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 8
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
" As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, So are the children of youth.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them : They shall not be ashamed,
When they speak with their enemies in the gate."
There were two brothers Fay, near the beginning of the eighteenth century, who lived on the "Fay Farm," and who had, as the years went by, the one twenty-two, and the other twenty-four children. As they were cousins, and lived near each other, it was desirable not to have the same names in the two families; and before the forty-six had all made their début, it became comically difficult to find Scripture names, and the latest comers had to take what they could get.
The next step forward was the establishment of a school. Thus far they had done without. The church must come first, by law as well as by conviction. And the towns were slow in the adoption of public measures. Had not the Colony spurred them up, there is no telling when the reputation of our fathers for zeal in education would have been born. As a whole, they were not eager for schools. The wisest of them saw the necessity, and pressed for them; but they had to work hard to accom- plish their ends. It was well, therefore, that on the statute- book was this Act of 1647 :-
"It being one of the chief projects of Satan to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times keep- ing them in unknown tongues, so in these latter times by per- suading from the use of tongues, that so at least the true use and meaning of the original might be clouded and corrupted by false glosses of deceivers ; to the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers in church and common- wealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors :
" It is therefore ordered by this Court and authority thereof, that every township within this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath
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THE SCHOOL.
increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall forth- with appoint one within their towns to teach all such children as shall resort to him, to write and read, whose wages shall be paid either by the parents or masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in general, by way of supply, as the major part of those that order the prudentials of the town shall appoint ; pro- vided that those that send their children be not oppressed by paying much more than they can have them taught for in other towns."
The fine for non-compliance was fixed at £10. Every town of a hundred families must also have a grammar- school. Failure to comply with these laws was sure to be followed by the " presentation " of the delinquent town before the General Court. Westborough had already been presented once, for delay in providing the town pound, and encountered the same annoyance in 1753 for not having a grammar-school; but this time it acted promptly, and, the religious institution being well started, took the next step forward, and on the 3d of October, 1726, voted to have a school kept in the town six months, and chose Daniel Warren and Edward Baker school committee. The former was one of the founders of the town, holding a large farm east of " the Plain," part of which is still occu- pied by some of his descendants. He was one of the most prominent leaders in town affairs for a long time. The latter was a young man of about thirty, who came afterward to have a leading influence, especially in edu- cational and religious matters. This committee was in- structed " to procure a suitable schoolmaster, to teach children to Read, write, and Sipher; and to provide en- tertainment for sd schoolmaster during the sd six months ; and also to provide a place or places for the school to be kept in." Edward Baker went to Brookfield, and found there a certain Joshua Townsend, who for the modest
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
sum of £18 (then about $35) was willing to teach six months in three different sections of the town, and who from that time for twelve or thirteen years at least, was the pedagogue of Westborough. It is greatly to be regretted that we have no materials from which to con- struct the portrait of Dominie Townsend. The school- master of that day had a simple task, requiring no erudition, only a " faculty" for instruction and for redu- cing the youthful mind to a proper state of reverence for authority. The school-room was in a private house, two months at a time in each of the three sections of the town, which, at that time including Northborough, was large. There were no school-houses for forty years after- ward. And even the scanty salary of £18 was not always paid without grudging. In that winter of 1726-1727 the town was evidently a little disturbed at the bills which were presented in connection with this schoolmaster: ten shillings to Edward Baker " for fetching him from Brook- field;" £1 4s, to David Brigham for entertaining him one month; and £4 16s. for entertainment elsewhere. Consequently, when the proposition came up, Aug. 28, 1727, to employ him another six months, the town voted to do so, paying £18 as before, but "he paying for his Diet." It would seem that he had some hesitation about accepting this, as well he might have; but he was prom- ised an additional pound as a compromise by Joseph Wheeler, which the town ratified the next February, when it was in better mood. But in the following year (1729), Thomas Ward, one of the residents of the north end of the town, formally entered his dissent on the town records against paying the schoolmaster £18 for the last half year.
