USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume I > Part 38
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In this same letter he urges his steward to build a large storehouse, to fence in about a mile square at the mine, and to turn aside the bridle path, that their work might be more private. He assures the captain that he shall have a stock of milch cows and breeding swine, and reminds him, "what ever you meet with that is uncommon or looks like a rarity or curiosity, remem- ber you are to preserve it for me." He bids him disregard all "tittle tattle which is always hatched in Hell, with designs to disturb and prevent all good undertakings." This extraordinary letter closes with the statement, "Mr. Agate was with me this morning, and is pleased to see a piece of black lead you sent me, and says that he sells that which does not look so well for six- teen shillings a pound."
The bubble burst. Within a week came a letter to Winthrop from Ger- many setting forth that the maximum price of black lead was indeed sixteen shillings, but for one hundredweight, not one pound. On top of this a Lon- don assayist informed him, "I have tried your samples of ores, and none of them are of any value except the black lead. That which you call silver ore is almost all iron, nor can any other metal be got from it that will pay the charge of refining. And this you may be satisfied in, by calcining a piece of that ore, then pound it, and the loadstone will take it all up; which is full conviction. That which you call tin ore holds no proportion of metal that is sufficient to pay the expenses of refining."
Then lawsuits piled on him. Sparrow and Morke sued, and so did the widow of Rev. Dr. Hunt. There were disagreeable aspects to the cases, particularly in the defendant's contacts with the ex-sea captain. Worries preyed upon John Winthrop and sickness followed; and his death occurred in 1747. The suits were transferred against his widow, but she finally won them all, with costs. The Winthrop family's mining ventures were ended.
But the Tale of Tantiusques was not ended. Eighty years later, Frederick Tudor of Boston, in 1828, acquired the property, and operated the workings as an adjunct to his manufacturing of crucibles, until 1833, when he sold the mine to the Ixion Black Lead Factory. It came back to him, however, in 1839, and he operated it himself for a time, and then leased it to one Marcy,
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on shares. There followed a long lapse of time, until the opening years of the present century when a company was organized to apply modern mining methods and did considerable work of clearing and draining and tunneling. Once again Tantiusques was abandoned and has remained so ever since. Per- - haps its day of usefulness is yet to come.
Treasure Hunts in Worcester-Worcester has its first taste of treas- ure hunting as far back as 1754, according to an account in Lincoln's History of Worcester, which says : "A vein of metal which was supposed to be silver, was discovered near the head of the valley, about a mile north of the town. A company for exploring the spot was formed by some of the most substan- tial inhabitants, furnaces and smelting-houses were erected and a cunning German employed as superintendent. Under his direction a shaft was sunk eighty feet perpendicularly, and a horizontal gallery extended about as far through the rock, which was to be intersected by another shaft, commenced about six rods north of the first opening.
"Among the masses which were, within a few years, laid around the scene of operations were specimens of the ores containing minute portions of silver, specks of copper and lead, much iron and an extraordinary quantity of arsenic ; which struck against steel, a profusion of vivid sparks were thrown out, and a peculiarly disagreeable odor of the latter mineral emitted. On the application of heat this perfume increased to an overpowering extent. The company expended great sums blasting the rocks, raising its fragments and erecting buildings and machinery. While the pile of stone increased, the money of the partners diminished. The furnaces in full blast produced nothing but suffocating vapors, curling over the flames in those beautiful coronets of smoke which still attend the attempt to melt the ore.
"The shrewd foreigner, in whose promises his associates seem to have placed that confidence which honest men often repose in the declarations of knaves, became satisfied that the crisis was approaching when it would be ascertained that the funds were exhausted and that stone and iron could not he transmuted to gold. Some papers which exist indicate that he pretended to knowledge of the occult sciences. However that may be, he assured them that the great enemy of man had been busy in defeating their exertions, mak- ing his presence redolent in the perfume of sulphur and arsenic. He obtained the sum of $100 and made a journey to Philadelphia to consult with a per- son* experienced in mines and their demons, for the purpose of exorcising the unsavory spirit of the crucible. He departed with a barrel full of the productions of the mine, but never returned to state the results of his con- ference.
