USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Sandwich > Two hundred and fiftieth anniversary celebration of Sandwich and Bourne, at Sandwich, Massachusetts, September 3, 1889 > Part 6
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in Sandwich cradles, and I certainly wish all these travellers in this heyday of their hope all good wishes ; that their cup may not be bitter, nor they drink it to the dregs, and that the passion of our mortal life, sent down as it were to put men to proof may leave all these brides and grooms at their death's day in their white sleep, with their work well done. The home life of our people showed generally, an ascent toward comforts and the enjoyments of civilization. Chil- dren stand at meal time and are helped after their elders. Well-filled barns, with an ox for beef, hanging in them about Thanksgiving time, a fat wood pile for the winter, a stock of cows, a flock of sheep with the owner's mark on them, brought out of the woods in fall, plenty of wild game and fish helped make our people comfortable in doors. They rose early and wrought late, and there were few idlers. Prayers, morning and evening, and early to bed, plenty of ex- ercise out doors and not a little for the women in ; fresh air, pure water, plenty of the tonic of frost in the long winter days and nights, comfortable, homespun dresses, with a little finery and more starch ; white sanded floors, brass andirons and candlesticks, well cleansed; the big pewter platters scoured to brightness ; some ancient china ; big chests pleth- oric with honest woollen blankets and linen sheets. These things and many other like, made a circumstance and an en- vironment which tended to much actual comfort. Then on winter nights, especially, with the frost outside and the sleep- ing chambers overhead, quite as cold as the barn, but full of oxygen, the family gathered in and around the big fire- place to spend the evening. The stout sons are perhaps ru- minating upon the next day's wood chopping or a new pair of oxen. Their father's land and live stock will go to them ; usually by English custom, a double portion to the eldest son. The daughters will have as their portion some of the house furniture, a few pounds sterling, some of their mother's dresses and if the marriage settlement so said, their equal share of what their mother brought to the house, and most of all, a certain yearly share of the wool or flax raised on the place. So tonight Thankful and Bethia and Lydia, as well as their neighbors' girls, are busy over some sort of linen or household drapery, which may serve for their own house-
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keeping; demure Pilgrim maidens trying to prepare for their woman's future. The fire on the hearth is blazing un- der and through the oak logs ; the mother is in her low chair in the chimney corner, right hand side, near the oven, knitting or mending; the father in his stiff-backed chair or his roundabout, in a leather jacket, sits, the same side, further out on the hearthstone, in our day supplanted by a stove or register. Left side on a long wooden settle or bench with a high, solid wooden back, and from the chim- ney corner out, sit the small boys and girls, ruddy, restless and warm. How rolicking and brilliant in its old way, with the embers falling into fantastic shapes and all sorts of sup- posed faces in the red coals, this vagrant fire behaves for these folk, and as if for the king's delight. Bethia or Lydia will per- haps steal a glance across the woollen in their lap at these same coals, to espy as the fancy runs, the face of their future husband ; the demure but quite human Pilgrim maids they are. It is not a bad place for these youngsters, on that settle in the chimney corner. In clear nights, by looking up, they can see the stars through the chimney's mouth. And when on stormy nights, with a northeaster rum- bling and thundering across the chimney's mouth, driving the thick snow towards the hill ridge, what a place for a child to hear his elders tell of the pirates' money, the witch's ride, the war of Revolution and those endless stories of the sea, which, with pipe in their mouth and a close watch for the falling embers, we heard in our childhood our elders tell, around a Cape Cod hearthstone, in an ancient Pilgrim house. Our fathers had not our comforts, but they certainly had their own ; and the balance is not altogether in our favor.
