamin Marshall of Dover in 1863, and he equipped it for a paper factory. He succeeded in business for several years, but sold his interest to Hudson Keeney of Everett. Keeney leased the old rolling mill, which was empty of machinery, and doubled the capacity of his paper business. In 1882 he sold to Clark and Wardwell who after four years disposed of their interests to the Superior Wax Paper Company. That organization failed before it had com-
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pleted its preparations for manufacturing. In 1888 E. L. Crandall and Company acquired mill and water rights, and prospered in paper manufacturing.
The aspect of the village was altered by the construc- tion of the Boston water works. The system included a source of supply in Lake Cochituate at Framingham and an aqueduct which passed through Lower Falls, Waban and Newton Centre, to a reservoir at Chestnut Hill. This aqueduct was constructed in 1846-48. A second conduit became necessary as a means of supply to the growing city, and the Sudbury aqueduct was constructed during the decade of the 'seventies. This started from Farm Pond and passed through Upper Falls, a part of Newton High- lands, and Newton Centre. In passing through Upper Falls it was necessary to bridge the Charles River at an eleva- tion of approximately seventy feet. Echo Bridge was built where the river flows through a hemlock gorge after it had turned the mill wheel before plunging over the dam below. With its foundations resting on the solid rock the stone bridge spanned the stream with its graceful arches at a dizzy height. In the total length of five hundred feet six arches were constructed, the largest a span of one hundred and thirty feet. The bridge was constructed without acci- dent by a Springfield contractor at a cost of two hundred thousand dollars. It soon became famous for its echo, and was visited by many persons who came even from a dis- tance to test its possibilities.
The construction of the reservoir at Chestnut Hill necessitated turning Beacon Street to the south in a curve instead of following its straight course into Boston. Two basins were made and named Lawrence and Bradley basins, including two hundred and twenty and a half acres. With tastefully laid out drives and footpaths the reserva- tion was well adapted to become a park, attractive to resi- dents of Boston as well as of the immediate vicinity. It
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soon became an occasional resort for persons who liked to enjoy the quiet beauty of the water and its surroundings. The water itself soon became known to flocks of mergan- sers and black ducks, and occasionally a straggler of another species of wild fowl. The Railroad located a new station not far from the pumping station of the water system and named it Reservoir, appropriate but a puzzle in pronun- ciation for the brakemen on the railroad. In time street cars conveyed passengers to and from the heart of the city for a single fare of five cents. The changes at Chestnut Hill required the adjustment of land titles, by which New- ton gained from Brighton approximately one hundred acres containing about twenty families.
Chestnut Hill had been occupied by market gardeners during the first half of the nineteenth century. The Bos- ton market made such gardens very profitable. About 1855 Leverett Saltonstall and Francis L. Lee built houses there, and for a number of years the settlement was known as the Essex Colony, from the Essex County origin of its first families. The district was partly wooded with a grove of chestnut trees, which gave a name to the settlement and the railroad station. Both Saltonstall and Lee were from old families of prominence and wealth, and they had the means to indulge their fondness for fine effects in land- scape gardening. Saltonstall gave to the village its noble trees. Lee became widely known for his taste in exterior decoration of ample grounds with trees and shrubs. Colonel Lee became commanding officer of the Forty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War. Chestnut Hill attracted the best class of residents, among whom were Heman M. Burr, the eighth mayor of Newton, and Col. Isaac F. Kingsbury, city clerk for a number of years. Dr. Paul D. Slade lived in a brick house at the corner of Hammond and Beacon Streets, which had been added to the Newton street system. He was a Harvard classmate
ECHO BRIDGE, AT NEWTON UPPER FALLS
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of Saltonstall. In a house dating from Revolutionary times Judge John Lowell of the United States District Court made himself a suburban home near the railroad station. Still another family of distinction took root in the vicinity when Amos Lawrence bought a farm on the south side in 1864. The meadows of his farm were submerged by the Chestnut Hill reservoir.
