USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Maynard > The annals of Sudbury, Wayland and Maynard, Middlesex County, Massachusetts > Part 37
USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Sudbury > The annals of Sudbury, Wayland and Maynard, Middlesex County, Massachusetts > Part 37
USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Wayland > The annals of Sudbury, Wayland and Maynard, Middlesex County, Massachusetts > Part 37
USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Sudbury > The annals of Sudbury, Wayland, and Maynard, Middlesex County, Massachusetts > Part 37
USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Wayland > The annals of Sudbury, Wayland, and Maynard, Middlesex County, Massachusetts > Part 37
USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Maynard > The annals of Sudbury, Wayland, and Maynard, Middlesex County, Massachusetts > Part 37
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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
Your tears we see profusely fall,- Your painful parting sighs we feel ; The farewell words, when leaving all, To tenderest sympathies appeal.
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No more for you Old England's soil Her well-requited harvest yields ! Henceforth your hands await the toil In those far-off New England fields.
How swayed emotions, big with fate, As pressed your feet on this new ground! Words could not flow ! A joy elate Transfused its effluent power around.
Seeds from the banks of Stour's" bright stream You brought to spread o'er plain and hill.t Where Sudbury's sluggish waters gleam, To make its fields seem home-like still.
And all the choicest plants to rear, - Of soul devout and feeling kind, - Your careful hands transplanted here, The heart's deep sympathies to bind.
Ah! " Better than you knew " arose The temples of those early days; For still the mighty influence flows, - God's plans are seen in human ways!
Your little band then stood for all That prayer eould plead for, - strength maintain ; Now, broadening nations hear the eall, And Freedom spreads from main to main:
For every inch your valor held Along Atlantic's rugged eoast. Now, o'er a continent inipelled, Your followers press, -a myriad host !
And, reaching to the farthest elime. - Extending through unnumbered years, Your work shall hold its place sublime, - O dauntless band of Pioneers.
* River Stour, on the banks of which the town of Sudbury, in England, stands.
t It was of sufficient consequence to be entered on the earliest records of this town (Sudbury, Mass.,) that " English corn [grain | was sown " by the settlers.
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The President. - This year, which is the two hundred and fiftieth in the existence of the town of Sudbury, is also the hundredth year of our national constitutional existence. Sudbury was one hundred and fifty years old before the constitutional life of the country commeneed. We liad anticipated to have with us an official representative of the United States, but in his absence we have one fully able to take his part. I have to say for old Massachusetts that if she had any faults we should love her still. I present to you tlie Hon. George A. Marden, of Lowell, who will respond both for the United States and for the Commonwealth.
ADDRESS BY HON. GEORGE A. MARDEN.
Ladies and Gentlemen : -
I WISH the few moments allotted to me had been taken up by those pages which were turned over in bunches, or perhaps in part, by the Fitchburg Band. The discordant notes of my voice cannot make amends for any vacancy in the sweetness of the strains which have captivated us ; and still less could I take the place of him, who, speak- ing of the love of a son of Sudbury, has praised his old home so warmly and so faithfully. I am to speak, it scems, in a double sense : to speak for the United States and for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Certainly, nothing but the performance of the duty to which the citizens of the Commonwealth called me a few months ago has been so pleasant to me as to come here to-day and bring you the congratulations of Massachusetts herself. Yesterday I stood upon Cape Cod, where one of the great towns with the same birthday as Sudbury was celebrating her two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. I will say that His Honor, the Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, and acting Governor for the time in the absence of Governor Ames, said that he had received a kind invitation to come here, and he desired me to express to you his regrets that he could not add old Sudbury to the list of those towns whose birthday anniversaries he had attended; and he desired me for him to extend to you, citizens and descendants and neighbors of Sudbury, thic congratulations of the mother state. Mother State! Why, the state is a hundred and
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forty years or more younger than her daughter, and the great coun- try in whose behalf I have been impressed into service on this occasion is younger still by almost a decade; but it is by such children as these that they have been enabled to prosper. Looking over the list of towns of Massachusetts that have celebrated their two hundred and fiftieth birthday, or might have done so, I find but twenty-three ahead of the town of Sudbury. Your town is one of the old settlers. In the seventeenth century there were but fifty more towns settled after that, and altogether the towns of Massachusetts settled in that century number seventy-five only. It is a venerable town. Sometimes we are accustomed to consider the life of a nation or community from its birthday, such as you celebrate now ; but Sudbury started full armed, full panoplied. We go back a thousand years or more in any history and find that the beginnings of countries are but mists, cloud, and fog; they took centuries to evolve from their little begin- nings, now so obscure. But Sudbury began, as Governor Long said of Sandwich, at the top. Two hundred and fifty years ago there was not the Sudbury here that there is to-day ; not the meeting- house, not the Town Hall, not the tall school-house, taking the tele- phone wires ; but the seeds of them all were here, the beginnings of the civilization which needed only a few years comparatively, as mcn reckon time, to bring them into full development. Why, two hundred and fifty years since the settlement of Sudbury is a thou- sand years in the calendar of civilization.