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"And yet the German superintendent may have been more superstitious than knavish. The mineral which baffled him, whose arsenical fumes almost suffocated his miners and confirmed his belief in the supernatural, was cobalt, a name derived from the Greek Kobalos, German Kobold, a little devil." The mine was abandoned for good.
The Worcester coal mine still remains on the hillside which rises to the westward at the north end of Lake Quinsigamond. The opening of the tunnel is there, and the pit, always filled to the brim with water. It was in 1823 that "this inexhaustible store of anthracite coal, well calculated for steam engines" was exploited. The Blackstone Canal was soon to be opened connecting Worcester with the sea at Providence, and there were rosy dreams of supplying the world with fuel. This coal was said to ignite easier than any of the fine coals of Pennsylvania and to burn longer. The claim was made that where Lehigh coal burned four hours and twenty-five minutes, Worcester coal anthracite lasted five hours, and in the same time produced a great degree of heat.
"Tests were made at the Worcester Brewery," says Lincoln, "which appear to have been satisfactory, and in 1824 the Massachusetts Coal Company was incorporated to ascertain the quality and quantity of the coal, and expense of mining and conveying it to market. For the next two years it appears to have been used as the principal fuel at the brewery of Trumbull & Ward, and was also used in Colonel Gardner Burbank's paper mill. It was found there that about half of the bulk of the coal remained after the fire subsided, but upon replenishing with new coal it was mostly consumed in the second burning, and Colonel Burbank found that the expense of keeping a fire with this coal to be less than the expense of cutting wood and tending fire, if the wood were delivered at the door free of expense."
Work at the mine proceeded with vigor for a number of years. The Worcester Coal Company was organized to operate the property, and the Worcester Railway Company was given a charter to build a railroad to Lake Quinsigamond and on to the Blackstone Canal. A railway of sorts was con- structed, on which coal was carried chiefly by gravity in loads of fifteen hun- dred pounds. But, in about the year 1830, the whole enterprise was aban- doned chiefly because, as a wag put it, "There was a damn sight more coal after burning than there was before."
Harvard's Silver Lode-"In Harvard, at the foot of Oak Hill, on the eastern side, there is a mine that may be justly deemed a curiosity," wrote Whitney in 1793, in his History of Worcester County. "Early in the year 1783, when a rage for the treasures thought to be hid in the bowels of the earth, was prevalent in the country, it was thought by some persons, from
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the color of the earth in this place, and from the working of the mineral rods, that silver ore might be obtained not far beneath the surface of the ground.
"Accordingly some gentlemen in this town and its vicinity (twenty-five in number) formed themselves into a mine company for the purpose of descry- ing those hidden treasures, and enriching themselves therewith. Under the conduct of certain men, Messrs. Ives and Peck, they began their operations in July following. These were continued, though with frequent interruptions, until sometime in the year 1789.
"During this time, they had, with some difficulty, digged through a con- siderable quantity of condensed gravel, until they came to a solid rock. Into this they penetrated more than forty feet. But either from the unskillfulness of the mineralists, or for want of perseverance in their employers, the shin- ing ore has not yet been discovered. The company, after expending one thousand one hundred dollars in the process, is amicably dissolved. The sides of this cavity are almost rectilinear. It is about six feet high, and half as wide. The excavation was made, partly by heating the rock to a great degree, and then cooling it suddenly with water ; but the greater portion of it was effected with powder. Pieces of the earth, which they dug before they entered the rock, had the appearance of yellow lead, and were considerably sulphureous. The cavern now rests a deserted monument of successless toil. Its mouth opens to the east; and the rising sun, to a person in the other extremity, renders the prospect highly delightful.
"Here in Fitchburg is a hill," wrote the same old chronicler, "usually denominated Pearl Hill, and is composed of a rock of a peculiar quality, not common in this part of the country. It produces isinglass, or talc, in great plenty. The appearance encourages a hope that there are valuable mines, either of gold or silver, or both, imbosomed there. Attempts have hereto- fore been made to explore and possess them; but for want of wealth or per- severance in the undertakers, they have not obtained the desiderata.
