USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume I > Part 16
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The building, converted into an impressive mansion was first the property of James and Thomas H. Perkins, Boston merchants, who founded the Bos- ton Athenaeum and Perkins Institute for the Blind. Soon afterwards it was purchased and occupied as a home by Dr. Joseph Trumbull and his family, and later was the residence of the doctor's son, George A. Trumbull. In the ancient temple of justice there occurred in the Trumbull family fifteen births, nine marriages and seven deaths.
Eventually the house fell into other hands, was moved a little distance to make room for a brick business block, and in 1899 was doomed to be torn to pieces. But Miss Susan Trumbull came to its rescue. She purchased it as it stood, and a builder carefully took it apart, and reërected it with the original framework and other timber, on its present site. Its restoration was complete and it stands a "museum piece," a perfect example of Colonial architecture of one of the best periods. The old timbering of the roof may still be seen in the unfinished attic with many a hand-wrought nail visible, and there are the curiously arched heavy beams which give the form to the vaulted ceiling of the court room.
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In the restoration many historically interesting bits were added. For instance, there is a latch from the Worcester house in which George Ban- croft, the historian, was born, and two latches from the house at Salem of Rebecca Nourse, one of the victims of the witchcraft horror. Many of the door knobs are from the Isaac Davis house which stood on Worcester's Nobility Hill. The east parlor mantel was in the house of Pardon E. Jenks, one of the first settlers of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The wainscot in the main hall is from the Rutland Parsonage built about 1723 for Rev. Joseph Willard, who, as we have told, was killed by Indians almost on the eve of his installation. The two bullseyes in the front door came from Temple, New Hampshire, from the homestead of General James Miller, hero of Lundy's Lane.
But far more important than any of these things is the old court room. When the building was the courthouse the lower floor was occupied by the county offices. The courtroom was on the second floor, occupying all of the southerly half. The chamber is as it was in the old days-the same arched ceiling and wainscot, mantel and doors, and the same southerly exposure. To bring back a true picture of the court room in the eighteenth century needs only the presence of the white-wigged, scarlet-robed judges, who presided in a splendor "more solemn and pompous," as John Adams put it, "than that of the Roman senate when the Gauls broke in upon them."
No Gaul ever broke in upon this scene of austere dignity, but, according to tradition, one Old Grimes of Hubbardston did. Grimes was a troublesome rogue who made a practice of visiting Worcester during each court session and of joining in whatever of revelry or roistering he might meet up with. He made a bet, so the story goes, that he would ride his horse not only into the courthouse, but into the presence of the judges in the court room itself. Racing down the Main street at a gallop, he rode up the courthouse steps, and into the hall. Then, if the tale be a true one, he forced his steed up the narrow stairway, and through the narrow door into the court room. Meeting the stern faces of the outraged judges and the astonished, and probably delighted, countenances of the barristers, he removed his hat with a fine sweep of the arm, and announced to the bench that his horse, seized with an irresistible desire to attend court, had run away. That animal, as a final gesture, in leaving the building, kicked out a foot and left the print of his shoe on the courthouse door. Unfortunately, the door was burned in a building where it was stored, so that the horse's signature can not be pro- duced to put a seal of truth upon the legend.
Today the old Trumbull mansion stands dignified and serene, the home of its present owner, one of the family, Mrs. Louisa Trumbull Cogswell Roberts.
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The third courthouse was occupied in 1803, and is still remembered by many people, with its domed cupola surmounted by the blind goddess of justice and her scales. It had a long life, more than half of century of it side by side with the stone courthouse, the first portion of which was erected in 1844. In 1898 when its enlargement amounting almost to a complete reconstruction, was undertaken, the third courthouse had to go the way of its predecessors.
Worcester's sister shire town of Fitchburg, which has shared the sessions of the courts since 1856, was given a handsome courthouse in 1871, and has a commodious jail.
A jail was as necessary as a courthouse, and upon the erection of the county immediate steps were taken for the imprisonment of malefactors. In the interim, before the construction of a jail building, a stout cage was placed in the rear part of the conveniently situated residence of Judge Jennison. Apparently the judge tired of the responsibility, for the next year the cage was moved to the house where lived Deacon Daniel Heywood.
