USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Maynard > The annals of Sudbury, Wayland and Maynard, Middlesex County, Massachusetts > Part 36
USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Sudbury > The annals of Sudbury, Wayland and Maynard, Middlesex County, Massachusetts > Part 36
USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Wayland > The annals of Sudbury, Wayland and Maynard, Middlesex County, Massachusetts > Part 36
USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Sudbury > The annals of Sudbury, Wayland, and Maynard, Middlesex County, Massachusetts > Part 36
USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Wayland > The annals of Sudbury, Wayland, and Maynard, Middlesex County, Massachusetts > Part 36
USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Maynard > The annals of Sudbury, Wayland, and Maynard, Middlesex County, Massachusetts > Part 36
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The character of a settlement and of its subsequent history is foreshadowed when we obtain a knowledge of the pioneers. The indi- vidual history is prophetic of the town's general history. The pas- senger list of the Mayflower, for those who knew the character of the men, was sufficient data by which to forecast New England's future greatness; so it is as a general rule. The moral oases of our ex- tended country have not become smiling with rare fruit simply because of climatic conditions or a greater fertility of soil in these apparently favored places, but the advantage was in the seed or stock.
We need not detail the development of the town of Sudbury to show that it is worthy, for the character of the settlers declares it. The secret of the town's success as a settlement, of its rapid development, and of its far-reaching influence is found in the fact that ours was an ancestry of sterling qualities. First, they had an unfailing trust in God and His word ; second, they had patience, perseverance, courage, and self-reliance, that would overcome all common obstacles. It is not because the country about us is admirably suited to easy settlement that the town soon became prosperous, and overran its borders like a cup that is
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more than full, for few towns about us had a rougher surface than old Sudbury. It had rocks and hills and wild forests enough. Its streams had floods, and the settlement for years was on the very frontier, but they were men who were there to meet these things. A company whose character was as substantial as the influence of the town afterward proved itself to be, were in the cabin of the Confidence as it sailed from Southampton - Walter Haynes, Peter Noyce, John Blanford, John Bent, and John Rutter, representative men in the Sudbury settlement, were a type of the historic Puritan. Sudbury settlers were not adventurers, except as they adventured for truth and the right. Lieutenant Edmund Goodnow was rightly styled on his tombstone, "That eminent sarvant of God." He could teach his son John to beat a drum to call the people to meeting on the Sabbath and on lecture-days, or to the defence of the garrison in war-time. But it is not enough to make assertions with regard to the character of these men, for in the fervor of an occasion like this, speech is easy ; we will therefore consider a few things that speak for themselves, and we will say, first, that the institutions of their faith and their fidelity to them are indicative of their character. Scarcely were they fairly established at the place of settlement when they turned their atten- tion to thic claims of religion. Loyalty to the church was not quenched hy the excitement of a life in what was then the wild West. As has been noticed, notwithstanding the need of hard, every-day toil, to supply themselves with what was actually needful for com- fortable existence, they nevertheless, almost at the very outset, erected a meeting-house. The erection of that meeting-house thus early, and under such circumstances, is significant. It shows that the people of those times were not only friends of God, but of man. They believed it was essential to provide means for the meeting of man's higher needs and the development of the better part of his being. They had a double purpose in the service of God : they would show obedience and loyalty to Him and His laws, and they would also serve Him and obey His laws, because by such obedience came prosperity and thrift for the life that now is. It is injustice to our fathers, and gives a false view of their theories of right, to sup- pose that they clung to the institutions of their faith so closely, and erected a meeting-house and maintained its services by toil and denial, in a merely servile manner. They did not obcy God as a
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stern, harsh ruler of the earth and sky, whose laws were the laws of a despot, and unproductive of good in this life. They believed He gave the gospel and its institutions and laws for man's present, future, and comprehensive good, and they would strictly conform to and maintain them, because of the good they would bring to the indi- vidual, the family, the town, and the state. They established a church as a practical means of a high and holy development, as surely as in obedience to an implied requirement of religion. But the establishment and maintenance of the external or visible means by which their faith had growth, is significant of more than merely religious relations in the common acceptation of the term. It indi- cates that those men were friends of civil liberty. The times and circumstances were such in those years, that fidelity to the church was fidelity to the fullest and purest republican principles that the heart of mankind ever knew.
