USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Westborough > The history of Westborough, Massachusetts. Part I. The early history. By Heman Packard De Forest. Part II. The later history. By Edward Craig Bates > Part 11
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Lieut. Stephen Maynard ; first spot on right hand front door.
Jonathan Forbush, Jr. ; first on left hand front door (sold to E. Parkman)."
The accompanying floor-plan will help in understanding the arrangement. The pew-spots were sold at a price ranging from £1 6s. 8d. to £5 12s. 9d.
Still the completion of the house lingered. In March it was voted "to lath and plaster overhead," and in July
DAVID MAYNARD
JEDUTHAN JEDUTHAN MINISTERIAL FAY
PEW
PULPIT
NEWTON
DEA.JOSIAHJONATHAN |EDWARD BOND
BAKER
TIMOTHY WARREN
BENJAMIN FAY
J.GROUT
CHARLES RICE
JONAH WARREN
W
E
HEZEKIAH HOWE
JAMES MAYNARD
MEN'S STAIRS
WOMEN'S STAIRS
ENS.JAMES MILLER
JONAS BRIGHAM
CAPT.JOHN WID.VASHTI MAYNARD
NEWTON
ELIEZER RICE
LIEUTABIJAH BRUCE
JONATHAN FORBUSH SOLD TO E.PARKMAN
STEPHEN SAMUEL NATHANIEL MAYNARD
HARRINGTON WHITNEY
FLOOR-PLAN OF THE SECOND MEETING-HOUSE.
FAY
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THE FIRST PRECINCT.
to do the same under the gallery floors. In November it was voted to provide materials and "finish the meeting- house." But it still remained unpainted, and in June, 1754, the precinct solemnly refused to "Culler the out- side of the meeting-house," or to paint the breastwork of the galleries, but did allow itself to be overcome by the clamor for pomps and vanities to the extent of painting the pulpit. There was an article in the warrant for a meeting, Jan. 19, 1755, " To see if this Precinct will grant ye petition of Surviah Thurston, Persis Rice, Dinah For- bush, and others, who pray that they may have Liberty to hang a dore and set banesters on ye hind seat on ye women's side in ye long gallery in our meeting-house, and injoy it for their seat in sd meeting-house." Whether the petition was granted does not appear.
At last, in March, 1755, a committee was appointed to "seat ye meeting-house; " and it was voted "that ye aged Fathers should be seated according to their age, and ye next set of men according to their age and pay, and by ye last Invoice with one head." So, after long delay, the first precinct was furnished for business so far as regards ecclesiastical relations. There was still one exception, in the case of the ministerial land, which continued to be the subject of dispute and litigation until it was sold, in 1784. But the house was ready for all needs, and the minister was on the ground, in a new and better house than he had before ; and the points of difference between north and south precincts were chiefly in other directions.
Some minor changes, of considerable importance at the time, were adopted in the services of the new meeting- house. Chief among them was a change which sounds strange to us of to-day, - the Scriptures began to be read in church. It is a remarkable fact that until near
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
this time the colonial churches were not in the habit of having the Bible read in public worship. It had been read, according to Hutchinson, for some years in Boston, but the custom was afterward discontinued. Sermons might be one or even two hours long without offence; prayers were not noted for brevity; the execrable singing took up a good deal of time: but the Scripture was alto- gether omitted. The reason of the omission must doubt- less be found in the violent recoil from everything that marked the customs of the Church of England, - a recoil so extreme as to lead in many instances to absolute ab- surdity. Two considerations help us to understand this fanaticism. In the first place, the separatists had endured much trial and suffering in their struggle for liberty of worship, and the church which had persecuted them was sincerely believed by some of them to be in league with Satan. And furthermore, the human mind always has to make a strenuous effort to tear itself away from ancient custom and provide for itself a new environment. It is a phenomenon still observed with great frequency that those who feel themselves forced to change from one form of belief to another usually become more radical in the new faith than those who have been born and bred in it.
