The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1

The following affidavit is spread on the town records of Amesbury:

"Whereas Thomas Challis of Amesbury in ye County of Essex in ye Province of ye Massachsetts Bay in New England, and Sarah Weed, daughter of George Weed in ye same Town, County and Province, have declared their intention of taking each other in marriage before several public meetings of ye people called Quakers in Hampton and Amesbury, and according to yt good order used amongst them whose proceeding therein after a deliberate consideration thereof with regard to ye righteous law of God and example of his people recorded in ye holy Scriptures of truth in that case, and by enquiry they appeared clear of all others relating to marriage and having consent of parties and relations concerned were approved by said meeting.

Now these certify whom it may concern yt for ye full accomplishment of their intention, this twenty-second day of September being ye year according to our account 1727, then they the sd Thoms Challis and Sarah Weed appeared in a public assembly of ye aforesd people and others met together for that purpose at their public meeting-house in Amesbury aforesd and then and there he ye sd Thoms Challis standing up in ye sd assembly taking ye sd Sarah Weed by ye hand did solemnly declare as followeth:

Friends in ye fear of God and in ye presence of this assembly whom I declare to bear witness, that I take this my Friend Sarah Weed to be my wife promising by ye Lord's assistance to be unto her a kind and loving husband till death, or to this effect; and then and there in ye sd assembly she ye said Sarah Weed did in like manner declare as follweth: Friends in ye fear of God and presence of this assembly whom I declare to bear witness that I take this my Friend Thoms Challis to be my husband promising to be unto him a faithful and loving wife till death separate us, or words of ye same effect. And ye sd Thoms Challis and Sarah Weed, as a further confirmation thereof did then and there to these presents set their hands, she assuming ye name of her husband. And we whose names are hereto subscribed being present amongst others at their solemnizing Subscription in manner aforesd have hereto set our names as witness."

Then follow the names of groom and bride, relatives on either side, and then the names of members in the assembly, first the "menfolks," then the "womenfolks." The names all told are forty-one. Among them is that of Joseph Whittier, which name with those of Challis and Weed have long been honored names in Amesbury.

The marriage gift to the husband on the part of his parents was usually a farm, a part of the homestead; the dowry to the young bride from her parents was a cow, a year's supply of wool, or something needful in setting up house-keeping. If the homestead farm was not large the young couple were brave enough to encounter the labors and toils of frontier life, and begin for themselves on virgin soil and amid new scenes. It required bravery on the part of the young bride. But there were noble maidens in those days. The cares and duties of motherhood soon followed, but the house-cares and the maternal obligations were performed to the admiration of later generations. The fathers and mothers of New England were strong and hardy. Their praises come down to us. Witnesses new and ancient testify of their worth and royalty of character.

A REMINISCENCE OF COL. FLETCHER WEBSTER

In a private conversation with the writer not long since General Marston, of New Hampshire, related the following story:

"On the morning of the thirtieth of August, 1862, before sunrise, I was lying under a fence rolled up in a blanket on the Bull Run battle-field. It was the second day of the Bull Run battle. My own regiment, the Second New Hampshire Volunteers, had been in the fight the day before and had lost one-third of the entire regiment in killed and wounded.

"While so lying by the fence some one shook me and said, 'Get up here.' In answer I said, without throwing the blanket from over my head, 'Who in thunder are you?' The answer was made, 'Get up here and see the Colonel of the Massachusetts Twelfth.'

"The speaker then partly pulled the blanket off my head and I saw that it was Colonel Fletcher Webster; whereupon I arose, and we sat down together and I sent my orderly for coffee.

"We sat there drinking the coffee and talking about his father, Daniel Webster, and he told me about his father going up to Franklin every year and always using the same expression about going. He would say 'Fletcher, my son, let us go up to Franklin to-morrow; let us have a good time and leave the old lady at home. Let us have a good old New Hampshire dinner—fried apples and onions and pork.' At about that time the Adjutant of Colonel Webster's regiment came along and told him that the General commanding his brigade wanted to see him. Colonel Webster replied that he would be there shortly.