He is a dull reader who, in reading New England's religious his- tory, does not also read its political history. We cannot go into the politieal life of the Sudbury settlers at this time to prove what we shall only assert, viz., that the laws recorded on the town books and the general standards of town actions were highly democratic. The aets, as preserved in the crumbling records of the town, are the prod- uet of an equitable system of town government. It is, perhaps, as if the settlers came to Sudbury with a system of government already formulated. The lands were divided by an impartial standard ; town rates were levied in a manner that ineurred no hardships. Through the influence of the teaching in that little meeting-house caste, was levelled, and character became a man's politieal as well as social credentials. It prevented rash and venturous speculation on other people's hard-earned gains, and made it comparatively safe for man to trust his fellow-man, and woe be to the unfortunate party, no matter what his family, his estate, his antecedents, or rank, who bade defiance to the laws enacted in the town meeting at the meeting-house. The meeting-house thus was significant of a broad citizenship. It was suggestive of a source of influenee or foree that led man to respect the right of his fellow-man, and the right of every person that stood related to him.
But, further, we sce the character of the carly Sudbury inhabitants by considering their relation to the Indians and the method by which
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they obtained their lands. It is foolish to suppose that Sudbury, as is sometimes alleged of the New England towns, obtained its land by fraud and violence. It has gone into print in at least one instance that the public land of this vicinity secmed such a prize to both the red men and the whites, as to occasion frequent collisions among them, and it was instilled into my boyhood mind that the settlers stole the land from the Indians. These lands were bought by our fathers. They were conveyed by a legal process as just as any lands are con- veyed to-day. To begin with, few Indians at the time of English occupation lay claim to this tract of country. Karto had more land than he wanted; he wanted wampumpeage more than he wanted real estate. The sale of the land by him, so far as we know, was satisfactory to all concerned, so it was in the case of all the aboriginal grantors. No process of ejection was ever served on an Indian by the early settlers in Sudbury, and no collision ever occurred here between the two until about 1675 or 1676, when a different nation- ality of Indians invaded the territory, and undertook to drive the English from it. The war was with Metacomet, or Philip, not Karto, and Philip never owned an acre of Sudbury territory. He invaded the land of old Karto, who was a Mystic or Nipnet Indian. Philip of Pokanoket had no more right to Karto's Goodman Hill home, or to his hunting-grounds adjacent, which he had conveyed by decd to the English, than Karto had to Pokanoket or an acre of the land adjacent to Mt. Hope Bay. We say it with a feeling of honest pride-the Indians and whites lived on friendly terms in Sudbury for nearly half a century after its settlement. The war-whoop was not heard in the forest, nor along the fair intervalcs of the Musketaliquid. Walter Haynes, Edmund Goodnow, Peter Noyce, Edmund Rice, and Karto, the Speens, and old Jethro, could all pass from wig- wam to log-cabin in love, amity, and peace. This friendly inter- course and these honorable transactions are indicative of those elements which go to make up estimable character and good citizen- ship. They say for the settlers of Sudbury what is said of the Pilgrims at Plymouth and William Penn of Pennsylvania.