In 1833 the jail was ready for occupancy. It was situated on the west side of Lincoln Street, then the Boston turnpike, no great distance from the square. It was a one-story building, eighteen by forty-one feet, and eight feet high. The prison part, of white oak timber, was only eighteen feet square, but below was a stone dungeon for the confinement of the more desperate characters. The rest of the structure served as a residence for the jailor and his family. Later it became part of the Hancock Arms tavern.
The county soon outgrew its jail, and a new building was erected, close by the first, twenty-eight by thirty-eight feet, and only seven feet high. The ceiling, walls and floor were thickly studded with the heads of heavy iron spikes, to discourage attempts to break out, and doors, windows and parti- tions had heavy iron gratings.
But the masterpiece among jails, and one of which the county seat, and presumedly the rest of the shire, were very proud, was that completed in 1788 on the south side of Lincoln square. It was a massive structure of granite blocks, quarried on Millstone Hill, thirty-two by sixty-four feet on the ground, and three stories high. Peter Whitney wrote of it when it was still new : "The jail is a large, commodious house, lately erected at the expense of the county. The lower floor is divided into four arches crosswise, form- ing four rooms for the safe custody of persons convicted of, or committed for gross crimes. The second is divided, in the same manner, into four rooms, but not arched with stone. They are for the keeping of debtors, who have not the liberty of the yard ; and for persons committed for small offenses. The upper story has an entry or walk from end to end, and is divided into
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eight convenient rooms for the use of prisoners for debt who have the liberty of the jail yard. This yard extends so as to include the jailor's house, and the meetinghouse of the Second Parish."
It was the first stone building of any consequence to be erected in Massa- chusetts, excepting St. Paul's Church in Boston, and loyal Worcester people maintained that their jail was the equal of the church in architectural beauty. The Worcester Spy predicted that the building would need no repairs for "two or three centuries."
The Worcester County House of Correction on Summer Street was estab- lished in 1819. After a few years the entire interior was reconstructed and from time to time the building was enlarged. In 1835 a portion of it was set apart for a jail, and the stone jail at Lincoln Square was removed, its stone being put to useful purpose in the construction of a business block.
In the early days of the county men believed in corporal punishment. It was not enough to confine offenders against the law. The whipping post, pillory, and stocks were considered very necessary adjuncts in meting out punishment. There was branding, too, and judges sometimes ordered that a prisoner's ears be cropped.
The whipping post, pillory and stocks stood in front of the first court- house, and probably occupied the same place through at least a part of the life of the second courthouse, now the Trumbull mansion. The authorities believed that the more publicity attended the punishment of a criminal the greater his or her humiliation and disgrace, and the greater the object lesson to the people. The gallows was not near the courthouse, yet it played a part in punishment apart from its more deadly duty of hanging criminals by the neck. A frequent part of a sentence was that the convicted person must sit upon the gallows for a given length of time with a hangman's noose about the neck, not tightly drawn, but as a symbol of dark and abject disgrace. At some later date these instruments of bodily punishment were moved to a less conspicuous spot, away from the gaze of decent people.
There is a quaint little Worcester book entitled Carl's Tour in Main Street, whose contents originally appeared in 1855 in a series of letters printed in the Worcester Palladium. Carl tells of what he saw and what his father related to him as a boy as they strolled about the streets of Worcester twenty years before, which makes it about the time when Worcester County was celebrating the centennial year of its history. Carl tells us something about the painful old punishments, as follows :
"My father told me that in the early times of the County, Court Hill was more abrupt than it now is ; that on its sloping sides grew native bushes ; and on the summit stood the pillory, the whipping post and the stocks; and that
Wor .- 10
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when the poor rogues were punished, the boys, the men, and even women, were accustomed to gather round them, and make them the subject of their poor witticism and coarse remark. 'What is a pillory? What is a whipping post ? What are the stocks?' were the questions I put to my father in quick succession.