So it is a mark of progress toward a calmer view of the necessities and proprieties of worship that on the 18th of September, 1748, Mr. Parkman records as follows: "We this day began the public reading of Scriptures. In the morning, after prayer, before singing, I read the first chap- ter of Genesis, and in the afternoon the first chapter of Mark." Of course where Bible reading savored in the minds of the people of ritualism, the observance of church festivals was looked upon with horror as a leaning toward popery itself. In the Laws of Massachusetts, published in
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1672, the observance of any such day as Christmas was classed with dancing, playing shuffle-board, bowling, play- ing cards or dice, and was punishable by a fine of five shillings. This was afterward repealed, but the observ- ance of Christmas did not thereby become popular. In Shute's governorship the General Court, with unneces- sary obstinacy, met on Christmas Days, in spite of the Governor's churchly proclivities. He refused to attend; whereupon Judge Sewall said the Court could pass bills on that day anyway, and the Governor might sign them when he pleased.
A note of the same conflict appears in Westborough about the time we are now considering. There is an un- wonted acidity in the point of the minister's pen in a re- cord made on Christmas Day, 1750: "I hear that several of my neighbors, particularly Eliezer Rice and his wife, are trapseing off to Hopkinton to keep Christmas there. Were any of them rationally and sincerely enquiring and examining into the grounds of the controversy between Prelatists and Dissenters, it were a different case; but they manifest only a spirit of unsteadiness." It happened that the next year Rice had a child to baptize ; and of course the matter of his soundness came under discussion. It appeared on examination that he was below the mark in regard to the doctrine of original sin; that he sturdily denied, not only the imputation of Adam's sin, but the corruption of mankind as the result of it. Mr. Parkman, to his honor, was extremely kind, - labored with the delin- quent faithfully, and was willing to make any concessions which seemed to him reasonable, in order to perform the baptism; but Rice was rather stubborn, and at last the matter came before the church. Mr. Rice stated that "though not utterly denying the imputation of Adam's
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
sin to his posterity, yet he was apter to disbelieve it; " after which happy characterization of a laboring and un- certain mind, he was admonished to inform himself more fully on " those doctrines which he appeared to be so much in the dark about," and the matter was laid over. At a subsequent meeting the church refused to allow the baptism.
The question of church music, which the pastor had taken so vigorously in hand twenty years before, began to break out with its chronic disorder again in 1752. This time it seems that there were those who desired to im- prove on the minister's improvement, which would not do; so the church came to the rescue, and voted that they " were satisfied in the pastor's having desired Bro. Edd Whipple to set the Tune, and in the Tunes which we have been wont to sing in this congregation."
In May, 1752, the church gave a letter of dismission to Eli Forbush, son of Dea. Jonathan Forbush, who left to organize a new church "in the northeast part of Brook- field," over which he was to be pastor; and the church shortly afterward assisted at his ordination. This was the beginning of the First Church of North Brookfield.
The year 1755 was long remembered in New England as the year of the great earthquake, which occurred on the 27th of March. Probably it was the most severe ever known in this region. Chimneys were thrown down every- where; the ends of brick buildings fell, as far down as the eaves; springs which had long fed wells were stopped, and new ones were opened; and the people were every- where greatly terrified. Mr. Parkman says that in West- borough "it shook the house exceedingly, tossing and wrecking as if all nature would fall into pieces." This, like its predecessor of 1727, was looked upon by all the
,
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THE FIRST PRECINCT.
people as a direct visitation of God, and for years after- ward faithfully "improved" by the ministers in their appeals to their congregations.
It was some time before the relations between the two precincts were satisfactorily adjusted. Next to the meeting- house, the question of schools required careful handling. The bounds of three districts had been at least temporarily fixed in 1742, when the matter of division was only in the air. But ten years later, at the March town-meeting in 1752, when the project of building a school-house for a grammar-school was broached; a process of obstruction began which lasted for more than a dozen years. At that meeting it was voted "that they would Buld two Scool houses, and that they would set them as Near to the two meeting houses as they convenitly can ;" but a month later, owing probably to a desire to force the second precinct to build its own school-house, the town refused " to proceed to build the two school-houses." The result of that was that the town, having more than one hundred families, was again under presentment for not having a grammar-school. Thereupon it was voted "that the North precinct should be set off to be a district by themselves, if they see cause." But in the following April the town refused to let the second precinct draw money for its schools out of the common treasury; and the question was hung up again indefinitely. It recurred in 1756 and in 1758, resulting always in the same vote, - " Refused to build two school- houses." And it was not until 1765 that sufficient advance was made to appoint a committee to "squadron the town for school purposes, and regulate the length of school in each." This was the beginning of the school district system; each district or "squadron" was to determine, by majority vote, in what part of its section the school should
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
be kept. The two school-houses for the whole town were never built.
