Hearths and homes of old Lynn, with studies in local history

Front matter

I

V

<j* b s ^

Preface

THIS book is an ingathering of sketches, addresses, and local historic studies, most of which have been printed in some form, from time to time, of late years.

The present publication is due to the advice of, perhaps too zealous, friends, who have urged the compilation.

In a prefatory note to some of these sketches, written in 1888, this language was used : -

There is not a nook-shotten locality in Old Essex which has changed less in a hundred years than this charming river-valley, where these sedate places complacently hold their own, heedless of innovations about them.

The writer loves every tree, rocky hillside, brook, woodland path and recollection associated with them. The writing of these slight hints concerning them has been a pleasure, which will be heightened if the reading shall interest others.

Changes were then apprehended. Some have happened, and many more are impending.

Some elderly people were named in the text. Of course these have mainly passed away in the intervening years. In a few instances note has been made of the decease of a person named or described.

PREFACE

The author is not vain enough to think that these rambles in the olden time could not be re-touched and improved, but as they were written and given out they must remain.

One motive in the local studies in this book is to recall some of the scenes, incidents, happenings and worthies of the old town, not perhaps overlooked by other writers, but having to the author a deeper interest, which he trusts may be shared by other descendants of the lovers of the people of the planting days.

The storehouse of Lynn's historic treasures is so well filled, and the explorers in the hidden lore are so few, that I am confident that no one's preserves will be trenched upon in these slenderly connected gleanings.

A few instances of double dating will be noticed. The chronology followed is that of the records, which is old style to September 13, 1752, inclusive. The change from old style to new style is so generally known that no further explanation is required.

This is only a slight fragment of the work promised, a part of which I trust yet to execute, but it has seemed expedient to put this much in convenient type.

N. M. H.

Lynn, Massachusetts, November 1, 1906.

Foreword

I GLADLY accept the responsibility of having urged the bringing of these papers and addresses into a volume by themselves. They well deserve this enduring form, and will win their place both as history and literature. In them has been garnered the fruit of years of intelligent and sympathetic study. Their style is as delightful as it is characteristic of their author.

But to every lover of old Lynn these sketches and addresses will have a charm and value distinctly their own. For, more than history or literature, they are the offspring of the author's pious affection for the place of his birth, for its fathers and founders, and for those days when the men of Lynn were men of Massachusetts Bay. Nor has this affection blinded him. On the contrary it has inspired and led him to a deeper knowledge of earlier New England, and to a clearer insight into its character, its standards of conduct and endeavor. Through that intuition which is born only of the truest sympathy, our author so well understands the men of by-gone generations, that they have moulded his inmost thought, and the reader will sometimes feel that they are themselves addressing him. But our author not only comprehends these men ; he knows where they lived

FOREWORD

and how. He traces their family relations and makes us feel that "there is love and courtship and eager life and high devotion up and down all the lines of every genealogy." He helps us connect the simple annals of early Lynn with the wider interests first of the colonies and at length of the nation.

President Woodrow Wilson has well said: "A spot of local history is like an inn upon a highway; it is a stage upon a far journey; it is a place the national history has passed through. There mankind has stopped and lodged by the way." This figurative description expresses with singular and literal aptness one of the notable relations of earliest Lynn to the life of the Colony. Here ran the country highway connecting the more important commercial towns, and here for more than one hundred and sixty years in the old Tavern by Saugus River the men of New England stopped and lodged by the way.

But in that old Lynn where so many thus lodged, the author of this volume has spent a lifetime. Where others tarried he has been constant. He loves the olden time and its people. They have been his favorite theme for thought and study, and he has the passionate longing to make others see and know them even as they are seen and known by him. And so it is that when we go with him to the neglected site of some old homestead — wholly forgotten by the Lynn of to-day — we shall see him stand with uplifted eyes, as he recounts its life drama long ago enacted, in which, however simple, there were all the romance, the joy, and the tragedy of human experience.

FOREWORD

It is this more vital and intimate knowledge of the earlier days which commands our attention, notwithstanding all that may be said by those who believe that nothing of value about the past can be gleaned except from its written records. It is this sort of local history which, by making days that are gone more sacred, enables us to divine something of what the future should be.

