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 3
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KING PHILIP'S WAR.
case of attack, therefore, Marlborough was .in a situation of extreme peril.
In the summer of 1675 the Nipmuck Indians began to be seriously mistrusted. They had killed four or five people in Mendon, and alarmed the whole region. But the Government, still hoping to make alliance with them, sent a delegation, headed by Capt. Edward Hutchinson of Marlborough, to meet their chiefs at Quaboag (Brook- field) and hold parley. The end of that expedition every one knows, - a treacherous ambush, eight men killed, the town burned, Captain Hutchinson mortally wounded, and the expedition utterly routed. Captain Hutchinson's grave may be seen to-day in the old burying-ground in Marlborough.
In October eight garrison houses were established in different parts of the town; these were surrounded by rough palisade work, and to them a few soldiers and a number of the neighboring inhabitants were assigned in case of attack. One of these was Thomas Rice's house. The town had already been made a military post and a depot of supplies; and in the struggle that ensued it became the headquarters of the army of defence.
During the autumn Philip and his allies were engaged with the towns on the Connecticut, - Deerfield, Hadley, Northfield, and Springfield. In the February following there was trembling throughout all the region. On the Ioth the savages fell upon Lancaster, which then joined this town on the north, killing or capturing more than forty persons, among them brave Mrs. Rolandson and her children. They were checked in their career only by the arrival of a Marlborough company under Captain Wadsworth. Then passing southward, plundering as they went, hindered from attacking Marlborough only by its
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
extra defences, on the 21st they fell upon Medfield, by a concerted movement setting fire to the houses before the break of day, and escaping with savage swiftness before the garrison was aroused.
On this same day a special session of the General Court was held, when further measures were taken for defence in a war which was becoming atrocious, and began to threaten the annihilation of the settlements. Some of the orders issued that day have a special interest for us. For example, -
" Major Gen" Denison is ordered to repair unto Marlborow, there to order and dispose the souldiers under their several Captaines, according to the order of the Generall Court, taking care that those who goe forth be able and fitt for the sajd march, & that the comissarys doe send along wth them the am- unitions & provisions ; & that the troopers & so many of the foote soldiers as can be in a readiness do march away on the second day of the week, so as they may be at Quaboag on the third day according to the agreement of the comissioners. The supernumerary souldiers are to be disposed for the garri- soning of those frontier towns, as the Major Gen" shall judge meet, excepting only such as for just reason or bodily infirmity he shall dismiss, special respect being had to the garrison at Marlborow."
There were also the following "Instructions for Mr. James Brajden, appointed comissary for ye army :-
" I. First, you are to speed away to Marlborow & there to choose the ffittest house you can finde to lodge the provisions and amunitions that is sent vnto you, and to cause it to be carefully secured & kept for the vse and service of the army as there shall be occasion.
" 2. You are to declare to the cheefe comander on the place that it is the Court's pleasure that he affoord you a sufficient guard for the securing the magazine.
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KING PHILIP'S WAR.
"3. You are to take such assistance as may be necessary to performe the service comitted to you and to deliver forth what is comitted to you for the vse & service of the army & keeping carefull and particular accounts of all matters & yielding obedi- ence to such orders as you shall receive from the comander in , cheife or comittee for the war, and give intelligence to the council or comittee for ye army of all matters requisit for the publick service respecting yo' place."
A warrant was also directed to be "issued out to ye Comittee for ye army to send away ye provisions ordered to be at ye headquarters at Marlborow by the last day of the week. Also to send up some liquors and spice with a competency of canvass for a tent to shelter ye provisions and amunition, as also the carpenters' tools, nayles, &c., to build a quarter at Quaboag or elsewhere; which was done."
Troops were ordered to scour the country between Groton and Lancaster, and Marlborough and Medfield, where the Indians were prowling about in small com- panies. Suspicions began to arise, also, on both sides, against the praying Indians, - on the part of the whites, lest they were enemies in disguise, in secret communica- tion with Philip's army; on the part of the hostile Indians, lest they were aiding the settlers. So between upper and nether millstones the poor fellows, who had really done no harm whatever, were crushed out. Some Marlborough Indians having been found in the woods, near what is now New Braintree, with the horde which a few days later ravaged Lancaster, the few remaining warriors of the Okommokamesit town (in all but fifteen) were ar- rested by troops sent from Governor Leverett, and with their hands tied behind their backs, and bound neck to neck with a cart-rope, they were driven to Boston, and
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
thence taken to one of the islands in the harbor, where they passed a winter of severe suffering.
