USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume I > Part 15
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The towns constituting the new county were Lancaster, Leicester, Lunen- burg, Rutland, Shrewsbury, Southboro, Westboro and Worcester from Mid- dlesex County ; Mendon, Oxford, Sutton, Uxbridge and Woodstock from Suffolk County ; and Brookfield from Hampshire County. Suffolk County then extended to include those towns neighbor to Worcester County which
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are now within the County of Norfolk. Hampshire included the territory of the present counties of Hampden and Franklin.
These original townships covered huge territories, which, excluding Woodstock, today contain all or parts of thirty-three other county towns, in other words a total of forty-six of the present sixty-one cities and towns. In addition there were two plantations in the north county, then known as Narragansett number two, now the town of Westminster, and Narragansett number six, now the town of Templeton. These were among the grants to veterans of King Philip's War. Then there was a grant to petitioners from Medfield, which was known as New Medfield and in 1738 became the town of Sturbridge. Doubtless there were various private grants of other lands, and certain tracts were set apart as Indian reservations. Yet all the town- ships, grants and reservations together did not comprise very much more than one-half of the more than 1,500 square miles of the area included in the county. Filling gaps between the boundaries of allotted territories were blocks of common land, and a special legislative act had given the county all other Province land not laid out in contiguous counties. Altogether the origi- nal area of the county was not very much different from the present 1,577 square miles.
Worcester County was the tenth to be erected in Massachusetts. Suffolk, Essex, Middlesex and the first Norfolk were erected in 1662; Barnstable, Bristol and Plymouth in 1685; Dukes in 1693; and Nantucket in 1695. Only Norfolk, Franklin, Hampden and Berkshire are younger. The first Norfolk County went out of existence with the creation of the State of New Hamp- shire, within whose borders were four of its six towns, the remaining two being attached to Essex County. The present Norfolk County dates from I793.
The formation of a new county was suggested several years before it was brought about. In 1728 the idea began to take definite form. Lancaster was among the first to favor it, which had weight, for this was the oldest and probably the most influential of the towns concerned. But in the beginning its people insisted that Marlboro be made a shire town, that it might have the sittings of the two inferior courts.
In 1729 a more determined movement developed for "erecting a new county in ye westerly part of ye county of Middlesex." This, too, received the cooperation of Lancaster, but with the almost unanimous desire of its leading men that their town should be the county seat, or, at any rate, a half- shire town. Uxbridge came forward with an expression of willingness to separate from Suffolk County, but with the understanding that Mendon be a county seat. But Mendon wanted no part in a new county, preferring to maintain its old shire relation.
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Oxford was a candidate for shire honors and so was the lofty hill town of Rutland, whose citizens visionized the county courthouse and jail fronting on a Main Street than which few are wider. It is even said the great breadth was planned in anticipation of so great a dignity. Rutland had a good talking point in the fact that it occupied the exact central spot in the State, and even today it has a tree which is said to be the true mathematical center. Brook- field, far out on the western border, saw no good reason why it should not be chosen as the county capital. The town of Worcester, very young, with only a few hundred people, appears to have made no particular effort to procure for itself the distinguished honor. Brookfield, Lancaster, Mendon and Sutton had a greater population and wealth. It is not unlikely that Worcester citi- zens recognized their humble place in the scheme of political influence.
The counties possessing the fourteen towns did not stand passively by while the agitation was proceeding. Middlesex, Suffolk and Hampshire were belligerently opposed to the plan. The towns were theirs and they proposed to keep them. They fought the measure in the General Court with every weapon they could command. There was also a strong feeling which was voiced by Thomas Hutchinson, a member of the legislative body, afterwards royal Governor of Massachusetts, when he urged the utter impracticability of this "hill country ever making any figure."