It will be seen from his Preface that the author of this volume is very modest in estimating the value of his work, but it is safe to venture the prophecy that the reader will often be impressed by a firm grasp of historic facts and of their wider relations, and will find genuine pleasure in the quaint originality of the author's point of view. It will not be too much to say of him, as was said of another : " Everything he touched he brightened, as after a month of dry weather the shower brightens the dusty shrubbery of a suburban villa."

Benjamin N. Johnson.

Lynn, Massachusetts, December IS, 1906.

A PIONEER SCENE (WOLF PIT)

PART I. Heaith* <i»d Homes of Old Lynn

PAGE

Lynn 1

Lynn Hotel 9

The Abijah Boardman House 13

Oaklandvale 23

A Homestead by Grace of the Indians .... 33

An Ancient House in North Saugus .... 45

Noted Names upon a Revolutionary Commission . . 53

The Tarbell Place 57

A Quaker Home on the Downing Road .... 61

Notes on and about a Saugus Pond .... 73

The Iron Works Mansion 79

The Vinegar Hill Circuit 91

Rev. Joseph Roby and His Times 101

The Flagg-Gray House 109

The Meeting-House of the Second Church in Lynn . Ill

The Meeting-House of the Third Parish in Lynn . 115

The Puritan Birthright 119

CONTENTS

PART II. Studies in Local History

PACK

A Chapter in the Story of the Iron Works . . 129

Captain Robert Bridges, Founder of the First Iron

Works in America 149

Evolution of the Town from the Parish . . 159

Colonial Land Titles 179

The Cycle Days of New England 195

Essex Farms — The Cradles of American Homes . . 219

Lynnfield in the Revolution 245

Why the Old Town House Was Built .... 263

John Endicott and the Red Cross Ensign ... 281

High Rock 293

PART III. Individual Sketches

James Robinson Newhall 301

Cyrus Mason Tracy 325

Samuel Hawkes 333

Index 339

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

The Elkanah Hawkes House Frontispiece ""

A Pioneer Scene (Wolf Pit) xii

Initial — Fire-place 1

Western Entrance of the Central Part of Lynn (from old print) 10

The Abijah Boardman House opp. 13-

The Elkanah Hawkes House (late view) . . . opp. 31/ The Hitchings-Draper-Hawkes Place .... opp. 33- Fishing Rock .......... 44

Indian Rock 46

Ezra's Rock 52

Revolutionary Commission (reproduced from original) . opp. 55"

Hawkes Pond from Fuller Hill 56

The Tarbell House opp. 59'

Hawkes Pond opp. 61 '

Hannibal, Sexton of the Old Tunnel Meeting-House . 65

Cranberry Meadow opp. 69-'

Wayside Rest 72

Appleton's Pulpit opp. 75 ^

The Iron Works Mansion ...... opp. 79^

Breed's Pond 90

Ye Glen Pirates See ye Frigate 92

Garrison House (restored) 99

The Roby Elm opp. 101-

Lynn from Pine Hill 108

The Meeting-House of the Second Church in Lynn

(Lynnfield) opp. Ill

The Meeting-House of the Third Parish in Lynn (Saugus) opp. 115

Glen Lewis Pond from Mt. Hermon 118

Cinder Banks, Saugus River opp. 129-

Howlett's Mill (site of Gifford's Iron Works) . . opp. 147 The Flagg-Gray House (rear view — Marion Street) opp. 149^

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE .

The Old Tunnel Meeting-House opp. 159 /

The Lantern Path 178

Castle Hill from Walden Pond opp. 195 J

Hart's, in Lynn 197

The Triple Ways 218

Sunset on Walden Pond opp. 229

The Flagg-Gray House opp. 237'

Walden Pond Road 244

Penny Brook Road 280

Oceanfront from Highlands ....... 292

High Rock, 1628 294

High Rock Tower (1905) opp. 297 '

James Robinson Newhall opp. 301

Cyrus Mason Tracy opp. 325 '

Samuel Hawkes opp. 333

Samuel Hawkes' House 334

Overlook Crag 338

PART I Hearths and Homes of Old Lynn LYNN, ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS

PURITAN settlement - made less than ten years after the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock.

