USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume II > Part 42
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Admiral Earle made sketch plans in the early morning at home, before entering upon the exacting duties of his office hours. His idea was accepted, the work of design proceeded rapidly, and five of these huge guns were mounted on trucks, and the rest of the five battery trains, armor plated throughout, were made ready. The first left St. Nazaire on August 18, 1918, the second left the next day, and in September all were on the front.
The first train proceeded to the French proving ground to demonstrate its shooting ability to a group of Allied artillery experts. A target was given it, eighteen miles distant. Four shots were fired. The shells landed within a stone throw of one another at the target. "Waste no more ammunition," cried the French General in command. "Go fire against the Germans !"
In the closing months of the war the naval guns moved from one position to another, variously distributed between the French and American armies. Time and again their great shells caused demoralization in areas which had been beyond the range of the most powerful Allied cannon. Important rail- road centers, points of concentration of troops and supplies, were made untenable. An enormous ammunition dump was quickly destroyed. The climax of destructive usefulness came in the final campaign. The Metz- Sedan railroad, paralleling the front, and well beyond any previous artillery
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range, was indispensable to the German army, for it permitted the quick movement of troops from one point to another as demanded. If the line could be cut, irreparable injury could be inflicted. This three of the batteries stationed at Verdun proceeded to do, by bombarding two towns, Longuyon and Montmedy, each of which had a great railroad yard, as well as ware- houses and barracks and aviation hangars. The damage inflicted was terrific. The strategic value of the line was destroyed. The three trains were engaged in this bombardment when the Armistice was declared. The last shot was fired at 10.57.30 A. M. on that historic day, timed to reach its target a few seconds before II o'clock.
Such was Admiral Earle's career in the navy. He closed it to return to his native city to become the president of its famous engineering school.
Father James Fitton, Worcester County's First Catholic Priest, Who Laid the Foundations upon Which Holy Cross College was Established, 1803-1881-Father James Fitton was born in Boston, in a house which stood on the site of the recently vacated Federal Building at Milk and Devon- shire streets. As a lad he drove his father's cows to and from the Common, then a public pasture. He attended the public schools, and a New Hampshire academy, and studied theology in Boston. He was ordained to the priest- hood in 1827. The Fittons, of Welsh and English stock, had worshipped in their first years in Boston as members of a flock of one hundred Catholics. When the young clergyman entered upon his life's work there were but seven Catholic priests in all New England.
Father Fitton immediately took on the arduous duties of a missionary in a country the larger part of which was but thinly populated. His life was that of a pioneer and had much of privation. Time and again he traveled far to hold service in remote settlements. He went among the Passamaquoddy Indians, whom he deemed to be in sore need of spiritual help. Much of his missionary work was in Connecticut and Vermont, and it is pleasant to read in his memoirs not only of the eagerness of members of his own faith to hear mass, but of the cordiality displayed to him by the New England Protestants, especially in Vermont, who frequently placed at his disposal the village school- house or town house, or even their meetinghouse.
In 1835 he was sent to Worcester, where he celebrated the first Mass in the shop of a mechanic, and preached his first sermon in the old Elephant Tavern. He built a church, and before the roof was on celebrated Mass there. It is related that during the Elevation of the Sacred Host a heavy shower came up, and three men of the congregation came forward and held umbrellas over the good priest as he moved to and fro during the Holy Sacrifice. No one of the drenched congregation thought to move to a place of shelter.
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It was an important event in the history of New England colleges when Father Fitton purchased a large tract of land on Pakachoag Hill, in the southern part of Worcester. He renamed the eminence Mt. St. James, in honor of his patron, and in 1840 erected an academy building and established the Seminary of St. James, for the education of young men. Bishop Fen- wick became deeply interested in the school, and so did the Fathers of the Society of Jesus. In 1842 Father Fitton presented land and building to the Bishop, who established there the College of the Holy Cross. Its academic direction he placed with the Jesuit fathers from Georgetown University at Washington, District of Columbia, and it has remained a Jesuit institution ever since. From the small beginning made by Father Fitton and afterward by Bishop Fenwick has grown one of the great Catholic colleges of America. There the students gather for assembly in Fenwick Hall, and play their games on Fitton Field.
