USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Newton > Tercentenary history of Newton, 1630-1930 > Part 3
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41
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THE EARLY SETTLERS
were at Plymouth and Providence, and christianized and civilized by the patient efforts of missionaries.
It was the peaceful course which appealed to John Eliot, the minister at Roxbury, before the Massachusetts colony was twenty years old. Patiently he learned the Indian language through interpreters and visited the Indians in their wigwams. He stayed a week with Waban in his lodge by the river. When he was satisfied that he could preach to them in their own tongue he went with three companions to the Indian village and unfolded the English conception of religion. It was late in October, 1646, that he sent word that he would visit the Indians at Nonantum, and they gave him a glad welcome. The story of the valley of dry bones as described by the Old Testa- ment prophet Ezekiel seemed to the preacher to fit their benighted condition, and he spoke to his audience for more than an hour on natural and revealed religion. By an open forum method minister and audience quizzed one another, and after three hours the meeting was adjourned for two weeks.
On a second visit Eliot found other Indians from out- side Nonantum waiting to hear his gospel. A revival broke out with Waban as the first convert, and Indians from other places came to live at Nonantum in order to be within range of the movement. There the Indians adopted more civilized ways of living from the white men. They found that the settlers would buy wild grapes and berries, fish and poultry; that it was profitable to manufacture small wares such as baskets and brooms, and that at sea- sons of sowing and harvest they might earn money work- ing in the fields. Thus the Nonantum Indians became one of the "praying villages" of eastern Massachusetts. Eliot was encouraged to go farther afield, and interest in Indian missions was aroused in England, where Parliament appointed a committee in aid and provided for subscrip-
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HISTORY OF NEWTON
tions among the church people of England and Wales. The result of Eliot's efforts was the adherence of about one- fifth of the New England Indians to Christianity. The Indians wished their children to have Christian education, and nearly forty native preachers were in the praying vil- lages. Eliot translated the Bible into the Indian language, a useful task then, though no one can translate it now.
It is doubtful if special grants of land were made to the Indians at Nonantum, but the town of Dorchester gave them several thousand acres of land at Ponkapoag in 1657, and Natick, the "place of hills," was granted by Dedham to the Christian Indians in 1650.
Misunderstandings and hostility were certain to arise after a time between the colonists and the Indians, for the white men had taken possession of lands which the Indians had not expected to lose permanently, and the red men saw themselves in danger of being crowded out altogether. Growing discontent made them rally about Philip, chief of the Narragansetts, when he took up arms against the colonists in 1675. Measures were taken at once to protect the settlers and the Christian Indians. The Natick Indians to the number of two hundred were sent to Deer Island in Boston Harbor under the direction of Captain Prentice of Newton, and the colonial treasurer was to see that they were provided with the necessaries of life. Cap- tain Prentice was charged also with sending out three Indians who had come in from Natick to bring in or destroy those who were unfriendly, and to reward the three if they should bring in any sachems. The General Court directed the towns to provide fortifications, to gar- rison them by the citizens in time of special danger, and to distribute arms for that purpose. The town of Newton escaped attack, but a number of the citizens served in the war.
Just before King Philip's War Capt. Thomas Prentice
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THE EARLY SETTLERS
bought eighty-five acres of land in the east part of Cam- bridge Village, where he made his home for half a century. He was among the most vigorous defenders of the colony during the Indian hostilities. He led a troop of horse, consisting of twenty men from the Village and twenty- one from Dedham, against Philip at Mount Hope, having several brushes with the Indians on the way. Six months later Prentice held similar command of a larger force against the Narragansetts, and he distinguished himself by burning one hundred and fifty wigwams, killing ten of the Indians and capturing more than fifty. The next spring he and six others helped to beat off the Indians who had attacked the town of Sudbury. At the end of the war he kept several of the Indians on parole at his house in Newton, and he enjoyed the confidence of the friendly Indians so far that they wished to have him as their general magistrate and adviser after the death of Gookin. John Druce was a villager of Prentice's troop who was mortally wounded at Swansea on the first expedition. Edward Jackson, son of Deacon John Jackson, was killed in the Indian attack on Medfield.
