USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Lancaster > The story of colonial Lancaster (Massachusetts) > Part 14
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wider than the path that the road was filled with loose snow, which rendered the traveling as uncomfortable as can well be imagined. We reached Petersham about sunrise next morning, tired, hungry, and frozen, having traveled in the course of the night thirty miles, the hardest march that I ever endured. I found myself badly frost-bitten, and found but two in my company who were not more or less frozen.
Shays, being informed that Gen. Lincoln was close in his rear, thought it best to leave town, and so rapid were his movements that many left their provisions, and some on the fire preparing for breakfast. Our quartermaster had gone in front of us to look out for houses to lodge in, so when we reached the main street we had only to take possession of such as we were appointed to, some of which were occupied by Shays' men, who soon left and gave us a peaceable entrance. Never were a good fire and breakfast enjoyed more highly by any set of men.
The sufferings of the soldiers that terrible night still echo down the years! Many were frozen to the knees, and suffered for it for years to come. To the hardiest soldier, that night's experience was some- thing to be remembered for life.
Shays and his "regulators" were taken completely by surprise, and fled in all directions. Insurrections were at an end. It was really a happy ending for all concerned, for General Shepard is said to have told one of his soldiers that at no time in his life was he called upon to perform so painful a duty as when he ordered good aim to be taken at Shays' men, many of whom had fought at his side and stood with him through the most trying scenes of the war. They all knew that he was a brave soldier and officer, and they were glad not to be compelled to fire upon him and his mistaken followers, as enemies.
Shays fled to Vermont where he remained for a year. He was pardoned, and returned to his home in Pelham; but afterwards removed to the state of New York, where he became a Revolu- tionary pensioner. One hundred and fifty of his followers who were captured were forgiven, and no one was punished for sedition.
An old epigram which plays upon the word chaise, in use at the time, but spelled "shays," is this:
Says sober Will, "Well, Shays has fled,
And peace returns to bless our days."
"Indeed," cries Ned, "I always said He'd prove, at last, a full-back Shays;
And those turned over and undone,
Call him a worthless Shays to run. - Ward.
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Three years later Alexander Hamilton launched his sound finan- cial policy for the United States, and the debts incurred by each state were assumed by the national government. Taxes were lightened, trade was revived, new manufactures were introduced. Many who had lost their property migrated to the Ohio valley, where they took up land grants. The complaints of the people were silenced and when spring came in 1787, peace reigned in the land.
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CHAPTER XLIII
More of Mother Lancaster's Children Come of Age
TERRITORIALLY THE TOWNSHIP OF LANCASTER WAS SO LARGE THAT the small groups which had gathered in various sections had found it impossible to get to the center to attend church, town meetings and schools. The outcome was the establishment of these small groups into self-governing political units.
At the close of the Revolution, as we have seen, three such units were well established. Harvard, Bolton and Leominster were rounding the half century mark, and now Sterling had joined them.
This "second Precinct" had fought through three generations for separation, and now by outvoting the mother town had gained it in 1781. At last the people living on Sterling's five hills would no longer be taxed for Lancaster's eight bridges-long and often a source of great expense.
Except for a strip of land about a mile wide and known as "the Mile," the territory upon which Sterling grew was not a part of Sholan's grant to Lancaster, but was largely a part of the "Addi- tional Grant," which had been purchased from George Tahanto, nephew of Sholan, in 1701. Still more territory was added to the "second precinct" when a strip of land of irregular shape, known as "Shrewsbury Leg," was divided between Sterling and West Boylston.
The town was settled by families of Lancastrian origin. Gamaliel Beaman's and numerous Sawyer families had been there from the first, and these, with Osgoods and Houghtons, Willards, Wilders and Ruggs carried on the Lancaster tradition. When they married the women of these families gave their maiden names to their sons.
A family by the name of Burpee came from Rowley in 1775 and settled on what became "Rowley Hill" about two miles west of the Center. The Burpee descendants have always been prominent in Sterling.
The numerous Kendalls, who also named a hill to the southeast of the Center, were descended from Reverend Thomas Carter of Lancaster and Woburn, by marriage.
