USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume I > Part 34
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"Thus formed, at 12 o'clock, the Hearse, covered with a black velvet Pall bearing an Urn shrouded with black crepe and accompanied by the Pall Bearers in mourning and with white scarfs, was received by the troops with presented arms, the drums beating a march while it passed slowly in front to the left ; the Officers and colors saluting as it passed; from the left it was borne back to the centre where it halted and received the salute of all the officers and colors alone. It was then removed to its place in the procession, which then moved, by the left, in the order following, the music playing a Dead March :
Company of Cavalry. 16th, 15th and 14th Regiments of United States troops. Artillery. Band of Music. Drums and fifes of the Brigade. (Drums covered with crepe and muffled.) Clergy. Orator and officiating Clergyman with white scarfs.
PALL BEARERS, Capt. Balch
BIER PALL BEARERS, Capt. Tillinghast
Maj. Jones
Bearing the Urn, covered as before men- tioned, a 'W' in gold cipher on the Urn, and a laurel wreath running spirally from the base to the top. The General's Hat and Sword placed at the head of the Bier, which was borne by four Sergeant Majors.
Maj. Lynde
Maj. Winslow
Col. Hunnewell
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THE GENERAL'S HORSE
Covered with black properly caparisoned, boots reversed, led by two servants in livery. Col. Rice, Commandant, As chief mourner-with staff. Officers of the Army with badges of mourning. Civil Staff of the Army. Members of the Society of the Cincinnati and Officers of the late Army.
Brethren of the 'Morning Star,' 'Fayette,' 'Meridian Sun' and 'Olive Branch' Lodges in the following order : Tyler With a drawn sword, the hilt covered with crape. Two Tylers, do. Two Stewards With white staves, the tops covered with crape tied with white. Ribands-black and white tassels. Brethren of the several Lodges. Secretaries of the Lodges. With the records covered with crape. Treasurers, bearing charters covered with crape. Junior Wardens, Senior Wardens, bearing their columns covered with crape. Past Masters.
Three Master Masons walking triangularly with the three candlesticks covered with crape, lights extinguished. Three Masons walking triangularly, each bearing a staff, the head of which was covered with crape and a white silk cord-black and white tassels. On each staff hung a pendant of white silk bordered with black. On one pendant was 'Wisdom,' on another 'Strength' and on the third 'Beauty.' MONUMENTAL OBELISK borne by four oldest Master Masons supported by four more.
The Obelisk and its Pedestal were four and a half feet high, representing black marble; on the front of it was a bust of General Washington and over it a motto, 'HE LIVES IN OUR HEARTS'; above the motto the square and compass. On the other three sides of the Obelisk were represented Faith, Hope and Charity, and above them the corresponding Masonic emblems; the whole in Bas Relief. On the Pedestal was inscribed the General's name, where born, when Commander of the late Army, when President of Congress, etc., etc., Two Master Masons bearing a large and elegant SILVER URN
beautifully decorated with a wreath of evergreens intermixed with flowers and the (laurel branch) in front. Three brethren walking triangularly with large silver candlesticks without lights. Tyler with his sword as before mentioned. The Constitutions and Sacred Writings on black cushions, etc., borne by two Past Masters. Three Masters of Lodges. A Brother of the Royal Arch bearing a silver Urn. Presiding Master.
Deacon.
Deacon. Each with a black staff, the head covered with white crape tied with black riband, black and white tassels. Officers of the Militia. Sheriffs. Justices of the Peace. Gentlemen of the Bar and Physicians. Other Citizens.
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"The citizens were marshalled by Capt. Hamilton of Worcester. It is supposed the procession and the spectators amounted to 5,000 persons.