Scarcely was King Philip's War over before the Massa- chusetts towns were disturbed by the revocation of the original charter of the colony. The people of Massachu- setts had been entrusted with self-government, even to the extent of choosing the governor of the colony as well as their own representatives to the General Court. But they had been inhospitable to persons who would not con- form strictly to their standards, and many complaints had gone to England. Colonies that had been organized in the South, like the Carolinas, did not have such privi- leges, and towards the end of the reign of Charles II it was decided to revoke the Massachusetts charter. With it fell the choice of governor by the people. Sir Edmund Andros was sent overseas as royal governor, and friction
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HISTORY OF NEWTON
with the Puritan colonists soon developed. Taxes were increased. All estates, both real and personal, were taxed a penny in the pound besides a poll tax. New land titles required heavy fees. A penny a pound was levied on all imported goods, upon which the colonists depended when there were almost no American manufactures. And an excise tax on liquors, when everybody imbibed, brought remonstrances from town after town. Because the people were inclined to raise grievances at town meetings, such meetings were forbidden to be held more than once dur- ing the year.
Fortunately for the peace of the colony the Andros regime had scarcely begun when the revolution of 1688 occurred in England. James II ceased to be king, and the government of Andros came to an end in Massachusetts. When news of the revolution reached America, Andros was imprisoned, and two delegates from each town met to decide what course should be adopted for the govern- ment of the colony. It was voted that the old charter ought to be restored. It was then that the citizens of Newton met and resolved that the old forms should be restored, and that the General Court should try to recover its earlier privileges. They also favored the extension of the suffrage to persons of "an honest conversation and a competent estate."
A second charter was granted to Massachusetts in 1691, which removed the grasp of the Massachusetts theo- cratic leaders and kept the appointment of governor in the hands of the king. Otherwise the people recovered most of their former liberties. The new charter confirmed the land titles of the settlers. The town system was recog- nized by providing for representation through two dele- gates from each in the General Court. The provincial government continued to exercise the right of oversight over each community. In 1692 a colonial law provided
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THE EARLY SETTLERS
for annual town elections in the month of March, when selectmen, overseers of the poor, assessors, constables, and lesser officers were to be chosen. The suffrage was restricted to those who possessed an estate of at least twenty pounds.
The year 1688 marked the end of a period in the his- tory of Newton, as it did in the history of the mother country. In England the Stuart aristocracy gave way to constitutional government, by which the representatives of the people had an ever growing power to exercise authority. Across the sea the people of Newton in Massa- chusetts were free from leading strings. It was their priv- ilege to try their own experiments locally, and to be represented by their own delegates in the colonial legisla- ture. Fifty years had passed since John Jackson made his home by the winding Charles. The first settlers had lived their pioneer days and nearly all had passed peacefully on, resting at length in the little cemetery hard by the meet- inghouse. They had lived conscientiously, if not perfectly, and they had died like good Puritans in the firm belief that the star which had its earthly setting would rise afar above another horizon. Their works remained as the foundation of a town which was to grow slowly but steadily to an enviable position in the old Commonwealth.
II EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EXPANSION
THE history of Newton before the Revolution is a story of peaceful development unmarred by Indian mas- sacre, pestilence, or disaster of any kind. The town grew steadily in population, partly by the advent of new citi- zens. A few persons moved away to keep pace with the advancing frontier, and a few others preferred the business opportunities of Boston, but more families were continu- ally coming into town, buying portions of the larger farms, and carving out smaller ones for themselves. The Jack- sons and Hydes made money by the sale of lands in this way. More than fifty new houses were built in the half century following the year 1700.
