USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Sudbury > The history of Sudbury, Massachusetts, 1638-1889 > Part 2
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CHAPTER XXIX.
1850-1875.
The Wadsworth Monument. - Petition to the Legislature. - Re- sponse. - Description of the Monument. - The old Slate Stone. - Fac-simile of it. - Dedication of the Monument. - Dismission of Rev. Josiah Ballard. - Sketch of his Life. - Ordination of Rev. Charles V. Spear. - His Dismission. - Installation of Rev. Eras- tus Dickinson. - His Dismission. - Sketch of his Life. - Rev. Webster Patterson. - Settlement of Rev. Philander Thurston. - His Dismission .- Sketch of Rev. George A. Oviatt. - Rev. Calvin Fitts. - Rev. David Goodale. - Rev. Warren Richardson. - Deacons. - Donation of Samuel Dana Hunt. - Bequest of Miss Emily Thompson. - Gifts from Mrs. Abigail Smith and Miss Ruth Carter. - Wadsworth Academy .- Congregational Chapel. - Changes in School Districts. - In School-Houses. - Numbering the Districts. - The Goodnow Library. - The Building. - The Donor. - Incorporation of Maynard. - The Framingham and Lowell Railroad. - The Massachusetts Central Railroad. - Mis- cellaneous, . 514
CHAPTER XXX.
1850-1875.
The Civil War. - Causes of it. - Warlike Activity at the North. - First War Meeting in Sudbury .- The " Wadsworth Rifle Guards." - Acts of the Town Relating to the War. - Soldiers' Aid Society. - Enlistments. - Sketch of the Thirteenth Regiment. - The Sixteentlı. - The Eighteenth. - The Twentieth. - The Twenty- Sixth. - The Thirty-Fifth. - The Forty-Fifth. - The Fifty-Ninth. - Enlistments in other Regiments of Infantry. - Sketch of First Massachusetts Cavalry. - Enlistments in other Regiments of Cavalry. - Enlistments in the Artillery Service. - United States
xix.
CONTENTS.
Sanitary Commission. - List of Conscripts. - Casualties. - Biog- graphical Sketches of Men who Died in the Service. - Of Sol- diers now Living in Sudbury. - Summary of Service. - List of Citizens Subject to a Draft in 1863. - Bicentennial of the Wads- worth Fight. - Laying out of Road to Railroad Station, South Sudbury. - The George Goodnow Bequest, . . . 535
CHAPTER XXXI.
CEMETERIES.
First Burial Place. - Old Burying-Ground at Sudbury Centre. - Mount Wadsworth Cemetery .- Mount Pleasant Cemetery .- New Cemetery. - North Sudbury Cemetery. - Burial Customs, . . 568
CHAPTER XXXII.
TAVERNS.
Early Names. - Character and Importance. - First Tavern. - Oth- ers on the East Side. - Taverns in the South Part of the Town. - Description of the South Sudbury Tavern. - " Howe's Tavern," or the " Wayside Inn."- Mr. Longfellow's Connection with it. - Location and Early History. - Description, - The Last Land- lord. - Traditions Concerning it. - Taverns on the Central Road of the Town. - Taverns at North Sudbury, . . 588
CHAPTER XXXIII.
PHYSICIANS.
Early Mention of Physicians. - Biographical Sketch of Dr. Eben- ezer Roby. - Ebenezer Roby, 2d .- Ebenezer Roby, 3d. - Josiah Langdon. - Moses Taft. - Moses Mossman. - Ashbel Kidder. - Thomas Stearns. - Levi Goodenough. - Otis O. Johnson. - George A. Oviatt, . 599 .
CHAPTER XXXIV.
TEMPERANCE.
Early Customs. - Effects of Cider Drinking in North Sudbury. - Connection of Taverns with the Liquor Traffic. - Drinking Cus- toms in South Sudbury. - Common Use of Malt. - Extract from James Thompson's Account Book. - Dawn of Better Times. - Pioneers in the Temperance Cause. - Reformatory Measures. - Temperance Reform,
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XX.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXXV.
