History of the town of Groton : including Pepperell and Shirley, from the first grant of Groton plantation in 1655

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Preface

Chronicles of events and occurrences which happened to the inhabitants of those towns in New England which began to be settled during the first half century after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth, have become almost universal. The reminiscences furnished by these local histories are interesting to the present generation on several accounts. They afford us the means of comparing the hardships, trials and privations endured by our progenitors, with the ease, comforts and abundance enjoyed by us ; a comparison, which may well reconcile us to the trifling inconveniences and molestations wre too often permit to make us discontented. A kind of melancholy pleasure is afforded by contemplating the courage with which they met, the fortitude with which they sustained, and the patience with which they endured the dangers, difficulties and destitutions to which they were constantly exposed. They will also furnish the future historian with materials for a more general, comprehensive and philosophical narrative.

Groton, it is thought, affords as many incidents worthy of record, as almost any town in New vi

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England settled as late as 1655. It had its full proportion of suffering with Swanzey, Brookficld, Deerfield, Hadley, Lancaster, Medfleld, Sudbury, &c, in the Indian wars of 1675 and 1676, and of 1694. Its efforts and exertions also in the war of the Revolution, and the part taken by some of its inhabitants in the insurrection of 1787, deserve to be remembered ; the former for praise and imitation, the latter for caution and avoidance.

In its topographical character, the fertility and productions of its soil, its eligible situation, and its literary and other advantages, it bears a favorable comparison with any other town equally remote from navigation and from the metropolis. The characters of some of its first settlers and succeeding inhabitants are not without interest, both for instruction and amusement. Unfortunately, however, the time for successfully collecting, digesting, and recording the incidents of by-gone times, necessary to a complete history, has been too long deferred. Many transactions and occurrences committed only to frail and erring memory, are either wholly lost, or are so faded and shadowed, that their beauty and correctness cannot be depended on ; and others, though placed upon record at the time they happened, have been corrupted by " moth and rust."

As the habits, modes of living, opinions ecclesiastical or political, individual characters, and in fine the whole history of any people, can be better learned from their own sayings, acts, and writings, than from description, the following pages are rather

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vii a compilation of facts and documents, copies of public records, and other printed or written testimonials, than a regular history of the towns to which they relate. One main object of the author in taking copies, in preference to reciting in his own language, is to preserve the principal matters contained in three or four volumes of the oldest records of Groton, in the language and style of the clerks who penned them, from being entirely lost. They are already, by age and being often handled, much defaced and worn, and unless now or very soon copied, they will be illegible. The family registers of marriages, births and deaths, in the Appendices, will save much time and trouble in searching the originals, and preserve the records from total destruction for a longer time to come.

The reader is apprised that the orthography of the original has been made to conform to modern usage, but the words, with all their improprieties, bad construction and false grammar, have not been altered. It is thought that exact copies, verbatim et literatim, would disgust, rather than instruct or amuse.

In copies from the old records, dates are uniformly set down as they are found, except an error of the clerk has been rendered certain. Some improprieties will be found, especially in the Appendix, such as Nov. 31, Feb. 29, when not bissextile, children of the same parents born apparently within six months of each other; but these are few. In dates previous to 1752, there is liability to err by not noticing the difference between old and new style ; and from

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January 1, to March 25, by a difference in commencing the year. That the reader may guard against errors in these dates, and understand how to compute and reduce any date to our present reckoning of time, as brief an account of style, and its change from old to new, and of the difference in time of commencing the year, as the nature of the subject will permit, is here given.

A tropical year is a natural division of time, being that in which the sun apparently moves from a tropic or equinox around the heavens to the same point again. A civil year consists of a certain number of days, classed into weeks and months. If the tropical year consisted of an exact number of days, that is, if the sun returned to the tropic at precisely the same time in the day in which it left, the tropical and civil year might and would be forever the same, and the seasons would remain unmoved and fixed to the same months and days. But this is not the case. "The civil year must of necessity consist of a certain number of days ; but the tropical year is found to consist of about 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 50 seconds. To fix a calendar, by which the two years should coincide as nearly as possible, (exactness being impossible,) has been a desideratum with astronomers, mathematicians, and sovereigns. The numerous abortive attempts made by different nations need not be mentioned. Julius Caesar, with the aid of Sosigenes, a famous mathematician of his time, was the first to adopt a method nearly correct. Finding that the tropical year consists of about 365 days and 6 hours, he fixed the common year of his

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ix calendar at 365 days ; and as the fractional part of the day, 6 hours, would in four years amount to just one day, he made every fourth year to consist of 366 days, by counting the sixth of the calends of March (Feb. 24) twice, hence called Bissextile, or vulgarly Leap-year. Had 365 days, 6 hours, been exactly the amount of the tropical year, the desideratum would have been attained, and the seasons have remained fixed to the same days. As it is, it was the best arrangement of the calendar which hitherto had been made; no error therein was discovered for several centuries. It is still retained by the Russians. This is called the Julian, or Old Style, which commenced 46 years before the Christian era, the sun being in the vernal equinox that year on the 25th of March. The names of the months in Caesar's calendar were the same as in ours, and his year began as ours, January 1.