The area of the south precinct had been increased a little during these years; three farms from the northwest part of Upton (which was incorporated in 1735) having been added in 1754, and four from Shrewsbury applying for admission in 1762. The town voted to receive " the Shrewsbury corner families," if they would build a road from their houses to the great road that goes to Grafton. These farms were annexed by Act of the General Court on the 4th of June, 1762. That the town exercised some discrimination in the reception of new territory is apparent from a vote passed in April, 1754, when the three farms from Upton were admitted, refusing to re- ceive Zebulon Rice and Eben Miller, of Upton, with their lands, as inhabitants of Westborough. The reason is not assigned.
In 1755 a new pound being required, one was ordered to be built of stones, and to be twenty-eight feet square within the walls. It stood near the present site of Bates' straw shop. In 1757 the " burying-place " was enlarged by the exchange of a piece of ground with Mr. Park- man, and the gift of "a litel strip of land " from Stephen Maynard. In 1759 it was voted "to fence the Burying place with a good four Rail fence on three sides, and the frunt on the Rhode with a good four feet wall."
The pauper question was beginning to assume larger proportions as the town increased in size, and the ex- pense of boarding out those who were dependent became a troublesome item in town meeting. The reluctance to do any more than was necessary for these incompetents did not lessen. There is a vote recorded in 1758 which modern overseers of the poor would sometimes like to
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THE FIRST PRECINCT.
follow in certain perplexing cases which our laws do not fully provide for; namely, that they would not appropri- ate a penny to support the wife of John Maynard, but that they would take measures to oblige John to support his own wife; and for that they granted two pounds.
About 1763 a memorandum was begun in the town- records of persons warned out of the town limits accord- ing to law, to prevent their acquiring a residence, when it seemed likely that they might become dependent on the town. In the course of two or three years this list included thirty-eight names, many of them being those of heads of families. In 1765 it was voted to build a workhouse; and two years later a small building, thirty feet by sixteen, and one story high, was erected on land owned by Timothy Warren, at a cost of £26 13s. 4d. In 1770 George Andrews, Timothy Warren, and Abijah Gale were chosen first overseers of the poor, and it was voted that the workhouse should be regulated according to law. This disposed of the question for twenty years.
The history of the first precinct comes to an end in 1766, when the second precinct is incorporated as the town of Northborough, and the first becomes the town of Westborough, with its present boundaries. A division of ` common property was made by the selectmen of the two towns, with the exception of the ministerial lot, which remained a matter of dispute for eighteen years longer. The town had grown considerably during the process of division; for while in 1744 there were only one hundred and twenty-five families in the whole town, in 1767 West- borough had one hundred and twenty families, and North- borough eighty-two.
1
CHAPTER XI.
1755-1772.
THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR. - BEGINNINGS OF THE REVOLUTION. - CHURCH MUSIC AGAIN.
T `HE eight years from 1755 to 1763 were full of public excitements and dangers. The long struggle be- tween English and French for the possession of the broad lands of the New World was passing through its culmina- tion. The draft upon the Colonies to furnish men and money for this struggle, which came to be known as "the French and Indian War " par excellence, was very severe. Massachusetts had put seven thousand men in the field in 1757, and was financially ruined. Not a town but must have felt the strain to be severe. There are, however, no records of the time in Westborough which throw any light on the part taken by the town in the eight years' struggle ; Capt. Benjamin Fay and Capt. Bezaleel Eager are said to have been in command of companies, but there are no muster-rolls which give their men. There is a roll in the State archives of a company in a regiment sent to Crown Point in 1755, under command of Col. Josiah Brown, of which one John Fay was cap- tain,1 containing three men from Southborough, six from Grafton, ten from Shrewsbury, ten from Marlborough, six from Upton, five from Uxbridge, and six from West-
1 If this John Fay was a Westborough man, he must have been the grandson of the original John Fay (who died Jan. 5, 1748), and was at this time only twenty years old.
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THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR.
borough. The names of the Westborough men are else- where given as John Butler, Joseph Hudson, Henry Gashett, John Caruth, Adam Fay, and Thaddeus Warren. Charles Rice, of Westborough, is enrolled in 1755 in a company commanded by John Taplin. This was in the very beginning of the war; and there were frequent levies afterward, until the young men had very generally ob- tained an opportunity to smell powder in the campaign.
