USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Walpole > The story of Walpole, 1724-1924; a narrative history prepared under authority of the town and direction of the Historical Committee of Bi-Centennial > Part 18
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parade and, although the elements were unkind and the storm descended, those brave men (almost every one beyond the age of eighty years) did not postponc, but with their fifes and drums marched through the streets of Boston giving us new stimulation, inspiring us to new heights of patriotism. Thank God, as we pay tribute to the men who performed that great service for our country, that we have here honorable survivors of the boys who answered the call of Abraham Lincoln in 1861. So, too, when the call came from a people in distress in downtrodden and persecuted Cuba, there were stalwart young men and women who were willing to go and endure privation and suffering that they might carry new hope to the people of Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philippines. Surely they gave unusual service; surely they are entitled to be held in unusual esteem and memory.
Then within the recall of practically all of us there came a great challenge to see whether we should help the cause of humanity throughout the world; whether we should be willing to endure sacrifices if we could save what civilization brought to the world. All of us will remember with gratitude those days in which we had an opportunity of making some unusual effort in behalf of a great cause. So the young men who have come here today, as they grow 'older, they will remain I am sure as their predecessors and comrades of the several wars for this community a standing army of minute men, always ready to do whatever may be necessary to stimulate patriotism and to arouse the highest type of citizenship in Walpole. Surely they should be included as worthy of special tribute; they properly are honored by the tablet which has been placed on the new bridge. We should not forget those honorable women who followed where battle led and who were angels of mercy in the relief and help they brought to the maimed and wounded.
I congratulate you of Walpole for your public spirit which has prompted you to set aside this bridge for such a worthy purpose. You will pause and read yonder tablet. After you have gonc, others will pass through what I hope may be a beautiful new public park and they will read that tablet with its simple inscription. May there always come to each one who reads it a continued challenge, and as they realize that those in whose honor it has been erccted have given unusual service, I hope the question will come to each . one of us-"Are we doing our full part to make this a better com- munity, to make the lives of our people more happy, more contented and more worth while? Are we trying to do what we can to break down false barriers of prejudice and hatred? Are we trying to
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make this a community where men and women dwell together in peace and harmony?"
I hope under the inspiration of such an occasion, and out of the memories which will be permeated as we read the tablets, that there may come a new birth of public spirit and a greater measure of patriotism in the hearts of the people of Walpole; that there shall be a greater determination to keep faith with all those who have gone and try to enrich the splendid health which has been entrusted to us and make it possible for succeeding generations to exclaim as we do, "I am a citizen of the greatest, noblest, truest country which men have ever yet known-the United States of America!"
MR. GEORGE A. PLIMPTON'S INTRODUCTION SPEECH
T THIS is a very pleasant duty. As Mr. Allen said, this is a family meeting. This is to be a family affair. We are all citizens of Walpole, and we are all members of this family of Walpole. Two years ago I was in the north of England at Walpole, Norfolk County, not far from what is called "The Wash"-not far from where King John, in the early part of the thirteenth century, in crossing "The Wash," lost his baggage. In this town there are two churches. One is called Walpole St. Peter, and one called Walpole St. Andrews; one dates back to the year 1229, and the other dates back to the thirteenth century.
Our Robert Walpole, after whom our town is named, got his name from this village of Walpole. The people of Walpole, England, . hearing that there was to be a celebration here the 200th anniversary, sent me this cablegram which I received last night.
"October 3, 1924.
George A. Plimpton, Walpole, Mass.
Walpole, Norfolk, England sends warmest greetings with maternal pride to Walpole, Massachusetts, on its two hundredth anniversary. Reginald Smith, Vicar, Walpole, Wisbech, England."
. He is vicar of the church which was established in the year 1229. We had hoped to have present here on this occasion a member of the Walpole family, and I wrote to the Bishop of Edinburgh, who is a
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THE BI-CENTENNIAL PARADE ENTERING THE PLIMPTON SCHOOL GROUNDS Headed by Weymouth Legion Band, who were followed by members of Thomas H. Crowley Post, No. 41, A. L.