By the middle of March the woods to the west of the town were swarming with the savages. On the 13th they burned Groton, and the whole region was filled with terror. But troops being sent out against them, they fled to the Connecticut River. Thereupon Marlborough, not yet fully acquainted with the subtlety of the foe, breathed freely again, and the soldiers dispersed to their farms. That was the very thing the wily fellows wanted, and suddenly, on the 26th of March, being Sunday, as the people were unsuspiciously worshipping in their meeting- house, the terrible cry rang out, " The Indians are upon us!" The congregation in wild confusion rushed to the nearest garrison house, and fortunately all reached it in safety, save one : brave Deacon Newton, delaying in order to help an old and infirm woman, was hit by a ball in his elbow, which crippled his arm for life. But he had nobly exemplified the Christianity of which he had been hearing that day, and proved himself a deacon that " had used the office well, and purchased to himself a good degree."
The people were safe, but it was the hour of doom for the town; for when they emerged from their retreat they found meeting-house, parsonage, and homes burned, their cattle killed, their orchards ruined. After sixteen years of life and growth the little frontier settlement came to an end. They might, perhaps, have rebuilt, in spite of this, and gone forward with a brave determination. But when, on the 17th of April following, Sudbury was devastated, and several of the Marlborough men, who were defend- ing it, - including Captain Brocklebank, commander of the garrison, - lost their lives, the pioneers gave up the
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KING PHILIP'S WAR.
unequal contest, left the lands they had reclaimed, and retired to the older towns.
But this war, which ended with the death of Philip on the 12th of August following, however seriously it weak- ened the English, broke forever the power of the Indian tribes of Massachusetts. It was their last struggle for life and the possessions of their fathers. And however much we may deprecate their methods, which were simply those of savage warfare everywhere, we cannot severely blame them for rising up to strike one desperate blow for the right to live, and roam their ancient hunting-fields. Only cowards could tamely submit to dispossession and practical extinction. The Indians were not a specially noble race; they were apt, in the long contest between French and English for the possession of the land, to fight on the side that promised the best pay, without much sense of right or much manifestation of manhood. They were savages. But Philip, quicker than the rest to see the meaning of the steady encroachment of the whites upon his domain, with more of the true fibre of a man in him than most of his contemporaries, deserves the credit that belongs to bravery and a true defence of the rights of freehold. We are not sorry he did not suc- ceed; it was better that the higher race should hold the land; and we have nothing but horror for the treachery and cruelty of the warfare he waged: but we need not therefore forget that he fought and died, like many a nobler man, for the rights he defended, and the liberty and property which he saw vanishing from him, - not always by fair means And with him fell the last de- fender of the Indian inheritance. There were none left to strike a blow. Their hour had come, and they passed away like a morning cloud. We hear little more of the
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
Massachusetts Indians. Those who at a later period strike terror into the people of this region, are of another stock, and, as a rule, from the Canadian tribes.
In Marlborough there lingered for some time an un- equal contest with the little remnant of the settlement of praying Indians concerning their lands, which ended, as such contests always have in this country, in the posses- sion by the white man of the Indian's freehold. Then they faded away. There is from this time no relic what- ever of the Okommokamesit people. Indians have lived in this vicinity since; the Rev. Joseph Allen, who wrote his sketch of Northborough in 1826, had been told by Capt. Timothy Brigham, then in his ninety-first year, of one David Munnanaw, whom Captain Brigham had seen in his boyhood, a survivor of Philip's war, who had taken part against the English. He lived in a wigwam on the shore of a pond near the Gates House, in Marlborough. One Abimelech David, supposed to be his son, with sev- eral daughters, all dissipated and thievish, lived afterward in a wretched hovel under an oak near the Warren Brig- ham place. But these were not Okommokamesit Indians, but stragglers from the Hassanemesits. The site of an old Indian burying-ground is still visible near this spot. The land around it has been ploughed and planted many times, but one little rectangular area has been kept sacredly free from the touch of ploughshare to this day, guarded by the tradition that it contains the dust of red men.