The situation was clarified by Judge Joseph Wilder of Lancaster, the town's representative, who believed that Lancaster would be better served if it was not made a shire town. He pictured the train of undesirable and often obnoxious persons who attended the sessions of the courts, with their drink- ing and fisticuffs and gambling and racing horses in the village streets. Evidently he converted his fellow-townsmen to his way of thinking. Prob- ably had Judge Wilder's influence been wielded the other way, Lancaster would have been a half-shire town, sharing the county business with Worces- ter. Rutland's geographical argument does not seem to have been convinc- ing. Perhaps some of the legislators had ridden their horses up the long, long hills to the highest town in the State east of the Connecticut River. Yet, when the roll of the General Court was read tradition has it that the town lost to Worcester by a single vote. Legend goes even farther than tradition- that the one vote was bought with a pint of whiskey. However, the Legisla- ture not only picked Worcester but gave its name to the county.
The choice of Worcester was a logical one, as things turned out. It was the natural center of the county. The post-roads converged there. Later it was an inevitable junction point of the railroads. It thrived under the influ- ences of the presence of the county offices and courts. Its population increased rapidly. Yet even sixty years later, when the census of 1790 was taken, Sut- ton and Brookfield were still much larger and richer.
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Many Attempts at Separation-Hardly had Worcester County been organized when the towns most remote from the county seat began the effort to divide the shire into two counties. The area was so great that large num- bers of the inhabitants were situated at almost prohibitive distances from the only courthouse and the sitting of the courts. The greatest hardship was the inaccessibility of the probate office and court which had to be visited by the interested parties in the settlements of estates. Expenses incurred by widows and orphans were dwelt upon time after time as a convincing reason why there should be separation, and the argument contained nothing but truth.
In the first century of the county's existence, travel was a very serious and arduous business. Many communities had to depend upon roads which were little better than trails. It often happened that the person compelled to attend court as litigant or witness or juror must travel at least part of the distance either afoot or on horseback. Stagecoaches and post-chaise lines were con- fined to the turnpikes and post roads. The second century of the county was well advanced before the railroads had been extended to reach the more remote towns. A distance of fifty or forty or even twenty miles was no easy jaunt. Oftentimes in winter travel was impossible. Agitation for division into a north and south county was inevitable.
There was a long series of bitter fights, extending over a hundred and forty years, from the first effort in 1734 to the last hard fought battle in 1874. Distinguished lawyers became associated with them. The proponents of separation played with great names. They tried Webster County, immedi- ately after the death of Daniel Webster. It was not sufficient. Then they set up Washington County, which brought forth a flood of patriotic oratory. Again they failed. Finally, in the last attempt, in 1874, they made it Lincoln County. But even the name of the immortal Lincoln could not make the solons at Boston believe that Worcester County should be disrupted.
All that was long ago. Always the motive back of the efforts of the northern towns had been the substantial one of business convenience. It translated into dollars and cents. That motive disappeared with the coming of the automobile and motor bus and good roads-and there are no better roads anywhere. Fitchburg and Gardner and the Brookfields and South- bridge and Webster and the eastern towns and Worcester are now close neighbors. What was a day's journey is now a matter of an hour or may be less. Men in widely separated communities have their regular golf together, their wives entertain back and forth at bridge. County pride is now county- wide. Thought of separation is of a day which seems a long ways back.
The first attempt to dismember the county was made in 1734 when Men- don, which had been included in the new shire against its will, petitioned the General Court for permission to join with Dedham in Suffolk County, and
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form a new county, but met with no success. In 1763 a determined and pro- tracted effort was begun by the northern towns. A petition was presented "To His Excellency Francis Bernard, Esq .; Captain-General and Governor in Chief in and over His Majesty's said Province; and to the Honorable His Majesty's Council, and House of Representatives, in General Court assembled at Boston, December A. D. 1763." The petitioners were the towns of Groton, District of Shirley, and Pepperell, Westford, Littleton and Town- send in Middlessex County, and the town of Lunenburg and the townships of Ipswich-Canada (Winchendon) and Dorchester-Canada (Ashburnham) in Worcester County. Fitchburg was then a part of Lunenburg, and upon its incorporation the following year joined in the movement for the erection of a new county.