Its sea front, upon which beats the ceaseless ebb and flow of the Atlantic, is included in the magnificent Massachusetts Bay, one of the out-posts of which Prince Charles, at Captain John Smith's request, named " Cape Ann," and the other was named by Gosnold "Cape Cod." Within the Bay it lies between Salem, the first seat of Puritan occupation in Massachusetts, and Boston, the permanent capital.

High Rock stands like a citadel of feudal Europe, around the base of which the town has grown from the sea on the south to the woods on the north.

A gleaming girdle of hard sand separates the harbor from the beach, reaches out to the twin Nahants

- a little terrestrial paradise — while the bright light upon Egg Rock warns the mariner that ours is a rock-ribbed coast.

The first white men known to have trod the soil of Lynn were Edmund Ingalls, Francis Ingalls, William Dixey, John Wood and William Wood. These men were of Captain John Endicott's Colony, who, as the advance guard of the great Puritan exodus from England, landed in Salem, in 1628. These five, and perhaps others, strayed over to Lynn, five miles away, in the early summer of 1629. The organized settlement of Lynn took place a year later. In June, 1630, John Winthrop, the Governor, bearing the Charter granted by Charles the First, with eleven vessels and over a thousand immigrants, arrived in Salem Harbor. After a few days' tarry at Salem, Winthrop sailed to what was soon to be named Boston Harbor, at the mouth of Charles River, and established the first seat of government and the first church at Charlestown. On account of lack of good water, Winthrop, with a majority, soon removed across the harbor to Shawmut, which they called Boston in honor of the old English town of that name.

When Winthrop landed, it was the intention to remain together and begin a single settlement. This purpose they were soon compelled to abandon.

Thomas Dudley, the Deputy Governor, who had been a soldier in the Low Countries and was connected with the family of the Puritan Nobleman, the Earl of Lincoln, two of whose daughters were with the Colonists, wrote a letter, dated March 28,

1631, to the Countess of Lincoln, relating to the settlement.

In it he says : " We were forced to change counsel, and for our present shelter to plant dispersedly - some at Charlestown, which standeth on the north side of the mouth of Charles River ; some on the south side thereof, which place we named Boston (as we intended to have done the place we first resolved on); some of us upon Mistick, which we named Medf orcl ; some of us westward on Charles River, four miles from Charlestown, which place we called Watertown ; others of us two miles from Boston, in a place we named Roxbury ; others upon the river of Saugus, between Salem and Charlestown ; and the Western men four miles south from Boston, at a place we named Dorchester."

Dudley speaks of the " River of Saugus," which is an Indian name and signifies "extended," suggested, it is said, by the broad, salt marshes that spread over a wide territory upon its banks.

The Indians applied the name to the region lying between Boston and Salem; the river itself they called " Abousett." The English settlers applied it to the beautiful river, and for a few years the settlement itself was called "Saugus."

The Town of Lynn never had a formal incorporation. Its settlers were members and grantees of the Corporation known as the "Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England."

This Corporation, transplanted from London to Massachusetts, assumed all powers of government, and the participation of the freemen of Lynn, or Saugus as it was then called, in the First General Court of the Colony in 1630, was a recognition of the plantation, and gave it equal standing with Boston, Salem and the other participants in that first Great Court of Massachusetts.

In 1634, the number of freemen had so increased that it became expedient to send Deputies in place of the whole number.

In that first House of Representatives, eight towns, including Lynn or Saugus, were represented. The Lynn members were Nathaniel Turner, Edward Tomlins and Thomas Willis.

In 1637, the Indian name of Saugus was changed to Lynn, in honor of Rev. Samuel Whiting, the Pastor who had formerly officiated at St. Margaret's Church in Lynn Regis, England.

Colonial Lynn had its centre of interest and business activity, in 1643, on the banks of the Saugus River, at the head of tide water, or about where Scott's Mills in Saugus now stand.

On the eastern side of the river at this point, owing to the public spirit of the late Andrew A. Scott, there is to be seen a grove of white pines, which have had no equals since the pioneer axe began its havoc.

