USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 56
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At the close of the colonial period a change had undoubtedly taken place in character and manners, owing, in part, to the close connection of Rox- bury with the metropolis. Everywhere the too rigid austerity of the social and religious life of the Puritan pioneers had given place to a freer and more unrestrained play of the social forees. Intemperance had greatly increased. Attendance at church had grown less constant. More costly dress and equipage, and greater refinement of manners began to be observable. Other changes of a beneficial character appeared. Farming was then and long continued to be the principal occupation of the people; but the introduction of cloth manufacture, of tanning, and other industries to supply the wants of Boston, always a ready market for her agricultural products, gave the town an additional impetus, and added materially to her wealth and popula- tion. With respect to the latter, it must, however, be borne in mind that numerous emigrations, especially that of thirty families to Woodstock, Conn., in 1686, had materially lessened her numbers. Notwithstanding this draw- back, Roxbury at this period was unquestionably a thriving and influential town.
Francia & Draky
CHAPTER XIII.
DORCHESTER IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
BY REV. SAMUEL J. BARROWS. Minister of the First Parish.
)F the suburban sections now included in the corporate limits of Bos- ton, Dorchester is one of the most beautiful. Its broad fields and meadows, its ancient homesteads the heritage of colonial estates, its well-kept lawns and fruitful gardens, its noble bay, its numerous rock-ribbed hills, and its general accessibility to the heart of the city have made it a favorite place of residence for many years. No district is more replete with lovely views than are furnished from some of these lofty hills, - command- ing the city, the harbor, the Blue Hills, Brookline, Cambridge, Milton, and a whole circle of neighboring towns, And there is no town so near the city which so long preserved its original simplicity and solidity.
The town of Dorchester was annexed to Boston in 1870. It is to be remembered, however, that Dorchester, Roxbury, Charlestown, and Boston, prior to the town organizations, were all originally under the same general government in the earliest days of the colony, and that Dorchester formed a part of Suffolk County until 1793. Although now a silent partner in the new firm, it can point to a time when Boston itself was a stripling of no special promise, called Blackstone's Neck, - a neck without any body, so far as population is concerned, except that which Dorchester and Charles- town furnished. Boston bears a different relation to its suburbs from that of many large cities, where the centre has been first formed and the periphery afterwards, and the suburbs have been thrown off by a force of growth from within. In Boston two segments, Charlestown and Dorchester, were formed before the centre was even attempted.
Dorchester was settled June 6 (o. s.), 1630, some weeks before Boston. Had not the waters of Dorchester Bay been more shallow than those on the other side of Dorchester Heights, we should probably have had to re- cord the annexation of Boston to Dorchester instead of the reverse. In fact there are many of the old residents of the place who prefer to consider the annexation in that light.
The settlement of Dorchester arose from the same influences in England, which, two years before, had settled the town of Salem, and, ten years
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
carlier, had planted the Leyden refugees about Plymouth Rock. The conflict between Puritanism and the hierarchy had assumed threatening proportions. There were two solutions for distressed England. One was to be found in a Puritan sca-voyage ; the other was furnished by the radical surgery of the New Model.
Of the active promoters of Puritan emigration, Rev. John White, Rector of Trinity Parish, Dorchester, England, was the most prominent. The colonization of Massachusetts is a lasting memorial of his zeal, energy, and executive ability. It was he who gathered the company of emigrants in England and organized the church which settled Dorchester, and the town was in all probability named in his honor. Mr. White had early shown his sympathy in the emigration movement by giving of his heart and purse to help the settlers at Plymouth. He had encouraged the Dorchester fisher- men in their voyages to the American waters. One object of the settlement which he sought to make at Cape Ann, in 1624, under Roger Conant, was to furnish a depot for the fishermen on the coast. The practical failure of this enterprise only stimulated Mr. White to greater efforts, and the expedi- tions to Salem in 1628 and 1629 were prompted by his active exertions. With a persistent and contagious zeal, Mr. White immediately gathered another company of emigrants from the western counties of England, very few of whom had known each other before. This band assembled in the New Hospital, Plymouth, England. John White was present, and preached in the morning. In the afternoon a church was organized, and the Rev. John Maverick and Rev. John Warham were chosen ministers. On the 20th of March (o. s.), 1630, the company, numbering about one hundred and forty, sailed in the ship " Mary and John," a vessel of four hundred tons, under command of Captain Squeb.