Population increased even more rapidly by the excess of births over deaths in the resident families. Large fam- ilies of children were the rule, and there were instances of some whose contributions to the growth of the town were excessive. Goody Davis of Oak Hill, who cultivated her own land when she was more than a hundred years old and claimed to be one hundred and sixteen when she died, left forty-five grandchildren, two hundred great-grand- children, and eight hundred of the fourth generation. It was customary to divide an estate among the children, with a premium for the oldest son and provision for the widow. It often happened that a man owned real estate in different parts of the town, and in that case he might have a farm to leave to each of his children. As an example of what was occurring it is instructive to note the division of part of the extensive property of Edward Jackson. He gave thirty acres to Reverend Nehemiah Hobart, the
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EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EXPANSION
minister who married his daughter. To his eldest son Jonathan he distributed one hundred and sixty acres, but Jonathan preferred to settle in Boston, and sold the property. To his son Sebas the father left a hundred and fifty acres with the homestead. Sebas in turn, when he made his will, bequeathed sixty acres to his oldest son Edward, and left the remainder to be divided among his three other sons. His widow was to enjoy the estate dur- ing her lifetime; if she married again she was to have the west end of the house, a small orchard in the rear, and firewood and five pounds yearly.
Such division of property resulted in smaller farms and necessitated more intensive cultivation in many cases. More woodland was cleared and laid down to grass or cul- tivated for grain and vegetables. Yet a generous woodlot was needed to feed the wide-mouthed chimneys which were so essential in the New England climate. Every farm offered for sale included a certain number of acres of woodland, or it was scarcely salable. As property increased in value, more comforts were available and the monotony of life was less depressing. There was a little more for relaxation, a little less sense of the sternness of life. But the struggle for existence made every one ten- acious of his property rights and conservative regarding expenditures, whether private or public.
For this reason inheritances sometimes caused family disputes. Two sons of Sebas Jackson, Edward the oldest and Joseph the youngest, went to law over the division of the property of their brother Jonathan, who was lost at sea. Joseph learned so much law as a result of his quarrel that he was called a quack lawyer. He had a local reputa- tion for raising honeybees, and was generous with his neighbors in honey time, treating them with bread spread with honey and butter and with cider to add to the delec- tation. Edward Jackson's family suffered eclipse through
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HISTORY OF NEWTON
Capt. Samuel Jackson, who lived in the eighteenth cen- tury. He pulled down the house which had been built by his great-grandfather, erected a mansion where he in- dulged his fondness for good wines, and through his idle- ness and intemperance so permitted the property to go to pieces that he and his wife came on the town for partial support in their declining years. So near were wealth and poverty when Puritan thrift and self-control were removed. A similar fate befell Captain John of the other Jackson line. One of the best known and respected of all Newton families was that of Deacon John Jackson, the first settler. His son Abraham added to his father's fortune and mar- ried a well-to-do wife from Watertown. He increased his father's gift of land to the cemetery. Captain John Jackson inherited their name and fortune and lived with far more ostentation than Puritan ancestry in New England would readily justify, with slaves at his command and abund- ance of goods. His mansion was located near the foot of Waverley Avenue, and it stood until it was pulled down in 1833. The captain enjoyed the most conspicuous seat in the meetinghouse because of his wealth and his family distinction. But he wasted much of his property, and after his death the estate was broken up. In spite of these individual failures the Jackson family continued to keep the respect of the citizens of the town, and in the Revolu- tion it enjoyed preëminent distinction.
A few men accumulated wealth and kept it, but it was less by means of farming than by business. James Barton was a ropemaker and owned a wharf in Boston. In the year of the incorporation of Newton as a separate town he bought one hundred and three acres of land from Jonathan Jackson, who went to Boston to live. Though Barton lived just over the Watertown line, he and his wife were buried in Newton and he was counted among Newton citizens. He owned four negro slaves. He gave
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EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EXPANSION
his grandson the generous allowance of thirty pounds a year while at Harvard. When he died in 1729 he left an estate in Newton valued at twenty-seven hundred pounds and his wharf and buildings in Boston were worth twenty- two hundred. About the time of the death of Barton Capt. Edward Durant of Boston purchased ninety-one acres of land for eighteen hundred pounds south of Nonan- tum Hill. He died eight years later leaving an estate valued at ten thousand pounds, including one hundred acres with house and two barns in Newton, one hundred and thirty acres with house and barn in Worcester, and three houses in Boston. His inventory included three slaves. There were only thirteen slaves in Newton in 1755.