I liked the address of the orator, liked it exceedingly well, especially for the love the man showed for his birthplace. Every man believes in the place where he was born, or ought to; if not, the place should not believe in him. I have a good deal of sympathy with a remark which Theodore Parker once made. He was met by a man who told him the world was coming to an end; whereupon he replied, "That does not concern me, I live in Boston." And also with the fecling of a lady who went to the other world, and who was said to have sent back this message to her husband. She said, " This is a lovely placc ; the streets are of gold, and the hills of jasper, and everything so fine and beautiful. It is very nice, but it is not Boston."
Did you ever hear of a little party of Americans who were celc-
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brating the Fourth of July in Paris? When a man gets so far away from home as that he is apt to take something, especially at a Fourth of July dinner, which naturally inspires sentiments worthy of the occasion. These people were no exception to the rule, and after they got through with their dinner their patriotism ran ligh, and they came to the conclusion that America was the biggest country on the footstool, and began to give sentiments. One of them was: "I give you the United States of America, - bounded on the north by the British Possessions, on the south by the Isthmus of Panama" (he was going in for all of Mexico), "on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the west by the Pacific." The next man said : " That does not express it. I give you the United States of America, - bounded on the north by the North Pole, on the south by the South Pole, on the east by the rising sun, and on the west by the setting sun." They thought that was a pretty good toast, and they began to cheer. One, more exhilarated than the others, said: "Your sentiment does not amount to much. Let me give you one : 'Here is to the United States of America, - bounded on the north by the Aurora Borealis, on the south by the Procession of the Equinoxes, on the east by Primeval Chaos, and on the west by the Day of Judgment.' "
I almost expected the minister who gave us the address would give us sueli a toast about Sudbury, and he would not have overstepped the bounds if he had. This is figurative speech, mind you. There is nothing you can say too good for Sudbury, not because it is Sud- bury, but because she is a typical New England town, on whose con- servative and stable elements tlie state must in the future, as in the past, rely. The president told us that the safety of the state lay in the towns, not in the eities. So it does. If Boston had to depend upon her own resources for men to make her big aldermen, for instance, where would we be ; or in Lowell, if we didn't get some good men to come out to Lowell from the country once in a while ? We should be " in the soup," to use a common expression. It is men from the country towns who have a conservative influence. You could not have this sort of a celebration in the city; you have not the material for it there. Take Boston as an example : Boston was settled before Sudbury ; but, although it dates from 1630, you could not have a celebration like this in Boston. You have not the old
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families or the traditions, in Boston, in spite of Faneuil Hall and the Old State House. It has been overgrown, partly by the importations we have made. You could not dig out the New England element in Boston from the mass of the community there ; but here it comes to the surface of itself; you can see it in every face. This is the kind of community which made New England what it is, and keeps it what it is. Go across the line to the north of us, and you can tell if you were blindfold when you got there. Go into the Middle States, and you know at once that you are out of New England. Go west, or north, or south, and you think that New England is the best place. One of the first things that you notice is that your appetite is gone. You search in vain for a good square meal, such as you have been accustomed to. There is something about a New England dinner that is absent elsewhere.