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Now Sterling far exceeded the old town in numbers of horses, oxen and other cattle, sheep and swine, and, too, in mowing and meadow acres. By the census of 1784, Sterling had 440 polls to Lancaster's 307, and five more dwellings than the mother town. No weakling, this new offspring!
Boylston had practically run her own affairs since 1743. It cov- ered a part of both Lancaster and Shrewsbury. Now the struggle began for independence from both towns. Lancaster gave up a strip of land a mile and a half wide at her southeast corner in 1780, and established the line which is today Boylston's northern bound- ary. Six years later Shrewsbury granted her land and Boylston became an independent township, in 1786.
The first permanent settlements in Boylston were upon that part of the town's land which had been granted by Lancaster, and the settlers were descendants of Thomas Sawyer and Mary Pres- cott. They built a corn mill on the Nashua river probably as early as 1705. Around this mill grew the settlement known as Sawyers Mills for nearly two centuries until by the building of the Wachu- sett Dam it was flooded over. These people were decidedly "of Lancaster" by birth and tradition, and Lieut. Aaron Sawyer, the brave soldier who figured so prominently in Lancaster's part in the Revolution, was the first Town Clerk of Boylston.
The Ball family, probably the second to settle in Boylston, went from Lancaster. They were descended from John Ball, who with his wife Elizabeth and their infant child had been slain by the Indians in 1676, and two other children of theirs had been carried into captivity. The original farm in Boylston remained in the Ball family down to the present century.
The Bennett family was also from old Lancaster, and had figured in the massacre of 1676, when George Bennett, a grandson of that Richard Linton who built the first house in Lancaster, was killed. Bennett left a widow and five little children, of whom Samuel, born in 1665, settled in Boylston territory.
By the census of 1790 the new town of Boylston was given a population of 841.
Before Boylston was well on her way, her "first precinct" was looking for independence and clamoring for a part of her territory also some from Sterling and Holden. This was first "the precinct" and afterwards the town of West Boylston.
Here the Bigelow families had long been prominent. They were
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descended from the John Bigelow who was carried away captive to Canada in 1705, with Thomas Sawyer, Jr., and his son Elias, and who, when about to be burned at the stake by their captors, were rescued by a friar. For their ransom the younger Sawyer agreed to remain for a year and build the Canadians a saw-mill- the first in that country-and teach them the sawyer's art, for they were sawyers by trade as well as by name.
Another precinct was clamoring for independence at the south end of Bolton. The ecclesiastical war which had been raging in Bolton hastened the desire of those in this section to become inde- pendent, and when the "South Parish" of Bolton was allowed to become a separate precinct, in 1778, the new town of Berlin was virtually established. Among the families from Lancaster who settled here was that of Captain Edward Johnson, one of the three supervisors of Lancaster's affairs in the early days of the planta- tion, and for 150 years this family was active in Berlin affairs. Here, too, were thriving branches of the Carter, Sawyer, Houghton and Wilder family trees.
As divisions and subdivision of territory were made, and lines changed, small settlements of people belonging to two or three towns, sprang up. Around the boundary stone which divided the lines of Berlin, Boylston and Lancaster, and including farms in each town, grew the settlement known as "Six Nations." Philip Larkin and his sons were owners of several hundred acres in what is known as Larkinville. The Larkins were Irish, and it is said that the father migrated to Baltimore, where there were others of the Roman Catholic faith; but his sons remained on the old farm. The other families of "Six Nations" were the Wilders, Carters and Saw- yers, from England; Andrew McWain, from Scotland; Louis Con- querette, from France, also a family called Hitty; Daniel and Frederick Albert, from Holland. The sixth was the family of John Canouse, a Hessian deserter from the captive army of Burgoyne.
The children from these families attended school in what was known as the "Six Nations Schoolhouse," which eventually was moved to its present location on the north side of Charlotte Street in South Lancaster.
To the west of Boylston was the tract known as "Shrewsbury Leg" which belonged in turn to Shrewsbury, Lancaster, Sterling, Boylston and West Boylston. Farms in parts of this section were in turn a part of the five towns.
