USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Ipswich > The celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the town of Ipswich, Massachusetts, August 16, 1844 > Part 2
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PRESIDENT HASKELL. - The next item on the pro- gramme - a poem by Mrs. HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOF- FORD - will be deferred until afternoon. A poem will now be read by the Rev. J. O. KNOWLES, D.D.
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICH.
POEM.
TN other climes and other days The poets in their tuneful lays Have sung their native country's praise Right royally, And moved the men of after-years To deeds heroie, or to tears ; And made them, spite of foes or fears, Act loyally.
Their living words have conquered fate, And made the deeds of all the great The proudest trophies of the State, And richest dower; And made the spots forever bright
Where heroes dared to do the right,
And faced the wrong, though mailed in might And kingly power.
In rhythmic lines we see again The beauties of the mountain glen, Or walk within the gloomy fen With Scotland's bard, Or wander on its heath plains wide, Or cleave Loch Levin's tawny tide, Or climb Ben Nevis' rocky side By tempests scarred.
Again the Greeks rejoice to see The glimmer of the welcome sea ; Again at old Thermopyke The Spartan braves
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POEM BY REV. J. O. KNOWLES, D.D.
Roll back the swarms of Xerxes' host, Humble the proud invader's boast, And glorify their native coast With patriot graves.
But time would fail the tale to tell Of running stream or barren fell, Of mountain-pass or shady dell Sacred in song, Of Swiss or Saxon, IInn or Celt, Whose souls the thrill of freedom felt, That nerved their sturdy arms that dealt Death-blows to wrong.
Scarce humbler men we sing to-day, Scarce humbler deeds these lines display, Than those of other bards the lay In ages past ; For every test applied to men To measure greatness now or then Declares our fathers to have been Of merit vast.
Small need is there our limping verse Should trace their lives' heroic course, And to our age their fame rehearse In fulsome strain ; For never since the world began, And deeds in widening currents ran, Have men endured the more for man Ilis rights to gain.
What though we read of fairer skies, And vineelad hills that higher rise, And greener fields to greet the eye Than these they loved ! 2
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
We know our skies are fair and bland, Our hills in modest beauty stand, Our fields spread wide on every hand, In verdure clothed.
Our old town lies beneath the hill ; Its shady streets are wide and still ; Its river murmurs past the mill As years increase ; The church and school retain their place, While on the whole a quiet grace Rests like God's blessing on the race In sweetest peace.
I have searched through the records with sedulous ken To learn all that I could of those venturesome men Who first built their rude homes on this since famous spot, And divided these lands to their households by lot ; But I find that their part in founding a State Kept them too busy by far their deeds to relate.
I suppose those old chaps had a very hard time As they worried life through in this rigorous elime ; And I dare to presume it is not very rash If I say they often were hard up for cash ; That their mud chimneys would smoke, and their whitest chicks Would quite often " peg out " with the old-fashioned pips. Then there were the measles, and the big whooping-cough, And ugly warts on their hands they could not get off; And, besides other troubles that pestered their brats, They had family jars and connubial spats, With precisely the same little bother and fret Their unfortunate descendants struggle with yet.
What fun it would be could we only restore The picture, now faded, of years gone before ! --
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POEM BY REV. J. O. KNOWLES, D.D.
The wheel and the distaff; the cradle and chair ; The queer Mother Hubbard, and nicely puffed hair ; The bright pewter platters that answered for tin ; The hole in the door for the cat to get in ; The pot-hooks and trammels that hung from the crane, The pots and the kettles attached to the same ; The wide fireplace with the mantel above it, On this side an oven, on that side a closet ; The bellows, the shovel, the poker and tongs, And each hung up or standing where it belongs ; The queer sprawling creatures they dubbed fire-dogs, That bravely stood under their backload of logs ; The musket and cow's horn hung on rude brackets ; The corner beyond with its homespun jackets ; The dames with their kerchiefs and caps white as snow ; The men's hair in pigtails, each tied with a bow ; All would strike us as odd, and force us to grin At the queer little world these queer folks were in ; And yet, after all, there might be much more grinning If they could see us with our follies and simning.