The petition set forth that the people of these towns and districts "do labor under great difficulty and burthen, by reason of the great distance they live from the usual place of holding the several courts of justice within the counties aforesaid, as well as the courts of probate in the same counties ; many of the inhabitants living fifty, some forty, and few less than thirty miles from the courts of probate aforesaid, which renders it at times very difficult, and sometimes impossible for poor widows and others to attend the probate courts, and other courts of justice, without great expense," often- times with loss to "poor orphan children."
The petition proposed to include, besides their own towns, the towns of Dracut, Chelmsford, Dunstable and Stow in Middlesex, and the towns of Harvard and Leominster in Worcester. The movement was kept before the General Court until 1776, and was relentlessly opposed by Worcester and Middlesex counties.
In 1785 a convention was held in Westminster with the purpose of devis- ing a new plan for the division of the county, and shortly afterward in the same year there was a similar meeting in Lunenburg. In 1785 the General Court was petitioned for a new county with Petersham as the shire town, to include the towns of Athol, Barre, Hardwick, Hubbardston, Petersham, Royalston, Templeton and Winchendon in Worcester County, and Green- wich, New Salem, Orange, Shutesbury, Warwick and Wendell in Hamp- shire. In 1798 a similar petition was presented by the towns of Athol, Gard- ner, Gerry (Templeton), Hubbardston, Oakham, Petersham, Royalston, Warwick and Winchendon. Neither received favorable consideration.
In 1828 the Legislature referred the question of division, originating in Fitchburg, to the referendum of the voters of Worcester and Middlesex counties. The opponents won, of course, for the interested towns constituted only a small fraction of the voters.
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The matter took more formidable form in the 1850's. In 1851 a petition signed by 4,505 voters of the northern towns prayed the Legislature for a new county, and the matter was referred to the next General Court. In 1852 a petition asked for the establishment of a half-shire in Fitchburg, but the bill was defeated. In 1853 another bill for the erection of a new north- ern county was submitted. Here began the play on the sensibilities of the proletariat in the use of great names. The county would be called for Daniel Webster. Distance from the shire town was the chief argument of the petitioners ; Fitchburg was much more conveniently located.
The legislative committee reported that Webster County should be created, and refused to submit the question to the voters, though the remonstrants greatly outnumbered the petitioners. In its report the committee said : "It ought not to be contended that the opposition of a large majority of the inhabitants of the towns (proposed for the new county) most of them but slightly interested in the objects for which counties are primarily created, should deter the General Court from erecting them into a new county if it should be satisfied that, as a matter of state policy, wisely looking into the future, it was desirable, even though it could not be accomplished without some sacrifice, some social suffering, from the sundering of ancient and accustomed relations, and some increase of expense at the moment." But in spite of its committee's plea, the Legislature turned down the bill, as it had turned down its numerous predecessors.
Still the northern towns were not downhearted. In 1855 they were back again, fighting the determined opposition of the city of Worcester which "would be short of much of her comparative importance in a political point of view, and would cease to hold that elevated position among her sister counties which she has maintained for so long a time."
This time the name chosen was Washington County. The legislative committee again was favorable, its report finding "from the evidence adduced, taking a comprehensive view of the whole matter, that the interest of the whole county would be better promoted by a division, from the fact that the city of Worcester would still be left the center of the largest county, terri- torially, in the state, and one of the most thriving and most prosperous, while such division would tend to develop more rapidly, along the northern line of the state, those resources which now lie comparatively dormant; and the same prosperity may be confidently anticipated for the new that has already been realized by the old county." But the bill to create the county of Wash- ington was defeated in the Senate.
The next year, 1856, the proponents of the new Washington County came again, stronger in their case than ever. The bill was defeated by a very small majority. It was evident that the opposition must make some considerable
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concession, else the division was inevitable. Therefore a bill was permitted to pass making Fitchburg the second shire town. Since that time the Superior Court has held regular sessions in the northern city, and there are county offices in the courthouse which was erected in 1871.