"As he sat there on the blanket with me he took hold of his left leg just below the knee with both hands and said: 'There, I will agree to have my leg taken off right there for my share of the casualties of this day.' I replied: 'I would as soon be killed as lose a leg; and the chances are a hundred to one that you won't be hit at all.' 'Well,' said he as he gave me his hand, 'I hope to see you again; goodbye.' I never saw him again. He was killed that day. His extreme sadness, his depression, was perhaps indicative of a conviction or presentiment of some impending misfortune."

OLD DORCHESTER

By Charles M. Barrows

The quaint old Puritan annalist, James Blake, wrote as a preface to his book of records:

"When many most Godly and Religious People that Dissented from ye way of worship then Established by Law in ye Realm of England, in ye Reign of King Charles ye first, being denied ye free exercise of Religion after ye manner they professed according to ye light of God's Word and their own consciences, did under ye Incouragment of a Charter Granted by ye Sd King, Charles, in ye Fourth Year of his Reign, A.D. 1628, Remoue themselues & their Families into ye Colony of ye Massachusetts Bay in New England, that they might Worship God according to ye light of their own Consciences, without any burthensome Impositions, which was ye very motive & cause of their coming; Then it was, that the First Inhabitants of Dorchester came ouer, and were ye first Company or Church Society that arriued here, next ye Town of Salem who was one year before them."

Nonconformity, then, was the "very motive and cause" which settled Dorchester, the oldest town but one in Puritan New England, and planted there a sturdy yeomanry to whom freedom of conscience was more than home and dearer than life. Nor was this "vast extent of wilderness" to which they succeeded by right of purchase from the heirs of Chickatabat any such narrow area as that of the same name, recently annexed to the city of Boston. It extended from what is now the northern limit of South Boston to within a hundred and sixty rods of the Rhode Island line, thus giving the township a length of about thirty-five miles "as ye road goethe." The late Ellis Ames, of Canton, a competent authority, says the town "was formerly bounded by Boston, Roxbury, Dedham, Wrentham, Taunton, Bridgewater and Braintree," so that its history is the history of a large part of the towns in Norfolk county and a portion of Bristol. The manner in which the original territory has been gradually reduced is thus told by Mr. Ames: "Milton was set off in 1662; part of Wrentham, in 1724: Stoughton, in 1726; Sharon, in 1765; Foxborough, in 1778; Canton, in 1797; strips were also set off to Dedham, probably, in 1739; and before the whole was annexed, portions of the northern part of the town were set off to Boston, at two several times: in 1804 and in 1855." Since that date another portion has been severed to make the northern quarter of Hyde Park. Honorable John Daggett, the historian of Attleborough, which was then a part of the Rehoboth North Purchase, says there was a dispute concerning the boundary between Dorchester and that town, which was finally settled by a conference of delegates, held at the house of one of his ancestors.

Why those "most Godly and Religious People" chose to settle where they did rather than on the Charles river, as at first intended, Mr. Blake proceeds to tell us in his annals. He says they made the voyage from England to New England in a vessel of four hundred tons, commanded by Captain Squeb, and that they had "preaching or expounding of the Scriptures every day of their passage, performed by Ministers." Contrary to their desires, the ship discharged them and their goods at Nantasket, but they procured a boat in which part of the company rowed into Boston harbor and up the Charles river, "until it became narrow and shallow," when they went ashore at a point in the present village of Watertown. But after exploring the open lands about Boston, they finally made choice of a neck of land "joyning to a place called by ye Indians Mattapan," because it formed a natural inclosure for the cattle they had brought with them, and which, if turned into the open land, would be liable to stray and be lost. This little circumstance fixed the original settlement on the marsh now known as Dorchester Neck.

The honor of the name Dorchester appears to belong to Rev. John White, minister of a town of the same name in the mother country, who planned and encouraged the exodus to America. But the hardy little band of exiles who received the title from old Cutshumaquin, the successor of Chickatabat, little knew what their wild territory was destined to become in the course of a hundred years. They were loyal subjects of the English throne, building their log cabins and rude meeting-house on Allen's Plain under protection of a charter from King Charles; there they hoped to found a permanent town, where the worship of God should be maintained in accordance with the dictates of the Puritan conscience, without interference of churchman, Roman Catholic, Baptist, or Quaker. There was room in the unexplored forests to the south for pasturage and for the overflow, whenever, as Cotton Mather said when the whole state contained less than six thousand white inhabitants, "Massachusetts should be like a hive overstocked with bees."

