USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Lancaster > The story of colonial Lancaster (Massachusetts) > Part 15
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CHAPTER XLVI
"The Old Order Changeth, Yielding Place to New"
ALTHOUGH THE OUTLOOK WAS GLOOMY AT THE END OF THE Colonial period, Lancaster did what she could to help by sending delegates to the county conventions who voted in favor of enact- ment of laws to alleviate the suffering of the people, and to relieve the farmers of their burden, by imposing excise and import duties. Now, after one hundred and forty years of struggle, the old town entered upon an era of prosperity of which she had only dreamed. She was the oldest and richest town in the County, and had already acquired a reputation which brought many scholarly men to her door.
Schools had necessarily suffered during the lean years of the war. The old grammar school, established by Col. Abijah Willard in 1762, had been taught up to the time of the Revolution by men who later became famous. Samuel Locke and Joseph Willard were teachers here and later presidents of Harvard College. Other instructors were Edward Bass, first Episcopal bishop of Massa- chusetts; Moses Hemenway, afterwards a distinguished clergy- man at Wells, Maine; Gen. Joseph Warren of Bunker Hill fame; Dr. Israel Atherton, the first physician of liberal education in Worcester County; also Peter Green, a physician in the town for many years.
The town voted one hundred pounds for schools in 1784 and to begin to keep the schools "the year through." The names of "school dames" now appear for the first time in the records, and for the first time they divided the schools into districts, of which there were thirteen.
The town voted to build a schoolhouse for a Latin Grammar School, in 1790. This was an advance over anything before attemp- ted in education. It was built on a corner of the little common in front of the fourth church and "opposite Gen. Greenleaf's garden."
Taverns were more numerous than ever before. Joseph Fair- banks kept a tavern at "Deershorns," which section took its name from a trophy of Fairbank's marksmanship-the elk horns
THE OLD SWAN SWAMP, OFTEN REFERRED TO IN OLD DEEDS
The upheavals of the soil caused by the action of frost and water in the Intervale for untold years marks the location of the old Swamp. This is on the south side of the old Turnpike road.
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which he had kept since boyhood, now placed upon the guidepost at the parting of the ways to Sterling. From that date the district has been called "Deershorns" instead of its earlier name "Sly Corner."
The Locke Tavern stood on the North side of the George Hill Road in New Boston (South Lancaster) on what has long been the site of the Nathaniel Thayer estate farm house. Probate Court was held in the Locke Tavern three days each year.
At the junction of the two roads that led from Lancaster to Sterling was the far-famed Gates Tavern. Here Hezekiah Gates and his son Thomas Gates kept an inn well into the next century.
There was at least one tavern on the East Neck run by Elisha White. It would seem that there must have been good old English names given to these old hostelries, but only one name has been found. The "Sun Tavern" is spoken of in the "Annals" of Lancaster but its location is not told.
At the foot of George Hill the Carter's tavern was opened to the public off and on, but the main line of travel was no longer by its door.
Another tavern was just north of the Brick Tavern location on the road to Shirley, and was opened soon after the close of the Revolution by Colonel Henry Haskell, a brave officer of Lancaster, who served throughout the war. The region around this tavern, now almost depopulated, then had inhabitants enough to fill two schoolhouses with children, as twenty-five families lived within a radius of a mile from this corner.
On the road to Leominster, Dr. James Carter had opened an inn in 1788 where he received patients and students to board, and retailed goods of various kinds. Although he did not have a college education and was rough and uncouth, he built up quite a practice in medicine and surgery. He also cared for the town's poor in a house across the road from his house which stood a little to the east of the present Town farm barn.
About a mile farther on towards Leominster was the Ballard tavern, owned by the family who gave the name to the hill when they came to Lancaster from Andover about 1730, and where Dea. Josiah Ballard and his son, Thomas, entertained travelers for fifty years.
A third inn on Ballard Hill between the two mentioned, was run by Maj. Gardner Wilder.
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Jonas Wyman was the first inn-keeper in the present center of the town and his inn stood on the corner of Main Street where the Harvard road begins.