Some grumbling old heathen, I've forgotten his name, Said, "For all the world's mischief, some woman's to blame ;" But his speech would have been a great deal exacter, Had he said, " In human affairs she 's chief factor." All know Mother Eve in the very beginning Susceptible Adam beguiled into simming ; While Adah and Zillah, cach but half of a wife, Made muddle and torment of old Lamech's life. But time will allow me but a brief allusion As I dump them all in in a careless confusion : There were Rebecca and Jane and old Keturah, Rachel, Ophelia, and prophetess Deborah, Abigail and Mary, and grandmother Eunice, Zenobia, who queened it outside of Tunis ; And Helen of Troy, the most winning of ladies ; And that other Helen, the mother of babies ; There were ITuldah and Ruth, and Mehitable too, And wicked old Jezebel, whom the cunuchs slew ;
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
Phobe and Lois, Tryphena and Tryphosa, (I must not forget the maid of Saragossa,) Elizabeth, Priscilla, Betsy, and Hannah, Isabella, Victoria, and Susannah ; Xantippe the scold, who blew up old Socrates ; Pocahontas, the maid with feet in moceasons ; Jerusha, Jemima, and oldl Mother Carey . Whose chickens will never fly over the prairie ; And gay Cleopatra, whose post mortem fame is Not greater than that of the great Semiramis. Now here I should add names of ladies of worth Who blessed the first years of this place of our birth. But recorders were just a little bit blind, Or bachelors crusty, who wives could not find ; For scarce has a woman had mention or place - Except note of the death that comes to the race. To snatch her in part from oblivion's grave One woman's short story old John Winthrop gave, As worth recording for the years to come, Because, though blind and deaf, and also dumb, She still, in spite of Nature's cruel dealing, The names of men could tell by sense of feeling. Yet even here is evidence completest That man, and not the woman, is the weakest ; For, had she chanced to be of man's estate possessed, No woman's name by any sense could have been guessed.
That the women of our carly history may this day have their due share of honor, I offer the following sentiment : -
Here's to the women of the olden time, - The women strong and brave and true, Who bore the rigors of this northern clime : To them are chiefest honors due. They were no courtly dames in raiment fine, With gems their tresses gleaming through ; Theirs was the robing of a faith sublime, That made them strong and brave and true.
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POEM BY REV. J. O. KNOWLES, D.D.
Here's to the women of the olden day, - The wives and sisters true and sweet, Who walked with even steps in virtue's ways : For them are stintless honors meet. They were no triflers, trilling lightsome lays, With lovelorn victims at their feet : Theirs were the songs of faith and holy praise That made them women true and sweet.
Here's to the women now beneath the sod, - The mothers tender, wise, and good, Who taught their children love and faith in God, By which they brave in danger stood. The paths of righteousness they humbly trod, With love restraining natures rude : Their strength was virtue and a faith in God, That made them tender, wise and good.
I now change the measure, theme, and so forth, And adopt the well-known style of Woodworth.
How dear to my heart are the names heard in childhood, When fond recollection decrees their review ! The Caldwells and Treadwells, and a tall Underwood, And all the old codgers my early days knew, The flock of the Shatswells, the Lanes who lived near them, The Russells and Rosses where the pudding-bag split, The Perleys and Potters, with Nourses to rear them, Are the names of some people I heard when a chit. The old-fashioned titles, the time-honored titles, The names of the people I heard when a chit.
The Kimballs and Cogswells are names heard with pleasure, And Baker and Kinsman and Conant as well ; The Browns, Smiths, and Wades, with the Waits, fill this measure, And make room for Appletons, Dodges, and Bell,
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
The Willcombs, the Farleys, the Haskells, and Goodhues,
The Heards, the Hodgkinses, the Clarks, and the Millers, The Colburns and Choates, Cowles and Perkins crews,
The Lakemans, the Willetts, the Rusts and the Spillers - The old-fashioned titles, the time-honored titles,
The names of the people I heard in my youth.
How sweet to old crones in some kitchen's warm corner To call up the names Ellsworth, Sutton, and Wise, And tell of the pranks of Lord, Manning, or Warner, In the days when they dazzled their girlish eyes ! And now, far removed from the home of my childhood, Of Harrises, Dunnells, and Newmans I hear, With Averills, Fellowses, and Fosters as good,
The names of the people once sweet to my car - The old-fashioned titles, the time-honored titles, The names of the people still sweet to my car.