Father Fitton rounded out his life in pastoral duties, first in Providence, Rhode Island, and for the last quarter century of his long life as pastor of the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer at East Boston. He rests in Holy Cross Cemetery, Malden, where was carried out a last wish, that "When I die, bury me where God's sunshine will fall on me."
Edward Howe Forbush, Ornithologist and Author, 1858-1929- Edward Howe Forbush, for over thirty-five years State Ornithologist of Massachusetts, and author of the monumental work Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England States, was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, where his father was teaching at the time. But he was of a Westboro family and there made his home in the latter years of his life.
He was a naturalist from boyhood, and in his young manhood passed in Worcester was curator of the Natural History Museum. He was an active figure in the campaign against the Gypsy moth, and in other work of eco- nomic ornithology, and in 1893 was made the State Ornithologist in the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture which office he held until shortly before his death. He contributed largely to the literature of the birds, includ- ing their economics. His great work was his Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England States in three volumes, published by the State, in which every bird, native and visitant, is not only described technically and popularly, but is shown in colored plates by two eminent painter specialists, Louis Agassiz Fuertes and Allan Brooks. Upon Mr. Forbush's retirement the Advisory Board of the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture had a gold medal struck for him, for "Outstanding Achievements in Economic Orni- thology." After his death, the New England Federation of Bird Clubs established the Edward Howe Forbush Sanctuary in the Berkshire Hills, which is a large tract of wild country dedicated for all time to bird life.
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Dwight Foster, Jurist and United States Senator, 1757-1823-Dwight Foster was born in Brookfield, son of Judge Jedediah Foster, himself distin- guished as a lawyer. He graduated from Brown University in 1774, and studied law in his brother's office at Providence, and was admitted to the bar there in 1778. But following his father's death shortly afterward, he moved back to Brookfield. He served as sheriff of the county and in both branches of the Legislature, was a Federalist member of Congress from 1793 to 1799, and a member of the United States Senate from 1800 to 1803, when he resigned the office. For ten years he was Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas.
Daniel Gookin, Founder of Worcester. Friend of the Indians. Impor- tant Figure in the Larger Affairs of the Colonies. Harborer of the Regi- cides, 1612-1687-The name of Daniel Gookin will always be closely associated with that of Worcester city and, to a lesser extent, of Worcester County. He was the real founder of Worcester, the strong, experienced man of the world, who dominated wisely the pioneers who hit upon Quin- sigamond for their future township and home. As superintendent of the Praying Indians and close associate of John Eliot, their "Apostle," his influ- ence was widely felt through all the Nipmuck country, including the few already settled towns. In the early chapters of this book he is at times a conspicuous figure. But the romance of a long life, containing many large adventures, intimate contacts with the great characters of the day, as for instance, Oliver Cromwell and the Regicides, Goffe and Whalley, and an important part in the greater affairs of the Colonies, deserves more than an incidental place in a narrative history of Worcester County.
In telling the story of this sturdy man we are gleaning facts and quoting extracts from a paper presented by his descendant, Charles Taylor Tatman of Worcester, to the Worcester Historical Society, some years ago. Daniel's grandfather, John Gookin, a man of wealth and prominence, bought the Manor of Ripple, in the county of Kent, in the year 1600. His son, the first Daniel, spent his late boyhood there, and in 1616 followed his adventurous brother, Vincent, to Ireland, and there purchased the castle and lands of Carrigalene, on the coast near Cork.
He became a shareholder of the Virginia Company, and in 1620 engaged in shipping cattle to Virginia, and we read of his arrival there in the good ship Flying Harte, carrying provisions and cattle, thirty passengers and a crew of fifty men. All this company he established at Newport News, where suitable grants of land were made them. There followed shortly the widespread massacre of whites by the Indians, but when Captain John Smith ordered the abandonment of all outlying plantations, Gookin and his company refused
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obeyance, preferring to defend themselves, if attacked, behind their palisades and trenches. Returning to England, Gookin was granted a patent of 2,500 acres of land at Newport News. We give this brief sketch because of the bearing of this period of his life on the early career of his son, the second Daniel.