The first meeting-house in Dorchester, a very unpretentious structure of logs and thatch, was completed in 1631, and no free-holder was allowed to plant his domicile farther than the distance of half a mile from it, without special permission of the fathers of the town. It stood near the intersection of the present Pleasant and Cottage streets, and that portion of the former highway between Cottage and Stoughton streets is supposed to have been the first road laid out in the early settlement. Shortly after, this road was extended to Five Corners in one direction, and to the marsh, then called the Calf Pasture, in the other. The present names of these extensions are Pond street and Crescent avenue. From Five Corners a road was subsequently laid out running, north-east to a point a little below the Captain William Clapp place, where there was a gate which closed the entrance to Dorchester Neck, where the cattle were pastured. It was on this street that Rev. Richard Mather, the first minister of the town, Roger Williams, of Rhode Island fame, and other distinguished citizens resided. The next undertaking in the way of public improvements was the building of two important roads, one leading to Penny Ferry, thus opening a highway of communication with the sister Colony at Plymouth; the other leading to Roxbury, Brookline and Cambridge.

In Josselyn's description of the town soon after its settlement may be read:

"Six myles from Braintree lyeth Dorchester, a frontire Town, pleasantly situated and of large extent into the maine land, well watered with two small rivers, her body and wings filled somewhat thick with houses, … accounted the greatest town heretofore in New England, but now giving way to Boston."

Through what hardships and privations this infant freehold was maintained can be understood by those only, who have read the records of the colonial struggle against a sterile soil, a rigorous climate, grim famine, hostile Indians, and a total lack of all the appliances and comforts of civilization. The years 1631 and 1632 were a period of great distress to the Dorchester farmers, on account of the failure of their crops and supplies of provision, and Captain Clapp wrote concerning it: "Oh! ye Hunger that many suffered and saw no hope in an Eye of Reason to be Supplied, only by Clams & Muscles, and Fish; and Bread was very Scarce, that sometimes ye very Crusts of my Fathers Table would have been very sweete vnto me; And when I could have Meal & Water & Salt, boyled together, it was so good, who could wish better. And it was not accounted a strange thing in those Days to Drink Water, and to eat Samp or Homine without Butter or Milk. Indeed it would have been a very strange thing to see a piece of Roast Beef, Mutton, or Veal, tho' it was not long before there was Roast Goat."

In 1740, the same year that Whitefield visited New England, on his evangelistic mission, the crops were again cut off by untimely frosts, and Mr. Blake wrote in his annual entry-book: "There was this year an early frost that much Damnified ye Indian Corn in ye Field, and after it was Gathered a long Series of wett weather & a very hard frost vpon it, that damnified a great deal more."

It is not unfair to suppose that the habits of rigid economy learned in this school of adversity influenced the passage of the celebrated law against wearing superfluities, quite as much as their austere prejudice against display. Be that as it may, the attention of the court was called to the dangerous increase of lace and other ornaments in female attire, and, after mature deliberation, it seemed wise to them to pass the following wholesome law:

"Whereas there is much complaint of the wearing of lace and other superflueties tending to little use, or benefit, but to the nourishing of pride, and exhausting men's estates, and also of evil example to others; it is therefore ordered that henceforth no person whatsoever shall prsume to buy or sell within this jurisdiction any manner of lace to bee worne ore used within or limits.

"And no taylor or any other person, whatsoever shall hereafter set any lace or points vpon any garments, either linnen, woolen, or any other wearing cloathes whatsoever, and that no p'son hereafter shall be imployed in making any manner of lace, but such as they shall sell to such persons but such as shall and will transport the same out of this jurisdiction, who in such a case shall have liberty to buy and sell; and that hereafter no garment shall be made wth short sleeves, whereby the nakedness of the arm may be discovered in the bareing thereof, and such as have garments already made wth short sleeves shall not hereafter wear the same, unless they cover their armes with linnen or otherwise; and that hereafter no person whatsoever shall make any garment for women, or any of their sex, wth sleeves more than halfe an elle wide in ye widest place thereof, and so proportionable for bigger or smaller persons; and for the pr sent alleviation of immoderate great sleeves and some other superfluities, wch may easily bee redressed wth out much pr udice, or ye spoile of garments, as immoderate great briches, knots of ribban, broad shoulder bands and rayles, silk lases, double ruffes and caffes, &c."