Other men reflected honor upon the families to which they belonged by public service or simple faithful per- formance of their every day tasks. Edward Durant, Junior, married the daughter of Capt. John Jackson, and was a leader of the opposition to the British government which culminated in the Revolution. He was moderator of town meetings for ten years before the Revolution, was chairman of the Committee of Correspondence in 1774, and delegate to the Provincial Congress the same year. Col. Nathan Fuller was another Revolutionary leader, and participated in the expedition to Canada. After the war he gave the West parish an acre and a half for a cemetery and contributed generously to the church. He left an estate worth $6,157, a considerable sum in those days. Earlier in the century Lieut. Jeremiah Fuller was many times moderator of town meetings and was select- man for sixteen years. He was one of five sons of the first John Fuller, John, Jonathan, Joseph, Joshua and Jere- miah. He divided about three hundred acres of land among his three sons. Joseph Fuller, his brother, who lived during the eighty-eight years between 1652 and 1740, was captain of the Newton Horse Company and gave the
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HISTORY OF NEWTON
training field to the town. He had a house on the May- hew farm, enjoying twenty acres given him by Edward Jackson. There were many military officers in the Fuller family, some of them officers of militia, but others win- ning their titles in the Revolution. Judge Abraham Fuller, who was born twenty years before Joseph Fuller died, belonged to a later generation. He was eminent for his services to the town as selectman for four years, town clerk and treasurer for twenty-seven years, representative to the Legislature for eighteen years, and a senator. He had his title of judge as magistrate of the Court of Com- mon Pleas.
Deacon John Woodward, grandson of the builder of the old homestead in 1681, was the moderator of the town meeting which in 1776 voted to ask Congress to declare the colonies independent. He was among those who helped to drive the British back from Concord the year before.
The Hastings family is an illustration of a variety of trades and of public service. Samuel Hastings had a tan- nery near the West Parish Church about the year 1740. Three sons honored his memory and inherited his fortune, but each had his own line of business. Daniel was a stone- cutter, and for five years during the stirring times of the Revolution he was a selectman of the town. Thomas was a grocer. He was the first clerk and treasurer of the Baptist church, but joined in the Universalist defection. The third brother, John, was a baker. One of the best known men in town was John Greenwood, who was select- man for eighteen years late in the seventeenth century and justice of the peace. As such he married most of the young people in town up to about 1735. He also represented the town three times in the General Court.
A few men saw an opportunity to profit from trade or manufacturing. As long as every farmer had his own forge
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EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EXPANSION
or could use a neighbor's a blacksmith shop was not neces- sary, but with the increase of population and the growth of trade and travel smithies sprang up. There, as at the gristmills, farmers liked to stop and swap stories if noth- ing more substantial. Occasionally an oxcart creaking by on the way to market at Boston needed tinkering, and the blacksmith picked up many a shilling to eke out his farm- ing. Not yet was there sufficient demand for a general store in every village. There was little to exchange, and the people satisfied their few needs at Watertown, Cam- bridge or Boston. Clothing of domestic manufacture was in demand. Daniel Bacon found employment as a tailor at Newton Corner, and Joseph Davenport of Milton opened a clothing shop at Lower Falls where he employed several men.
The existence of natural falls in the Charles River on the southwest side of Newton made the place a suitable location for the erection of mills, and both Upper Falls and Lower Falls became centres of manufacturing indus- try about the turn of the century. Not long after Drew put up his sawmill at Palmer Brook John Clark of Brook- line bought land at Upper Falls, where the river fell twenty-three feet, and built a dam and another sawmill. He satisfied Indian claims to the river and the ancient weirs where they had caught fish, and left a clear title to his sons and a property valued at one hundred and eighty pounds. About 1708 Clark's sons joined in a partnership with Nathaniel Longley and Noah Parker, and added to the former business a gristmill and a fulling mill, where cloth spun and woven on the farms was bleached by a process of hammering in fuller's earth and water. The business passed into the hands of Noah Parker about 1720, who for nearly half a century was the leading citizen of Upper Falls. For a time he owned all the mill property, but he sold the fulling mill. Thomas Parker, his son, a
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HISTORY OF NEWTON
Baptist lay preacher, succeeded to the position of leader- ship in the hamlet, served as a selectman of the town, and was a representative to the General Court for six years. For a decade after his father's death it proved imprac- ticable to operate the mills during the disturbances inci- dent to the outbreak of the Revolution, but the shutting off of importation from England and the turn of good fortune which brought France into alliance with the fight- ing colonies encouraged Simon Elliott of Boston to pur- chase the Parker mills and develop a more extensive enterprise after 1778. Meantime Thomas Parker's daugh- ter had married Jonathan Bixby, a blacksmith, and he had bought from his father-in-law a piece of land opposite Turtle Island a half mile farther down the river, with water privileges and the right to build a scythe mill. Iron manufacture became an important industry even in colo- nial times, because bog iron ore was found in different localities, and tools and farm implements were in con- tinual demand. With the sale of his land to Bixby, Parker reserved the right to erect fulling mills and a right of way past the scythe mill. In 1799 the Bixby interests were sold to the Newton Iron Works Company, which put up a nail factory.