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CHAPTER III.
1676-1711.
PRELIMINARY MOVEMENTS TOWARD A NEW TOWN. - INDIAN TROUBLES DURING " QUEEN ANNE'S WAR."
T T HE eclipse of the new settlement occasioned by the war did not last long. The pioneer spirit was strong, and the longing for new lands could not be sup- pressed. In two years from its collapse Marlborough was on its feet again, and the town organization was re- sumed, with twenty-seven families as the nucleus. A tem- porary meeting-house, which sufficed them for the next eleven years, was raised on the site of the one burned by the Indians, and affairs went on as before. The western part of the settlement began to assume important propor- tions, and to have a strong vote and influence in town affairs. It was growing up chiefly around Chauncy Pond, and had already taken the name of Chauncy Village. When in 1688 Marlborough proposed to build a new meet- ing-house, the Chauncy people protested against setting it on the old spot, which was too far away for their con- venience ; and Chauncy was so much of a community that the following vote was carried in town meeting: -
" That if the westerly part of the town shall see cause after- wards to build another meeting house, and find itself able to do so, and to maintain a minister, then the division to be made by a line at the cart-way at Stirrup Brook, where the Connecti- cut way now goeth, and to run a paralell line with the west line of the bounds of the town."
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
This was essentially the line of subsequent division. The " Connecticut way" here referred to, built not long before Philip's war, ran from Marlborough town through the present territory of Northborough and Shrewsbury, crossing Lake Quinsigamond near its northern end, and leading to Brookfield and the Connecticut valley. It probably determined the subsequent course of the " country " (county) road of 1730, and corresponded, partially at least, to the present line of road from Marlborough to Worcester. The junction of this road with Stirrup Brook was near the Bartlett place, in the edge of Marlborough.
It will be noticed that the vote above recorded has the expression, "where the Connecticut way now goeth ;" this means that there was an earlier " Connecticoat road," which, however, was only a bridle-path, which made a southerly détour near the present Marlborough line, pass- ing, according to Allen, through the easterly part of Northborough, over Rock Hill, east of Great and Little Chauncy ponds, and so southwesterly through Grafton. It has been substantially followed in Lyman and Main streets. This was doubtless originally the path between the two Indian settlements of Okommokamesit and Hassanemisco ; when Brookfield began to rise in the wilderness, the newer way was opened.
At this time, two hundred years ago, in spite of the growth of Chauncy, the territory to which Westborough is now restricted was still lonely. If at that time one had climbed the hill above the Whitney place, and could have found an outlook through the forest that then cov- ered it, he would have seen little but unbroken wilder- ness. The same rounded hills lay about him as to-day ; the same wooded crests swept around to the north;
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MOVEMENTS TOWARD A NEW TOWN.
Chauncy Pond gleamed through the trees as fair as now; the meadows were as green; Wachusett and his dimly out- lined sentinels stood guard as proudly in the northwest: but the signs of human habitation were few. He might catch a glimpse of a number of houses that clustered around the great pond, - Thomas Rice's house, with its stockade, lay just at his feet. Perhaps, away to the left, hidden by the hills, were "the houses of the Fays," - alluded to in a plan of the territory made some years later. To the northeast rose the rude church of Marl- borough on the hill-top. And two miles or so away, a little west of north, he would have noticed two gently rounded knolls, partially wooded, - the one to the west sloping away to the green meadows that lined the As- sabet. On the slope of that little hill, forty years later, was to rise the little homely meeting-house of a new town, and close by it the homestead of its first pastor.
The wilderness about him was not as safe to wander in as now. Five years before, Marlborough had paid a bounty for twenty-three wolves killed by the settlers. Rattlesnakes infested. the western hills in such numbers that the town voted, in 1680, -
" To raise thirteen men to go out to cil rattlesnakes, eight to Cold Harbor-ward, and so to the place they cal boston ; and five to Stony brook-ward [Southborough], to the places thereabout. John Brigham to cal out seven with him to the first, and Joseph Newton four with him to the latter; and they are to have two shillings apiece per day, paid out of a town rates."
This "place they cal boston " is reputed to have been "Boston Hill," on the Shrewsbury line, beyond Hobomoc Pond; and tradition adds - though not with equal proba- bility - that the name arose from the circumstance that at some previous time as many snakes had been killed
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
on that hill as there were inhabitants in the young village of Boston.