Remembering the scarcity and costliness of books at
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this period, the absence of newspapers, and the seclusion of communities, it is evident that the student of that time was forced to curb his ambition within narrow limits. A pathetic little scrap of paper once fell in my way, in a pro- bate office of one of the counties of Massachusetts, which conveyed a very striking impression of the condition of these pioneers of New England education. It was the schedule of the library and effects of a Massachusetts schoolmaster in the reign of George II. It consisted, be- sides notes and bonds for money due him as a teacher and unpaid at his death, of a meagre bit of personal property : " Six linning shirts, a gown, a Broadcloth coate, a sadel and Bridel, Stockens, Briches, neckloaths, wescats, an old knife, and a come." So runs the execrable English of the poor Dominie's executors. The rest of the estate was a library of fifty-six volumes; but how unappetizing ! Thirty-three of the books were catechisms, psalters, prim- ers, and hymn-books; the rest were such as " Mr. White- field's jurnel," "two books jntitled A preservation from Sin and folly," "Siance of Being, with Its affections," "The young man's Best Companion," "ye youth's in- structed in ye jnglish tongue; " with some sermons and tracts. No gleam of the world's best literature; no scrap of the endless stores of knowledge which to-day make the task of selection so much more difficult than that of acquisition. The familiar oratory about the profound con- victions of the fathers who always " planted the meeting- house and the school-house side by side on every hill-top," assumes too much. There were men who, like Edward Baker of Westborough, believed in education, and sacri- ficed a good deal to promote it. The makers of the Col- ony believed in it and fostered it. But the people generally had to be whipped up to the necessary expenditure, and
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
the schoolmaster had a hard time. It was not because there was a popular demand for the school that the school came; it was because the men who influenced public sen- timent - the best men in the Colony - led the people, and would take no refusal, that at last the public feeling rose to the task of supporting the school. For though the gov- ernment of the towns was democratic, and every church member had his vote, the best men nevertheless took the place and the power which their education and capacity gave them, and dragged the lagging sentiment of the popu- lace up to the demands of the times. There is a valuable suggestion in the history of the early days of these New England towns for the exigencies of the present period.
The town meantime was showing signs of outward growth and thrift. It even indulged in the modern luxury of a town debt for a short time; but did not like it, and so, at a town meeting held Feb. 27, 1727, £14 was granted "to pay the town Debt and to buy a Burying cloth." The town lines were being carefully surveyed in con- junction with the authorities of adjoining towns. In 1727 the line between Hopkinton and Westborough was “ per- ambulated;" in 1728 the lines between the town and Framingham, Marlborough, Lancaster, and Shrewsbury were adjusted. It is not quite easy to understand where Framingham and Westborough could by any possibility join. Southborough was not incorporated until the July following, and Ashland was not born; but Framingham joined Marlborough, not Westborough, whose eastern line has always been the same as to-day. The line between Lancaster and Westborough was the same essentially as the present line between Northborough and Berlin, for Westborough included Northborough, and Lancaster included Bolton, Berlin, Clinton, and Sterling.
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GROWTH OF THE TOWN.
During the same year nineteen hundred acres were added to the town area on the south, from Sutton, on which there were ten families. This area is essentially the angular southern projection of the present town; the southern line originally running straight from the angle on the road between B. A. Nourse's and Jasper Fay's to Cedar Swamp, and intersecting the Upton and Hopkinton roads a little below their junction. The incorporation of Southborough in July called for some readjustment of boundaries, which was finally made in 1730.
This growth and accretion seems to have filled the meeting-house quite to its present capacity, and we hear of a gallery and of extra pew-room granted. On the 5th of February, 1729, the town gave " the vacant room be- hind ye front Gallery to Beriah Rice, Noah Rice, Phineas Hardy, Abner Newton, David Maynard, and Aaron Hardy, as far as ye south window, to build a pew; they making a good seat before their pew for ye Boys, and mending ye glass and barring ye casement of sd window." In May the southwest corner of the gallery was granted to Thomas Bruce, Jonathan Fay, and Eliezer Rice for a similar pur- pose. Two other town institutions besides the meeting- house required attention at about the same time. The lease of the land granted by David Maynard in 1721 for ten years as' a site for the town pound having nearly expired, Ensign Thomas Newton and Daniel Warren were directed, in 1730, to provide " a sufficient Pound and Stocks," according to law. And so the town is holding on its way, with provision for all its needs and with a prospect of increasing prosperity.