Roger Clap, one of the passengers, in his quaint memoirs, - the earliest contemporaneous document relating to Dorchester, - thus refers to the voyage : "So we came, by the good Hand of the Lord, through the Deeps comfortably; having Preaching or Expounding of the Word of God every day for Ten Weeks together, by our ministers."
It was understood that the " Mary and John" was bound for the Charles River. Either through an ignorance which, in the absence of charts and maps at that time, might be considered pardonable, or through a perversity which the indignant passengers considered very unpardonable, Captain Squeb, says Roger Clap, "would not bring us into Charles River, as he was bound to do ; but put us ashore and our Goods on Nantasket Point, and left us to shift for ourselves in a forlorn place in this Wilderness.") The date of the arrival was May 30 (o. s.), 1630. It is well known that previous to the coming of the Winthrop fleet, of which the " Mary and John " was the first to arrive, a few adventurous planters, such as Tompson, Blackstone, and
1 [It should be remembered, however, that whether at Light-house Channel or at Shawmut. See Mr. Winsor's chapter on " The earliest maps of Massachusetts Bay and Boston Harbor."-ED.]
there was a diversity of opinion in those days as to where the mouth of the Charles River was,
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DORCHESTER IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
others, had established themselves about the harbor for the purpose of trad- ing with the Indians.1 From one of these old planters the newly-landed cmigrants at Nantasket procured a boat, and loaded it with goods. About ten men, well armed, under command of Captain Southcot, started for Charles River. They landed first at the peninsula afterwards called Charlestown. Here they found some Indian wigwams and a solitary Englishman, who treated them to some boiled fish (which Roger Clap describes as bass), without bread, - afterwards a somewhat familiar and monotonous diet. The scouting party moved up the Charles River until the stream grew narrow and narrower, and finally landed at the present site of Watertown. The Indians quickly assembled, upon their arrival, to the number, as they judged, of about three hundred. But the mediation of an old planter (whom they had probably brought from Charlestown with them, and who could speak a little of the Indian language) prevented any hos- tilities. The next morning an Indian appeared, graciously holding out a fish, which he exchanged for a biscuit. From the very beginning the Dor- chester settlers seem to have had friendly dealings with the Indians.
After spending a few days at the site of Watertown, and building a tem- porary shelter for their goods, the scouting party received word to return, as the main company at Nantasket had found a neck of land adjoining a place called by the Indians Mattapan, which would serve both to nourish their cattle and prevent them from straying. The exploring party re-em- barked for Dorchester, and thus Watertown lost the honor which it nearly achieved of being the second settlement of the Massachusetts Colony. A piece of land at Watertown, called " Dorchester Fields," long preserved the memory of this early expedition.
A week from the arrival of the " Mary and John" at Nantasket the re- moval of the passengers' effects was completed, and Sunday, the 6th of June, was observed as a day of rest and thanksgiving. The settlement of the town is reckoned from that day. The south side of Dorchester Neck (South Boston) is supposed to be the landing-place of the first settlers. A week later they were gladdened by the arrival at Salem of the " Arbella," the admiral ship of the fleet, with Governor Winthrop on board. We are told that a few days later Winthrop, after exploring the Charles and Mystic to find a good place for settlement, returned to Salem by way of Nantasket, and com- posed the differences between Captain Squeb and his indignant passengers.
Dorchester was thus the first settled town in Suffolk County. It did not receive its final baptism, however, until the fall, when at a meeting of the Court of Assistants, held at Charlestown, Sept. 7, 1630, it was ordered that " Trimountaine shalbe called Boston ; Mattapan, Dorchester ; and the towne vpon Charles Ryver, Watertown."2 "Why they called it Dorchester," says James Blake, next to Roger Clap the earliest annalist of the town, " I never heard; but there was some of Dorset Shire, and some of ye Town of
2 [A fac-simile of this record is given in Mr. volume. - ED.]
1 [Cf. Mr. C. F. Adams's chapter in this
VOL. 1. - 54.
R. C. Winthrop's chapter. - ED. ]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Dorchester that settled here, and it is very likely it might be in honor of ye aforesaid Revd. Mr. White of Dorchester."