"My father told me he never saw but one pillory; and then a man and woman were punished by standing in it one hour, to answer the sentence of the court. It consisted of a staging several feet above the ground, with a post rising in the center. On the post were cross-pieces with holes in them sufficiently large to admit the neck and wrists. The cross-pieces were in two parts, so that the head and hands could be put into the holes; and, when in, they were brought together, encircling the neck and wrists. And there by the hour stood the culprits with their hands elevated as high as their heads, in danger of suffocating unless they stood straight up all the time, and there all the while they took the taunts and jibes of the spectators.
"'I never saw but one man publicly whipped,' said my father, 'and he was a horse thief.' He said a post was set up in the ground, with a bar across it, higher up than a man's head. The thief was led out of the jail by the officers at a time of day when his punishment would be an admonition to as many spectators as possible, and when brought to the post he was stripped naked to his waist, and his hands tied up to the cross-bar. One of the officers then gave him as many lashes with the cat-o'-nine-tails as the court ordered, upon his naked back. The cat consisted of a whip handle about a foot and a half in length, with nine small knotted cords, of about the same length. My father said the blood spurted out of the poor fellow's back at the first blow, wher- ever the knots hit him. He shrieked out at every blow. He received fifteen lashes, and when about half of them had been given, my father said it made him shudder to hear the sheriff exclaim to the officer :- 'Hit harder, or I'll cut you.' He said that when the fifteen lashes had all been given, the blood ran freely down the culprit's back, which looked as red as raw beef ; and they then rubbed it over with soft soap, and led him back to prison.
"There were other punishments administered by the courts in the olden times. My father said that he never saw a prisoner in the stocks, nor did he ever see the cropping of ears. But he remembered seeing persons whose ears had suffered some curtailment by the application of the legal shears. Another punishment was that of branding. He said that he saw it done once. A thief was taken from jail to a place where all who wanted could witness the opera- tion. He was laid upon his back in a rough box; his feet and hands were secured ; and the letter T pricked in his forehead with indelible ink. There it stood, not a 'scarlet letter,' but an ugly black one in the face and eyes of the
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world, and years of penitence could not efface it, nor 'sorrow's tears' coursing through a life of bitter remorse, wash it out."
Here are other sidelights on the penal system of the day, in the following abstracts from the Worcester Spy: "On Friday last (May 3, 1811) Caleb Jephterson was exposed in this town in the pillory for an hour and a half, pursuant to his sentence, upon three convictions for the odious and detestable crime of blasphemy."
"Saturday night last (May 28, 1791), Stephen Burroughs, Stephen Cook, Jr., and Simon Wetherbee, who were confined in gaol in this town, effected their escape by sawing a passage through the grates. An hour in the pillory, thirty stripes and about seven weeks imprisonment were yet due Burroughs." This miscreant must have been happy indeed to regain his freedom, for he had already suffered the larger part of a sentence which comprised one hun- dred and seventeen stripes on his bare back, to stand two hours in the pillory ; to sit one hour on the gallows with a rope round his neck; to be confined in prison three months, and to procure bonds for his good behavior for seven years.
Incidentally it is worth mentioning that the gaol referred to was the impregnable stone edifice on Lincoln Square.
The Lot of the Poor Debtor-The present-day economist would shudder with cold horror could he visit a jail and find it filled with men whose only offense was that they were unable to pay their debts. Yet that was the common practice in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. A creditor, securing judgment against a debtor, could cause his imprisonment, thus placing him where he could not possibly earn money with which to pay the debt in question. Here is what Carl saw and heard one day when walking out with his father :
"I was on tiptoe with the multitude to see the sights, but when we got to Lincoln square, my father chilled me with the remark, 'Come Carl, go with me into the jail. I must see my old friend M.' 'Why, what is he there for? What has he been doing? Is he a rogue?' Such were the questions that I put in quick succession. 'No (was the answer), he has only been unfortunate. He owes money which he cannot pay.' In my simplicity I asked the question, 'And how can he pay by being in prison?' 'It is the law,' was the ready reply.