There is nothing to indicate that the severe political trials through which the colony was passing at this time were greatly felt in this vicinity. It seems as though the coast-towns felt the influence of the mother-country quite as much as the frontier towns were affected by the experi- ences of Boston. The chief foes of the interior were the wilderness and its savages. These men, being farmers, lacked the opportunities of the coast-towns for making money by manufactures and commerce. They were also saved from the burdens and losses of heavy taxes, prohibi- tive tariffs, and political intrigues. The life was plain and simple, too much occupied with unremitting toil to leave time for great concern with the affairs of State. The journey to Boston, which could be made only on horse- back, was seldom undertaken, and the lads from this frontier would have looked on with utter amazement at the fine sights and gay attire of the provincial city. Nor were their fathers more disturbed at the endeavors of royalists to import Church of England worship, or at the appearance of new and strange forms of belief and practice that sprang up in the coast-towns; for they were too far away to know much about them. Even the struggle with the English Government and the loss of the charter of the colony in 1684 seem to have scarcely disturbed the quiet of the life here, which was wholly turned to the effort required to regain the losses of the Indian war.
Thus the years went by, in patient struggle with the wilderness, for a quarter of a century from the time of the return. But at length Chauncy has attained a growth which makes it long for rights and privileges of its own.
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MOVEMENTS TOWARD A NEW TOWN.
There are more fair lands to the west waiting for occu- pancy, if only there were a meeting-house in the vicinity and enough of the privileges of a town to attract new settlers. Accordingly, the year 1702 saw the birth of a definite effort to found a new town. Chauncy had not forgotten the vote of 1688, above referred to, and the peti- tion which was sent up to the General Court was based upon it. This, which is called, for convenience, Henry Kerly's petition, was as follows: -
"To her Majties Honble Councill &c. Humbly Sheweth : - That whereas the town of Marlborough, in their first settlement of their Plantacion, seated their town towards the westerly end of said Plantacion, and since hath laid out a considerable por- tion of the land on the westerly part into Lotts : the inhabitants considering that much of their land, both upland and meadow, would be very Proper and Convenient for settling upon, only remote from any meeting, -
" Therefore, for Jncouragement of people to settle there, the sd Town of Marlborough on the 21st day of May, 1688, did grant Liberty to build a Meeting House, and forthwith staked out bounds there for a village to be settled ; through which Jncouragement a considerable number of families are already settled thereon, who find a difficulty and inconveniency in the want of a Meeting House, and being so remote from any, and Likewise Considering yt there are several farms and Vacant Lands in the Country adjacent to it sufficient to make a village, -
"Therefore we your Humble Petitioners do pray for an Jn- largement ; That from the Westerly bounds of Marlborough Town the said new settlement which is called Chauncy, may be extended to Consigamack [Quinsigamond] Pond, and to a parallel line to Marlborough west line while it comes to Has- sanessit, the Indian Plantation, and so to run the full breadth of five miles until it comes to Hassanessitt, and so cutting upon that Plantation ; also a mile in breadth on the southerly side from Sudbury River to the Indian bounds before mentioned ;
3
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
we desiring all bounds of land to stand as they are already settled, and the vacant lands to be for the benefit of the place, and the farms to do duty and take privelege amongst us ; & y' Humble Petitioners shall forever pray &c.
(Signed by)
HENRY KERLY
RICHARD BARNES
NATHAN BRIGHAM
SAMUEL' BRIGHAM
JACOB RICE
JOHN MAINERD JR.
JOSEPH RICE
ANNA WARD
INCREASE WARD
JAMES RICE
JOSIAH HAWES
THOS BRIGHAM
SAMI. GOODNOW
ELIEZER How
EDMUND RICE
DAVID MAINERD
THOMAS FFURBUSH
JOSEPH WITHERBY
SAMI. FFURBUSH
ISAAC THOMLIN
JOHN FFAY
SAMUEL FFAY
JOHN BRIGHAM.
