USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume II > Part 39
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their injuries and from hunger and thirst. Clara Barton saw clearly that relief must be provided on the battlefield. She must get her supplies to the front where the men were falling and lying uncared for. Officialdom stood in the way. A battlefield was no place for a woman, she was told by those whose authority she must obtain. "I have no fear of the battlefield," she answered. "I have large stores, but no way to reach the troops." She was resolute in her demand, and finally permission was given her to go to the front, her authority coming direct from the surgeon-general's office.
One of her first acts was to get in touch with the United States Sanitary Commission, which she found always eager to cooperate with her. But throughout her field service she worked practically as a free lance, "a sort of independent Sanitary Commission," as she afterward defined it.
It was in August, 1862, "when our armies fought on Cedar Mountain, I broke the shackles and went to the field," wrote Miss Barton. In the next two years this little woman and her helpers shared the perils of many battle- fields, often working among the wounded where shell and bullet were flying thickest. Never did she leave the field until the last wounded man was cared for, in blue or in gray. The color made no difference to "The Angel of the Battlefield." It has been written, giving a glimpse of Clara Barton on her way to a scene of battle :
"Seated in an army wagon, piled high with boxes and provisions, rides Clara Barton, on her way to Harper's Ferry. Her wagon is one of a long column of army wagons, at least ten miles in length. Scattered along the road are men, weary and sick, who have fallen by the wayside, unable to go fur- ther. As her wagon rattles along, Miss Barton busies herself cutting loaves of bread into slices, and passes them to these poor, famished stragglers.
"Another train of army wagons is moving toward the battle of Antietam. The order of the train-first, ammunition, next, food and clothing for the well troops, and last, the hospital supplies-does not please Miss Barton. Her load of supplies reaches Harper's Ferry too late. The column of wagons stops for the night. At one o'clock Miss Barton arouses her driver, and they move on past the whole silent train so that at daylight they have gained ten miles and are up with the artillery, in advance even of the ammunition. There is need for this maneuver. An army surgeon, speechless with delight, when he sees Miss Barton approach in the wild fury of the battle, exclaims: 'God indeed has remembered us! How did you get here from Virginia so soon? We have nothing but our instruments and the little chloroform we brought in our pockets. We have not a bandage, rag, lint or string, and all these shell- wounded men bleeding to death."
"At Antietam-a man lying upon the ground asks for a drink. Miss Bar- ton stoops to give it, and raises him with her right arm. A bullet, speeding
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along, tears a hole in her sleeve and finds its way into his body. He falls back dead.
"Night settles down over the shell-torn battle ground. In a nearby house, a surgeon is sitting, gazing savagely at a bit of tallow candle. Miss Barton approaches him. 'You are tired, Doctor," she says. 'Tired of such heartless- ness and such carelessness," he replies. "Here are at least one thousand wounded men, five hundred of whom cannot live till daylight, without atten- tion. That two inches of candle is all I have or can get.' Miss Barton leads him to the door and shows him the barn, lighted by lanterns.
""'Who did it?'" he questions.
"'I, Doctor.'" ""'Where did you get them?'"
"'Brought them with me,'" replies Miss Barton. "'All you want-four boxes.'"
Scores of stories as vivid as this could be told. There was no end to her ministering care. She prepared great kettles of gruel over campfires and fed the famished sufferers. After the slaughter of Spottsylvania, a line of more than two hundred wagons loaded with wounded men en route to hospitals became hopelessly mired. Miss Barton was at hand to make kettles of hot coffee for the sufferers. "I became a notable housekeeper," she told her friends in happier days, "if that might be said of one who had no house to keep, but lived in fields and woods and tents and wagons with all out doors for a cooking range, Mother Earth for a kitchen hearth, and the winds of Heaven for a chimney."
Her personal bravery became a proverb. To relate a single instance, at Fredericksburg she crossed a stream on a swaying pontoon bridge, while shot were falling in the water on either side. As an officer approached to help her an exploding shell hissed between them, taking with it a piece of his coat and a part of her dress. But she was never dismayed. She had no time to think of danger. Her every thought was on her wounded men. Her battle service ended in June, 1864, when she was appointed superintendent of the Department of Nurses of the Army of the James.
