The history of Westborough, Massachusetts

Part I. THE EARLY HISTORY

By HEMAN PACKARD DEFOREST.

Part II. THE LATER HISTORY

By EDWARD CRAIG BATES.

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WESTBOROUGH:

PUBLISHED BY THE TOWN.

Copyright, 1S91, By C. S. Henry.

IHntoersttg Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

GENERAL PREFACE.

'^pHE warrant for the town meeting of March 7, ■*■ 1887, had an article, " To see if the town will print in book form the history of the town as gathered by Rev. H. P. DeForest and others, or act anything in relation to the same."

At an adjourned meeting, held March 21, thetown voted, " That the moderator appoint a committee of three to take the matter into consideration, and report, with an estimate of the expense, at a future meeting."

George B. Brigham, George Forbes, and Joshua E. Beeman were appointed as the committee. At a meeting held April 27 of the same year the committee reported that Rev. H. P. DeForest could furnish the earlier history, and some one here in town the later, but that they could give nothing definite in regard to the expense, as Mr. DeForest would leave the matter to the town to pay what they thought best. The committee made no recommendation, and no action was taken at this meeting ; but at a town meeting held Septem-

IV PREFACE.

ber 21 the committee reported further, recommending that the town procure one thousand copies, and that the sum of $800.00 be appropriated to cover the expense of printing and publishing the same.

The town voted " that the report be accepted and its recommendations adopted, and that the committee carry out its recommendations, and have power to fill any vacancy in the committee." Mr. George Forbes having died, Mr. Charles S. Henry was chosen as a member of the committee.

Mr. DeForest was engaged to write the earlier history of the town, and Mr. Edward C. Bates to write the later history.

Judge William T. Forbes has written a chapter on the early land-grants which is of great value.

A few biographical sketches of men who have been prominent in town affairs have been prepared, and several portraits are given, also views of a number of our public buildings.

The pictures are most of them the work of the Boston Photogravure Company, and the engraving for the wood-cuts has been done by Mr. Albert E. Wood, of New York city, a native of this town.

As we finish our book and present it to the town we regret that we must speak of the death of Mr. George B. Brigham, the chairman of our committee, to whose efforts the publication of this History is due. He brought the subject before

PREFACE. V

the town, labored faithfully and untiringly to make the work thorough and accurate, and hoped to live to see the book published.

We submit our work to the town, hoping that it may prove useful in preserving its records and stimulating our people to take a deeper interest in them.

JOSHUA E. BEEMAN, CHARLES S. HENRY,

Committee.

Westborough, March 10, 1891.

Preface To Part I

PHE only motive which has induced me to give ■*■ this sketch of the earlier history of Westborough to the public is the conviction that the material which had been incidentally gathered in connection with my work and residence there ought not to be lost. There is that in the history of the earlier growth of all our New England towns which is of permanent interest to the historian, the genealogist, and the student of social forces ; and it is desirable that every town should embody in some accessible form, for the benefit of its own people and their descendants, such facts of its early struggles and development as may be rescued from oblivion. Faulty as I know this sketch to be, it may serve such a purpose. The manner of its origin is as follows. In 1874 the Congregational church, of which I happened at that time to be pastor, celebrated the one hundred and fiftieth viii PREFACE.

anniversary of its organization. It fell to me to write the story of that period. In 1876, when all the towns kept the centennial of Independence, I was requested to deliver the historical oration on the Fourth of July. Not long afterward the town voted a request that the material thus gathered might be prepared, with such other as I might be able to collect, for publication, and appointed a committee to that end. Busied with the care of a large parish, my time for such work was very limited; and it progressed very slowly until 1880, when I was called away from the town, and the material was consigned to a drawer, where it remained untouched for some eight years. But at that time a few citizens of Westborough who were especially interested in saving its history from oblivion, procured the passage of a vote in town meeting calling for the history, and appointing a new committee to attend to the matter. At their urgent request, seconded by my own feeling as to the recklessness of consigning any historical material to destruction, I consented to undertake the difficult task of resuscitating my buried work, and finishing, at a distance from the locality, and with too much remoteness from the fresh memory of previous work, the task which I

PREFACE. IX

had been obliged to drop. It has been entirely rewritten, some of it more than once. It represents, as all historical work must do, the study of many weeks and months, scattered through years which have been crowded with other duties. I have tried to write a continuous narrative, believing it more likely to be read than if divided, in the manner of many local histories, into disconnected sections.

