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COLONIAL TIMES ON
BUZZARD'S BAY
3925611
BY
WILLIAM ROOT BLISS
“This is the place. Stand still, my steed,
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
The forms that once have been."
LONGFELLOW.

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BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1889
THE SECOND EDITION, ENIARGED.
Copyright, 1888,
By WILLIAM ROOT BLISS.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
“ If, however, a man says that he does not care to know where
his grandfather lived, what he did, and what were that grand-
father's politics and religious creed, it can merely mean that he
is incapable of taking interest in one of the most interesting
forms of human knowledge, — the knowledge of the details of
the Past." -- The London Spectator.
I Dedicate this Book
TO MY WIFE,
ELIZABETH FEARING,
ONE OF THE GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTERS OF
ISRAEL FEARING, ESQUIRE,
OF THE AGAWAME PLANTATION, WHO WAS A GRANDSON OF
JOHN FEARING,
OF NORFOLK COUNTY IN OLD ENGLAND,
WHO LANDED AT HINGHAM, MASSACHUSETTS,
IN THE YEAR 1635.
INTRODUCTORY.

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This book contains a
picture of old times in a
section of the Plymouth
colony lying between the
sea and the forest, settled
by Englishmen who, in
1,
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viii
INTRODUCTORY.
the language of Governor Bradford, were
“used to a plaine countrie life & ye inocente
trade of husbandrey.” The peculiar features
stamped by them upon the towns which they
founded disappeared long ago, their dwelling-
houses have decayed, and many of their
farms and landings have fallen into the hands
of those who are spending summers of leis-
ure on the shores of Buzzard's Bay; but
their manuscript records have been pre-
served. From these we learn their social
customs, their manner of speech, how they
labored, traded, worshiped, and voted, and
through them we can see the events of their
times in a natural perspective.
My story begins with the coming of the
first settlers upon the shores of Buzzard's
Bay, and ends with the coming of a railroad
into the same region. The lands of Sippican
and Agawame, covering the western and
northern shores, were bought through the
colony government from Indians, and were
divided by the buyers into homesteads and
farms. Families expanding around the home-
steads formed the villages which were event-
ually united in Rochestertown. For a long
time they were small isolated communities,
INTRODUCTORY.
living upon their own resources, spinning
and weaving cloths for their clothing, making
their farming tools, pasturing their herds and
flocks in common, trading with each other
by barter, building sloops, and sending some
ventures over the sea; while they habitually
worshiped God and honored the British
Throne. It was doubtless a humdrum life,
visited by no muse of any kind. But, to
quote the words of Mr. James Russell Lowell,
referring to similar conditions, “it was the
stuff out of which fortunate ancestors are
made."
Rochestertown, whose territory formerly
included the western shore of the bay as far
down as Dartmouth, has given all its salt-
water front to its offsprings, Wareham, Matta-
poiset, and Sippican (unfortunately renamed
Marion), and it is now an inland farm un-
touched by railroad trains. Old sea-going,
whale-catching Mattapoiset is now looking
off upon the sparkling bay from grass-covered
wharves, meriting the name by which it has
been called, “the fair enchantress of re-
pose;" Marion annually invites a gay com-
pany of summer guests to its low brown
houses and convenient harbor; while Ware-
1
INTRODUCTORY.
ham, older than either, is content to hold the
commercial supremacy of the bay. It has,
however, charms of its own. Its belts of
oaks in whose sunny nooks, when the south
wind has melted the snow, children search
for mayflowers; its pine woodlands, “with
soft brown silence carpeted;" its rivers and
ponds; its sedgy field brooks,
“Where the crowned Butomus is gracefully growing,
· Where the long purple spikes of the Loosestrife are blow-
ing,
And the rich, plumy crests of the Meadowsweet seem
Like foam which the current has left on the stream,”
these, and the picturesque scenery from its
shores, are irresistible attractions to stran-
gers who have built cottages on Onset Bluffs,
and also to those who have built costly dwell-
ing - houses on the necks and headlands of
Agawame. From these necks and headlands
stretches far off the broad bay, which on
breezy summer mornings is studded with
yachts and fishing boats, and at evening dis-
closes on its distant verge
“Low, far islands looming tall and high."
In preparing the book -- which has en-
gaged my leisure hours during many years —
I have had use of the following manuscripts :
AN
vita
INTRODUCTORY.
the Records of the Rochester Propriety, be-
ginning in the year 1679; the Agawame
Booke of Records, beginning in 1685; the
Records of Rochestertown, beginning in
1694; the Records of the Church and Town
of Wareham, beginning in 1739; the diary
and account-book of Israel Fearing of Aga-
wame from 1720 to 1754, and similar writings
by his son John and his grandson John,
farmers and justices of the peace under the
King and under the Commonwealth. I have
also had the use of several old manuscripts
belonging to Mr. Gerard C. Tobey, of Ware-
ham, for whose courtesies I am much in-
debted.
wri
CI
In studying these manuscripts I have tried
to clothe their skeleton statements of facts
with the life and spirit of their times; and
I venture to think that the result embodied
in the book throws some new light on that
period of colonial history to which they
belong. The people who formed the Old
Colony had a character of their own. Those
with whom my narrative deals — the settlers
on the shores of Buzzard's Bay -- had no
religious bigotry, no belief in witchcraft, no
xii . INTRODUCTORY.
enmity to Quakers. They erected on their
Common the stocks and the whipping-post;
but no pillory, and no cage to confine such
as "might be made a spectacle to all the
men of the Fair.” They knew things only
in the small; and they necessarily had small
ways of trade, which appear like ways of
meanness to us who are familiar with the
large and generous things of modern life.
But they did not get their money without
earning it, farthing by farthing, and its great
cost made them loath to part with it. They
therefore learned to practice shrewdness and
frugality with such rigor that these virtues,
if virtues they are, became hereditary in their
descendants, and may be detected even in the
present generation.
The first edition of the book having met
with favor, I have been induced to enlarge
this edition by more copious extracts from
the old manuscripts; two new chapters (IV.
and VII.) have been inserted, and some
chapters - especially those relating to the
development of the first settlements on the
bay shore and that relating to town life dur-
ing the Revolutionary War -- have been ex-
tended. Some errors which crept into the
first edition have been corrected.
1
.
INTRODUCTORY.
xiii
As I am sending forth the book again, I
am tempted to quote the following words
from Mr. John Lothrop Motley: “But I con-
fess I have not been working underground
for so long without hoping that I may make
some few people in the world wiser and better
by my labor. This must be the case when-
ever a man honestly 'seeks the truth in ages
past' to furnish light for the present and
future track. And if you can only get
enough oil to feed a very small lamp, it is
better than nothing."
And so I offer the second edition of my
"small lamp" to the public.

WA
SHORT-HILLS, Essex County, N. J.,
July, 1889.

1.
.
AB
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
. 19
I. THE LANDS OF SIPPICAN . . .
II. THE AGAWAME PLANTATION . . . 44
III. COLONIAL FARMERS . . . . . 55
IV. THE SQUIRE . . . . . . . 71
V. The Birth Or A TOWN . . . . 77
VI. The Town's MIND . . . . . 84
VII. IMPRESSMENTS FOR THE KING . . . 104
VIII. THE TOWN'S MEETING-HOUSE, . . I
IX. A SUNDAY Morning IN 1771 . . . 127
X. THE Town's MINISTER . . . . 136
XI. THE Town's SCHOOLMASTER . . . . 161
XII. TOWN LIFE IN THE REVOLUTION . . 169
XIII. TOWN LIFE AFTER THE WAR . . . 192
XIV. The British RAID . . . 210
XV, THE TOWN'S BASS-VIOL. . . . . 218
XVI. FINAL TRANSFORMATIONS . . . . 223
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ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
MAP OF THE BAY SHORES . . (Frontispiece)
INTRODUCTORY. “THE LONG LOOK" . . . 7
Bird ISLAND LIGHT (from Harper's Magazine). 19
A MANUSCRIPT OF THE YEAR 1690 . . . . 45
THE SQUIRE'S DWELLING- House . . . . 145
TROLLING THE BAY . . . . . . . 194
The DWELLING-HOUSE ON FEARING HILL . . 200
CONTRABAND FISHERMEN . . . . . 208
NOBSKA BLUFF ON CROMESET . . . . 216
A QUILTING BEE (reëngraved from Harper's Bazar
by permission) . . . . . . . 230
THE FAREWELL . . . . . . . 238

BIRD ISLAND LIGHT - BUZZARD'S BAT.