The battles of 1855 and 1856 were nobly fought by great men. Rufus Choate, one of the ablest of American lawyers in all time appeared for the petitioners in both contests. Opposed to him in 1854 was Richard H. Dana of Boston ; in 1855, Judge Henry Chapin of Worcester, and George S. Bout- well, a Governor and United States Senator of Massachusetts, appeared against the measure in behalf of the county of Middlesex.
Rufus Choate's final argument in behalf of the separationist is worthy a place in every history of Worcester or Middlesex county, when he said :
"A very powerful final appeal was made to you on behalf of the four towns in the county of Middlesex, which it is said strongly desire to remain in the county of Bunker Hill and Concord Bridge, and Lexington. Sir, I honor and have these beautiful regards, and this filial feeling which appeals so peculiarly to the glory of our fathers, and makes us all desire to share it. But, Sir, I submit that I distrust the cause,-although, in this case, I can hardly distrust the advocate who tries to enlist these holy and noble affec- tions to defeat the claims of two and forty thousand of his fellow-citizens to an equality of justice. If he were here I would be glad to tell Governor Boutwell that these same towns, when the proposition was first presented to them, petitioned by large majorities for a change. Had they then forgotten Bunker Hill; or is it not this vast body of misrepresentation in regard to the increased expenditure that has constantly influenced them to change their minds? Let me tell him that these sentiments refuse to march under the banner of Injustice.
"Let me tell him that the true descendant of the men who fought at Bunker Hill would be the first to say to this government :- 'Gentlemen, assign me my civil or military post, and there I will stand, and there I will fall, by whatever name you please to call the county in which I live. What- soever place you assign me in the attainment of justice,-whatsoever place you assign me in the accommodation of my fellow-citizens, I accept it grate- fully, all of it ; I accept it all.
"'And meantime, on every Nineteenth of April, and Seventeenth of June, and Fourth of July, I shall continue to take my children, as heretofore, and lead them out, and show them where their ancestor was loading his gun for the last time when the British bayonet pierced his breast; I shall take them to the shade of the monument and teach them to be ready at that day when the country is to fall-when her day of trial shall come-to shed their blood, too,
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in her defense, and I shall reconcile them and myself to that, as good citizens.'
"There will be sentiment against sentiment. These aged men will pass away as in a dream, and a new generation shall come forward, in whose hearts will spring up that other feeling,-pride to know that there is inscribed on these hills and valleys the greatest name on earth, before whom all ancient and modern greatness is dim; pride to know that on their own country is borne the superscription of Washington, which is to stand a monument at once attesting and sharing his immortality. Let one sentiment, if it is senti- ment, counteract the other; and between the two give us justice, and give us our rights."
That was the way they fought to convert northern Worcester County into Washington County. But the members of the General Court were adamant- Worcester County should stand undivided.
The division of the county was forgotten for a time; at any rate no attempt was made to bring the matter to public attention. But in 1874 the name of Lincoln County was brought forward, and the Legislature was petitioned for its creation. The towns proposed were Ashburnham, Athol, Berlin, Bolton, Clinton, Fitchburg, Gardner, Harvard, Hubbardston, Lan- caster, Lunenburg, Leominster, Petersham, Phillipston, Princeton, Royalston, Sterling, Templeton, Westminster and Winchendon in Worcester County, and Ashby, Shirley and Townsend in Middlesex. The committee was far from favoring the plan. In its report it stated : "That considering the strong opposition from the towns which it is proposed to include in the new county, as well as from the county at large, and in view of the fact that the incon- veniences which may exist in consequence of the great extent of Worcester County are certainly less than formerly when the Legislature refused to divide it," the committee recommends that the subject be referred to the next General Court. Those Fitchburg men were back in 1875, and failed. They never tried again.