COLLEGE GRADUATES AND PROFESSIONAL MEN.
List of Graduates before 1800. - Biographical Sketches of College Graduates and Professional Men since 1800, . 612
CHAPTER XXXVI.
NATURAL FEATURES.
Hills. - Forests .- The Flora .- Ponds. - Brooks .- Sudbury River. - Its Rise and Course. - Its Fish. - Poetical Description of Pickerel Fishing. - Birds about the River. - Poetical Descrip- tion of Duck Hunting. - Fur Bearing Animals about the River. --- Slow Current of the River, . 621
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE RIVER MEADOWS.
Width of the Meadows. - Former Productiveness. - Litigation and Legislation .- Change in Productiveness .- Causes of it .- Natural Features at the Present Time. - Grass, . 633
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Zoology and Geology, . 643
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Public Bequests. - Action of the Town relative to the Publication of the History of Sudbury. - Preparations for the Observance of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Town, . . 653
CHAPTER XL.
Conclusion,
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
REV. ALFRED S. HUDSON, Frontispiece.
VIEW OF HOP BROOK VALLEY AND NOBSCOT,
.
13
47
JONAS S. HUNT,
MAP OF HOUSE-LOTS, BY DRAPER,
77
A PORTION OF SUDBURY CENTRE,
107
MAP OF 1708, BY HAYNES,
125
THE GOODNOW LIBRARY, SOUTH SUDBURY,
149
RESIDENCE OF JOSEPH C. HOWE, . 183
THE BROWNE GARRISON HOUSE, . · 199
THE HAYNES GARRISON HOUSE,
·
225
MAP OF 1676, BY HUDSON,
.
. 237
THE WADSWORTH GRAVE, SOUTH SUDBURY, 251 .
THE WALKER GARRISON HOUSE,
.
.
271
THE LORING PARSONAGE, SUDBURY CENTRE,
291
THE WOODS, OR ALLEN HOUSE, .
.
313
THE SUMMER RESIDENCE OF HON. HOMER ROGERS,
333
THE COMMON, UNITARIAN CHURCH, TOWN HOUSE AND METH- ODIST CHURCH, SUDBURY CENTRE, 365
RESIDENCE OF CHARLES P. WILLIS, 391
RESIDENCE OF SAMUEL B. ROGERS, SOUTH SUDBURY, 413
MAP OF 1794, BY MOSSMAN, . 429
RESIDENCE OF RICHARD R. HORR, SOUTH SUDBURY, 445
THE BIGELOW PARSONAGE, SUDBURY CENTRE, .
471
THE HURLBUT PARSONAGE, SUDBURY CENTRE,
481
MILL VILLAGE (SOUTH SUDBURY), 487
.
xxii.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE RESIDENCE OF NAHUM GOODNOW, 505
REV. JOSIAH BALLARD, 523
THE WADSWORTH ACADEMY, SOUTH SUDRURY, . 527
THE WADSWORTH MONUMENT, SOUTH SUDBURY, . 555
THE WAYSIDE INN, 593
RESIDENCE OF NICHOLS B. HUNT, SOUTH SUDBURY, . 605
THE RESIDENCE OF HON. C. F. GERRY, SUDBURY CENTRE, . 615 RESIDENCE OF GEORGE E. HARRINGTON, . 643
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HISTORY OF SUDBURY.
CHAPTER I.
Early Condition of the Country. - Original Boundaries. - Indian Names. - Primitive Forests. - Laws concerning Timber. - Clear- ings. - Game. - Johnson's Description. - Meaning of " Meadow Lands."-"Old Connecticut Path." - Indian Trails.
'Tis like a dream when one awakes, - This vision of the scenes of old ; 'Tis like the moon when morning breaks, 'Tis like a tale round watch-fires told.
