USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume I > Part 35
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"There are some, however, that are greatly frightened and have made all preparations for its reception, such as having procured bags of sand, large stores of camphor, laudanum and the like, which are recommended to be used upon the first breaking out of the disease. May God grant that some device, like that of inoculation or vaccination for the small pox, may be discovered whereby this frightful malady may be disarmed of its terrors as well as its malignity."
All the alarm in Worcester County was for nothing. The Brookfield case was the only one, and that was contracted in New York. Asiatic cholera is a filth disease. If filth it needed, the shire of Worcester was no place for it.
Years were to elapse before medical men and their patients, and the people as a whole were to reap the benefits of knowledge of the part bacteria played in the scheme of human life. Nor did those who lived in our first quarter century get so far as to connect ordinary sanitation with sickness. Plumbing, of course, was unknown. Sanitary conveniences were of the most primitive description. Water, excepting in very exceptional instances, had to be pumped from the well, which too often was not well guarded against pollution. The wonder was that typhoid did not levy heavy toll of sickness and death, and perhaps it did, under another name. Such a convenience as a refrigerator had not been dreamed of, nor was ice harvested and stored for hot weather use. Many farms had their spring-houses-dark little buildings set astride a stream of water from a cold spring, where milk and butter and meat could be
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* THE . LEWIS . J . WARNER . MEMORIAL . .
LEWIS J. WARNER MEMORIAL, WORCESTER ACADEMY'S NEW THEATRE AND AUDITORIUM
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kept fresh and clean. But in the towns, the only cool place in a dwelling was the cellar, where milk was exposed in open pans, or the well in which perish- able foods and drink could be suspended in receptacles.
There were no screens to exclude flies and mosquitoes, and, in many country neighborhoods, the black flies which were a torment. The plague of flies must have been most trying, with horse and cow stable in close proximity to most houses. But, to tell the truth, screens were little needed excepting perhaps in outer doorways, for it was the common custom to keep dwellings tight, with windows closed. To sleep with them open was regarded as suicidal, for "night air," to the minds of practically everybody, was a noxious thing.
Surgery was of the crudest, and always accompanied by torture, for anaesthetics were unknown. Morton of Charlton, another great Worcester County man, years later discovered that wondrous boon to mankind, the sense-destroying influence of ether. But before that day the surgeon could do no more than dull his patient's senses with drugs.
Looking backward, from this more enlightened day, one might marvel that any but the most robust and long-enduring ever approached old age. Prob- ably a century hence, a still further enlightened people may express the same wonder as they ponder upon human existence in the first third of the twen- tieth century.
Who in that old day, could have connected the recurring yellow fever with a mosquito? When this scourge came to Philadelphia, its presence was attributed to weird causes-the offensive smell emitted from a cargo of putrid coffee ; a mysterious pestilential poison wafted from the West Indies ; a pecu- liar condition of the atmosphere as indicated by great swarms of flies, mos- quitoes and grasshoppers. No plausible conclusion was drawn from the fact that the fever came year after year in summer to our more southerly seaboard cities, was confined to restricted areas and could be avoided by moving a short distance from them, and disappeared with cold weather. The minds of physicians and scientists were not yet prepared to seek systematically and patiently for causes.
Our County People Gamble in Lotteries-As soon as the Federal Government had become firmly established and a banking system had been created, the rich and well-to-do invested money in government bonds and bank stocks, and those who cared to speculate found ample opportunity in land promotions, particularly in wild lands, and in shipping ventures to Russia and the Far East. But persons of lesser means had much greater difficulty in placing their savings where the money would yield them a return. There were no savings banks. The Worcester County Institution for Sav-
Wor .- 21
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ings, first mutual savings bank to be established in Massachusetts, west of Boston, did not open its doors until 1828. Joint stock companies were prac- tically unknown.
What was more natural than that our people should turn to the lottery ticket as a proper and exciting method of disposing of their money? Were not the great colleges and churches of the strictest sects employing lotteries constantly, as a matter of course, in raising funds for maintenance and for new buildings? The people of every town in the county joined in a form of gambling, which was licensed by the law of the land and the approval even of the clergy. In fact, it had been considered religiously sound from the very beginning of colonization, for the Virginia Company was authorized to raise funds in this manner.