Each of the village centres of Newton had stores for retail trade, the grocer, the provision dealer, the dry goods merchant, and others replacing the keeper of the general store who catered to the various needs of the community. These stores provided so many more points of contact for the people, so many more possibilities of satisfying dis- criminating tastes, so many more temptations to spend money. But as yet no opera house, moving picture theatre, garage or airport, provided thrills and frills. Most of the villages had their halls for public gatherings. At Newton were Eliot, Middlesex and the Nonantum House halls; at Newtonville Tremont Hall; at West Newton Village Hall; at Newton Centre Lyceum Hall; at Upper Falls Elliot and Nahaton halls; and at Lower Falls Boyden Hall. Many of the churches met in these halls in the days of their infancy. There the Horticultural Society spread its exhibits. There an occasional dance or local drama found its setting. The village of Newton boasted six business blocks, other villages had to be content with aspi- rations. The town had ten railroad stations within its limits, and several hotels and boarding houses.
When it was evident that the town was changing and the old ways were passing, Francis Jackson of Boston, a member of the Jackson clan which had played so large a part in the early history of the town, determined to put on record the annals of the community up to the nineteenth century, and to transcribe the genealogy of its citizens. After long and careful research he published his "History
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of Newton" in 1854. The book was embellished with a map showing allotment of lands and the location of the houses of the colonial settlers.
Eleven years later, when the Civil War was fresh in the minds of the citizens, the town voted to appoint a committee of five to arrange for the writing of a history to continue the story of Jackson, and especially to commemo- rate the lives of those who had taken part in the war. Reverend S. F. Smith of Newton Centre was secured to write the story. Publication was long delayed, but in 1880 a volume of eight hundred and fifty pages came from the press. The author had searched diligently for his facts, and had included a variety of information in his pages, especially with reference to the wars in which Newton people had been engaged and to the churches of the community.
Ten years later Dr. Smith and a number of other citi- zens made still another contribution to the written history of Newton by writing chapters for the History of Middle- sex County, Massachusetts, compiled under the super- vision of D. Hamilton Hurd.
In the year 1866 Henry M. Stimson thought that the growth of the town justified an attempt to establish a weekly newspaper. This was the Newton Journal. It was a four-page paper of large size, containing general articles on the first page, with only an occasional item of special interest to Newton; on the second page a miscellaneous collection of local comment and detailed accounts of meet- ings of such organizations as the Newton Horticultural Society and the West Newton Athenaeum; almost a solid third page of advertisements; and a fourth page with addi- tional general matter and advertisements. The paper week by week gave generous space to the lectures which were in great vogue among all sorts of organizations.
The issue of the first of March, 1873, furnishes a
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sample of the usual contents of the local page of the four- nal. At the top of the first column Sunday services of two of the churches were announced. Below were public notices of coming events, and editorial comments on the town water supply, lectures in Newton Centre and at the West Newton Lyceum, and an item of news about a cantata in the Methodist chapel at Auburndale. The second column contained an obituary, an editorial on the Newton Ceme- tery, and brief news items. The first half of the third column was given to the entertainment of the Newton Highlands Literary Club, considerable space was allotted to the proposed bazaar of nations at the Eliot Church, Newton, and several items of interest to Lower Falls. One- half of the fourth column went to the Newton Horticul- tural Society. There were items on Newton and Newton- ville affairs, and a list of the heavy taxpayers of the town. The fifth column contained a half column report of the school committee, a quarter of a column on a literary sociable at the First Church in Newton Centre, and a num- ber of brief news items. A report of a lecture at the West Newton Athenaeum more than filled the sixth column, and the seventh contained an account of the trial of the new chemical fire engine, and a corner of Watertown news.
The Newton Republican put in an appearance as a rival of the Journal, but Henry M. and Frank H. Burt absorbed it, and issued the first number of the Newton Graphic in 1882.
In the year 1868 C. C. Drew published the first New- ton Directory. It contained as an introduction a brief history of the town by Dr. S. F. Smith, a list of blocks and halls, a census and a general directory containing 3,291 names of persons, with a business directory and the names of the town officers and their departments. Twenty-one churches, the Newton banks, the cemeteries, the gas com- pany, and the street railway were listed. For good meas-
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