I am indebted to many helpers for assistance rendered, at many times and in various ways, since the inception of the work. I have consulted the local histories of the vicinity, especially Hudson's Marlborough, Peter Whitney's Worcester County, and Joseph Allen's Northborough, and have given credit where these have been quoted. To the late E. M. Phillips I am under many an obligation for reminiscence and story of the days of his boyhood. To the late Hon. Samuel M. Griggs, whose interest in the town and its history was always keen, and whose knowledge of facts and places was exceptional, I owe more than to any one else in the earlier days of this study Judge W. T. Forbes and Mrs. Forbes have rendered great service in the past year, and Messrs. J. A. Fayerweather and F. W.

X PREFACE.

Forbes have assisted much at various times. And finally, to the Committee of Publication, Messrs. Brigham, Beeman, and Henry, and my coadjutor, Mr. E. C. Bates, I owe many courtesies and helps. Of the town itself I have only the happiest memories, and it has been pleasant to recall them in this gathering up of the threads of many years' work.

Detroit, Mich.,

November, 1889.

CHAPTER VIII. • Waterworks. — Phenomena. — New Buildings. — Other

Improvements 415

3Cppen&ir.

I. Biographical Sketches 431

II. Land Grants 454

III. Town Officers 465

IV. Representatives to General Court 470

V. Votes for Governor 472

VI. Rev. Ebenezer Parkman's History of Westbor-

ough 479

Index 4§3

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE SQUARE Frontispiece

Insane Hospital, across Lake Chauncy 18

The Whitney Place 36

Ebenezer Parkman 66

Breck Parkman 106

East Main Street 134

Eli Whitney 192

Old Arcade 208

Charles Parkman 218

Otis Brigham 226

Unitarian Church 234

Congregational Church .'.... 238

Westborough, from Whitney Hill 245

Town Hall and Baptist Church 250

Soldiers' Monument 274

Post-Office Block 332

Rev. Heman P. Deforest 340

Elmer Brigham 352

George B. Brigham 360

William R. Gould 368

The High-School Building 376

William Curtis 380

Christopher Whitney 388

John A. Fayerweather 396

Dr. N. Emmons Paine 402

Residence of John A. Fayerweather 412

XVI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Page

Residence of Mrs. H. K. Taft 418

St. Luke's Church and Rectory , . . 424

The Whitney House 426

Charles B. Parkman 43 2

Lyman Belknap 438

Horace Maynard 44 2

Henry K. Taft 450

Daniel F. Newton . 466 a^apg an& fMan£.

Map of Westborough 1

Floor-Plan of the First Meeting-House 55

Floor-Plan of the Second Meeting-House 138

The Original Marlborough, and the New Towns " set

off " from it 45^

The Original Chauncy, and some of the Territory

afterward Annexed 457

Map of Westborough in 1766 463

THE EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.

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THE

EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.

Chapter I. Topography. — Indian History And Legend. — First White Settlers

THE traveller from Boston toward Worcester by the Albany Railroad, after passing Cochituate Lake and Farm Pond, strikes the valley of the Sudbury River near Ashland, and following it for some eight miles beyond that village, through an uninteresting region broken by two small manufacturing stations and ending in a long and lonely stretch of wood and swamp, comes suddenly upon the central square of a busy town, with its brick blocks and tree-lined streets, its lumber-yards and factories, with church spires rising beyond the square. It is a good place to stop, — and to live, if one is looking for a country home, with some charming scenery, and not too far from the whirl of life ; with school, church, and library at hand, and easy communication with the appliances of civilization. The village of Westborough, which is in the centre of the town, is only ten miles due east from Worcester, and twenty-nine west-southwest from Boston, as the bird flies. It lies in the southern portion of a plain, which traverses the area of the town from northwest to southeast, terminating in the cedar swamp through which the train passes. It belongs to-day in the highest class of New England villages ; its population is largely descended from the native stock, — industrious, enterprising, and law-abiding; believing loyally in New-England institutions, and not yet emancipated from the sway of conscience.

