USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Newton > Tercentenary history of Newton, 1630-1930 > Part 9
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During the same period several societies and clubs were organized for musical culture. The oldest of these was a singing school for the whole town. It had its origin in 1780. It would be interesting to know whether the
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principal benefit resulted to the choirs of the churches or to the young men and women who attended and thus were given an enviable opportunity for acquaintance and court- ship. St. David's Musical Society, which was organized in 1816, had a more pretentious name, but its purpose was similar. It met in different places and gave occasional concerts. The Newton Musical Association, organized in 1861, gave a number of concerts and rendered the popular oratorios before large audiences. More than two hundred members joined in the peace jubilees in Boston in 1869 and 1872. Newton Centre had a singing school of its own in 1805-06, and in the 'twenties similar schools met at West Newton, Upper Falls and Newton Centre. About 1840 a glee club of Newton Corner people maintained an organization for a few years.
The fullest opportunity for the use of musical talent locally was in the churches. There an ambitious soprano or tenor, or the owner of a bass viol, could give of his best, and dream of operatic triumphs if the fates were kinder. Church choirs were made up of volunteers and were led voluntarily without pay, sometimes by faithful choristers who held the position for a long term of years. Such was Deacon Elijah F. Woodward. He came from a family devoted to the old church. His father and grandfather were deacons. He himself was chosen a deacon at the age of twenty-eight, and superintendent of the Sunday school the next year. He had entered the choir at the age of eleven and for nearly half a century he kept his place, act- ing as leader for half that time. A humorous story is told of a horse which he was accustomed to drive to prayer meeting from his home in Waban and leave standing in the horse sheds, but when the closing doxology was sung the horse of his own will backed out and moved to the church door to relieve the good deacon from the incon- venience of repairing to the horse sheds.
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With all these attempts at intellectual and aesthetic culture most of the people did not forget that the springs of spiritual development are in religion. The First Parish retained the prestige of antiquity and the presence of the town aristocracy. During the old age of Dr. Homer Rev- erend James Bates was his colleague. His earnest spirit and faithful endeavor made him liked, though he never could fill the place of the senior pastor who for so many years had christened, married, and buried the members of his parish. The junior pastor was a leader in the commun- ity, helping to organize lyceums and encourage the begin- nings of the Female Seminary in Newton Centre. When Dr. Homer ended his long pastorate in 1839 his colleague withdrew, and three years later the church chose Rev- erend William Bushnell of Connecticut, a graduate of Yale, as its minister. The ministry of the new pastor lasted only four years and a half, in striking contrast to the preceding service of Dr. Homer. The principal event of the time was the withdrawal of thirty-one members to organize the Eliot Church at Newton Corner.
In 1847 the First Church dedicated its fifth meeting- house. In the same year the long life of Dr. Homer came to its end. His funeral sermon was preached by Dr. Cod- man of Boston in the new meetinghouse on an August Sunday afternoon. The other churches in town omitted their services in order that their people might be present to do him honor. The event closed an epoch in the history of the church. It was an interim before another period of progress, and the people were discouraged over the loss of so many of their members from the Corner. They missed the leadership of the man who was gone. But the meeting- house stood on the old corner, the deacons supplied lay leadership, and the church moved on towards the close of its second century.
The Baptist church reached the time when it needed
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a new edifice. Most of the members preferred to rebuild where the church was located, but they gave way for the sake of the Theological Institution. The old site of the church by Wiswall's Pond was inconvenient. The school belonged to the Baptists of New England, and when Commencement Day came they wished to share in the exercises. It seemed best to the church to acquire a more central site. Mrs. Anna White gave the land in the centre of the village, and Deacons Eben Stone of Oak Hill and David White constructed the foundations and graded the lot. Late in December, 1836, the building was dedicated. The Christian Watchman of Boston said of it: "The house is extremely neat, chaste, and commodious, and has been adapted as far as possible to the convenience of the Theo- logical Institution for anniversary occasions." The last public service in the old church was the funeral of Dr. Grafton.
