USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Ipswich > The celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the town of Ipswich, Massachusetts, August 16, 1844 > Part 5
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if the community which sent the most of them out of itself, especially if they were its bravest and best children, would be the one that in life's struggle would be the least likely to survive. All experience, however, shows that such is not the case. War, not less than peace, is one of the great forces of the world's social evolution; the test of which can fight the best, one of the ways of proving which is fittest for its work ; and though the slaughter of the brave and good on battle- fields is in some of its aspects a terrible loss, nevertheless it is only in proportion as a nation has the most of its children who are ready thus to die for it that it is able itself to live.
It is a condition of survival of which Ipswich, like all the rest of our old New England towns, has had ample experience. Strange as it may now seem, with the only sound of border strife two thousand miles away, it was once a frontier settle- ment, and indeed was seized and occupied at first as a mili- tary outpost and as a military necessity, -that of presenting a barrier against the incursions of Frenchmen and of the Tar- rantine Indians from the East. Surrounded with savage foes, its inhabitants, for a hundred years, never lay down to sleep at night without preparations to rise up before morning to defend their lives, never rose up in the morning without possibilities of lying down before night in the sleep of death as protectors of their homes. Its first houses were all built with portholes through their overhanging second floors, out of which to run their guns. The meeting-house was literally a watch-tower. The sentinel on "the hill of Zion" within, sounding the alarm against sin, was offset by a sentinel at the door without, ready to sound the alarm against Indians. Not only was every man trained to arms, but, by a vote found on the town-records in 1648, all the children ten years old and upwards were ordered to be " exercised with small guns, half-pikes, and bows and arrows." While the settlement was yet only four years old, it sent out twenty-three of its soldiers in the war against the Pequots. Seven of its number were slain in the famous battle at Muddy Brook; three killed and twenty-three wounded in the victorious fight with King
1
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TIIE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
Philip at Narraganset Swamp. It was represented in all the great expeditions against Canada during the King William, French and Indian, and Queen Anne wars; shed its blood at Ticonderoga, Crown Point, Cape Breton, and at the daring siege of Louisburg. It went into the Revolutionary struggle with all its heart, mind, soul, and strength. The spirit with which it was animated was well evinced by the reply of Mrs. Holyoake, one of its old ladies, when asked to have some of her beautiful oak-wood cut down to be used in making salt- petre, " It is for liberty : take as much of it as you want." Money, men, and supplies were voted again and again with- out stint; and from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, on the land and on the sea, some of its soldiers were in its every fight. And when at last, after long days of peace, its Union war broke out, and the issue was not of selfish liberty alone, but of humanity, and of liberty to the slave, and of loyalty to the kingdom of God, it soon showed that the blood of the sires was in the sons, and answered with three hundred and forty- seven men and with fifty-one lives its own share of the question as to whether New England still could fight.
Who now shall say that this long list of patriotic soldiers, heroic deeds, and sacrificed lives, running through eight generations, has added nothing to our town's diviner life ? Who say that liberty is not dearer, our every institution richer, the very soil on which we stand the more precious, for every blow they struck, every pang they suffered, every ruby drop they offered up ? Who say that the shaft on yonder hill, bearing the names of the last ones on the long roll who pressed to the battle's awful front, and suggestive of all the rest, does not blend harmoniously with the church- spire, the schoolhouse, the market, the home, and these ancient hills, as a worthy factor of our fair old town ? Sainted band ! we cannot stand with uncovered heads by all your graves to-day in the redeemed South, along the Canada line, by Champlain's limpid wave, and beneath the deep blue sea ; cannot summon your visible forms to join with us in the festivities of this natal hour; cannot, amid the gathered dust
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of years, decipher all your names: but we stand with un- covered souls beside your patriotic deeds, hail you as fellow- citizens still in thought's undying realm, and behold in all these institutions around us the impress of something more truly yours than any outward name. Among the great com- pany of the town's departed builders rising above us to the inner vision, tier after tier, through the dim encircling years, - wise scholars, holy divines, saintly women at the shrine of home, and faithful toilers in the shop and field, - we give to you, red-handed though you are, a foremost place. And in the light of your deeds, and by the breath of your example, we pledge ourselves, do we not, we its living, to keep our town worthy of you its dead ?