Lancaster was the end of the stage coach line and there was still no post office, so travelers and mail must put up here until taken to their destination by private conveyance and post riders. Jonathan Whitney who owned the "Boston, Concord and Lan- caster mail line" sent the mail and chance passengers to Leom- inster and beyond.
There were two widely patronized stores in the town, one in New Boston owned by Captain Ward and the other on Bridecake Plain owned by Levi Wilder. Both sold goods imported from Eng- land and from the West Indies.
Nearly all of the men who owned retail stores were licensed to sell rum, and quite often turned landlord as well for a year or two.
The mechanics of Lancaster were widely known for their super- ior workmanship. There were blacksmiths, whitesmiths, tanners, fullers, hatters, wheelwrights, cobblers and coopers. Some became so expert at their trade that they came to be at the head of noted firms, such as John Bigelow, who, on Sundays, played the violin in the church choir, and on weekdays was a goldsmith. He became the head of an important firm of Boston jewelers.
There were several master-builders who had been through the long apprenticeship when everything that went into the finishing of a house was fashioned of rough lumber by hand. At the head of these master builders stood Eli Stearns, whose work can still be seen in some fine examples of Colonial architecture in the town.
The first collection of books for a public library was brought together by an association of citizens in 1790. Up to that time the books of the town had been mostly in the libraries of the ministers, physicians, and lawyers, although there were usually a few well- worn books in the homes. Since this time Lancaster has never been without a public library.
For the first time in the life of the town a new religion had taken its followers from the parish church. The cult known as "The United Society of Believers Commonly Called Shakers" was established just over the town line in Shirley in 1780. Many resi- dents of the north part of Lancaster were drawn into the fold, especially around Ponikin Hill. Here many farms changed hands
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and were turned over to a small colony of new comers from Reading when their former owners joined the Shakers.
The coming of Mother Ann Lee and her followers raised a temp- est in the three northern school districts of the town. Men left their wives and women their husbands to accept the celibate life of Shakers. Children were deserted or were taken into the custody of relatives in other towns. Efforts were made by the clergymen in the towns about to stop people from joining the community, but to no purpose. The Shakers believed they had been guided to stay in this very spot, and here they staid for more than 125 years.
No longer is the story of Lancaster the story of a colonial town, nor of the hardships and struggle of pioneers. The town had come into a place in the sun. Some of the ideas of the planters are no longer acceptable, but out of it all something strong and fine re- mained, and has been carried on in the lives of her children all over the land. Whatever may betide us in years to come, we will always hold on to the traditions of these early years which in- fluenced the future of nine towns.
THE END
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APPENDIX
Geology and Geography of Lancaster
WHEN THE PIONEERS CAME TO MASSACHUSETTS THEY LOOKED upon this part of the world as new country. Englishmen of that day knew little of races, religions, or civilizations other than their own. They were ignorant of geography and geology, but realized that they had been transplanted to conditions of great opportunity to satisfy their love of land. They had the courage and energy necessary to make these fertile valleys and broad uplands supply their needs. Just how long it had taken, or by what means these things had come to pass did not disturb their minds. They accepted conditions as they found them and believed that all was a part of the divine plan for their advancement, which without doubt it was, in a broader sense than they realized.
They did not know that the "new" country had been many thousands of years getting into its present form. That interesting feature of the landscape, the winding rivers and the intervales- the broad rich meadows which line their banks-simply furnished unusual planting places to the pioneers.
Geologists tell us that long, long ago the Nashua river followed a course very different from that of today. Fossils of animals of the Cretaceous period have been found in this region. The then lofty mountains gradually were worn away in many thousands of years of weathering in Nature's hands, and the valleys were filled. The surface became a peneplain (almost a plain) sloping away to the ocean.
A few monadnocks (hills of resistant rock standing in the midst of a peneplain) were left on the western horizon: Wachusett and Watatic mountains, Little Wachusett and Asnebumskit; and farther to the north, the higher mountain which was given the name of the formation, Monadnock.