Near by is the great bank of scoria, upon which the snows of two hundred and fifty bleak winters have fallen, which marks the spot where the settlers of Massachusetts made their first essay in manufacturing — the spot where the die for the " pine tree shilling " was cast — the spot where Jenks made the first fire engine ever seen in America.

In 1639, the General Court allowed Lynn fifty pounds towards defraying the cost of building a bridge over Saugus River. This was the first bridge built in Lynn over tide water, and was on the site of the one which now marks the dividing line between Lynn and Saugus. Its construction materially shortened the distance between Boston and the towns to the east, and soon diverted the travel to the Colonial highway, now known as Boston Street, our most famous historic road.

Over this road, from Cambridge to Newburyport, on the 11th of September, 1775, Benedict Arnold led the army which General Washington dispatched for the conquest of Quebec. This expedition, through the unbroken wilds of Maine and Canada, was the most wonderful, chivalric and quixotic event of the Revolutionary War. Had it been a success, what a change would have been made in our history. North America would have been wholly American instead of one-half remaining English. Arnold might have been the pivotal hero of our race, instead of the world's champion traitor.

Over this road, President George Washington traveled in his memorable journey from New York to Portsmouth, in 1789 ; and over this road, Washington's friend, the gallant Frenchman, La Fayette, was escorted beneath floral arches in 1824. By this road, the Essex Minute Men marched at the Lexington alarm, April 19, 1775, to death and to undying fame.

The beginning of the present century was a time of turnpike building in Massachusetts. These turnpike roads changed the centres of business activity in towns. Thus the opening of the Salem Turnpike through Lynn, September 22, 1803, made Market Square, and Lynn Hotel, with its great stage coaching business, the scene of travel, in place of the old Boston road.

The first postmasters had been located on Boston Street. In 1808, Jonathan Bacheller became postmaster, and kept the office in his building, still standing 1 west of the old burying ground, opposite the Lynn Hotel. For twenty years, he distributed the mails from this location.

On the 28th of August, 1838, the Eastern Railroad was opened for public travel through Lynn. Immediately the stage-coaching days were ended, and post-office and business moved east towards the railroad.

The moving of the post-office used to be an index to the fluctuations of business. It will be so no longer, as what President Cleveland called a " Federal decoration " has become an accomplished fact, and all branches of the public service now are conducted under the roof of the United States building.

This leads to a word upon our architecture.

Prior to the war of 1861, women's shoes — the staple industry of Lynn — had been made by hand, in little shops, about twelve feet square, scattered over the town in the yards connected with the dwellings.

1 Since pulled down to make room for modei-n fiats.

From 1861 to 1867, the business was revolutionized by machinery. This assembled workmen in factories, and with the passing away of the little shoe shops and the incoming of great factory buildings, came more ornate public and private structures.

The municipality set the example. The City Hall was dedicated November 30, 1867, and the people quickly responded in the erection of numerous costly and ornamental structures, the latest of which is the long-needed Public Library building.

Lynn has lost much of its early acreage by the process of setting off new towns. It is to be borne in mind that the Puritan age was an age of Parishes ; that is, the Parish made the Town, and not the Town the Parish.

The first offspring of the parent town was Reading, where a parish had been gathered in 1644. Another parish completed its organization in 1720, and, existing as the District of Lynnfield for nearly a century, became the Town of Lynnfield in 1814. The West, or Saugus Parish, became an Ecclesiastical District in 1738, and the Town of Saugus in 1815, thus preserving the original name. Though the age of parishes had given way to the age of politics when Swampscott was set off, yet the establishment of the Swampscott Parish in 1846, was followed by the Charter of the Town of Swampscott in 1852, and the next year, 1853, Nahant, without ecclesiastical or any other adequate excuse, became by fiat of the Great and General Court a town.

While we have lost territory, these towns have prospered under the good, old-fashioned Town Meetings, which are in closer touch with the tax payers than it is possible for City Governments to be, and we have had the benefit of their beaches, roads, views and suburban restfulness, which are a relief from urban noise and utilitarian push.

Lynn has done its full share in all the crises of our history. Its minister, Jeremiah Shepard, led the people who deposed Sir Edmund Andros, in 1689. Rev. John Treadwell was of the Committee of Safety after the Lexington Alarm in 1775. In the Indian Wars, at Louisburg, Lexington, Bunker Hill, and in the War of the Rebellion, Lynn men were at the front.