PIERPONT.
THE town of Sudbury was settled in 1638, and received its name in 1639. It was the nineteenth town in the Massachu- setts Bay Colony, and the second situated beyond the flow of the tide. Originally it was bounded on the east by that part of Watertown which is now Weston, on the north by Con- cord, and southerly and westerly by the wilderness, or the unclaimed lands of the Colony. Up to the year 1637 there was no white man's trail through the length or breadth of this land tract. The smoke of no settler's cabin curled upward through the tree-tops of its far-stretching forests, and it was only the home of the Indian and the haunt of wild beasts and birds.
The Indian name of the river and country adjacent on the. north was Musketaquid, or Musketahquid, and it is presuma-
1
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HISTORY OF SUDBURY.
ble that the same name was applied to this region. Mus- ketahquid is supposed to be made up of two Indian words, muskeht, meaning " grass," and ahkeit, which signifies "ground," the whole signifying "grassy ground ;" and if applied to the river, "grassy brook," or "meadow brook." The name formed by these words, it is stated, as nearly resembles Musketahquid as the Indian dialect will allow. (Shattuck.) As the same stream runs through Concord and Sudbury, and the meadows in these places are equally green and broad, it is not by any means unlikely that the same term was applied to each place and the river as it runs through them both. This is rendered still more probable by the fact that Karte, the Indian owner of the land first granted at Sudbury, was also an owner, with others, of the territory at Concord ; as the Colony records inform us that Karte, with Tahattawan, the sachem of that place, with some others, consented to the sale of territory to the English in 1637. (See Chapter II.) As Karte lived in the territory that is now Sudbury, and his wigwam was not far from the river, it is presumable that he would call the stream as it flowed near his home by the same name that it was known by as it flowed through his domains a few miles farther north. Moreover, it is not to be supposed that the Sudbury Indians had no name for their river.
Probably the first Englishman who made a record of this word was William Wood, in a work entitled " New England Prospects." Mr. Wood, it is supposed, came to this country abont 1633; that he then visited the Musketahquid region, and was so charmed with its resources and scenery that, by representations of it on his return to England, plans were formed for a settlement at Concord. However this may be, he first made a record of this Indian name of the river and the adjacent country, and that before any town boundaries could have limited its application or made local the name of this old natural landmark.
The country about Sudbury at the time of its settlement was largely covered with heavy timber. That tar making was, to an extent, an early occupation indicates that these trees were, many of them, pines. But probably not one of
3
HISTORY OF SUDBURY.
them now remains ; the rapid growth and early decay of these trees, and their fitness for building purposes, causing them to disappear long since. A solitary pasture oak, left here and there for a landmark or serviceable shade, is about all that remains of those old monarchs of the wood.
But, notwithstanding there was formerly so much timber land, we are not to suppose the country was one unbroken forest; on the contrary, it was interspersed with clearings ; and the fact that in those first years the town was choice of its timber, and passed stringent laws concerning it, indicates that these clearings were considerable. The following are some of the laws. In 1645 Edmund Goodnow was appointed to look after the timber on the common, and liberty was given him to designate what timber should be taken; and "it was ordered, that, if any one took any without his leave, they were to forfeit nineteen pence a tree."
In 1646, "Ordered, that no oak timber shall be fallen with- out leave from those that are appointed by the town to give leave to fell timber, that shall hew above eighteen inches at the butt end."
Also, " That no man that hath timber of his own to supply his want shall have any timber granted upon the common."
In 1647, " It was ordered that the people should have tim- ber for that year to supply their wants, for every two shill- ings that they paid the ministry, one tree."
On different occasions persons were permitted to take the town's timber as an encouragement to business, as when a blacksmith was allowed so much as was necessary to build a shop, on condition he would set up his trade in town.