We will now consider other phases of character in those who settled and preserved our town, as set forth in their patient endurance of hardship such as we can neither comprehend nor conceive of. These smiling fields have an unwritten history, save as snatches of
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what has transpired upon them have found a place on the records. These hills are hallowed by a silent touch that has left no visible im- press. The stones that sternly stare with their cold, gray faces, could, if they were sentient objects, tell of that which would make men wcep. In the settlement of a township in those early days there were hardships that under ordinary circumstances would be suf- ficiently severe, but let those hardships be intensificd by what the settlers of Sudbury passed through in a single twelvemonth, during the years 1675-6, and we have a scene of mingled pain and suspense that shows the price paid for our pleasant homes, but we will pass in a panorama-like way the early and ordinary hardships, and proceed to a brief statement of the severe hardships in the years alluded to. A cabin of logs to begin with, biting cold and bitter blasts, as passed the winter of 1638. There was isolation by flood, snow-drifts, and forests. The prowling wild beast was there, want was a liability which their exiled condition might bring at any time. In sickness no physician was near. in sorrow they could weep alone. Toil, that sometimes sweetens life's cup, and is as sunshine that cheers its gloom, was experienced to excess. Schools were a luxury that for nearly half a century were but little enjoyed, and the utmost sim- plicity in living and in dress must be practised if the plantation was to survive. Thus the years of privation passed, and then, just as things began to brighten, and prosperity set in, that gave promise of permanence, a change came to the settlement. The cause that pro- duced it was the war with King Philip, a war waged with such intense and terrible ferocity as the country never knew before or since. We cannot here do justice to this subject by giving an out- line of the terror of those times, but must content ourselves with the thought that it has been our privilege in the published history of the town to give it somewhat in detail, and I will venture to express the hope that, whatever else be omitted in the reading of that history, that part will not be omitted which relates to the doings of those dis- mal days.
It was then that the courage, the persisteney, the bold energy of the town's early inhabitants were exhibited in a marked degree. We will not tire your patience with particulars, but we will simply affirm that Sudbury was saved on April 21, 1676, by the dogged per- sistency of her citizens, combined with the same element in men sent
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from Watertown, Milton, Roxbury, Rowley, Concord, and some other places. From 1,000 to 1,500 Indians were here. Every wood-path was watched, every log-crossing was guarded by a painted foe on the night of April 20, and on the morning of April 21 every house on the west side that was undefended was probably sacked and fired by the scattered enemy. The settlers saw, at day-dawn, in the black smoke of that April morning, the last of their once smiling homes. Simultaneously the garrisons were attacked. Then came the display of courage and the determination to resist that we have spoken of. It was in vain that the savages strove to capture those places. Thoughi intense their ferocity and combined their forces, not a garrison in town succumbed. Neither werc these settlers content with simple self- defence. They rushed forth from the garrisons and beat back the savage assailants. On the east side of the river, where the Indians were plundering the dwellings, the English fell with such fury upon them that a part of the spoil was recovered, and the enemy was forced over the " old town bridge " and causeway, and the causeway was held, so that the foe never recrossed it. The fight went on until noon. At the same time, at Green IIill, was raging the terrible fight between the savages and Capts. Wadsworth and Brocklebank. The bold company from Watertown, sent or led by the gallant Hugh Mason, pushed on to render the two brave captains relief, but they were forced to desist from the undertaking, when nearly surrounded by the foe. With propriety may we pause and ask : "Did these things transpire in old Sudbury ?" Yes ! and on the place where we now stand, then lone and desolate, the " Rocky Plain " of the set- tlers, the centre of the west side cow-common, could be heard the guns of King Philip and his outstanding detachments at the Haynes and Goodnow garrisons and of the allied English forces at the old town bridge. Could the dead of yonder burial-place have their resurrection to-day and celebrate this occasion with us, what thrilling tales they could narrate, received from their fathers, who were of the gallant company of Sudbury defenders at that time. We would do well to pause and reflect if by silence we could make those scenes more vivid.