The town, extending from two to three miles about the village in all directions, has numerous good and well-kept farms, with thrifty-looking buildings, and a delightful mingling of woodland, meadow, pond, and hill, which has endless charms for the lover of Nature. An irregular range of low green hills rises to the south and west, and another to the northeast. One never tires of the views they give in payment for an easy climb ; and walks and drives of picturesque beauty are numberless. From the highest point of these hills one gets an inspiring view of Wachusett, twenty miles away, and of a line of sentinels that guard the northwestern horizon, comprising Monadnock, Watatic, and the Temple Hills. There are long reaches of meadow, lying between wood and knoll, and terminating, perhaps, in a far-off glimpse of a church spire relieved against the blue background of a hill. There are picturesque confusions of hill and dale, — now shutting one into a sheltered nook; now, after a steep climb up a rocky slope, confronting him with a sweep of landscape that reaches to New Hampshire. There are walks through the woods, the path strewn with soft pine-needles or rich brown oak-leaves. Here the road winds unexpectedly round a sharp curve, and runs down the hill to a rude bridge by an old mill ; again, as it climbs a gentle slope, the well-tilled fields sweep away toward the town, with fringes of maple on the farther verge, which in October

TOPOGRAPHY. 3

burn with a hectic flush against the greens and browns of the meadow.

The water area of the town is comparatively small. There are no large streams, but brooks are numerous, and those which are fed from the western slopes of the hills gather themselves in the northerly meadows into the Assabet River; while those that rise on the eastern slopes, collecting in Cedar Swamp, form the Sudbury. These two streams, receiving their names before they leave the town area, separate widely, then flow together, and uniting in the Concord, flow to the Merrimac, and so to the sea. But if there are no rivers, there are ponds, of which Chauncy is king, and which unfolds its full beauty only when seen from the slopes of the Hospital grounds, with the village spires in the distance, relieved against the background of the southern hills. Hidden darkly at the foot of the wooded hills to the west, its seclusion only just now broken in upon by a railroad cutting, lies Hoccomocco, whose true and better name is Hobomoc. Down in the recesses of Cedar Swamp there lies another pond, as one may find in the winter if he will thread the mazes of the frozen forest. And high up on the southern hillsides is still another, now enlarged by artificial dredging and embankment, which supplies the water for the village, and has natural " head " enough to drench the village spires through a well-directed hose.

Westborough is one of the " borough towns." That means, in local parlance, that it is a part of the area — now including also Marlborough, Northborough, Southborough, and a part of Hudson — which, about the time that Charles II. was proclaimed king of England, was incorporated as " Marlborow." The present Westborough is the southwestern part of the ancient " plantacion," with some additions on the west and south. The story I am to try to tell runs back to the middle of the seventeenth century, and comes down to the middle of the nineteenth. It is the story of a quiet inland town, with few striking episodes ; of small importance to the history of State or nation ; not great in the arena of public affairs, but taking its share, without either fuss or flinching, in the movements that the times have thrust upon it. What I should be glad to do, if possible, is to " develop," as the photographers say, a few pictures that have long lain concealed in musty documents and half-forgotten traditions, and give them a little reality to the descendants of the men and women who subdued the wilderness, and made the pleasant life of to-day possible.