" For the place
Where shining souls have passed imbibes a grace Beyond mere earth : the sweetness of their fames Leaves in the soil its unextinguished trace, And penetrates our lives with nobler aims."
VIII. But, while war preserves a community from without, there is another and sweeter force which holds it together from within, - one that unifies and co-ordinates all its other parts, and deprived of which it would be like the limbs of a body without its ligaments, or of a tree without its sap; and that is its SOCIAL LIFE. Men are made in their very nature to live in communities. There are ties and necessities older even than our Aryan blood, as old as the race itself, which tend to draw them together. They cannot be complete in themselves, cannot show all that they are capable of, any more than the parts of a watch can, except through mutual contact and inter- . course. And it is this social instinct which not only lies at the basis of the state and the town, but operates all through to give them grace and polish, and is the final factor in their evolution. We are apt to think of our Puritan ancestors as altogether cold, rigid, and formal ; apt to look on them as the fresh leaves of a tree might on its dark limbs beneath, or the green blades of grass on its buried roots, -as being always what they are now, the dim, bloodless, unmoving figures that
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
we see them on the dry historic page. We need continually to remind ourselves that they were human beings, full of warm human nature, and that once they were moving about these streets, clothed in flesh and blood, and as full of weak- nesses, passions, interests, and affections, and of rich and bounding life, as we are to-day. Who, for instance, can read the entry lighting up the old records, of how Daniel Blake in 1660 was fined five pounds " for making love to Edmund Bridge's daughter without her parents' consent," and not see, that, though his age was Puritan, Daniel's heart was very human ? Women were evidently as much given to dress and fashion then as they ever have been since; for, the same year that Ipswich was incorporated, the General Court passed a law against " slashed apparel, great sleeves, gold and silver lace, knots of ribbon, and double ruffs." And Ward says, in his " Simple Cobbler of Agawam," " I honor the woman that can honor herself with her attire, -a good text always de- serves a fair margent ; but when I hear a nugiperous Gentle- dame inquire what dress the Queen is in this week, what the nudiustertian fashion of the court is, with egge to be in it with all haste, whatever it be, I look at her as the very giz- zard of a trifle, the product of the quarter of a cipher, the epitome of nothing, fitter to be kiekt, if she were of a kiekable substance, than either honored or humored." Ipswich life in its early day was the very opposite of being hard, barren, and repulsive, indeed, judging by the glimpses we get of it now and then, must have been pre-eminently rich, cultivated, and refined. Ward himself, instead of being altogether a sombre Puritan, had inscribed on his mantelpiece not only " sobrie, juste, and pie," but also " læte," joyously, as his life motto,- surely a noble one for any age. Winthrop, in his Journal, describes a visit here and a home gathering in 1658, about which he says, " My cozens all three were in health, and as merry as very good cheere and Ipswich frends could make them." John Dunton is not always a reliable authority ; but the description he gives of his visit to the town in 1685; its beautiful meeting-house, orchards, and gardens; its lively
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circulation of the news, "when a stranger arrives there 't is quickly known to every one ;" his hospitable entertainment at Mrs. Stewart's, where his sleeping-apartment " was so noble, and its furniture so suitable to it, that he doubts not but even the king himself has oftentimes been content with worser lodging;" his excursion to Rowley, where he found "a great game of football going on between the Rowleyites and the young men of another town, played with their bare feet ; and his talk with Mrs. Comfort, as they picked their path on horseback through the vast woods, fringed with flowers, and musical with birds, on such themes as Platonic love, - is full of picturesque beauty, some of it almost a page out of Spenser's " Faerie Queene." With women in society like Rebekah Symonds, Anne Bradstreet, Martha Winthrop, and Patience Denison, and men like Governor Winthrop, Deputy Symonds, General Denison, Dr. Firmin, the Revs. Ward and Hubbard, occasionally Judge Sewall, and a score of others, life could not have been otherwise than elegant, social, and cultivated. They had all been brought up in good Eng- lish society, and knew its manners and customs. The press- ure of the great wilderness around them, and of a common danger and enterprise, must have brought them very near together. Politics and religion were always to be discussed. New ideas sprang up as abundantly as weeds on the new uncovered soil. There was that Anne Hutchinson, coming along once in a while, with her radical heresies and her fresh womanly enthusiasm, to stir them up. The new pages of nature, and the ever old interests of birth and love and mar- riage and death, had to be talked over. John Dutch's sloop, or a traveller now and then from Boston, brought them into contact with life there ; and occasionally a vessel from across the seas, with letters from friends, and news of great political convulsions, and the latest gossip about fashions and court, thrilled anew their common English nerves, and gave them the topies of many a loving heart-talk. The charm of that early picnic life died away in the generations that followed and in their hard struggle for existence ; but the social spirit