"On the arrival of the procession at the Meeting-house the troops formed the lines, opened their ranks, and faced inward, resting upon their arms reversed ; the procession passed through into the house, led by the clergy, the band playing a solemn dirge; the pulpit, communion table and galleries, were wholly shrouded in black; the hearse being placed at the head of the broad aisle, the brethren of the Fraternity of Masons elevated the obelisk on the right of the hearse, and on the left placed their lights, silver urn, etc., on a large pedestal covered with black, during which the band from the gallery continued to fill the house with solemn music; thus arranged, the throne of grace was addressed by Rev. Mr. Austin of Worcester, after which another solemn dirge by the band. An eulogy was then pronounced by Capt. Josiah Dunham, of the 16th regiment of United States Infantry, in which he strik- ingly portrayed the virtues and services of the late Commander-in-Chief, and observed justly that Five Millions of people were, with one voice, expressing sorrow and grief at their loss. After the eulogy followed a solemn funeral dirge by the Band, during which the Fraternity, in mournful silence and in proper order, deposited their large silver urn and raised the Obelisk over it. A short but solemn funeral service was performed by the Fraternity, which closed the solemnities in the Meeting-house.
"The procession was again formed, and left the Meeting-house in the same order in which it arrived there; marching one mile in the Main Street, which being very broad, straight and level, afforded to a numerous body of spectators an opportunity of viewing the whole procession at once, during which time the bell, being muffled, tolled a solemn knell, and minute guns were fired from the Artillery. On the arrival at the place of Deposit the troops again forming a line and resting on their arms reversed, the procession passed through, and the Hearse, reaching its destined spot, the Urn was deposited in the earth, the music again played a solemn dirge. The order of the President and of Gen. Hamilton was read to the troops, a detachment of Infantry advanced and fired three volleys over the Urn, after which the Masonic brethren placed a monument over it. The troops being again formed, the colors were unfurled and the drums unmuffled, the troops wheeled to the right by platoons, the President's March was played, and they moved to their quarters and were dismissed. The Fraternity retired to their temporary Lodge, which was immediately closed.
"The solemnities ended with the setting sun. The appearance and move- ment of the troops gave great satisfaction, and bore honorable testimony of the military address and executions of the officers."
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For many years the "Urn" was preserved in the attic of the South meetinghouse, where the ceremonies were held, and later in the house of Capt. Abijah Davis. It was of wood, about three feet in height, and was silver gilt with a monogram "W" in gold, on the side.
War of 1812 Was Unpopular-The War of 1812 was not popular in Worcester County, a feeling which was shared with the rest of New Eng- land. The people felt that it was a very serious blow at their prosperity, especially as it affected their commerce. A certain element of the population was in open sympathy with Great Britain. We read in the National Aegis of August 31, 1814: "Horrible depravity! When news of the capture of Washington reached this town, some of the leading Federalists openly expressed their gratification, mingled with a regret that the President Madi- son was not involved in the destruction of the capitol." Nor had the race of Royalists died out. There were citizens who had not ceased to hope that again America would be under British rule. Before this war had ended, there were many loyal men who feared that such would be the outcome of what has often been called our "Second War of Independence."
Upon the declaration of war in 1812, an act of Congress authorized the President to require the Governors of the several states and territories to arm, organize and hold in readiness to march on the shortest notice, their respective quotas of 100,000 militia. Massachusetts was ordered to furnish men to garrison the fortresses which guarded the seaports.
Governor Strong refused to comply with the requisitions, holding that under the Constitution the Federal Government had no right to make such a demand. Therefore our Worcester County companies were not called to the field. But volunteers came forward, and they were encouraged by bounties offered by the towns. Worcester, for instance, on November 9, 1812, voted to allow each soldier, when mustered and ready to march, ten dollars bounty, in addition to his soldier's pay. Recruiting offices were established in the principal towns of the shire to enlist men for both the army and navy. Later in the war, because of the lack of patriotic enthusiasm, and insufficiency of recruits, a draft was imposed, which took a rather limited number of Worces- ter County men into the army comprising altogether only two companies, which served in the forts of Boston Harbor, where, of course, they saw no fighting.
Not until the capture of Washington and the burning of the Capitol by the British forces, coupled with the announced threat of destruction to the cities and towns along the seaboard by the commander of the British fleet, were the New England people aroused to vigorous patriotic fervor. Possible invasion spread alarm. Governor Strong, on September 6, 1814, ordered the
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entire militia forces to hold themselves in readiness to march at a moment's warning, and called the flank companies of the 7th Division into immediate service for the defense of the coast.
