USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Newton > Tercentenary history of Newton, 1630-1930 > Part 20
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render by the liquor forces, they began to hold meetings for the purpose of moulding public opinion, and succeeded in getting two hundred and twelve votes for the Prohibi- tion candidate at the next election. The Newton branch of the Indian Rights Association was planned for the pro- motion of the interests of the American Indians.
Among the early associations in Newton was the Every Saturday Club of Newtonville, which included both men and women in its membership. It was the perpetua- tion of a group of friends who had spent together a part of the summer of 1870. They determined to maintain their pleasant relations and at the same time improve their minds by organizing a club in the autumn, to which they gave the name Every Saturday Club. H. C. Hayden was its first president. The number of members was limited to forty, and each pledged himself by an iron-clad rule "to support and abide by the Constitution and General Rules and Regulations of the Every Saturday Club, and in order to maintain the good standing and general welfare of the Club we hereby pledge our word of honor to perform such duties as may be assigned to us by the Executive Com- mittee, or provide a substitute from among the members of the Club who shall perform this duty, unless excused by the Executive Committee." In 1873 a revised constitution was adopted which has served ever since. The meetings have been held at members' homes fortnightly through the season, with a carefully planned program of literary merit. Gilman H. Tucker was the originator of the meth- ods of study and discussion to which much of the success of the Club has been due. The Club met on alternate Saturday evenings, faithfully following its course as planned through the history of English literature, turning aside for variety to other subjects, like pottery or the Cen- tennial. The members contributed original papers, and it was noticeable that habits of study improved and more dis-
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criminating judgment and a keener sense of literary values resulted. Once a year the members have met in a mid- winter party. Theatre and costume parties, suppers, pic- nics, and various other kinds of entertainments have been enjoyed, including a Dickens party, an old folks' party, and a watch night vigil. Many of the early social enter- tainments were held in the old Hull Mansion, the home of J. L. Roberts and wife. One occasion in particular, a din- ner in March, 1878, was recorded in a printed magazine of forty pages, with a history of the Club. At Woodland Park Hotel a freedom party on the twenty-first anniver- sary and a silver wedding celebration on the occasion of the twenty-fifth stand out as high points in club annals.
The Club has kept to its self-imposed task for sixty years, and has become an acknowledged factor in the real- ization of high intellectual ideals. It has been of inestim- able value to its members in encouraging habits of study and giving power of self-expression, and has provided a bond of fellowship for its members. One charter member survives. The latest year's program was devoted to Eng- lish and American essayists. The pleasant custom was adopted of filling large scrapbooks with souvenirs of Club events.
Several attempts were made to form a community social club before the Newton Club was organized in 1887. It was felt that a club that would bring citizens together in a social way would be of direct benefit not only to mutual acquaintance and good fellowship but also to the city, since it would attract people to acquire Newton residence that they might share in the advantages presented. It grew out of private conversations and the special interest of two or three persons, as such associations generally start, and a meeting for organization was held at Newtonville in the spring of 1887. The charter members were Heman M. Burr, who in two years was to become mayor of the city,
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Robert R. Bishop, the Newton Centre judge, William Claflin, the former governor, Henry E. Cobb, a future mayor, Samuel L. Powers, a future congressman, and a few others. The completion of the Circuit Railroad made it probable that people from the south side of the city would join, and plans were made for a club house on an ample scale. Newtonville seemed the most accessible loca- tion, and the Club was fortunate in being able to secure a lease of the Roberts house, formerly the property of Gen- eral Hull. But the members wanted a modern house, plans were made accordingly, and the present club house was opened in formal fashion the evening of November 16, 1892. Annual receptions were planned from the beginning. Be- fore the house was finished the Club held a fête in October, 1891, with a reception to Mrs. Benjamin Harrison, wife of the President of the United States, and her daughter.