I conclude with a short walk, very abruptly ended : -
And now, fellow-townsmen, it is well to suggest, That before we lie down on our pillows to rest, We walk through our village, and out on our plains, To find the old spots with their wonderful names, And more wonderful legends of red men or white, The ears of our childhood that filled with delight. Among these old seenes we will wander at will, Beginning our walk here on "Meeting-house Hill." Ilere rose the first temple of praise and of prayer, And here were the pillory, stocks, and the chair In which the women who dared to aronse The town with their tongues were given a souse. Here also paraded, when the hamlet was young, A slanderous vixen, a split stick on her tongue ; Here the grave ruling elders of Church and of State Together held counsel o'er interests great ; And here came the people on days for election,
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POEM BY REV. J. O. KNOWLES, D.D.
With beans black and white to make their selection As they dropped them into the box : so it seems They who counted those ballots had to know beans. And now lift up your eyes : there, verdant and still, Is the playground of childhood, - the old "Town Ilill." We pass, on our way leading down to the valley, The street that our fathers called "Pussy-cat Alley." Not to tax our pedal extremities hard, We will leave on our right our famous "Shipyard," And, rather than put our rhymes out of joint, Just mention that down there lie " Nabby's Point," The " Diamond Stage " that never had wheels, And " Labor in Vain," too crooked for cels. To climb once more the well-remembered hill, " Hog Lane" ascending, helps our footsteps still. At length we reach the summit, and there comes To sight an isle of sand and pines and plums ; This side the river, with its branching creeks ; And, fairer than the Euxine to the Greeks, Beyond, the ocean rises to the view, And ceaseless rolls its waves of liquid blue.
--
Why need we weary our old limbs with toil ? Let eyes, not feet, now march about our soil : At first and landward seck the landscape's brim, And count the verdant hills that shut it in. See " Great Neck," where they pasture sheep and lambs, It verges the famous camping-grounds for clams ; See " Heartbreak," where in vain a maid sought lover ; And "Jewett's," "Prospect," "Eagle," "Boar," and " Plover." To climb on "Turkey Hill," our old-time strength is o'er ; We'll be content to waddle round on "Turkey Shore."
What famous spots within this landscape lie, Which spreads its lights and shades before the eye ! - " New Boston," where we gobbled cherries ; And " Bull Brook," where we picked our berries ; And " Pine Swamp," where we tramped from morn till late, To find at dusk our homeward road at " Red Gate."
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
If our eyes are as sharp as we claim them to be, There 's " Hogtown " and " Firetown " and " Fly-town " to see, And " Linebrook " and "Goose Village," with "Goshen " beyond, But never the least glimpse of old "Baker's Pond." We cannot forget those bright days, if we would, When we travelled for fun to old "Candlewood;" The whole town to us was filled full of charms, From " Little Comfort " away across to the " Farms."
We turn our eyes below, and at our feet, Elm-shaded, lies in peace old " Pudding Street," So named because a pudding hard and dry Was stolen by some tipsy passers-by. These later years from vulgar names have shrunk, And called it "High" because the thieves were drunk.
But we must pause. The memories of the past, Like ocean tides, are rising deep and fast. Below are corners, streets, and pleasant nooks That charmed our willing hours away from books, And space supplied for play, or shade for rest, In days agone, our sweetest and our best.
Having brought you in my rhymes to the top of this old hill, and to look lovingly down on our grand old mother-town, I am sure you will allow it is just the place to stop.
The choir sang DUDLEY BUCK's anthem, " Praise the Lord."
PRESIDENT HASKELL. - Your attention is now asked to an address by the Rev. JOHN C. KIMBALL of Hartford, Conn.
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
THE EVOLUTION OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN.
T TWO hundred and fifty years ago to-day, as our president
has already said, it was ordered by the General Court of Massachusetts that " Agawam shall be called Ipswitch;" and this act, the modest christening of our infant town, born here in the wilderness seventeen months before, we, its chil- dren and grandchildren, have met now to celebrate.