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After Boylston had been taken off, what remained at the south end of old Lancaster was the settlement known as "the Mills," where, since the days of the pioneer Prescott, various branches of his family had lived. But few other families had settled in the neighborhood, for Lancaster had given John Prescott many square miles of territory in acknowledgment of his public services. His lands covered most of the present business center, and much of the mill property, in what is now Clinton. The second John Prescott extended these lands to the westward, and they were owned in succession by a third and a fourth John. The fifth John also held the Homestead. He died childless.
A few farms had been cleared and homesteads set up on the roads leading westward, but all about to the southeast and south were the original dense pine forests. The few families were quite near to the center of the mother town, and the period covered by this story shows little growth in population at the Mills.
At the death of the fifth John Prescott, in 1791, there began a subdivision of this vast estate. The Prescotts and their kinsfolk, the Sawyers, sold the ancestral lands to a succession of new owners, many of them from nearby towns. Then the Burdetts, Lowes, Rices, Harrises, mostly from Leominster and Boylston, brought in the comb industry. Within fifty years the "Mills" became Millville, then Clintonville and, in sixty years, the town of Clinton, second in importance and size of the Lancastrian towns.
It is much to be regretted that Clinton did not bear the Prescott name, so long and so honorably associated with its beginning. Little attention was paid in that day to the musical Indian names long in use in the neighborhood. Today such a name would probably be chosen instead of the name of a hotel in New York, where the industrial heads of the town found comfortable lodging.
Lancaster, Leominster and Bolton harked back to old English towns for names; Harvard, for no known reason, took the name of the Charlestown clergyman; Sterling was named for the Scotch earl who fought for American independence, but misspelled, as his name was "Stirling." Berlin took the name of the German city without giving it the correct accent; and Boylston took the name of Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, at the time famous for his work of inocu- lating for smallpox. When the second precinct of Boylston came into its own, with a wealth of local Indian names to choose from, "West Boylston" was chosen.
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And so old Lancaster was left-still centering around the point from which the first surveys were made. Her youngest child, Clinton of the future, was not yet even a village, but the seven other towns which had gained their independence were still tied to the mother town by strong family attachments, and it is said that there was much visiting among the clans in those early days when Leominster was a days journey from old Boylston.
Just as the pioneers were Englishmen living in America, so the people living in these new townships were Lancastrians, independ- ent of the mother town, but connected by strong family ties. In the Revolutionary war, where soldiers from all these parishes were in the same regiment, given names were so often repeated in the various branches of the family tree, that there were often several men with the same name in one company. As an example, twenty- two soldiers by the name of Wilder, all descendants from the pioneer, Thomas, served from Lancaster: there were nearly as many Carters, Willards, Houghtons, Sawyers, Beamans, Whites. At the close of the war a great exodus started, and carried many of these family names into new territory, especially to Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.
An interesting example of this swarming of pioneer families is found in the descendants of Thomas Wilder, who came from Eng- land in 1639, and settled first in Charlestown and Hingham, then in 1659 at Lancaster. One son remained in Hingham where he carried on the name. The other three sons married in Lancaster: two established their homes on Bridecake Plain, and the third on George Hill, at the homestead. When it came to the third genera- tion, besides several who remained in Lancaster, there was John, of Petersham; Jonas, of Bolton; Josiah and Jonathan, of Sterling; William of Bolton; Aholiab and Bezaleel, of Shutesbury; and David, of Leominster. Samuel, John, Abel and Jacob carried the family name into Vermont. Jonathan, of the same generation as David, had eleven sons, nine of whom grew to manhood and carried the names Jonathan, David, John, Luke, Cephas, Prescott, Lewis, Henry and Frederick. All had large families. Then there were numerous daughters, who, by marriage into other pioneer families, had many children by the given name of Wilder.
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CHAPTER XLIV
The Lancastrian Towns at the Close of the Revolution
AT THE CLOSE OF THE ANGLO-AMERICAN WAR ALL OF THE NEW parishes were in straitened circumstances; but with the courage which carried them through to independence, they now started on a period of greater prosperity than they had experienced. It took time and labor, but they gave both.