...
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O
COLONIAL TIMES
ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
I.
THE LANDS OF SIPPICAN.
AS Shine
:)
HEAVING the cars of the Cape Cod
railroad at a junction where iron-
works have gathered around them a
dun-colored village, you enter a wagon and
drive away over a sandy road which passes
through oak and pine woods, crosses other
sandy roads, and after many windings brings
you to Fearing Hill. Here you turn into a
yard shaded by elm-trees, and alight at a.
dwelling-house built in the low, square style
of the early part of the last century, where,
in colonial times, lived “Our trusty and well-
beloved John Fearing Esquire;" as he was
called in the Commission which he held as a
Justice of King George the Second.
In front of the house passes an old high-
20 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
way called the country road, coming from the
east, and going down the western shore of
the bay. It was an ancient path when the
English settled in this region, and in the ear-
liest lay-out of lands it was mentioned as then
existing. Against the rude stone walls mark-
ing its boundaries purple wood-asters and
blackberry vines are clustered, in the adja-
cent fields yellow primroses and meadow
pinks are blooming, and the soft September
air is laden with the perfume of Indian posies.
Looking around, you are impressed by the
picturesque scenery and the quiet of the neigh-
borhood. On the northern horizon stretches
an edge of Plymouth Woods, whose tree-tops
catch the mists blown over from the ocean
when the wind is northeast. Half a mile
eastward stands a ridge of low hills covered
with pine-trees, and through the valley at
their feet runs the Weweantet River south-
ward to the bay. The highway crosses the
river by a narrow bridge, the approach to
which is hedged by tall bushes of syringas,
buttonwoods, and alders. Below the bridge
the stream is checked by a dam which ex-
pands it to a broad pond, creeping over mead-
ows on this side and into wooded coves on the
THE LANDS OF SIPPICAN. 21.
other. When the water is low a few tree-
stumps dotting its surface appear in the
shadowy distance like little boats at anchor.
You hear the hum of a nail factory, out of
sight, and you see its steam-jets floating away
behind the hills. You hear the whish of a
scythe ; a man is mowing the aftermath in an
old orchard. Yonder you see the dust raised
by an ox-team coming up from the salt mead-
ows with a load of hay. A traveler rarely
passes along the highway, save the baker from
Sippican village, an oysterman, or a butcher
driving a tidy white-covered wagon from Ware-
ham Narrows, or itinerant merchants in lad-
ders, fruit-trees, and tin wares, from the inte-
rior of the State. Occasionally a sunburnt
doctor flits by in a one-horse shay, carrying
an apothecary's shop in a little box at his
feet. But none of these disturb the universal
repose.
All around are pine and oak woods. In
many places and at diverse times the woods
have been cut down and have again grown
up, occupying fields where stone walls now
testify that within their leafy enclosures corn
and grass formerly grew, and where a few
scraggy apple-trees and the weedy ruins of a
22 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
cellar-wall show that an old home has disap-
peared. The present occupants of the farms
yet unreclaimed by the forest are making a
hard struggle to draw their living out of the
exhausted land, which they till as it was tilled
in colonial times, when the soil was more fer-
tile and the seasons more propitious than now.
· The earliest authentic memorial of this re-
gion is to be found in the Plymouth Colony
Records of the year 1639; when a "graunt
of a plantacion called Seppekann" was made
to John Lothrop, a non-conformist minister,
who, to escape persecution by Archbishop
Laud, had fled from London to New England
with a part of his congregation. The grant
was not accepted; the minister and his con-
gregation having been induced to settle near
the great marshes of Barnstable; where, like
true Presbyterians, they observed days of
thanksgiving “for the Lord's admirable pow-
erfull working for Old England” by Oliver
Cromwell.
After the desolating war with King Philip
was ended, all the lands on the western shore
of the bay were purchased by a company
which comprised many of the principal men
in Plymouth Colony. As some of these were
1
THE LANDS OF SIPPICAN.
23
of Kentish descent, the purchased territory
became known as the Rochester Propriety.
It was esteemed valuable for its fisheries, its
pine woodlands, its cedar and spruce swamps,
and especially for its great necks extending
into the bay, containing rich meadows which
had been used by the English “to winter
cattle upon," when the limited pasturage on
the Plymouth shore became insufficient for
the increase of their herds and flocks. North
of it was a wilderness encompassing the thinly
settled township of Middleborough, known by
the Indian name Nemassaket; west of it was
a forest covering the Quaker township of
Dartmouth, through which went the path to
Rhode Island; south of it was the sea, and
eastward was the Agawame Plantation.
The purchasers went to work to turn their
property to a good account. On March 10,
1679, they met “at Joseph Burgs his house
at Sandwitch,” and “Ordred that mr Thomas
Hinctly mr william Paybody Joseph warrain
Samuel white and Joseph Lothrop shall take
a vew of the Lands of Scippican and determin
wher the house Lots shall be Layed out and
if the Land will Beare it to Lay 40 ackors to
a house Lot and to have for thair paines 25
24 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
6d a day a peece in mony — and Samuel
white to stay ther with mr Pay body to help
Lay out the Lands and Joseph Doty to goe
ther to help them and to have 2s p day a
peece in mony." Then to attract emigration
they declared that those "that first settell and
are Liveșs "there shall be allowed to make on
the commons "ten Barrells of tarr a peece
for a yeare," for their own use; and that
one man's barrel should not be larger than
another's, it was distinctly stated that the
free tar measure is to be “such as are com-
only called small Barrells.” Lest purchasers
who did not emigrate to the new lands should
claim the privilege of making tar which, at
that time and until after the Revolution, was
a valuable article of commerce, it was “furder
ordred that ther shall be none of the said
purchasers alowed to Burne or make any
Tarre of the pine knots or wood that is
within the Limmits " for five years, “upon
the penalty of five pound for every default."
The value of the great forests for other prod-
ucts was recognized by an order “that ther
shall be no Tymber of any sort convaied or
carryed a way out of the Lymits of Scippican
under the penilltie of twentie Shilings for
THE LANDS OF SIPPICAN. 25
every Tree or part of a tree so used and sent
or carried away.”
The first necessities of the new settlers
were a grist-mill and a minister of the Gos-
pel; for a law of the Colony declared that
noe pson be admited to goe to Inhabite upon
any such lands that lye soe remote as the
Inhabitants thereof can not ordinaryly fre-
quent any place of publicke worship.” There-
fore, when, in April, 1680, the purchasers
drew lots for homesteads and meadows, they
appropriated "the first and second house lots
with the twentie Ackar Lots that are énpled
to them in the great Neke," and two lots in
the best of the woodland, “for the minister
and for the ministrie.” Three years later
two of the company were chosen to hunt for
“som meet person to preach the word of
god to them at Scippican and to procure him
if they can;" and also to treat with some per-
sons to build a mill. Soon after this the rec-
ords refer to a grist-mill about to be built “ of
such a capassitie as Shee may grind the corne
of the Inhabitants for the space of twentie
years;” and also to “the house or frame
that is got up" for Mr. Samuel Shiverick,
whom the proprietors agreed to pay at the
26 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARDTU
'S BAY.
rate of five shillings a share "for his paines
in preaching." The next year they ordered
“those that are setled Inhabitance" to pay
him yearly ten shillings “in mony a peece
during the time he shall preach the word of
god.”
Tradition points to Minister Rock, a huge
boulder near the head of Sippican harbor, as
the place where the pioneers first met for
public worship :-
"On Minister Rock they stood, and as they gazed
Upon the white-caps sailing out to sea,
Their prayerful souls to heaven devoutly raised,
They praised the Lord for christian liberty.
And as they sang 'The hill of Zion yields'
To contrite souls 'A thousand sacred sweets ;'
The fragrant marshes seemed like 'heavenly fields,
The yellow sedges glowed like 'golden streets.'
“ The wandering wind had healing in its breath,
Distilled from cedar, pine, and spicy birch;
The sea had saving salt; nor second death
Itself could fright a member of the church.
In ages past the servants of the Lord
Were glad to seek the shadow of a rock;
Here was the ponderous substance, to reward
These scions of a puritanic stock."
Not long afterwards a few of these thrifty
Englishmen, attracted by the streams, fish-
THE LANDS OF SIPPICAN..
27
eries, and meadows of the easterly part of
the territory, planted their homesteads nearer
to Fearing Hill and the picturesque banks of
the Weweantet.
Meanwhile the title to the lands, which the
company held “acording to the deed granted
by the Court,” was disputed by some of the
Indian sachems. These were Charles, who
claimed a neck of land which still bears his
name, Manomet Peter, and Will Connet, as
they were called by the English. The claims
were bought, except that of Will Connet, who,
claiming to be lord paramount of all the ter-
ritory bordering on the Weweantet and Woon-
kinco rivers to “Plymouthes westerly tree at
Agawaame," did “disclaime and defie the
title of every these men called the purchasers
of Sepecan.” In 1682 the purchasers, prose-
cuted a suit to dispossess him ; but they were
glad to settle it by paying a pound sterling, a
trucking cloth coat valued at ten shillings,
and by making him a member of their com-
pany. His name was then written upon the
roll of shareholders —- “Substanciall men that
are prudent psons and of considerable es-
tates," as the Plymouth Court had described
them; and when they were taxing themselves
ar
28 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
“ten shillings a peece in silver mony" to
meet their contract for building the grist-mill,
it was recorded that “Will Connet promised
for him self and his brother John to give six
barrells of tarr to wards sd mill.”
In 1686 the lands of Sippican were incor-
porated, and became “Rochester Towne in
new England;" but the management of affairs
remained with the proprietors, who continued
to carry on the general government of the
town in entire separation from the body of
the inhabitants.
Their supreme authority was used in vari-
ous ways. To prevent the exportation of
lumber they met, in 1687, “at Elder Chap-
mans house in Sandwitch,” and “ Ordred
that all Timber Bourds Bolts Shinales Cla-
boude Cooper Stuf or shuch like that is
brought to the water side or any Landing
place where it may be Judged that it will
be transported out of the Township shall be
forfited the one half there of to the Inter-
men and the other halfe there of to the
Townes use.” They also ordered that “no
Person what so ever should gett timber upon
the undivided Lands for Posts Rails or house
frames except the timber so gotten be used
THE LANDS OF SIPPICAN.
29
within the township.” They made laws for-
bidding strange Indians “to hunt or catch
1
inhabitants “to imploy anny such indian in
hunting.” They made a decree to prohibit
every person from cutting “ cedar spruce or
pine except he fairly demonstrate that he
stands in need of it.” They gave to their
associates liberty “to sett up a grist mill
upon the River called mattapoicitt," and
"to sett up a mil for Iron works whear it
may be secur from hurting people by cuting
choyce timber or fire wood.” In 1698 they
fixed a boundary line with Plymouth; in
1701 they ordered “Samuel Prince Lieut
John Hammond and Aron Barlow to setle
bounds an run the Line" with Dartmouth;
in 1702 they had a controversy with “the
Lathrops of barnstable and the tomsons of
tween them and the Proprietors of roches-
ter.” In 1706 they fixed a tax upon "what
tar hath bin gotten or shall hear after be
gotten by the inhabitance of rochester"
from their lands, “those yt git it shall pay
eight pence for every full gaged barell they
git into the clark of the propriety.” In 1708
30 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
they ordered a fine of five pounds to be paid
by every “English or Indian or others who
shall set on fire the woods in anny part of
the Township and neglect to put it out be-
fore they depart the Spott whear the sd fire
was made.” They ordered that undivided
lands in "all the four necks shall remaine
after the manner of a common field;" they
appropriated lands for highways, and “to
make a training field and for a buriing place
and to sett a meeting hous upon for the
benifit of the Town in Genarall.”.
Other matters fell to the town meeting,
where orders were generally conditioned
“with the consent of the proprietors," whose
prerogative appears to have been regarded
like that of the King. The town meeting
dealt with wolves, wildcats, and foxes, mak-
ing havoc of the farmers' sheep, and with
crows, blackbirds, robins, and squirrels, de-
vastating planted fields. Forty shillings were
paid in 1699 "for killing of two grown
woulves in our town;" at the same time it
was made obligatory upon every inhabitant
to bring “unto Peter Blackmer the town
clark,” annually, the heads of four crows
and the heads of twelve blackbirds killed by
THE LANDS OF SIPPICAN.
31
the bringer, before the last day of Mạy.
But it was voted “that whosoever shall kill
either squerels, Red birds or jay birds &
bring 12 of their heads to the town clark
they shall be exsepted and entered in the
Room of black birds & crows." So numer-
ous were these farm pests that the town was
compelled to enforce their destruction by a
fine of two shillings levied upon “every man
in Rochester of 21 years old and upward”
who did not kill his yearly quota, and “cary
the heads of the birds or squarils so killed to
the man that is to take a Count of ye wild
cats." There was always a bounty to be
paid for wildcats and foxes killed in the town,
if the head of the beast was brought to "one
of the selectmen with both thire eares on to
be cut off.” 1
Dogs, kept by farmers to protect their
. "a Count of wild cats and foxes killed in the year
1722 capt Holmes & family killed eleven foxes James
Stuart fouer wild cats Timothy Stephens i cat caleb cow-
ing i cat Anthony cumbs i cat moses Barlow I fox John
Wing i cat John Briggs i fox Jabez Hillard 2 foxes Ben-
jamin hammond 2 foxes I wild cat Seth hammond I wild
cat Benj Dexter Junr & James Hammond i cat Jonathan
Hammond Junr i fox Thomas Turner i fox Benjamin Dex-
ter i fox David Joseph i fox.” — Rochester Town Records.
32 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
O
sheep from wild beasts, were also a pest, for
they persisted in uprooting the early corn.
With each return of spring, alewives came up
Mattapoiset River from the sea and entered
Sniptuit pond, where they were taken by
Anthony Comes, who was “chosen to tend
the Herring ware carefully and dilligently,”
and were dealt out to each inhabitant that
came for them "for a peck of corne or 6d in
money for each 1000.” When cornfields
were planted alewives were put into the hills,
and the hungry dogs, getting nothing to eat
at home, pawed open the hills and ate the
fish. This made business for the “town
meet” of May, 1703, when, as the records
say, “it was taken into consideration the
great dam that this town hath in time passed
suffered by dogs going at Liberty when ale-
wives are planted in cornfields with Indien
corn;" and then it was ordered that every
“dog Bitch or dog kind” shall be annually
fettered on the 20th of April for forty days
by “haveing one of theire fore feet fastened
up to their neck so as to prevent their dig-
ging up of fish so planted."
But neither wolves, dogs, crows, nor ale-
wives distracted the thoughts of the people
THE LANDS OF SIPPICAN. 33
from a meeting-house to be “sit on the west-
erly Sid of the long bridg;” and they “did
agree to pay for the meeting-house which
was to be builded by a free will offering” of
fifty pounds. It was a square building of
four gables, finished in 1699, and is described
as having “a pulpit and flours and Seats &
girts for 3 galerys with 3 Seats apew and
windows as the undertakers Shall see con-
venient.” In 1714 it was declared to be too
small for the congregation, and it was then
enlarged by "an addition made to ye back-
side.” Seats were built "nye the pulpit stairs
for Antiant parsons to sett in." Rights to
build pews in the enlarged house were sold
“at vandue to those that would give most
for them and buld sd pues in three month
and pay in mony for them in Six months;"
it being understood that “the pues be al of a
haith and bult work men like." The allotted
spots for pews were gradually occupied, and
then permission was given to certain per-
sons to build pews, on the beams over the
galeries," and upon other lofty perches above
the heads of the congregation, “provided
they do it decently,” and “on their own cost."
One of these lofty-pew builders was Timothy
34 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
Ruggles, junior. He had just graduated at
Harvard College and had returned to his
native town to begin the practice of law,
when he obtained permission to build the
pew whose commanding position on the
beams of the meeting-house was typical of
his position in subsequent years as one of
the most prominent citizens of New Eng-
land, in civil and military affairs.
The natural parsimony of the people which
led them to prefer to patch out the old meet-
ing-house rather than spend money for a new
one was again shown in December, 1730,
when the shabby condition of its windows
was making the cold house colder; and it
was voted “to mend the Glass that is Least
broken and where the Glass is quite Gone
to nail up bords in Lue thereof for ye
preasant."
The first minister in this meeting-house
was Samuel Arnold, who had begun to preach
to the town in 1690, and to whom, in 1697,
the proprietors of the lands gave a "whole
shear of upland and meadow ground," upon
condition “that he continueth in the work
of the ministry among them till prevented
by death.” After continuing in this work
for thirteen years he organized a church, and
recorded the fact in these pious words: “It
hath pleased our gracious God to shine in
this dark corner of this wilderness and visit
this dark spot of ground with the dayspring
from on high, through his tender mercy to
settle a church according to the order of the
Gospel October 13, A. D. 1703."
As some townsmen, who were not of the
prevailing religious faith, protested against
paying the ministry taxes, a town meeting of
1709 was charitable enough “to abate the
sum of ten pounds upon such inhabitance as
are of contrery judgement & now professed
Quakers.” Then they raised forty pounds
"for the incoragement & soport of a min-
ister;" and, mr Arnold being dead, they
“made choice of mr Timothy Ruggles,” in
1710, to be their minister, to be by them
“Treated with & duly incoraged in order to
à Settlement.” He was a graduate of Har-
vard College, and a great-grandson of Thomas
Dudley, the second governor of the Colony of
Massachusetts Bay. He was "incoraged”
to settle by a salary of thirty pounds, a
gift of seventy acres of land for a farm, the
use of the glebe, or, as it was designated in
I
36 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
the records, the “uplands medows & ceadder
& spruce swamps of the ministreys shear,"
by building for him a house — “the sd mr
Ruggles finding and providing all the nails
& glasse," and by boarding him “at Roger
Hascols” until the house was done. He con-
tinued to be the town-minister for fifty-eight
years, or "till prevented by death.”1
1 The following letter from the Rev. Timothy Ruggles,
addressed to the Rev. John Howland, of Plympton, is pre-
served among the papers of the Rev. Ezra Stiles in the
library of Yale College: "Revd. Sir, In answer to yours
of the 30th of Aug. last I would say I am not able to say
anything as to any uneasiness of the Neighbour ministers
with Relation to the settlement of The Revd Mr Saml
Arnold &c. This I find by the Church Records he left
now in my hand that he lived Thirteen years in the work
of the ministry before his ordination in Rochester & as I
well Remember the only Reason of that was for want of
members to Imbody. I find by sd Records he was or-
dained 13th of October, 1703: & there was seven members
beside himself Imbodied at his ordination and he was in
the 56 year of his age and he dyed in the year 1708. I
remember I often heard the antientest people & brightest
Christians say that they had one Mr Shievereck, a lay
preacher, with them before Mr Arnold who was in their
opinion not comparable with Mr Arnold, who after settled
at Falmouth. Mr Arnold, by all I could learn by the
brightest Christians here at my first coming, was an Emi-
nent Christian who walked close with God. His Father
was a minister & gave him a good Education, who had only
THE LANDS OF SIPPICAN. 37
UT
The proprietors also left the school, the
highways, and the poor to the care of town
meeting, which in 1706 chose “mrs jane
mashell for to teach childered & youth to
Reed & to writte;" for “her panes" she was
“to have her dyet and to receive twelve
pounds." She kept her school in different
places between Mattapoiset Neck and Woon-
kinco River. For two or three years she
was the chosen teacher; but doubts arose
about the soberness of her conversation and
it is recorded that three ungallant men,
“joseph Benson john dexter & ichabod burg
requested to have theire protest entered for
that they accounted she was not as the law
directs.”
In 1712, John Myers “ was made choice of
to sarve in the office of a Skoll master," and
it was voted “to raise twelve pounds in
money to pay him for his pains in keeping of
a private Education himself. I have often heard from
some of the Neighbouring Ministers who survived him
that they esteemed him as a worthy minister & approved
him as a good Divine but not so well skilled in Church
Discipline as some others. Sir, with sutable compliments
to yourself & Madam I rest yours to serve,
“ TIMO. RUGGLES.
“ Roch. 8. Sept. 1764." '.
38 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
Skool to teach children & youth to Read &
write & to have his dyet provided for him.”
His school was to be kept at five places in
the town during the year, “first at White
Hall then at the centre 3ly at mattapoisit 4ly
at the fresh meadows and 5ly at Sepecan."
The distance between the third and fourth
places was about ten miles by the country
road. After him there were years when no
school was kept, for a teacher was not to be
had; and, in 1720, the town having been
presented by the grand jury of the county
for “not being provided with a Scooimas-
ter," paid “Capt Winslow twenty shillings
for Answaring the Towns presentment.”
When in 1732 Benjamin Delano undertook
to keep the town school in five places dur-
ing the year, his compensation was thirty
pounds with “Dyat washing & Lodging &
hors to Ride." As pounds were then of
small value in silver money his principal re-
ward was his board and washing and the use
of the horse that carried him to his work.
The northeasterly boundary of Roches-
tertown was then an imaginary line in
the woods crossing 'the Woonkinco River.
Thereabout were natural fresh meadows, and !
THE LANDS OF SIPPICAN.
39
A
on the river a grist-mill, and a mill pond, the
same that now, with its wooded banks and
shaded coves, forms an attractive picture in
the centre village of Wareham. Near the
mill stood a cluster of dwelling-houses known,
from the meadows, as the Fresh - meadow
Village. It was one of the stations of the
town's migratory school; and a town meet-
ing of 1722 specified it as one of the five
villages in which notice of the arrest of
“A Ram or Rames in Rochester Running at
Larg" must be posted :-
“if in the village called the center at the hous
of John Clapp
& if in the villeg called Sepycan at the hous of
John Briggs
1 The celebrated Peter Oliver, the last Chief Justice of
the Province of Massachusetts Bay, was in 1746 an owner
of this mill pond. He settled at Middleborough in 1744,
and for thirty years carried on a successful business as an
iron founder, living in ostentatious style in a sightly man-
sion known as Oliver Hall. In 1774 he was impeached
"for receiving his salary from the king.” Departing with
other loyalists for Old England, he wrote in his diary:
“Boston, 1776, March 27, Here I took my leave of that
once happy country, where peace and plenty reigned un-
controuled, till that infernal Hydra Rebellion, with its hun-
dred Heads, had devoured its happiness, spread desolation
over its fertile fields, and ravaged the peacefull mansions
of its inhabitants."
40 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
And if in the village called Sneptuet at the
hous of Capt Edward Winslow
& if in the fresh meadow village & Weweantet
at Isaac Bumpus his mill
& if at Mattapoyset village at the house of
John Hammond "
As these people were born into a life of
large value of small things, they could not
sink into abject poverty. Their wants were
supplied by their daily labors, and by the
voyages of their sloops to the islands of the
West Indies, to which they sent tar, rosin,
and turpentine, to be exchanged for rum,
sugar, and molasses. The only allusion to a
pauper during the period with which this
narrative has to do is in the town records of
1721, when it was voted, in regard to an un-
fortunate neighbor, that "Eleven pounds be
paid in money to any man that will take and
keep” him a year, and find him “vettuals &
close sutable unless the Court Determines
him to be maintained by his Relations."
One December day in 1729 the selectmen
summoned the householders of the town "In
his Majsts name to assemble and meet to
Geather att ye Meeting house" to consider
THE LANDS OF SIPPICAN. 41
a work of charity. It was announced that
some townspeople needed aid, and “espe-
cially ye family of Benjamin Burges De-
ceased who are in Great want at preasant.”
Then they who had been too parsimonious
to give anything for the building of a new
meetinghouse when it was said to be needed,
opened their cellars and handed out corn
and wheat by the peck and half bushel, beef
and pork and butter by the pound, molasses
by the gallon; all which were entrusted to
“Sam Look to Deliver ye same to the use
of sd family as they shall stand in need."
The people were generally prosperous in
their affairs. They had a small commerce
by sea' as early as 1697, when “the Townes
gennarall Landing place” was established on
the northerly side of Sippican harbor. . A
wharf was built at the harbor in 1708, and
for its maintenance a tax of “one shilling in
money for every boats load of whet saeder
1“ Whear as Samuel briggs hath alowed a cart way
through his Lands down to the Townes gennarall Landing
place on the northerly side of the harber in case sd bridggs
Receave damage by anny Cart or parson either by break-
ing or Leaving open sd briggs his Gattes or Railes he or
they shall surly pay the whol damage that doth accrew to
sd briggs thereby.” — Rochester Town Records, 1697.
42 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
brought on or carried of,” was decreed.
The freeholders of the town were wealthy
enough as early as 1714 to send Samuel
Prince as their representative to the Great
and General Court at Boston, and after him
Thomas Dexter, paying them five shillings
a day and their expenses. As long as the
royal government lasted they continued to
send representatives, one of whom was the
famous Timothy Ruggles, son of the town
minister, a man of lordly address, strict in-
tegrity, high talents, and strong convictions,
caused him to lose his property and his
country.1
In 1734 the inhabitants of Mattapoiset
Village, having complained that they were
so remote from the centre of the town as
"to make their Difficulty Great in all publick
Conserns," were allowed to become a pre-
cinct, by which they were entitled to a min-
ister, a parish, and a meeting-house of their
own; while they continued to be a part of
1 In the years immediately preceding the Revolution he
was leader of the King's party in the legislature. He em-
barked from Boston with the King's troops in 1775, and
made his home near Annapolis, Nova Scotia, where he
died, an exile, in 1795.
THE LANDS OF SIPPICAN. 43
the town. In the same year, on the petition
of “sundry Bumpases," Rochester consented
to set off its east end to be joined to the
Agawame Plantation, in the composition of a
new town, by a boundary described as “be-
ginning at the mouth of Sepecan River &
Running up the River to mendalls Bridge
Thence as ye Rhode now Lieth to plymouth
till it meets with middleborough line."
This road still “lieth to Plymouth" as of
yore. As the traveler worries his horse
through its wheel-deep sands, a covey of
partridges breaks out of the berry bushes at
the roadside, a hare or a gray squirrel scam-
pers across the ruts, the pale blossoms of a
clump of house-leeks tell the place where a
hearthstone once stood, and he may see at
intervals in the openings of the forest granite
posts marked with an R and a W, defining
the exact line between the old town and the
new.

.
WWW/
.
11
.
.
0
11.
MTV
:
.
:
I
.
TUOI
II.
.
T
.
.
W
Milit
X
.
•
A
.
.
1
.
II.
THE AGAWAME PLANTATION.
DJOINING the east end of Roches-
ter was the Agawame Plantation of
about eight thousand acres. Its early
history has been preserved in an old Booke,
whose yellow leaves. of English paper, water-
marked with crown and fleur-de-lis, are writ-
ten in quaint characters difficult for an un-
trained eye to read.
The territory is mentioned in the early
records of Plymouth Colony as a discovery:
"the South Meddowes towards Aggawam
lately discovered and the convenyent uplands
there abouts.” The colony bought it from
Indians —"natives of New England” they
were called, and in 1682 sold it to six English-
men for two hundred and eighty pounds,
current money, to obtain the means of build-
ing a meeting-house in Plymouth town. It
was more attractive than the colder lands on
Plymouth shore, where “divers corne fields
third
1бро
“June ye

A FACSIMILE FROM THE AGAWAME BOOKE.
being polymouth, elekten say the sgonens of faid Agename, there and ther-
bos namely, no potezogen
& gore gefaph Bauhlitt fofeph warungunioze reathaniel-
Bantlitt el
frorton foliah.m onton thruilt SkullieGuru Bate and Ratzariek
Beale becsure all rerefont as a rly Samuel Bate and Ratsanickle
poué and som all that is before in cont e nir la carte de med
Pilit mei Paia Mathaniek Bsale to fantinted one line fellate as before
- - - - - - - - - - - qon m
-Pathaniille Beale kanke
TRANSLATION.
being plimouth election day the owners of said Agawame then and thereas namely Mesrs Seth
Pope Joseph Bartlitt Joseph Warren Junior Nathaniell Morton Josiah Morton Cornitt Chubbuck
Samuell Bate and Nathaniell Beale wheare all present And John Fearing & Josiah Lane gave it
under ther hands — they all Above named that weare ther present & ye other two named yt did
give it under ther hands did then fully declare that they did aproue and owne all that is before
recorded in this Booke and then did Disire me ye said Nathaniell Beale to Continue in ye place of
Clarke as before.
Nathaniell Beale Clarke.
46 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
and little running brookes," seen under a
December sky, had invited the Mayflower
pilgrims to stay. It contained many springs
of sweet water, and small lakes on whose
shores beaver and otter were trapped. In
the vast forest which covered the uplands
deer were hunted and streams ran abounding
in trout. It had rich salt meadows which
were intersected by creeks whose marshy
banks were a resort of curlew and plover, and
there was abundance of bird life along the
shores when the mud slopes were left bare by
the ebbing tide. It lay at the head of the
bay, whose waters washed it on three sides,
and its coast line is still indented by coves
rich in shellfish, is fringed by islands and
sandy beaches, and fronts the slumbering sea
by a long ridge of highland from which the
eye ranges southward as far as the Elizabeth
Islands, and over as pleasing a panorama of
sea and shore as is to be found in New Eng-
land.
The purchasers, who had divided their es-
tate into six shares, met and laid out six
"home lotts” of sixty acres each, “ to build
any hous or housen upon.” They met again
and laid out “sixe tracts of meadow," and to
THE AGAWAME PLANTATION. 47
prohibit the making of tar in the common
forest, they ordered that “not any pine notts
liing upon ye undevided lands should be
made use of by any man untill such time as
ther was an allowance by the said owners soe
to doe.” Desiring to divide more uplands
and meadows and to lay out “convenient
publike & private high waies,” they appointed
four of their number to carry on these im-
provements; and when they met, in 1696,
they “declared thar selves contented and
satisfid with what was don and there set too
thare handes in the smal bucke where all
thes devisins ware first writen."
By this time some dwelling-houses had
been built. The records of 1688 mention
the house of Joseph Warren as “now stand-
ing thare.” From him the promontory, near
to which Bostonians have built their summer
dwellings, took its name; it is quaintly de-
scribed as “bounded by the see esteward
and southward and northward by his own
medo on the cove." Other houses were clus-
tered near a secluded place where
“ A winding wall of mossy stone,
Frost-flung and broken, lines
A lonesome acre thinly grown
With grass and wandering vines,”
48
COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
which, in the records, is designated as the
place where “some persons have been laid
already at.” It was the neighborhood of the
early settlers; they lived in sight of the acre,
and within it they were buried.
In 1701 the proprietors, intending" to Laye
oute sum hie waye into the Neckes” on the
bay, looked into their old Booke and found
that a highway “must of neseseti come over
the southerd end of Samuel Bate his home
lots which was veri much damig” to him.
Therefore each gave him as compensation
“his sevrel rite in two or three small peses of
medo," — an illustration of the equity with
which the members of this agrarian commu-
nity dealt with each other. In the same year
two lots of land and a meadow were “laid
oute two and for the yuse of the ministre.”
In 1711 it is recorded that they built “a good
and sufficient pound.” A pound-keeper was
appointed, also two haywards to “bring out
and impound such cretures” as were found
in the commons without right to be there,
for which service they were paid “what shall
be Judged Reasonable more then what ye
Law will give for ye poundage." The build-
ing of the pound, the most ancient of all
2
English institutions, is the first evidence of
the existence of a village community in
Agawame. It was needed before there was
a schoolhouse, a meeting-house, or a town
organization.
The authority of the proprietors was still
supreme in the community. It appears in a
law which they made to protect the produc-
tion of turpentine; prohibiting “ani parsen
from boxing or chiping and milking ani pine
tre or tres on the common on the penelty of
payeng Ten Shilengs for everi tre," of which
fine the informer “shall have won halfe for
himselfe and the other halfe to the proprie-
ters." Following the custom of ancient Teu-
tonic farmers who felled wood in a common
forest and grazed cattle in a common pasture,
they stinted the pastures, restricting each
proprietor to graze only “thurtitoo nete catel
and fouer horses for a sixte parte," or "six
sheepe instead of one Beast." They ap-
pointed an officer to watch the pastures to
-
CP
report if any man sent in more cattle than
his proportion; the watchman "to have his
horse go into ye Necks freely so long as
other horses go in." Farmers who were not
50 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
proprietors were allowed pasturage on un-
used rights if they brought to the watchman
" a note or token to his sattisfaxion whose
Rite they come upon.” In winter, when cat-
tle and horses ran wild in the necks along
the bay shore, the times of turning in and
driving out were fixed. In summer the pas-
tures were stinted severely, excluding all
cattle or reducing their number, that the grass
might have a chance to grow. This was an
inconvenience to some of the farmers, but
they had no relief. The proprietors of Aga-
wame were lords of the manor, and although
they owed allegiance to Plymouth there was
no one who ventured to challenge their au-
thority.
Here was the image of a town system
based upon the rights of property in land.
Its superintending power was the owners of
the land in regular meeting assembled, enact-
ing such regulations as a major part of them
saw fit, and appointing such officers as they
deemed to be necessary for their purposes.
In their acts they were preparing for the
time when their agrarian commune must be
expanded into a town organized under the
laws of the province; when new-comers as
THE AGAWAME PLANTATION.. 51
well as old residents would have an equal
right to be heard in the town meeting.
After the shareholders had dedicated “one
acre for a Burying place,” and lands for a
grist-mill, a saw-mill, and the fisheries, they
ordered that the common lands be laid out and
divided to themselves. Their numbers had
increased and their meetings were not always
harmonious; there was a minority whose in-
dependent spirit often delayed the action of
the majority and sometimes caused to be
entered upon the records a formal protest
against the proceedings. For example, it is
recorded that, at a meeting in 1712, “Oliver
Norris himself being present did desire it
might be Entred by ye Clarke that he did
protest agenst ye most of ye votes that
ware Past." .
At each annual meeting they elected a
moderator, listened to the clerk as he read the
records from their old Booke, adopted their
customary orders, refreshed themselves at the
bar of the inn and went their ways. As years
passed by, and estates were divided from
father to sons, their transactions decreased in
importance, and their business was finally re-
duced to re-surveys of boundary lines - in
52 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
dispute because the old landmarks (a “whit
ock tree," or a “stake with a heepe of stones
laide to it”) had disappeared, to the renting
of an island, and to the care of the alewives
which, with each return of spring, entered the
Agawame River. The old Booke relates some
of their proceedings during this time, -- as,
for example, that in 1763 they undertook to
establish a free school by appropriating for
that purpose two promissory notes which had
been given for two catches of fish in the
river, of the value of a few Spanish dollars ;
that in 1773 they undertook to increase the
alewife fishery by making a tide-way up Red
Brook into White Island Pond. This hopeful
speculation turned out as profitless as the
South Sea Bubble; but when its thirty pro-
moters met they were in such jovial spirits in
anticipation of the success of their enterprise,
that their meeting, at the village inn, was
called in the records, a merry meeting, and
when their overflowing bumpers had been
emptied they named their new river the
Merry Meeting, River, and voted "to carry
Herring into sd River to Breed.”
Often at their annual meetings they
“Voted to vandue Wickets Island for plant
THE AGAWAME PLANTATION. 53
ing," – an island off the camp at Onset, —
and as late as 1791, touched with sympathy
for the miserable relics of the original owners
of their ancestors' lands, they ordered their
treasurer “ to pay out the money to the poor
Ingings that he received for the use of the
island.”
And so a run of fish and a little island con-
tinued to be their business until they met no
more. All their interests had been absorbed
by the larger interests of the town. But their
ancient and well-thumbed Booke of Records
remains as the foundation of the titles by
which every estate in that large territory is
now held. It also preserves the quaint
names of the old landmarks :- there is "the
big rocke nigh ye gret salte poun which run-
neth into the Se;" there is “the broocke
which cometh oute of the willo swamp;"
there is “the plas wher the fenc of the pine
neke goieth into the water;" there is “ye
Long Look" down the bay, and “the small
frech poun;" there is the ford of the river
called “the place whear the horses com-
only goe over,” and “ye old mans spring,”
and "ye sandy pointe at ye upland,”
and “the letel harber," and "that island
54 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
of flates bounded round with ye chanel.”
The Booke preserves the first names of the
promontories jutting into Manomet Bay, as
it was then called, of the islands, the coves,
the creeks, the springs, and the many nooks
of meadow which stretch into the pine woods
from the salt marshes by the shore.