I agreed not to speak more than five minutes. I must con- clude by saying, as I said in the beginning, that I came here cheerfully and gladly, as a representative of Massachusetts, to tender you as her preservers the congratulations of the good old Commonwealth.
The President. - The fourth senatorial district of the state, in which Sudbury and Wayland are situated, has a represen- tative in Boston at the State House who has done great credit not only to his district but to the state; and though you have sent many able and discreet men to serve you in that capacity, there is none more so than Mr. Davenport of Marlborough, whom you will be glad to see, and equally glad to hear, whom I now present to you.
ADDRESS BY HON. WILLIAM N. DAVENPORT.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen of Sudbury, Way- land, and the Surrounding Country :
I AM told that the exercises will close at a quarter-past four, that several other gentlemen are to follow me, and I have but one min- ute in which to speak, - much to your relief, no doubt, as it cer- tainly is to mine.
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I must eonfess that I hardly know what to say at this stage of the proceedings. While I have been listening to the speakers who have preceded me, I have been taking a retrospective view of the family tree, and have tried to hunt up in the annals of my memory some aneestor of mine whose bark of life was launched within the limits of the good old town of Sudbury; but as yet it has been a most lamentable failure, so I cannot speak as a native or deseendant of the town. But if, in the course of human events. I shall be per- mitted to begin at the beginning again, under the influence of this perpetual youth elixir, of which we read in the Lowell Courier and other unreliable papers, I shall start here in the town of Sudbury, let my new life begin here, and I shall elaim relationship from this time. It is indeed a pleasure to be with you to-day. It is a pleasure to meet the descendants of sturdy old New England stoek, who have gathered to commemorate the heroie days of her aneestry ; and it is a pleasure to know that here in this part of the County of Middlesex, where many towns are running a form of government under a eity eharter, the town of Sudbury, for many years at least, proposes to remain a little republie, such as has been spoken of by the president of the day. I believe in the small New England towns; I believe the men who take their first training in statesman- ship in discussing matters in the town meeting are safe to rely upon in any erisis or ordeal through which the state or the United States may be called upon to pass. I am gratified to see on this day this large gathering of the sons, and descendants of the sons, of Sudbury, and if I am permitted, as I expect to be, to participate in the next two hundred and fiftiethi anniversary, I hope to meet with many of you again, preserved by this marvellous elixir, and I hope to here find on the fair plains of Middlesex this same little republie, going on in the same line in which it is going to-day. It is difficult to realize that so many years have elapsed since Sudbury was incorporated ; to realize that two hundred and fifty years have passed between us and the incorporation of the old town. We live in an era of change, and while your ancestors would hardly know where they were if placed here to-day, amid all the achievements of steam and electricity, still, while there is a change in everything else, the people remain true and loyal and faithful. Wishing that many blessings may rest upon the fair town of Sudbury, I will say good-by.
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The President. - It might be inferred from what has been said that Sudbury was the only town in Middlesex County. Yet we have good neighbors, of whom we are also proud. When the original grant was given to the territory, it was bounded on the east by Watertown, on the north by Concord, on the south and west by the wilderness. That wilderness has since blossomed like the rose. One of the most enterprising and growing towns in old Middlesex is Hudson. We have a distinguished citizen of that town with us to-day, and you will be glad to listen for a moment to Mr. Joslyn, of Iludson.
ADDRESS BY HON. JAMES T. JOSLYN.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : -
THIS comes to me as an entire surprise. I am here to-day by the invitation of the Committee of Arrangements, which I accepted, and I return to them, and through them to you, my sincere thanks. I shall not presume, however, to occupy any time on this occasion, when I know there are present learned gentlemen, not only those skilled in statesmanship, but doctors of divinity, who can entertain you better than myself. While I was listening to the last speaker, and remem- bering that he had been a young student in my office, and is now clothed with senatorial honors, I could not but feel that I was old.