Harvard, the oldest "daughter" was now fifty years old, in 1782. At the outbreak of the Revolution the population was 1,315. Of these 338 were males above sixteen years of age, "likewise two aged Negro men."
From the first, apples and peaches had been grown in Harvard and a new era in prosperity in small fruit culture and export was at hand. Thousands of barrels of apples were sent yearly to Liver- pool, England. Harvard was furnishing gravestones for the country- side for miles around. All the blue slate so much seen in the old cemeteries came from the slate quarries on Pin Hill, where it was cut in wedges and then split and finished, even to the "weeping- willow" or "blissful cherub" ornament. This industry was carried on until marble and granite stones became more popular.
Harvard has had a remarkable record for carrying on the inde- pendent, progressive, sturdy traits and habits of its pioneers, many of them descendants of John Prescott and Major Simon Willard of Lancaster.
Bolton, having left the mother town in 1738 was marking a half century. Her population at the close of the war was 856. Bol- ton's contribution to the neighboring towns was the product of her famous line kilns, which was used wherever bricks were laid in the country round about. This lime was of such excellent quality and durability that today it shows no signs of weakness in build- ings which have stood for well over a century. The Bolton orchards, like Harvards, have always been a source of increasing revenue.
Bolton holds a place all her own in the ecclesiastical affair of this region, and was the first to oppose the tyrannical stand of the
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clergy. The controversy was partly a personal warfare, but drew upon the sympathies of the people in the surrounding towns, who did not hesitate to take sides.
Reverend Thomas Goss, pastor of the Bolton church from 1741 until 1770, had lost the good will of many of his parishioners through his personal habits and through his tyranny in church matters. He would negative a vote of the entire parish or exclude persons from communion according to his whims; he shifted communion dates to suit himself. Several times he announced communion and then because he saw someone in the congregation whom he disliked he dismissed the congregation without the communion service.
A successor was chosen when Mr. Goss was dismissed, in 1771, and Reverend John Walley became pastor. He was acceptable to but a part of the parish. The town was divided into "Gossites" and "Walleyites" in a feud which left its imprint for generations. In the midst of this parish quarrel the country's war for Independ- ence came on and the weight of greater anxieties buried for a time the church dispute. Mr. Walley remained as pastor until 1783.
Leominster, the third town to be set off was making rapid strides in its development towards the flourishing manufacturing city it was to become-destined to far outnumber the other Lancas- trian towns. During the forty years before its incorporation it is always mentioned in the records as "the Additional Grant." Families of Joslins, Beamans, Sawyers, Houghtons, Osgoods, Car- ters, Whites, Whitcombs and Wilders had come up from Lancaster about 1725. Another decade and the village was ready to build a church and settle a minister, and then to ask for the separation which was granted by the courts and made them an independent town in 1740.
At the close of the Revolution, for which its full quota of men had been furnished, Leominster's skilled workmen turned their attention to the promotion of the town's industries, with such success that a great variety of articles came to be manufactured and sent all over the world. Three centers of water power furnished by the Nashua river were in use, besides other powers from the large brooks which are its tributaries. The Kendall paper mill, the first in Leominster, led to the development of this industry, which has made Fitchburg important today.
Forty years passed before the mother town had to give up more territory and then, as we have seen, the end of the war brought
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many changes in the old town, and brought the three new towns into Worcester County.
The population of Lancaster after all its territorial losses was 1460: Harvard, 1387; Bolton, 856; Leominster, 1186, and "in the Gore adjoining," 27; Sterling, 1428; Boylston, and its precinct which was to become West Boylston, 841; Berlin, 512.
Ninety-five percent of the whole population of Massachusetts at the close of the Revolution was of English descent; a little over three and a half per cent were Scotch, and only one per cent were Irish, thus leaving a very small margin of other nationalities.
Slaves had never been listed as population even before their possession was forbidden by law in 1783. For a long time slavery had been considered unwise as well as immoral and slaves had very generally been freed or disposed of in Massachusetts.
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CHAPTER XLV
The Important People in Lancaster at the End of the Colonial Period
UP TO THE TIME OF THE REVOLUTION THE RULING SPIRITS IN Lancaster had been lineal descendants of the pioneers. Now at the close of the war not one of the leading citizens was of pioneer ancestry.