He enters our story in 1630, when he was living in Newport News. In 1634 the court at London granted him the land which had been promised his father, and with his wife and infant son he set sail with the intention of mak- ing a permanent residence in Virginia. Probably he was already a Puritan, though most of the Virginia settlers were members of the Church of England. He was promptly made a burgess, and took part in the legislative proceedings of the Grand Assembly at Jamestown. He was made a captain of "trayned bands." To quote Mr. Tatman :
"Captain Gookin found among his neighbors a considerable number of Puritan families. He joined in signing and sending a letter in 1642 to Massa- chusetts Bay, asking that ministers be sent them. Accordingly, Rev. William Tompson of Braintree, and Rev. John Knowles of Watertown, were sent to Virginia, where their coming was hailed with delight by Gookin and his com- panions, but was strangely resented by the royal Governor Berkeley, who lost no time in procuring the enactment of a law forbidding ministers not of the Church of England to preach or teach, and instructing the Governor and Council to compel all non-conformists 'to depart the colony with all con- venience.' For a while the ministers managed to work with the people in their homes, but very soon they were put on board ship and packed back to Boston.
"Gookin found it unpleasant to live in Virginia by reason of this law and the prevailing church sentiment, and so migrated to Maryland, where he dwelt for about a year. While Governor Calvert, a Roman Catholic, was tolerant in his treatment of all settlers of whatever religious denominations, Gookin preferred to live among those of his own faith, and so, with his family, set sail for New England, arriving in Boston, May 20, 1644.
"Gookin was therefore about thirty-two years old when he settled in New England. Within ten days of his landing he was made a member of the First Church of Boston, and a freeman of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. His family resided for four years in Roxbury, and were near neighbors and intimate friends of Rev. John Eliot. Gookin is described as being 'tall in stature and robust in physique ; in bearing grave and dignified.'
"Gookin appears to have retained his Virginia and Maryland properties for some years and to have engaged in coastwise shipping between New England and Virginia. He is said to have been elected to the General Court during his four years residence in Roxbury. In 1648 he removed to Cam-
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bridge, where he bought a house on a street then called 'Crooked,' but now Holyoke Street, on the site now occupied by the Hasty Pudding Club. The town later, in 1649, made him a grant of five hundred acres of land for a farm, at the same time granting the same area to Henry Dunster, President of Harvard College. Gookin was promptly after his arrival made captain of the Cambridge train-band. In 1649 he became a member of the General Court from Cambridge, and in 1651 was chosen speaker. In the same year he was made an associate of the county court, held at Cambridge, and in the next year, 1652, he was elected an assistant, that is, a member of the council of eighteen magistrates who were, with the Governor and the Deputy Gov- ernor, administrators of the government of the Colony, and dispensers of justice. To this high office he was continuously elected for thirty-five years, with the exception of one year, 1676, when his friendliness for the Indians met with popular disapprobation.
"In 1655 Gookin appears to have made a voyage to England, partly for the purpose of settling the estate of his brother, Edward, who had died there. The English revolution had taken place and Oliver Cromwell was Lord Protector. Daniel's cousin, Vincent Gookin, was a member of Parliament and was in the midst of his great struggle to prevent the wholesale banishment of the Irish people which had been proposed.
"Cromwell was a mighty military leader and a statesman who looked far beyond the seas, and especially to the West Indies, in his ambitions for Eng- lish preferment. His fleets had failed to conquer Santo Domingo, then in the hands of the Spaniards, but had succeeded in capturing Jamaica. Cromwell was wishing to colonize the island of Jamaica, and, learning of Gookin's pres- ence in England, sent for him and proposed that Gookin should manage a migration of settlers from New England to Jamaica. Gookin argued against the proposal, saying that the settlers in New England had made great progress in establishing themselves, after suffering tremendous hardships, and that he did not believe they would care to leave what they had won and tempt fortune in a strange clime and in the midst of new and unknown dangers.