In the earliest time of which we have any knowledge, — the time of Indian occupation, — this region was a borderland between two or three tribes. It is quite impossible to clear up the confusion which rests on the topography of Indian tribes, and leads nearly every writer on the subject to a different conclusion. They were still a nomadic race, to a great extent; their boundaries were flexible, and the relative subordination of tribes and clans to one another varied from time to time. In general, it seems reasonable to adopt the statements of Major Gookin, the friend and helper of John Eliot, who travelled over the whole region and had friendly intercourse with all the tribes. According to his division the Pokanokets, or Wampanoags, held southeastern Massachusetts, — including Bristol, Plymouth, and Norfolk counties, — as far north as Charles River. The Massachusetts occupied the district north of Charles River, and westward from Massachusetts Bay to the western boundary of Middlesex County. The Pawtuckets were

INDIAN HISTORY AND LEGEND. 5

north of the Massachusetts, covering Essex County and part of north Middlesex, and extending into lower New Hampshire. Westward of these tribes were the Nipmucks, whose principal domain was along the Nipmuck or Blackstone River, but also extended westerly toward the Connecticut. To this tribe belonged the Indians of Hassanemisco, whom Eliot had gathered into the semblance of a town on Grafton Hill.

Near the junction of the Concord and Merrimac rivers, — now in Lowell, — the Wamesits, a clan of the Pawtucket tribe, had their headquarters ; and to this clan belonged the Indians of the Marlborough settlement. The territory of the present Westborough, therefore, had the Nipmucks on the one hand and the Wamesits on the other, while the Massachusetts were close by on the east. It is uncertain which of the tribes built their camp-fires around these ponds, and gave them their names, and wove their superstitions about them, since they all alike belonged to the great Algonquin race and spoke its language. But they have left their traces in two or three localities. Chauncy Pond was to them Naggawoomcom, or " Great Pond ; " and the pretty sheet of water at the foot of what was then a serpent-haunted hill, hidden among thick trees, its waters always dark with shadows, its shores a lurkingplace for wild beasts, received from these imaginative children of Nature the name of Hobomoc, — their Evil Spirit, to whose dwelling-place they believed it to be a hidden entrance.

The late Horace Maynard, of Tennessee, who was a Westborough boy, made use, in his college days, of the old Indian traditions about this latter spot to weave a very pretty legend of the tiny lakelet, — a tale of love and stratagem and revenge. There is a chief and a rival ; a dusky maiden beloved of both, but soon to be wedded by the chief. There is a little skiff upon the lake paddled by the maid ; a dark figure plunging into the water, and swimming silently under the surface till he can pull the unsuspecting bride down to her death, so mysteriously that they who spy it from the shore attribute it to the evil Hobomoc himself. Then, as a year is finished, comes a warning to the murderer, mysterious and awful; the second year, another; the third, a vengeance, weird and terrible, sweeps him to his watery doom beneath the dark surface of this mouth of hell. And thereafter when any of the tribe crossed the spot he dropped a stone into its depths, until the cairn rose above the surface.

There would be little use in looking for the monument to-day. But there are few spots that are the worse for a legend or two ; and this one lends itself to the purpose with a singular suggestiveness, as the imaginative youth from the old farm-house on the hill discovered.

Besides the names they have left and the legends they have suggested, there is very little by which we may trace the occupancy of the Indian proprietors. There is a measure of probability that we have such a trace in the name of the Jackstraw Pasture, beyond the house of Nathan M. Knowlton. This section was granted to one William Beeres about the time of the incorporation of Marlborough, and was then known as Jack Straw's Hill. This indicates a previous Indian occupation. In April, 163 1, Governor Winthrop was visited in Boston by Wahginnacut, — "a sagamore upon the River Quonehtacut [Connecticut], which lies west of Naragancet," — "with John Sagamore and Jack Straw, — an Indian who had lived in England, and had served Sir Walter Raleigh, and was now turned Indian again, — and divers of their