As the close of the war drew nigh, Miss Barton brought to the attention of President Lincoln the need of a bureau for the locating of missing men, and he approved her plan and issued a letter advising friends of missing sol- diers to communicate with her. She had undertaken a stupendous task, and at the end of four years had succeeded in giving information to twenty-two thousand families. As there was no appropriation for the purpose, she her- self met the expenses. Later Congress reimbursed her with an appropriation of $15,000. During all this time, she was lecturing through the country.
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Overwork broke down her health. Again, in strange ways, the hand of Providence was guiding her immediate destiny, by sending her to Europe for rest after her long unceasing labor.
Miss Barton was in Switzerland when she was waited upon by a dele- gation from the society known as the International Convention of Geneva, otherwise the Red Cross, who wanted to know why the United States had not joined with the other nations in adopting the Treaty of Geneva, which had as its purpose the neutrality in time of war of the wounded, and of the persons and material necessary for their care and treatment. She frankly told them she had never heard of the Red Cross, and believed the American people shared her ignorance.
As she became acquainted with the international agreement she was con- vinced of its great promise to mankind. She learned of its origin, in the experience of Henry Dunant, a Swiss, who in 1859 had witnessed the battle of Solferino in Italy between the French and Austrians, and seen the indescrib- able suffering of the neglected wounded on the battlefield. Returning to Geneva he described what he had witnessed in a pamphlet: "A Souvenir of Solferino," and urged that societies be organized in every country which in time of war would give aid to the wounded, regardless of their nationality. So great an impression did he make that the organization of the International Conference at Geneva followed in 1864, and the Geneva treaty was framed. In compliment to the Swiss republic, the colors of its flag were reversed, and the red cross on a white field became the universal emblem of relief in dis- tress.
There followed the Franco-Prussian War, and Miss Barton responded to the invitation to go to the front as a Red Cross worker. There she saw what preparedness and organized efficiency of relief could accomplish, in contrast to the experience of the Civil War. "If I live to return to my coun- try, I will try to make my people understand the Red Cross and the treaty," she told its leaders, and in 1873, again recovering her health after her efforts at the front, and for the French after the sieges of Strassburg and Paris, she was back in the United States, bending every effort to keep her word.
It was not an easy task to procure the ratification of the Geneva treaty by the American Government. President Hayes was not interested. But Presi- dent Garfield, and after his death President Arthur took up the cause. The American Red Cross was organized with Clara Barton as its president, and finally, in 1882, the favorable action of Congress was secured, and the United States became the thirty-second Nation to join the Red Cross agreement.
In 1884, at the International Conference, Miss Barton introduced the "American Amendment" which called for Red Cross service in peace as well
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as in war. It was adopted, and its world-wide benefits to humanity have been beyond reckoning.
For twenty-three years Miss Barton remained president of the American Red Cross, and twenty times she led its workers in the aid of suffering humanity, to Russia, Armenia, and Cuba, to the Sea Islands, Texas, Louisi- ana, and to many other states where calamity had left destitution and suffering behind it.
In 1898, with a cargo of Red Cross supplies, Miss Barton went to Cuba to aid the suffering people. Six days following her arrival the battleship Maine was blown up. Her message flashed to the United States, "I am with the wounded." With the surrender of Santiago the United States Navy paid her a gracious honor, for the first ship to enter the harbor, even ahead of the flagship, was the State of Texas, flying the Red Cross flag, laden with sup- plies, and standing on her deck was Clara Barton, seventy-eight years old, erect and proud of her flag and of the recognition accorded it.
When in 1900 the American Red Cross Association was reincorporated by act of Congress, its octogenarian president believed it time to retire. So she resigned, and William Howard Taft, then Secretary of War, succeeded her, and, becoming President of the United States, agreed to retain the office, establishing a precedent which has been followed by each successive President.