"However, Cromwell insisted that the attempt be made, and Gookin was authorized by the Council of State to undertake what was called a 'trans- plantation' of English Colonists in New England to Jamaica. In a long letter of instructions to Gookin the Council made the following alluring agreement to prospective emigrants :
'Out of love and affection to themselves and the fellow feeling Wee have always had of the difficulties and necessities they have been put to contest with ever since they were driven from the land of their Nativity into that Desert and barren Wilderness from their Consciences sake which wee could not but make manifest at this tyme when as Wee thinke an opportunity is
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offered for their enlargement and removing them out of a hard Countrye into a Land of plenty.'
"Gookin returned to America and got out circulars and tried to stimulate an interest in the proposal from England in regard to the migration to Jamaica, but the reports from Jamaica had been so unpleasant as to the unhealthful climate and the troubles made by Indians, negroes, and Span- iards, that he could make no headway, so he duly reported in several com- munications. Finally the idea was abandoned.
"Gookin went to England again in 1659 'about some special concerns' as he says in a letter, but the nature of which he does not disclose. At any rate, he was soon employed as collector of customs at Dunkirk, which had fallen into the hands of the English. And immediately after he was made 'Deputy Treasurer at War, to reside at Dunkirk, and receive and pay all moneys for the forces there, and also for contingencies, that the accounts may be better kept, and he is to be responsible for all, and communicate the state of affairs as occasion requires.'
"This post probably had to be vacated on account of the approaching Restoration of Charles II to the throne, and Gookin left England for the last time, having as fellow-passengers the celebrated regicides, Goffe and Whalley. They took up their temporary residence in Cambridge, probably at the home of Daniel Gookin, but were obliged to leave and hide themselves in the west- ern wilderness, where, though hunted long, they were never found by the King's officers.
"The Puritans of New England were never again enthusiastically submis- sive to royal authority, and while their magistrates were compelled to take the oath of allegiance, the Archives of Massachusetts present the following record in regard to our subject : 'Daniel Gookin, before he took the oath of allegiance in Court, May 24th, 1665, did openly and plainly declare that in taking that oath he would be so understood as not to infringe the liberty and privileges granted in his Majesty's royal charter to the Governor and Com- pany of Massachusetts, whereof he is a member, and unto which he is sworn formerly. Boston the 24th of May, 1665. Daniel Gookin.'
"This spirit of liberty and standing on their rights against royal encroach- ments subjected the people of New England to the visit of a commission sent by the English government to enforce subjection on the part of the Colonists. The General Court named a committee consisting of the Governor, the Deputy-Governor, and four others, including Daniel Gookin, to deal with the same matters on behalf of the people.
"The English commissioners had a long investigation, which amounted to nothing, except that there was an exchange of opinions, the Colonists renewed
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so much of their allegiance as was consistent with their liberties, and matters went on as before. Among other things the commissioners reported to the King that Goffe and Whalley had been everywhere entertained and feasted after they were told they were traitors and ought to be apprehended; that Gookin had harbored them in Cambridge and had furnished them with horses and a guide on their departure, for which offences the commissioners had seized Gookin's cattle for his Majesty's use, but as Gookin had refused to answer before the commissioners, no more was done about it.
"The outbreak of King Philip's War, in the summer of 1675, was fore- told in the spring of that year, through a warning given to Gookin. The latter tried in vain to induce the Colonists to prepare with defensive measures, and to make use of 'the fidelity and integrity of the praying Indians.' The war went on, and some of the praying Indians backslid into their savagery. But Gookin and Eliot were patient, and tried to secure sane and just treatment of the Indian problems. Still, the popular mind was so inflamed that these gentlemen were hardly safe from violence in the streets, and in 1676 Gookin was dropped from his office as an assistant, but after one year's absence from the bench he was triumphantly returned in 1677.