With the decade of the 'forties the village of Newton Corner began to stir with new life. The advent of the rail- road in 1834 did not at once transform the sleepy hamlet, but after a while the easier communication with Boston resulted in an increasing number of inquiries after land suitable for homes from people who wished to live outside the growing city. Farms were cut up into house lots, and Newton experienced its first real estate boom. At Walnut Park lots were sold by the foot for the first time in the history of the town.
The promise of more rapid growth encouraged a growing desire among certain of the people for a church nearer home, for the meetinghouse at Newton Centre seemed remote. Deacon William Jackson lived on the north side of town, and in 1844 he formed an adult Bible class which met in the north schoolhouse on Washington Street. The Newton Corner people through a committee respectfully gave their reasons to the mother church for
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wishing to worship in Newton, and she gave them her maternal blessing. In March, 1845, the corner stone of Eliot Church was laid with appropriate ceremonies. Thirty-one members were dismissed from the First Church, including five Bacons, six Jacksons, and six Trowbridges, members of the first families. Six other persons joined, making thirty-seven constituent members, two-thirds of whom were women.
The meetinghouse was scarcely completed when en- largement became necessary, and the church prospered from the beginning. One hundred and fifteen new mem- bers were received during the eight years' pastorate of the first minister, Reverend William S. Leavitt. He was only twenty-three years old when he came, and was paid but six hundred dollars for a salary. He was succeeded in 1854 by Reverend Lyman Cutler, who died within a few months, to be followed by Reverend Joshua Wellman. He spent seventeen years of ingathering, when five hundred and sixty-one new members joined the church between 1856 and 1873. By that time the community was growing fast, and Eliot Church was reaping the benefit in more numbers and increased resources.
Four years after the formation of Eliot Church at the Corner the West Newton Unitarian Church came into existence. Several prominent men in that village were sympathetic with the liberal movement in religion which had permeated eastern Massachusetts. The strength of Unitarianism had been surprising. It had swept a hun- dred Trinitarian churches from their orthodox moorings, and the American Unitarian Association, organized in 1825, knit them into a real denomination. The liberal tendency was apparent also in Universalism. Its best known exponent in Newton was Reverend Elhanan Win- chester, and the influence of the movement produced several attempts to build up Universalist churches. As
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far back as 1827 the Massachusetts Legislature incor- porated the Newton and Watertown Universalist Society, and a meetinghouse was constructed the same year. Sev- eral ministers succeeded one another, but the enterprise proved a failure. After nearly forty years of existence the Society was dissolved and the building disposed of. A second attempt had been made at Upper Falls in 1841, when twenty-two persons united in fellowship. The next year a building was erected and Reverend P. Skinner settled as minister. But after a few years the interest declined, the meetinghouse became a village forum under the name of Elliott Hall, and nearly forty years after its construction it was transformed into a dwelling house.
The new Unitarian church at West Newton was des- tined to a more secure future. After preliminary meetings at intervals of several years a church organization was realized in 1849. Its history belongs to the next period.
The Sunday school was an organization which became the chief reliance for religious education after religion ceased to be in the curriculum of the public schools. In many cases schools were organized just before the organi- zation of churches. The first school in Newton was started in 1816 by women of the First Church. The only men among the teachers were William Jackson and Deacon Woodward, who acted as superintendent and taught the boys. For several years the school was held only in the summer after the morning service of worship. Teachers and pupils assembled in the little red "sand-bank" school- house located at the sand hill which occupied part of the triangular piece of land hard by Father Grafton's home- stead. Sunday school attendance was small in the first years. Bibles, cards of merit, even clothing, were offered as inducements to attend. During the second year only nine boys were held in leash, two of whom became deacons in the Eliot Church. Reverend James Bates was the first
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to introduce singing into the Sunday school, and Deacon Woodward trained the children to sing. One of the prin- cipal items of instruction was the assignment of selections from the Bible to be memorized. After a time the Sunday school moved to the church and continued through the year.