But we will turn now from the character of the people and the merits of their manly development, to the consideration of the influence and results of their deeds. Man is not measured alone by
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what he is, but by what others are led to do or be by him. So it is with a town. " Do you want to know of my monument ? " asked a noted architect. " Look about me." Would you know of a town's worth on the whole, strike the average of its influence in a long scries of years, in places ncar and remote. A look at a New England town, in the present, may not be suggestive of its history. As well expect to estimate the pearl's worth by a look at the mere shell that contains it as to make an estimate of a town's influence in days gone by by what is manifest now. Towns are wonderfully changed by the times. Old Plymouth is but a speck on the map of New England to-day as regards population and commercial importance, and yet she is the central sun of the past. Concord, but for her place in the provincial history of New England, and of the world's modern elassies, would be almost unsought by the scholar or antiquary, but bceause of her past history Daniel Webster was led to say that, with Lexington and Bunker Hill, she would remain forever. True, time passes, and population shifts in the land, and roofs become moss, covered and fall, and roads become grass-grown, while in other spots- onee but meadows or swamps, a large town may springup. By a recognition of this principle of change in American life, must we judge of the true worth of a township. We do not say this by way of apology ; we need no more apology than the old man who has be- come weak by his intense early activity. But we say it to the stranger who may have walked these lonesome streets, and is unac- quainted with our history. One hundred years ago, or a little over, Sudbury was eentral in its influence, and the birth of that influence was one hundred years before. It was prominent in council, and its political influence was far felt. When John Nixon, afterward general, was at Nobseot, when Col. Ezekiel Howe was at the " Red Horse Tavern," when William Rice had charge of government stores at Sand Hill, when Thomas Plympton was of the Provincial Congress, when Capts. Russell, Cudworth, Stone, Loker, and Haynes were at the head of Sudbury militia and minute companies, then Sudbury had a power- ful influence on the surrounding country. It was then the most populous town in Middlesex County. About four hundred stalwart citizens were in process of training, or were ready to resist Britislı oppression, and about three hundred of this number marehed in de- fence of the continental stores at Concord on April 19th. All through
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the Revolutionary War the resources of the people were never called for without a kindly, prompt, and generous response. The influence of Sudbury was felt in yet other respects. It had a large influence in the settlement of some of the best townships in Massachusetts. When the Sudbury settlers had taken up all their lands, and the great West was no longer on the farther bank of the Musketahquid, then the call was heard for more land. Already had they spread out on the south, to what is now Framingham. John Stone had built his cabin by the Falls, now Saxonville, and Edmund Rice had opened a woodway about Cochituate Pond, but a still broader territory was wanted. A petition was, therefore, presented for a tract six miles farther to the west, and the court met the request. The Rices, Rud- dockes, Newtons, and Wards and some others left the settlement, and soon a plantation sprung up at Whipsufferage, which has since become the town of Marlborough, which once included Northborough, South- borough, Westborough, and Hudson. Worcester is proud to own Ephraim Curtis as an carly pioneer, and when her historian speaks of this noted scout of old Sudbury, and how after a hard day's work on the rough soil of Wigwam Hill he looked in the direction of Sudbury, and like a homesick child wept, he only shows the perseverance and pluck of the old Curtis race which began at Sudbury with Henry Curtis on the old East Street. Another town is Grafton, and still another is Rutland, in the settlement of which Sudbury had a share. In the "Town History" pages have been devoted to biographical sketches of the distinguished citizens of Sudbury, who, in about 1725, went out into the far westward-stretching wilderness to aid in forming the town of Rutland.
But time forbids that we should follow the outline of Sudbury's history farther. As we stand, to-day, by this mere framework of facts ; as we look over this vast building from foundation to roof- plate; as we glance upward and behold the high dome, well may we exclaim : "Who built it, and what would the completed structure be ?" What is the filling of this historic outline, which we have largely left out, but which has accumulated in this quarter-millennial of rolling, changeful, progressive years ? Who erected these walls, so massive and grand? Who painted those pictures upon them, which, better than stucco and fresco, yea, better than gold or fine gold, it is our joy to behold ? They did it in part whose names are
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on the roll of the early settlers ; their posterity did it in part, as at the " town bridge " or about the old garrisons they beat back the wily Pokanoket chief and helped save the town, and, perhaps, adjacent places ; they did it who assembled on this same village green at the bell-stroke on April 19th ; they did it who stood without breastwork or trench at the battle of Bunker Hill; and they in part did it who about a century later responded to the call of their country in the great Civil War. All these helped to erect this structure, and now, whose, we ask, is this structure, this heritage of history? It is owned by every citizen and native of Sudbury as it was in its original limits ; the title is one and the same to each ; our fathers jointly procured it. their names are subscribed upon it, there is no divided in- heritance about it, we are tenants in common of this grand old house. Thus these towns stand one in their history. Sudbury and Wayland are not apart to-day. It is a pleasant feature of the day we celebrate that the circumstances are such that we celebrate as one. There is no bond of union more perfeet than that which comes by way of com- mon ancestry, of transmitted traits and traditions. It was a hard thing for the colonists to break from British authority, notwithstand- ing they were so oppressed and aggrieved, because of the oneness of English and colonial history. Shoulder to shoulder had Eng- lishmen and Americans stood through repeated intercolonial wars, and one record-book spoke of their deeds. They had one language, one literature, and one prestige of which to be proud, as it usually is when there is a oneness of history. We, who jointly celebrate as Sudbury and Wayland to-day, have, indeed, a common history. Though a river is between us, yet it does not separate. Though of different names, yet we, nevertheless, are one. It would be difficult indeed to decide which side of the Sudbury River has the most places of which to be proud. You friends of the old east precinct have the old " Watertown trail,"' while we have the home of Karto ; you have the ancient burial-place, with its tender associations, that eling like the gray moss to the erumbling tombstones, and we have the sites of old garrisons in whose dooryards were hard-fought battles ; you have the little mound on the hillslope*, which you have enwreathed with your evergreen hedgerow, and we have a hill ever green with the
* Site of early meeting-house.