This tract included not only the present territory of Westborough and Northborough, but the whole of Shrews- bury and the major part of Boylston, together with a wide strip from the northern section of Grafton. It was not all unclaimed land, by any means. More than five thousand acres beyond the present western line had come into English hands. Of this the greater part was owned by the Haynes family, already mentioned, and at the very time of Henry Kerly's petition was in litigation before the General Court. The original Haynes brothers, who pur- chased the thirty-two hundred acres of Mrs. Nowell in 1657, having died, the property was divided among the heirs. John and Peter, sons of John, senior, petitioned the Court for the confirmation to them of additional land, which they claimed to have purchased of the Indians. John Brigham, who had married the daughter of Josiah Haynes, put in a counter petition, showing by a plan of
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MOVEMENTS TOWARD A NEW TOWN.
the territory that his access to certain meadow-lands would be cut off if the petition of the other heirs was granted. It may have been the unsettled state of these claims which prevented the granting of the Kerly peti- tion. At any rate, it was not granted, and the "village " of Chauncy remained as it had been, a part of the town of Marlborough, for fifteen years longer.
One farther step was taken, meantime, by the grant, on the 13th of March, 1709, from the Proprietors of Marl- borough, of fifty acres of land "for the benefit of the Ministry in the westerly end of Marlborough, called Chauncy village." It consisted of forty acres of upland and swamp west of Chauncy Pond, and ten acres of meadow " at the west end of Great Middle Meadow, near Hobamoka pond." This remained a part of the " minis- terial farm" until Westborough and Northborough were divided, and was not sold until 1784.
Shortly after the Kerly petition the perils of life in the wilderness received a new illustration. During the twenty- five years that had gone by since the war with Philip, the settlers had been unmolested. The heroes of that war had become veterans, and the children had grown up and were cultivating farms, unterrified by the savage war-whoop. Life was hard enough without that, to be sure; one wonders at the irrepressible desire that these men had to maintain their struggle with the wilderness, and the utter absence of any wish to fall back upon the older towns, or try the comparative luxury of life on the coast. But the pioneer fever was upon them strongly, and privation and danger seemed only to stimulate their hardy spirits. Now, however, came new troubles. Though the Massachusetts Indians had disappeared, there were forces at work in the far North creating deep hostility in the
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
Indian tribes of those regions; and at about this period bands of them, instigated by the French, began to come southward, and to prowl about these settlements. It was an incident in the history of what is known as "Queen Anne's war," which was itself but an incident in the long struggle between England and France for the possession of the New World. The French in Canada made great use of the Indians, - as, for that matter, the English did also, as they found opportunity; and it added untold hor- rors to the history of the struggle. After the disastrous failure of the attack of the New England forces on Que- bec in 1690, there was an outbreak of hostility from that quarter which made the New England settlers realize for the first time what they afterward became so wearily familiar with, - the terrors of a "French and Indian war." Queen Anne's war broke out in 1702; and two years later began that series of Indian raids which is so mem- orable in the annals of the time, when Deerfield and Haverhill were devastated with a cold-blooded barbarity which has never ceased to make men shudder. In July, 1704, a body of six or seven hundred French and In- dians, foiled in an attempt to destroy Northampton, came eastward and attacked Lancaster. Capt. Thomas Howe, of Marlborough, gathering what force he could, marched to the relief of his neighbors; but the English were defeated and driven into the garrison, and the town was desolated.
On the 8th of August following, Chauncy had its share in the common terror. In the hot summer day some men and boys were at work in the field just this side of the Whitney place, spreading flax. The hill rose above them to the south, covered then with a thick growth of trees. Suddenly, before any one of them could turn himself
THE WHITNEY PLACE.
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INDIAN TROUBLES.
or know what had happened, a party of eight or ten In- dians had rushed down from the hill and seized the boys. Little Nahor Rice, only five years old, was summarily disposed of in true Indian fashion, by having his brains dashed out on a rock; four others, from seven to ten years old, were " captivated," as the quaint record has it, and carried off to the woods, while the rest of the party escaped in panic to the garrison-house of Thomas Rice, which was close by. Of the captives, Asher, aged ten, and Adonijah, aged eight, were Thomas Rice's sons; the others, Silas and Timothy, nine and seven years old, as well as Nahor, who was killed, were sons of Edmund Rice, a second cousin of Thomas, who lived near what has since been called Willow Park. The little boy Nahor is said to have been the first English person buried within the limits of the present town.
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