George Washington bought lottery tickets. Thomas Jefferson sought to rehabilitate his lost fortune by disposing of some of his lands through a lot- tery. Dr. Bentley of Salem wrote that the building of colleges and meeting- houses "seems to be a public license to the clergy for speculation, which many of them cheerfully embrace." The newspapers were half filled with adver- tisements of lotteries, and promoters and ticket brokers issued elaborate posters. One issue of the Philadelphia Aurora advertised four church lot- teries-the Holy Trinity, the Fourth Presbyterian, the Second Baptist and the African Episcopal. We find also the lotteries of the Catholic Cathedral Church of Baltimore and the German Evangelical Reformed Church of Phila- delphia. One would find difficulty in selecting a more strictly representative list of religious bodies. To them there seemed nothing unholy in this form of game of chance. Even when in the second third of the nineteenth century a strong revulsion of feeling set in, and was voiced from the pulpits in no uncertain language, none of the church societies which had profited by the widespread sin, considered it necessary to destroy the edifices which were its fruits.
To the colleges the lottery was almost an essential money-raiser. Harvard College in Massachusetts, William and Mary in Virginia, Vincennes Univer- sity in Indiana, Dartmouth in New Hampshire; these and others conducted annual lotteries, to which the public eagerly subscribed by the purchase of tickets. They were all honestly conducted, of course, and were extremely generous to the ticket-holders.
The Harvard College lottery was perhaps the most widely advertised, even as far afield as Charleston, South Carolina. The record books of some of the drawings are still preserved. It went on from year to year, the total amount taken by each class varying from seventy thousand to eighty thousand dollars. Two-thirds of the tickets were doomed to draw blanks ; the prizes, going to holders of fortunate numbers, ranged from six dollars to twenty
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thousand : the last drawn number taken from the wheel being entitled to five thousand dollars. The expenses of the lottery were deducted from the prizes, the net profit realized in each year being about fifteen thousand dollars.
A lottery for "A College in Baltimore" in 1808 was a single type, in which there were twenty-two thousand tickets at ten dollars each, which brought in two hundred and twenty thousand dollars, and prizes to that full amount were offered, but fifteen per cent. was deducted from them at time of pay- ment, which must have yielded the promoters for expenses and profit the neat sum of thirty-three thousand dollars. Of a more complicated form was the Bustleton and Smithfield Turnpike lottery, and it was one of the largest. The eighty drawings were held three a week, and at least four hundred tickets were drawn on each occasion. The price of tickets started at ten dollars apiece. This was raised to thirteen dollars on the forty-second day, to fifteen dollars on the sixty-fifth day, to twenty dollars on the seventieth day, and to thirty dollars on the seventy-fifth day. The greatest prize was drawn on the forty-fifth day, after which there were several prizes of one thousand dollars, for the first drawn of the last two hundred and fifty tickets.
Lottery ticket brokers built up prosperous clienteles, and advertised expensively. Typical of the alluring invitations is one printed in Relf's Phila- delphia Gazette of September 7, 1808, in which Hope & Company invited the ladies to buy tickets in the Universalist Church lottery, or the Holy Trinity Lottery, advising them that they are "not obliged to consult their cautious, plodding husbands in order to gain one or more of the many dazzling prizes which await the claim of beauty."
CHAPTER XXVII.
Christopher Columbus Baldwin's Diary
No better picture of a by-gone period of history may be found than that contained in the frankly written diary of an observing and industrious chroni- cler of events as they occurred in his own life and about him. When Worces- ter County was entering upon its second century, Christopher Columbus Baldwin was keeping such a journal, which is now one of the precious pos- sessions of the American Antiquarian Society.
Mr. Baldwin was a Worcester County man through and through. He was born in Templeton, in the village of Baldwinville, which was named for his family ; prepared for Harvard College at Leicester Academy; and, after graduating at Cambridge, studied law in Worcester, and practiced his profes- sion in that town, and Barre and Sutton. In 1832, when he was thirty-two years old, he was made librarian of the Antiquarian Society.
His diary shows him a man of an extraordinary range of interests. First of all, he was a profound and indefatigable antiquarian and genealogist. To spend a day in a grave-yard copying epitaphs was supreme happiness. He had a bent for natural history, and enjoyed hunting and fishing. He was fond of society, and was on an intimate footing with the socially prominent families of the towns where he made his residence. He was a favorite with ladies, and delighted in dancing. With his cronies he was a good fellow, though, for his day, very abstemious in his habits. His journal proves him a wit. He was a shrewd observer of men and women, and of the affairs of his community and the world in general. Finally, he was a writer of ability.