The new club house was made colonial in style, with broad verandas and porte-cochère. Though membership was limited to men, ladies were welcomed on many occa- sions, and apartments were provided for their use. The conveniences for the members included library, reading room, dining room and cafés, billiard room and bowling alleys, and an assembly hall served for addresses, as when President Tucker of Dartmouth was a guest of the Club, and for the social affairs which the Club sponsored. The usual program for the season included concerts, lectures, recitals, whist, dramatics, illustrated talks, and a prom- enade concert. The Club soon filled the expected place of prominence among the organizations of the city.
New organizations were being formed and old soci- eties celebrating their anniversaries. The Dalhousie Lodge of Masons observed its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1885 in Masonic Hall, Newtonville. Eliot Lodge, Knights of Honor, celebrated its tenth anniversary two years later with an entertainment. The Quinobequin Association of
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Upper Falls commemorated its founding twenty years before in 1888. A Newton Caledonian Club had observed events in Scottish history, and attended an annual Scots picnic. A British American Association was formed at Newtonville in 1887, to be known as Newtonville Branch, No. 28, for the purpose of securing the naturalization of all British residents in Newton. About two hundred persons signed the roll of membership.
The natural beauty of Newton, its interesting records of geological ages in the rocks, its flowering fields and wood- land floor, its numerous migrant and residential birds, its blue waters and green meadows, all combined to create an interest in nature. This was fostered by several persons who felt that such an interest should be inculcated in the schools and among the people of the community. It was evident that this could be done best by an association. The Newton Natural History Society was added therefore to the increasing number of organizations in the city. Sentiment crystallized at a meeting in the home of Dr. Shinn of Newton in the year 1879. The Society started with a membership of fifteen, and it was believed to be possible to interest as many as twenty-five persons. It was planned to hold monthly meetings at the homes of the members when papers should be read and discussions enjoyed. Dr. J. F. Frisbie was a moving spirit in the organization, became its first president, and contributed many interesting papers, especially on his specialty of geology.
Papers were ready for reading on the first evening, the first of all on "Fossils found in the Connecticut Valley." Before the second meeting was held public interest had become so great that it was necessary to hire a room in Eliot Hall block, and seventy-five persons attended the meeting there. Presently the Society had to move into Eliot Lower Hall, and the attendance increased to two
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hundred. The field of study embraced all branches of natural history, and some of the papers were considered so valuable that they were printed. The Society succeeded in arousing interest in the subject in the schools. During the summer season field days were observed, with excur- sions to points of interest in natural science. A museum was started to house the specimens which were being brought in frequently, and after a time the collections were placed in a cabinet in the public library, where they would be kept safely and would be convenient for observation.
One of the most prominent members of the Natural History Society was Charles J. Maynard, who was an ornithologist of national reputation, and the author of numerous books and articles on birds, butterflies, and other objects of nature study. He lectured on his hobbies, and delighted to take companies of nature lovers on tramps afield. Born in West Newton in 1845 he knew its nature haunts and byways, and he discovered and recorded rare species of birds and plants in town which others passed by. At other times he worked in the laboratory at his own home, where the collections of the Natural His- tory Society found an appropriate home. He lived until the autumn of 1929.
The first field day of the Society was held on the six- teenth of June, 1882, when sixty persons took barges at the railroad station in Newton, visited the city water works at Upper Falls, then drove to Echo Bridge, where they inspected the natural features, admired the engineering achievement, and tested the echo; thence they proceeded to the residence of William B. Fowle at Auburndale, where they were served with refreshments and listened to a lec- ture out-of-doors. The schedule of field days in one sum- mer included Echo Bridge and the ravine near by, Lincoln Pond in Lincoln, Marblehead Neck, Walden Pond in Con- cord, Newport, Rhode Island, Sandwich, New Hampshire,
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Chocorua, Ipswich and Plum Island, and Stony Brook, Weston. Some of its leaders visited the White Mountains, and reported its beauties and wonders through the col- umns of the Newton press.
The Newton Horticultural Society continued to pro- vide annual exhibitions for public enjoyment, arranging their thirtieth in September, 1884.