The Baptist Sunday school at Newton Centre was two years behind the Congregationalists. It was held in the summer, and was conducted by women until the Theo- logical Institution opened, when students assisted. The Eliot Sunday school organized with twelve teachers and seventy-one scholars. For five years the school studied the Sermon on the Mount and other parts of the Bible without lesson helps. Then question books were intro- duced as a guide to discussions, a practice which was com- ing into vogue in Sunday schools generally. The first superintendent of the school was Otis Trowbridge, who held the position for thirteen years.
The Congregationalists in the West Parish made similar beginnings a few months later, against the opposi- tion of the minister, Reverend William Greenough, who was a conservative gentleman of the old school. There were those who did not believe in the Sunday school, because nothing of the kind was mentioned in Scripture. The West Newton school met in the public schoolhouse, holding sessions on Sunday morning before the church service. After their school exercises teachers and pupils marched to the meetinghouse. Sunday schools soon became popular in the churches generally.
Interest in Sunday schools justified the organization in 1838 of the Newton Sunday School Union, which was expected to stimulate interest among those engaged in instruction and to aid them with counsel. Six schools were constituent members. William Jackson was the first president. Annual gatherings on the Fourth of July were
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held in groves at Upper Falls and Newton Centre. On these occasions addresses were made to pupils, teachers and parents respectively, and music and collations were enjoyed, but there is no record of pitched contests of base- ball or quoits. Yet for several years these anniversaries were popular gatherings at which two and three thousand persons assembled. Meetings for the purposes of the organization were held every month for a time, later once a quarter. Every school made report and a practical question was discussed at each meeting. For a time the Union supported a home missionary colporteur. The twenty-fifth anniversary was held in the Eliot Church in 1863.
While public school and Sunday school, church and seminary, were thus cultivating the intellectual and reli- gious life, business interests were multiplying and the manufacturing villages were feeling the throbbing pulse of the developing industries which were giving New England the economic leadership of the young nation. The enter- prises were affected by changes in tariffs until business adjusted itself to them, and by the financial depression of the late 'thirties, and several disastrous fires prostrated more than one of them. The most serious loss that Newton ever sustained from a conflagration was the burning of the Pettee Works at Upper Falls in 1839.
Otis Pettee had come to Newton to superintend the interests of the Elliott Manufacturing Company, and he continued in its employ until 1831. But he was not satis- fied to remain an employee indefinitely. He had an inven- tive mind, and was able to make important improvements in cotton machinery. With the beginning of the new dec- ade he bought out the machine manufacturing part of the Elliott Company's business and built his own plant for manufacturing. A little later he started an iron foundry. The prosperity of the Pettee Works from the beginning
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was remarkable when it is remembered that as yet there were no railroads for transportation of raw materials or finished goods, that communication by mail was slow and the telegraph had not been invented. It took a long time for orders to come through and a longer time to fill them, but all these handicaps were being overcome when the fire came. The water supply was entirely inadequate, the power of the hand engine feeble, and though help was summoned from neighboring towns the fire fiend had its way.
It was a critical time in the industry. Pettee had been on his own feet but a few years, the cost of equipment had been large, and the financial depression of 1837 had made it a hard time to do business, but with courage and opti- mism the manufacturer cleared away the ruins and built his factory on a larger scale. Orders had begun to come in from Mexicans who were equipping their own cotton mills, and for the next fifteen years the Pettee Company prospered materially. Within a very few years the enter- prising manufacturer had a single building three hun- dred and sixty-five feet in length and three stories high, and when the Elliott Manufacturing Company decided to liquidate its business of cotton manufacturing Pettee bought the plant and put it in renewed operation under the name of the Elliott Mills. For years the managing board of the Elliott Company had been divided in opinion as to the policy to be followed. There were certain prac- tical difficulties in both manufacturing and sale. Water was diverted from the Charles River to feed certain manu- facturing concerns in Dedham, and farmers were draining their swamps and meadows along the river, until the decreased flow necessitated a resort to steam power with increase in the expense of manufacturing. Then, too, the market was unreliable, with wide fluctuations in prices. These considerations led to the decision to liquidate. But
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to Otis Pettee the occasion spelled opportunity, and he promptly built the necessary buildings, put in the best equipment, and reached out for new markets. The flour- ishing condition of the Pettee Works brought prosperity to the village of Upper Falls, both to the workers in the mills and to the storekeepers and others in the village.