"All valuable mines in this part of the world, as in most other parts, lie deep in the bowels of the earth, and much labour is necessary to reach them. In the present state of our population, riches, in these northern parts, are with much greater facility procured from the surface of the earth by the various instruments of cultivation, than from deep and latent mines of the richest ore. When the country becomes overstocked with inhabitants, and support from the soil shall not be so easily obtained, it is not improbable that from this mountain will be dug large quantities of those shining metals, as every- thing, at present, favors the conjecture."
Of Hubbardston, Whitney wrote: "It is supposed this town is rich in iron ore, at least. There is a hill in the north part of it, extending into Tem-
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pleton, where a number of gentlemen from Boston and other places wrought near fifty years ago. They dug several rods into the hill in quest of a silver mine; but whether it answered their expectations or not, was not divulged. A war commencing, put a stop to their pursuit, and it has never been reas- sumed.
"Templeton has no remarkable hills or eminences distinguished by par- ticular names, except one on the south side towards Hubbardston, called Mine Hill, from its abounding in good iron ore, and supposed also to be rich in other more valuable mines and minerals. This was granted to a Capt. Andrew Robinson of Gloucester, some time before the original grant of the township. It was soon sold, and now a great number of persons have a right therein. It is a long, rocky hill, and very steep on one side."
Wor .- 23
CHAPTER XXIX.
Farm and Home Life a Century Ago
Dr. G. Stanley Hall, who was president of Clark University from its foundation through the long period when it was one of the world's great centers of psychological research and study, held for many years an abiding interest in old New England customs and the manner of living of the people, and particularly the country people. He pursued his avocation with the thor- oughness which characterized him. His investigations were based primarily upon the experiences of his own boyhood, when he passed his vacations on an ancient farm in the little old Massachusetts town of Ashfield, which was typical of many of the small Worcester County towns of that period.
Much of his information was gathered from men and women who were old when he was young, and whose memories harked back to the early years of the last century. In this way he accumulated a great mass of valuable detail, which otherwise might have been lost, of the self-contained, self- sufficient existence of a Yankee village and a Yankee farm of the old days- of the home industries by which they converted the products of field and pasture and woodland to fill their needs; of their homes and what was in them; of their raiment and its manufacture, and of their food and its cook- ing; of their simple, pleasant social life in the family and with their neigh- bors, and of their wholesome amusements.
President Hall embodied much of the knowledge which he had accum- ulated in a paper read before the American Antiquarian Society in 1890, presenting a picture of deep interest to anyone who would know how the forefathers lived. We are reprinting from the Society's proceedings of forty years ago, with permission, a large part of Dr. Hall's paper, as follows :
BOY LIFE IN A MASSACHUSETTS COUNTRY TOWN THIRTY YEARS AGO.
By G. Stanley Hall.
Between the ages of nine and fourteen, my parents who then lived in a distant town very wisely permitted me to spend most of the schoolless part of
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these five years, so critical for a boy's development, with a large family on a large farm in Ashfield of this State. Although this joyous period ended in 1860, the life, modes of thought and feeling, industries, dress, etc., were very old fashioned for that date and were tenaciously and proudly kept so. In more recent years, as I have come to believe that nowhere does the old New England life still persist more strongly or can be studied more objectively, I have spent portions of several summers, with the aid of a small fund placed in my hands for the purpose, in collecting old farm tools, household utensils, furniture, articles of dress, and hundreds of miscellaneous old objects into a local museum, a little after the fashion of the museums of Plymouth, Salem and Deerfield. I have interviewed all the oldest inhabitants for details of customs and industries. My vacation interest grew into a record partly because so many facts of the early life and thoughts of old New England are still unrecorded and are now so fast passing beyond the reach of record, with the lamented decay of these little old towns, partly because despite cer- tain evils this life at its best appears to me to have constituted about the best educational environment for boys at a certain stage of their development ever realized in history, combining physical, industrial, technical with civil and religious elements in wise proportions and pedagogic objectivity. Again : this mode of life is the one and the only one that represents the ideal basis of a state of citizen voters as contemplated by the framers of our institutions. Finally, it is more and more refreshing in our age, and especially in the vaca- tion mood, to go back to sources, to the fresh primary thoughts, feelings, beliefs, modes of life of simple, homely, genuine men. Our higher anthro- pology labors to start afresh for the common vulgar standpoint as Socrates did, from what Maurice calls the Ethos, and Grote the Nomos of common people and of a just preceding and a vanishing type of civilization, to be warned with its experience and saturated with its local color.