INDIAN HISTORY AND LEGEND. 7

sannops," who " brought a letter to the governour, etc." Whether this was the Indian who gave the name to the hill in question is uncertain, but it is not impossible. Accounts have been found of two Indians carried by- Raleigh from his Roanoke colony to England; and of these the only one who remained here was known as Manteo. He was the first Indian baptized by the English colonists, and served them as scout and interpreter. He was made " king" of an island in Pamlico Sound, which still bears the name of Manteo. Raleigh's expedition to this coast was in 1584; and a youth who was twenty years old at that time would be sixty-seven at the time of the interview with Governor Winthrop. There is not sufficient evidence to make any positive assertions, but the coincidence of statements is highly interesting. A hundred years later there were three Indians bearing the surname of Jackstraw living in Hopkinton. They might easily enough have been the descendants of this Indian, as the Hopkinton line is not far from the locality which bears his name. How he came by so singular a cognomen is not easily answered, but a curious extract from the " Narrative of Phineas Pratt," who came to this country in 1622, gives a possible hint. He says: —

" Not long after the overthrow of the first plantation in the bay, Capt. Louit Cam to yer Cuntry. At the Time of his being at Pascataway, a Sacham, or Sagamor, Gaue two of his men, on to Capt. Louit, & An other to Mr. Tomson ; but on yt was ther said, 'How can you trust those Salvagis? Cale the nam of on Watt Tyler, & ye other Jack Straw, after ye names of the two greatest Rebills yt ever weare in Eingland.' "

Pratt relates this out of the fulness of his heart, for he had suffered much at the hands of the Indians, and considered them the most treacherous rascals alive.

There were other Indians in the vicinity, of whom the white men, on their arrival, purchased lands ; but they had already disappeared, to a considerable extent, before that time. For we remember that only eight years before the " Mayflower " touched Plymouth Bay there had been a pestilential fever all along the coast, which had decimated the tribes. And with the coming of the English the days of the natives were numbered. Not that the Pilgrims had any purpose of extermination, or even of conquest. They had even cherished the hope, as no small part of their object in coming to this wilderness, " to propagate and advance the Gospel of the Kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world." And no sooner were they freed from the necessity of using all their strength in securing a bare subsistence for themselves, than they took measures to civilize and Christianize the aborigines. As early as 1644 the General Court took cognizance of the matter, and ordered the county courts to take care of the Indians in their several shires. In the two succeeding years still more definite action was taken, looking toward the gathering of them into communities, and bringing them under religious instruction.

John Eliot was the leading spirit in this movement, full of zeal for the Christianizing of the red men ; and as soon as the government indorsement was obtained, he began the work at Nonantum and Natick which has made his name a household word. By 1654 he had gathered the " praying Indians " into a colony at Natick, and was petitioning the General Court " that those Indians might be settled, who were scattered yet, in convenient places unclaimed by the English." The places indicated by him were some of them within or near the locality of our story. Naguncook was at Hopkinton ; Hassanemisco, at Graf-

INDIAN HISTORY AND LEGEND. 9

ton; and a third settlement was on Okommokamesit 1 Hill, just north of the present village of Marlborough. These Indians were partially civilized, and quite different from the wild forest-rangers who named hill and lake and stream. They had lost their picturesqueness ; they had certainly gained something; but they were, at this stage in their development, a strange and uncouth compound of barbarism and civilization. Their teachers had committed the common mistake of trying to graft advanced English customs on undeveloped natures; and the result was a comical incongruity, like the blanket and silk hat of the modern Indian of the West. They had awakened their religious impulses, but their ethical knowledge was very slight, and they had no trained instincts. They had been forced to have a local government like that of the white men, in forgetfulness of the fact that it had taken the nurtured English mind some centuries to arrive at the idea of self-government. They were organized into churches, and that too of the prevailing Congregational pattern, — which being a new thing, reasoned their teachers, and the best thing, must be the thing for the savage. They were taught to cultivate the land, — which was exactly the right thing, because the first in order in the development of the arts ; but they were bidden to live in houses like the white man, and wear his dress, and bear his English names ; and these things did not fit them as yet. The chief of this Okommokamesit town was Onomog, of whom Gookin says, in his Cromwellian phraseology, that he was " a pious and

1 This name, like so many other Indian names, is spelled in various ways. Besides the above, which is the more euphonious, though probably a later form, I find Ockoocangansett, Ogkanhquokamus, and Ogquomkongquamesut. The early settlers had a pretty severe struggle with the ordinary spelling-book ; when it came to Indian names, they were apt to surrender at sight.

discreet man, and the very soul, as it were, of that place." He died in 1674.