There was one disadvantage, however, which by this time began to be severely felt, - the depreciation of the currency. In 1729 the Colony issued a new loan of
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
£60,000, to be apportioned to the different towns in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The town voted to bear its proportion, and appointed Daniel Warren, Joseph Wheeler, and Thomas Forbush trustees, who should re- ceive the paper money and let it out to the inhabitants of the town in sums of not more than ten nor less than five pounds. Joseph Wheeler went to Boston for the money at the town's expense. But this paper currency was full of mischief. The interest was not paid regularly, and in June, 1730, the town voted "to call all the trustees to account for the interest money of both banks, and to look over Capt. Fay's account." The other "bank" or loan was that which the town had assumed its share of in 1721, and of which Capt. John Fay, David Brigham, and Thomas Ward were the trustees. But the chief trouble was in the depreciation of this inflated currency. The notes of the former loan, now called " old tenor," were practically worth only about one tenth of the new bills; and these in turn depreciated until, in 1731, it took £340 in currency to equal £100 in coin; and in 1738 the ratio was five to one. The way-marks of this depression are strikingly seen in the votes regarding Mr. Parkman's salary. This was fixed in the beginning at £80 a year. In 1728 they added {10 to it; in 1729, during his illness, the same, but with two recorded "dissents; " in 1730 they added £30, and £6 more for firewood; in 1733 they added £60, and in 1737 £80, doubling the original salary : but as it was payable in currency, it would have been necessary, in order to make it really equal to the original sum, to have voted £400. And yet this was only the beginning of sorrows in this direction. The war of the Revolution, with its financial bankruptcy, was to come.
CHAPTER VIII.
1730-1744.
THE NEW COUNTY. - BEGINNINGS OF DIVISION. CHURCH MUSIC.
F OR the first twenty years of its existence the town had little to do except to attend to its own affairs, with small reference to the larger business of the State. The first record of the choice of a representative is in the year 1738, when a town-meeting was called on the 22d of May "to choose a Debuty to sarve for and repre- sent them in a Great and General Court of this province, to be convened, held and kept for His Majesty's Sarvice in Boston, for the year ensuing, and Capt. James Eager was Elected and Deputed for the Sarvice above-men- tioned." " His Majesty " at this time was George II., George I. having died the previous year; and Jonathan Belcher was governor of the Colony.
It was about this time that Worcester County was organ- ized, and courts and county roads became matters of local interest. The incorporation of the county dates from April 2, 1739. It included eight towns of Middlesex County, - Worcester, Lancaster, Westborough, Shrews- bury, Southborough, Leicester, Rutland, and Lunenburg; five in Suffolk, - Mendon, Woodstock, Oxford, Sutton (including Hassanamisco), and Uxbridge, with the land "lately granted to several petitioners of Medfield ;" and Brookfield, in the County of Hampshire. Three courts were to sit in Worcester, as the county town, -a " Court
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
of General Sessions of the Peace; " an "Inferior Court of Common Pleas; " and a "Superior Court of Judicature, Court of Assize, and General Gaol Delivery." The first of these courts consisted of all the justices in the county, and was presided over by one of the four judges of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas. Besides attending to minor criminal cases, it had charge of the county affairs, such as laying out roads, licensing inns, and admitting freemen. It took the place of the General Court of the Province in enforcing the laws requiring towns to support a competent ministry and to have schools and pounds and stocks and other paraphernalia of law and order. The Court of Common Pleas had four judges. It was a court of appeals from the lower court, and had civil jurisdiction in the county. The Superior Court was a provincial body, and held annual sessions in each county, having charge of more serious civil and criminal cases, and hearing appeals from the lower courts.