I have freely eked out the boyish memory of those five years with that of older persons; but everything that follows was within the memory of people living three years ago. Time allows me to present here but a small part of the entire record, to sample it here and there, and show a few obvious lessons.
I begin with winter, when men's industries were most diversified, and were largely in wood. Lumber-or timber-trees were chopped down and cut by two men working a cross-cut saw, which was always getting stuck fast in a pinch which took the set out of it, unless the whole trunk was pried up by skids. Sometimes the fallen trees were cut into logs, snaked together, and piled with the aid of cant-hooks, to be drawn across the frozen pond to the saw-mill for some contemplated building, or, if of spruce, of straight grain and few knots, or of good rift, they were cut in bolts, or cross-sections
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of fifteen inches long, which was the legal length for shingles. These were taken home in a pung, split with beetle and wedge, and then with a frow and finished off with a drawshave, on a shaving-horse, itself home-made. These rive shingles were thought far more durable than those cut into shape by the buzz-saw which does not follow the grain. To be of prime quality these must be made of heart and not sap wood, nor of second growth trees. The shav- ings were in wide demand for kindling fires.
Axe-helves, too, were sawn, split, hewn, whittled, and scraped into shape with bits of broken glass, and the forms peculiar to each local maker were as characteristic as the style of painter or poet, and were widely known, com- pared and criticized. Butter-paddles were commonly made of red cherry, while sugar lap-paddles were made by merely marking whistle wood or bass, and whittling down one end for a handle. Mauls and beetles were made of ash knots, ox-bows of walnut, held into shape till seasoned by withes of yellow birch, from which also birch brushes and brooms were manufactured on winter evenings by stripping down seams of wood in the green. There were salt mortars and pig-troughs made from solid logs, with tools hardly more effective than those the Indian uses for his dug-out. Flails for next year's threshing ; cheese-hoops and cheese-ladders ; bread-troughs and yokes for hogs and sheep, and pokes for jumping cattle, horses and unruly geese, and stanchions for cows.
Some took this season for cutting next summer's bean and hop poles, pea bush, cart and sled stakes, with an eye always out for a straight clean whip stock or fish pole. Repairs were made during this season, and a new cat- hole beside the door, with a laterally-working drop-lid which the cat oper- ated with ease, was made one winter. New sled neaps, and fingers for thé grain cradle, handles for shovels and dung-forks, pitch-forks, spades, spuds, hoes, and a little earlier for rakes. Scythes and brooms were home-made, and machines and men of special trades were so far uncalled for. Nearly all these forms of domestic wood work I saw, and even helped in as a boy of ten might, or imitated them in play in those thrice-happy days, while in elder pop-guns, with a ringing report that were almost dangerous in-doors; hem- lock bows and arrows, or cross bows, with arrow-heads run on with melted lead ( for which every scrap of lead pipe or antique pewter dish was in great demand) often fatal for very small game; box and figure 4 traps for rats and squirrels ; wind-mills ; weather-vanes in the form of fish, roosters or even ships; an actual saw-mill that went in the brook, and cut planks with marino and black and white Carter potatoes for logs; and many whittled tools, toys and ornamental forms and puppets ;- in all these and many more, I even became in a short time, a fairly average expert as compared with other boys,
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at least so I then thought. How much all this has served me since, in the laboratory, in daily life, and even in the study, it would be hard to estimate.