Let me make one suggestion: The historian of this day, in a book that has very recently been published, has brought to my mind, to my great satisfaction, a historical idea. I find that one of the early settlers of this town was my ancestor, an immigrant from old England in 1635. He was for a time in Hingham, and in 1654 signed the original order upon which was founded the town of Lan- caster. I endeavored to trace him for some time, without success, as I could not examine the carly records ; and now, through your generosity, your historian has brought to light the fact that Thomas Joslyn was one of the grantees and settlers of Sudbury. I find his name in several reports and two or three divisions of land. After that he took his family and settled in the valley of the Nashua, and helped start the beautiful town of Lancaster. I am situated more fortunately than Mark Twain, who regretted that the Pilgrims did
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not take two or three days in landing, because he had so many invitations for one day to celebrate that event that he could not accept them all, whereas if they had been distributed over two or three days, he could. I have come to the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of Sudbury; and I ean go to Laneaster and celebrate with them their two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, and the next year probably I can celebrate the anniversary of my own native town of Leominster, and so I am very fortunate. It so happens that the town of Marlborough, a growing town and fast becoming a city. and the town of Hudson and the good old town of Sudbury are in one representative distriet. We are glad that the towns of Marlborough and Hudson ean also share in this conservative element that the representative of the Commonwealth has referred to.
It is a wholesome element to have in any political district. It is true, as you, Mr. President, intimated, and as the representative for the state and the United States has said, that this celebration could not be duplicated in Boston or Lowell. While in the town of Hud- son we eannot have the same kind of celebration which you are hay- ing, we feel that Marlborough and Hudson are helping with Sudbury to lift up the great mass of the population who are coming over not only from the shores of England but from many other European countries, and there may be a trying time for New England in the future from this element ; and we in New England have the same work in character and spirit to do which our forefathers had, and which their posterity has accomplished to this present time. I be- lieve all that has been spoken about Sudbury to-day is true, and I am perhaps sorry that my ancestor did not remain here and take up his lot with you. He was evidently inelined to get the best lots of the settlers. I am only sorry that he did not leave some of them to his posterity.
The President. - In 1852 an event of more than usual im- portanee to the old town of Sudbury, making it one of our red- letter days, was celebrated, and the Wadsworth monument, creeted by the joint action of the town and state, was dedicated. The young Governor of the state, as he was then, is with us here to-day, and it
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gives me special pleasure to introduce to you Governor Boutwell. I might call him by almost any other title, for he has held almost every position in the gift of the government, but I will call him Governor Boutwell.
ADDRESS BY HON. GEORGE S. BOUTWELL.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : -
As You may infer from the introductory remarks of the president my presence here to-day is due to the circumstance that seven and thirty years ago I came to the town of Sudbury, upon the invitation of your people, to deliver what was made to pass for an address, upon the occasion of the dedication of the monument to the memory of Captain Wadsworth, Captain Brocklebank, Lieutenant Jacobs, and twenty-six others who fell in defence of this frontier town in the month of April, 1676.
I may speak, if your patience shall endure, of two features inci- dent to that circumstance; but before I do so I wish to comment upon an observation made by the orator, and seconded by others, that this is an assembly of the descendants of the Puritans, of the descendants of the Puritans as distinguished from the Pilgrims and the descendants of the Pilgrims. Too often I have observed in pub- lic addresses and in historical works that the two are confounded ; and the country is sometimes invited to accept the civilization of the present age and of the country as the civilization of the Puritans, and sometimes it is invited to accept it as the civilization of the Pil- grims, but it is not the civilization of either. They had independent sources ; they were different bodies of men; not in their national origin, but in the ideas they entertained, in the sources of information under which they had lived and were living, and in the objects which they had in view in coming to America for the home of themselves and their posterity. I do not mean to-day to state with any distinct- ness the difference, but only this, that the Puritans were not a religious sect. They contained in their organization as a body men of different religious opinions. John Cotton, minister of the first church in Boston, and John Winthrop, the first Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts, both were members of the Church of Eng-
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land, and from the Church of England they never departed. Others were Calvinistic, pure and simple. But the Pilgrims of Plymouth were inen animated and controlled by a single religious idea. They were independent, they were pronounced, they were followers in the extreme of the doctrines of John Calvin. The two bodies were com- pelled by political considerations to merge their influence together, and from the Pilgrims' religious opinions and from the Puritans' political ideas has come the civilization by which the whole northern half of this empire and republie is controlled, and by which, with increasing steps and without great delay, the entire continent, from the gulfs on the north to Mexico on the south, is to be controlled.