In 1664 "timber was granted to Elias Reives for his build- ing, and also timber and hoop poles for carrying on his coop- er's trade, in case he would live in Sudbury six years, and honestly and carefully do the town of Sudbury's cooper work the said six years, both for making and trimming casks at such honest rates as they are made and trimmed for at the bay of Boston."
The cleared spaces were occasioned by both natural and artificial causes. The Indians, by setting fires, cleared places for their planting grounds and sunny spots for their homes.
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HISTORY OF SUDBURY.
The natural openings were the broad, beautiful meadows on the river and brooks.
A remarkable feature of these forests was their freedom from underbrush. The early settlers could traverse large portions of them on horseback and meet with few obstacles, except the streams and swamps. In places the forests were kept clear by means of the annual fires which the Indians set to facilitate transit and the capture of game. These fires were set in the autumn, after the equinoctial storm, that they might burn with less intensity and be more easily con- trolled. Afterwards the Colonial Court enacted laws regard- ing forest fires. It was ordered that " whoever kindles fires in the woods before March 10 or after April 2, or on the last day of the week or Lord's day, shall pay any damages that any person shall lose thereby, and half so much to the com- mon treasury."
The country afforded fine ranges for wild animals, and was well stocked with game, which made it an attractive hunting ground for the Indians. (See Chapter II.) Deer reeves were annually chosen by the town for years after the settle- ment, and wolves were considered such a pest that a bounty was set upon them. Prior to 1646 ten shillings were offered apiece for them ; and repeatedly were laws enacted for the destruction of these forest marauders. Bears found favorite resorts among the highlands of Nobscot and Goodman's Hill, and tradition informs us that within about a century one has been killed at Green Hill. Beaver pelts were an article of merchandise through a large part of the Musketahquid country. Wild fowl were abundant. Turkeys strutted with stately tread in the lowlands by the meadow margins, and large flocks of water fowl frequented the streams and made their nests on their sedgy borders. Pigeons were plentiful, and grouse enlivened the shrubbery of the numerous swamps. The supply of fish was ample, including salmon, alewives, shad and dace.
The following is a description of the place as given by Johnson, a writer of 1654, in a book entitled " Wonder- Working Providence :" "This town is very well watered, and hath store of plow-land; but by reason of the oaken roots
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HISTORY OF SUDBURY.
they have little broke up, considering the many Acres the place affords ; but this kinde of land requires great strength to break up, yet brings very good crops, and lasts long without mending. . . . The place is furnished with great plenty of fresh marsh, but, it lying very low, is much indamaged with land floods, insomuch that when the summer proves wet they lose part of their hay; yet they are so sufficiently provided that they take in cattel of other towns to winter."
In those early times meadow land had a meaning a little unlike that which it now has. The term, at least in places. was used to designate mowing land of whatever description, after the manner of its significance in England. This distinc- tion may have been made here by the early writer just quoted. The marsh he refers to is doubtless the meadow on the so- called Great River, and the meadows those tracts by the higher banks of the brooks and those found in natural forest openings, or wherever the grass land abounded.
Before the Plantation of Sudbury was commenced, there passed through the southeasterly corner of its territory a memorable trail. This was a part of the " Old Connecticut Path." This highway extended from the sea-board settle- ments far into the interior. From Watertown it passed through what is now Waltham and Weston to that section of Sudbury now Wayland ; from thence southwesterly to the north side of Cochituate Pond, and on through the wilder- ness towards Connecticut. It is, we believe, the road now traveled from Weston Corner, by the "Five Paths," Way- land, to Framingham. Mention is made of this way in the town records as early as 1643, and again in 1648. Where it passed through the town it was called "the road from Water- town to the Dunster Farm," a tract of six hundred acres granted in 1640 to President Dunster of Harvard College, bounded on the west by Cochituate Pond, and early leased by Edmund Rice of Sudbury. This trail was first made known to the English by some Nipnet Indians, who came to Boston bring- ing corn at a time when there was a scarcity of it in the col- ony. From this time for years it was the way travelled by the English in their journeyings to the Connecticut valley. In 1633 John Oldham and several others journeyed by it to
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HISTORY OF SUDBURY.
the westward, in search of a settlement. In 1635 some inhabitants of Watertown took this way as they travelled to Wethersfield, Conn., where a large part of them settled. A year later the ministers Hooker and Stone, with about a hun- dred others and their families, took this path in their emigra- tion to Hartford.