At length it was discovered, that the assumed year of 365 days, 6 hours, exceeded the true tropical year by 11 minutes and 10 or 15 seconds, and that thereby the vernal equinox was receding from the 25th of March at the rate of that time annually, amounting to about one day in 130 years. Again ingenuity was applied to correct the calendar, and various propositions made for the purpose, which it is unnecessary to state. Pope Gregory XIII., rinding that the feast days of the church were being deranged by the defect in the reckoning, undertook a reform of the Julian calendar. In the year 1583, having called to his aid the most eminent astronomers and mathematicians of the age, and they findb

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ing that the vernal equinox, which happened on the 21st of March in the year 325, when the famous council of Nice was held, had receded to the 11th of March, he ordered ten days to be left out of the month of October in the year 1583, by counting the fifth day the fifteenth. This of course brought the equinox of the next succeeding year to the 21st of March, where it was in the year of the Nicene council, when Easter and other church festivals were arranged. To prevent the recurrence of the recession of the equinoxes in future, Gregory ordered, that three bissextile years in every four hundred thereafter, should be reduced to common years, viz. 1700, 1800, and 1900, in the then next four centuries, being a deduction at the rate of one day to about 130 years, the deficiency above stated. And by this arrangement, though not perfectly exact, the civil and tropical years will not vary to the amount of a day for 5,000 years to come. This is called the Gregorian, or New Style.

This reformed calendar was soon after adopted by all the Catholic countries of Europe ; but the Protestants, from prejudice, or fear (as one of their clergy avowed) that " the hand of Joab ivas in it" retained the old style.

At length, however, prejudice and fear having ceased, or lost their power, the Parliament of Great Britain, in 1751, passed an act, adopting the new style, and ordering eleven days (the year 1700 having been reckoned a bissextile, and consequently making the difference one day more than at Gregory's reform,) in the month of September, 1752,

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xi to bo omitted, by calling the 3d day of that month the 14th. Hence it is evident that to any date made according to old style, between 1582 and 1700, (1600 being bissextile, according to hoth reckonings,) 10 days must be added to render it new style ;* and since 1700, (that being a common year with Catholics, but bissextile with Protestants,) 11 days must be added.

The times at which to commence the year have been numerous, and have caused more errors, than the different calendars in other respects. The equinoxes, solstices, certain festivals, and other epochs, have at different times and by different nations been the commencement of the year. Two or three of these only need to be mentioned.

The Romans at one time had the year divided into ten months only, commencing with March, so that September, October, November and December had their numerical rank according to their Latin etymology. This year consisted of only 304 days, and the seasons consequently fast removed from their places. Two more months were therefore added, January at the beginning, said to be so called from two-faced Janus, one face looking back upon the old year, and the other forward to the new ; and February at the close of the year, afterwards placed between January and March. The number of days in these two months, when added

* The landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth was on the 11th of December, 1620. Ten days only should be added to make it correspond with new style. By some inadvertence the 22d instead of the 21st has been celebrated as the anniversary of that event.

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to the year of 304 days, did not make it equal to a tropical year, so that Julius Carsnr, when he established his calendar, was under the necessity of adding 90 days to the end of one year, hence called the year of confusion, in order to reduce the seasons to their proper places. The year then commenced January 1. This commencement of the year was not universally adopted. In England, the year at one time commenced at Christmas, at another at the Annunciation, March 25, and finally it was fixed by law in the reign of Henry VIII., at the Annunciation. Historians, however, adhered to the 1st of January, and thus came the distinction of civil or legal year, and historical year. Hence also originated the practice of double-dating between January 1, and March 25, thus: "Feb. 11, 1731-2," or " 173A," the numerator of the fraction expressing the civil or legal year, and the denominator the historical. This method, if strictly observed, would have plainly indicated the true time ; but in many instances we find but a single date, and then we are in doubt, unless we can compare with some other date known to have been in the same year. In general it is supposed, that a single date between Jan. 1, and March 25, previous to 1752, indicates the legal year; but it is by no means certain.

Another method of dating used by our Puritan ancestors occasions no little perplexity. The heathenish names given to the months, and to the days of the week, were an offence to them ; so instead of them they used the ordinals, 1st, 2d, 3d, &c., both for months and days. Thus 10 d. 6 m. 1667, de-

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xiii noted August 10, 1667, as they commenced the year with March 1. In this, however, it is not certain that every clerk wras uniform. Some, it is thought, called January the first month, for there are instances of a double date in the year, when in the first or second month.