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TIIE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
went into other forms, less elegant and English perhaps, but not less real. Sundays and town-meetings brought them all together. Weddings and funerals were celebrated for a long time with great pomp ; rum and wine flowing freely, and the minister receiving innumerable. presents in the form of rings and gloves, - one divine, it is said, twenty-nine hundred pairs in a ministry of thirty-two years. Huskings and house-raisings brought all the neighbors together, for a helping hand to begin with, and a merry-making after- wards. Election-day came once a year, with its famous cake and its chance for the small boy. Training-days, with their music, banners, and parade, relieved the awful grimness of war. With the material harvest all gathered from the fields, Thanksgiving brought its gathering of the household's human products from far and wide, to rejoice with feast and story under the old roof-tree again. Now and then a distin- guished visitor came from abroad, and everybody turned out, with a spokesman at their head, to give him welcome ; as, for instance, when Lafayette made his visit, and General Farley, the grand old soldier, in his reverence and excitement did him double honor by taking off, as he received him, not only luis hat, but his wig also. And then, beyond all else, was the intercourse they had with each other simply as townsmen and neighbors ; the bows and hand-shakings and good-mornings in the street; the remarks about the weather and the crops across the garden-fence, and the talk in the horse-sheds and at the church-doors on Sunday about the price of oats and the points of doctrine, the children that were down with the measles and the candidates that were up for office, -little things in themselves, and very different from what the fashionable world calls society, but all helping to shape the townly character, to build up its citizens into a living unity, and to make a love for it in all after-years one of the corner- stones in the love of country.
Such, friends, are some of the forces concerned in the evolution of a New England town, such the ones that have
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operated to produce our own loved home. To many of us the review of them is a matter, not only of historical study, but of keen personal interest. The men and women we catch a glimpse of are the ancestral stems on which our being has blossomed; the scenes and events they acted in, the ones by which our characters, our principles, our lives, have been shaped : and as we look at them, especially at a feature and a trait here and there, it seems almost as if we had dropped the plummet of memory below our individual being, down through these other generations, into the mystic personality of our race. The images brought up are indeed but for a moment. The great wilderness of wood, the little Puritan town planted in it as a seed, the unshackled river, and the quaint furniture of the olden time, materialized to our vision by the medium of the hour, melt away, even while we look at them, into the mist of the past. And Masconno- met and his Indian braves, John Winthrop and his venerable compeers, Madame Symonds and her coterie of friends in their rich brocades, and Colonel Wade and his Revolutionary heroes, stately in their continental uniform, summoned out of their tombs by the magic wand of memory, march back again, even while we speak, to their silent dust. But they leave the impress of themselves, leave the print of their subtle feet, all over the living town; remind us how largely and nobly its builders are of the past, and its beauty not a surface glow, but a solid depth. And who can look at their shadowy forms even for this brief moment, who think of the whole-souled men and women, the toiling hands, the brave minds, the warm hearts, the lifted prayers, and under these the great historic forces that for two hundred and fifty years have gone into the building of our town, and not have a deeper appreciation of its worth, and a warmer love for its every part ? Because they have not resulted in a great metropolis, because our wealth and numbers for so long a time have been almost stationary, it does not follow that they have been in any sense lost forces. The evolution of a town is like that of a leaf on a tree, -- not for its own sake