Thus through a portion of Sudbury passed an old and historic road, which is interesting because of the things now mentioned. But other associations also may cluster about it. Because of this path, perhaps, the plantation at Sudbury was started. This supposition is favored by various circum- stances. The Watertown people, as they journeyed to Con- necticut, may have been pleased with the country along this part of the way, and as some of them returned to Water- town, at which place a plantation at Sudbury was afterwards planned, favorable reports may have been rendered concern- ing it.
It was easy to obtain a view of it from the top of Reeves's Hill, along which their path led, and it is not at all improba- ble that more than one traveler ascended that sightly emi- nence, and from it obtained a broad view of the Musketahquid and its adjacent meadows. The slow-winding stream, as it flashed afar in the sunlight, and the wood-covered hills that extended beyond, together with the proximity of such a desirable spot to their Watertown home and the sea-board towns, may have led to the plan of its early settlement. Favorable to this conjecture is the fact that the Watertown people petitioned for the land soon after the return of the emigrants. But whether or not emigration through the place by this path suggested or originated the settlement, it must have aided it when once begun, and promoted exploration in that locality.
A trail so near what was to be the first street of Sudbury would be quite helpful in the conveyance of the various com- modities that were essential in starting a settlement. The planters journeying from Watertown could follow this well- worn way almost to the spot assigned for their house-lots where they erected their cabin homes.
Besides this path from the sea-coast to the Nipnet country,
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HISTORY OF SUDBURY.
other trails doubtless led through the place, which were used by the Indians, and which afterwards may have become trav- eled roads. As the town afforded favorite fishing resorts, there were doubtless paths from various quarters leading to them. There were doubtless such to the fishing weir and fording place in the town's northerly part, and to the rocky falls of the Sudbury River at the south. Karte probably had a path from his hill-top home to the lodge of Tahattawan at Concord. The old pasture path at Nobscot, which still winds along the northern hill-slope by the spring and the Nixon farm, was perhaps the well-known way of Tantamons as he visited the wigwam of Karte at Goodman's hill. or attended the preaching of John Eliot at Natick, or with a pack of candle or light- wood upon his back, went with spear or net to the Musketahquid to fish. Thus the country of Sudbury at the time of its settlement was, perhaps, more than ordinarily broken by paths ; and its timber lands, rich pasturage, and facilities for the capture of game and fish, made it attractive to both the Indians and the English.
CHAPTER II.
Indians of Sudbury Territory. - Relics. - Localities where they Lived : at Nobscot, the Vicinity of the River, Weir Hill, Cochituate. - Names and History of Prominent Indians : Karte, Tantamous, Nataous. - Description of Wigwams. - Food. - Characteristics. - Method of Hunting and Fishing. - Tribal Relations. - Nature of their Early Intercourse with the English.
Chief, sachem, sage, bards, heroes, seers, That live in story and in song, Time, for the last two hundred years, Has raised, and shown, and swept along. PIERPONT.
THERE is no evidence that many Indians lived in Sudbury at the time of its settlement by the English. But few of their names have been found on the town records, and compara- tively little is there mentioned of business transactions be- tween the natives and whites. About the beginning of the seventeenth century, a great pestilence prevailed among the Indians in the vicinity of Massachusetts Bay, and it is not improbable that it affected the population of Sudbury. This pestilence or plague was in places severe. It is stated that the New England Indians, before its outbreak, could muster about eighteen thousand warriors, but were reduced by it to about eighteen hundred. Thousands of Indians died in the country along the south shore. The Pilgrim fathers were informed of the sad ravages of this dreadful disease by Squanto, an early visitor among them. It is stated that Obbatinawat, a sachem living at Shawmut, now Boston, treated the English very kindly, and was glad to submit him- self to King James, that he might find protection from his enemies, as his once powerful tribe was reduced by the pes- tilence of 1616.