VIII
W

Verin
III.
COLONIAL FARMERS.
AR HE largest landowner in the plantation
was Israel Fearing. He kept a diary
of local events, blended with some
carefully written accounts, stating the values
of all sorts of things entering into the com-
merce of his times. It makes a picture of the
farming life of his neighbors, framed in a
parchment-bound volume on which is inscribed
“Israel Fearing his Booke bought Ianuary the
10 day 1722" — when George the First was
King. This antique book tells of trades and
barters, of agreements and indentures, of im-
pressments into the King's military service, of
marriages and trials by His Majesty's justice
of the peace, and whatever else concerned the
people living upon the farms. It tells us that
these people were shrewd in their bargains,
honest in their reckonings, industrious in
their habits, and bound by a close economy
56 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
which made them contented with small sav-'
ings and small gains. The whole family -
sons, daughters, and indentured servants, took
up their daily work before sunrise, suspended
it only for their meals, and ended it only
when the candles were put out at early bed-
time. The women did the housework, tended
the hens, the geese, and the calves, scoured
the brass warming-pans and pewter dishes,
spun flax and wool yarns, and wove them into
cloths from which the clothing and bedding
of the family were made by their own hands;
and if more was made than was needed at
home, it was bartered away. The purpose of
all was to get out of the farm every farthing
that it would yield, and to squander nothing.
These men and women were of pure Eng-
lish blood, of an even social condition, de-
scended from those who had come to the
coasts of Massachusetts between the years
1620 and 1650. Their farm labors were too
exacting to allow many opportunities for men-
tal culture ; but they were people of good
sense, who feared God and honored the King,
who wrote the English language as well as it,
was commonly written by the people of Eng-
land at that time, and better than it is written
LUI
ses
. 57
by some New England farmers to-day. Their
peculiar phrases and grotesque forms of
speech had grown out of the fashions of Puri-
tanism; and if their writings amuse us by the
comical combination of letters which formed
their words, it is because they often wrote by
sound ; although they made peculiar devia-
tions from their phonetic system (as in writ-
ing idpsland for island), and sometimes they
spelled words as they are spelled in the
Progress, first printed at Boston in 1681, was
their principal reading. They scorned punc-
tuation in their writings, and in the use of cap-
ital letters they were all at sea.
The wonder is that they could write at all.
When we consider their isolated situations,
that there were but few schools in the colony,
and these were of short duration and of low
grade, that all laws intended to maintain
schools had been, as the legislators declared,
“shamefully neglected," we must attribute
the ability of the farmers to write so well as
they did to an education received by the fire-
side at home.
Their principal interests were in the use
of the soil, which they fertilized with fish and
58 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
sea-weeds, producing abundant crops of corn,
rye, wheat, oats, and flax. They also traded
in peltries, fish, and timber. They gathered
iron ore from bogs and ponds, and turpentine
from pine-trees. So valuable was the right
to gather turpentine regarded that it was
specially mentioned in deeds of woodlands,
granting “ All ye privilidge of milking of pine
trees.” Their larder was bountifully sup-
plied with food, and they supplemented their
tables with game from the forests, with water-
fowl and shore birds, which frequented the
maritime parts of the plantation in great
numbers. Besides what food the sea liberally
furnished, they had a choice from flesh of
beef, mutton, venison, partridge, and wild
turkeys.
They dealt with each other in trade by
barter, and accounts were allowed to stand
open for years before they were balanced.
When the amounts had been carefully reck-
oned and certified, the balance was adjusted
with a promise to rectify thereafter any mis-
take. Here are some illustrations from the
queer and precise entries in the old book :-:
· 1729. “Reconed with Joseph blakmor and thare
is due him one bushall of wheat and 12 bushalls
COLONIAL FARMERS.
59
shilling"
1731. “Reconed with margret bates as Execter
to har husband and ol acounts balenced A mistak
in Reconing 6 shilling for my hos”
1733. “Reconed with Ebnezer Swift and thare
is a mistak of 2 quarts of maleses”
1738. “Reconed with Ebnezer Luce and
acounts balanced from the begining of the world
to the date here of ”
1746. “Reconed with Epram Tobey and
acounts ballenced all but ye 6 pounds and 12
Shillings Left for consideration”
1747..“ Reconed with Nathaniel chubback
And Acounts balenced and hee saith he is sattes
fied about ye fouer pound and will say Nomore"
1748. “Reconed with Olever Nores and
acounts balenced and thare is due to me twelve
Shillings in mony and one days worck”
1750. “Reconed with Ester Savery before
biniamin Bese and She and I. promas If thare
bee any mestack to Rit it"
book; and it was not forgotten to charge for
“time loost," even when it was lost in fever-
and-ague fits:-
60 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
"January the 28 day 1724 Theopilus Wood
hiered him self to mee for 1 Yeare for 36 pounds"
“April — Dr to siknes the fever and ago 4 fites
one weke and three the next”.
"febuary 1736 Samuel bates to worck with
me 6 mounth for 22 pounds and if he loos Any
time to abate acordingly and If I se cause to
have him make up the los of timme after he hath
made his Salt hay he is to du it"
"November 8 1737 Ebnezer bessee to work
for mee to 10 day of March at night with his own
ax and I am to find him meet drink washing and
loging And I am to give him the vallew of 10
pounds but not in mony and hee is to cut 2 cords
of wood in a day when hee doth no other work"
Another bargain was made with this man
and his axe to work eight months, –
“and I am to pay him one half in goods and the
other in bills of credit and if I think he dont ern
his wages he is to go Away”
Two Indians who had agreed to dig a ditch
were paid in rum, cider, corn, pork, “2 mugs
of fleep i knife i Ax i Shurt i diner.”
The following are examples of bargains
recorded in the book :--
“Memarandum of a bargen with John Nores
and Roulan Swift for pine wood abouf ye going
COLONIAL FARMERS. 61
over ye River on ye Northerly Side and I am to
have two Shillings per cord and thay are to cut
off ye pine If thay can git it down and thay are to
cut one lood At ye Uperind of ye Loot and If they
cannot git them down then I am to Loos ye wood
and they to Loos thare Labour"
“A bargen with Jonathan Chubbuck -hee is
to clear a peace of ground of mine at ye River
for one pound and one Shilling And hold plow
for 6 Shillings and hee is to plant ye ground
and how 3 times and I am to plow ye ground and
find ye seed and I am to have one half And hee
is to gather ye corn and to cut ye Stocks and wee
are to devid In ye heap And Shock and hee Is
to how in ye Rie and Reep and Shock ye rie and
wee are to devid in ye Shock and hee to find ye
rie and I to put in my creaters as I ues to dow"
“A bargin with hanary Sanders Juner for pine
wood to cut it on the South Side of ye Croked
River and to put on bord ye Sloop hee to have 6
Shillings and I to have ye Rest and hee is to cut
20 cords on ye furder side of ye Muddy cove and
hee is to have 8 Shillings old ten when hee hath
put it on boord ye Sloop and I ye rest of ye mony."
Whatever was wanted by one neighbor
could be obtained in barter from others.
“ April 1737 Receved of Joseph Giford two
hox sets of melases for my turpen tine one hun-
TY
62 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
dred and 6 gallons 4 shillings and 2 pence the
gallon one hoxet one hundred and 7 gallons "
A load of hay was exchanged for five pairs
of new shoes, which were afterwards sold
with stockings made by Israel Fearing's
eldest daughter Ann, and a skin for a pair of
breeches, as stated in this account:-
"february 2od 1745 marck hascul Dr for one
Lood of hay fouer pound and 12 shillings old
tener. Recived of marck hascul five pars of
Shues fouer pounds 12 Shilling old ten
“ April 25 day 1745 Jonathan Chubback Dr for
one pare of Shues twenty shillings If hee pay it
in one month And If not then to give mee twenty
two shillings
“July 1746 Elezer King D' for one
pare of Shues.. £o1-05-00
to one pare of Stockens of
Ann · · · · · · 00-16-00
to one Scen for briches · 00-05-00
to patterns and thread and
tow cloth . .... 00-05-00"
The book shows that the variety of the com-
modities exchanged included cradles and
coffins, cloths, and clothing. To the widow
Margret Bates “ bordes and nayles for a
cofen” were supplied, and to Thomas Bates
COLONIAL FARMERS. 63
“bordes and posts for your cradel," and
"timber for your house."
Swapping horses was a common form of
barter. A note in the old book reads :-
" John bump promased to give mee fouer
pounds old tener by ye foot of ye year beetween
our mars in ye Swap”.
Some of the farmers built scows for trans-
porting wood, and sloops for freighting it to
market, and also craft for fishing and whaling.
A launch of a vessel, which was usually built
in the woods, sometimes more than a mile
from the water, was an event which attracted
general attention. It was loaded on two
pairs of wheels, and was hauled by many
yoke of oxen to the launching place. The
wheels were then run into the water until
the vessel floated off. Whaling voyages in
which the farmers were associated occupied
but a few months at sea, as the blubber was
brought home in casks and tried out on
shore. The old book says :-
“ febuary 26 in 1737 agread with Josiah peary
for Josiah Wood to go this Spring coming A
Whael Vige with him for 5 pounds and 5 shillings
per mounth from the time he goeth from hom
And one pound of whale bone more in all"
64 COLONIAL TİMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
“ March the 28 day 1737
Josiah Wood went Easterd on the Whale Viage
· Augest the 12 day att night Josiah Wood was
cleared from Josiah peary from whalin"
The outcome of this voyage was probably
in the following memorandum :-
“desember the 1 day 1737 Receved of Josiah
peary forteen pounds And he saide If the mony
is not good he will take it and give me better”
One of the laws of the province required
the farmers to send to a tanner all “ hides or
skins as either by casualty or slaughter came
to hand;" it forbade butchers, curriers, and
shoemakers to “exercise the feat or mystery
of a tanner," and it forbade him to exercise
any other trade. The farmers had accounts
with tanners like the following :-
“ Ichabd King had of me 2 skens to dres in
1733 december 6 day to 4 mor skens to tan for
me the one maid 47 one 52 one 51 pounds the
other à cones sken : the 52 paide for in parte of
excainging of a hos in 1734 to 2 doges skéns to
dres and 2 sheep skens in 1735 to one cow hide”
This tanner took in payment of his account
corn and rye and “one dog” to balance it.
Some took one half of the skins in payment
for the exercise of their “mystery :"-
COLONIAL FARMERS.
65
“ April 1737 cared to Ebenezer Peary to dres
one hos hide for a bage one cow hide and 4 kepes
Scenes to tan and to curey to the halves - Dr to
one calves Scen that he dresed and I am to have
the neext”
The currency was so bad that leather was
sometimes used as an equivalent of money;
as in 1749, “paide to Roulan Tupper one
pound and Seventeen Shillings and Sixpence
in leather."
Iron was also used in the same manner :-
“ desember 1744 Sold to mr Joshua bensen 20
bushalls of corn and 20 bushalls of rye for twelve
shillings per bushall and to be paide in bloomary
Iron to be delivered at my hous at four pounds
old tener per hundred but good Iiron
November ye 18 1746 benianan Eles Dr for
Iron to be paid in Smith worck twenty-fouer
pounds ten Shillings and Six pence”
So also rye and corn were of value in
trading :-
"John Fearing bought a gun of Nehemia bese
for 3 bushalls of corn and 3 bushalls of rye at six
pounds twelve Shillings and If ye corn or rye
fecheth more by the 18 day of Augest he is to
give it and to pay for mending his gun If he Re-
deemeth her"
The prices of all things were affected by
the varying value of colonial bills of credit,
66
COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
which, according to a letter written by Gov. ·
ernor Belcher at Boston in 1739, were “not
worth five shillings in the pound of the cur-
rent silver money of this Province.” This
currency, known as old tenor, described in
the General Court records as “printed bills
of equal value with money," was first issued
by the Massachusetts colony in 1690 and 1691
to defray the cost of an expedition sent to
capture Quebec. The first legislature under
the charter of 1692 made these bills “equiva-
lent to money," by which was meant equiva-
lent to gold and silver coinage, for all pay-
ments except in specified cases. Their credit
was maintained by receiving them in public
payments at a premium. After the passage
of this legal-tender act gold and silver coins
were rapidly exported to England. Other
issues of printed bills in subsequent years
were made "equal to money," and it became
a general complaint that gold and silver coins
were “not to be had.” Trade came to a
stand-still. Farm produce was the best of all
values.
In 1737 a new issue of paper money, called
new tenor, was made. It was to be redeemed
after five years “in silver money at six shil-
1
COLONIAL FARMERS. 67
lings and eight pence per ounce.” One shil-
ling of this was valued as three shillings of
old tenor. Representatives whose pay had
been six shillings a day for attendance at the
legislature and for traveling to and fro, count-
ing twenty miles as a day's journey, were
now paid two shillings a day in new tenor
bills. But the redemption promised was not
made, and by a further repudiation, four
pounds for one was fixed as the rate of ex-
changing old tenor for new.
In 1749 by legal enactment forty-five shil-
lings of old tenor, or eleven shillings and
three pence of new, were redeemed by a
Spanish-milled dollar; and it was also enacted
that after March, 1750, all debts and con-
tracts “shall be understood to be payable in
coined silver” at these rates. The means of
making this adjustment were furnished by
the receipt of one hundred and eighty-three
thousand six hundred and forty-nine pounds
two shillings and seven pence sterling granted
by Parliament “to reimburse the Province
their Expenses in taking and securing for his
Majesty the Island of Cape Breton and its
dependances.” 1
1 “Sunday Aug. 6. The Mermaid man-of-war, Capt Mon.
tague sailed from Portsmouth for Boston having on board
68 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
The value of the colonial pound in its rela-,
tion to the Spanish dollar was now fixed by
law; it was equal to three dollars and thirty-
three and one third cents in silver, and a shil-
ling was one sixth of a dollar. This currency
and its reckonings continued in use in New
England more than a hundred years.
The man whose accounts and writings
have been quoted was a representative of
the thrifty class of farmers of his time. His
book shows that he was sought for as an
arbitrator in differences between neighbors;
as when in 1747 he charged Zacceus Bump
“ for going to plimoth to stop ye action
with Squer Bartlet £i- More to going to
650,000 ounces of foreign silver coin and ten tons of cop-
per purchased by Sir Peter Warren and Mr. Bollan, agents
for New England, with the money paid them at the Ex-
chequer, for indemnifying that colony for their expenses
about Cape Breton.”— Gentleman's Magazine, August, 1749.
"I congratulate you, Gentlemen, upon the favour of
Divine Providence in the Safe Arrival of the Money
allowed by the Parliament of Great Britain, whereby we
are enabled in a good Measure to pay off the great Debt
contracted by the Charge of the late War & now lying
upon this Province; And We by the Blessing of God upon
Our wise & faithful management of this Advantage, deliver
this Province from the Evils & Mischiefs arising from the
uncertain & sinking value of the Paper Medium.” — Lieut.-
Governor Phips, November 23, 1749.
... COLONIAL .
FARMERS. 69
Rogester for power of Aturny fech Squire
Winslo down here £1-5-6." By his acqui-
sitions he came to be regarded as one of that
class which the colony court had described
as “Substanciall men that are prudent psons
and of considerable estates in the Lands of
Scippican.”1 He received the first commis-
sion given to an inhabitant of Wareham as
His Majesty's justice of the peace, an office
of great dignity. His court records, written
in a medley of farming accounts and notes
of bargains, contain only the two cases here
quoted of cursing and swearing in violation
of the law, indicating that conversational
language was, in his day, kept under a closer
restraint than it is now:-
“October 21-1748 Ebnezer Swift of falmouth
for profain Swaring two times in my hearing paide
1 At Israel Fearing's death in June, 1754, his real estate
was appraised at £4,000, and his personal estate at £ 510.
In the latter there was pewter ware £15, but no china
ware; there were two saddle mares, two saddles, two carts,
but no vehicle for traveling purposes. The inventory
specified £ 2-13-4 in “Loombs and Tacklg," £ 5 in books,
£225 in money and notes, £ 57 in bedding and furniture,
£ 55 in “Chest-drawers and chests," £16 in apparel.
His wife Martha, daughter of Benjamin and Ann Gibbs
of Sandwich, where her birth is recorded“ on ye last day
of Oct 1699," died in September, 1754.
70 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
his fine twenty Shillings old tener to mee Israel
Fearing Justes of peac”.
“ March ye ad day 1749 A complant came to
mee of Joseph Savery of Rogester cursing Ensin
Ebnezer burg two times and hee paid his fine
twenty Shillings old tener to mee Israel Fearing
Just of peac”
At his death the account-book fell into the
hands of his son Noah, as executor, who, after
dividing the large estate, made this quaint
note concerning the remnants :-
“ April 1755 — The a Count of what Every one
Benjamin Had a pair of Shues . . .£1-5-0
John Had a pair of Nee Buckels Silver 4-0-0
David Had a Beaver Hat .... 4-0-0
David Had Cash ....... 1-10-0
I Had one wosted Cap and a pair of
old Shoues ... .. 1-10-0
I had a ox and Benj” Had another ox 30-0-0"