When, in the fall of 1630, a few months after the landing, the Court of AAssistants found it necessary to define and grant the privilege of freeman- ship, out of one hundred and eight persons who made application for this right, twenty-six were of Dorchester.
" In our beginning," says Roger Clap, "many were in great Straits for want of Provision for themselves and their little Ones. Oh, the Hunger that many suffered, and saw no hope in an Eye of Reason to be supplyed, only by Clams, and Muscles, and Fish. . . . Bread was so very scarce that sometimes I tho'hit the very Crusts of my Father's Table would have been very sweet unto me. And when I could have Meal and Water and Salt boiled together, it was so good who could wish better? ... It was not accounted a strange thing in those Days to drink Water, and to eat Samp or Hominie without Butter or Milk. Indeed, it would have been a strange thing to see a piece of Roast Beef, Mutton, or Veal; though it was not long before there was Roast Goat." Yet the old Puritan grit and the Puritan faith did not wince under the most extreme hardship. "I took notice of it, as a Favour of God unto me," says the philosophical Captain Clap, " not only to preserve my Life, but to give me Contentment in all these Straits; insomuch that I do not remember that I ever did wish in my Heart that I had not come unto this Country, or wish myself back again to my Father's House." In these days, two hundred and fifty years later, when the Massachusetts Indian has nearly disappeared, and thou- sands of the western tribes would starve to death every winter if the Gov- ernment withheld the supply of food, it is interesting to recall the fact that the Massachusetts Indian established the kindly precedent by dividing his portion with the destitute white man. Roger Clap has embalmed this fact in a pious pun. " In those Days, in our Straits, though I cannot say God sent a Raven to feed us, as He did the Prophet Elijah; yet this I can say to the Praise of God's Glory, that He sent poor raven-ous Indians, which came with their Baskets of Corn on their Backs to Trade with us, which was a good supply unto many." The relief ship which has sailed for Ireland this year is a reminder of the fact that two centuries and a half ago the dis- tressed colonists welcomed with joy a ship which brought them provisions from the Irish shore.
The priority of settlement in favor of Dorchester, though only of a few weeks, was also marked by a priority of growth. A second ship-load arrived from Weymouth, England, in July, 1633, and brought eighty pas- sengers, who settled at Dorchester. In October of this year, from. the assessments made by the Court, it appears that Dorchester was the largest or wealthiest town in Massachusetts. While Boston, Roxbury, Newton, Water- town, and Charlestown were each taxed £48, and Salem £28, Dorchester was assessed for £80. Prince says, " in all military musters or civil assemblies where dignity is regarded, Dorchester used to have the precedence."
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DORCHESTER IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
The distinguished honor is claimed for Dorchester of having the first special town government in New England. During the early years of settlement the affairs of the colony were administered by the Court of Assistants. Such local authority as was needed beyond the orders of the Court was no doubt exercised by the clergymen, deacons, and magistrates. Meetings of the Dorchester Plantation were occasionally held. In the subsequent records there is reference to such a meeting in 1631, "to make and confirm orders for the control of their affairs." But no special town government existed. The necessity of some form of represen- tative local regulation was soon felt, and at a meeting of the " Dorchester Plantation " held Oct. 8, 1633, an order was passed which has become of such historic interest that we transcribe it in the original form : -
" An agreement made by the whole Consent and vote of the Plantation, made Mooneday, 8th of October, 1633.
" Imprimis. It is ordered, that for the generall good and well ordering of the affayres of the plantation. there shall be every Mooneday before the Court by eight of the clocke in the morning, and presently upon the beating of the drum, a generall meeteing of the inhabitants of the plantation at the Meeting House, there to settle and sett downe such orders as may tend to the generall good as aforesayd, and every man to be bound thereby without gainsaying or resistance."
Another new feature was the appointment of twelve selectmen, who were to hold monthly meetings, and whose orders were binding when confirmed by the Plantation.
This order, it will be seen, contains the germ of the New England town government, which was afterwards adopted by the other towns, and, as De Tocqueville promptly recognized, exercised " the most prodigious influence" on the history of New England.
In the May of the following ycar,-1634,-when it was ordered that four General Courts should be kept every year, at three of which every town should be represented by deputies, Dorchester sent three members, -Israel Stoughton, William Phelps, and George Hull.