In the absence of direct statements and statistics, we i have, in a sermon of Mr. Parkman's, a very good impres- sion of the general feeling at the time, and the anxieties and burdens which were testing the fibre of the people. The sermon is in print, and a copy is in the library of Harvard College. It was a special sermon, preached at Southborough May 15, 1757, and dedicated as follows :
"To the Rev. Mr. Nathan Stone, Pastor, and to the flock of Christ in Southborough, the ensuing plain Composure, but such as it is, in testimony of hearty gratitude for the kind acceptance of his occasional labors among them, is humbly inscribed by their affectionate soul-friend and humble servant, the Author."
Its title is quaint enough : " Reformers and Interces- sors Sought by God, Who Grieves when they are Hard to be Found, as exhibited and applied in a plain but serious Discourse on Ezek. 22, ver. 30." The text reads : " And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none." The whole sermon is quaint, and not lacking in force and pungency ; it has five heads, as follows: -
"I. God is not o' mind to destroy the land of his peculiar covenant people, for whom he has had very special regard.
" II. Gap-men, Reformers, and Intercessors are of great ser- vice to prevent the desolating judgments of God.
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" III. When God sees destruction coming upon his people and upon the land he has peculiar regard to, he looks for a Gap-man that may prevent it.
" IV. But he sometimes finds such are scarce. It is here said he found none.
" V. When it is so, he laments it."
There follows some discourse on the character of " gap- men," their influence as intercessors, etc., " as argued from the Scriptures and the nature of the Divine Being." Per- haps it is necessary to explain now, as it was not at the time, that the men he has chiefly in view as " gap-men and intercessors " are the ministers of the churches. Mr. Parkman belonged to what was, even in his own day, the old régime, - the Puritanism of the time of the first char- ter, which made the church the basis of civil society, and its ministers the most important men in the Common- wealth. And it must be said that he lent honor to his calling, even on this high estimate of it.
The " application " of the sermon is a sample of the preaching for the times which was in vogue at that day. It also is divided into five heads, of which the last is subdivided into two: -
" I: We are ourselves, here in this land, in covenant with God.
" 2. Sin has made an awful breach, and opened a wide and horrible gap, at which all happiness is ready to depart, and numberless evils to rush in; so that we stand in great need of reformers and intercessors.
" 3. Does God ever seek those who will make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before him, for the land ?
" 4. The number is too small, and many are dying.1 We may fear what God will permit the savages, with their insidious instigators to do in our sinning New England, when the Pious intercessors are removed.
1 This is a reference to the fact that "many ministers have lately deceased."
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THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR.
"5. What reason we have to fear on account of our exposed- ness to Divine Resentments at this very time.
" (a) As God's indignation has been poured out already in a variety of judgments upon us, and which, divers of them, are now upon us, so he will consume us with the fire of his wrath kindled up in the war we are so distressed by, and by other sore judgments which threaten, unless there is some suitable `altera- tions among us. [This he illustrates at length from the history of the destruction of the Jews, and then proceeds.] Our sins are now nearly ripe. The kingdoms of Europe are greatly moved. Our own land is one of the principal theatres for ac- tion. The whole Protestant cause is in danger. He may suffer the anti-christian adversaries, aided by the hideous monsters of the wood, literally blood-thirsty, and whose even tender mercy is cruelty itself, to prevail over us. [This is still farther illus- trated from the fate of the ancient churches.]
" (b) We are as stubble before this fiery indignation and wrath on account of our sins. [After this has been sufficiently dwelt upon, he ends the discourse by a few " closing incite- ments."] First, To the careless, impious, and flagitious, there is little to be said ; the greater part of them, there is reason to fear, will be swept away in the flood of Divine indignation, and will be made eternal monuments of his unquenchable wrath. Secondly, To those more susceptible. Open your eyes ; see immoralities abound ; vices of all kinds ; principles esteemed very bad until now ;. pernicious sentiments in religion. God is sure to execute his judgments. Think of what may be when our foes sweep us away ! Homes burned, houses of God burned or turned into Mass houses or temples for paganish rites, to the honor or great rejoicing of the Devil; calamities on the feeble and defenceless, the aged and sick, on women and children !