While these enterprises were starting up river other experiments were being tried two miles farther down stream, where the falls dropped twenty-two feet and the river flowed through a beautiful glen. There John Lev- erett owned land which he had received as a grant when the Cambridge proprietors divided up that town's com- mon lands. The first manufacturing enterprise there was started by John Hubbard of Roxbury. As early as 1704, before Noah Parker commenced operations at Upper Falls, Hubbard bought four acres with water rights from John Leverett, formed a partnership with Caleb Church, a blacksmith of Watertown, and built a dam above the
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EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EXPANSION
rapids and a forge shop. The son of Hubbard soon re- placed his father, but after twenty years of manufacturing the Hubbard interest was sold to John Willard, Hubbard's son-in-law, who was a smith and bloomer of Newton. Willard remained the prominent figure in the manufac- turing industry at Lower Falls during the next fifty years, for he lived to the advanced age of ninety-five.
Lower Falls was on the road to the country beyond, and a ford over the river at that point was known locally as the "wading place." A tavern was kept there by Col. Ephraim Jackson, who fought in the French and Indian War, was a minute man at the battle of Concord, and died in camp at Valley Forge. The location of the hamlet was so convenient for through trade and for manufactur- ing that for a time Lower Falls seemed likely to become the most flourishing part of Newton.
In a different quarter of the town on the edge of Watertown Daniel Bemis bought sixty-five acres of land along the river about 1760, and in partnership with Dr. Enos Sumner of Newton constructed a dam across the river. Sumner sold his interest to a company of men who built a paper mill in 1779, which Bemis soon acquired. He continued business with his son Luke until his death in 1790.
While these private enterprises were engaging the attention of certain individuals and hamlets, the town as a whole was learning to face its civic responsibilities. The last years of the seventeenth century were prosperous ones for settlement, as the lengthening voting list and tax records show. Yet there was no great wealth, and New England thrift kept down town expenses. It became necessary to provide schools for the children. The Gen- eral Court in 1647 had adopted a rule that every town of fifty households should provide a school where boys should learn to read and write and understand the laws. Schools
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HISTORY OF NEWTON
were not open to girls until 1789. Cambridge had had a grammar school about as soon as it changed its name, and the Village, of course, helped to pay for its support, but it is doubtful if any of the Village children went so far to school. They were needed on the farm, and the home was the first school. Under primitive conditions the family on the farm is factory, church and school.
It was not until 1699 that Newton voted to build its first schoolhouse, sixteen by fourteen feet in size. Already John Staples, who had a farm on the Sherborn Road, had been employed for a winter term to teach for one shilling sixpence per day. Opinion was divided about the location of the schoolhouse, but Abraham Jackson gave an acre of land adjoining the cemetery, and there the building was erected. Very soon the town voted to build another school- house at Oak Hill, for which Jonathan Hyde gave half an acre of land. It was voted that the master should teach there one-third of his time. As yet most of the settlers lived within reach of one of the schools, and the citizens were free to choose for their boys the school which they preferred. They had to pay for the schooling, threepence for those who were learning to read, and fourpence for those who were studying writing and arithmetic. These studies formed the backbone of the curriculum, for they seemed primary in all attainment of learning and practical for community needs. The town appropriated twenty- five pounds for two buildings, and decided to raise by sub- scription whatever else was necessary.
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