In the succeeding geologic period-the Tertiary-, rivers crossed this peneplain and wore away the rocks into deep and well defined valleys. These ancient channels differed in some
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cases from the present courses. The ancient channel of the Nashua river is believed to have cut through this Cretaceous peneplain making a rock gorge, buried under a drift terrace, of from 120 to 130 feet thickness, which lies at the bottom of Clamshell pond, in Clinton. An earlier course of the north branch of the river probably was directly eastward from North Leominster, past Shirley to Ayer.
Then came the Pleistocene or glacial epoch, when, in the far north the perennial accumulations of snow, piled into masses of glacier ice, descended from the Labrador center over valley, plain and hill until the vast sheets of ice topped the crests of New England's highest mountains. No peak is known to have risen above the huge plateau of ice thus formed which moved irresistibly forward to Long Island and the sea. This ice plain buried the highest peak of Wachusett Mountain 685 feet, and covered the summit of Monadnock to a depth of 374 feet.
Then came the melting and receding of the glaciers, when the glacial waters carried deposits of sand, gravel, rocks, clay, and sometimes berg-dropped boulders into queer earth formations, and filled up many hollows. It piled up in ridges which dammed river valleys to form lakes. These ridges were called moraines. Other low, camel-backed hills, chiefly of clay called drumlins; other rounded hills of assorted sands and gravels were called kames; and long, low, serpentine ridges of sand, gravel and pebbles called eskers.
While yet the outlets were blocked and there were no open channels, temporary lakes filled the river basins, and Lancaster was surrounded by the glacial Lake Nashua.
With the melting of the ice, the barriers retreated, leaving ponded waters, and also the stream channels through which the Nashua river and its tributaries flow. Wide flood plains were left in the valleys, one of which has been submerged by the Wachusett Reservoir.
Accumulations of drift were piled up by the over riding ice, which gouged the rocks in some places, and in others laid strata of clay, gravel and sand, which later-centuries later-were found useful.
The deposits of clay thus formed in the north eastern section of Lancaster were used for more than a century in the making of brick, and are still exposed at the site of the former plant of the New England Brick Company, half a mile to the southwest of the
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Still River station. Slate was cut for many years a mile or more west of the same location, while two miles to the south, not only brick making was carried on, but a pit of laminated clay was used for Fuller's earth, dug out and bagged by the family who owned the land for generations.
The finest example of glaciated ledges found in this region is in Clinton, where the creek crosses North Main Street, in what is known as the "Scrabble Hollow" district. This was laid bare in the flood of 1875, when Mossy Pond dam gave way and rushing waters tore their way through this district.
Examples of drift piled into smooth round or egg-shaped hills, with no out cropping rocks are in this area and add much to the beauty of the landscape. These drumlins, from the nature of their soil, were used for grass lands by the pioneers. What is often called Kilbourn Hill, in South Lancaster, and close to the foot of George Hill, is such a drumlin.
Geologists claim that probably nowhere in New England was the closing stage of the Pleistocene ice sheet more typically developed than in the Nashua Valley.
In the nine miles from Clinton to Shirley the river chose a course through a gorge then formed, bordered by terraces on the west of from 260 to 270 feet, and the course then chosen never has been changed for any great distance. This course gives it a unique place among the rivers of New England, as it is the largest stream east of the Hudson, and the Champlain Valley, flowing throughout the main part of its course in a northerly direction.
The slopes of the rock ridge upon which Lancaster stands are coated with sand and gravel up to about the lake level. An aban- doned channel leaving a marshy sag, brought out the flat terrace of Pine Hill, which ends in an abrupt slope to the present river bed.
The building of the Wachusett dam and consequent filling of the reservoir, submerged a large territory in the southern part of the original land grant to Lancaster.
Nature took a hand at changing the topography in the region of West Boylston, on the evening of November 17, 1755.
An historian of West Boylston gives a description of "The Great Earthquake," which left traces visible to this day only in that part of West Boylston when the territory was in Holden. The location is near the present Holden line, on the Quinnepoxet river. Here a high-bluff of from fifty to eighty feet in height rose
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from the river bank. After the earthquake the opening was but a few feet above the river banks, but on its other side it rose abruptly in some places to the height of seventy feet, thrown there by the quake. Although the effects of this earthquake were felt from Chesapeake Bay to Halifax, in no place did it leave such a mark as here in West Boylston. Trees and stumps were split and thrown some distance. In another part of the town several acres of land sunk several feet, one acre or more of this going down from forty to seventy-five feet.