Establishment of the Courts-The formation of the county compelled a reestablishment of the courts. Under the act of incorporation provision was made for four annual sessions of the Court of General Sessions of the Peace, and of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas, and for an annual session of the Superior Court of Judicature, Court of Assize and General Gaol Delivery. The jurisdiction of the justices of the peace, to whom was given a considerable judicial power, and of the judges of probate, supplemented that of the more formal tribunals.
The Superior Court was composed of a chief justice and four associate justices. Its jurisdiction covered "all matters of a civil or criminal nature,
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including appeals, reviews and writs of error, as fully and amply to all intents and purposes whatsoever, as the Courts of King's Bench, Common Pleas and Exchequer within his Majesty's Kingdom of England." The judges were appointed by the Governor and his council, and might, and frequently did, hold various other offices at the same time. But no resident of Worcester County attained the dignity of appointment to the higher bench until Massa- chusetts ceased to be a Colony of England.
The Inferior Court of Common Pleas was a strictly county court, com- posed of four justices. Its jurisdiction covered civil actions of every nature according to the course of common law. Appeal from its decision lay in the Superior Court. The Court of General Sessions of the Peace was held at the same time as the Common Pleas by the justices of peace of the county, or such a number of them as were designated from time to time. Its juris- diction covered only criminal matters, and was limited to the trial for offenses for which the punishment did not extend to death, loss of member, or ban- ishment.
Justices of the peace held court in their various places of residence through the county, and had jurisdiction in a wide variety of civil actions where the damage did not exceed forty shillings, though never where the title to land was concerned, such an action being deemed too important to be heard in any court of less dignity than the Common Pleas. In criminal matters the justices of the peace had power to try and punish in minor breaches of the peace and cases of disorderly conduct, and they could inflict the penalty of small fine, whipping or sitting in the stocks. Defendants had the right to appeal from their decisions to the Court of Common Pleas.
In the Governor and council was vested jurisdiction over the probate of wills, the settlement of estates, the appointment of guardians and similar matters. The custom was, however, for them to appoint a substitute in each county who transacted the ordinary business subject to revision on appeal to Governor and council, and in Worcester County the duty fell upon the justices of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas. Such was the foundation upon which the present judicial system of the county was built. Our Supreme Judicial Court, of which the Chief Justice is Arthur P. Rugg of Worcester, a native of Sterling, was created in 1780. The Superior Court, the Chief Justice of which is Walter Perley Hall of Fitchburg, was established in 1859. The district courts and the county commissioners took over the jurisdictions originally possessed by the justices of the peace and lower tribunals. The Probate Court functions much as it has from the beginning. The evolution to the judicial system was a long and somewhat intricate process, and its history has been written many times.
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An initial step in establishing the county seat was the erection of a court- house and jail. Through the long history of the shire the Worcester court- house has always stood on Court Hill. The first, erected in 1734, was a small wooden structure which was erected on a narrow strip of land, the gift of Judge William Jennison of the Court of Common Pleas, which had been a tangle of brush. Chief Justice John Chandler of the Common Pleas and of the Court of General Sessions, opening the first session within its court room, termed the building "beautiful." However truthfully descriptive that may have been, the courthouse soon proved inadequate, and in 1751 the court ordered that a new one be provided.
This building was thirty-six by forty feet and two stories. That it was both beautiful and dignified, ocular proof may be had today, for it stands now a handsome residence, in a lovely old-fashioned garden on Massachu- setts Avenue in Worcester, rounding out a long and eventful and nomadic existence.
When in 1801 preparation was making for the erection of a much larger courthouse on the site, the building was sold, and moved bodily to what later came to be called Trumbull Square, a short distance east of the Common. It was jacked up and mounted on some sort of wheels, so it is recorded, and twenty yoke of oxen were hitched to it. Its progress was incredibly slow, and when the Sabbath came it was still square in the middle of the village Main Street, blocking the way. And there it stood, for neither ox nor man was permitted to labor on the Lord's Day.
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