The Worcester Light Infantry, commanded by Captain John W. Lincoln, and the Worcester Artillery, commanded by Captain Samuel Graves were included in this command, and promptly reported for duty and took station at South Boston. But after an uneventful tour of duty they were discharged on October 31 and returned home. On the Sabbath following their arrival at their homes, the members of both corps attended divine service in full dress, agreeable to the recommendation of the general in command, and offered public acknowledgments for restoration to their friends. The towns procured equipage for their militiamen, provided for the families of soldiers where assistance was needed, and furnished departing soldiers with arms and equipment, if they were unable to procure them for themselves.
"As the sound of war went through the land," wrote Lincoln, "the veter- ans of the Revolution, persons exempted from military duty by age or office, and the youths, formed themselves, in many towns of the County, into volun- teer corps, and prepared to strike for their homes and their rights. The step of an invader on the New England soil, would have found her yeomanry as prompt to answer the summons to battle, as in the glorious days of old."
British Prisoners Break Worcester Jail-One of the exciting local incidents of the War of 1812 was the escape of British prisoners of war from the Stone Jail on Lincoln Square at Worcester, the supposedly impregnable prison of which the county was so very proud. In the summer of 1813 a number of British officers, captured on the northern frontier, were quartered in Worcester, on parole. Sir George Prevost, commanding the Canadian armies, with the sanction of the home government, selected from the Ameri- can prisoners of war a number of officers, and sent them to England for trial as criminals. These soldiers had emigrated to the United States from the King's Dominions long previous to the war, had become naturalized, and were captured while fighting under the flag of their adopted country. They were charged with being traitors.
For the protection of these citizens, the American government ordered into confinement an equal number of English subjects, to suffer the same fate as might befall those for whom they were hostages. The effect of this stern measure of retaliation was to cause an order that two American officers were to be committed to prison for every one of the British soldiers confined by the United States, to suffer death if vindictive punishment were inflicted on the hostages. In turn forty-six British officers, held prisoners, were immedi- ately incarcerated in American prisons, and the British Government was
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informed that their subjects would receive the same punishment as that inflicted on the Americans. So on December 2, 1813, ten of the officers quartered in Worcester were committed to the jail by the marshal of the district, to await events.
On December 12, nine of the ten surprised and overpowered the unwary keeper when he entered their room between 10 and II o'clock in the evening, to make things secure for the night, and with the aid of his keys easily effected their escape. They simply walked out. They made the mistake of binding their guard too loosely and in fifteen minutes he gave the alarm. An attack by hostile troops could have made no more confusion. The bells were rung in wild alarm, and cannon were fired. The whole town was awakened, and armed men took up the hunt and pursuit. Parties set out in the cold winter night in every direction. Houses were entered and searched with scant ceremony.
One of the prisoners was caught in Holden at two o'clock in the morning, exhausted and half frozen, and the next evening four others were captured in Barre. But the remaining four were never caught and eventually made their way to Canada and reached Quebec in safety. The result was a deep- seated suspicion of the Stone Jail and its jailer and the removal of the pris- oners to a safer prison.
The ratification of the treaty of peace was received with great rejoicing. The Massachusetts Spy of February 13, 1815, said: "When the news of PEACE reached this town on Monday last, it was received by all with utmost transports of joy. The high degree of public gratification was immediately demonstrated by a salute of eighteen guns in each quarter of the town and the ringing of bells." So it was throughout the county. The church bells peeled out a joyful refrain, cannon were fired, and bonfires lighted, while the American flag was hauled to the peak of every liberty pole, which still rose from village greens, as they had in the days when the Colonies were fighting for their liberty.