As we might expect from its size and importance, the town of Dor- chester figures very frequently in the old colonial records. Its name, as already noticed, was given at the second Court of Assistants, when Boston was also named. At the third Court, held Sept. 28, 1630, Thomas Stough- ton was appointed its constable, and six months later learned the limits and responsibilities of his office, when he was fined five pounds by the Court for taking upon himself to marry a couple, and was ordered to be imprisoned until the finc was paid. Some years later this fine was remitted. Most of the orders of the Court related to the appointment of officers, the mending of roads, the settlement of boundaries, the adjustment of disputes, &c., but the importance of Dorchester to Boston is seen in the order of Nov. 7, 1632, when the inhabitants of Boston were granted liberty to " fetch wood from Dorchester neck of land for twenty years, the property of the land to re-
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
main with Dorchester." Its military importance was recognized in 1634 by an assignment of three pieces of ordnance, and leave was granted to the Deputy-Governor to have "his Indian trained with the rest of the company at Dorchester." The novel way in which the Dorchester poor-fund was recruited in 1632 leads tis to infer that our early fathers considered that intemperance owed some reparation to poverty. It was ordered that " ye remainder of Mr. Allen's Strong-Water, being estimated about 2 Gallandes, shall be delivered into ye handes of the Deacons of Dorchester for the benefit of the poore there, for his selling of it dyvers tymes to such as were drunke by it, he knowing thercof."
In 1645 an instrument called the "Directory " was adopted, containing regulations which the inhabitants bound themselves to observe in conduct- ing town meetings. The Directory provided that " Althings should be aforchand prepared by ye Selectmen ; that all Votes of Importance should Regras Clay Ifunny Pray Atkinson Format Harker be first drawn in writing, and have 2 or 3 distinct Readings before y Vote was called for; that every man should haue libertie to speak his mind meckly and without noise; that no man should speak when another was speaking; that all men would Countenance and Encourage all ye Town Officers in ye due Execution of their Offices, and not fault or Revile them for doing their Duty." An order was also published that at all town AUTOGRAPHS OF EARLY SETTLERS. 1 meetings the selectmen were to appoint one of themselves to be moderator.
The first Dorchester record-book is the oldest town record in Massa- chusetts. Its six hundred and thirty-six pages cover the period from January, 1632-33, to 1720, and mainly contain lists of selectmen, orders relating to land-grants, fences, roads, &c., having an interest for the anti- quary, though but little for the general reader.2 There is one important
1 [Roger Clap is the writer of the account of their early experiences, already quoted. Clap was for twenty-one years (1665-86) captain of the Castle, and he is buried in King's Chapel yard. Shurtleff, Boston, pp. 195, 478, 490. He removed to Boston in 1686. He wrote his Memoirs about 1676, and it was first printed from the original manuscript, edited by Thomas Prince, in 1731, and various times since, besides being printed by the Dorchester Historical and Antiquarian So- ciety, and being included in Young's Chronicles of Mass. Humphrey Atherton was a major- general, and while returning home in the dark after reviewing his troops on Boston Common, his horse was struck by a stray cow. In the collision he was thrown and killed, Sept. 16, 1661. Shurtleff, Boston, p. 283, records his epi- taph. Parker was a lay preacher and trader be- tween Barbadoes and Boston. History of Dor- chester, p. 70. - ED.]
2 [See N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., April, IS67, &c. Use was of course made of them in the History of Dorchester, which was begun by a committee of the Dorchester Historical and Antiquarian Society, in 1851, and completed in 1859. That Society, acting under the impulse which the late Rev. Thaddeus M. Harris, D.I., gave to antiquarian study in his account of the town in the Mass. Hist. Coll., ix., had already printed the Memoirs of Clap, the journal which Richard Mather kept on his voyage over, May- August, 1635 (also printed in Young's Chronicles of Mass.), and a compilation, chiefly from the Town Records, made by Captain James Blake in the last century, and called Annals of Dor- chester. The oration which Edward Everett, who was a native of the town, delivered in 1855 (Works, iii. 293), entitled “ Dorchester, in 1630, 1776, and 1855," is not without interest in this connection. - ED.]