Two things I wish to say to you, my friends, concerning this monument. It so happened that something of the responsibility as to the monument rested upon me. We had many designs offered to us by artists in Boston and elsewhere as to the character of the monument. Mr. Isaac Davis of Worcester had then recently rc- turned from a trip to Europe, and when the subject was under con- sideration, he said that at Lucca in Italy he had seen a monument that liad stood thic test of criticism for two hundred years as the best pyramidal structure on the continent of Europe. So then, just as I am now, entirely ignorant of art, I said to these designers who approached with the products of their artistic skill, " On examination I am utterly unable to form any judgment in this matter. We will take tlic monument at Lucea for our model." Wc sent over and had the measurements made, and the monument which stands on yonder hill is an exact representation of the monument at Lucca in Italy. I fancy that it is as good in respect to artistic eliaracter as any in this country.
It so happened that I had, in consequence of my address here, in November, 1852, a controversy, which I fear has not quite ended yet. When I made preparation for what I thought it might be proper to say on that occasion, my attention was directed to the dif- ference of opinion as to whether the fight in which Wadsworth and others fell was on the 18th day of April, 1676, or on the 21st day of April; and after such examination as I could make I came to the conclusion that it was on thic 18th, and therefore I said so in my address, making the statement that there had been and was an opinion that the fight occurred on the 21st. The date of the 18th was
THE WADSWORTH MONUMENT, South Sudbury.
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placed upon the monument. Soon after an article appeared in the Genealogical Register lamenting the error. Again, in a few months, another article of the same tenor followed. I was at that time occu- pied in other affairs. I was called to Washington, the war came on, and my attention was diverted to other things, and it was not until 1866 that I found time and opportunity for further investigation of the case. I wrote an answer to thesc articles, and I fear that I put into that one passage that was not wise. I stated the reasons pro and con for my opinion, which I am not going to repeat herc, and the facts, and that I relied at last upon this : That President Wads- worth, of Harvard College, son of Capt. Wadsworth, who was seven years of age when his father died, and whose mother lived sixteen years after the death of Captain Wadsworth, had, when he was sixty years of age, placed at his own proper cost upon the greensward of Sudbury a statement that his father fell on the 18th day of April, 1676. I said to myself, it is not for me to say that I know better than President Wadsworth, of Harvard College, as to the question whether Captain Wadsworth fell on the 18th or the 21st day of April; and in my indiscretion I put at the end of my paper, -- which, with the exception of that last sentence was, after some debate, printed in the Gencalogieal Register, - these words, which were omitted; but, in a still further indiscretion, I put a copy of the paper in the Historical Society's rooms with the sentence annexed which I put in the original article. The said words were these: "The statement of President Wadsworth as to the time that his father died is of more valuc than all the theories of all the genealogists who have lived sinee their vocation was so justly condemned by St. Paul." That was the indiseretion.
And now I will relate a circumstance : Soon after this article was published I had occasion to go into one of the courts of Boston to try a case, in which my client was involved to the extent of $1,000, and on coming into the court room I saw to my horror that the foreman of the jury was the editor of the Genealogieal Register. The case was tried and the verdict was against my client; but I wish to say this in regard to Mr. Drake and his cleven associates, that my im- pression to-day is that they brought in a righteous verdict.
I have thus reviewed this controversy, not from any personal
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motive. Everybody who had anything to do with the matter besides myself I fear is dead, and I would not rake the ashes now except that it is a historical event. I have no feeling of personality in the matter, and if it shouldl turn out that it was the 21st instead of the 18th, I should feel that I had done the best I could to set the matter right.
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