George Bancroft, Historian of the United States, 1800-1891-George Bancroft, greatest of the historians of the United States, distinguished as a diplomat, Secretary of the Navy and founder of the United States Naval Academy, was born in Worcester, son of Rev. Dr. Aaron Bancroft. The father was himself a historian, and the author of a Life of Washington, published in 1807, which was a standard book of its period. He was a sol- dier of the Revolution, and fought at Concord and Lexington and at Bunker Hill.
At the time of Shays' Rebellion he was minister of the Second Parish Church at Worcester. The rebellious little army had occupied the town, and he was told that a company was marching up the street toward his house, with the intention of commanding shelter. He seized his musket and sta- tioned himself outside the barred door. The soldiers demanded entrance. "You are rebels," returned the indignant divine, "and you shall not enter this house except by violence." None cared to face so determined a man of the cloth, and the soldiers departed to find billets elsewhere. We tell the story to show the kind of man who sired George Bancroft.
It took great courage in that day for a clergyman to declare himself a Unitarian, as he did, and to lead in the establishment and building up of a new and unorthodox parish in the face of a religious prejudice which showed
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itself in actual personal enmity. But this antagonism was overcome long before the close of his pastorate of fifty-four years.
George Bancroft graduated from Harvard at the age of seventeen in the class of 1817. The college recognized his great gifts, and provided means for him to continue his studies abroad, in the hope that he would return, eventu- ally to enter its faculty. He traveled and studied for five years, which was an experience of extraordinary value in its influence upon his career. For a year after his return he was tutor of Greek at Harvard, and the following year, with Joseph G. Cogswell, afterward noted for his connection with the Astor Library, founded the famous Round Hill School for boys at North- ampton.
He had already chosen American history as his life work, and in 1834 appeared the first volume of his classic History of the United States, which even today, a century later, remains the standard authority on the period from the discovery of the American Continent to the close of the American Revolution, and the formation of the government of the United States, which he evidently had fixed upon for the close of his history. The successive volumes appeared one by one in the next forty years, until the set of twelve completed the work. In 1882 he undertook a complete revision of his history, a task which was completed in 1885. The revised edition has since been the standard edition, embodying the matured convictions of the historian.
In the twoscore years in which he wrote his history, Bancroft divided his time between it and a public service most important and enduring in its results. It began, inconspicuously enough, as collector of the port of Boston, to which office he was appointed by President Van Buren in 1838. He was nominated for Governor of Massachusetts on the Democratic ticket in 1844, and was defeated. But he polled a larger vote than had ever been recorded by a candidate of his party in his State.
His defeat was perhaps fortunate, for the following year President Polk made him his Secretary of the Navy. Seeing the need of a training school for officers of the navy he brought about the establishment of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. It was Secretary Bancroft who in 1846 issued the order to take possession of California in case the strained relations between Mexico and this country should result in a declaration of war, and, who, in the absence of the Secretary of War, gave the order under which General Zachary Taylor marched his army into Texas, which was the overt act that precipitated hostilities.
George Bancroft's career in diplomacy began in 1846, when he was made Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain, which post he filled until 1849, when he returned to the United States and took up his residence in New
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York City. There for some years he devoted himself to his history. In May, 1867, he accepted the office of Minister to Prussia, in 1868 was accredited to the North German Federation, and in 1871 to the newly former German Empire, where he remained until 1874, when he was recalled at his own request.
Few men have had the personal contacts which came to him in his long and varied career. He had friends everywhere in the civilized world among the great scholars of his day. Opportunity for research came to him from every side. His own distinguished achievements were widely recognized, and many honors were conferred upon him by universities and learned societies at home and abroad. His winter home at Washington and his summer place at Newport, Rhode Island, were frequented by the great. Passionately fond of flowers, his gardens were of extraordinary beauty, and his rose garden at the National Capital was known to enthusiasts the world over. He lies buried in Rural Cemetery, in the city of his birth. The affectionate esteem in which he was held was illustrated in the verse cabled him from England by Robert Browning, upon his eighty-seventh birthday :
"Bancroft, the message-bearing wire Which flashes my all-hail today Moves slower than the heart's desire That what hand pens tongue's self might say."