These inconveniences and uncertainties were all remedied by the act of Parliament, by which the style was reformed. By that statute the legal was made to conform to the historical year, and to the common usage of the other nations of Europe, as well as to that of their own people, whose almanacs had long before, perhaps always, commenced the year with January 1.

It is much to be regretted, that when these reformations were made by authority, the commencement of the year had not been fixed at the vernal equinox, and a disposition made of the days of the months a little different from our present calendar ; but a change would now be attended with very serious inconvenience, and perhaps insurmountable difficulty.

The compiler will not further extend these prefatory remarks, already perhaps too prolix for propriety, by naming all, who have aided, assisted and encouraged him in the progress of his labor. They are one and all entitled to his sincere thanks and warmest gratitude for their courtesy, assistance and encouragement ; and they will please to accept the expression of them in this general form.

It has not been thought expedient to encumber the margins with authorities for the assertions in

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Contents

the text, which are not copies. Due care and caution have been taken to insert nothing for which there is not good evidence of its truth. What is stated as tradition, will be appreciated as such; and copies of records, which compose so great a proportion of the volume, cannot with propriety be contradicted.

That the following pages may afford some gratification to the antiquarian and genealogist, and not be wholly destitute of interest, instruction, and amusement to the general reader, is the hope and desire of the compiler.

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Chapter I. Titles To Lands

Titles to Lands in New England — Grant to Council of Plymouth — Sale to Sir H. Roswell — Confirmation of Charles I. to Roswell and others — Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay incorporated — Grants for Townships and Plantations — Grant of Groton — Petition of Grantees, and Answer — John Tinker's Petition, and Proceedings thereon— Survey and Boundaries — Indian Deed and Title, . . 9

Chapter II. Proceedings Of The Original Proprietors

Progress of the Settlement — Division or Partition of Common Lands — Separation of Proprietors and Inhabitants — Names of first Proprietors, and their several Proportions — Rightof Voting — Town Records — New Book of Proprietors' Lots — Further division of Common Lands — Rights of the Prescott Family, 25

Chapter III. Extracts From The Early Records

Condition of early Settlers — Preservation of Trees — Controversy with John Lawrence, Sen. — Origin of Gratuities — First, or " Old Mill" — Mill at Stony Brook, or Forge Village — Saw Mill — Andrew, the Indian— Decrees and Orders of Selectmen — Fences — Swine — Herding Cattle — Pound — Instructions to the Selectmen, . . . .33

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Chapter IV. Highways Am) Bridges

Road" of unnecessary Width — Bad Policy — Sales of Roads — Highway to Chelmsford — Billerica Bridge — Roads to Lancaster — Bridges over Lancaster or Nashua River — Agreement with Pepperell about U:idi:e> — Agreement with Capt. Fitch— Other Bridges, . . .45

Chapter V. Division Of The Town

Parcel with Nashobah set off to make Littleton — Compensation for the Loss hy Groton Core— Hon. William Prescott's country Seat — Line of New Hampshire run — Loss and Compensation — Harvard and Westford to have Parcels — Precinct of Pepperell — Districts of Shirley and Pepperell— Parcels to Dunstable — From Pepperell to Groton, . 53

Chapter VI. Indian Wars

Philip, Chief of the Wampanoags — His Foresight and Wars — Attack upon Groton, March 2d, 9th, and loth — The Town burnt and deserted— Daniel Adams's Petition — Town Meeting at Concord — Petition for Relief — Squaws taken up by Sargeant Lakin — King William's War — Officers — Garrisons — William Longley's Family killed, with others — Petition for Relief— Queen Anne's War — Tarbell Boys taken — Sheple's House burnt — John Shattuck and Son killed — Jacob Ames killed — Kxpedition to Norridgewock, and Death of Ralle — LovelPs War — His first, second, and last Expeditions — Lovell's Fight, and Consequences — Story of Chamberlain and young Paugus — Reflections, 68

Chapter VII. The Revolutionary War

Incipient Causes — Instructions to the Representative — Resolves about Industry, Economy, Manufactures, and foreign Superfluities — Regulations about Funerals — Non-importation — Resolves on Rights, Privileges, Grievances, kc. — Letter to Committee of Correspondence — Duty on Tea — Continental Congress Association — Signing Covenant and posting Names — Minute Men march— Recruits, Supplies, &c., during the War — Shays's Rebellion, 114

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Chapter VIII. Meeting-houses, Or Churches

First Meeting-House— Jts Situation— Cost and Materials— Second House — Committee of Twelve to agree aboui its Location — Their Report — Its Site — Sales of Land to raise Money to finish it — Third House— Its Site — John Ames gives a Deed — Enlargement — A Bell — W. Martin's and Jona. Lawrence's Wills — A new Bell — Enlargement of the Common — Votes about repairing, or building, a new fourth Meeting- House — Trouble about finishing — Pews — Costs — Regulations — Presbyterian House— Union Meeting-IIouse — Baptists, Sec, .... 137