After Rev. Benjamin Fessenden's death, in 1746, Rev. Abraham Williams became the Sandwich minister in 1749. He was your minister during the Revolution, dying in 1784. I gather that he was very like his predecessors, and bating at least his diminished salary in war times he seems to have fared very much as they had ; also that he was a very busy and useful man in secular affairs, surveying wood lots, making wills and drawing deeds. As a matter of fact, the parsons on the Cape kept the lawyers out by taking the law business, and to a degree this was also true of the doctors. A town par-
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son then was a sort of town university. It probably illus- trates Mr. Williams' patriotism, to say that two of his sons died in British prison ships. By his wife he was connected with some of the leading families in modern Massachusetts. He seems to have been a man of property, at least he owned two African slaves, one of them, Titus Winchester by name, who ought to have, and shall have some mention on this occa- sion, not only because of his own conduct, but because of that patient African race who built so many of our old stone walls and worked hard as slaves of the whites. The Red- man would not work, and died ; the blackman worked and lived. Our fathers bought, sold or devised them very much as we would cattle. Everybody did. In general, I suppose they were well treated. Some were manumitted. It was all wrong by the Lollard rule. One man ordered by his will that his servant Dinah should be sold, and the money laid out in purchasing Bibles for his grandchildren. And yet the Bible has said of old, "that God hath made of one blood all them that dwell upon the face of the earth, and that this is one of the only two great commandments, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." "Bury me, said a slave in the Gorham family, "as near as you can to the feet of my mistress." Titus Winchester was Mr. Williams' slave, and would not accept manumission, staying with his old master until the latter died. Then Titus went to sea and elsewhere and was faithful over the few things of his poor maimed life. When he died he left some property and your town clock to the First parish. I knew a small boy rather intimately, some fifty years ago, who used to think that that clock's face was black because a black man gave it. For the sake of Titus and his race, I trust that longer than that clock's face is black, Sandwich folk will tell their children that the man who gave that clock had a black face, but a life that was very white ; that his name was Titus Winchester ; and that Christianity, of any honest sort, is forever color blind.
We approach now the period of the Revolution, 1776- 1783, an epoch in our town history. I do not propose to re- tell the story, but only to throw some side lights upon it from Sandwich history. But here, again two preliminary questions thrust themselves upon our notice. First, was the
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Revolution, an evolution or an accident ? I say, that it was an inevitable and fated evolution ; made so by the two root ideas of the Puritan movement, and under a law as fixed as a law of Nature. If a man has a right to be free, he has a right to maintain his liberty with his sword. If it was wise in him to come 3,000 miles to enjoy his privilege, it was wise for him to stand in military array ; watch late on guard ; rise early to begin the battle and hang to his foe, until he asked quarter, to defend his privilege. There has been much time wasted over this matter. The Puritan, I take it, was a rebel - and from the start. If he was not a premeditated rebel, he was certainly a predestinated one. At the roots, the Puri- tan movement was always coherent, even when its surfaces, as in the Quaker or. Baptist troubles, showed dubious or con- fusing. I might illustrate by what goes on every day in your bay, and long before the Mayflower sailed on its hori- zon towards Plymouth rock. The surface of that bay, as you all know, is liable to innumerable changes. In a clear day, often blue ; with a thundercloud over head, black ; in a calm day, placid; with a north-east wind lashing it, turbulent, cruel, hammering in the hoar rage of its crested waves the beachsands, as if it would rend its way to your hills. But, under all these changes, the great bay current of under waters, undisturbed sweeps west and north, around the feet of those sand bluffs of Plymouth woods. The surfaces of the Puritan movement were indeed confused, but its trend was always one, away from kings and towards a republic. The roar of the battle on Bunker's Hill, was but the ever- augmenting echo of that axe, which smote off the head of King Charles the First.
The second matter is about the Sandwich tories, or as they called themselves royalists. There were pleuty of them here and the like is true at least of Barnstable, two towns who at that time had at least as much intelligence and as much at stake, as any of their neighbors. When the Boston patriots in 1769 invited delegates to a convention to consult about public affairs, this town voted, after a long debate, 33 to 42, not to send. Now I ask you Sandwich men of today, whether the current popular opinion, here and elsewhere, concerning our tories of the Revolution, is a just one. Here
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in a test vote were 42 men against 33 in this town, your an- cestors and mine, who at that time at least were unwilling to take action against the king. Of course I think they were in the wrong but they thought otherwise. Are you prepared to hold, as much of the historical writing I have seen, implies, that this, a majority of your voters, were any more base, any less respectable than the majority, who afterwards put them down or drove them out ? That some of our tories did some- times silly or very brutal things, or made provoking speeches as Timothy Ruggles did, I know very well, just exactly as I know that some of the Sandwich whigs were often remorseless and cruel. Such passions always show themselves in revolutions and are a part of their price. There have never been any saints in Sandwich or anywhere else on earth. The saints are in heaven alone. Allowing, then, all the excesses alleged against our Sandwich tories, and is it not true that generally they were the average Christ- ian men found at that time in this town ? What should be said of many of them is this ; they took the losing side and paid the penalty ; that they were wrong but that they fol- lowed, apparently, their own judgment, as the Pilgrim man- hood has always done. Is it any less worthy to follow con- science, leave your home and property and go to Nova Scotia to live under a king, than it was for the Pilgrims to leave England upon their conscience and come to this wilderness to escape a king? Is conscience which leads men to a costly sacrifice only venerable when it is a wise one, going right and never venerable when going wrong? If so this poor world must rewrite much of its history. For my part, and speaking now for myself personally, I say this ; that of the Ellis blood which happens to connect me with Sandwich folk, some were whigs and some were tories. Let all true whigs of Sandwich rest, if you like, in eternal fame. I only insist that the time has come when no wise man can afford to say that Sandwich tories are sleeping in dishonored graves.