.
"
THE SQUIRE.
OHN, who received the silver knee-
buckles, having taken unto himself
a wife, became the proprietor of
the farm on Fearing Hill; and having been
appointed to succeed his father in the office
of His Majesty's Justice of the peace, the
title Esquire was written as an appendage to
his name. The people, looking upon him as
a unique figure in their community, spoke of
him as The Squire and treated him with
respect, for they regarded him as the repre-
sentative of “our Soveraign Lord the King."
To speak profane words in his presence was
an offense punishable by a fine, or by a sit-
ting in the town stocks. He had to do with
the domestic as well as with the civil life of
the town. By his consent only could indent-
ures of service be entered into;1 and a
1 “Rebeekah wickod indenters at Capt Edward Wens-
lows And she is to live with me fourteen years and nine
72 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
funeral could not take place “on the Lord's
Day or evening following," except by his per-
mission, to be given only in urgent cases.
He was not nominated for the office by the
ruling power because he was wise and learned
in the law; but rather because he was one
of the “most sufficient persons” dwelling in
the county, known to be loyal, of dignified
deportment, and possessed of lands or tene-
ments yielding a certain annual value. The
oath to which he subscribed bound him to
mounths from 20. day of May, 1729." - Israel Fearing's
Book.
An Indenture of service was a written agreement entered
into with the consent of two of His Majesty's justices of
the peace for the county. . By its usual form the woman
servant bound herself to learn the “Art Trade or Mystery"
of her master; to dwell at his house ; obey his reasonable
commands gladly; his “Secrets keep close ; Damage not
willfully to do; Goods not to waste, embezel, purloine or
lend to others; at Cards, Dice, or any other unlawful
Game not to play; Fornication not to commit, nor Matri-
mony contract with any Person during said Term.” On
the other part the master was bound to cause her to be
taught "the Trade Art or Mystery of Spinning both Wol.
len and Linen and to read English ; " to provide for her
good and sufficient “ Victualls and Drink Washing and
Lodging and Cloaths of all kinds ;” and at the end of her
term to dismiss her with “two Good Suits of Apparell for...
all parts of her Body, one for Holly Days and one for
Working Days."
THE SQUIRE.
73
"dispense justice equally and impartially in
all cases and do equal right to the poor and
to the rich after your cunning wit and power
according to law.”
The colonial laws which he administered
had been made by wise legislators, who in-
tended that there should be neither traveling,
labor, amusements, nor funerals on Sunday;
but a solemn and decorous observance of the
day by masters and servants, and a general
attendance at the public services in the
meeting-house; that there should be no pro-
fane swearing, nor cursing of persons or crea-
tures; no drunkenness, nor brawls; that
debtors must pay their debts either with
money or with service. Here are some ex-
tracts from the records written by His Ma-
jesty's justice of the peace, showing how he
executed the laws of the province:-
“ September ye 23 Day 1761 Then Reuben
winslow of Free Town Paid as a fine For a Breach
of his majestys peace For Spiting in the Face
of Barnebus Swift and Rubing his Ears in the
Town of wareham Four Shilings to me"
“Then Stephen Bourn of Sandwich paid as a
fine For a Breach of his majestys peace For
Defernce with Ebenezer Swift Jụnr he Threw him
74 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
on The ground and Spit in his face and Poled his
hare and Rubed his Ears in Wareham the sum
of Four Shilings To me"
“May 23 Day 1763 Then Eliz Bump the wife
of Juhn Bump Junr paid a fine of Ten Shilings to
me for Burning the Daughter of Jonathan Chub-
back named Susanah Tho she said she did it
By an axatant”
“December 5 Day 1767 then Samuel Barrows
of wareham parsonly appeared and acknowledged
himself Gilty of Being over Tacken with Strong
Lecker and paid a fine of 5 Shilings to me".
“May 1769 then Joshuea morse personly and
acknowledged him Self Gilty of prefane Swaring
at Benjamin Fearings Before Josiah Carver
Grand Jurey man and paid Six Shilings to me"
“Whereas William Parcker of Wareham La-
borer Stands Convicted Before me John Fearing
Esqre one of his majesties Justics of the pece
for the County of Plymoth In a complaint by
Jabez Burggs of sd wareham Cordwinder For
Theft — the Damages and Corst of Proscution
amounting to the sum of Two pounds Seventeen
Shillings & nine pence Lawful money - & he the
sd william not having any Estate To Satisfie sd
Judgment I do In obediance to ye Law of this
Province put bound out and Set over Ye said
william to the said Jabez and to his hars or
THE SQUIRE.
75
asignes To Serve him or them the Term of one
year From the Date hearof he Finding him Good
and Sufficent meet & Drink Lodging & apperel
During Said Term --and I do Injoin ye sd Wil-
liam Parcker to serve ye sd Jabez Burggs or as-
sighns faithfully During Said Term Wittness my
hand this Fiftenth Day of March Ad 1771"
If offenders did not pay the fines imposed
upon them, he could place them in the stocks,
or order them to be whipped. Persons who
lived disorderly, “misspending their precious
time," he could send to the work-house, to
the stocks, or to the whipping-post, at his
discretion. He could break open doors
where liquors were concealed to defraud His
Majesty's excise. He could issue hue-and-
cries for runaway servants and thieves.
There are instances on record in which a
justice of the peace issued his warrant to
arrest the town minister about whose ortho-
doxy there were distressing rumors, and re-
quired him to be examined upon matters of
doctrine and faith. But a more pleasing
function of his office was to marry those who
came to him for marriage, bringing the town
clerk's certificate that their nuptial intentions
had been proclaimed at three religious meet-
1
76 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
ings in the parish during the preceding fort-
night. If the bride was an insolvent debtor,
and it was necessary to prove that she was
possessed of no goods whatever, she was
married “with no more clothes on than her
shift;" and this fact was certified in the jus-
tice's record. For the marriage fee he claimed
four shillings and gave “out of it sixpence to
the town clerk," as said a law of 1716. But
it was not always that the town clerk re-
ceived the sixpences ; for the dignity of office
did not hinder His Majesty's justice of the
peace from practicing the parsimony of the
times.

.
U
.
VIJA
.
.
I
11.
.
.
.IT
CIL
*
THE BIRTH OF A TOWN.
1
S the farmers of Agawame were sep-
arated by fifteen miles of forest from
Plymouth meeting-house, they felt the
need of a parish and a town government of
their own. So also felt the farmers at the
east end of Rochester, who, having obtained
a separation from their old parish in 1734, de-
sired to unite with those of Agawame in form-
ing a new town. No one was active to ac-
complish this end until Israel Fearing went,
in April, 1738, to lobby the matter with the
selectmen of Plymouth. He made a second
journey thither in May, carrying the petition
of himself and his neighbors for a precinct.
The result was so satisfactory to him that af-
ter the meeting had adjourned he treated the
selectmen at an expense of three shillings,
and returned at once to Agawame to prepare
himself to take a petition to the legislature at
Boston.
78 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
Early in the morning of the 29th of May,
1738, his mare having been newly shod and
carefully saddled, Israel Fearing started on
the journey to Boston. The road which he
traveled was narrow and tortuous — a lane
through a forest, having rocks and quagmires
and long reaches of sand, which made it al-
most impassable to wheels, if any there were
to be ventured upon it. Branches of large
trees were stretched over it, so that it was
unvisited by sunlight except at those places
where it crossed the clearings on which a sol-
itary husbandman had established his home-
of some of those picturesque ponds which
feed the rivers emptying into Buzzard's Bay.
Occasionally a deer bounded across the
path, and foxes were seen running into the
thickets.
The nimble mare, accustomed to such ways,
carried her rider at a steady pace during the
day, baiting at Scituate village, and reaching
Roxbury Neck about five o'clock in the after-
noon, where a stop for a half hour was made
at the St. George tavern. From this elevated
site the traveler saw the steeples of Boston,
its harbor lively with vessels, the King's ships
THE BIRTH OF A TOWN.
79
riding before the town, Cambridge and the
shores of the mainland in the distance. Hav-
ing refreshed himself and the mare he trotted
along the narrow way leading into the great
town, on which the most prominent object at-
tracting his attention was a gallows standing
at the gate.
When he rode within he found in every-
thing around him a wonderful contrast to the
quiet and monotonous scenes which had al-
ways surrounded his life at Agawame. The
streets were paved with cobble-stones, and
were thronged with hackney-coaches, sedan-
chairs, four-horse shays, and calashes, in some
of which gayly dressed people were riding,
the horses being driven by their negro slaves.
Gentlemen on handsome saddle-horses paced
by him, in comparison with whom he made a
sorry figure. But he was reassured of his
own manliness when he encountered a flock
of sheep, and ox-carts just in from the coun-
try laden with fire-wood, fagots, and hay.
He noticed with amazement the stately brick
houses and their pleasant gardens, in which
pear-trees and peach-trees were blooming. In
the Mall, gentlemen dressed in embroidered
coats, satin waistcoats, silken hose, and full
80 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
wigs, were taking an after-dinner stroll with
ladies who were attired in bright silks and
furbelowed scarfs, and adorned with artificial
flowers and patches on their cheeks. Boston
was an active, thrifty trading town; its shops,
distilleries, wind-mills, and rope-walks were
all agoing; and as he turned his mare into
King Street and pulled up at the Bunch of
Grapes tavern, which, being near to the Town
House, was conveniently situated for the
business on which he was bent, he probably
felt that in such a wealthy and worldly place
his simple errand would receive but little at-
tention. At the shutting in of the evening,
James Warren, an influential member of the
legislature from Plymouth, came to his assist-
ance. To him the petition was intrusted, and
having paid him twenty shillings, Israel Fear-
ing rode back to Agawame.
A precinct did not meet the public wants,
and next year Ebenézer Burgess, Thomas
Hamlen, and their neighbors petitioned the
legislature for a town ; “finding ourselves,"
they said, “too small and Impotent to main-
tain the Public Worship of God.” Israel
Fearing's record of the business was this :-
" April 1738 going to the Selectmen to work
the meeting for a presink one day £1-00-00
THE BIRTH OF A TOWN. 81
“May 1738 going to the town of plymoth with
a petision two dayes Mony to treet the Select
men 3 shillings
"May th29 1738 going to carey the peticion to
boston one pound — and twenty shillings of mony
to Cornol Woring
“March thi day 1739 going to plymouth to
Cornol Woring to fetch the Copey of the Cort
for a precenk and paid to Cor Woring three shil-
lings "
· His book tells us nothing of the discus-
sions by the farmers when he reported to
them the result of his journeys across the
wilderness to Boston, carrying in his saddle-
bags their hopes for self-government and the
shillings which they had contributed to pay
the expenses of this momentous enterprise.
But the book tells who his backers were, and
what number of shillings each gave or prom-
ised to give to procure the act by which the
plantation was converted to a town. Here is
the list :-
“Recevd to goo with the petion of my
own mony . . . . . . . 10 shillings
and of mr John Eles ......05
and of mr Joshua gibbes ....05
and of mr Samuel buerg ....05
82 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
and of mr thomas bates the promas of 05 shillings:
and of mr Ebnezer beese . ... 04
and of mr Ebnezer Swift the promas of 05
and of mr Uriah Savery ....05
and of mr Jirey Swift ......05
and of mr micah gibbes . ... .:05."
Governor Belcher signed the act incorpo-
rating the town July 10, 1739, and was soon
after removed from office. He was succeeded
by Governor Shirley, who, ambitious of royal
favor and thinking that the number of towns
was increasing too rapidly, determined that
Wareham should be the last "until His Ma-
jesty's pleasure shall be known.”
The little town then became the text for a
correspondence between the governor and
the British ministry, the object of which was
to establish the right of the King of England
to limit the number of representatives in the
colonial legislature. The governor wrote to
London that an increase in the number of
towns was an increase of representatives ;
that the present number of these men“ hath
been sufficient to embarrass His Majesty's
Government here," and, taking the act incor-
porating the town of Wareham as an illustra-
tion of the facility with which towns had been
THE BIRTH OF A TOWN. 83
created, he proposed “to prevent the further
increase of representatives” by refusing to
give his assent to any act incorporating a
new town or dividing an old one until it had
been approved by the King.
But if His Majesty had inquired of the
farmers of Wareham, who had so sparingly
counted out their shillings to Israel Fearing,
he would have learned that they had no
money to give for the expenses of a repre-
sentative at Boston, and that they never had
desired to be represented there.
The town having been incorporated, the
next thing for the farmers to do was to hold
a town meeting.