"We called at the tavern kept by Mr. Bellows, and my father found the turnkey, and we went to the jail. It was a large stone building, which stood where Union street now enters the square. Massive iron doors were opened one after another, with huge keys, and we climbed up stone steps after stone steps until we reached the third story. 'Those rooms below (said my father ) are for the criminals, these for the poor debtors.' Another lock was
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turned, the iron door creaked on its hinges, we were ushered into M.'s cell, and the door shut and locked behind us. 'Come in half an hour,' said my father to the turnkey ; and this was my first half hour in prison. I have been in jails, and houses of correction, and state prisons, since that time, but never with such emotions as moved my inmost heart on that occasion.
"Mr. M. (and his image haunts me) was a man of middle age, and of middling stature. He gave my father a cordial welcome. He looked pensive. For furniture there was a small bed on one side of the cell, two chairs, and a small unpainted table, on which were two or three books and a newspaper. 'I was looking over my book of accounts (said he) as you entered, to see if there is anything to prevent me taking the oath. I could pay all my debts if men would pay me what they owe me; but if they will not, or can not, then I must suffer the consequences.' I was then taking my first lesson in the philosophy of debtor and creditor, and have since found it a circular chain, the links of which are all dependent upon each other.
"They talked fast. My father was more cheerful in jail than out. M. smiled occasionally a sardonic smile, and I busied myself in looking out, as well as I could, at the grated window, and in examining every nook and crev- ice, scratch and mark, upon the forbidding walls and dirty ceiling. The turn- key came back and opened the door. I started out. Mr. M. patted me on the head, and made some remark which I do not now remember. And as I looked back I saw my father take something from his pocket and give to him; but what it was I did not see, and he would not tell me, though I often asked him the question.
"When we passed down stairs, and had reached the lower floor, my father halted for a moment at the door of a cold and dreary cell. 'This (said he) was for years the miserable cell of the howling, naked, filthy maniac, Peter Sibley of Sutton, who was tried for murder, and acquitted by the jury on the ground of insanity. The boys would come under his window to "stir him up," as they said, that they might hear his insane ravings. It was for him, and such as he, that the state built its lunatic hospitals, and he has been taken out and carried there.' Years afterwards, when I came to understand the matter better, I saw, in one of the wards of the hospital, the 'howling, naked, filthy maniac' transformed into a quiet, neat and well-dressed patient, whom no one would mistrust for an insane man, were it not for the expression of the countenance."
There was an ugly side to the treatment of the poor debtor and the law- breaker in the first two centuries of the Bay Colony. There was a still uglier and crueler aspect to the treatment of the insane, which, through dense ignorance, extended over the world. Then a Worcester woman, Dorothea Dix, was inspired to inaugurate and carry on year after year the movement
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which revolutionized the care of the mentally disordered. The State Lunatic Asylum on Summer Street, Worcester, which came directly out of her pas- sionate pleading with the State Legislature, first in Massachusetts and one of the first in the world to apply scientific treatment, was opened in 1833, an even century ago, and helped mightily in wiping from the county whatever stigma may have attached to an attitude toward these unfortunates which to the modern mind was barbarous.
Corporal punishment in the treatment of criminals gradually died out. Early in the nineteenth century we find cases where a sentence of whipping was commuted to imprisonment. Probably the practice disappeared com- pletely in the Commonwealth with the legislative act of 1848 which abolished corporal punishment in the State Prison.
Imprisonment for debt gradually lost its vogue among creditors as the proper manner of treating poor debtors. Eventually, in 1855, it was "for- ever abolished in Massachusetts" by act of Legislature, though subsequent legislation modified this sweeping action by permitting confinement in jail under certain conditions which suggested fraud or conspiracy.
We have dwelt with intention upon the early methods of dealing with the poor debtor and with the insane and criminal classes, sordid reading though it may be, for without this familiarity with conditions as they were in by-gone days, there can be no true historical perspective. They may be persons, per- haps a great many of them, in their knowledge of the activities of criminals in America today, who would like to try the effects of whipping post and branding needle, pillory and stocks, as a deterrent to crime with all its modern refinements-a big black K on the forehead of the kidnapper, and R for the racketeer, and so on through the list. However these methods might work out in the twentieth century, they certainly affected to a degree the atmosphere of the little country town.