The diary is all too short. It covers the period, with one year missing, from January I, 1829, to August 20, 1835. On this latter day, as he was journeying through Ohio on a tour of the West, the stage-coach on which he was a passenger was overturned and he was killed.
We are devoting a chapter to abstracts from the Baldwin Diary-a para- graph or two here and there-in the belief that no better way could be found
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for giving the reader a conception of what Worcester County was like and how its people lived one hundred years ago. Worcester then had 4,173 peo- ple, Barre 2,502, and Sutton 2,186.
WORCESTER TOWN IN 1829.
February 27, 1829-Attend ball in the evening at Mr. Thomas' public house ; sixteen ladies and nineteen gentlemen present. Nero Powers on the Fiddle and old Peter Rich on the tamborin are the musick. No musick from abroad could reach us on account of the going. Ladies in gay dresses and musick always pleases me. Pay $3.00.
March 2-March meeting; am candidate for town clerk; people will not vote for me because I have no wife! Jupiter Tonans! Men are judged by their coats and not by their motives.
April II-The Canal-boat "Washington," the first to be built in Worces- ter, is carried through the street on wheels from near the Gaol to the basin near the Distillery, where it is to be launched. April 13. At 10 o'clock it is launched. Emory Washburn, Esq., makes a speech on the occasion, writes a song, and Emory Perry sings it. Have a collation aboard, ride to the Red Mill and return.
May 2-Have a justice's court with Emory Washburn, and he has gone to Springfield to examine Miss --- to see whether he can put up with her faults for $25,000, and take her for a wife.
May 14-Warm and pleasant. Go into the woods with Rejoice Newton, Esq., for trees to ornament the burial-ground by the Common. Joseph Turner, Caleb Newton, Thomas Kinnicutt, Esq., and Luther Burnett go with me. We return with seventy trees. 15th. Set out the trees in the burial- ground.
June 19-Attend court which rises at 9 a. m. According to immemorial use the members of the Bar in Worcester devote the afternoon to rolling nine pins. It is usual for court to rise on Friday but it fell this time on Saturday. Have a very pleasant time, and don't lose any money. I bet only one fourpence a game.
July 24-Henry K. Newcomb invites me to go to Hopkinton Springs-a very pleasant place. Meet much company ; roll nine pins, swing, hang the ring, talk to the ladies, walk with them, drink and laugh. Return at night.
August 3-Ride with T. Kinnicutt, Esq., to Millbury, in company of Gov. Lincoln, Daniel Webster, Hon. Mr. Hunt of Brattleboro, and with them and other gentlemen at the Governor's. I have never seen any men who said so many good things as Mr. Webster.
September 5-Court rises. Rode to Ram's Horn pond in Sutton or Mill- bury, a reservoir of the Blackstone Canal, in company with Hon. J. Davis,
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John W. Lincoln, and William Lincoln. All go in the Colonel's wagon with two horses and his new harnesses. Bring back many grapes, and, notwith- standing my headache, had a pleasant time.
1831-CAMPAIGN ARAINST COSTLY MOURNING.
January 17, 1830-Attend meeting. Funeral sermon on the death of Mrs. Paine by Dr. Bancroft ; afternoon a sermon on mourning apparel by Mr. Hill. Attend oratoric in evening. Go with Miss Bartlett of Springfield. Great Complaint has existed for a long time against the practice of wearing expensive mourning apparel, occasioned by the death of friends or relatives. The first person who ventured to make an inroad upon fashion and discourage such an expensive and embarrassing custom was the Hon. Nathaniel Paine, the Judge of Probate, for the County of Worcester. The aged rarely take the lead in the work of innovating upon long established usages. Judge Paine, however, must enjoy the fame of having been first to set an example in this particular. He did it on an occasion when no one, who was acquainted with his estimable and excellent lady, could impute to it a wrong motive. It appeared very odd and singular to see the family the next day, which was Sunday, attending church without any appearance of mourning. They wore their usual dress and the example was well thought of by all excepting a few elderly women who regarded the change as pagan and heathernish and would by no means consent to its adoption. The Reverend Mr. Hill preached on the subject on Sunday afternoon, and he made a furious attack upon the fashion of mourning. Rev. Mr. Going preached to his people on the same subject.