.
11
:
VI.
THE TOWN'S MIND.
H E object of all town meetings was “to
know the Town's Mind;" whether it
was for doing this, or for doing that,
or for doing something else. In the warrants
it was written with capital letters, and was
alluded to as if it were a distinguished per-
son, slow to act, and to be consulted on every
matter, small and great. On the sixth day of
August, 1739, the Town's Mind of Wareham,
of the County of Plymouth, of the Province
of Massachusetts Bay, was summoned for the
first time “to make Choice of a town Clark
and all other town officers.”
The town clerk recorded in the town book
the decisions of the Town's Mind. In the
same book he recorded births, marriages, and
deaths; transfers of pews in the meeting-
house; descriptions of articles losi and found;
of estrays taken up, as “a Reed Stray Hefar
THE TOWN'S MIND.
85
two years old and she hath sum white In the
face." Here he also recorded the marks by
which farmers identified their cattle, although
the reader of the records may suppose that
they were the marks by which farmers them-
selves were identified. For example: "Joshua
Brigs mark Is a Scware Crop In the under
side of ye Right ear;” “Thomas Whittens
mark Is a mackrels tales In Both Ears."
There is no romance in the clerk's annals;
they deal only with such facts as interested
the townspeople, who were accustomed to
think more about their woodlands, crops, cat-
tle, and salt marshes than about anything else.
It must be confessed that, important man as
he was, he did not always write the records
in a scholarly style nor in a readable hand.
He was frugal-minded. His closely written
lines, running zigzag like a rail fence across
the pages, reveal a desire to be saving of the
book, and the formation of his words shows
that no extravagance could be allowed in the
use of the alphabet. The Wareham book
testifies that one of the qualifications of can-
didates for this office was an entire want of
skill to write the English language correctly;
a want which sore beset the men and women
.
86 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
of colonial New England, notwithstanding the
compulsory school laws.
In the judgment of the Town's Mind the
honors of the clerk's office were a fair com-
pensation for its labors; he was elected to
serve for nothing; as, in 1761, “maid chois
year Insuing without fees from ye Town and
he Excepted.” Sometimes the clerk was
granted a small amount of money, to be raised
by a general tax, that he might piece out the
fees allowed him by law for special work,
called in the vernacular “the Proffites of the
Townes Bookes ;" for example, Rochester
town, in 1711, “agreed with Peter Blackmer
that twenty shillings in money should be
raised by Rate to satisfie him for keeping
of the town Booke for about eleven years
past."
The treasurer of the town did not fare so
well. A province law declared that he should
have “such allowance for his services as the
town shall agree to; " and when he was
elected the Town's Mind agreed to allow him
nothing. For example: 1745, "chose Samuel
Burge Town treasurer and he is to Serve the
Town for Love and good will.” After a time
THE TOWN'S MIND.
87
1
six shillings a year — or “sex shelangs," as
the clerk of the period wrote it — were
allowed the treasurer for his services, and in
1780 his salary was increased to ten dollars.
This extravagance can be accounted for by
the fact that the paper currency of the coun-
try was at that time almost worthless; silver
coins were scarce, and farm products, such as
grain, wool, flax, and meats, were their only
equivalents in trade and barter. The ten
paper dollars paid to the treasurer in 1780
were not worth more than the “sex she-
langs” of peaceful times, which, by the prov-
ince laws of 1749, had been made equal to
a Spanish milled dollar.
In addition to the clerk and the treasurer,
the town's officers annually chosen were
numerous. Some of them were authorized
by legislative enactments and some by custom
only. There were men “to make up ac-
counts" with the treasurer; others to per-
ambulate the boundaries ; one “able man,"
called in the records the “Clark of the
markit," to affix the town's seal to all weights
and measures found to be true according to
the standards sent out of England in the
reign of William and Mary, and to destroy
OG
88 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
the false. To enable this officer to do his
duty fairly, the town bought a London set of
"wates and mesuers," as the clerk wrote it,
at a cost of ten pounds.
Good orthodox leather was considered to
be a prime necessity, like orthodox preaching,
and therefore men were chosen, who by au-
thority of law stamped the town's mark upon
all leather well and sufficiently tanned or
curried; and who seized all unstamped and
defective leather offered for sale, whether it
had been worked up or not. And as no man
was allowed to make his own theology, so
none was allowed to make his own leather,
unless he was skilled in what the law styled
“the feat or mystery of a tanner;" and if so
skilled he was prohibited from exercising any
other trade.
There were fence-viewers chosen to adjust
controversies between the owners of adjoin-
ing lands. There were inspectors of high-
ways and bridges. There were inspectors of
rivers, who were sworn to secure to shad and
alewives a free passage up and down the
town's streams. Once a year they came be-
fore His Majesty's justice of the peace and
took an oath to look after the welfare of the
fish, who recorded the fact as follows:-
THE TOWN'S MIND
89
“ March the 22 day 1756 Insign Swift and Eb-
enezer Brigs hath taken ye oath Taking Care of
the Ale wives not Being Stoped from going up the
Revers to cast their Sporns before me John. Fear-
ing."
There were hog-reeves, to see that when
hogs went abroad they wore rings in their
noses, and yokes of the regulation size on
their necks. The law called them meet per-
sons; they were unpopular, as they made
fees by using their authority to seize swine
found without a keeper, a yoke, a tethering
line, or snout rings, "so as to prevent damage
by rooting." Benjamin Smith, of Taunton,
sent a petition to the Massachusetts Legis-
lature, in December, 1722 : “Shewing That
being the Hog Reve of the said Town He
suffered much in the Execution of that Office,
And Praying that this Court would determine
Whether his Oath is not a good & lawful
Evidence Though he be Hog Reve.” When,
in later times, as swine became less numer-
ous, the office became a sinecure, the popular
candidate for it was usually the last bride-
groom in the town.
Two tything-men, called in the vernacular
“tidymen," were chosen from those who
90 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
were supposed to be prudent and discreet.
Every incumbent of this office had need of
prudence and discretion, for, although he no
longer, as in earlier times, took “the charge
of ten or twelve Familyes of his Neibour-
hood” to “diligently inspect them," he was
required to watch licensed houses of enter-
tainment, and to make complaint of all dis-
orders and misdemeanors discovered therein.
As he reported to His Majesty's justice of
the peace all idle persons, “prophane swear-
ers or cursers Sabath breakers and the like
offenders," his presence in the tavern, the
shop, or the store, was a signal for silence
and sobriety.
Because, said a province law, “bundles of
shingles are mark'd for a greater number
than what they contain,” two skillful men
were chosen to see that neighbors did not
cheat each other in trading for lumber. Then,
there was a town gauger, appointed to gauge
and mark all casks of rum and molasses ex-
posed for sale. The necessity for this officer
grew out of the “total depravity” of His
Majesty's good subjects, in whose casks and
hogsheads, said the law of 1718, “there hath
been wanting seven or eight gallons and
THE TOWN'S MIND.
91
sometimes more which persons are obliged to
pay for."
As military service was compulsory upon
men between sixteen and sixty years of age,
the town had its militia company and mem-
bers of the county horse troop; and a military
clerk, who four times a year listed all persons
required by law to bear arms and attend
musters. He collected fines from those who
failed to answer the roll-calls on training
days. Those who did not pay the fines were
punished by being made to lie neck and heels
together, or to ride the wooden horse.
Other officers of the town were a cattle-
pound keeper, who lived by fees; a sheep-
yarder, who yarded stray sheep, “if they be
not badgd," from December to March, at two-
pence a head and expenses of keeping; a
man “to Tack care of the meeting House and
Sweep the Saim,” and “to keep the dores &
windows shet.” Wardens were chosen, “to
Inspect ye meeting Hous on ye Lord's Day
and see to Good Order among ye Boys ;" for
it was customary to separate children from
their parents, to place them together in un-
comfortable seats, and to set inspectors over
them. If they were discovered laughing or
92 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY..
playing during the time of public worship,
the wardens complained of them to His Ma-
jesty's justice of the peace, who inflicted
punishment according to law. Gamekeepers
were annually chosen, whose duty was to
prevent the untimely killing of deer, or hunt-
ing them when they were imprisoned in
corries by deep snows. The town clerk said
in his records that they are “To Bee the men
for Prevesation of the Deare for the yeare
Insuing."
The office of constable was of high reputa-
tion, and, as in old Saxon times, so now, it
was intended that only those should have it
who were “honest and able men both in body
and estate and not of the meaner sort.”
Every constable, said a Plymouth Colony law,
“shall have a Black Staffe tip’t with Brasse
as a Badge of his office which as he hath op-
portunity he shall take with him when he
goeth to discharge any part of his office.” He
was therefore popularly known by the irrev-
erent as tipstaff. He gathered the taxes al-
lotted for general expenses of the town, and
those allotted for support of the minister.
The warrant for town meeting was addressed
to him by the selectmen. It ran: “In his
THE TOWN'S MIND.
93
Majesties name to Require you to notifie the
Freeholders and other inhabitants Quallified
as the Law Directs to vote in Town Meeting
that they meet and assemble themselves to-
gether at the meeting House to know the
Town's Mind" in regard to the various ques-
tions stated in the warrant. This document
was copied in the town book to establish the
authenticity of the meeting; and the consta-
ble therein certified that he had notified the
inhabitants “by setting up the warrant at the
meeting House,” by which he meant that he
had nailed it upon the principal door of that
building, where everybody could read it on
Sunday.
No one sought the office of constable, but
whoever was elected was required to accept
it, or to pay the fine fixed by law for refusing
to take the oath. In 1751 a town meeting
was adjourned six times to elect men who
would consent to take the constable's oath of
office, and David Besse was chosen to prose-
cute “delinquent constables” on behalf of the
town. It was necessary for the Town's Mind
to be lenient in dealing with this antipathy to
the office; therefore the fine imposed upon
Benjamin Fearing " for being delinquent in
94 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
!
the office of constable” was remitted on con-
dition that he procured a substitute. In 1752
Butler Wing, being elected constable, refused
to serve; whereupon he was prosecuted, and
he gave his promissory note for the amount
of the fine. He appealed repeatedly to be
excused from the debt; but the Town's Mind
was unmoved, and in 1755 it directed the
clerk to enter upon the book its decision, that
it would “not a Bate mr Butler Wing any
Part of the money that he gave a note for for
his Refusing to Sarve in the office of Consta-
ble when chosen by the Town in ye year
1752." The sequel of this matter is found in
the town treasurer's records of 1756, viz. : “I
have Reseved a fine paid by Butler Wing for
not Sarving Constable in the Town of Ware-
ham 2 pounds 14 Shillings."
Of all the town officers the selectmen were
chief. There were three of them chosen
annually to direct prudential affairs, holding
sessions at the tavern, where they usually sat
the day out, having the town clerk at hand to
record their orders, served with victuals and
grog at the town's cost, and regarded by their
host with a respect due to servants of the
King. They prepared business for the town
THE TOWN'S MIND.
95
1
0
meetings and nominated town officers for
election. They looked up undesirable resi-
dents and were active (to quote the records
of 1767) in “worning Pepel oot of Town." In
1768 they sent Jeams Baker out of town at a
cost of fifteen shillings; Nathan Bump was
exported at a cost of six shillings; eight shil-
lings were paid for carrying away “a black
child;" and Elisha Burgess received twenty
shillings for carting out a whole family.
Rams were in higher favor than these friend-
less sojourners. They had the freedom of the
town until 1781, when it was ordered that
they “shall be taken in" by the ist of Sep-
tember. But as they continued to stand at
the street corners, the Town's Mind rose in
anger, and declared that “if a Ram goes at
large the owner shall pay a dollar to him that
takes up said Ram.”
The selectmen offered to the town meeting
a variety of subjects for consideration. Some
related to the extermination of foxes, crow.s,
and other farm pests; to the protection of
oyster fishing; to the catching and selling of
alewives; to the acceptance of highways and
the building of bridges; to repairs of the
meeting-house; to the minister's salary and
96 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
the ministry lands; to the herding of sheep
and yoking of hogs on the commons; to such
questions as “what amount of money is to be
raised for defraying necessary expenses ;”
whether the town “will have a school this
year;” or will choose a representative at the
Great and General Court appointed to be con-
vened for His Majesty's service in Boston;
or will make new irons for the town stocks;
or a new whipping-post. Some measures dis-
cussed were medical, as "not to have Small
Pox set up by Inoculation;" some were con-
vivial, as “To pay Joshua Gibbs for two bowls
of Grog” drunk while on the town's service;
some were pathetic, as "voted for makeing a
Coffen for Alice Reed ten shillings -- for her
Winding Sheat three and four pence- for
digging her grave three shillings;" to pay
“the Wido Debre Savery for Fethers she Put
in Jemima Wing's bed when Sick Six Shil-
lings;" to pay“Six Shillings to Sam" Savery
for his Trouble and care of John Pennerine."
This last-named beneficiary was one of a
large number of poor, ignorant, and super-
stitious peasants, prisoners from Acadia, kin
of Evangeline and Gabriel Lajeunesse, who
were billeted upon the towns of Massachu-
THE ?
97
TOWN'S MIND.
IM
setts by orders of the royal Governor and
Council, like the following, dated 1757 : “To
remove John Pelerine Wife and Children,
supposed to be Five in Number a Family
of French Neutrals to the Town of Ware-
ham, and that the Select Men of the Town
of Wareham be and hereby are directed to
receive them and provide for them.”
Alice Reed, whose coffin, winding-sheet,
and grave thus cost the town sixteen shillings
and four pence, had been one of the town's
poor, annually put out by the selectmen to be
kept at public expense. How to dispose of
such people was a subject which periodically
exercised the Town's Mind, and it was doubt-
less a consolation to know that some of the
oaths and curses uttered in public had been
turned by His Majesty's justice of the peace
into shillings for their benefit, as the law di-
rected. They began to call for support in
1746, when the town paid £12 for keeping
“Jane Bump so called with victuals and
cloaths.” The next year she was returned to
the selectmen, who, not knowing what to do
with her, pressed the town “to do Sumthing
for ye Support of Geen Bump.” In 1754
appeared the widow. Reliance Bumpus, who
98 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
V
placed her whole reliance upon the town
treasury for twenty years. A short time be-
fore she had enjoyed a merited credit with
her neighbors, in regard to which the old ac-
count-book testifies as follows : “ November
ye 24 1751 ye widow Reliance bumpus Dr
for 16 pounds of porck i bushall of corn and
I gallon of malases and 1 pound of Ches" —
“July 1752 Reconed with Relyanc bumipus
and all accounts balanced." Her widowhood
was soon followed by poverty, and then she
turned to the selectmen for help. John
Bishop, the town clerk, says :-
“When the votable inhabitance convened in
His Majesties name September 24, 1754 John
Bumpus ye 3d Came Into ye meeting and maid
the offer ye town that he would Keep ye widow
Reliance Bumpus one year Kuming for six Pounds
Thirteen Shillings and four Pence Lawfull money
and ye Mordarator Put it to vote to know ye Mind
of ye town whether they ware willing to allow ye
sd Jno Bumpus ye 3d the money he asked to keep
ye aforesd widow one year and ye vote Past in the
Affarmative."
Thus the poor widows Bump and Bumpus,
descendants of Edward Bompasse, who came
to Plymouth in the little ship “Fortune” from
THE TOWN'S MIND.
99
London in 1621, secured a place in recorded
history. Many poor widows achieved the
same distinction, and became their compan-
ions at the public crib. A warrant for a
town meeting in 1757 stated a wish “To
know the Towns Mind whether they will do
anything for the Support of Sarah Chubbuck
it being the Desire of her Brother Benjamin ”
- a request which suggests that family pride
in this respect was not a virtue universally
appreciated. In the same year others joined
the poor widows' band, among whom was
Jane George, who became famous inasmuch
as she participated in its joys and sorrows
for fifty years.
The prices at which the poor widows were
farmed out varied annually, but in 1770 their
value was uniform at k3 each per annum,
taken as they ran. Their keeping was so
profitable, in services rendered by them, as
to induce the town to vote repeatedly “Not
to build a poor-house," and a convenient plan
for disposing of them was adopted : it was to
sell them at auction. At a town meeting in
1776 it was voted, “to vandue the Widow
Lovell.” She was accordingly set up by the
selectmen, and, as the records state, “was
100 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
struck of to Josiah Stevens for to keep
one year for the Sum of nine pounds Six
shillings & if She did not live the year in he
to have in that proportion." But she lived
“the year in,” and continued to appear at the
annual auction. In 1782 the town voted to
buy her a shirt, and then sold her again.
After transfers to various homes, her death is
disclosed in this record of September, 1784 :
“ Voted for a winding sheet and a shift for
the Widow Lovell eight shillings." And that
was the end of her. But Jane George lived
on, and into the next century, surviving all
her numerous contemporaries. She began to
be one of the town's poor in 1757; she was
set up at vendue for the last time in 1808,
when, before she passed from the public
stage, dilapidated as she undoubtedly was,
the town voted to pay “for Extra Mending
Jane George four dollars.”
Not every one who came to town meeting
was allowed to vote there. The laws of
1692 described qualified voters as owners of
real estate in fee simple, and "inhabitants
who are ratable at twenty pounds estate."
In 1743 the laws compelled voters to be per-
sonally present at the meeting, and all could
1
Porar
THE TOWN'S MIND. IOI
vote on town matters who had a ratable
estate of £20 value in the town; but at the
election of a representative to the Great and
General Court at Boston, only those could
vote who owned a landed estate yielding an
annual income of forty shillings “at the
least." This qualification was fixed by the
charter of William and Mary, and it is wor-
thy of note that the same ruled in the first
municipal corporation in England of which
there is an authentic record; that granted in
the year 1439 by Henry VI. to the town of
Kingston-upon-Hull: “To remedy the great
evils arising from the elections being made
by outrageous and excessive numbers of
people dwelling in the counties, most part of
small substance, pretending to have a voice
equivalent to the most worthy knights and
esquires."
The colonial town meeting was evidently
an institution of New England origin, and
noť an imitation of anything that had existed
on the other side of the Atlantic. It was a
primary and not a representative assembly.
The law declared that “no matter or thing
whatsoever “shall be voted or determined"
at the meeting “but what is inserted in the
102 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
warrant for calling" it. Men sat with their
hats on, as in the House of Commons; and
as this was a place where all were on a uni-
form level in regard to personal rights and
opinions, there were frequent disagreements
and disorders among those present. A prov-
ince law of 1715 gave special powers to the
moderator, because, as the law recited, “by
reason of the disorderly carriage of some
persons in said meetings the affairs and
business thereof is very much retarded and
obstructed.” And it was sometimes neces-
sary to make a registry of the names of those
who had a title to vote; as in September,
1774, while the Boston Port Bill was in force,
the town of Wareham chose a committee
“to join with the Select Men to make out a
list & say who should vote in Town Meet-
ings."
In some respects the town meeting re-
sembled the parish vestry meeting of Old
England two hundred and fifty years ago.
Extracts from the vestry book of a small
Somerset parish, begun in 1666, and from
church wardens' accounts a hundred years
older, show that vestrymen discussed expen-
ditures for taking care of the church or meet-
!
THE TOWN'S MIND.
103
1
ing-house, for “glazing the Church windes,"
for “minding the bell whell," for killing
foxes, “hedg hoggs,” rooks, sparrows, and
other farm pests; and that they, like the
colonial selectmen, paid for divers parochial
feastings and drinkings, and for mending "ye
noisome ways.” The vestry clerk wrote his
“regester booke” (sometimes spelt “radges-
ter”) in words of the same illiterate forma-
tion as those quoted from the town-meeting
records. He may be considered as the
original of the town clerk. It may also be
noted that some of the customs observed
in the town, as the seating of the congrega-
tion by rank in riches and titles, the sale of
town paupers at public outcry, the appoint-
ment of wardens to watch the children, and
of dog-whippers to beat out dogs in meeting
time, and the practice of nailing on the meet-
ing-house door wolves' heads, and other simi-
lar trophies captured for the town's bounty,
were an inheritance from the parishes of Old
England.

Bu
.
U
XX
nomine
i
VII.
IMPRESSMENTS FOR THE KING.
ESS than two years had passed, after
the organization of the town, when
warrants to impress men into the
King's military and naval service were re-
ceived by the captain of the town's militia
company. Impressment was not a new
thing. A line written on the inside of the
cover of Israel Fearing's book reads: “May
the 26 in 1707 I was preesed to the casel for
6 mounth ;” referring to his impressment
into Queen Anne's military service at "her
majesty's Castle William” on Castle Island
in Boston harbor; which fortification was at
that time garrisoned by "impressing men's
sons and servants every spring."
Impressment was a grievance, and yet
there was a plenty of law for it. Although
it had not been directly authorized by act
of Parliament, it was recognized as lawful in-
IMPRESSMENTS FOR TIIE KING. 105
n
U
asmuch as there were acts which made pro-
vision for the exemption of certain persons
from impressment to which they would other-
wise have been subject. Moreover the earli-
est laws of Massachusetts provided for "Im-
presses” of laborers, cattle, goods, soldiers,
and sailors; and the way to do it was de-
scribed by the Great and General Court from
time to time during the entire period of co-
lonial legislation. The laws authorized im-
pressments of laborers and artificers for
public works; of goods and cattle for public
service; of sailors and soldiers from the
militia for wars conducted by act of the co-
lonial legislature. They exempted from im-
pressments men who were suffering from
“any natural or personal impediment, as
want of years, greatness of years, defect of
minde, failing of senses, or impotency of
limbs.” Members of the Provincial Council,
representatives at the Great and General
Court and judges of assize, while in office,
were allowed by the law of 1704 to "enjoy
the priviledge of having one son or servant
exempted and freed from all impresses."
Each person liable to impressment was
required to appear himself or by a substitute
106 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
at the time and place appointed, on pain of
suffering imprisonment, unless he paid down
within two hours the fine fixed by law.
Those who paid the fine or who procured
substitutes were to be “esteemed as persons
that have served.” Soldiers were impressed
for the Indian wars as well as for wars in the
succeeding century; and extraordinary favors
were sometimes expected by those who re-
turned home after having served their King
in this compulsory manner.1
There was of course a natural desire to
escape impressments, and it was favored by
physicians' certificates of inability to serve,
which were easily obtained. These means,
employed “ by divers persons fit and able for
service," were described by the legislature as
“corrupt and fallacious " certificates written
by “some practitioners in chirurgery.” Many
who failed to get the fallacious certificates
ran away. The laws, having recited the fact
that “the ablest and fittest for service have
absconded and hid themselves from the im-
1 Sept. 6, 1746, Barnabas Bates and Ebenezer Perry, Jr.,
asked, in town meeting, to be excused "from paying Rates
the Ensuing year by Reason of their being on the Expedi-
tion at Cape Britton the Last year." -- Wareham Records.
IMPRESSMENTS FOR THE KING. 107
press,” gave authority to public officers to
pursue the fugitives, and to levy a tax of five
pounds upon their “body goods or chattels."
As Massachusetts by the charter of Wil-
liam and Mary had power to enact such laws
only as were “not repugnant or contrary to
the Lawes of this our Realme of England,"
it is to be presumed that all impressment
laws of the province were of this character.
But they were often executed in a despotic
manner. In 1757 the Provincial Council
· directed the sheriff of Suffolk County “to
Impress Thirty Seamen for Manning the
Snow Prince of Wales as soon as may be;"
and in 1759 the General Court authorized
the captain general “to impress out of the
inward bound Vessels so many Seamen as
to make up the Compliment of Men to com-
pleat the number allowed to man the Ship
King George." The inhabitants of Boston
frequently protested against the “oppressive
manner before unknown to Englishmen and
attended with tragical consequences,” in
which impressment warrants were executed.
It could be said of the officers of the law
that, like Falstaff, they “misused the King's
- press most damnably," thereby causing riots,
108 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
and compelling the governor to promise that
impressments should be stopped.
There was reason for the farmers of Ware-
ham to be alarmed when the King's ship (or
snow) came up Buzzard's Bay in 1741, and
again in 1742, and sent warrants to the cap-
tain of the militia to impress men into the
King's service. Although some took to the
woods, none offered resistance. In Israel
Fearing's book are written the names of his
townsmen who were impressed at various
times between the years 1740 and 1748, to
assist in carrying on the wars of England
against France and Spain :-
“April, 1740 Robert Bese impresed and Na-
than Brigg's man; and Nathan Briggs gave
Robert Bese fifteen pounds old tener for half a
man and Robert Bese went to the Estward.
“May 1741 Josiah Cunit Impresed to go on
bord ye snow And he Recived ten pounds in
mony.
“And Edward Bump paid him 5 pounds for his
sons.
"And John bump ye 3 two pounds.
“And After hadawa two pounds for his sun.
“And Joseph doty one pound for his sun.
“ March 1742 Joshua bese Impresed to go on
IMPRESSMENTS FOR THE KING. 109
bord ye sno and Joseph Landers paid 4 pounds
for his son to him.
“March 1743 Noah bump Imprest for his
magests sarvis and Runaway.
" June 1744 Jonathan bump Jun Impresed
and Samuel peary for his magist sarvis and they
both went to the Est frontters.
“March 1745 Oliver Nores impresed and Run
away and Joseph doty Jun and Run away Ed-
ward bump impresed and Joshua bump. And
barnabas bates and these 3 went in his magest
sarvis to cap britan.
“June 1745. Ebenezer peary Jun and Jona-
than bump Junr Listed for cap britten and I gave
them fouer pounds apeace old tener.
" Jabez bensen was Impresed and went to ye
Estward.
“Joshua Gibbes Jun Impresed and paul Ra-
ment and paul Rament Recived twenty pouns old
tener and If Either of these are Impresed the
other is to Apear and go Into his magestys sar-
vis or Else to give 20 pounds old tener.
"July 1746 biniamin Chubback Impresed and
gave Noah bump twenty pounds old ten to goo
half for him.
“Samuel peary and Noah bump impresed to
go to the Westward frunttery and Samuel peary
Received 40 pounds old ten 20 pounds of John
bushap for his sonn and ten pounds of Jorg
Whit and ten pounds of Joh gibbes
IIO COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
“Sepr 1746 Jonathan Chubback Jun Impresed
for Zeccues Bump At five pounds old ten Joseph
Giford Jun presed at five pounds and ten shillings
old tener for Edward bump to goo in his magty
sarves.
“March 1748 Judah Swift and Joseph doty
and Edward Rayment Imprest and hired Robart
bese for 55 pounds."
The record shows that these men were
equipped for the service on which they were
going with muskets, halberds, drums, and the
royal ensign; and that opportunity was given
them to buy substitutes, to obtain compensa-
tion, and even to run away,