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descendant of Sir Robert Walpole's brother. Sir Robert had one son, Horace, but no descendant except that. The Bishop of Edin- burgh sent me this letter from Switzerland, where he resides:
"Hotel Des Alps, Murren, Switzerland, August 28, 1924.
Mr. George A. Plimpton, Walpole, Mass.
My dear Sir:
Your very kind telegram has been sent here, and I thank you heartily for it. I wish much that it were possible for me to come, but after I leave here on the 6th, every day is full of engagements of long standing, and I cannot be free for a day till next year. It was a pleasure meeting you at St. Paul's, and I needed no other attraction but that of seeing Walpole and staying with you.
As a lineal descendant of Sir Robert Walpole's brother (you know he had no grandsons), I wish you and the citizens of Walpole every blessing when you meet together on October the 4th, a day I hope to remember, to celebrate the 200th anniversary and hope that the town may go forward with ever increasing prosperity and well being. I feel it an honor that our family name should be borne by one of Massachusetts' towns and hope that it may always stand for liberty, frankness and the love of letters for which our family has stood in the past. Some day I hope I may have the privilege of seeing it. I am,
Yours sincerely, (Signed) G. H. S. Walpole, Bishop of Edinburgh."
You doubtless remember a few years ago when we dedicated the forest, we had on that occasion Lieutenant-Governor Coolidge. We hoped that we might have him today, but he sends Mr. Allen this letter which I take pleasure in reading:
"The White House, Washington. September 11, 1924.
My dear Mr. Allen:
My thanks for your invitation to participate in the Bi-Centennial Anniversary of the Town of Walpole on October 4th. I wish it were possible for me to come, for I have some very pleasant recollec-
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tions of that fine, old town. I cannot be with you for your celebra- tion, but at least I can express my hopes for a delightful occasion and for a long future of prosperity for the community.
Very truly yours,
(Signed) CALVIN COOLIDGE.
Mr. Philip Allen, Chairman
Bi-Centennial Committee, East Walpole, Mass."
Sixty-three years ago I attended the East Walpole primary school and with me another boy from East Walpole. From the primary school we went to the grammar school, and from there to the high school. We got all that Walpole could give us in her public schools. I went to Phillips, Exeter, and he went to Phillips, Andover-he to Harvard, and I to Amherst College. He came back to his own town (fortunately for the town) and entered into business with his father, the sage of Walpole, whom we all honor, and we are only too glad to remember his contribution to Walpole.
When Mr. Bird took up this business, he realized the difficulties and problems which he had to conquer. A few years afterwards a gentleman from the West came to him and said, "Mr. Bird, this is no place for you to do business. Sooner or later you will go to the wall. You ought to go West. See our business. We will drive you out of the market. We have natural gas; we have coal; we have raw materials right at our very door. You can readily see that it is absolutely impossible for you to succeed, and the quicker you realize it, the better."
Mr. Bird said, "True; you are right. The conditions here are hard and difficult, and we people here in New England realize that men only can succeed by hard work; in other words, that our salva- tion depends upon our brains, upon our hard work and upon our character and integrity."
Mr. Bird didn't yield to the suggestion; and pretty soon the town of Walpole wasn't big enough for his business. He moved to the town of Norwood. Soon Massachusetts wasn't big enough and he moved part of his plant to Rhode Island. Then he went to Illinois to establish a plant there. When that didn't prove to be big enough -he wasn't satisfied in the United States-he established a plant in Canada.
So his success is due, as people will tell you, to his brains, to his character, to his stick-to-it-ive-ness, and it is a great pleasure today to introduce to you this honored man of Walpole-this man who
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has done so much for our town, and not simply for our town but for our state and country. He sets an example that should be followed throughout New England, for the salvation of New England depends upon men of his character. It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you, Charles Sumner Bird.
ADDRESS BY CHARLES SUMNER BIRD AT BI-CENTEN- NIAL ANNIVERSARY OF TOWN OF WALPOLE, OCTO- BER 4, 1924
W E are assembled to commemorate the birth of the town of Walpole 200 years ago. It is a short space of time com- pared to the hundreds of thousands of years which have elapsed since the birth of man, and yet within that time the most virile and powerful nation on this earth has been created and tested upon a scale not dreamed of by our fathers in the year 1724.