But the court did not confine itself to prescribing the size of a lady's sleeves, or the trimming she might wear on her dress: it passed other timely laws to restrain the idle and vicious and preserve good order throughout the community. It was ordered in 1632 "that ye remainder of Mr. (John) Allen's strong water, being estimated about two gallandes, shall be deliuered into ye hands of ye Deacons of Dorchester for the benefit of ye poore there, for his selling of it dyvers tymes to such as were drunke by it, knowing thereof."

In 1638 the court passed a curious law regulating the use of tobacco, which runs as follows:

"The Court finding since ye repealing of ye former laws against tobacco ye law is more abused than before, it hath therefore ordered that no man shall take any tobacco in ye field except in his iourney, or meale times, vpon pain of 12d for every offence, nor shall take any tobacco in (or near) any dwelling house, barne, Corn or Haye, as may be likely to endanger ye fireing thereof, vpon paine of 2s for every offence, nor shall take any tobacco in any Inne or common victualling house; except in a private room there; so as neither the master of the same house nor any other gueste there shall take offence thereat; wch if they doo, then such p son is forth wth to forebeare, vpon paine of 2s 6d for every offence."

One office created by the court of that early period it might not be a bad idea for the authorities of the present day to revive. Wardens were appointed annually to "take care of and manage ye affairs of ye School; they shall see that both ye Master & Schollar, perform, their duty, and Judge of and End any difference that may arrise between Master & Schollar, or their Parents, according to Sundry Rules & Directions," set down for their guidance.

In all matters coming within the province and jurisdiction of the colonial church the law was even more exacting than in merely civil affairs; and singularly enough, the town authorities took it upon themselves to seat all persons who attended divine service in the meeting-house where it seemed to them most proper. With the full approbation of the selectmen, responsible persons were sometimes allowed to construct pews or seats for themselves and their families in the meeting-house; but it appears on one occasion that three citizens undertook to "make a seat in ye meeting-house," without first getting the full permission and consent of the town fathers, an act deemed exceedingly sinful, and for which they were arraigned before the town at a special meeting and publicly censured. After duly considering the case it was decided to allow the seat to remain, provided it should not be disposed of to any person but such as the town should approve of, and that the offending parties acknowledge their "too much forwardness," in writing, which they did in the following manner:

"We whose names are underwritten, do acknowledge that it was our weakness that we were so inconsiderate as to make a small seat in the meeting-house without more clear and full approbation of the town and selectmen thereof, though we thought upon the conference we had with some of the selectmen apart, and elders, we had satisfying ground for our proceeding therein; wch we now see was not sufficent; therefore we do desire that our failing therein may be passed by; and if the town will grant our seat that we have been at so much cost in setting up, we thankfully acknowledge your love unto us therein, and we do hereupon further engage ourselves that we will not give up nor sell any of our places in that seat to any person or persons but whom the elders shall approve of, or such as shall have power to place men in seats in the assembly.

[Signed]. INCREASE ATHERTON,

SAMUEL PROCTOR,

THOMAS BIRD.

At another time one Joseph Leeds, a member of the church, was accused of maltreating his wife; the charge was sustained, and after the case had been considered at several special meetings, it was settled by his confessing and promising "to carry it more lovingly to her for time to come." But Jonathan Blackman, another erring brother, was charged with misdemeanors that could not be so easily overlooked; he was accused of lying and also of stealing. He had been whipped for these offences, but refused to come before the church for wholesome discipline, and ran away out of the jurisdiction. Accordingly he was "disowned from his church relation and excommunicated, though not deliuered up to Satan, as those in full communion, but yet to be looked at as a Heathen and a Publican unto his relations natural and civil, that he might be ashamed."

Another class of statutes—laws that have a queer sound in nineteenth-century Massachusetts—were designed for the encouragement of special public service. Here are examples of some of them:

"1638. For the better encouragement of any that shall destroy wolves, it is ordered that for every wolf any man shall take in Dorchester plantation, he shall have 20s by the town, for the first wolf, 15s for the second, and for every wolf afterwards, 10s besides the Country's pay."