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
alone, but for that of the state, the nation, and the civiliza- tion of which it is a part. Its juices were meant to go, not into its own stem and veins merely, but into the limbs of new institutions and into the fruit of enlarged ideas; and, when the autumn comes, to know what has been evolved out of it, you must look at the whole social and political tree on which it stands. Who shall say that Ipswich has not per- formed worthily this function of a town ? Its life-blood has gone forth into our whole broad land. Liberty is larger, civilization richer, humanity farther along in its upward way, because, side by side with ten thousand others, it has done so well its work. And waving in the summer breeze, and glistening in the light of the August sun, the evolution it shares in, richer than any individual growth could possibly be, is that of the freest, healthiest, and most thrifty nation that stands to-day on the soil of earth. And can it have any worthier ambition than to go on in the same direction for the years that are to come, seeking not so much to change in size or character as to unfold in completeness ? With its churches, schools, and library, its combined beauty of hill and dale, winding river, and gray old sea, its grand historic traditions flowing from the past, and its close connection with all that is richest and best in the civilization of the present, I know of no spot where life can be spent more sweetly, more worthily, and, if not in material gains, yet in the soul's larger wealth, more richly, than on its soil. And when two hundred and fifty more years shall have rolled away, and we who are here to-day shall sleep in its dust, and our names be counted among its ancient inhabitants, and our children's children celebrate its five hundredth anniversary, I know of no better prayer for it than that, developing still out of its old Puritan root, and under these same forces, it may be then what it is now, only more completely, a CHARACTERISTIC NEW ENGLAND TOWN.
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" MOTHIER IPSWICH."
PRESIDENT HASKELL. - Ladies and gentlemen, the Committee find it necessary to curtail the ex- ercises at this place somewhat, and, in consequence of that arrangement, the music mentioned next on the programme will be omitted, and the singing of the hymn mentioned lower down on the programme will also be omitted. Your attention will only be asked to a poem, " Mother Ipswich," by one of her grandchildren, which will occupy but a short time, and will be read by Mr. ROLAND COTTON SMITHI.
MOTHIER IPSWICH.
BY ONE OF HER GRANDCHILDREN. 1
THRONED on her rock-bound hill, comely and strong and free, She sends a daughter's greeting to Ipswich over the sea ; But she folds to her motherly heart, with welcome motherly sweet, The children home returning to sit at her beautiful feet.
Fair is her heritage, fair with the blue of the bountiful sky ; Green to the white, warm sand, her billowy marshes lie ; Her summer calm is pulsed with the, beat of the bending oar Where the river shines and sleeps in the shadows of Turkey Shore.
Down from the storied past tremble the legends still As the woe of the Indian maiden wails over from Heartbreak Hill, And, alas ! the unnamable footprint, and the lapstone dropped below - From places so pleasant, poor devil, no wonder he hated to go.
1 Daughter of Hannah Stanwood, grand-daughter of Captain Isaac Stan- wood, of Ipswich.
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
Fair is my realm, saith the Mother ; but fairest of all my domain, Are the sons I have reared and the daughters, sturdy of body and brain,
Tender of heart and of conscience, ready, with flag unfurled,
For service at home, or, if need be, to the uttermost bounds of the world.
Never my bells of the morning fail to the morning air,
With their summons of young minds to learning, with their sum- mons of all souls to prayer.
Gracious yon pile where are stored mne the treasures of thought to- day,
More gracious my children who poured me their wealth of the far Cathay.
Mourn your lost leader,1 my hamlet, sore needed, yet never again To mingle his words of wisdom in the wide councils of men ; Nor forget whose hand first plucked its secret from the Mountain King's stormy breast,2
And held up the torch of freedom over the great North-west.
Thrilled to him, hearts of the people, whose eyes were a smoulder- ing fire,
Whose voice to the listening multitude rang like an angel's lyre ; But I hear the trill of light laughter in thickets of feathery fronds, Where a little lad dares for white lilies the deep of Chebacco ponds.3
Rest in the peace of God forever, O man of good-will,4
Who gathered the healing of heaven in the sunshine of Sweet-Brier Hill : Far from the city's tumult, with my soft airs overblown, In my arms of love I hold him, a stranger, and yet mine own.
1 Hon. Allen W. Dodge, of Hamilton.
2 Rev. Manasseh Cutler, of Hamilton.
3 Rufus Choate, of Essex.
4 Rev. John Cotton Smith, D.D., rector of the Church of the Ascension, New York City.
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" MOTHER IPSWICHI."