.
AN!!
V1
111111
VIII.
THE TOWN'S MEETING-HOUSE.
AT stood on the common where the
flagstaff now stands, a plain square
building, stained silver-gray by the
sun and rains. On its front side there was a
porch, on top of its front gable there was a
little turret, and over the turret, on a stumpy
rod, whirled a whale-shaped wind-vane. The
turret and the vane gave to the building an
air of humble respectability. Around it were
a few oak-trees, outposts of the primeval
forest which extended behind it to the shore
of the bay, a mile distant. In front was the
principal highway of the region, called by the
earliest settlers "ye contry rode.” It was
along this way that Englishmen of Plymouth
drove their cattle to the Mattapoiset necks to
be wintered, as long ago as the year 1655, and
over the same path English soldiers traveled
in 1676 to attack the Indian King Philip. A
112 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
way branched from it to some meadows and
houses on Cromeset Neck; where three chim-
ney stacks may yet be seen, in the woods, the
only relics of those seaside homes of the
parish. The Woonkinco River was so near
the meeting-house that the hum of its grist-
mill could have been heard above the voice of
the preacher in the pulpit, if the miller had
been allowed to run his grindstones on Sun-
day. Beyond the river was that stretch of
verdant meadows which had given the name
of Fresh-meadow Village to the small settle-
ment in the neighborhood.
The Agawame planters began to build the
meeting-house in the year 1735. It was a
private undertaking by a few farmers, who got
their sustenance from the soil and from the
sea, their clothing from sheep's wool carded
and spun at home, and who, for trade, made
tar and gathered turpentine in the pine
forests. As times were hard, because the
current paper-money of the province was
almost valueless, the undertaking dragged
heavily on their hands. Four years later
they were glad to turn it over to their new-
made town, which immediately levied a tax
upon them wherewith to finish it. In the
THE TOWN'S MEETING-HOUSE. 113
records the tax was called “the meeting hous
Rat.” Some paid the “Rat” with labor,
some paid it with lumber, some with nails
wrought in the home smithies, some with
farm products which were exchanged for
labor; for example, Uriah Savery gave “76
pounds of beef toward building ye meeting
hous at 6 pence a pound.”
As soon as it was habitable for public wor-
ship the town appointed agents “to sell ye
Spots for Pues," and chose two serious men
to police the Sunday services. It was the
duty of these men to watch all playful boys
and girls, especially boys, whom the elders of
Duxbury had publicly stigmatized as “the
wretched boys on the Lord's day.” By com-
mon opinion they were regarded as an annoy-
ance to the minister and an offense to the
gravity of the town.
It was a small meeting-house, but it had
more than one door, as appears from the elec-
tion of a man to sweep it "and unlock the
Doores.” It was customary in those times
not only to separate men from women and
boys from girl's in seating the congregation,
but to provide separate doors for them; there-
fore the little house had a great door for men
omen
114 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
on its front, and two small doors on opposite
sides, of which one was for women and the
other was probably for symmetry.
The sweeping and the locking it were sub-
jects which exercised the Town's Mind annu-
ally; and although the doorkeeper's emolu-
ment had been twenty-five shillings old tenor
a year, which was equivalent to nearly two
dollars in silver, the town was willing to pay
more for a better service. It is recorded that,
at a town meeting in 1747, “Ye modarater
Pute to vote whether the town would Give
Sam" Savery forty Shillings old teener to
Sweep and keep the kee of the meeting hous
ye Insuing year and It Past In in the affearm-
itive and ye sd Sam" accepted.”
But in 1748 the said Samuel was no longer
the town's doorkeeper. The compensation
was increased to sixty shillings, and Ichabod
Samson was chosen for the service. Instead
of keeping the key he lost it, compelling the
selectmen to put into the tax levy seven
shillings and sixpence “for a Lock and kee
for ye meeting hous.” Notwithstanding this
loss Ichabod continued in charge ; but in
1754 his meagre salary was cut down. There
was some reason for the cutting : the Great
1
THE TOWN'S MEETING-HOUSE. 115
and General Court at Boston had established
a silver currency, and shillings were worth
more than they had been. Besides, he had
begun to show that carelessness in the dis-
charge of his duties which a long tenure of
office is apt to beget. He had neglected to
use his broom, and had fallen into the habit
of locking people in the meeting-house on
Sundays, or of locking them out of it ; for a
town meeting gave him positive orders “ To
open ye dores & shutt them when wanted,”
and it directed him to sweep the house once
a month, the general expectation being that
he was to sweep it “so often as there shalbe
ocation to keep it deesent.”.
It needed a great deal of sweeping. There
were days when the doors were swinging
open, inviting all wandering sheep, dogs, and
boys to explore it. Children played in it on
Sunday noons, if the warden was out of sight,
thereby “Prophanning the Sabbath in the
Intermission Season," as the elders said ;
while the latter ate luncheons there, smoked
tobacco, and scattered trash upon the floor
without “prophanning" the place at all. It
was used for town meetings and for elections,
at which times boys climbed into the pulpit
116 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
and imagined themselves to be ministers. In
its loft were stored the town's drum, halberds,
muskets, ammunition, and the British colors
which had been carried in the French and
Indian wars, and were always flaunted through
the town by the train-band on training days.1
Notwithstanding these uses of the meeting-
house, the people had some regard for it.
When the adjacent common became a dump-
ing ground for superfluous stones and a
market-place for firewood, they ordered that
no stones shall be dumped nor wood piled in
front of it. When the rains leaked into it,
1 It is worth while to note the vulgar uses to which
churches (or meeting-houses) were sometimes put in Eng.
land in the 17th century, as showing that the careless-
ness and disrespect in which these edifices were held by
New England colonists were inherited from Old England.
In Bedford, as related in Brown's Life and Times of John
Bunyan, a man got into trouble for "folding some sheep in
the church during a snow storm;" a woman for “hanginge
her lynnen in the church to dry.” The curate of the parish
was presented in 1612 for baiting a bear in the church at
Woburn; the church wardens of Knotting and their sons
and the rector, because they “permitted and were present
at cock fightings in the chancell;" and the rector of Carlton,
because "immediately before service he did lead his horse
in at the south doore into the chancell of the church where
he sett him and there continued all the time of said service
and sermon.”
THE TOWN'S MEETING-HOUSE.
117
they voted to put "some scattering shinggles
on the roof.” Once they bought a pulpit
“cushing." In 1764 they altered “the front
Gallery so the men has the whole of it to Set
in ;” and in 1767 they appropriated four
pounds, equivalent to thirteen dollars and
thirty-three cents, "for Doing ye meeting
hous and for a Suppolidge," — whatever that
strange thing may have been. Moreover, His
Majesty's justice of the peace, a rugged
farmer whose loyalty to the King was bred
in his bones, fined all boys and girls who
laughed in it during the time of worship.
This worthy opened his court records in 1755
with these writings :-
“Deborah Bergs hath paid me as a fine for Lafing
in the Wareham meeting house on the Sabarth
day In the time of Publick Devine Sarvice By the
hand of Ebnezer Brigs 5 Shillings”
“Hanah Elis hath paid me as a fine for Breach of
Sabath for Lafing in the meeting house on the
Lords Day In the time of Devine Sarvice By the
hand of Rholand Benson 5 Shillings”
Everybody in the town, whether living near
the meeting-house or far from it, went to the
Sunday services. A celebrated petition to
D
118 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
the King, in 1731, from the rector of the
Church of England in Boston, “most humbly
informs your Majesty that it is very common
for the people in New England to go ten or
fifteen miles to Church.” This custom filled
the seats of the Wareham meeting-house so
full that some worshipers must bring chairs,
which they placed wherever there was an
open space on the floor. The chairs became
an annoyance to the pew-owners, the aristoc-
racy of the place, who in 1757 got an order
from the town “to clear the Alleys of the
meeting Hous of chairs and all other Incum-
brances." Whether the ousted worshipers
stood during the services thereafter, or seated
themselves on doorsteps and window sills, the
records say not.
Religion filled a large space in the thoughts
and in the laws of the province. The laws
1 A prolonged observance of the Sabbath continued to be
the custom in New England until the influence of railroads
broke it up.
"I remember being despatched when a lad ove Saturday afternoon in
the winter, to bring home a few bushels of apples engaged of a farmer a
mile distant; how the careful exact man looked first at the clock, then
out of the window at the sun, and turning to me said: 'I cannot measure
out the apples in time for you to get home before sundown; you must
come again Monday.'” – Rev. Horace Bushnell, at Litchfield, Conn.,
in 1851.
THE TOWN'S MEETING-HOUSE. 119
directed that the Sabbath time shall begin at
the going-down of Saturday's sun and shall
continue through the evening of Sunday. On
Saturday evening the usual labors of the
household were suspended, and when Sunday
dawned preparations were made to go to the
meeting-house. Then traveling and walking
afield were forbidden. To travel was not to
pass from one town to another only; it was
also passing from house to house in the vil-
lage. His Majesty's justice of the peace was
within the instructions of the law when he
wrote in his book:-
"May th 10 Day 1769 then Parsonly appeared
Japhath washburn and acknowledged himself Gilty
of a Breach of Sabbath In traveling From my
hous onto Zaphanier Bumps on the 16 Day of
april on a arond To Git Benjamin Benson to
worck for him and he hath paid Ten Shillings as
a Fine To me John Fearing Justis of peace"
Nor can the hay be winrowed on Sunday,
nor may children pick apples in the orchards.
The same justice wrote in his book :-
“September th 5 Day 1772 personly appeared
william Estes and acknowledged him Self Gilty of
Racking hay on The First Day of the week or
Lords Day and paid Fine Ten Shillings to me"
I 20 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAX.
"July th 27 1774 then Elizabeth Mosse paid Five
Shillings For her son Job for a breach of Sabath
for puling aples in Benjamin Fearing's orchard
complained of by Ebenezer Swift warden to me"
Religion was also the romance of the
people. The humor and pathos of Bunyan's
story depicting the progress of his pilgrims
from this world to that which is to come
touched all hearts. It was the delight of
their imagination, in the Sunday twilights, to
follow Christian and Hopeful while they
crossed the Inchanted Ground, and, entering
the Land of Beulah, “whose air was very
sweet and pleasant," journeyed on to the
Celestial City; for many believed that they
were going thither by the same way.
To such a people, going to the meeting-
house for divine worship was a duty ; to be
there was a social pleasure by which the duty
was enforced. The intermission between the
forenoon and the afternoon service furnished
opportunity for greetings to those who, living
on almost impassable roads, had not seen each
other during the preceding six days. Many
things were to be talked about, some of which
were suggested by announcements tacked
upon the great door of the meeting-house.
THE TOWN:S MEETING-HOUSE. 121
There they read, as from an old newspaper,
of an intention of marriage between persons
known to everybody; and although the town-
clerk had stood up in the congregation and
screamed it at the top of his voice, it was an
endless subject for comment, especially if the
woman had as publicly renounced the inten-
tion -- as women sometimes did. There they
read of a sale at outcry to come off during
the week, and the wise ones were asked to
foretell how much the property would fetch,
and to explain why it was to be sold. They
read of stray cattle lost or found, of a trinket
picked up on the highway, of the last bounty
offered for a fox's head, of taxes due, of a
whaling sloop about to sail and would take a
green hand, of a townsman going to Boston,
of the next town meeting, and they threshed
out the questions there to be voted upon.
These Sunday noon gatherings, which were
not unlike the meetings of a village club,
supplied not only news and gossip, but also
opportunities for a trade or a barter not to be
neglected.
Thus the Sundays came and went for
thirty years, when it appeared that the large
congregation must have a larger meeting-
122 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
house; and the town having refused to build
it, preferring to patch out the old one, a few
townsmen undertook the building. Although
there had been migrations to Connecticut
during these years, the town had retained
the natural increase of its population, save
what part death and the King's impress had
carried away. There were more farms, more
sheep and neat cattle, more sloops going to
sea, and a more general prosperity than
there had been. A forge had been set up in
the woods to work iron ore dug from bogs
and ponds; the schoolmaster had become a
part of the community; and the political
strifes in Boston had hardly been heard of.
The new meeting-house was set up "Nigh
where the old meeting-house now stands,"
as the location of the land given for it is
described in the conveyance, dated “March
16th in the tenth year of his Majesties
reign annoque Domini 1770." No barrels
of rum were tapped at its raising, because it
was a private undertaking, to be done without
waste. The farmers who built it followed the
architectural style of the old house; they
knew no other style, and used a part of the
old materials in the new building. They
THE TOWN'S MEETING-HOUSE. 123
were to repay themselves for their expenses
from the sales of pews, the deeds of which
ran in very unscholastic language, showing
how destitute of a school education these
town fathers had been when they were boys.?
Near the new meeting-house was Benjamin
Fearing's inn, which in the early part of the
century had been the dwelling-house of Isaac
Bumpus, the miller. He had been a prom-
1“We the Subscribers Major part of the Commity Chosen
by Subscribers of the New Meeting hous in Wareham to
build for them said Meeting hous agreabell to thear articales
Subscribed to and to give to them a Tittle of thear pew or
pewes theay shall Drow by Lott and it appearing to ous
that John Fearing Esquire of Wareham haith Subscribed
and paid to ous the following Sumes to Wit the Sum of Six-
teen poundes and the Sum of Six pounds Eleven shillings
and Six pence for the Building said Meeting hous and a
further Sum of four poundes Eight shillings for a pew he
Boght of ous at publick Veandew -
We Do In ower Capacety Intitle to him the said John
Fearing Esq. of Wareham. the following pewes which he
Drew by Lott and Chose and that he Boght beeing Num-
bered ass foloweth to wit one Nº. 31 another Nº. 54 and the
other Nº. 43 To him the said John Fearing Esquire his
heirs and assigns soo Long as Shall be thought proper by
the said proprity of Wareham to Continue said Meet Hous
Wareham June
Barnabas Bates )
Commity of
ye 4: 1774.
Ebenar, Briggs
The New
Josiah Carver
Meeting Hous"
Samuel Savery
124 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
inent man in the work of organizing the
town, was chosen town treasurer, and in 1739
was appointed by the church to settle with
Deacon Hamlen, as the records state, "to
see how he had disposed of ye contributions."
But the tables were turned when, in 1747,
the town “Chose Decon John Ellis to Prose-
cute Isaac Bump for ye money that is due
from sd Bump to the Town," which he had
collected while he was its treasurer.1
There were no stage-coaches to pull up
at the inn, but travelers on horseback from
Plymouth and Cape Cod, and those coming
by sloops from Nantucket and the Vineyard,
rested there. Its bar-room was a crowded
resort on town-meeting days; there the mili-
tia captain had his headquarters on training
days, and all the year it was the home of the
town's municipal business, –
“Where village statesmen talk'd with looks profound,
And news much older than their ale went round.”
Its gardens extended to the river, where sea
trout were to be caught in great numbers on
1 The surname of Edward Bompasse has received from
his descendants varied spellings, such as Bumpas, Bumpus,
Bump. In a deed of 1793 “ Jeremiah Bump,” for £ 300,
conveys his old farm and house in Wareham to his "son
Jeremiah Bumpus Jr."
THE TOWN'S MEETING-HOUSE. 125
spring mornings. Sloops and scows - were
moored a little way down the tide, and families
that sailed to meeting from the bay shores
grounded their boats near by. From its
windows could be seen the town stocks, in
which drunkards who had left their money in
the bar-room were seated until they became
sober, jeered at meanwhile by the village
boys. The stock-irons also held fast at times
those unfortunate offenders who had not
money to pay the fines imposed upon them
by His Majesty's justice of the peace.
One November day in 1763 this dignitary
dismounted in front of the inn and entered
the bar-room. He laid aside his beaver hat
and red camlet cloak trimmed with fox skins,
and seated himself by the great fireplace to
chat with his brother the landlord; when
there entered a sailor from a sloop just ar-
rived from Nantucket, who, after drinking a
grog, became boisterous and finally profane.
Whereupon the scene was changed. The
bar-room was transformed into a court-room,
and this audacious offender of the King's
peace was tried, condemned, and punished
according to colony law. The sentence which
placed him in the stocks was this :-
126 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
“At a cort held before John Fearing Esquire
one of his majesties Justices of the peace at the
House of Benjamin Fearing In Wareham on the
II of November 1763 Jonathan Wing marriner
being Convicted for prefainly Swaring in the
Preasence and hearing of said Justice Two prefain
Oaths It is considered by said Justice that the
said Jonathan pay a fine of Five Shillings for the
first of said Oaths and one Shilling For the other
to his majesty For the use of the Poor of Wareham
or In Default thereof that the said Jonathan being
a common sailor shall be sett in the Stocks an
Hour and halfe.”
In sight from the new meeting-house stood
the whipping-post, at which convicted thieves
were flogged by a constable, and tramps, or
persons who by the law of England were
accounted vagabonds, were“ whipt with rodds
· so as it exceed not fifteen stripes."

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*
AU
i
the
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"
!
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IX.
A SUNDAY MORNING IN 1771.
WET us turn away from the whipping-
post and enter into the new meeting-
house on a Sunday morning of June
in the year 1771.
Along the highways, the green lanes and
field paths, and from the boat landings, come
the worshipers in family groups, followed
by their dogs. Some are on foot, some are
on horseback, the wife riding on a pillion be-
hind her husband, their youngest child on
blood and of one faith. Young men are
carrying their best homespun coats on their
arms, and young women are carrying their
best shoes in their hands, intending to put
them on before they enter the meeting-house.
His Majesty's justice of the peace comes
in a dusty shay, drawn by a stiff-limbed
mare that refuses to quicken her gait not-
128 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
withstanding her master's repeated objurga-
tions, accompanied by a jerk of the reins, to
“Git along, yer old dumb toad!” The people
exchange greetings with each other as they
arrive at the doors, and when the Squire
alights they salute him respectfully, for no
man except the minister is considered to be
his peer.
We enter by the great door, whose face is
covered with all kinds of announcements to
the public. Opposite to us as we enter stands
the pulpit, lofty and formidable in appearance.
There is a large window behind it, a dome-
shaped sounding-board above it, and a steep
staircase leading up to its entrance. When
the minister has ascended the stairs and shut
the pulpit door behind him he is entirely lost
to sight. At the foot of the pulpit and facing
the congregation are the seats of the deacons.
Before them stands the communion table,
which is not served on sacrament days with
unfermented wine, as we know from an order
of the church at Milton in May, 1734, “that
the Deacons be desired to provide good
Canary wine for the Communion Table.”
Next to the pulpit is the pew of the minis-
ter's wife. Out of it a narrow door opens
A SUNDAY MORNING IN 1771. 129
into a closet under the pulpit, in which the
town's broom, the demijohn of Canary wine,
and the pewter baptizing-basin and com-
munion Alagons and cups are kept.1 From
this pew a line of square pews runs along the
walls of the house, around to the other side
of the pulpit. They are of clearest oak, whose
beauty is not covered by paints. They were
made with the best skill of the village
carpenters. They are topped by balustrades,
and are so high that when the congregation
is seated a few heads only appear in sight
above them. Seats are hung by hinges on
three sides of each pew, and are lifted when
the worshipers stand up for long prayers,
1" July 1750. Then Esq* Fearing delivered me eight pound
(Old tenor) & desired me with it to procure a Flaggon which
he intended to give to this church as a gift, & have the two
first letters of his name set thereon, and if the money was
not enough he would make it up to me when I had pro-
cured it."
"May 6. 1752. Our sister Mary King wife to Ichabod
King of Rochester presented this church with a Bason for
baptism with the two first letters of her name thereon: The
church voted their thanks to her therefor. And it was the
same time proposed & voted that I should have the old
Bason allowing therefor what the two Deacons should Judge
it to be worth.” — Reza Rowland Thacher, in the Wareham
Church Records.
130 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
permitting them to lean against the parti-
tions, where they get some assistance in
standing. The pews are the upper seats of
the synagogue. The lower seats are two
ranges of benches in the centre of the house,
fronting the pulpit and separated by the great
alley. In the fore-seats of these ranges, elder-
ly people and those who are hard of hearing
are seated ; the hind-seats are occupied by
younger persons. Of the same rank are cer-
tain seats in the galleries, reached by stairs
in the corners of the house.
Mr. Rowland Thacher is the minister. He
came fresh from Harvard College to this
secluded town more than thirty years ago; .
and here he has stayed, occupied in preach-
ing, farming, marrying, burying, and repre-
senting all the scholastic learning of the
community. It is said that he is not “as
young as he used to be”; but he is still able
to sympathize in the fortunes and misfor-
tunes of his flock. He has been poorly paid
for his labors; his small salary has always
been small and always in arrears, and even
now the town is owing to him that of last year.
Nevertheless, with a cheerful countenance he
appears at the parapet of the pulpit, and
A SUNDAY MORNING IN 1771.
131
stretching out his hands as signal for the con-
gregation to stand up, he begins the services
with a prayer thirty minutes long.
When it is ended the seats in the pews are
let fall, making a noise like an irregular dis-
charge of muskets; there is a shuffling of
feet on the sanded floor, an uneasy settling
of the congregation in the seats, and at last
everybody is still. During the stillness Mr.
Thacher appears again and announces a
psalm to be sung. There are not many psalm
books in the house, there is no choir and but
little knowledge of music. But there is Dea-
con William Blackmer, of Blackmer's Pond,
who has a strong voice, and for that reason
has been appointed to read and tune the
psalms in meeting. He stands on the pulpit
stairs with a pine pitch-pipe in hand. He
blows the key-note, recites two lines of the
psalm, adjusts his voice, which is somewhat
raspy by reason of too many shoutings to his
oxen yesterday, and then he starts away.
The congregation joins in an arduous pursuit.
It lags behind, its tones are dreadfully dis-
cordant. Some dogs sitting in the alleys
utter cries of distress, and Mr. Thacher's
collie, lying at the pulpit door, howls patheti-
132 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
cally at the music. But Deacon Blackmer,
as in duty bound, keeps on his winding way,
by turns reciting and starting, until all the
psalm is worked off; and the congregation
then relapses into quiet.
From this condition it is summoned by a
signal to stand up while Mr. Thacher becomes
"more large in prayer.” This prayer is an
important part of the service. It has a sys-
tematic beginning, middle, and end. It takes
alternately the form of a petition and a nar-
ration, and includes within its sweep Noah,
Abraham, the ancient Hebrews, the sick and
the afflicted of the parish, and His Majesty
King George the Third. When its long-
drawn end is reached there is another slam-
ming of seats and another shuffling of feet
on the sanded floor.
In the hush that follows, Thomas Samson,
son of Ichabod, doorkeeper, floor-sweeper,
grave-digger, is seen going up the pulpit
stairs. His earlier duty was beating the
town drum to announce meeting-time. Now
and then he has swept the meeting-house
floor and has sifted fresh sand upon it. He
also has provided cold water for the ferocious
custom of baptizing babies in the meeting-
11
A SUNDAY MORNING IN 1771.
133
house on the first Sunday after their birth,
however inclement the weather or perilous
the journey thither; a cruel custom as we
now estimate the value of infant life. John
Cotton, minister at Hampton, wrote in his
diary : “Being Ld's day my wife was de-
livered of a Son who was baptised by myself
on ye Sabbath following viz Dec 28. 1701 &
was called Simon.”
Now, the principal business of Thomas
Samson is with the tall, brass-bound hour-glass
standing on the pulpit's edge. He turns it
in view of the preacher, who is to preach
an hour, or as long as the sands are run-
ning. It is not the tender mercy and love, but
the inflexible justice and anger, of the Su-
preme Being that the preacher sets before the
congregation. He declares that “the saints
in heaven will rejoice in seeing the justice of
God glorified in the sufferings of the damned.”
The doctrine is cut into many divisions, in
which the objections of skeptics are stated
and successfully controverted. Then comes
the application, followed by reproof and ex-
hortation adapted to the supposed needs of all
hearers. Perhaps it will be necessary to turn
the hour-glass for another run before every
134 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
hearer can get the teaching fitted to his
condition.
The dreadful doctrine of the sermon and
the loud voice of the preacher are a contrast
to the cheerful and peaceful surroundings of
the house, whose doors and windows are open,
admitting freely the summer air and the
beneficent sunshine. The rustling of leaves
on neighboring oaks, the songs of birds, the
stamping of horses hitched to the trees, the
drowsy hum of insects, are interludes to the
long argument. Now a great bumble-bee
sails into the house as if it were a traveler
turned aside to inquire about the noise in the
pulpit. Every eye turns to this new-comer
as to one that brings relief. It circles around
the preacher's head, it buzzes against the
pulpit window, skims back and forth over the
congregation, and encourages the restless
boys and girls to believe that it is about to
alight on the bald head of Barnabas Bates,
the warden.
In spite of the energetic tones of the
preacher a drowsiness comes over some of the
farmers, who try to resist it by standing up,
or by taking off their heavy homespun coats,
or by going out to quiet their horses. A
A SUNDAY MORNING IN 1771. 135
babe lying on its mother's lap as she sits in
the doorway of the porch utters a cry, and
suddenly every head turns towards the babe.
But the preacher continues to unfold his
gloomy theme, unmindful of the weariness
apparent in the congregation. He began at
“ firstly," he has now passed “twelfthly,"
and he begs his hearers to follow him “once
more" as he opens another gradient.
When at last “finally” is ended, with
“aymen!” — there is a noisy rush of boys to
the doors, by which they escape into the open
air, unless constables have been placed there
to keep, as the Salem records have it, “ye
doores fast and suffer none to goe out before
ye whole exercise bee ended.”