This earthquake occurred in the same month as the convulsion which destroyed a large part of the city of Lisbon, in Portugal.
An interesting feature of the landscape in Lancaster is the winding river and its intervales-the broad, rich meadows which line its banks and which furnished such unusual planting fields to the pioneers. Spring rains filled the river to overflowing, and made great lakes over these intervales. While the damage by freshets to the poorly constructed early bridges was great and frequent, the value of the deposits left after the flood waters had subsided was inestimable for raising crops.
Historians regret the change from the early spelling of the name of the river, but more than a hundred years ago it often was spelled "Nashua" instead of the early "Nashaway."
The north branch of the river starts from springs in Ashburnham and also is an outlet for lake Wachusett, in Westminster. On its course through Fitchburg and Leominster it is widened by the waters from several little brooks.
The south branch, the first to be called the "Nashaway," rises on the east side of Mt. Wachusett,-an outlet from Rocky pond- and it also is fed from Quinapoxet pond in Holden. The streams from these two sources unite in West Boylston, flow north through Clinton and join the north branch just above the Center Bridge in Lancaster, from there the crooked river, flowing mainly north- ward, soon becomes the boundary between Lancaster and Harvard, and, in a winding course, finds its way to the Merrimack river in the city of Nashua, New Hampshire.
Much water from the upper reaches of the south branch has been diverted into the Wachusett Reservoir, and the once turbu- lent stream which furnished power for so many early mills, is now but a small, slowly flowing river.
The earliest maps show a large body of water extending from
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Still River south to the swampy land north of the State Industrial School in Lancaster. This area was marked "Long Pond," and at the southern end was called "Swan Swamp." It is thought that the deposits of earth in the yearly freshets gradually filled the depression. From springs in this old swamp, the Still river, a small tributary, rises and, flowing through a corner of Bolton, enters the Nashua without touching the village of Still River.
In the course of time the Nashua has changed its course through these alluvial lands, cutting new channels and leaving a number of "dead" river beds where it made a straighter course. Such is one between the main river and the Still river. During the World War, in 1918, it was utilized as a road bed for War Prison Camp, No. I, when a hundred German prisoners of war were encamped on a strongly fortified peninsula, almost an island, formed by a bend in the Nashua river. Much of the land on both sides of the old turnpike traversing this intervale was covered with bunches of coarse grass and swamp mounds, never before turned over within the memory of anyone living. Under supervision of the Quartermaster Department of the United States Army, the Ger- man prisoners cultivated the intervale on the north side of the Turnpike. The land on the south side still shows its virgin soil raised in little mounds by the action of freshets and frosts for centuries. These unusual mounds often are believed, erroneously, to have been left from the days when Indians planted corn there. There, in the beginning was the "Swan Swamp" mentioned so often in the early records.
Lancaster lost many of its beautiful ponds in the divisions of the town. Bare Hill, the most beautiful of all, and Hell pond, supposedly so named because of its fathomless depth, went to Harvard. The two Washacum lakes went to Sterling; while Clinton took Mossy, Clamshell and Sandy ponds. Two small ponds, Gates' and West pond, went to Berlin and Bolton, while Leo- minster claims a part of White's pond, leaving, however, over eighty acres of it in Lancaster. A part of Turner's pond lies in Shirley, part in Lancaster.
Still old Lancaster retains five beautiful ponds in the north part of the town. The largest of the two Spectacle ponds is a beautiful body of clear water with pebbly bottom and deeply indented, wooded shores. Old surveys give it 113 acres of surface and give "Little Spectacle" thirteen. The two ponds are connected
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when the water is high. Fed by springs from beneath, these ponds find an outlet by way of Canoe brook. This little stream flows southwest and on its course is joined by the outlet from Oak Hill pond and empties into the Nashua river a short distance above Ponikin. Oak Hill pond-lying to the southeast of the Spectacle ponds-is like a deep bowl, and until within a few years has never been reached by a road, and was practically unknown except to hunters and fishermen. An old map gives it as of fifteen acres area.