Erastus Brigham Bigelow, Inventor of the Power Carpet Loom Which Led to Invention of Wire Cloth Loom and Established Great Industries, 1814-1879-Erastus B. Bigelow was born in West Boylston, son of a small cotton manufacturer. His useful inventions began when he was still a boy, his first being a hand loom for weaving suspender webbing, and he had hardly reached his majority when he had developed two power looms, one for weaving figured quilts, the other for weaving coach lace. His elder brother, Horatio N. Bigelow, and he established themselves in Clinton, then an insignificant village, in 1837, leasing mills which they equipped, one with the coach lace loom, the other for the manufacture of quilts. It was the hey-day of the stage coach and the ornamental lace was in great demand through the succeeding decade. As to the quilt loom, its capacity was so great that the mill was able to sell its product at half the price asked in America for English-made counterpanes.
The passing of the stagecoach was indirectly responsible for the inven- tion and development of the power carpet loom. The coach lace loom was enlarged by its inventor, and certain parts modified, to weave Brussels car- pet. Further improvements gave the carpet a velvet pile. To quote Erastus Bigelow's biographer: "The carpet loom, as a conception in the inventor's
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brain, was soon complete in all its details. The machinists under Mr. Bige- low's eye shaped the conception in wood and metal, and at Lowell in 1845 Jacquard Brussels carpeting was woven upon a power loom. The invention was patented in England, March II, 1846, and in the great London Indus- trial Exhibition of 1851, specimens of Bigelow's carpeting were exhibited which won from a jury of experts the highest encomium. It was declared in their official report that the Bigelow fabrics were 'better and more perfectly woven than any hand woven goods that have come under notice of the jury.'"
It was soon demonstrated at the carpet mill established by the Bigelows in Clinton that where a skilled weaver could produce by hand no more than five yards of carpeting a day, a Bigelow loom, operated by a girl, produced five times that quantity.
Thus were founded the great Bigelow carpet mills, now, unfortunately, removed from Clinton as a consequence of a merger of carpet companies as the Bigelow Sanford Company. Horatio N. Bigelow was the business genius, Erastus the inventive genius.
His inventions did not end with the carpet loom. The manufacture of ginghams had become an important industry. But the weaving had to be done by hand, for its complexities were much greater than in weaving plain cloth. Two years of intensive study and design brought forth the gingham loom, upon which were built the huge Lancaster Mills at Clinton. These, too, are now dismantled, victim of changes in feminine styles.
Erastus Bigelow's carpet loom was the vital factor in establishing the large wire fabric manufacturing industry of Central Worcester County, for from it he evolved a machine for weaving wire cloth, with the result the for- mation of the Clinton Wire Cloth Company, and the building of a plant which began operations in 1857 and was expanded rapidly as the years passed. Now it constitutes an important department of the Wickwire-Spencer Steel Com- pany.
Colonel Timothy Bigelow, Revolutionary Patriot and Soldier 1739- 1790-Timothy Bigelow, patriot and distinguished soldier of the Ameri- can Revolution, captain of the company of Minutemen which marched from Worcester Common, April 19, 1775, was born in Worcester, son of a sub- stantial farmer. Frequent mention has already been made of him in this book, in the chapters dealing with the period leading up to the Revolution and in that war. But the circumstances of his career as a soldier, and espe- cially of the unfortunate later years of his life and his tragic death, a prisoner for debt in Worcester jail, require a more detailed story.