"1736. Voted, that whosoever shall kill brown rats, so much grown as to have their hair on them, within ye town of Dochester, ye year ensuing, until our meeting in May next, and bring in their scalps with ye ears on unto ye town treasurer, shall be paid by ye town treasurer Fourpence for every rat's scalp."

The same year the town offered a bounty for the destroying of striped squirrels.

Now that the recent death of Wendell Phillips brings freshly to mind the bitter opposition with which the early champions of abolution were treated in Boston and vicinity, it is pleasant to find in the musty records of the Dochester Plantation emphatic evidence that they not only recognized slavery as an evil, and the slave-trade as a heinous crime, but that they set their faces like a flint against it. The traffic in slaves began among the colonists in the winter of 1645-6, and in the following November the court placed on record this outspoken denunciation of the practice:

"The Gen'all Co'te conceiving themselves bound by ye first opertunity to bear Witness against ye haynos & crying sin of man stealing, as also to prscribe such timely redresse for what is past, and such a law for ye future as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to have to do in such vile and odious courses, iustly abhored of all good and iust men, do order yt ye negro interpreter wth others unlawfully taken, be ye first opertunity (at ye charge of ye country for psent), sent to his native country in Ginny, & a letter wth him of ye indignation of ye Corte thereabout, and iustice hereof, desiring or honored Govrnr would please put this order in execution."

How men so clear in their convictions of the rights of Africans could be guilty of the most heartless injustice to Quakers and their friends, it is not easy to explain; and yet they mercilessly persecuted one of their own fellow-citizens, Nicholas Upsall, and made him an exile from his home, for no greater crime than that of countenancing and befriending members of the Society of Friends. He kept the Dorchester hostelry, and was wont to entertain Quakers as he did any other decent people; but for this he was apprehended and tried by the court, and sentenced to pay a fine of £20 and be thrown into prison. Finally, finding it impossible to entirely prevent his friends from holding intercourse with him, he was banished from the settlement for the remainder of his life. That curious book, "Persecutors Maul'd with their own Weapons," contains the following account of the case:

"Nicholas Upsall, an old man full of years, seeing their (the authorities) cruelty to the harmless Quakers that they had condemned some of them to die, both he and elder Wisewell, or otherwise Deacon Wisewell, members of the church in Boston, bore their testimonies in public against their brethren's horrid cruelty to the said Quakers. And the said Upsall declared that he did look at it as a sad forerunner of some heavy judgment to follow upon the country; which they took so ill at his hands, that they fined him twenty pounds and three pounds more at another meeting of the court, for not coming to their meeting, and would not abate him one grote, but imprisoned him and then banished him on pain of death, which was done in a time of such extreme bitter weather for frost, snow and cold, that had not the heathen Indians in the wilderness woods taken compassion on his misery, for the winter season, he in all likelihood had perished, though he had then a good estate in houses and lands, goods and money, also a wife and children."

One of the officials who for a time had charge of poor Upsall during the period of his imprisonment was John Capen, of whom the old chroniclers have left a pleasanter record, namely, a transcript of several of his youthful love-letters. The following will serve as sample:

"SWEETE-HARTE,

"My kind loue and affection to you remembered; hauinge not a convenient opertunety to see and speake wth you soe oft as I could desier, I therefore make bold to take opertunety as occassione offers it selfe to vissit you wth my letter, desiering yt it may find acceptance wth you, as a token of my loue to you; as I can assuer you yt yours have found from me; for as I came home from you ye other day, by ye way I reseaued your letter from your faithfull messenger wch was welcom vnto me, and for wch I kindly thanke you, and do desier yt as it is ye first: so yt may not be ye last, but yt it may be as a seed wch will bring forth more frute: and for your good counsell and aduise in your letter specified, I doe accept, and do desier yt we may still command ye casse to god for direction and cleering vp of your way as I hope wee haue hitherto done; and yt our long considerations may at ye next time bring forth firme concessions, I meane verbally though not formally. Sweete-harte I have given you a large ensample of patience, I hope you will learn this instruction from y'e same, namely, to show ye like toward me if euer occassion be offered for futuer time, and for ye present condesendency vnto my request; thus wch my kind loue remembered to yor father and mother and Brothers and sisters wth thanks for all their kindness wch haue been vndeseruing in me I rest, leauing both them and vs vnto ye protection and wise direction of ye almighty.