Health Conditions in Our First Quarter Century-Health conditions in the first quarter century were, naturally, very different from those of the twentieth century. Strangely enough, the rate of mortality, so far as can be learned from somewhat scanty available statistics, was not very different from what it is today. But the distribution was another matter. Infant mortality may rightly be said to have been frightful, and this was not cor- rected until years afterwards. In fact, the rate was high for young people generally. In Worcester town in 1834, 21 out of 87 deaths were of infants under one year, and forty were under ten years. In 1835, 20 out of 105 deaths were of infants under one year, ten from one to five years, five from
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five to ten years, ten from ten to twenty years, and twelve from twenty to thirty years-forty-five in all under thirty years old.
On the other hand there were many very old people in every town. It is recorded that in Salem in 1808, living on one street within a distance of three hundred and fifty feet, there were thirteen persons whose aggregate years numbered one thousand and twelve, the youngest seventy years of age and the oldest ninety-five. But men of fifty regarded themselves as on the threshold of old age.
The causes of death were very different then. Infant disorders were always in the van, and in some years epidemic diseases took dreadful toll. Of all other diseases, tuberculosis was most generally fatal. The records of the city of Boston indicate that from one-fifth to one-quarter of the deaths were due to the dreaded consumption. Probably the proportion was not very different in our county towns. Physicians were unable to grasp the nature of the ailment in relation to its treatment. They did not regard it as contagious. To them a fever was a fever, and their method of reducing it was by bleeding the patient and by purgings. As one scoffing wag put it, speaking of a famous doctor, "If his patients are not quite gone, he bleeds them to death." And there was more truth than jest in the bon mot.
Many other methods of treating consumption were proposed, among them "temperate living," the avoidance of liquor, wearing flannel next the skin, and a morning draught of "half a pint of new milk, mixed with the expressed juice of green hoarhound." Which, as has been written, was "doubtless more efficaceous than giving oil of earthworme for colic and an emulsion of dried rattlesnake for rheumatism."
Yet the medical world had been given its hints of what the tubercular patient needed. A clergyman in whose family and that of his wife consump- tion had caused many deaths, was seized with the disease, and in desperation abandoned his house, and lived in the open. He soon recovered his health and returned home, but again had to seek safety in the country. Other instances of the effects of environment must have occurred. Yet the doctors all agreed that the proper place for the consumptive was in the tightest and warmest room in the house, with all fresh air, and especially night air, excluded.
Smallpox Takes Huge Toll of Death-Epidemics of smallpox swept over the land, one after another. Sometimes the cases were normally light, at others the death rate was very high indeed. In the year 1776, in the village of Worcester alone, seventy-six persons died of it. The pockmarked face was a common sight among both men and women, so common, indeed, as to attract no special attention. There was absolutely no preventive, until Jen-
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ner's discovery of the relations of cowpox and smallpox resulted in vaccina- tion, and this amazing panacea was accepted but slowly.
Lincoln wrote: "Before the small pox had been disarmed of its fearful power of destruction, during the periods when it spread over the country, hospitals were established in Worcester, to which whole families resorted for inoculation, in preference to awaiting the danger of taking the disease in the natural way." And similar hospitals were established in every large town of the county. The only safety lay in inoculation, which meant giving the actual smallpox to a person in health and under the most favorable circum- stances. This precaution lessened the mortality, but it always meant a dis- agreeable sickness, and often a scarred face, and sometimes brought death.
"Dr. Waterhouse of Cambridge," wrote Channing, "learned of Jenner's discovery of the relation of cow-pox to small-pox and procured some vaccine matter from him. With this he vaccinated four of his own children, and three other members of his family. A month later, these were taken to a small-pox hospital and inoculated. All came out at the end of ten days with- out any signs of infection. Jefferson was one of the first to welcome the new discovery. He obtained some of the matter from Dr. Waterhouse and caused eighty or ninety persons to be vaccinated at Monticello and vicinity. The belief in the cow prophylactic spread very slowly. In 1802 the Boston Board of Health permitted an experiment to be tried on a group of children. Twelve of these had been vaccinated and two others had not had either cow- pox or small-pox. The whole fourteen were inoculated with small-pox, and the twelve who had been vaccinated, showing no signs of the small-pox, were again inoculated with it. They all remained together in one room, often- times sleeping in the same bed, without producing the least appearance of small-pox in those who had been vaccinated. The report of this experiment was published by the authorities and seems to have produced conviction of the efficacy of vaccination."