"It was in 1681 that Daniel Gookin was made Major General of the Colony, that is, its highest military officer. He retained the office for five years, until the abrogation of the Colony's charter, in 1686 by James II. It was the independence of thought and spirit of such men as Daniel Gookin and Samuel Danforth that not only brought down the royal wrath, but also implanted and fertilized the seeds of liberty in the souls of the people of Massachusetts. A single quotation from a State paper signed by Gookin will serve to illustrate the courage of his mind. Said he: 'I verily believe that so gracious a prince as our king is will be very slow to deal so severely against his poor loyal subjects that are not conscious we have showed any disloyalty to him or his predecessors, nor have been unwilling to obey him in the Lord. But when the case is so circumstanced that we must be accounted offenders or ruin ourselves, of two evils the least is to be chosen.'
"At the time of the naming of Worcester, Gookin was an old man, 73 years of age, but still active in his Indian ministrations. He still resided in Cambridge, and never dwelt in Worcester, although at the time of his death, in 1687, he was the owner of 236 acres of land here. This land did not stay in the Gookin name. Daniel Gookin was buried in the churchyard of the First Church of Cambridge, across Harvard Square from the gates of the University, where a memorial to him now stands.
"Daniel Gookin's seventh child, Samuel, became High Sheriff of Suffolk County, and afterwards of Middlesex. It was to this son, Samuel, that he
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left by his will his rapier and other articles intended to become heirlooms. This son Samuel had a son, Daniel Gookin, third, who became the first High Sheriff of Worcester County on its establishment in 1731. The sword or rapier has been handed down to me (Mr. Tatman), together with a cane also used by the sheriff.
"So we have three Daniel Gookins. The first was the early settler of Virginia ; the second, his son, who migrated from Virginia to Massachusetts and became Major General; and the third, grandson of the second, who was the first High Sheriff of Worcester County."
John B. Gough, Internationally Famous Temperance Lecturer, 1817- 1886-John B. Gough, one of the greatest temperance advocates and lecturers, was born in England, but Boylston was his home for forty years. A drunkard during his young manhood, he finally drifted to Worcester, where the Washington Temperance Movement was at its height, and was induced to take the pledge. There followed a period of struggle against the habit, which he finally conquered. Then, in 1843, he entered the lecture field, and became one of the most powerful apostles of the cause of temperance, continuing the work until he dropped dead while lecturing in Frankford, Pennsylvania.
Mr. Gough's birthplace was Sandgate, near Dover. His father was a veteran of the Peninsular War and his mother a schoolmistress of the village. He was only six years old when he was sent to a seminary at Folkstone, a few miles from his home village. At the age of twelve, in 1829, he came to America with a family from Sandgate, and settled with them on a farm in Oneida County, New York. Two years later he went to New York City, and became errand boy and apprentice in the book-binding trade with the Methodist Book concern. There followed his contracting of the alcohol habit, a roaming from place to place, and eventually the fortunate circum- stance at Worcester which resulted in his reformation.
As a lecturer he quickly sprang into great popularity. He possessed a rare eloquence, a keen sense of humor, a profound knowledge of human nature as it entered into his audiences. His fame spread abroad, and in 1853 he went to England at the invitation of the London Temperance League and remained in Great Britain for two years. He spoke in the important centers of England, Wales, and Scotland. In Edinburgh seventeen thousand people flocked to hear him. The London Temperance Society presented him with a silver service.
He visited Breat Britain again in 1877, and spent three years in England and Ireland. In England alone he made three hundred and ninety addresses
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to more than five hundred thousand people, and secured twelve thousand signatures to the pledge. In his long career he gave eight thousand five hun- dred and sixty-seven lectures, and on his tours traveled half a million miles. More than a million copies of his lectures were sold and over one hundred thousand copies of his autobiography. For years, when he was at home at his beautiful estate "Hillside" in Boylston, it was the mecca of journeys by many great men and women.
Andrew Haswell Green, Father of Greater New York, 1820-1903- Andrew H. Green, born on Green Hill, the family estate in Worcester, earned for himself the enduring name of "Father of Greater New York." He studied at Worcester Academy and fitted for West Point, but finally entered the employ of a New York mercantile house. After one business trip to the West Indies, the young man determined to become a lawyer, and to that end entered the office of Samuel J. Tilden, whose partner he afterward became. It was largely because of the intimate association of these men that New York in a later year, secured the famous Tilden Library.
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