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X
THE TOWN'S MINISTER.
LTHOUGH Rowland Thacher was
the first minister of the town, he
I was not the first minister of the peo-
ple who ſormed it. The Agawame planters,
in their lay-out of lands in 1701, appropriated
two lots for tillage and one lot of meadow,
"lwo and for the yuse of the ministre," as
their records say, and this was before they
had a minister or knew where to get one. In
1712 they voted “that Mr. Rouland Cotton
should have Improvement of ye meadow for
seaven years next ensewing." He was the
minister of Sandwich town, ten miles to the
eastward; and this grant indicates that he
rode over to the plantation at certain times
to preach, perhaps under the forest trees,
while he continued to live in Sandwich and
be its minister. He was paid for this itiner-
ant service by the mowing and pasturage of
the ministry meadow. In those days there
THE TOWN'S MINISTER. 137
appears to have been a relation between min.
12
02
that measures for the maintenance of each
should be taken simultaneously. Mr. Cotton
had not only the Agawame meadow for the
support of his horse, but he also had the
privilege of pasturing that omnivorous ani-
mal in the Sandwich burying-ground, pro-
vided he fenced it around. This privilege is
not to be considered as an indication of pov-
erty, for a burying-ground was, in colonial
times, a favorite browsing ground of the
minister's horse. But it was sometimes
necessary for a town to request its minister
“not to have more horses there than shall
be really necessary;" as a Plymouth town
meeting requested the Rev. Chandler Rob-
bins, in 1789, when he was pasturing several
horses on Burial Hill, much to the damage
of the grave-stones.
Mr. Cotton had another privilege as the
Sandwich town minister. The town had voted
to him a portion of “all such drift whales as
shall during the time of his ministry come
ashore.” Samuel Maverick, in “A Briefe De-
scription of New England," written about
1660, speaks of “a good Towne called Sand-
Yy1
138 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
wich, a Towne which affords some yeares a
quantity of Whalebone made of Whales which
drive up dead in that Bay.” And the Ply-
mouth Court had, in 1662, announced that it
"would bee very comendable and beneficiall
to the townes where God's Providence shall
cast any whales if they should agree to sett
appart some pte of every such fish or oyle
for the Incurragement of an able Godly min-
nester amongst them." Thus Sandwich was
“a good Towne," and with its whales it en-
couraged Mr. Cotton in the work of the min-
istry, while he encouraged the Agawame
planters.
After these planters had organized their
town under the corporate name of Wareham,
a name taken -- no one knows why -- from
the ancient town in Dorset, on the English
Channel, their first duty was to provide them-
selves with an “able, learned, orthodox min-
ister of good conversation to dispense the
Word of God unto them,” according to the
province laws. They immediately accepted
Rowland Thacher as a man answering to
this requirement, and agreed to maintain
him by a settlement of three hundred pounds,
and an annual salary of one hundred and
THE TOWN'S MINISTER. 139
twenty pounds old tenor. These sums, al-
though of large denomination, were of small
value in coined money. The new minister,
whose grandfather, Antony Thacher, came
to Boston from Salisbury, England, in 1635,
was thirty years old, and married to Abigail
Crocker. The town which called him was
composed of frugal husbandmen, who made
their small gains by small savings. They
therefore wished an inexpensive ordination,
and instructed their master of ceremonies,
one Edward Bump, to provide “not accord-
ing to the custom of Taverns Selling of Vict-
uals but as shall be Judged Reasonable by
the People." And so the minister was or-
1739. The next day he organized a church of
forty-four members. It was the frame upon
which the town was built; every inhabitant
being included within the fold of the parish.
After a time the town became neglectful
of its duty to its minister, and as often as
it was assembled to consider the constantly
recurring problem, “How much money the
town is for raising for defraying the neces-
sary charges arising within the same," the
question of the amount of salary to be paid
140 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
to Parson Thacher caused disagreeable dis-
cussions. In this respect Wareham did not
stand alone. A similar feeling in regard to
the support of ministers prevailed in other
towns. In an address to the legislature of
1747, Governor Shirley said: “I have heard
so much of the Difficultys which many of
the Ministers of the Gospel are brought un-
der thro the great Depreciation of the Bills
of Credit in which their Salarys are paid and
the little care taken by their People to make
them proper allowances for it, that it seems
probable many will soon be necessitated to
quit the Ministry." This promised to be the
destiny of Parson Thacher. But there was
a law which declared that if a town neglected
for six months to make suitable provision for
its minister, the Court of Quarter Sessions
shall order a competent allowance for him
out of the estate and ability of the people.
The town, being reminded of this, was warned
to assemble, in May, 1748, “to Cum” — as
the town clerk of the period recorded it-
“to Sum a Greement with Mr. Thacher that
may Be to his Satisfaction as to ye Support
that he ought to have from the town that
thear may Be return maid to ye General
THE TOWNAT>
)
'S MINISTER. 141
Cort.” In consequence of this warning, a
committee was chosen to treat with him
“consearning his Salery to know how much
money would content him ;" and the record
says that “he came in town-meeting and
thear said he Declined saying anything in
that affare," – a decision which showed the
honorable character of the man. The result
was that three hundred pounds were voted to
him as a salary for that year. This was paper
money, and the value of the sum was about
seventy-five Spanish milled dollars. In 1750
he was given to improve the ministry lands
his horse thirty-eight years before, and he
was authorized to bring a suit to dispossess
the occupant of them, who was Esquire Is-
rael Fearing, His Majesty's justice of the
peace, and consequently the greatest man in
town. This disagreeable task he probably
did not undertake, as it was evidently an at-
tempt of the town to employ him to pull its
soon after made £53 6s. 8d., which, by the
new law, was equivalent to one hundred and
seventy-eight Spanish milled dollars ; and he
was told that he might have the town's
142 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
money lying in the treasury of Middleborough
“for his own use if any be there." Probably
there was not a penny there.
Parson Thacher had occasion to discipline
some members of the church who refused to
make, in public, a penitent confession of their
errors, according to a custom derived from
Old England. Those who were absent from
the communion table on sacrament day were
summoned to account for their absence. Per-
haps the absentee pleaded that he could not
commune with a neighbor who had cheated
him in trading, or had spoken bad words of
him, or whom he had seen overcome with
strong drink. Both persons were summoned
before the church, their statements were
heard, and the erring one was advised to offer
“christian satisfaction" by a public confes-
sion of penitence. A refusal to do this
caused the member to be “suspended."
A troublesome case of discipline was that
of Abigail Muxom, who in 1750 became the
subject of a town scandal which was proba-
bly relished by the gossips as thoroughly as
1“ By coaches to church four miles off, where a pretty
good sermon and a declaration of penitence of a man that
had undergone the church's censure for his wicked life.”
Pepys's Diary, June 16th, 1665.
THE TOWN'S MINISTER.
143
similar scandals are relished now. Three
years later the church took notice of it on
the complaint of four members, the gist of
which was that “this our sister has been
guilty of immodest conduct.” It met to con-
sider the evidences on which the complaint
rested. These were three old and unsworn
statements, running as follows:
“Elisha Benson Saith That he was at Edmund
Muxoms house some time since & saw sd
Muxoms wife very familiar with Joseph Benson
by talking of balderdash stuff & kissing & hug-
ging one another in the absence of her husband.
At another time I saw them coming out of the
house together & discovered none but they two.
Middleborough, Octr. 1750."
“ Caleb Cushman & his wife do Testify & say
That we some time since have seen Joseph Ben-
son & Abigail Muxom at our house & their be-
haviour was uncommon for married people; she
fawning about him & sometimes in his lap or
upon his knee & he haleing of her, running his
face up to hers, & as we suppose kissing of her
or aiming to do so & talking & joacking like
young people. -- Plymton, Octr. 1750."
"Jedidah Swift wife to Eben" Swift Junr Saith
that she was at the house of Edmund Muxom
144 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
four times the summer past & his wife Abigail
Muxom did several times call her child to her
& ask the child who its father was, & the child
· would answer Doctor Jo's at which she would
laugh & make sport of. -- Wareham, Decem". 3.
1750."
!
The records, written by Parson Thacher,
state that the complaint and “the above evi-
dences were read to the church in the pres-
ence of this our sister. She denyed the two
first evidences as having no truth in them,
but the last she owned to be true.” She was
then, by a vote, “suspended from the com-
munion table till she give a christian satisfac-
tion ;” and soon the matter was forgotten.
In 1753, while perplexed about his salary,
his wife died. In the same year also died
the eldest son of Esquire Israel Fearing,
leaving a pretty and pious young widow. Nat-
urally the thoughts of Parson Thacher turned
to her, and occasionally he might be seen
riding his mare to Agawame to visit her. It
was a lonesome ride, across the Woonkinco
River by a causeway over the dam, then east-
ward two miles on a sandy road winding
through silent pine woods in which sheep
were pastured and foxes were hunted, until

.
THE SQUIRE'S DWELLING-HOUSE. Page 145.
THE TOWN'S MINISTER.
145
it reached Deacon Swift's inn, where the
farmers were accustomed to barter mutton
and hay for rum by the gallon. The inn
stood on a picturesque site near the bank of
the Agawame River; near it were a lumber
mill and a merchant's store, making a fussy
little centre of trade. But the parson does
not pull up there. He rides a half mile fur-
ther, and reaches “the neighborhood,” nigh
the burying-acre, where the Squire's dwell-
ing-house stood, and stands to this day. He
was not a stranger there. The Squire's
account-book mentions him as a buyer of
“cheas, malases, hay, hunny, an ox waying
427 pounds, laths, mutten.” But his errand
now is for nothing of that sort. He wants
the pretty widow for a wife. He is many
years her senior, yet, being the town minister
and a graduate of Harvard College, he is the
man whom any woman might be glad to wed.
His suit was short and successful, and in the
eleventh month from the day he became a
widower he married Hannah Fearing: 1
1 The will of Israel Fearing, Esquire, 1754, contained
the following bequest: “I give and allow to my daugh-
ter in law Hannah Fearing during her widowhood, the fol-
lowing privilege namely, the use of the Westerly lower
146 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
The large and increasing family of the de-
voted parson needed for their maintenance
all that he could earn; but whatever was
the amount of salary voted by the town, it
was always far in arrears. This condition
of things continuing year after year made it
necessary for the town to do something. In
September, 1771, it appointed “Dea William
Blackmer mr Barnabas Bates and Esqr Fear-
ing and Ensign John Gibbs agents to treat
with Mr Thacher about his Sallery to know
what he is willing to tack for ye Insuing year.”
But this game had been played too often
room in the dwelling house I have given to my son Benja-
min with the westerly garret, one third of the cellar, one
third of the Leanter at the West end with liberty to bake
and wash in said Leanter. Also pasturage for two cows
yearly in the season of pasturing to go with sd Benj's cows
with privilege of using one third of the little barn on said
farm. Also liberty to improve a small field about half an
acre on the South side of the road near said house now
fenced in. Also liberty of cutting ten cords of wood yearly
off of the lot I bought of Ebenezer Perry. Also one half
of the fruit yearly which shall grow in the orchard by said
Dwelling House. Also pasturage and hay for ten sheep
yearly on the farm I have given to her son Israel only in
the Spring, Fall and Winter. Also fodder or salt hay to
winter two cows yearly off of the place I have given her
son Israel.” All these privileges she gave up to marry the
town minister.
THE TOWN2
.
'S MINISTER. 147
during the thirty years preceding, and Par-
son Thacher would not treat with them.
Therefore in October the selectmen issued a
warrant for a town meeting. The warrant
recited in detail the several questions to be
voted upon, as follows:-
“to Raise money to Pay ye Rey ír Thachers
Sallery for ye Present year
“and Likewise to agree with mr thacher as he
Is Not Satisfied with ye Poorness of his former
Payment what sum or sums he Shall Have for ye
Futer yearly and at what time in ye year it shall
be paid him
" and Likewise weather sd town will voate to
Give him any Interest for that Parte that be Neg-
lected to be paid in at such Set times or ye
whole upon Neglect of Payment at sd time
"and Likewise wheather sd town will allow
any Interest for what is behind for Last years
Sallery by reason of it not being Paid in seasion-
ably."
It does not appear that these Likewises
were ever answered.
His promised salary never promptly paid,
he tilled the soil for a living as well as the
souls of the parish, and found his only rec-
reation in walks about the sandy Zion. For
'148 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
such an humble laborer there were no lux-
uries, and no vacations except to exchange
for a Sunday with the minister of a neigh-
boring town. So Parson Thacher lived in
his parish, and died there in the winter of
1775. During his fatal illness the town
meeting discussed his poor financial condi-
tion, and voted not to allow him anything
“for the year past more than his stated
salery." But he was soon to be free from
the tyranny of town meetings. Twelve days
after this vote he entered into his rest, leav-
ing a “good savor of godlyness behind him."
Seven months after he was dead the town
chose a committee to settle with his eldest
son “relative to his Hon'd Father's Sallery
the last year which was behind.” Whether
the son ever received the arrears of money
due to his honored father, no one now
knoweth.
Wareham must have a minister ever if it
will not pay his salary promptly; and no one
having offered himself as a successor of Mr.
Thacher, a town meeting held on the 3d of
April, 1775, chose“ Lieut. John Gibbs to Pro-
vide a minister for the towne & a Place for
him to bord at." Those were rebellious times
THE TOWNYIT
S MINISTER. 149
in the province; and John Gibbs was a com-
missioned officer in the county militia, which
responded to the Lexington alarm three
weeks after he had been chosen to supply the
pulpit. He therefore had no time to attend
to ministry matters, and went off with his
company to join the provincial army near
Boston, leaving the pulpit without a minister.
During the ensuing summer a young man
named Josiah Cotton was found at Plymouth
waiting a call to preach. Immediately the
town was assembled to consider the matter,
and a committee was appointed “ to wait on
the Rev. Mr. Cotton to see on what Terms he
will Preach and on what Terms he would set-
tle." This having been done, the formalities
customary in those times between the town
and the church were attended to. The town
nominated Mr. Cotton, or, as the phrase of
the time was, “improved him as a candidate
for the Resettlement of the Gospel Minis-
try.” The church then voted that “it is its
Mind and earnest Desire" to take him as its
pastor, and the town voted “to concur and
Join with ye Church in a call to settle Mr.
Cotton.”
His annual salary was to be £65 135. 4d.,
150 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
equivalent to two hundred and nineteen
Spanish milled dollars, and he was to have a
settlement of £160, to be paid in three years.
There was no parsonage in the parish, and
the new minister was disinclined to “board
round,” as did the schoolmaster and the shoe-
maker while practicing their professions. He
wrote a letter, in which he said, if the town
would furnish him with a parsonage, he
would, “on account of the difficulty of the
times, relinquish the sum of six pounds thir-
teen shillings and four pence for the year to
come, and after that time if the day should
still continue distressing by a stoppage of
trade, make a proportionable relinquishment if
consistent with necessary support.” He fore-
saw that a war with Great Britain, which the
politicians of the seditious town of Boston
were then trying to inflame, would impover-
ish his parish, and bring distress upon the
province. The town did not stop to think of
these things, nor did it provide a parsonage,
but immediately made plans for the ordina-
tion.
As ministers were settled for life, an ordi-
nation, on account of its rare occurrence, at-
tracted all the inhabitants of the town and
THE TOWN'S MINISTER. 151
many from neighboring towns to see the pro-
cession of the ordaining council escorted by
drums and fifes, and to enjoy the services at
the meeting-house and the free lunch at the
tavern. It was arranged to accompany the
ordination of the new minister with joyous
festivities of eating and drinking. The job
was farmed out to the lowest bidder, who
happened to be the eldest son of the previous
minister, and who did not get his pay for
it until the next spring, when ten pounds
and two shillings were voted “to Rowland
Thacher for making Entertanement for the
ordernation." His instructions were to make
entertainment" for the Counsell, Ministers &
Schollars for the Sum of Two Shillings &
Eight Pence for Each Man & Horse." In
addition to this there was a feast of a more
private character arranged by the selectmen,
who commissioned Samuel Savery and Eben-
ezer Briggs “to Provide an Entertainment
for Some Particular Gentlemen & Mr. Cot-
ton's friends, and to nominate and Invite
such persons as they shall think Proper."
Doubtless there was great hilarity at this
municipal junket. It may be presumed that
striped bass and scup, mutton, venison, and
152 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
corn puddings, wild ducks, oysters, crabs,
and clams, adorned the board. Shell-fish
were plenty along-shore then, as they are
now, and perhaps it was in anticipation of
this high time that in the spring of this
year the town had ordered “that there shall
be no shell-fish nor shells carried out of the
town.” The courses were probably served
with Canary wine and Barbados rum, and
with these the selectmen and their “Particu-
lar Gentlemen” drank Parson Cotton's health
and wished him a successful ministry.
Notwithstanding these good wishes, his
career in Wareham was short. The distress-
ing days to which he had referred in his let-
ter became more and more distressing. The
rebellion against the King, and the ensuing
war, had made the farmers poor, silver coins
had disappeared from circulation, and the
value of the new paper money was reduced
to such a low degree that the minister's sal-
ary became a mere pittance, utterly inade-
quate for his support. Mr. Cotton was obliged
to ask again and again for more compensa-
tion. Six hundred pounds were voted to
him. This not being sufficient for his sup-
port, and the people being unable or unwilling
THE TOWN:S MINISTER.
153
to afford him further relief, he was dismissed
by a vote of town meeting in March, 1779.
He packed his sermons in his saddlebags,
mounted his horse, and returned to Plymouth,
where he abandoned the ministry, which could
not give him a maintenance, became clerk of
the courts, and a much respected citizen of
that town.
After he rode away there was an interval
of nearly four years before another town
minister was secured, during which time the
deacons or selectmen were riding hither
and thither after a candidate. This riding is
noted in a record of the town clerk of 1782,
in which the union of diverse subjects in one
vote is characteristic of the methods of do-
ing public business at that time:—"Voted to
Jeremiah Bump for rideing after a Candidate
to Preach, £ 1 45. od. — to Prince Burgess for
a Shirt for wd Lovell & keeping mr Parmalys
horse £o 18s. od.”
In 1782 Noble Everitt, a graduate of Yale
College, was called to be the town minister.
He showed much shrewdness by not accept-
ing the call until by a negotiation with the
town he had obtained satisfactory terms of
compensation. It was agreed to give him
UIYA
I
154 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
land, and to build upon it a two-story dwell-
ing-house for him “in a decent and hand-
some manner with a convenient cellar under
the same,” to be finished in November, 1783;
to give him a salary of “ £56 silver money,"
free use of the ministry lands and meadows,
and “wood for the maintenance of his fires."
The town went to work in earnest to carry
out this undertaking. The selectmen issued
a warrant directing the collector to levy and
collect of each person on a list prepared for
the purpose his or her proportion, as set
down, of “the sum of three hundred and
forty-three pounds, five shillings, three pence,
two farthings, for defraying the necessary
expenses for building the Rev. Mr. Noble
Everitt's house and other ministeral charges."
The collector was directed to seize the goods
and chattels of those refusing to pay the as-
sessment, to keep the same four days, and
then if payment was not made, to sell them
“at an Outcry for payment of said money."
Those who had no goods or chattels and re-
fused to pay, he was directed to arrest and
commit “unto the common Goal of the
county, there to remain until he or they pay
and satisfy the several sums whereat they are
THE TOWN'S MINISTER. 155
respectively assessed.” The list of assessed
persons probably contains the name of every
head of a family dwelling in the town, and of
every widow having an estate. It was a se-
vere treatment to which they were subjected
for the public good; but the house was built,
and it is still standing on the old road which
went from the meeting-house to the settle-
ment on Cromeset Neck.
The first action of Parson Everitt was to
propose a season of fasting and self-examina-
tion. The members of the church, declaring
themselves to be "sensible of our coldness
and lukewarmness in religion," voted to re-
new “our covenant with God and with one
another," and they appointed a committee
“ to converse with brethren and sisters who
are or may be guilty of public offence accord-
ing to the rule given Mat. 18." These
cleansing explorers brought to light an old
scandal which had been forgotten. Thirty
years had elapsed since Abigail Muxom was
disciplined. Now an old woman, she was
again called up to listen to the reading of the
complaint recorded against her in 1753, the
evidences written in 1750, and to the state-
ments of new witnesses as to her conduct
"upwards of twenty years ago :" —
156 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
"John Benson of Middleborough testifieth
that upwards of 20 years ago he was at the house
of Edmund Muxom the husband of said Abigail,
sometime in the afternoon before sunset, he saw
said Abigail on bed with Joseph Benson, in the
easterly part of the house. He also saith that at
another time he was at work near Edmund Mux-
om's house and heard him repeatedly bid his son
Lem. go and fetch the horse and on refusal cor-
rected him. Abigail came to the door and said
- What do you whip that child for? it is none
of yours, upon which John Benson said I always
thought so, at which she went into the house
and said no more. April 11th, 1783.".
“ Hannah Besse testifieth that sometime about
20 years ago or upward she went to Edmund
Muxom's house late in the evening and there saw
Abigail his wife on bed by the fire with Joseph
Benson. April 11th, 1783.".
The accused woman, having listened to
these statements, positively declared, in pres-
ence of the assembled church, that “the
evidences of John Benson and Harriet Besse
are false.” There was no friend or attor-
ney to represent her before this self-right-
eous tribunal; and, without cross-examining
thc unsworn witnesses, the church voted
THE TOWN'S MINISTER. 157
(men only were allowed to vote) that she “is
guilty of the charge.” Then there was a
pause in the proceedings, and the people went
home as if to think over the matter. After
some weeks had elapsed, she was again sum-
moned before the church, and was "admon-
ished by the pastor” of the perilous position
in which she stood. Some of the sinful
brethren who had voted her to be guilty, “la-
bored" with her; and sympathizing women
conversed with her. But she refused to con-
fess that she was guilty of the alleged sin,
and resolutely maintained that the witnesses
were liars.
From the neighboring towns six ministers
were then summoned to the inquest. They
came and made a holiday; the six ministers
on horseback, and the village idlers, to whom
the spicy story was familiar, crowding around
them and believing that justice must reign
though the heavens fell.
Again there was a meeting of the church;
Abigail Muxom stood in the sovereign pres-
ence of the six ministers, while the floor and
galleries of the meeting-house were crowded
by curious spectators attracted by what was
to them “the greatest show on earth.” The
158 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
evidences were read aloud from the records :
the accused woman again denied their truth;
the six ministers were requested “to give
their opinion what particular immodest con-
duct our sister is guilty of, and how this
church ought to proceed with her." They,
“having conversed with the Brethren of the
church and heard what said Abigail had to
say in her own defence," consulted together,
and declared that her“immodest conduct in
former years with one Doct. Joseph Benson
was forbidden by the 7th commandment,"
and that it was her duty “to make a peni-
“if she refuse or neglect to do it,” the church
“to proceed after other suitable forbearance
to excommunication.” The church then
“Voted that Abigail Muxom is guilty of
immodest conduct according to the opinion
of the Revd Pastors," and it appointed three
stern-visaged men to converse with her in
the hope of obtaining a confession of the
7
“appeared to have no good effect.” Then,
after another delay indicating a reluctance
to pass such a terrible judgment upon “this
unhappy sister,” the church came together
THE ATT
TOWN'S MINISTER. 159
and the men “Voted that Abigail Muxom be
rejected and excommunicated from the com-
munion of this church, as being visibly a har-
dened and impenitent sinner out of the visi-
ble Kingdom of Christ, one who ought to be
viewed and treated by all good people as a
heathen and a publican in imminent danger
of eternal perdition. Praying that this sep-
aration of hers from christian fellowship may
not be eternal, but a means of her true and
unfeigned repentance that her soul may be
saved in the day of the Lord.”
Four years later Parson Everitt was pros-
trated by an illness which continued month
after month, and caused the church to be
perplexed respecting its duty “on account
of their pastor being unable to preach by
reason of bodily indisposition.” Advice was
sought from the town meeting; and after a
lapse of ten months the six neighboring ec-
clesiastics were consulted on the question
whether the church “ought to wait any
longer for his recovery or proceed to a sep-
aration." It looked as if Abigail Muxom was
about to be avenged, when Parson Everett sud-
denly recovered his health and returned to
the pulpit which he had narrowly escaped
losing
· 150 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
He appears to have been a thrifty man. In
addition to his labors as a preacher, in which
he gained a good repute, he was a successful
farmer; and it is noted in the town records
that he built a rail fence around the ministry
fresh meadow with two hundred cedar rails,
which the town had bought for that purpose
from the “loest bider.” He also received
from the town eighteen shillings a year, or
three dollars, for sweeping the meeting-house
and taking care of it. This was an office of
honor as well as of profit, and it was after-
wards held by Andrew Mackie, the town phy-
sician. The parson increased the interesting
variety of his occupations by leasing a fulling
mill on the Woonkinco dam in sight of the
meeting-house. Here on Sunday he preached
to his people, and there on Monday ho.
cleansed their homespun cloths, even unto
the year of his death, which was the ycar
1819, when colonial times had begun to pass
away.
.