Other epidemics ravaged the county. In 1796 it was dysentery which left a wake of death. Between July and November, forty-four children under five years and fifteen persons over that age died in Worcester, and it is said, the experience of the other towns where records were never compiled was practically like Worcester's. In 1810 and again in 1813 a very malignant fever raged through the towns, and many died. Perhaps it was the influenza of modern times, perhaps it was typhoid, which not until years afterwards was segregated as a disease, but was generally called "slow fever."
No wonder people became health conscious. Nor did the physicians them- selves serve to abate deep individual interest in a person's physical condition. Their weapons were the lancet and leech for bleeding and jalap and calomel,
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salts and epecac for purgings, together with opium in insidious forms and in its pure state-all these administered in combination day and night. Perhaps it was with subconscious desire to be rid of the horrors of accepted medical practice that the populace turned to the patent medicines which came on the market with a blare of trumpets and specious promises. The newspapers were flooded with their advertisements-of "Bateman's Drops" and "Botani- cal Tea," and Dr. Robertson's "Celebrated Elixir of Health," and Dr. Cool- idge's "Anti-Pestilential Pills." A great majority of the people contracted the medicine habit. To ask after a person's health took on more than a perfunctory meaning.
Dr. Hamilton was the leader in the quack remedy field, as measured by the amount of his advertising which sometimes occupied more than half of the entire available space of a newspaper. His "Elixir" cured colds, obsti- nate coughs, and "approaching consumption." Attorney-General Luther Martin of Maryland gave testimony that the "Elixir" relieved him of a "painful and troublesome affection of the breast, accompanied with soreness and obstructed and difficult breathing." But even this great nostrum did not exceed in its virtues the same doctor's "Essence of Mustard," for gout and sciatica, and his "Worm Lozenges." Every store in town and country always kept ample stocks of these medicines, and, no doubt, reaped handsome profits from their sale.
Asiatic Cholera Threatens-Later Asiatic cholera stuck its ugly head into Worcester County. Christopher Columbus Baldwin, librarian of the American Antiquarian Society, in his diary, wrote June 17, 1832: "Today we hear the melancholy news of the arrival of the Asiatic cholera at Quebec and Montreal. The information makes sad the faces of many. It is thought a matter of certainty that it will reach New York and Boston in a few weeks. It creates great consternation everywhere. God grant that its ravages may be stayed and the American continent spared from its desolating march."
Again, July 22, the diary says : "Rasselas Harwood died of the cholera at North Brookfield this day. This is the first case that has happened in this County. He was a merchant in New York and had had a slight attack there and came to his friends at Brookfield to avoid the disease. He was about twenty-seven when he died. He was formerly a clerk in the store of Moses Bond at Templeton."
July 26. "The country hereabouts is still agitated with the fear that the cholera will speedily make its descent upon us in this quarter. Dr. Oliver H. Blood of Worcester has gone to New York to see how the disease is treated. His wife read an interesting letter from him in my hearing. He gave an account of the saline injection, a method of cure adopted in Europe. It is
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done by opening a blood vessel and injecting the solution into the veins. Fifty ounces were thus injected, an astonishing quantity ; the mortality, at present, in New York is not so great as it has been in Montreal or Quebec. It aver- ages about one hundred a day, attacking principally the most miserable part of the community !
"At New York and elsewhere, the apparent malignity of the distemper is greatly increased by the fears and apprehensions of the people. Many people have made themselves actually sick from the dread and anxiety they have entertained lest they should die of the disease. They read the accounts given of the symptoms which precede the disorder, and quickly give way to the belief that they really have it. They then take medicine, which, of course, makes them sick, and then send for a doctor, who comes, and the patient dies speedily."
"August 3. News reaches us that the cholera has made its appearance at Providence, R. I., and that four respectable people have died of it. The alarm here has greatly subsided and little fear is entertained compared with the con- sternation that prevailed when the disease first appeared at Montreal and Quebec. So true it is that all dangers diminish as they approach us.
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