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fame of Capt. Wadsworth ; you have Timber Neck, where stood the parsonage of Edmund Brown, which, in time of war, was a fortified retreat of the settlers, and we have the houses, or the sites of them, where lived Nixon, Riee, and IIow.
In eonelusion, I would say that, as a native of Sudbury, I greatly revere her history. It is my joy that I was born amid these hills so historic, and the silent sites of homesteads so long hallowed by the influences and associations of our honored past ; and that my early years were spent within but a few minutes' walk of the old gray mound of the Wadsworth grave, that was erumbling amid the same unbroken turf that those soldiers pressed when they fell. It was my privilege in boyhood to roam these fields where what we have nar- rated took place; to climb the hill where stood the wigwam of Karto; and Nobscot, the old home of John Nixon; to behold the old town garrisons, and to think, think, think, with the limited thought of a child, of what happened in far away mystical times of the long. long ago. of which tradition faintly whispered. But when, in after years of busy research and toil among the musty records of town and state, I saw the truth of those faint intimations, and found that tradition had not told half the tale, then the interest in Sud- bury history gathered and grew, and there was, indeed, a strange reality to it :
"'Twas like a dream when one awakes. This vision of the scenes of old; 'Twas like the moon when morning breaks. 'Twas like a tale round watch-fires told."
It is to these realities, to this veritable history, that we welcome you, friends, here to-day. Though the rooftree has long sinee fallen, and the inmates of those other days are seattered and gone, the old mansion is still here; the hearthstones still remain to be trod by our feet if we will. To this hearth we have come; to this mansion we bring the gifts of filial regard, remembranee, and esteem. We have come to a better than an eastern Mecca. We have come to our fathers' sepulchres. Vonder they lie in their peaceful burial-plaec. Though turf-bound the grave that eonceals their dust, may we not believe that they are with us in spirit, that they revisit the spot where they reared their little chureh home, where they met in their
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early town meetings, and where they opened these pleasant ways for us ? As, then, in the presence of the Great Unseen and the spirits of our worthy sires, let us present our acknowledgment and offer our gifts. Let us be learners at the feet of our fathers.
They point us by their history to right living and thinking. They would have us perpetuate what they began, and by the impetus that has come down from the past, they would have us attain to even greater achievements than were ever attained by them. Two centuries and a half from this day others will have taken our places. Yes, in a half-century who of us will be here ? In the review, when the tri- centennial summons the children of Sudbury together, will it still be said that we, as a town, have continued to live our life well, and that a golden chain of right influence still binds our years into one ? May it be our desire that thus it shall be, and that those who write out our history may write of us deeds as worthy as we have written of those who have preceded us.
The President. - One of the most distinguished of the sons of Wayland has prepared for us a poem for this occasion, -a man who for many years has been associated with every good work connected with his own town and county. The poem will be read by Miss Fannie E. Neale, of Wayland.
POEM BY JAMES S. DRAPER, EsQ.
TO THE PIONEERS.
O DAUNTLESS band of Pioneers, With hearts so brave, and purpose true! Across the lengthening bridge of years We fain would backward turn to you.
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