Westborough had appointed a committee in November, 1728, to act with other committees of towns in relation to the formation of the new county. The committee consisted of Daniel Warren, Jacob Amsden, and John Maynard. In 1730 a county road was laid out through the town, - corresponding probably for the greater part with the "Connecticut way " of fifty years earlier, which ran from Marlborough through Northborough and Shrews- bury to Worcester and Brookfield, and thence to Spring- field on the Connecticut. The same year we hear of constables, for whom the town voted " black staves," and whose duties, so far as recorded, seem to have consisted principally in preventing paupers from getting a settle- ment in the town. In February, 1731, Jonathan Forbush was granted twelve shillings " for Entertaining and Trans-
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THE NEW COUNTY.
porting an Ainchant woman from Westboro to Marlboro constable." And for several following years an " old Mr. John Green " was a sore trial to the thrifty farmers who had to "entertain " him by turns, and who appointed successive committees in town meeting to ascertain whether he belonged of right in town, and whether he had no relatives anywhere who could support or relieve him. This is a significant glimpse into the question of pauperism at that time. The sturdy yeomen, who had to work hard for their maintenance, had small sympathy for the helpless, who had no means of support. They would take care of them if they must, but had no fancy for the business, and made no adequate provision for it. The method was severely tonic in its effect. Pauperism as a hereditary disease belongs to a later time; it could not develop well in the rigors of the early day. New Eng- land thrift was in part due to the irrepressible dread of " coming on the town " in old age. It is a fair question whether the sumptuous almshouses of to-day, to say nothing of luxurious jails and prisons, are not indicative of an opposite extreme, the effect of which is to coax pauperism and shiftlessness with the bait of a fair asylum when helpless.
In the parsonage a great change had occurred dur- ing these years. On the 29th of January, 1736, Mary, the young wife who had come with the minister to the wilderness in the days when Indians were prowling about, and had borne him five children, died, in her thirty-seventh year. The only record of her death, except that on the tombstone in the old cemetery opposite the town-hall, is the vote of the town in the following May to grant £30 to pay the expenses attendant on her sickness and death. The Diary of Mr. Parkman from 1731 to 1743 is not avail-
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
able. We know that she left at her death four children : Mary, the eldest, was ten; Lucy, the youngest, one year and four months; Ebenezer and Thomas were eight and six respectively ; Lydia, born in 1731, had died in 1733.
Two years later Mr. Parkman brought a new bride to the parsonage, a fresh young maiden of twenty-one, - Hannah, daughter of the Rev. Robert Breck, the minister of Marlborough. She shared with him the rest of his life, bore him eleven children, and survived him nineteen years, passing away in 1801, at the age of eighty-four.
In less than twenty years after the incorporation of the town the people began to feel crowded again, although the farms were large and there was plenty of wild land, which harbored some good game. As late as 1742 the town at its annual meeting appointed two " deer reeves; " and there is reason to believe that it was not yet a merely nominal office. There were scarcely a hundred families in the whole section, including Northborough; but the area of the town was long from north to south, and those who lived at the extremes, especially at the north end, found the meeting-house, which was also town-house, too far away. It was becoming crowded as well; and we have already seen how, in 1729, a gallery was built, and seats were inserted wherever room could be found. There was also an increasing sensitiveness in regard to the appoint- ment of town officers, each section being jealous lest the other should usurp too many functions. As a result of this it happened that for several years more officers were appointed than were needed; five, and in at least one instance seven, selectmen being chosen at the annual meeting. These causes, and others less traceable, were gradually bringing forward the question of the division of the single town into two.
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BEGINNINGS OF DIVISION.