Until his death in 1853 Otis Pettee was one of the principal factors in the development of Newton. He not only furnished employment to hundreds of men and used his good judgment and spirit of enterprise to further the interests of the community in a business way, but he sympathized with the temperance and slavery reforms that were being agitated, and his sterling character was a power among his acquaintances. His foresight made him see the value of the railroad in business, and he was instru- mental in getting through the construction of the railroad from Brookline to Upper Falls.
After the death of Pettee his sons Otis and George formed a partnership with Henry Billings called Otis Pet- tee and Company, to continue the manufacturing of cotton machinery. They continued to do business as a firm of partners until 1880, when the business was incorporated as the Pettee Machine Works. A company of Boston men bought the cotton mill and the tenement houses which belonged to Pettee, and operated business under the name of the Newton Mills until 1884.
Rufus Ellis, the manager of the Newton Iron Works, was similarly ambitious for himself. As early as 1814, when the war with England was not yet over, he bought land at Upper Falls on the Needham side of the river and constructed a mill with three thousand spindles for the weaving of cotton sheetings. Seven years later he pur- chased the property of the Newton Iron Works, and incor- porated the business under the name of the Newton Fac- tories, but after a decade he and his brother David took
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over the property. These two lines of industry kept the Ellises busy for many years. About 1840 others leased the cotton mill from Ellis, and ten years later it was burned. About that time Frederick Barden leased the rolling mill from the Ellises, and after improving the property which was on Turtle Island north of Boylston Street carried on a thriving business for twenty-five years when he retired. The mills were broken up before long. After the cotton mill on the south side of Boylston Street burned Rufus Ellis built a new nail factory on the site, moving the machinery from the old factory, but though Cuba was importing a large quantity of the nail product for its sugar boxes and other needs Ellis gave up the business and the building was used later as a grist and planing mill, until that structure also was burned in 1873.
During the 'forties William E. Clarke built a machine shop on Boylston Street, and Pliny Bosworth constructed another on High Street. Both of them manufactured cot- ton machinery for a few years until they went out of busi- ness. All these enterprises brought people to the village, encouraged local trade, and promised indefinite prosperity. In 1850 there were two cotton mills with a total of eleven thousand spindles, a rolling mill, a nail factory, a steam furnace for iron casting, and machine shops with a capacity for five hundred workmen. But the nemesis of a fiery fate seemed to hang over one plant after another.
During this same period manufacturing adjustments were taking place at Lower Falls. Moses Grant of Boston purchased the Ware paper interests and built another mill. Numerous changes in ownership took place during the first decades of the century, but business continued in the old locations in spite of controversies over water rights and obligations. In 1834 a fire on the Needham side of the river destroyed considerable property, and in the same year certain transfers of ownership were made which set-
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tled complications that had existed. The two sides of the river had made more or less confusion. Moses Grant, Allen C. and William Curtis, William Hurd, and Lemuel Crehore, all had large sums of money invested. The last two had been in partnership for nine years in the manu- facture of paper. Now Hurd bought Crehore's rights on the Needham side, and Crehore purchased the Hurd and Grant mills on the Newton side. The Curtises consolidated their property and continued paper making until they were forced to liquidate about 1860, when their property went to the Cordingly brothers, who prospered in the woolen manufacture. At the second dam other paper inter- ests were operating under various managements through the nineteenth century, and smaller enterprises were attempted from time to time.