February 2-Cloudy ; not cold. Good sleighing. Invite Miss Elizabeth Green to ride with me to Wesson's in Westboro. Accompanied by Emory Washburn, Esq., with Miss Giles of Fitchburg, and Henry K. Newcomb with Miss Helen Bigelow of Petersham, daughter of Hon. Lewis Bigelow. Leave Worcester at 4 p. m. and return between nine and ten. Have an exceedingly fine time.
February 5-Very pleasant and very cold. A sleigh ride is got up to go to Westboro. Mr. Newcomb induces me to attend. Ride with him and Mary and Catherine Robinson in a four-horse sleigh. Leave Worcester at 3 and return at 10. Between 20 and 30 in the party. Most all married people. Mulled wine was prepared for the ladies and flip for the gentlemen, but by mistake the flip is carried to the ladies and they do not find their error until our flip is mostly gone, when they pronounce it very unpleasant stuff !! I find that I have been very dissipated this week, and form a resolution to be more sober.
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February 6-Thermometer this morning at 8 o'clock stands 10 degrees below zero. Oliver Harrington's store at New Worcester is burnt. Alarm given at about 10 at night. Thermometer 10 degrees below zero. I attend the fire. Get very wet. Freeze my ears and both cheeks. Work the engine with difficulty. Return at 2 o'clock. Intensely cold. Many freeze them- selves.
WASHINGTON BIRTHDAY BALL.
February 22-Washington's birthday. Ball in evening. I do not attend. It has been the invariable practice in this town for many years, on the 22d of February, the birthday of Washington, to have a public ball. I have been here seven years and a like observance of the day has not been omitted. Dur- ing my residence here, I have, until now, at every ball with the exception of three, taken part as one of the managers. This year I did not attend. I am told that the number was small, being only about twenty couples. The expense to each has always been three dollars. The music generally consists of two fiddles, a clarionette, or bugle, and a base viol. The entertainer furnished this under direction of the managers. The party retires about one o'clock, sometimes earlier, and sometimes later.
March 24-I am requested by Gov. Lincoln to procure some one to go in pursuit of a runaway, Joseph Willet, a Canadian Frenchman. Joseph Lovell engages to catch him and overtakes him this side of Concord, N. H., when he obtains from him $400 in silver. He left town leaving debts to that amount.
April 20-Do not attend meeting. Dine with Judge Paine and spend the evening with Judge Parker and Hon. Samuel Hoar of Concord. Talk about phrenology. Mr. Hoar is a convert to the phrenological doctrine from having read Coombe on the "Constitution of Man." I have paid some attention to the subject and am disposed to embrace it to a limited extent.
MR. BALDWIN MOVES TO BARRE.
May 1, 1830-Saturday. Pleasant. Resolve to leave Worcester and establish myself in business in Barre. There are too many lawyers here either to be profitable or reputable-there are above twenty. My earnings here are worth five hundred a year, and it costs that sum to live, and the business of the profession is daily growing less. Many go out a maying, and more to see the girls.
May 4-May training, and rains all day ; and soldiers appear bad enough.
May 12-Wednesday. Take stage for Barre. Have lived in Worcester seven years on the 19th of June next coming, and they have all been years of
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great happiness. Reach Barre at 5 o'clock, and commence boarding with Archibald Black, Esq., at nine shillings a week. Take tea with E. James, Esq. There are now three lawyers in the place.
June 4-Pleasant and cold. Received a quantity of cake from William Pratt Esq. of Shrewsbury, who was married to Miss Elizabeth Sikes on 25th May. Take tea at Mr. Ezra Jones' and ride horseback with Miss James to Petersham. In the evening serenade a Mr. Rice, who was married yesterday. This is customary here to pay a salute to those embarking in matrimony. He gets up and entertains the company. June 28-Writing an oration. (For Fourth of July). and a dull time I have of it, having been directed by the committee of arrangements not to mention Jacksonism or anti-Jacksonism, Adams, Clay or Calhoun, Masonry or anti-Masonry, orthodoxy or heresy, nor anything touching politics, religion, or domestic life.
July 3-Cloudy and intensely warm. Rains a little in the morning and about 4 o'clock rains again. Deliver my speech, it being Saturday. The meeting-house is crowded and about 200 sit down at the table, which is spread under a bower. Everything goes off well and happily.