Two hundred and fifty years of municipal life ! Measured with the antiquity of many towns in the Old World, with the two hundred and fifty thousand years of man's probable abode on earth, and with the vast periods since the earth itself emerged from its swaddling-clothes of fire-mist, they are, of course, only the merest point of time, hardly worthy of a passing glance in the antiquarian's backward-looking thought ; but measured by events and by the development of the world's finer life, they are hardly less than all the vast ages, counted or uncounted, that stretch behind them to the farthest rim of time. When John Winthrop and his twelve companions made their first voyage here from Boston, if they had ever heard of Copernicus and his new theory of the sun and earth, or of Galileo and the wonders of his "Tuscan optic glass," or of Harvey and his circulation of the blood, or of Lord Bacon and his Novum Organum, it was only as far-off rumors, not coloring in the slightest degree their actual thought. The chief part of all our great discoveries in science and art, and of all our grand ideas about liberty, self-government, tolera- tion, and the rights of man, and not only this, but our whole existing way of looking at the universe, - at nature, man, life, religion, everything, as under the reign of constitutional. law
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
rather than of personal will, have been brought to light since their day. And in passing from the Ipswich of 1884 back to the Ipswich of 1634, we pass from the modern to the ancient, from the noisy Now, with its telegraph and steam-engine, to
" Those silent halls
Where lie the bygone ages in their palls,"
almost as completely as in going to the birthday of a town which had counted its thousand years.
But why should we go back at all into the past ? why take any more notice of this day than of any other in the town's history ? why not heed those who tell us that regard for the olden time is a foolish sentiment ; that what we need to study is not our ancestors, but ourselves ; and that the truly pro- gressive community is the one which spends its money in building up factories rather than monuments, and in opening workshops rather than tombs? It is a question which re- ceives a most satisfactory answer from one of those very sciences, that of evolution, which has come up in our own time. The past is found under its teaching to be one of the mightiest of all factors in making the present; the study of our ancestors, to be the snrest of all ways by which to know ourselves. „The Ipswich of to-day, its fields, factories, churches, and schools, and its living men and women, are only the leaves and blossoms of a tree whose root, trunk, and branches are the Ipswich of the past, as impossible to be lived and understood without it, as those of our gardens would be, if severed from their parent stem. We work, worship, and believe, even the most radical of us, not with our own strength, faith, and devotion alone, but with those, also, of our buried sires. It is because the truth-seekers of our age stand on the shoulders of all the truth-seekers of the past, rather than because of their own tallness, that they see so well the new truths of our time. And when our three hundred and forty-seven Ipswich soldiers went forth in the late Union war to defend their country and the cause of liberty on new battlefields, it was the courage, patriotism, and liberty-loving of all the
----
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IHISTORICAL ADDRESS.
heroes out of the grand old town who had fought the battles of the Revolution, marched to the siege of Lonisburg, and faced under woods and stars the Indian tomahawk in days gone by, that again, side by side with their own valor, flashed in their eyes, thrilled in their hearts and blazed in their guns.
" Words pass as wind ; but where great deeds are done A power abides, transfused from sire to son : The boy feels deeper meanings thrill his car, Which, tingling through his pulse, lifelong shall run With sure impulsion to keep honor clear, When, pointing round, his father whispers, 'Here, Here where we stand, stood they, the purely great - Then nameless, now a power, and mixed with fate .? "
And as every farmer knows that digging in the earth among the roots of his trees is one of the surest ways by which to increase and enrich their fruit up among the branches, so our town's money and time spent to-day in digging among the memories of its two hundred and fifty bygone years are not for a pleasant holiday merely, or for the gratification of an idle curiosity alone, but are what will show themselves better than by any other use in its richness and growth through all the years to come.
Moreover, the fact that our town has grown up from its past to be only a small community, and that it remains still not a city, but only a town, makes it all the worthier of being thus commemorated and studied. What Tennyson says of a single flower is equally true of a single town : -
" Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower ; but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is."
The towns of New England are its municipal flowers, the things to know which is to know what in all government is
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICH.
alike the most human and the most divine. It was within their limits that was first tried on American soil the great experiment of a free commonwealth ; by their hand that was organized, as never before, the now famous principle of " a gov- ernment of the people, by the people, for the people ;" in their school that Liberty learned to read and write not a few of the grand words with which so often since she has thrilled all humanity's heart; out of their ideal, moulded in miniature, that was afterwards carved the colossal grandeur of the whole republic. De Tocqueville well says, " The impulsion of politi- cal activity was given to America in its towns;" Freeman, that " the present greatness of our Confederation is mainly owing to the littleness of its municipal beginnings ; " Gordon, that "every town is an incorporated republice ;" and Professors Hosmer of St. Louis, and Adams of the Johns Hopkins Univer- sity, who have made special studies of this subject, that "its towns are the primordial cells of our body politie," and that " the reproduction of the old English town system under our New England colonial conditions is one of the most eurious and instructive phenomena of American history." The fact is, no one can understand the real nature and value of a de- mocracy, no one especially the foundation principles of our own government, who does not understand its New England towns ; and among them all there is none in which these characteristics are more complete and the processes of their growth more distinet, none which has a fairer record, or that will pay better for being studied, than our own beautiful Ipswich.