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He was first apprenticed in the mechanics' trade, and afterwards became a blacksmith, with his forge and trip-hammer at Lincoln Square, then the North Square. He prospered in this business, and aware of the advantages of education, collected a well-selected library, which included the works of the best English authors of the day. He acquired the art of direct and force- ful speech, and of writing with point and accuracy. These accomplishments, coupled with a strong personality and a natural capacity as a leader, brought him to the forefront among the patriots of the town, at a time when most of the influential and educated citizens were Tories, in full sympathy with King George and his manner of government. We have already told of his place on the local Committee of Correspondence and of his political society. It was largely because of his activities and influence that the "Sons of Liberty" came to dominate the county seat and the country of which it was the physical and civic center. He was held in high esteem in Boston, and as a member of the famous Whig Club was intimately associated with Warren, Otis, Hancock, John and Samuel Adams, and the other leading anti-Royalists. He was a delegate to the Provincial Congress in the first and second sessions. When the company of Worcester Minutemen was organized he was unani- mously elected its captain, and under his untiring instruction and drilling it attained such proficiency, as to draw from General Washington, at the first review of the new army at Cambridge, the exclamation, "This is discipline indeed !"
Joining the army as captain, he was soon promoted by act of Congress to the rank of major. In September, 1775, he volunteered for the ill-fated expedition through the Maine forest against the citadel of Quebec. "Had that winter march through the wilderness been the exploit of a Grecian phalanx, or Roman legion," wrote William Lincoln, "the narrative of suffer- ings and dangers, severe as were ever endured or encountered, would have been celebrated in song and story." Major Bigelow commanded one of the three divisions, which penetrated through a wild and unexplored country by the route of the Kennebec. During a day's halt of the troops, he ascended a lofty rugged mountain in what now is Somerset County, for the purpose of studying the route ahead, and to this day the peak bears the name of Mount Bigelow. The northern winter had set in. That the inadequate, poorly equipped, poorly supplied little army was able to proceed at all, was a military miracle.
In the attack on Quebec, in the night of December 31, Major Bigelow and his men were assigned to the hopeless assault on the then invulnerable citadel. Hopelessly caught in the fire from barrier and rampart, he was one of those made prisoner. He remained in captivity until the summer of 1776, when
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he was exchanged, and was soon in the Continental service again, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In February, 1777, he was promoted to a colonel- ship and given the command of the 15th Regiment of the Massachusetts Line of the Continental Army, which was made up principally of men of Worces- ter County. He had whipped his regiment into fighting form in time to par- ticipate as a unit of the Northern Army in the campaign which resulted in Burgoyne's surrender. The 15th served through the war, and we find it most of the time in Washington's main army, including the dreadful winter at Valley Forge.
When, the war over, and the army disbanded, Colonel Bigelow remained in service a little time, stationed at West Point and afterward in command of the national arsenal at Springfield. He finally returned to civil life and his family, with a high standing as a soldier, but with a depleted purse. The pay of the soldiers had been irregularly received, and was in depreciated currency, and large amounts were still due them.
"With a frame physically impaired by long hardship, toil and exposure," wrote Lincoln, "with blighted worldly prospects, with the remains of private property, considerable at the outset, but seriously diminished by the many sacrifices of his martial career, he returned to his home. With resolute spirit he set to work to repair his shattered fortunes, and resumed the old occupation of the forge and work shop. But times had changed since the fires of the furnace were last kindled. If the products of his skill were in as quick demand as in former days, responsible customers were diminished. Hard money had ceased to circulate; credit existed only in name; and public con- fidence was destroyed. Change too had come over the war-worn veteran himself. The stirring occupations of the field, the habits formed by eight years of active service, the tastes acquired by residence in the camp, and action in the exciting events of the Revolution, and disuse of old avocations, had produced inaptitude for a course of business so long discontinued. Still he bore up against circumstances of discouragement, and continued to main- tain his family in comfort and in respectable position."
But Bigelow fretted in his new existence. Finally, in 1880, with others, he obtained a grant of 23,040 acres, constituting a Vermont township, and there founded the town to which he gave the name of Montpelier and which is now the capital of the State. Then came the illness of a son and his death from tuberculosis, and this united with other disappointments to break down his energy and bring on premature old age. He returned to Worcester with- out money, became burdened with obligations which he could not meet, and on February 15, 1890, the patriot and soldier was cast into Worcester jail, a
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