The voyage of the Mayflower across the adventurous seas of the Atlantic and the landing of our forebears on Plymouth Rock was the most portentous event in human history since the birth of Jesus Christ. The fight for existence under the terrible hard- ships which pervaded the everyday life of that small community strengthened and developed the character and physique of our first settlers. This has been an inheritance of incalculable value not only to the people of New England but even more to the people of other states which were settled by the hardy pioneers who blazed trails across the country and opened the new world to civilization.
It may be interesting to visualize, briefly, the hardships and the perplexities that made up the daily life of a family of this com- munity 200 years ago. The house, fortunately, could be con- structed from the products of the saw mill. It was not necessary to hand-hew the logs as in the earlier days. It was, however, without question a rough and uncouth home of unpainted boards, with one or two windows letting in light through oiled paper and with a roof of thatch or hand-split shingles. One room would be used for a sitting room, dining room and kitchen, and another room, adjoining, for a bedroom. For the children was the attic or loft, reached by a ladder. The great fireplace, with its brick oven, provided means for cooking. The furniture was of the simplest- a large table, a bench, a few chairs and a spinning wheel was all that the average family could afford. At the end of the main room, near the fireplace, would be the articles used for cooking-pots and
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pans hanging on the wall; strings of apples and dried vegetables overhead. Outside was the cistern for water, and a sundial; a clock was a rare luxury in those days. Fish was the chief article of food, supplemented, of course, by vegetables from the garden.
The father, arising before daybreak to start with flint and steel the fire under the porridge kettle, began the daily life of the family. Soon after dawn all gathered to read the sacred Bible and to repeat family prayers. The daily routine which followed was a continuous struggle to forage and to wrest from the soil enough to provide food and.clothing. The mother worked even harder than her husband. Sick or well, she must cook, wash, spin and mend.
Sunday was a day of pious discipline and the entire family went to the meeting house (not in that day called a church), situated usually on the hilltop. Often John Eliot, the glory of New England Puritanism, would come to preach, exclaiming as he bent his aged legs in the ascent, "This is very like the way to Heaven! 'Tis up hill." Every one went to church. There was no sufficient apology for absenteeism. Father rode his horse, mother behind him on the pillion, and the children walked beside. The meeting house was by no means a sanctuary of safety from the Indians, and so, in order to protect his family, father took his gun and powder and shot. Even the minister had his musket by his side.
To many of us the religious faith of our early fathers may seem to have been illiberal and bigoted, and yet from it has come the en- lightened religious tolerance of today when different church de- nominations live side by side in social amity and sympathetic understanding.
It is interesting to note how little our forebears realized the approach of the industrial era which has brought millions of immi- grants and left unsolved many social and economic problems un- known in the early days. John Adams was emphatic in his belief that America's main occupation for centuries to come would be agriculture. Even the wise and farsighted Benjamin Franklin said that we would not be able to supply our own consumption of manufactured goods for at least 1000 years. Manufacturing in the colonies was in fact discouraged by the British Government, and our chief business at that time was the building and selling of ships and the trading in fish. The saw mill was the first adventure of the early settlers in manufacturing.
The first saw mill located on the Neponset River which, as you know, rises in Foxboro and wends its enchanting course through Walpole, was erected in Dorchester before Walpole became a town,
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and in this mill the first bushel of corn was ground by water power. Indian trails became the highways for hauling lumber and logs, the beginning, in fact, of the manufacturing industry in this vicinity. Settlers continued to come until finally the General Court passed an Act permitting the organization of the town of Walpole, named for Sir Robert Walpole, the traditional friend of the American colonists in the English Parliament.
Ebenezer Fales, an ancestor of Lewis F. Fales, our fellow towns- man, was the first Moderator of Walpole, then a community of 100 souls. They began their town existence by building a church and maintaining a school. The social life of Fales and his townsmen centered about the church; in fact, the news of the day, except such as came from travelers gathered in the local taverns, came from intercourse with his fellow men and women in the meeting house.