Among the improvements made by the village im- provement societies were the small parks with flower gardens at the intersection of certain streets. At small cost these open spaces added much to the attractiveness of the tree-shaded avenues. These undertakings prepared the way for a civic interest in larger parks. The city had post- poned the action desired by the Newton Horticultural Society looking towards a park department, but it was sympathetic with the idea. Mayor Pulsifer revived it when he proposed that practical steps be taken to secure a public park for Newton. He realized that as building increased and small house lots and fenced estates took the place of open country, the city needed breathing spaces and places in which to play. As yet city parks were few in the United States, but Boston had its ancient Common and its more modern Public Garden, and New York and Philadelphia had their large reservations for public use in Central and Fairmount parks. The Massachusetts Legis- lature in 1882 gave the Common Council of Newton the right to take possession of land for parks or city squares and to regulate their use. Land was taken for a park in Ward Seven, and in Ward One John S. Farlow gave to the city in the heart of its area a swampy tract, which by his generosity, coupled with municipal appropriations, was converted into an attractive park with shrubs and trees and a small pond with a rustic bridge. Surrounded by churches and residences, Farlow Park added much to the beauty of the village of Newton. The abutting property
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was thus enhanced in value, and the city thought it proper to increase the assessed valuation, an act which caused severe criticism and which presently had to be modified.
Within the next few years Lincoln Park in Ward Three and Walcott Park in Ward Four were given to the city, and twenty-three hundred dollars were spent for the care of the parks in the same year. At Newtonville Washington Park had been laid out by Dustin Lancey in 1865. It was one-sixth of a mile in length and sixty feet in width, and it became an attractive residential section. People who lived in the neighborhood of Linwood Avenue and Crafts Street contributed two thousand dollars for the creation of Lin- wood Park, which was secured by a special gift from W. J. Towne and a city appropriation of one thousand dollars.
The Charles River lured many who were in search of recreation. It supplied a delightful arena for tests of aquatic skill and the simpler pleasures of amateur boating. In 1815 fifty acres of meadows on the Auburndale side of the river were flooded by the raising of a dam at Waltham. Up to that time the river at Waltham was much like the present stream above the Concord Street bridge. Stumps of trees were submerged by the flooding and had to be blown up because they were dangerous to light craft, and the owners of the meadows claimed and were paid four thousand dollars, while the town received one hundred and thirty dollars for damage to the approaches to Weston Bridge. But the flooding was a boon to pleasure seekers, for it broadened the water course. Lovers of the out-of- doors found delight in rowing and canoeing and exploring islands and thickets along the stream. Flowers decked the banks and the farther fields. Birds flashed in and out of the bushes and sang to their mates a-nesting. Now and then an athlete timed his rowing spurt for half a mile, and then thought better of it to wind among the shallows. Fishermen trailed their lines astern, or stood knee deep in
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water, patiently waiting for the fish which might never come.
The river became attractive as a resort for parties in search of recreation. On the first Saturday of September in 1869 a fête champêtre was held under the auspices of the Newton Post of the Grand Army of the Republic. Hundreds thronged the grounds of the Fowle estate, which were thrown open for the occasion, listened to the band and the glee club, danced in a tent and enjoyed refresh- ments, and watched a regatta of boats. The proceeds went to the charity fund of the Post. Auburndale people fell into the custom of celebrating Fourth of July on the river. Some people preferred to enjoy the river as the scene of their summer vacations rather than to go farther afield. Celia Thaxter expressed their feelings when she wrote:
Dropped the warm rain from the brooding sky Softly all the summer afternoon, Up the road I loitered carelessly, Glad to be alive in blissful June.
Though so grey the sky, and though the mist Swept the hills and half their beauty hid;
Though the scattering drops the broad leaves kissed, And no ray betwixt the vapor slid,
Yet the daisies tossed their white and gold In the quiet fields on either side,
And the green gloom deepened in the old Walnut trees that flung their branches wide;
And the placid river wound away Westward to the hills through meadows fair,
Flower-fringed and starred, while blithe and gay Called the blackbirds through the balmy air.