In 1765, war between France and England, costing Eng- land something like £100,000,000, ended. That war, so far as it concerned these English colonies, was to prevent them from being strangled by the cordon, which France was grad- ually drawing about them from Quebec to New Orleans very
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much as, until Charles Martel broke it, the Mohammedans had drawn the cord of their power around Mediaval Europe. Every student of history, if he be of English stock, reads with a sigh of relief the event of Abraham's Heights, where the French allies went down before the cross of St. George, and beholds a great deliverance. At first sight, it would seem only reasonable that these colonies, thus delivered, should pay their share of the expense. A large part of their share, it is true, these colonies had already paid in money and blood ; but there was perhaps, by the rule of mere arith- metic, something more due. The British crown passed the Stamp Act and so proceeded to tax these colonies. This they resisted. Was there not a cause ? Were not the old artificers in linen from North Ireland, driven out by British greed, or at least, their sons, still here ? Had the Puritan forgot the Star Chamber and the bitterness of exile? Was there not cause to distrust their old oppressors? It is true, the Stamp Act was repealed in 1766, but the resolve of Par- liament " that of right it ought to have power to bind the colonies" left the sting undrawn. The answer of this town was to order the very next year, 1767, a powder house to be built. The powder, also, came and in due time was burnt. Henceforth and until the close of the Revolution, the his- tory of Sandwich responds and runs with the trend of that truly patriotic war. In 1770, Sandwich voted not to buy taxed goods, like tea, paper, etc., and to hinder their sale, until redress was had. Jan. 6, 1773, a very sober town meeting was held, and the town parson, Mr. Williams, was called on to open the meeting with prayer. The late speech of the Royal Governor to the Legislature in Boston, was of- fered, but refused a hearing. A letter from the patriot com- mittee in Boston was then read, and plain resolutions, set- ting forth the people's rights, were passed. A committee was also chosen in behalf of the town to correspond with the Boston committee. As this was a post of danger, as well as honor, I record the names of that committee. They are Dr. Nathaniel Freeman, Moses Swift, Seth Freeman, John Allen, Joseph Nye, 3d, George Allen, Simeon Fish, Mordecai Ellis, Elisha Pope, John Percival and Joshua Tobey. The Allens, being of the Society of Friends, asked to be excused and
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were. March 17, 1774, voted, that " the letters of the Gov- ernor and Lieut. Governor are replete with malicious enmity." Also voted, that the emptying the tea into Boston harbour, was " necessary," that they would neither buy nor use tea, until the tax was repealed, and "that an attested copy of these votes be transmitted, with the thanks of the town, to the committees of correspondence of Boston and Plymouth, for their manly opposition to a most pernicious measure, as- suring them that we are ready to join them in opposing ev- ery unrighteous attempt upon our liberties." At this meet- ing, Zaccheus Burgess, Lot Nye and John Dillingham, Jr., were appointed on the committee of correspondence, in place of the Allens. September 30, of the same year, it was re- commanded by the town, that the people should be well pro- vided with arms and ammunition ; that every male of six- teen years of age, or over, be armed and drilled ; that com- mon pedlers of English, Scotch or India goods, be suppressed ; that a congress of all the towns in Barnstable County should be held to consult for the common safety ; that the present doings of the town be published ; that the selectmen be di- rected to purchase a chest of arms, and to deliver them at first cost, to the inhabitants, and four barrels of gunpowder with lead and flints in proportion, in addition to the town's present stock ; also thanks to Meltiah Bourne, Esq., for the timber presented by him, to be erected a liberty pole. All this meant war, meant revolution, and that of a very sturdy kind. I am one of those, who insist that in the achievement of our independence, no town on this Cape is entitled to the preeminece. No Cape town of that age, but did its duty, according to its ability, in its own local and personal way. But, I am bound to say that the men of affairs in Sandwich, strike me as a ready, sturdy, resolute set of men, slow to de- cide, but fearless to carry out their plans, once made; a set of men, hard to be denied their will; selectmen, who made little noise, but did a deal of sound, hard work. And if you seek now in these days, after one of your citizens, who represents in these gentler days, both physically and mentally, these selectmen of old, you will not find a better, than my old schoolmate and fellow townsman, the chairman of this meeting.