Chapter IX. Ministers, Churches, And Congregations

Rev. John Miller — Rev. Samuel Willard — Rev. Gershom Hobart — Rev. Dudley Bradstreet — Rev. Caleb Trowbridge — Rev. Samuel Dana — Rev. Daniel Chaplin, D D. — Rev. Charles Robinson — Rev. George W. Wells— Rev. Joseph C. Smith— Rev. John Todd— Rev. Charles B. Kittredge — Rev. Dudley Phelps — Rev. Amasa Sanderson — Rev. Alfred Pinney — Rev. Lewis Holmes, 154

Chapter X. Groton Ministerial Fund

Donation of Shadrach Whitney — Of Josiah Sartell, Esq. — Incorporation of the Trustees — Sale of Farms — Donations of the First Parish — Suit by an Heir of Col. Sartell— Attempts to divide or misapply the Fund, 20S

Chapter XI. Schools And Education

First Votes about Schools— School House — Town indicted — School Bill — Petition for Grant of Land — Schools kept in several Angles — Grammar School in four Places — Town again indicted — Children numbered — Town again indicted — Districts formed — A better System adopted — By-Laws adopted, and altered— First Library— Second Library — United— First Parish Library — Groton Lyceum — Groton Academy — Association — Subscribers — Incorporation— List of Trustees — List of Preceptors — Embarrassments — Grant of Lands — Sale, and relief from Debts— Small Donations — Mrs. Blazer's Bequest — Generous Donations of William and Amos Lawrence — Change of corporate Name — Further Donations — Future Prospects, . . . 217

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Chapter XII. Miscellaneous

Topographical Description— Boundaries— Extent— Landscape — Water — Minerals, Soil, and Productions— Post Office — St. Paul's Lodge— St. John's R. A. Chapter— Lodge of I.O. of O. F. — Common Burying- Ground— Rural Cemetery — Thaumaturgia Pneumatica, or Witchcraft —Bounty for killing Wolves — Fines paid for not serving as Constable, for Swearing, and for Absence from Meeting — Lead Weights made Bullets— Court of Common Pleas, 242

Chapter XIII. Biographical Sketches

Notices of some of the Families of the First Settlers, and of distinguished Individuals, arranged in Alphabetical Order, ..... 263

HISTORY OF PEPPERELL.

Chapter XIV. Incorporation And Meeting-houses

West Parish — Boundaries and first Officers — First Meeting- House — Difficulty about its Location — Petition to Legislature and Committee to fix the Place — Timber moved — Progress of the Work — Incorporated a District — Name — Bill — A new Meeting- House contemplated — A Fast — Deification — Remodelling — Dedication — Second Parish — Meeting-House and Dedication, 305

Chapter XV. Ministers, Churches, Etc

First preaching in Dwelling-Houses— A Call to Mr. Vinal— Call to Mr. Emerson— Ordination— Organization of the Church— Mr. E.'s Salary — Military trait— Death, and Character — Deacons— Mr. Bullard's Call and Ordination— His Ministry— Deacons— Death, and Character — Choice of Mr. Howe— Exclusive System — Cautious Measures— Ordiii Hion— Breach of Promise— Division of the Town— Mr. Babbidge's Call and Ordinaiion— Deacons— Centennial Celebration— Mr. Howe rfM-o<:ni7.ed as Pa-tor of the Evangelical Congregational Society — Sickness, Death, ami Character — Mr. Andrews's Ordination — Deacons — Anniversary Festival, -314

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Chapter XVI. Wars And Warriors

Mr. Emerson's Address to Capt. Lawrence's Soldiers— Capt. Lawrence's Death — Instructions to Representative — Letter to Committee of Correspondence at Boston — Further Instructions and Resolutions — Alarm of April 19, 1775— Battle of Bunker Hill— Col. William Prescott—

Hon. William Prescott 326

FIRST SETTLEMENT, MEETING-HOUSES, ETC.

Boundaries— Stow-Leg — Petitioners' Names — First Meeting and Officers— Burying-Ground and Training- Field — First Meeting-House — Second Meeting-House — Bell — United Believers, or Shakers — Universalists — Orthodox Congregational Society, 358

Chapter XX. Ministers

Mr. Goodhue — Mr. Sparhawk — Mr. Whitney — Church, Deacons, &c. — Mr. Whitney's Ministry, Character, &.c. — Mr. Tolman — Ordination and Dismission — Mr. Chandler — Mr. Wood — Mr. Streeter — Mr. Browne — Mr. Eaton, ......... 367

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