One of the earlier signs of this movement which ap- pears in the records is connected with a town meeting early in 1736. The year previous seven selectmen had been chosen, in order to satisfy both sections. This year James Maynard was chosen constable for the whole town, who forthwith " Declared his Refusal to Sarve; " for which refusal he paid, in accordance with the law of the Pro- vince, a fine of £5. Josiah Rice was then chosen in his place, and also refused, " and paid ye sum of five pound in money to ye Town for his non-Exceptance." This fine was one of the blessings derived from the Andros government. Under the old charter government it was fixed at twenty shillings; but Andros raised it to £5. In the depreciated state of the currency this sum amounted to only about five dollars; but two thrifty farmers did not pay even that without a strong pressure, and the explanation is in the determination of the north end of the town to have a constable of its own, as the first move toward division. Yielding to the force of circumstances, the meeting finally appointed two constables, - one for the north, and one for the south part of the town.
Next, the meeting-house became entirely inadequate, even with its gallery. Feb. 14, 1737, the town voted " to enlarge the room in the meeting-house by altering the seats in the body of the house below, and making more as they shall see good." Two weeks later it was determined " to build one seat Round in ye Gallery before ye seats. yt are Built y' already," and " to build a convenient seat for ye women in ye front gallery to Raing with ye young men's pew y is built there already." This sufficed to quiet discontent for a time, but in November of the fol- lowing year three radical propositions came up in town- meeting, - only to be peremptorily rejected, it is true, but
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
indicating the inevitable issue that was coming. The first was to enlarge the room in the meeting-house. This was declined, evidently because it came from the wrong quar- ter. It looks a little as though the party of separation was specially devoted to church attendance just now, in order to crowd the building and demonstrate the necessity for a division of the town. The second proposition was to build a new meeting-house, which probably no one ex- pected to carry, but which was made in a spirit of chal- lenge to the stronger party. The third proposal was a blunt motion " to set off part of this town to be a town- ship by themselves." So ended the meeting, without ac- complishing any definite result; but the gage of battle had been thrown, and henceforth the matter was not to rest until settled. The enlarging of the meeting-house was an actual necessity, and so in February, 1739, it was voted " to shut up the Ally in the meeting house and improve it for ye men to set in; " and five weeks later the additional step was taken of voting "to build three seats in the north- east corner of the meeting house, if the room will allow of it."
The following year, in March meeting, the constable comedy was re-enacted, and three sturdy men in suc- cession marched up and paid £5 rather than serve. So again, a month later, the temper of the majority empha- sized itself in the vote "to build one good and sufficient Pound for the town's use, to be set on the land of Mr. David Maynard, a little south of his dwelling house." This was probably somewhat farther north than the old meeting-house, and near the line of the present North- borough road.
This was 1740, and the town now had more than one hundred families, as appears from the fact that it was
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BEGINNINGS OF DIVISION.
presented at Court this year for not having a grammar- school master; and Edward Baker was sent to Worcester to appear before "the Hon. Court of Quarter Sessions " to answer to the charge. The defence was probably based on the divided state of feeling and the probability of actual separation at an early day. Two years later the first movement toward school-districts was made, and the bounds of three were indicated. The following spring the north end had votes enough to defeat the motion to build one new meeting-house for the whole town. The motion was renewed in slightly altered form; to wit: " Shall the place where the meeting-house now stands be the place for one new meeting-house?" and this also passed in the negative. Then once more, as in 1738, the motion came up to set off the north part of the town with one half the area of the whole, and was again de- feated. Thus matters stood in town-meetings till 1744, with the single gain for the north-end people that in 1742 a committee was appointed " to run a centre line east and west through the town as will best accommodate both parts of the town." This, however, accomplished little, for in September, 1743, the town peremptorily refused to run a centre line or to build two meeting-houses.
But meantime more effective measures were being set in operation in another direction. About 1741 the nor- therly residents began to absent themselves from public worship in the town meeting-house and to hold services by themselves in the house of Mr. Nathaniel Oake. This was a sore trial to Mr. Parkman, who felt that he had been settled as the minister of the whole town, and opposed the division tenaciously from first to last. But he could not stay the tide, and in 1743 the question of sanctioning this sectional gathering came before him in an unexpected
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