" Whatever moulds of various brain E'er shaped the world to weal or woe, Whate'er made empires wax or wane, To him that hath not eyes in vain Our village microcosm can show."
And so, as a subject valuable in itself, and appropriate for this occasion, I want to speak of the forces concerned in the planting and development of Ipswich as a characteristic New England town, not of its municipal structure alone, for
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
this is only its skeleton, but of all that relates to its life and spirit, and that has helped to give it a flesh-and-blood reality.
I. First, as to its ORIGINAL STOCK. There is no denying that blood tells in the making of a community even more than in the making of an individual. North America planted with Spaniards would have been South America in spite of all that points of compass and parallels of latitude could have done. When civilization decided to try its experiment of a new nation on these western shores, it asked humanity first of all for its very best seed with which to do it ; and most nobly did humanity respond to the call. As old William Stoughton expressed it in his election sermon in 1668, "God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice grain over into this wilderness," nay, more than that, he sifted for this purpose a whole race. Its settlers were not only of English blood, but of the old Aryan stock. For five thousand years before they reached these shores, they had been on their westward travels. All Northern Europe bore the rich marks of their Pilgrim feet ; and, when they undertook to conquer the wilderness here, they had in their veins the strength, courage, and manhood which had already conquered a score of wildernesses there.
The detachment of them which settled among our own hills -John Winthrop and his twelve companions in 1633, a hundred others with their families a year after, and at the end of fifteen years a thousand in all - shared to the fullest extent the qualities of this original New England stock. Old Cotton Mather said in 1638, that "here was a renowned church, consisting mostly of such illuminated Christians that their pastors, in the exercise of their ministry, had not so much disciples as judges ;" and Johnson, eight years later, in his " Wonder-Working Providence," wrote, "The peopling of this town is by men of good ranke and quality, many of them having the yearly revenue of large lands in England before they came to the wilderness." Prominent among them were such personages as General Samuel Appleton, at once
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
a brilliant civilian and a brave Indian fighter; Anne Dudley Bradstreet, a genial, cultivated woman and New England's first poetess ; Rev. Thomas Cobbett, a leading divine, mighty alike in prayer with God and in logie with man; Major-Gen- eral William Denison, a valued soldier, scholar, statesman, and man of affairs alike in the colony and in the town; Nicholas Easton, an early freethinker, who afterwards, as a prominent citizen of Newport, R.I., gave his name to its now fashionable beach ; Giles Firmin, the quaint old physician, whose affee- tions were equally divided between " physick and divinitee;" William Hubbard, the well-known historian of early New England; Jolm Norton, a celebrated minister, theologian, and scholar, well " studied in arts and tongues," author of the first Latin book ever printed in America, a member of the noted Cambridge synod, and so eloquent a preacher, that one of his admirers used to, walk thirty miles to hear his voice; the Rogers family, descendants of the great Smithfield martyr, and one of them in later years president of Harvard Uni- versity ; Samuel Symonds, for a long time deputy governor of the Commonwealth, and, with his wife Rebekah, a leader of the Colony's social life; Richard Saltonstall, America's first abolitionist; Francis Wainwright, a leading business man; and Nathaniel Ward, equally distinguished as author, preacher, jurist, and scholar, whose "Simple Cobbler of Agawam" has long been our town's ancient classic, and whose "Body of Liberties" the foundation-stone of our State's independent sovereignty. Their names and deeds are among New England's historie treasures. Not another town in the Commonwealth could show a brighter list. They brought wisdom, energy, and dignity to the shaping of affairs at home; and under their influence Ipswich for a whole generation had a leading voice with the Colony at large on the field of war, in the ecclesiastical synod, and at the General Court.
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