But however earnestly the friends of the Indian were laboring for his elevation in the scale of manhood, the working of other inevitable forces that accompany and help to make social progress had begun, and the Indian was already passing away before the higher skill and the wider ambition of English training. The law of the survival of the fittest was to have a signal illustration. The leaders of the colonies had the best of intentions toward the natives; Eliot and his assistants were unremitting in their efforts to do them good in body and soul, — but not all the colonists were like the leaders. We are too apt to generalize vaguely concerning these ancestors of ours, and because the Plymouth Pilgrims were men of a high stamp, as statesmen and as Christians, to assume that all who came to the colonies were of the same type. But history does not bear us out in this assumption. There were adventurers among the immigrants. There were men who became mischief-makers in the new towns; there were those who had to be sent back, to get them out of the way. And among those who remained, and who gradually pushed their way westward, there were those who cared little for any one's rights but their own, and who had as much share in making the life of the towns as those who were of a better mind. These men could not be made to look on the Indian as anything but an incumbrance, to be gotten rid of. The feeling that " the only good Indian is a dead Indian " did not originate in the Western plains, if the phrase did ; and the broad meadows and productive " planting fields " of the civilized Indians were too strong a temptation to the white man, who very soon contrived to possess them, and not always by the method

FIRST WHITE SETTLERS. II

of lawful purchase. There were those who protested against injustice; but even the brave and true men who have deserved only the gratitude of posterity were men who had been brought up on the Old Testament ideas rather than on those of the New. They believed that God had given this land to his saints, as he did Canaan of old, — and they believed that they were the saints ; and brave and true as they were, according to their age, they did not always — especially when smarting from the cruelties of Indian warfare — see in the clearest light the claims of the original proprietor. If, as we read the story, we are tempted to be harsh with them for this, we have several more modern stories, like that of the Black Hills, by which we may temper our righteous wrath.

John Eliot's little colony on Okommokamesit Hill very soon found that it was to have English company. In the very same year (1654) that Eliot sent up his petition to the General Court " that they might be settled in this, among other places, unclaimed by the English," the first white man, one John How, is believed to have built his solitary cabin a little east of their planting-field. He came from Watertown, led by what motives it might be hard to say, but bent on separation from society. He was kind and friendly with his dusky neighbors, and from his superior knowledge came to be regarded by them as a sage and counsellor, and made a referee in their disputes. In Allen's "History of Northborough" an amusing illustration of this is cited. A dispute arose one day between two of the natives concerning the ownership of a pumpkin, which had ripened in the field of one of the parties, while the vine that bore it had its roots in the other man's domain. Unable to solve so difficult a case of casuistry, they had recourse to Mr. How. He gravely heard the case, put on his wisest countenance, and ordered the disputed property to be placed before him. Then calling for a knife, he cut the pumpkin in two, and gave half to each, — to the unbounded admiration of the litigants.

But this life of patriarchal simplicity was of short duration. It was only two years after the arrival of How (in May, 1656) that thirteen men of Sudbury — a town then eighteen years old — petitioned the General Court for a grant of land lying about eight miles to the westward. They had lived a good while in Sudbury, they said ; their children were growing up, and needing land; their cattle were much increased ; and, in short, " wee are so straightened that wee cannot so Comfortably subsist as could be desired." There was no satisfying these pioneers in the matter of room. They felt crowded as soon as there were fifty families in a town. They could not find elbow-room on a farm of less than five hundred acres, even when they had in addition no end of meadow-land divided into lots for the common weal. Fifty years afterward the Haynes farm, lying to the west of Westborough, contained 1,686 acres in one place, and 3,200 in another; and yet the heirs were claiming from the General Court a modest settlement of 5,000 acres more. The settlers all cried with a naive literalness, —