In 1871 there were three organized boat clubs, the Commodore Taylor, the Black Crook and the Waban. It was four years later that the Newton Boat Club was formed
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for the double purpose of encouraging the use of the river and for delightful social occasions. The Club at first used the Robertson boat house, storing canoes on the lower floor, then new quarters were secured and the membership grew, but the location was inconvenient. In 1886 Royal M. Pulsifer, who lived near the river in Auburndale, bought the site of the building in Charles Street, and the Club was incorporated in order to raise the ten thousand dollars necessary for a boat house. After that the Club increased rapidly in membership, and it built its boat house at Riverside near the house of the Boston Canoe Club, with room for numerous boats and canoes, a bowling alley and a dance hall. The Club arranged regattas in which races were held for the single scull championships of the Club. The Echo Bridge Boat Club was active during the same period.
Throughout the seasons the river was gay with pleas- ure parties, band concerts enlivened the evenings, and races of various kinds were held in friendly rivalry whether with friends or foes. A favorite celebration in early autumn was to have a grand display and parade on the river when the steamer White Swan left its moorings at Waltham, accompanied by hundreds of small boats gaily decorated with colored lanterns, while residences along the banks of the river were illuminated and colored fire and rockets pro- duced their weird effects on island, stream and shore. As the procession reached certain points bands stationed there awoke to music and songs and cheers rang from boat and bank. Visitors from other towns attended by scores and hundreds, and on one occasion the governor and his staff reviewed the procession of boats at Riverside. About 1888 an Upper Falls Racquet Boat Club was organized. The Club had a boat house by the bridge at Needham Street. From there one could row ten miles upstream without interruption.
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Crystal Lake at Newton Centre became a popular place for small boats in the summer season. A few amateur skippers tacked in their sailboats across the restricted course, searching for a steady breeze. It was used by some for swimming, and in 1880 a few citizens built a bathhouse, but soon it was adjudged to be a nuisance and was sold at public auction. In winter the lake was a favorite resort for skating. In 1871 when the lake was leased from the state by the Newton Black Bass Club it was expected that no fishing would be permitted for three or four years, but the restriction precipitated a lively discussion over the rights of the public in Crystal Lake. The Club argued that the lake had been included in the Haynes grant and in the Wiswall farm, and it was willing to pay an annual rent to the town. In the end it was settled that the lake was pub- lic property, and a few citizens could not put restrictions upon its use. In subsequent years the lake was the centre for village celebrations of Independence Day, with boat and tub races and fireworks in the evening. The other vil- lages were less favored with natural reservoirs, but there were ways to assist nature. Cheesecake Brook was en- larged into a pond at West Newton, and James F. Allen provided swimming baths, giving lessons in the art to women and children.
Field days and scientific lectures, boating and fishing enlisted persons who were interested in nature and animal life and in the wonders of woods and stream and sky, but other people cared more for sport and athletics. Times had changed since the Puritan colonists frowned upon most sports as a waste of time and unseemly for those who should remind themselves of the seriousness of life. There was a growing appreciation of the value of play as a means of recreation, and the passing of the hard conditions and harder labor of the past permitted relaxation.
Cricket and baseball marked the beginning of organ-
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ized sports. The English game of cricket was being natur- alized in the United States, though it never could compete successfully with baseball for the favor of the public. The Nonantum Cricket Club was organized as early as 1865. Local teams in the eastern United States travelled to a dis- tance to play matched games, and generated enthusiasm among those who followed their fortunes. In September, 1866, the Nonantum Club defeated the second eleven of the New York Cricket Club by a score of 109 to 87. The great American game was still in its infancy, but it was winning favor. Curiously enough it had its beginnings in the country towns, and Newton had its organization as well as other towns around Boston. Its Waban team made a reputation for itself in the season of 1866 by winning six out of eight games played that season. The score of a game in which the Jamaica Plain team was defeated indicates the less scientific character of the game than its present- day successor, for after eight innings the Waban Club had seventy-eight runs to its credit as compared with its op- ponent's twenty-eight. The two teams had battled for three hours and a half at the grounds at Oak Hill, and it was time to adjourn for supper.