The home industry in woolen is a good instance of one which survives in occasional families to this day. Sheep, as I remember, could thrive on the poorest hay, or orts, the leavings of the neat cattle. In summer they could eat brakes and polipods, if not even hardhack and tansy, and would browse down berry briers and underbrush, while their teeth cut the grass so close that cows could hardly survive in the same pasture with them. The spring lambs were raised in the shed by hand, sometimes as cossets by the children, who often derived their first savings therefrom. Sheep washing day was a gala day when, if at no other time, liquor was used against exposure, and shearing which came a week or two later, was hardly less interesting. A good shearer, who had done his twenty-five head a day, commanded good wages, seventy- five cents or a dollar a day ; while the boys must pull the dead sheep, even though they were only found after being some weeks defunct. Fleeces for home use were looked over, all burrs and shives picked out, and they were then oiled with poor lard. "Bees" were often made to do this.
Carding early became specialized and carders were in every town, but the implements were in each family, some members of which could not only card, but could even use the fine, long-toothed worsted combs in an emer- gency. The rolls were spun at home, novices doing the woof or filling, and the older girls the warp, which must be better. It was taken from the spindle sometimes on a niddy-noddy held in the hand, at two rounds per yard, but more commonly on a reel, in rounds of two yards each. Every forty rounds was signalized on a reel by the snap of a wooden spring or the fall of a ham- mer, and constituted a knot, four, five, seven, or ten of which (in different families and for different purposes) constituting a skein, and twenty knots making a run. Four seven-knotted skeins of filling, or six of warp was a day's work, though now, I am told, few young women can accomplish so much without excessive fatigue.
The yarn doubled if for stockings, after being washed clean of grease, next went to the great dye-tub in the chimney corner. Butternut bark for every-day suits, indigo for Sunday suits, and madder for shirting was the rule. There were also fancy dyes and fancy dyeing ; braiding, binding tightly or twisting in a white thread to get the favorite hit or miss, or pepper-and- salt effect, a now almost incredible ingenuity in making up figures and fancy color effects for loom patterns in girls' dresses. Next the filling was quilled and the warp spooled, the former ready for the shuttle, and the latter for the warping bars (both of these latter being often home-made) to which it went from the scarn or spool-frame. In warping, the leese must be taken with
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care, for if the order of the threads is lost they cannot be properly thumbed through the harnesses and hooked through the reed, and are good for nothing but to make into clothes lines and the piece is lost. A raddle also acts in keeping the warp disentangled and of proper width before the lathe and tenters can hold it. Sometimes blue and white shirt-formed frock cloth was woven, sometimes kerseys and plaid dress patterns of many colors, or woolen sheets, and even woolen pillowcases which were as warm and heavy, although coarser than those the olfactorial zoologist Jäger advises, and sells to his followers. The complication of harnesses and treadles required to weave some of the more complicated carpet, and especially cover-lid patterns, evinced great ingenuity and long study, and is probably now, although the combinations were carefully written down, in most communities a forever lost art. On coming from the loom the cloth was wet for shrinkage, and the nap picked up with cards of home-grown teasels and sheared smooth on one side, although in those days this process had already gone to the local fuller. Coarse yarn was also spun from tag-locks which was of course home carded. Knitting was easy, pretty visiting work. Girls earned from two to three York shillings a pair for men's stockings, paid in trade from the store, which put out such work if desired. Shag mittens were knit from thrumbs or the left-over ends of warp. Nubias and sontags were knit with large wooden needles, and men's gloves, tidies, and clock stockings with ornamental open work in the sides were knit with one hook, and the tape loom held between the knees was kept going evenings.
Domestic flax industry still lingers in a few families. The seed was sown broadcast and grew till the bolls were ripe, when it was pulled and laid in rows by the boys and whipped, in a few days, to get the seed for meal. After laying out of doors for some weeks till the shives were rotten, it was put through the process of breaking on the ponderous flax-break. It was then swingled, hatchelled, and finally hanked. It was then wound on the distaff made of a young spruce top, and drawn out for spinning. Grasshopper years, when it was short, this was hard, and though ticking, meal-bags, and scratchy tow shirts could be made, finer linen products were impossible. After weav- ing it must be bleached in a good quality of air.
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