To the north of these ponds runs the old Union turnpike, and it is said that in the days when this road was the connecting link between Brattleboro, Vt., and Boston, passengers on the stage- coaches which traversed it could see these ponds and Fort pond, which lies a little to the north and which covers about one hundred acres. The land about these ponds has become so heavily wooded that their waters are nowhere visible from the highway.
Two miles to the east lies the magical Cumbery pond. Many strange stories have been told about it. It has no visible inlet or outlet. It is said to rise two feet before a storm and that it is not affected directly by rains or by the change of seasons. Levi Burbank, a native of this district, and a teacher all his life, made a close study of conditions and changes in this pond. He decided that its waters rose and fell in a succession of years-three years high and three years low. About twenty feet from the shore a distinct drop of temperature is noticed, and is due to a line of very cold springs.
Some distance away springs, coming with force out of the ground, form a little brook which carries into the Nashua river in the Shabikin district. It is thought that these springs may be fed underground from Cumbery. The beautifully wooded shores formerly surrounding the deep pure waters of this pond have been devastated by artillery fire from Fort Devens. Whether this will affect the singular phenomenon of the rising and falling of the water remains to be seen.
What is known as Cumbery brook has no relation to the pond, but may have been so called from the hill of the same name in this region. It rises from springs some distance to the southwest of the pond in the district once known as "Peachblow." It is a tributary of the Nashua, and at one time turned the wheels for a lead pencil factory on its course.
A number of small brooks traverse the town, finding their way
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to the Nashua river. Wickapekit brook flowing down to the north- east from Sterling crosses the highway at the foot of the western slope of Ballard Hill. This brook is first mentioned in the town records in May, 1719, as the boundary of a highway, and is there spelled Wakapaket. It is mentioned many times in the records and seldom spelled the same way. The spelling Wickapekit seems to be preferred by Lancaster historians, but it is most often pro- nounced "Weekeepeekee."
Goodrich brook, widened to make "Four Ponds" in the Deer- shorns district, was one of the earliest to be used for power, when Thomas Sawyer, a son-in-law of John Prescott, set up his mill nearby. This brook was later used to turn the wheels of a little mill for the making of horn goods, a mile or more to the east on its course, and was again widened to make the two ponds at Fuller's Mill in the edge of Clinton.
Roper's brook, coming down from George Hill is widened in the intervale to form an artificial pond on the Nathaniel Thayer estate, and soon finds its way into the north branch of the Nashua.
Canoe Brook, which drains the waters of the Spectacle and Oak Hill ponds, furnished power for two important mill privileges two hundred years ago. The last to use it was a company for the manufacture of certain parts of shoes, in the late '7os of the last century, which gave the district the name "Shoeshank."
Old Lancaster lost its highest hills when Harvard took Bare Hill and Makamachekamuck, now called Prospect Hill; Bolton, the range connecting Bare Hill and Wataquadock. Sterling took Redstone and Justice Hills and Legate Hill went with Leominster.
George Hill remains the highest point in Lancaster, though from Ponikin Hill at the northeast there is an extensive view of the surrounding country. Assoatetick Hill lies in the north- west corner. George Hill is connected by a range of lesser hills with Ballard Hill, to the north. In the early days, two roads crossed over these two hills and found their way to Greenfield and Brattle- boro, carrying on the post road from Boston to Lancaster.
By modern road construction the remaining hill roads are now hardly more than easy grades, but before the days of automobiles the road north to Shirley went up the very steep and sandy Babel Hill; the road from South Lancaster to the Center was steep on both sides of the bridge that connects them.
The unusual formation of the "Necke of Land," a long plateau
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sloping gently away to the river on both sides, made an ideal setting for a township, and the unusual growth of elm, maple, walnut and buttonwood trees in the intervales adds much to the beauty of the landscape.
The northern part of Lancaster is an elevated plateau more than two miles wide from north to south, with some higher land at the west end, and falling to the river on the east. Much of this district has been taken by the United States Government, in connection with Fort Devens, and firing from heavy artillery has laid waste the homes of the families whose children filled two schoolhouses in the early part of the last century.
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