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It was in this year that Gen. Gage succeeded Hutchin- son as royal governor in Boston, and the commerce of that town was destroyed by the Boston Port Bill. To the distress of Boston all the Cape towns sent relief, in cord wood and money ; Sandwich, £19, Barnstable, £12 10s., and Falmouth, blessed be that deed, near £37 and 82 cords of wood. In September of this same year, a singular occurrence, headed by a Sandwich man, connects itself with your town and should never be forgotten. As things then were, the courts had ceased to be for the people but were to be used against them for the King. It was determined to stop the County Courts. This was an overt act of treason, and exposed every man concerned in it to the block, and some two years before the Declaration of Independence. By careful pre- arrangement an orderly company of men from Wareham, Rochester, and Middleboro, marched down to this town. Here they were joined by the Sandwich men, the horsemen ahead, tho foot behind, marched by your mill pond, up among the hills on the old road to Barnstable. Dr. Nathan- iel Freeman, "Brigadier Freeman," as the old folk called him, was conductor in chief. I am here to flatter no family pride, but I am bound to say, and in this I think the historians of the Cape towns will agree with me, that among all men who helped carry this Cape with the patriots into Revolution, Brigadier Freeman stands easily first. I take the description of this chief of Sandwich patriots from the words of an eye witness in this singular procession, the late Hon. Abraham Holmes, of Rochester. "Freeman was a fine figure of a man, between thirty and forty years of age. He had a well made face, a florid countenance, a bright and dignified eye, a clear and majestic voice ; and wore a hand- some, black lapelled coat, a tied wig as white as snow, a set up hat with the point a little to the right." The procession called themselves " The Body of the People " and certainly a more democratic gathering had hardly been seen since the swarming of a Teutonic tribe. They elected their own of- ficers, whom they implicitly obeyed ; agreed not to drink strong drink nor swear, had prayer of mornings, counselled together with all the decorum of a bench of judges, and when they came to the old Court house, at Rendevous Lane,
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in Barnstable, there were about fifteen hundred of them. They sent a respectful and well-judged request to the court - an Otis was on the bench - to give up the assize. Had they been refused they would have undoubtedly driven out the court and locked the doors. They were, indeed, " The Body of the People." The court went out and no King's court ever sat again in Barnstable County. All patriots should make themselves familiar with the details of this unique transaction. In studying it, I have been struck by the resemblance which the gravity, patience and yet resolution of these men bear to the behavior of that high commission which ordered the execution of Charles I., where the wonder was, not that a king was slain, but that he was slain by a solemn judgment under current forms of law and with an appeal to Heaven to note and confirm its justice.
On their return to Sandwich they hunted up and punished into due humility, certain persons who had cut down the Sandwich liberty pole in their absence. One cannot make revolution with gloves on and there was hard striking all round in those days.