At the start an agricultural community, Lynn early became and easily held the leading place as a shoe manufacturing centre ; of late it has become a hive of the General Electric Company's industry. Its material progress has been steady, and it has long held the position of the largest city in the United States, east of Boston.

LYNN HOTEL.

|N THE year 1839, John Warner Barber, the author of many similar works, published at

L ""' Worcester a volume, the title of which in brief

was :—

HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS,

BEING A

General Collection of Interesting Facts, Traditions, Biographical Sketches, Anecdotes, Etc.,

RELATING TO THE

History and Antiquities

OE

Every Town in Massachusetts,

WITH

Geographical Descriptions.

Illustrated by 200 Engravings.

One of the illustrations was a Lynn view. It was a rude wood cut. Under it was the legend, Western Entrance of the Central Part of Lynn.

On the following page we have reproduced this sketch in half-tone. It is a striking reminder of the shifting scenes of Lynn's activities. The central building is the famous old coaching station, and Inn of the Salem Turnpike Corporation, at West Lynn.

At the left side of the sketch, in the foreground, may be seen hitching-posts for the use of the patrons of the noted "West India Goods" store of Caleb Wiley, at the south-westerly corner of Federal Street and the Salem Turnpike, now Western Avenue.

Across Federal Street, where now stands the brick factory building occupied by Weber Leather Company, appears a corner of the old Tufts house, owned by David Tufts, a soldier of the Revolution, later occupied by Deacon Richard Tufts, and the house where his son, Col. Gardiner Tufts, was born.

I3lt$ ■

Deacon Tufts and Mr. Wiley, with only a pump and a street between them, on the "Medford rum" question were as far apart as the north and south poles.

The dark three-story brick building, in the left distance, was called the Josiah Clough building, which outlived its usefulness years ago, when it was demolished at the widening of Centre Street. Upon its diminished site, after its travels, the Old Lynn Academy now stands, and shelters Ex-Mayor Baird's painting materials.

The year before Barber's Book was published, the Eastern Railroad was opened for travel through Lynn (August 28, 1838). Hence the bustling stage coaches, which had heretofore been the bright feature of the scene, had gone to return no more forever.

The vehicle in the right foreground is of the kind known soon after as " prairie schooners," which, with the family and household goods, ploughed their way across the continent to conquer and populate the Empire of the West and the Pacific Coast.

Beyond the canvas-covered travelling home is caught a glimpse of the inclosure of the early burying-ground of the Parish of Whiting, Cobbet and Shepard.

The brick buildings on the right are those of David Taylor and Chase & Huse, then recently erected.

Still further, over the Common, appears the tower of the First Church, over which Rev. Dr. Parsons Cooke had been settled for three years.

At the extreme end of the Common the steeple of the Methodist Church, which Dr. Cooke did not love very much, appears.

The marvels, the glories, the charms, the guests and the legends of the old Tavern of the last century have captivated the pens and imaginations of our Press and History writers.

We will not enter at this time the portals of the

ii old hostelry, but simply save the exterior for posterity. The view was taken at the period of greatest depression the West End has ever known. Its Bank — the Nahant — located in what is now " The Home for Aged Women," had failed in 1836. Henry A. Breed, the versatile but unfortunate developing genius of the section, had succumbed to the panic. The railroad had banished the stage coach. It really looked as if the Tavern and the Burying-ground would peacefully abide by each other.

Later came banks and business back to the Market Place of the Fathers, and now the busy hive of the General Electric Company makes it the centre of a new and great community.

L2

THE ABIJAH BOARDMAN HOUSE.

jflN THE very western confines of Saugus, almost upon the Melrose border, stands the best preserved specimen of the projecting upper story, Colonial house yet in existence in the old town. Its location and its peculiar features are known, not only to the traveler but to the reader, by the photographic studies that have been made of it under the name given to this sketch. The place, however, has an interest extending far back of the Boardman occupation, long continuing and interesting as that has been. Counties and towns long played the old-time game of battledoor and shuttlecock with this quiet manor house. It has been in two counties, Suffolk and Essex, and in at least four towns, Boston, Lynn, Chelsea and Saugus. It was built when the boundary lines of the new towns were a trifle uncertain. Then it was determined that it was partly in Boston, which ran a long arm out into the country, as far as Reading and partly in Lynn. Perhaps the house itself made a good point to call a bound mark. It certainly has survived the heap of stones and white and black oak trees so freely used as bounds.