With the exception of the Bible the Pilgrims read but little. Rugged and independent in their thinking, they did not much care for the opinions of the people of other nations. This is not an altogether unwholesome trait; it makes for greatness in nationality. These men with their frequent quarrels about trivial matters, such as precedure of seating in church, or the trespassing of a neighbor's pigs, were, nevertheless, fathers of the men who a few generations later joined the Minute Men at Concord and Bunker Hill. The struggle for existence, close to the dangers incident to frontier life, developed a hardihood and a sense of independence of great service to future generations; in fact, the political philosophy and religious zeal that guided their conduct have been, and are, the backbone of American institutions.
And now let us turn to the Walpole of today, the Walpole that we know, where many of us were born and where our children, and their children, may live and die. I often think of the Walpole of my boyhood, 50 years ago, when the woods were full of game and the rivers overstocked with fish-hornpout, pickerel, perch and eels, indigenous to the waters of New England. What a delight it was to snare the partridge, trap the rabbit and the muskrat, or, with angle worm and pole, catch the morning breakfast in the unpolluted water of the Neponset River which, as you know, from its source to the Norwood line-a distance of 8 or 10 miles-has a drop of more than 150 feet. Those were primitive days and yet very restful and fully as enjoyable as the feverish ones in which we live today.
I like to think of the quaint and unique factories and mills of the early days-the picturesque yarn mill in South Walpole owned by
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the Clarke family, the father of William and Ralph C. Clarke, our fellow townsmen; the old brick factory controlled and operated by Willard Lewis, a pioneer in the manufacture of carpet lining and cotton batting; the felt hat mill in North Walpole, the property of Ira Gill, the inventor of the process of making felt hats, a rough and ready man of sterling character and of a high degree of intelli- gence; the card clothing factory of Edward Stetson, a righteous and successful business man; the iron mill of Henry and Calvin Plimpton, whose children have prospered in many walks of life. And es- pecially I like to remember the small paper mill in East Walpole, the forerunner of the mills now situated on the very spot where Francis William Bird began his business life. I should like to ramble further and tell some characteristic and amusing anecdotes about the old men who worked in those days from sunrise to sunset. Their blood is in our veins, perhaps the greatest asset we possess.
Since 1724 some towns located at the crossroads, or at the water- falls, have decayed and disappeared, with only a small cemetery plot or a lilac bush to mark the spot where the homes have dwindled and vanished. This is not true of Walpole.
Since 1724 other towns have become great cities. Brick, asphalt and cement have taken the place of stone-walled fields and rutted highways. In such cities families live in hives, swarming over pavements and market places, far away from the silent forests, the green grass and the bubbling brooks. Walpole, on the con- trary, has grown to be a thriving and united community close to the fields, the streams and the woodlands. Walpole, whether con- · sidered as a political unit, a social unit, or an industrial unit, has as much in which to rejoice as any spot on earth. It is, in fact, a typical New England Community of this day. There have been, of course, vast changes since our first saw mill was built, and since our charter was granted 200 years ago. Through all these years it has been a slow but healthful growth, quite free from the hectic and somewhat sordid development so often shown in the expansion of towns and cities, especially when controlled by large industrial corporations.
The products of the factories of Walpole of today are varied and known throughout the world. The mills on the banks of the picturesque Neponset River represent within our town limits more than 7 million dollars of invested capital, with yearly sales exceeding 25 million dollars. Paper machinery in South Walpole; rubber products, specialized machinery, hospital supplies, traveling bags. in Walpole Center; paper and paper specialties in the eastern section of the town,-these are a part only of the products of the labor of
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our prosperous town. It is a satisfaction, as well as an exception, to be able to say that in Walpole Labor and Capital live side by side in a friendly and co-operative spirit. Lockouts and strikes are practically unknown, a situation due largely to the fine spirit that prevails between the employer and the employee, but also to the fact that absentee ownership, so prevalent in most industrial centers, is practically unknown in Walpole. Steadiness of work, insuring full time, is, of course, an important factor, making for good wages and a full dinner pail. I doubt if there is another town in New England so free as Walpole from the fluctuations in trade which invariably bring idle time and loss of wages.