William Stedman was County Sheriff and was in Congress; General John and Judge Timothy Whiting, Sheriff William Green- leaf, Michael Newhall, Col. Edmund Heard, Ebenezer Torrey, Joseph Wales, Merrick Rice, Jonas Lane, John Maynard, Jacob Fisher, Eli Stearns and John Thurston were the ruling spirits, and all new-comers.
The town's venerable clergyman, Reverend Timothy Harring- ton, had become very feeble after his service of more than forty years, and he was soon to have a colleague. Reverend Nathaniel Thayer was chosen and soon began his ministry of forty-seven years.
Next in importance to the minister came Judge Sprague and Captain Samuel Ward.
Judge John Sprague came to reside in Lancaster in 1770 and at once became an influential citizen. He graduated at Harvard College in the class of 1765. He taught school in Roxbury and then began the study of medicine. He later moved to Worcester and there began the study of law in the office of Col. James Putnam. Eventually he came to Lancaster and opened an office in partner- ship with Abel Willard, of the prominent old Lancaster family. The Revolution interrupted this partnership as Abel Willard was a Loyalist and left Lancaster in 1775, never to return.
In Joseph Willard's memoir of Judge Sprague he tells us that the Judge, "having purchased a small farm in the center of the town, labored upon it as a farmer; dismantled himself of his linen and ruffles and other appropriate habiliments, and assumed the gar- ments of labor, which were then the checkered shirt and trousers."
After the war Judge Sprauge represented the town in the General
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Court and later in the Senate. Soon he was appointed Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas for Worcester County, and, in short, received all the honors his fellow townsmen had power to bestow.
As there were no law schools it was customary for young men to read law in the offices of established barristers, and many young men studied under the guidance of Judge Sprague.
At the convention for ratifying the Constitution of the United States in 1778, Judge Sprague voted for ratification, even though he had been instructed by the town to vote against it. He with Ephraim Wilder of Sterling, Samuel Baker of Bolton and David Wilder of Leominster were four of the seven men in Worcester County's fifty representatives who so voted, and thus brought honor to their towns. Again Judge Sprague was honored by being chosen a Presidential elector when Town, State and Nation voted unanimously for George Washington for President and John Adams for Vice-President of the United States.
Captain Samuel Ward, though now in the prime of life, had avoided a public career, although he might have had any position he desired. The war with England had seemed to him futile at the outset but he contributed in every way to the support of those who fought for it. He was not only respected but loved. As a merchant he had a wide acquaintance and to the end of his long life he never lost interest in all that was going on about him. His advice was sought by young and old and no account of him fails to mention his friendly smile nor of his keen ability to read character. His generosity to Lancaster is carried on by the bequests in his will.
Two brothers, Timothy and John Whiting had come to Lan- caster to reside during the Revolution. Both were destined to hold important places. Both, as boys of eighteen and sixteen years had marched beside their father at the head of the Minute Men in April, 1775. Timothy succeeded his father as tavern keeper in a famous tavern on the Old Common. John Whiting was a favorite moderator at public meetings and usually was a member of the school committee. He had studied the Latin and French languages and won particular renown for his courtly manners. Long after his death "as polite as Squire Whiting" was a by-word. These brothers were Jeffersonian in politics, and as that policy was very unpopular here, they never won the high places in Lancaster for which they were fitted.
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Dr. William Dunsmoor who had been not only town physician but the most prominent of Lancaster's patriots, died in 1784, and the two physicians succeeding him were Israel Atherton and Josiah Wilder, the former a graduate of Harvard College, the latter of Yale.
The arts were not wholly neglected in spite of the hard times for a Massachusetts Spy of this period printed the following notice: "The French Gentleman who taught Dancing and the FRENCH LANGUAGE grammatically, in Worcester the last winter and in Lancaster the spring ensuing, begs leave to inform the Publick that he has again opened a SCHOOL in LANCASTER, near the meeting House for the same purpose: Where he will pay the greatest atten- tion to every Lady or Gentleman who will honour him with his or her presence."
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