The invention of the bicycle created a furore over cycling. It was the time of the high wheel, and clubs were formed and races held with keenest relish. The rashness of the rider who "scorched" on the uncertain seat of the big-wheeled steed resembled that of the aviator who dis- regards the danger of a nose dive, for a small stone in the path might send the rider headlong, but he did not have so far to fall. Newton men vied with one another on the track, and as a group with cyclists of other towns. They joined in the annual ride around the Hub. They ran out of town to dine in the country with zeal equal to the auto- mobile tourist who frequents a roadhouse. In 1882 the Newton Bicycle Club was organized, chiefly through the
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efforts of Charles L. Clark of the Boston Club, who lived in Newton. He drove around town with his white horse stirring up interest. The meetings of the Club could not fail to be enjoyed as there was always a collation, and the Club continued its existence long after most of the other bicycle clubs had collapsed.
The Nonantum Cycling Club was equally active in the enjoyment of associated travel. Riding tandem was as much enjoyed as the side wheel car and the motorcycle. A tandem race was held at Newtonville in 1886. Those who were less venturesome and were not yet provided with safety bicycles made use of the tricycle. It was a more lumbering vehicle and required more foot power, but the rider could divert his gaze from the path to enjoy the scenery as he travelled over a country road. On the mac- adamized streets of the city he was as free as a boy with a velocipede, for neither automobiles nor trolley cars were in his way and there was no restriction to his speed. He might even race with another tricycle. Before the decade was half over annual tricycle races were being run off in the city.
If one's inclination ran to sedentary contests he could join the Newton Chess Club which was organized in 1885, and become as skilful in checkmating his opponent as the tricyclist in outpedalling his rival. Or he could hie himself away to the headquarters of the Young Men's Christian Association in Newton, where two checkerboards and tables had been provided, and where the mental activity could be relieved with a turn to dumb-bells and Indian clubs.
For those whose recklessness was not satisfied with bicycle races there was the Newton Polo Club. The safety bicycle was to bring new experiences to young women, giving them greater freedom of dress and movement, initiating them into out-of-door recreation, and introduc- ing them to new friends and novel scenes. Before that
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time came calisthenics enjoyed a sudden vogue, and exhi- bitions of skill and agility were staged for the friends of the young people in the new Eliot Hall. A loud protest arose when the city authorities pronounced the hall unsafe for more than five hundred people because good exits from the building did not exist. The climax of public exhibitions was reached in the gleeful custom on the Fourth of July of holding in the early morning a parade of "horribles," dressed in the most outlandish garb obtainable, their masked faces grinning fearsomely at the children when the sleep was hardly out of their eyes. More enjoyable were the events later in the day, especially the young folks' races on Crystal Lake, single and double sculls, a tub race, and on land cycle races and running races, with a band concert and fireworks at the end of a perfect day.
Tennis was becoming a national sport, with its annual tournament for all comers in Rhode Island. It required an equipment and leisure for play that most people could not afford, but it was gaining steadily in public favor. Croquet was a mild form of pleasurable titillation, not to say intoxi- cation for those who made it their hobby. It provided a mild degree of exercise for the mid-Victorian who had not yet taken to golf sticks. The ample lawns of Newton estates provided convenient places to play, and the click of balls and mallets on a summer afternoon was indicative of as keen a zest on the part of a player as the contact of bil- liard balls in a pool room. Croquet was an interim pastime lasting in favor long enough to introduce the timid to the delights of outdoor sports, and not requiring a special costume or long training.
Organized winter sports were as yet to be devised, but the boys and girls made the most of coasting and snow- balling when the winter gods were auspicious, and old and young enjoyed the pastime of skating, especially on the lake at Newton Centre. The older people took their recrea-
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