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DORCHESTER IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
order, however, which must not be overlooked. It is referred to by the oldest inhabitants with the greatest pride. I refer to the order making provision for a free school. On the 4th March, 1634-35, the General Court made a grant of Tompson's Island to the inhabitants of the town of Dorchester. On the 30th of May, 1639, four years after the grant, the town voted to lay a tax upon the proprietors of this island " for the maintenance of a school in Dorchester." From a later instrument we learn that those who paid rent numbered about one hundred and twenty, and therefore in- cluded the principal part of the adult male inhabitants of the town. This order, it is claimed, was the first public provision made for a free school in America " by a direct tax or assessment on the inhabitants of the town." The rent imposed on the island was £20, " to be paid to such a schoole- master as shall undertake to teach English, latine, and other tongues, and also writing." It was left to the discretion of the elders and the seven men for the time being, " whether maydes shalbe taught wth the boyes or not." In 1641, by another instrument, signed by seventy-one of the inhabitants of the town, it was agreed that the island and all profits and benefits thereof should be forever bequeathed and given away from themselves and their heirs unto the town of Dorchester, " for the maintenance of a free schoole in Dorchester," with the proviso that the income should not be put to any other use. Rev. Thomas Waterhouse was the first teacher. In 1645, wardens were appointed to manage the affairs of the school, and various rules were adopted for its government. The schoolmaster was not to be chosen without the consent of the major part of the inhabitants. For seven months of the year the hours were fixed from 7 o'clock to 11, and from 1 o'clock to 5 ; for the other five months from 8 o'clock to II, and I o'clock to 4. Every Monday, from 12 o'clock to I, scholars were called together and questioned upon what they had learned on the Sabbath day preceding, and on Satur- days, at 2 o'clock, were catechised in the principles of the Christian religion. Another rule was that the schoolmaster " shall equally and impartially re- ceive and instruct such as shalbe sent and Committed to him for that end, whither there parents bee poore or rich, not refusing any who have Right and Interest in the Schoole."
When, in 1648, the claim of John Tompson to the island already named, by virtue of his father David's occupancy, was granted by the Court, a thou- sand acres of land were assigned to Dorchester in lieu thereof. Individual bequests attest the great interest which the early settlers had in their free school. The earliest of these was the legacy of John Clap in 1655. The land he bequcathed at South Boston Point was sold in 1835 for the sum of $13,590.62. Another bequest, made in 1674, by Christopher Gibson, who was one of the first applicants for freemanship in Dorchester in 1630, now amounts to $17,575.79, and the £150 given by Lieutenant-Governor Stough- ton towards the advancement of the salary of the schoolmaster has swelled to $4,140. When Dorchester was annexed to Boston these funds were made over to the city, but the income of the Gibson fund is appropriated
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
for the supply of the Dorchester schools with such library books and appar- atus as are not furnished by the city ; and the income of the Stoughton fund is credited annually to the appropriation for salaries of school instructors.
The bold spirit of enterprise which, in common with an carnest religious faith, brought the colonists to New England, was not checked when they had landed on its shores. The people of Dorchester had hardly been settled three years before that westward movement began which was to result in the immediate foundation of Connecticut, and, fed by new and still flowing streams from Europe, was eventually to spread across the con- tinent. We have no space in this article to speak of that movement in detail. It must suffice to say that in 1633 the glowing reports brought by Indians and adventurous scouts of the fertility of the Connecticut valley, heightened by secing specimens of its valuable furs, stimulated the enter- prise of the Dorchester people, and a Connecticut fever set in which was not easily abated. The colonial government strongly opposed the movement, but was finally obliged to consent. A trading-house established by the peo- ple of Plymouth in Connecticut in 1633, on or near the site of the present town of Windsor, became the nucleus of the new settlement in 1635. An advance party left in the summer of that year, and were followed in Novem- ber by sixty persons, with a large number of cattle. The journey was one of much hardship ; the winter which followed was marked by great suffering. Winthrop tells us that they lost ncar £2,000 worth of cattle, and were obliged to eat acorns, malt, and grains. Having been threatened with starvation in the early months of their settlements in Dorchester, it may scem strange that so many of the first planters should invite the same peril a second time. It is another illustration of their native pluck and deter- mination. Though most of the first party were obliged to return to Dor- chester, in the spring of 1636 they set out again, with Mr. Warham, the junior pastor of the church, and a large part of its members. With those from Dorchester were others from Cambridge and Watertown.1
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