" What a welcome you will have at the throne of grace on such an errand of intercession ! And may n't it tend to the Divine glory ? "
It is easy to see what a profound impression such a ser- mon would make at a time of great fear and excitement, upon those who were taught to consider every public danger and calamity as a direct indication of the fierce
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
wrath of the God of whom they were sore afraid. To us it is interesting both as a sample of the way in which Mr. Parkman exercised the function of the prophet, and still more as a mark of the feeling of the time, and the strain under which the people lived during the contest with Catholic France for the possession of the Western valleys. Not a little was added to the burden of anxiety for the success of the English arms, and the heavier bur- dens of intolerable taxation and of the peril of sons and brothers at the front, by the religious conceptions of the Puritan age and the unspeakable dread of subjection to the domination of Rome.
Mr. Parkman preached the annual sermon before the Convention of Ministers of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in New England in Boston, on the 28th of May, 1761, in which he alluded to " the remarkable success of our arms " [Wolfe's decisive victory had been won a year and a half before]; " but especially the happy accession of His most sacred Majesty King George the IIId to the British throne," as " tokens of the Divine favor to constrain min- isters to be more diligent in his service."
It is to be feared that there is a mild touch of syco- phancy in that last allusion, due to the presence in the Boston of that day of so many of His Majesty's retainers. But it was a great honor to the Westborough minister to be invited to preach the Convention sermon, and his heart was full of good-will. This is the first reference to the famous Anniversary week, which became afterward such a characteristic New England institution. It is to be hoped, though without over-confidence, that when Mr. Parkman preached it did not rain.
We have now arrived at a period which was to test to the utmost the quality of the yeomen of these western
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BEGINNINGS OF THE REVOLUTION.
farms of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. George III. began his reign in October, 1760. The events immedi- ately following did not reassure those who, for the greater part of their lives, like their fathers for a century pre- vious, had been struggling under the burden of unjust taxation and of laws that discriminated against the Prov- ince. "The child Independence was born," said John Adams, "when, in 1761, James Otis, counsel for the British Admiralty, being ordered to defend the writs of Assistance, authorizing the searching of warehouses for goods that had not paid the prescribed duties, promptly resigned his office, and appeared in defence of the people, saying, 'To my dying day I will oppose, with all the power and faculties God has given me, all such instru- ments of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other.' "
In March, 1765, was passed the odious Stamp Act, making all paper illegal for business purposes and printing which had not certain stamps affixed, the sale of which was to bring the Government rich revenue. As soon as the action became known, the greatest excitement pre- vailed; and before the time had arrived for the Act to become law, the opposition to it was so well organized that it was never enforced.
In Boston, on the 14th of August, a crowd of rebels thronged the streets, hanged Andrew Oliver, the revenue officer, in effigy, and forcibly entered his house. The news of the disturbance spread like wildfire. There was sympathy with the rioters in the back towns as well as on the seaboard. Mr. Parkman attended a meeting of the Ministers' Association in Marlborough a few days later, where he says, " All the talk was of the Stamp Act riots in Boston, and the hanging of Mr. A. O. in effigy."
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
In the October following the town gave some instruc- tions to its representative, Francis Whipple, the tenor of which was not likely to be misunderstood by His Majesty's servants. These instructions set forth, -
That with all Humility, it is the opinion of the town that the Inhabitants of the Province have a Legal Claim to the Natural, Inherent, Constitutional Rights of Englishmen, Notwithstanding their Great Distance from Grate Britton ; and that the Stamp Act is an Infringement upon these Rights ; therefore we cannot be active in puting our Necks under such a Grevios Yoke; and we think it proper in the present Conjunction of affairs to Give you, our Representative, the following Instructions, viz., That you promote, and Readily Join in all such Dutiful Remon- strances and humble Petitions to the King and Parliment, and other Desent measures as may have a tendency to obtain a Re- peal of the sª Stamp act ; and you are hereby Directed by no Means What So Ever, to do any thing that may aid the sd Stamp act in its operation, and you are hereby Directed to Dwo all in your power to Surpress and to prevente all Rioatus Assemblies and unlawful acts of Violence upon the Persons or Substance of any of his Majesty's Subjects ; and further more, you are hereby Instructed that you be not Aiding or assisting in Making any unusual Grants out of the Province Treasurie to Repear any Damiges which we of this Town had no hand in.
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