The occasion of its getting out of the Capital was in this wise : The inhabitants of that part of Boston, in the district called Winnisimmet, Rumney Marsh and

Pullin Point, represented to the General Court that " they laboured under great difficulties by reason of their remoteness from the body of said town, and separated by the river, that renders their attendance upon town meetings very difficult ; and have a longtime since erected a meeting-house for the publick worship of Gocl, in that district," and prayed to be set off as a separate town — reasons patriotic and religious, and more reasonable than the modern tax dodgers' arguments for dismembering ancient towns. The General Court responded favorably, and the Act, incorporating Chelsea, passed January 10, 1738-9. A part of the bound lines given in the Act may be of interest in this connection.

. . . from thence to a crotched tree, marked B. L., in the wall between Cheever's and Boardman's land, and so the line runs across a small rivulet, and to the door of the house of the said Boardman's, which is marked B. L., and so through the stack of chimn [ie] [ey] s in said house, from thence, across a small brook, to a stump of a walnut tree, with a heap of stones in said Boardman's field ; from thence to a walnut tree marked B. L., on the south side of an hill near Felt's house ; from thence to a rock, with a heap of stones in land, called the six-hundred-acre right.

This imaginary line ran through the front door and through the chimney till early in the present century. To a debtor who sought to avoid service of writs, or to a criminal who would escape arrest, it might have been convenient for its owner to have been able to elect his domicile in either county without going out of doors. But the forehanded tenants of the Boardman house were not in such a category. They found disadvantages in the doubled civil duties and responsibilities.

Abijah Boardman experienced the inconvenience of being spread out over two counties, so he petitioned the General Court, that the line dividing the towns of Lynn, in the County of Essex, and Chelsea, in the County of Suffolk, might be so altered as to include his dwelling-house and the land under the same wholly in the Town of Chelsea. A special Act, granting the prayer, became law June 21, 1803. And thereafter, in the language of the Statute, said house possessed all the privileges and rights which the other houses in said Chelsea possessed. Probably the most prized privilege was an exemption from the annual visit of the Lynn assessors.

But in spite of all Mr. Boardman's efforts, the old house was not to remain attached to the ancient Rumney Marsh town, for February 22, 1841, the General Court passed another special Act to set off a part of Chelsea to Saugus. The West Parish of Lynn had in the meantime become a Town under the original name of Saugus. The part thus set off was a narrow wedge that lay between the western line of Saugus and the eastern line of Maiden, now Melrose. It included the Boardman farm. So back into Essex and Saugus came the Boardman homestead and its belongings, there to remain till some new legislative whim gives it another toss.

In organizing the Puritan Colony of Massachusetts Bay, its wise founders sent out with the planters the requisite proportion of tradesmen and artisans, such as blacksmiths, weavers, masons and carpenters. Among these was Samuel Bennet, carpenter. On the original grant of lands in Lynn he received a share and located on this spot. With the shrewdness, which was characteristic among the first settlers, he selected for the site of his house a moderate elevation, just west of a running rivulet, which came down from Castle Hill to water his " horned cattle," and to meet at the declivity, south of the house, another little stream that kept green and fertile his meadows. That he was energetic and driving, the yellow records of the courts reveal. Bennet was a man of the mould required in the planting of a Colony in the wilderness. He was full of resources, thrifty, adventurous and sharp. In 1639, he was enrolled in the ranks of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. He made numerous conveyances to men of mark in the new plantation. One of these parties was Thomas Marshall, who, after serving the English Commonwealth as a Captain in Oliver's Army, returned to Saugus, and became landlord of the famous old Anchor Tavern, where for more than forty years he entertained the traveling public with the lavish hospitality of " a fine old English gentleman." He had intimate business and social relations with Joseph Jenks, never to be forgotten as the first founder " who worked in brass and iron " on the Western Continent.