Walpole, fortunately, is not solely a mill town, or a farming community, or a suburban town. It is, in fact, a combination of all, and that is the main reason that it exemplifies the best that there is in American life. Our children, housed in attractive school buildings, enjoy educational advantages not inferior to those of any community. Every child in Walpole has an American chance- that means, too, the best in the world. We citizens of Walpole strive to get for our sons and daughters equality of opportunity in education, in moral and religious training and in physical develop- ment, and on the whole we get what we strive for.
We take a just satisfaction in our wonderful supply of pure water, in our town forest (the birth of which was witnessed many years ago by Calvin Coolidge) and in our park, recently born and destined some day to be an oasis in the center of a large community, just as the Boston Common is to Metropolitan Boston.
All in all, there seems to me to be no better place than Walpole in which to raise healthy and intelligent citizens; and that, after all, is the best that can be said of any town, or of any country. *
We have considered Walpole as it was 200 years ago and as it is today. Now let us look far ahead and endeavor to form a con- ception-a fanciful picture, if you please-of what the conditions may be 200 years from now in the year 2124.
It is likely that no less surprise would come to us, if we could look into the next century, than would come to our first Moderator, Ebenezer Fales, if today he could witness the thousands of airships outspeeding the fastest birds, or if he could hear the human voice hurtling through vast air spaces and caught in a machine, the cost of which is well within the means of the average man. It is not inconceivable that the spoken words of great men, Cicero, Demos- thenes, Washington, Lincoln and others, are still echoing and re-
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echoing in the vast air spaces of the Universe and that these utter- ances may some day be heard as distinctly as a radio, or even a telephone message, is today. Even one generation ago the radio was beyond the dreams of human imagination. What may it not be 200 years from now?
In transportation also there may be great changes. In 200 years the railroads may be, and probably will be, as antiquated as the stage coach is today. The streets and highways at that time may be used by pedestrians alone, unless, indeed, everybody will be equipped with some sort of wings, in which event the streets will be left to horses, if by that time they will not have become extinct. All extended travel may be done by airships, operated in defined lanes at given elevations, thus avoiding collisions. A trip from Walpole to Paris may then be a matter of a few hours, not longer than from Walpole to New York today.
Manufacturing may be stimulated by the development of super- power, secured, very likely, by tapping the storm clouds where vast stores of electricity are known to exist, or even by the breaking down of water into the elementary gases, hydrogen and oxygen, an enormous source of power far beyond the imagination of man.
In the years between now and then Walpole very likely will grow to be a large city, and as one unit of the nation it will share in the struggles and the sufferings and the triumphs which are part of the life of every great people. The first conclusion, which we may draw concerning Walpole is that in the year 2124 it may be a great com- munity which has developed from restless youth to mature man- hood. Just as there was a time in England, whence came the ancestors of many of the inhabitants of Walpole, when the Danes · and Saxons and Normans were upsetting all local conditions, and when all life was uncertain and in a state of reconstruction, so there came a time when people settled down into an ordered civilization. As this process of settling down and maturing goes on I believe that the interest of the people in material things will relatively diminish. It must be evident to all of us that human self-control and human character have not developed along with the develop- ment of material science. Nowadays the attention of man is drawn chiefly to the development of material resources of the country and to the construction of all kinds of mechanical devices. People have bent their energies so strenuously to organizing railroad systems and industries that they have neglected to some extent the essentials of human life; in other words, materialism has far out- reached the spiritual growth of man.
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It may be that in 200 years ahead the human family will have gone through fearful wars and intense suffering. If some scien- tists are correct, great misery is not far off. They say that before many generations the world will be overpopulated to the point of starvation. It certainly is significant that 100 years ago, after thousands of years of existence, our world has a total population of only 850 million people, while in the last 100 years it has in- creased by more than 900 million-more, in fact, in the last century than before during its total existence. There is no doubt that people are rapidly filling the vacant places of the earth and that the extent of arable land is today well known, and therefore, if the rate of increase of population should be maintained, serious prob- lems will stare our children's children face to face.
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