The unfortunate fires that repeatedly destroyed valu- able property compelled the town to consider ways of meeting the danger. After 1818 the town appointed fire wards as guardians of public property, and rewards were offered for the discovery of incendiarism, but it was left to the selectmen to build engine houses as they pleased, and the town refused to provide land on which to build them. Meantime volunteer companies continued to come into existence, West Newton No. 23 in 1822 with the hand engine Triton, Eagle No. 6 at Newton Centre in 1837, Mechanic No. 4 at Upper Falls in 1842, Nonantum No. 5 at Newton Corner the same year, and Empire No. 5 at Newton Corner in 1866. The fire captain of the Nonan- tums had a white horse for his bakery cart, which rushed to the engine house when the fire bell rang, ready to draw out the engine, though ordinarily he lacked ginger. By 1835 the town was willing to appropriate one thousand dollars for engine repairs, and after the Pettee fire a sum of six hundred dollars was assigned to each of the villages of Upper Falls, Newton Centre, Newton and West Newton,
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if it would raise two hundred dollars additional for pro- tection. In 1843 a town fire department was organized. But the whole expense four years later was only about one thousand dollars.
The volunteer fire companies were more than fire pro- tective organizations. They were also a means of associ- ation, especially for the young men of the villages, through which they enjoyed picnics and an annual banquet and indulged in friendly contests for superiority between vil- lages in much the same spirit as the rivalry between base- ball teams in later years. Occasionally musters were held by numerous companies far and near. The largest of these included fifty-four companies which met at Worcester in 1857. On that occasion the West Newton Company took the thirty-fifth place, beating the Mechanic Company of Upper Falls by nine feet. One event which was not planned was the burning of the West Newton engine house while the members of the company were at a circus in Waltham; the citizens saved the engine. That was in 1863. Nonan- tum No. 5 went everywhere, working not only in town, but also at fires in Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Waltham, Needham, and elsewhere. It was made up of young men who enjoyed the adventure, and it was a rival of a similar company in Watertown. On one occasion when both were returning from a fire, the two companies had a pitched battle with their fists. Such haphazard organizations were by no means suited to the needs of a growing town like Newton with valuable industrial properties. By virtue of a petition of the men of Upper Falls, followed by an em- powering act of the Legislature, the town of Newton organ- ized a modern fire department with a board of twelve engineers in 1843.
By 1854 Newton was ready to build a reservoir at Newtonville Square. Four years later the citizens in town meeting gave the selectmen power to buy fire hooks and
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ladders. One was provided for each village and hung on the outside of the engine house. Volunteer chemical com- panies existed temporarily for the protection of Newton- ville and Auburndale about 1870, but the town was about ready to act more efficiently. Several disastrous fires urged on the action of the town. The first steam fire engine was placed at Newton Corner in the autumn of 1868, and the first of the modern town companies was organized to man it. The town already had provided for an alarm bell at West Newton, the pay of firemen was raised from five to ten or even fifteen dollars a year, and other progressive acts followed. In 1871 a steam engine was provided for West Newton and a hook and ladder truck for Newton- ville. The next year an engine and house were located at Newton Centre. The Newton Company rendered aid at the disastrous Boston conflagration of 1872 and received a gift of four hundred dollars from the city with which it purchased furniture and ornaments for its parlor.
Fire companies might be useful for the salvage of a business that was threatened with destruction, but even more necessary was an organization for floating industry after it had been put together, like a ship on the ways. In 1847 Joseph N. Bacon was building a business block at Newton Corner, where the railroad had stimulated both population and trade. It occurred to him, as he thought of the activity in real estate and general trade, that a bank would be a valuable asset to the community. He gained the influential support of William Jackson, and together they enlisted enough interest to get the necessary capital subscribed. In 1848 the Newton bank opened its doors as a state bank. A bank building was erected in the heart of the village, and quarters were provided for the Newton Savings Bank, also in 1863. The bank proved a success from the start. Within five years its capital stock of one hundred thousand dollars was doubled. During the Civil
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