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HISTORY OF SUDBURY.
Beside this sickness, there was another that raged a little later. This was the small-pox scourge, which prevailed dur- ing the winter of 1633. Drake says of the fatality of it, that " The Indians died by scores and hundreds ; so fast, indeed, that the services of the white men were called into requisition to give them burial." He says the pestilence was not confined to a single locality, but swept with destructive effect through all the sea-board nations. The Narragansetts were reported to have lost seven hundred men, and the war- like Pequots an unknown number. If such was the fatality of these diseases along the Massachusetts Bay shores, it is not unlikely that it extended as far inland as Sudbury, and if so, that it thinned out the inhabitants. The supposition that this was the case is strengthened by the absence, in the records, of many Indian names of places. Few of these names suggest that there were few people to speak them, or to pass them along to the race that next possessed the land. There are but few places in Sudbury whose names are suggestive of the murmuring woods or the rippling streams. They are more of English than of Indian origin. The name of Nob- scot is still the reminder of a race that has passed away. Cochituate Lake and the highlands about it, places once near the town's southeasterly limits, have a name unmistakably Indian. Assabet or Assabeth, the name of a stream running through Maynard, a place once a part of the town, savors in sound of the Indian dialect; yet the origin of this term has been a matter of doubt, as it has been spelled Assabeth, Eliz- beth, Elzebet and Elizebeth. Even the name of Karte, who once owned a large part of the town's territory, has been spelled and pronounced Cato, and the place of his abode called Goodman's Hill, with all its prosaic simplicity. The " Great River," as the town's principal stream was once called, now bears no name suggestive of its natural features ; of meadows green with their grassy covering, outstretching to forest and flowery bank, or winding along its swampy out- skirts, where the vine and berry bush produce their rich, plentiful fruit; but it is now known as plain "Sudbury River."
But although no distinct tribe is known to have existed in
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HISTORY OF SUDBURY.
the territory when it was settled, and the evidence is that the town was not largely occupied by Indians, it is nevertheless probable that at some period they were considerably numer- ous. That this may be so is indicated by various circum- stances. First, the natural features were such as would invite them to it, and induce them to remain. There was the hill, valley and plain, just suited for corn lands or fine ranges for game, while the streams and ponds had supplies of fish. It is doubtful if there is a town about it where more advantages meet to make the Indian life easy than here. The natives depended largely for subsistence upon maize, game and fish ; hence good land, easily worked and in close proximity to places where they could take game and fish, were the conditions of Indian comfort. That these natural advan- tages were once improved by the Indians is evident from the number of relics which have been found in various localities. These consist of arrow and spear heads; stone plummets ; chisels and gouges; mortars and pestles, implements for pounding and crushing corn ; stone tomahawks or hatchets ; and what may have been the stone kettle. Beside these, there have been unearthed by the plowshare small stones, that show the probable action of heat, and which may have been used for their hearthstones, or to form rude ovens for the purpose of cooking. Where these stones are found under circumstances favorable to the supposition, they indicate the former existence of a wigwam or cluster of wigwams. The favorable circumstances are the neighborhood of a fishing or fording place, or the common conveniences of a life in the woods. These wigwams were more or less on dry, sandy spots, such as are in the present wind-swept, and sparsely covered with grass. Such places were probably selected as natural forest openings, where, because of the light, sandy soil, the wood growth would likely be small, and where the rays of the winter sun would more easily penetrate, to give light and heat. When in such places various relics are found, it is highly probable that there may have been situated an Indian dwelling-place.
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