In 1775 voted that a watch be appointed for the sea coast, watch boxes be built and the watchman's pay be 2 shill- ings per night. Voted, June 21, 1776, "that should the Honorable Congress of the united colonies declare these colo- nies independent of the kingdom of Great Britian, we solemn- ly engage with our lives and our fortunes to support them in the measure." In 1777 it was voted to supply, for the ap- proaching winter, the families of soldiers from this town, ab- sent in their country's service. In 1778 there was smallpox here brought probably from the army ; a pest house was built, nurses provided, red flags hung at the fencings and cats and dogs running at large were killed to prevent contagion. From 1778 to the close of the war, Sandwich records show how firmly our fathers tried to carry out their pledge to spend life and money for independence. Drafts of men and provisions were made on them which the town tried to fill and with general success. But when in 1781 a call was made for 21000 pounds of beef, though the town offered 4d in sil- ver, per pound, there was no beef to be had. The same year they gave $13 a month to each enlisted soldier. By this
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time the continental money had depreciated. To show the situation here, I quote some prices. A common laborer re- ceived for a day's work, £2; a mechanic, £3. But then a gallon of molasses and a bushel of Indian corn cost £4 each; butter 12 shillings a pound ; grog per mug 16 shillings ; Eng- lish hay, £32 per ton ; shoeing a horse all round, £3 12 shill- ings, and a tavern dinner 15 shillings. Indeed the whole land was at a low tide. Most had been spent for liberty which came in 1783, when this people, thanks to the great sacrifice, went free.
I have said nothing of the sufferings and sorrows of those Sandwich folk who went to the war or sent their sons. It is an old story, often told over this colony, and will be, as long as honor is reverenced in our ancestry. I close this period of Sandwich history with two brief extracts from two letters of a Cape mother, though not of this town.
July 26, 1778.
None of my children but Abiah are with me. All my sons are if living, with the army. I am afraid what I may hear concerning my sons, but I hope I may be prepared, let it be as it will. I would write more but it is the Sabbath.
Nov. 22, 1783.
The 20th of June last, we had the sorrowful and heavy news of our son Joseph's death. He died that day two months. He had been in the service two years and died with consumption, near West Point ; a loud call to us all. He was carried into the country and was comfortably provided for during the last month or six weeks of his life. What most contributes to my comfort is, God was pleased to give him a time of consideration. He sent us word not to mourn for him, but to prepare to follow him, for he trusted the eternal state was secured.
MARY JenKINS.
I have thus brought the record of Sandwich life to the year 1783. From then till now, (1889) you perceive, is a pe- riod of rather over a hundred years. It is a period pictur- esque and full of town activites which respond to the political and social development of the nation, and indeed, may be said, to run with it. Your town behaviors have always been conservative but firm, taking the side of law and order. What I have called in this address the Lollard temper, has generally asserted itself in your more important votes. I
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cannot enter on the details of this last period, nor can I per- form the miracle of telling in an hour or so a history which it has taken this busy Sandwich 250 years to make. I do not intend to slur this period. I intend to drop it bodily with a few. references in passing. All along I have been struck with the inadequacy of any possible mention in this address of events so mixed and many. Let a man sift as close as he likes and most of the grain will still lie outside his sieve. There I leave it for those who may come after.
Yet, I am unwilling to pass over these latter years with- out mention of certain of their phases. This has always been, for instance, until of late, a sea-faring community. Your sailors, like those of all the other Cape towns, have been found on almost every sea, in almost every fishery and certainly in every war which this land has maintained. Their story is one of romance, indomitable perseverance, danger, hardship and loss of life ; sometimes of rich reward.
Our merchant service, at least in foreign parts, as well as our navy is, at present, in abeyance. I cannot tell when they will emerge into their former mastery and splendor. I am sure that New England men of the English stock, have too much of the Vikings blood in their veins, to let the car- rying trade of the world remain in British hands. There is no reason why. In all that pertains to progress in the me- chanic arts, which are among the great dynamics of civiliza- tion, we have not, to say the least, been laggard or below the achievement of our English brethren. I take it as a good omen of our coming naval estate, and also as a matter of national, and certainly, local pride, that when, a few years ago, these same Englishmen challenged our ship build- ers and seamen to an international yacht race, the country was able to answer with a victorious " Puritan," backed by a swifter " Volunteer "; both designed by the brain of a young man of a very old Sandwich family, Mr. Edward Burgess. I say then on this Cape, so proud of its seamen, and in this town, which has sent so many of its sons down to the sea in ships, " All hail to the coming navy of these United States, both merchantman and war ship. May its white sails be found on every sea, where winds blow and steady men are needed at the helm. And if ever, (which may God avert,)
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