July 5-Monday. In the afternoon the ladies gave a public, tea party in the same bower which was used Saturday. One hundred and thirty partake and about the same number of gentlemen. Many excellent toasts were given. Musick followed each toast and the whole goes off pleasantly. I have never seen so many pretty faces together before. The ladies contributed as each one felt disposed. Some brought cake, some pies, some cherries, others furniture for the table, and all, good feeling and cheerful faces and merry hearts. Seth Lee, Esq., delivered a speech in the evening on temperance in the brick meeting-house and had fifteen hearers.
Note-Statistics of Barre, 1830. Palm Leaf Hats. There are two stores here which procure large numbers of these hats braided by females. I am informed that the number of hats sold by each firm in the year now past, which have been manufactured on their account, is upward of one hundred thousand ! One palm leaf is sufficient for a hat. These are brought from one of the West India islands and are sold here to the braiders at eight cents a leaf. The cheaper sort of hats are braided for twenty cents each. The principal market for them is New York, whence they are carried south.
OPENS LAW PRACTICE IN SUTTON.
November 5-Col. Sam. Ward carries me to Sutton where I am to remain. I dine with Mr. Sibley (Jonas L. Sibley, his new law partner) and remain there over night. IIth. Commence boarding at noon with Mrs. March. I give $2 per week, including washing. 15th. It rains yet! and,
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damn me, I believe it will never stop raining. I ride down to Millbury with Mr. Sibley.
November 19-Cloudy, and in afternoon and night snows. Read Boswell in forenoon, and afternoon attend meeting and hear Rev. Mr. Maltby. In the evening walk up to the Street to hear Rev. Lyman Maynard of Oxford preach. He is the son of Harvey Maynard of Templeton and is about my age. We used to go to school together, and he was our standard fiddler at all the junkets. He is now very much respected as a preacher of the doctrine of Universal Salvation. We do not hear him. We spend the evening in the tavern and drink, smoke, eat a supper of poached eggs and coffee, and hire a four-horse stage to bring us home. This was a bad way to spend Sunday night and I am satisfied it was a great error in me to do so. L. B. Putnam, E. Putnam, E. Clark, Esq., and Mr. Sumner were with me, or rather I with them. We get back at II o'clock.
Note-Square-toed boots and shoes were first worn in 1828 and 9, and in 1830 they have become in general use, and what is quite amusing is that even the sedate and sober yeomanry undertake to say that the fashion is a good one and that they have adopted it from convenience and economy, when in truth they do it from sheer pride. But another fashion is about to be introduced and the square toe one is to give place to picked toes. I have seen several of the pioneers of fashion with boots having toes very pointed and they look fierce enough.
BALDWIN-1831.
March 12, 1831-Meet Mr. Chester Harding the painter, and have a con- versation on phrenology. He is a full believer and convert to the doctrine, and has taken the dimensions of all the most distinguished heads in the country, such as the members of the Supreme Court of the U. S., Daniel Webster's etc. The largest head is that of Judge Marshall (Chief Justice John Marshall), and the next is that of Mr. Webster.
ELIAKIM DAVIS HAS HIGH SHERIFF ARRESTED.
March 16, 1831-There is great excitement in Worcester about the arrest of the High Sheriff, Calvin Willard, Esq., upon the complaint of old Eliakim Davis of Fitchburg. He was born in Rutland in 1739. Eliakim has been famous for between twenty and thirty years for his undauntable love of liti- gation. Perhaps no man ever lived who had manifested throughout so great a fondness for contention. He has been imprisoned again and again for per-
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jury, maintainance and defaming the names of honest citizens, and yet no sooner is he set at liberty than he gets into some scrape for which he is severely punished. He has squandered a good estate in quarreling with his neighbors and, notwithstanding his poverty, still succeeds in getting funds to carry on his suits. He left Rutland in 1820, or thereabouts, and moved to Fitchburg, where he married a respectable widow lady, with a small real estate, and, from his litigious temper, has become a terror to all the people of the town. His love of the law seems to have become a passion, and every other feeling is made subservient to it. I do not think he would steal or cheat, and I believe he is temperate in his habits. A perfect history of him may be found on the record of the Court of the County of Worcester, where he has regularly appeared at every term for nearly or quite thirty years. In all civil suits he appears as plaintiff, but in criminal matters he is generally on the defensive.
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