Where the footsteps of Maro wandered, where the waters of Heli- con flow,
Where the cedars of Lebanon wave, where the path of a people should go,
O blessed blind eyes that see, from the wrong dividing the right,1 Shed on the darkness of day the gleam of your radiant night !
And thou, O Desire of the Nation, loved from the sea to the sea, High above stain as a star, still upward thy pathway be !
By thy blood of the stately Midland, by thy strength of the North- ern Pine,
By the sacred fire bright on thy hearthstone, I name thee, and claim thee mine.2
Come to me, dear my children, from every land under the sun ; Nay, I feel by the stir of my spirit that all worlds are but one ; Nay, I know by my quickening heart-throbs, they are gathering to my side,
Veiled by God's grace with His glory, - the dead who have never died.
Fathers, whose steadfast uprightness their sons through no time can forget,
Mothers, whose tenderness breathes in many an old home yet, Hushed is the air for their coming, holy the light with their love : What shall the grateful earth pledge to the heaven above ?
The best that we have to give, - loyalty stanch and pure To the land they loved and the God they served while the earth and heavens endure :
We can bear to the future no greater than to us the past hath brought, -
Faith to the lowliest duty, truth to the loftiest thought.
1 Rev. John P. Cowles, of Ipswich.
2 Hon. James G. Blaine, of Maine.
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
The omitted hymn referred to above by the Presi- dent is here inserted : -
ORIGINAL HIYMN.
BY THE REV. J. O. KNOWLES, D.D.
Tune : Suint Ann's.
GREAT God, to Thee our song we raise For this auspicious hour, And sing the mercy of Thy ways, The wonders of Thy power.
Back through the fading years we read The record of Thy care, And hear once more, in times of need, Our fathers' earnest prayer.
Thy truth inspired them as they sought This land across the sea, And in their sturdy natures wrought The purpose to be free.
We praise Thee that this holy flame In hearts is glowing still ; And we, their children, follow them To work Thy righteous will.
For us their toils rich fruitage yields Beneath a fairer sky, Where banners of their battlefields In prouder triumphs fly.
Thy love has blessed the changing years With never-changing good, Until this beauteous town appears Where once their hamlet stood.
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BENEDICTION.
For broader fields and richer gain, For these our brighter days, For more of light on heart and brain, We offer Thee our praise.
Long may our town in beauty stand Close by the sounding sea : Grant to her sons Thy guiding hand In all the years to be.
PRESIDENT HASKELL. - The Doxology will be sung, and the audience are requested to join therein. After that, the benediction will be pronounced. There will be given an intermission of twenty minutes before the opening of the tent for the dinner.
The Doxology, "Praise God from whom all bless- ings flow," was sung by the audience accompanied by the band.
The following benediction was pronounced by the Rev. JULIUS W. ATWOOD, rector of Ascension Memo- rial Church, Ipswich : -
The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord. And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be amongst you, and remain with you always. Amen.
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HELIOTYPE PRINTING CO ..
VIEW FROM GREEN STREET BRIDGE, LOOKING DOWN THE RIVER.
-THE HOWARD HOUSE
NO1508
THE DINNER.
A FTER the short recess announced by the Presi- dent, about one thousand guests assembled for dinner. At two p.M. the divine blessing was invoked by the Rev. JOHN PIKE, D.D., of Rowley, and, after an hour spent in festivity and social converse, the President called the company to order, and said, -
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, - Will you give your attention one moment. I shall not trespass upon your time in the presence of so many eminent guests whom you desire to hear; but I must take this opportunity to bid you all a hearty wel- come to the town and to the festivities of the day, and to express the great gratification it must be to the people of this town to have such a manifestation of your interest in these exercises, and to thank you for your attendance upon this occasion. I will also invite you all to be here at the next centennial celebration, fifty years from to-day. It will un- doubtedly be the lot of some of you, perhaps of many, to attend at that time, and I assure all who shall then come that they will receive a cordial welcome. I now have the pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, of introducing to you the Rev. T. FRANK WATERS, who has kindly consented to aid us in these exercises by announcing the sentiments to be submitted, and by eliciting, as we hope, responses from some of our eminent guests.
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