Old Judge Wilder had a correct idea of what would happen to his beauti- ful home town of Lancaster were it made a county seat. The good people of Worcester soon learned that certain drawbacks were connected with the honor. On the other hand the social life of the community was most agree- ably affected. Lawyers and court and county officers moved there from other towns, and in many cases they and their families were cultured people. The merchants prospered, and others came and established stores. The taverns thrived, and when the courts were in session were filled to overflowing with judges and lawyers, litigants and jurors and witnesses. The population increased rapidly, though perhaps not so rapidly as in several other towns. Worcester was well satisfied with itself. Its people were willing to endure the evils that came to a county seat. Whatever there might be undesirable in connection with shire honors was much more than offset by tangible benefits.
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The Expansion of the County-The settlement of the county pro- ceeded rapidly in the remaining period of provincial government. Town after town was organized, some of them in whole or in part on common lands, others from the dividing up of the old, over-large townships. Most of the territory was no longer on the frontier. Only the extreme northwestern set- tlements were compelled to be on guard against Indian raids in the later French wars.
The conditions did not vary greatly in the organizations of the towns. Many of them were already established communities whose lands had been lopped off from parent towns. The new settlements proceeded almost as if by rule, the division of the land for a given number of families ; the building of homes and, of course, a church to which a minister was called as early as possible ; and the establishment of schools, not so quickly, but with no undue delay, for the province laws compelled that provision be made for educating the boys and girls. Each town had its gristmill and sawmill, smithy and fulling mill where the homespun cloth of the housewives was cleaned of its oil and other impurities ; its cobbler's shop, which occasionally was the begin- ning of a shoe manufacturing business ; perhaps a brickyard, and in not a few villages, a brewery or distillery. Substantial houses of hewn timber, boards from the sawmill, hand-made shingles and wooden nails, replaced the make- shift log cabins. Many of these ancient houses, sturdy as ever, still stand in, Worcester County, some occupied and treasured by descendants of their builders, others, modernized, the country homes of the rich or well-to-do.
When the Minute Men marched for Concord and Lexington in 1775 the original thirteen towns had increased to forty-two. The new ones were Ashburnham, Athol, Barre, Bolton, Charlton, Douglas, Dudley, Fitchburg, Grafton, Hardwick, Harvard, Holden, Hubbardston, Leominster, New Braintree, Northboro, Northbridge, Oakham, Paxton, Petersham, Prince- Town, Royalston, Spencer, Sturbridge, Templeton, Upton, Warren, West- minster, and Winchendon. The population had increased from a few thou- sand to perhaps thirty thousand.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Naming of the Towns
Three elemental factors in the history of a town are its birthdate, the origin of its territory, and the reason for its naming. The archives of the Commonwealth give, of course, complete information as to the date of incor- poration or establishment, which are treated as one and the same thing, and the lands included in each township. The christening of many of the towns was for a clear-cut reason. With some of the others complete proof is lack- ing. The late William B. Harding, of Worcester, lawyer and antiquarian, made a painstaking study of the subject, and got at most discoverable facts, and we are depending to an extent upon his findings.
The early settlers of Massachusetts brought with them associations and memories of the old country, and in selecting names for their new towns it was natural for them to take those of villages and towns which were dear to them. Hence from the first landing during the initial century of the Bay Colony, it was the general custom to name towns after places in England. But in 1724 a practice began of complimenting distinguished Englishmen who were friendly to the Colony, or, as more often happened, who were particular friends of the Provincial Governors. Previous to 1732 the incor- porators were permitted to select the names. But after that date nearly all the acts of incorporation passed both houses of the General Court in blank, and the name which the town was to bear was inserted by the Governor, or by his direction, when he approved the act. The acts of incorporation approved by Governors Bernard and Belcher contain the names of the towns written in their own hands.
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