W
XI.
THE TOWN'S SCHOOLMASTER.
N February, 1741, the farmers of
Wareham came together and voted
"to have a School Master this year."
Having done this theyrested. A month
later a warrant was posted on the meeting-
house door summoning a meeting “To know
the Towns Mind, whether they are for hav-
ing a School Master or Mistress.” They
came together again and voted “to have a
School Mistress for six months and Jedediah
Wing to be the man to provide her in each
half of the town." And then they rested
again.
It is doubtful if Jedediah Wing did as he
was directed to do, for no mention of the en-
gagement of schoolmistress is to be found
in the town records. But Israel Fearing's
account-book reveals the fact that there was
at this time a teacher who went from house
162 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
to house to fit children with knowledge, as
the shoemaker went in a like circuit to fit
them with shoes; and it is probable that the
fittings of the latter were fully as good as
those of the former. This is what the ac-
count-book says :-
“April ye 27 day 1741 Mr doty came to keep
Scool at my hous
"June ye 8 day in 1741 Mr doty came to
boord at my hous and keep Scool thare to ye
22 day of July
"Jenauary y 14 day 1742 biniamin tupper
came to my hous to ceep Scool”
In May, 1743, a warrant for a town meet-
ing was issued, stating a desire “to know the
Towns Mind whether they are for having the
School Settled and also how often they are
for having it moved and how they are for
haveing Him Dieted." These questions were
disposed of by an agreement to keep a school
four months in each of three sections of the
town; and as to the schoolmaster's board, it
should be rated at eight shillings a week, old
tenor, which at that time may have been
equal to nearly forty cents in honest silver
money.
THE TOWN'S SCHOOLMASTER. 163
1
The treasurer's book shows that a school
was kept in 1743, although this fact would
not be established by the action of the town
meeting. In the opinion of the rural popu-
lation of New England, schools were an
unnecessary expense. Oftentimes the for-
malities of town meetings, by which it was
ordered " to set up a school this year,” had
no other intent than to show an outward
compliance with the unpopular school laws of
the province. Whenever the people could
contrive a way by which the expenses of a
school could be saved, there would be no
school during that year. And when, on ac-
count of this neglect to observe the school
laws, the town was presented by the grand
jury of the county, it was customary to de-
pute the most influential townsman to go
and answer the presentment by such excuses
as could be made.
In February, 1744, the usual routine was
repeated. The farmers were summoned “to
know what the Towns Mind is for doing
about a School for the insuing year.” The
school of the previous year having cost fifty-
five pounds, old tenor, which may have been
equivalent to fifty-five Spanish dollars, and it
164 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
being necessary to raise this sum by a gen-
eral tax, the Town's Mind was for doing noth-
ing; and not until the following July did it
consent to have a school opened. Then
Eleazar King was chosen schoolmaster. He
gave satisfaction to his patrons until the day
when the town clerk stood up in the meeting-
house and screamed out Eleazar's intention
to marry Lydia Bump, who was already mar-
ried to a wandering husband. This inten-
tion being declared by the church to be an
offense to the good and wholesome laws of
the province, he was compelled to quit the
school, while Lydia was disciplined, and the
town cast about for another schoolmaster.1
John Bishup, the town clerk, wrote in the
1
1 "At a church meeting July 1. 1747. voted that our sis-
ter Lydia Bump be put by from special ordinances till she
gave christian satisfaction for the following offence. viz.
In that she has for some time kept company with & now
is published to Eleazar King in order for marriage : altho
her husband has not been absent but about one year & half,
& in which time he has often been seen & heard of by us
& that too within a year past, which procedure we look
upon as contrary to the good & wholesome laws of this
province in that case provided. Also voted yt sd E. King
be denied communion with us & ye church in Plymton to
whom he belongs be acquainted with it." - Wareham
Church Records.
THE TOWNLA
'S SCHOOLMASTER. 165
records of 1748, as follows: “Decon Elles
says he had discerst mr William Rayment to
know whether he would Sarve the town as a
Scoolmaster and he Inclined to Sarve the
town if the town will allow him Eightey
Pounds a year old teener and ye modarater
Put It to vote whether ye town would Imploy
ye sd Raymond In the affare In Keeping
Scool at the aforesd tearms and the vote Past
In ye Negative"
On this rejection of the deacon's candidate,
Samuel Savery was chosen “ to Bee the man
tarmes such a man would sarve the town for.”
In January, 1749, he reported that William
Rayment had reduced his price, and could be
had “to keep scool half a yeare for thirty
nine pounds old teener.” The moderator, so
says the record, “ Put to vote whether the
Town would have sd Rayment to keep scool
on ye tarmes offerd or not and the Vote
Past in the Negative."
In the mean time the intention of marriage
between Lydia Bump and Eleazar King was
atoned in a public and penitent confession by
the woman of her error. This brought Elea-
zar into favor, and he was chosen again to
i
166 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
keep the town's school. One of the school-
masters in subsequent years and previous to
the Revolution was Andrew Mackie, the town
physician, who, having studied physic with
his father at Southampton, Long Island, left
his home a young man in search of fortune.
Arriving at Wareham, dressed in a red coat
and small- clothes of good quality, he took
lodgings at the inn, where he attracted the
notice of Charity Fearing, the innkeeper's
daughter, who fell in love with him on sight
and eventually married him. Here, begin-
ning his career by teaching the town school,
and by riding long distances over bad roads
to practice physic upon the farmers as op-
portunity offered, he found the fortune of
which he was in search. There is a writing
in the town treasurer's book running as fol-
lows: “July ye 26: 1766 Paid John Fear-
ing Esqre for Bowrding Docter Maci when
he keept scool 178. 4d.”
The frugal mind of the colonial farmer
reckoned the schoolmaster as a day-laborer,
and the desire was to hire him at as low a
price, and to spread his labors over as large
a territory, as possible. Each section of the
town had his services during two or three
THE TOWN'S SCHOOLMASTER.
167
months of the year, when the scholars were
taught to read, to write, to cipher, and noth-
ing more. He was paid sometimes in money
and sometimes in merchandise, and his diet
was “thrown in." There was no standard by
which to test his skill as a teacher, but the
one generally esteemed the most skillful was
he whose price was the lowest; even if he
were the chief of blockheads
“Who tries with ease and unconcern
To teach what ne'er himself could learn."
His official seat was a great chair, behind
a table or desk on which he made a dis-
play of birch rods. There he announced his
laws, whose penalties were floggings; and
there he frowned upon the youngsters whose
roguish pranks kept him so actively occupied
that the flag bottom of the chair needed fre-
quent repairing. “Paid ten shillings," say
the Woburn records of 1747, "for bottoming
the Scoole Hous Cheer."
The schoolhouse was usually a small un-
painted building standing by the roadside like
“A ragged beggar sunning."
It contained a large fireplace, for whose fires
the children's parents provided wood. Its
168 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
square room was furnished with rough
benches, made smoother and glossier every
year by the friction of the woolen frocks and
leathern breeches of restless pupils to whom
schooling was a bore.
“ Within the master's desk is seen,
Deep scarred by raps official ;
The warping floor, the battered seats,
The jack-knife's carved initial;
The charcoal frescos on its wall,
Its door.worn sill betraying
The feet that, creeping slow to school,
Went storming out to playing."


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XII.
TOWN LIFE IN THE REVOLUTION.
AVN a back leaf of the town-book, be-
tween the records of marriage and
death, it is written: “At a Request
of ye town of Boston the Inhabatance of the
Town of Wareham met togather on ye 18
Day of Jan" 1773 To Consider of matters
of Grevinces ye Provience was under."
At this meeting three men were selected
to lay “ye above said matters of Grevince"
before the town, and then an adjournment
was voted to the bar-room of Benjamin Fear-
ing's inn, the 8th day of February. Here
the same persons met on the appointed day
“to Consider," as the quaint narrative states,
“of a Letter of Corrispondence from the
town of Boston Occasioned by Sundrey
Grievences the People of this Provence at
Present Labour under Respecting Sundrey
acts of the Parliament of Greait Brition
170 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
therby Drowing a tribute or tax from the
People of this Provience.” Resolutions were
adopted similar to those adopted in other
towns, the substance of which was that the
people of Wareham “have been and still
are” deprived of their natural rights as citi-
zens of the British empire, and will join
other towns in an effort to regain them. The
scholarly style of these resolutions, as well
as their political statements, show that they
were drafted in Boston.
The assembly at the inn was not a regular
town meeting ; it was not summoned by the
selectmen's warrant; it was not held in the
meeting-house, the place appointed for all
town meetings; and its proceedings were
written by Noah Fearing, the town clerk, not
in their proper place, but in a part of the
book where they would be concealed from
general observation."
1 “Voated to aggorn this meeting from ye meeting house
onto an Oack tree out of Doors.” – Wareham Records,
June, 1771. “Voated the town meetings for the Futer be
holden in the Porch Chamber of the meeting House and if
at any time the Selectmen thinck that their wants more
Room for to hold any town meeting then to order the
Doors opened that the People Go into the Gallarys if they
see cause.” – Wareham Records, March, 1772.
TOWN LIFE IN THE REVOLUTION. 171
It appears to have been a caucus of par-
tisans, aided by the town clerk, who sym-
pathized with the spirit of rebellion, as his
subsequent conduct showed. It was an illus-
tration of the manner in which the Boston
Committee of Correspondence seized upon
the authority of a town's name to manufac-
ture a public opinion hostile to Great Britain,
wherever such an opinion did not exist.
There is no reason to believe that the
farmers of Wareham — loyal, contented, in-
dustrious, and living remote from the strife
of politics — felt any interest in the plans of
the Boston committee, or in its theories of
natural rights. Indeed, the theories of this
committee were at odds with those of the
legislature of the province, which only two
years previous, March 27, 1771, had accepted
an address from the town of Ashfield declar-
ing that “natural rights are in this province
wholly superseded by civil obligations, and
in matters of taxation individuals cannot
with the least propriety plead them."
As the town had always been contented to
be without a representative in the legislature,
while paying the province taxes, it had prac-
tically assented to the principle of “taxation
11
172 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
without representation,” which had become a
subject of contention in the refractory town
of Boston. In 1773 it was fined by the Gen-
eral Court six pounds “for not sending a
Representative.” At the same time other
towns to the number of thirty were fined for
the same default; an indication that a large
part of the rural population of the province
felt no interest in the political questions
agitated at that time. It does not appear
1 This lack of interest is also shown in the trivial ex-
Court for a remission of fines imposed for not sending a
representative. In 1771 the town of Westford prayed for
a remission of a fine of eight pounds because it "was at
the expence of Building a new meeting house." The ex-
cuse of Southboro' was ~"greater expence than usual in
supporting their poor in making and repairing Bridges
and Roads." The excuse of Sherbourn was “great ex-
pence in rebuilding their meeting house and settling a
minister.” The excuse of Chelsea was — “the smallness
of the said Town and the poverty of its Inhabitants.” The
excuse of Upton was — “great expence in building a meet-
ing house and a prospect of further expence in purchasing
Roads to the said House." The excuse of George Town
was — “as the Inhabitants were in very distressing circum-
stances occasioned by the destruction of their Grass by
Worms." The alleged destruction of their liberties by
the British Parliament was of less importance than the
TOWN LIFE IN THE REVOLUTION. 173
that the town sent any delegate to the im-
portant convention called by inhabitants of
Boston in 1768, at which ninety-six towns of
Massachusetts were said to be represented,
to protest against the revenue acts, taxing
the colonies, quartering troops upon the
people, and other perils threatening, as was
supposed, their liberties. The import tax on
tea — “That worst of Plagues, the detestable
Tea," as the “Sons of Liberty” called it -
had been reduced from twelve pence to three
pence the pound; and the Wareham farmers
had no interest in joining in a revolt against
it with the Boston importers and tradesmen,
who, as smugglers, had long been defrauding
the King's revenue.
There was at this time a good deal of loy.
alty to the King in the Old Colony. Many
families had always kept bright the lion and
unicorn in the back of the chimney, and if
they avoided discussions with revolutionists
they were none the less proud in the fact
that they were natural-born and loyal sub-
jects of Old England. In 1773 they caused
to be dissolved the celebrated Old Colony
Club of Plymouth, an institution established
174 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
to keep green the memory of the Pilgrims,
rather than allow its name to be used as rep-
resenting rebellion against the King. It was
this condition of public opinion that justified
James Warren, the originator of the commit-
tee of correspondence, in declaring to Sam-
uel Adams that the Plymouth County towns
could not be aroused except by a power that
would arouse the dead. Deeds and other
private documents written by the colonists
of that period, when referring to the royal
government, exhibit a veneration for the King
which was not to be found in the words of
the orators and tavern and wharf idlers who
controlled public opinion in Boston. “Join
us or die!” was their cry early and late.?
1“ There was at the same time in and about Boston a
large mob element professing ardent patriotism, and com-
monly regarded as auxiliary to the movements which issued
in the war of independence. I believe that this element
was in every respect as harmful and detrimental as it was
unlawful and immoral ; that it thinned the ranks of the
patriots, disgusted many worthy citizens with the cause
which it professed to further, and was of unspeakable bene-
fit to the neighboring provinces of Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick in giving them from among the exiles from Mas-
sachusetts the best judges, lawyers, clergymen, and men of
elegant culture that they have ever had, including not a
few graduates of Harvard College." - Dr. Andrew P. Pea
body's address to the Bostonian Society, April, 1888.
TOWN LIFE IN THE REVOLUTION. 175
As the farmers of Wareham had frequent
intercourse with the neighboring village of
Bedford, where the famous tea-ship Dart-
mouth was owned, they probably knew of her
arrival at Boston, and that an excited multi-
tude in the Old South meeting - house had
resolved to boycott all teas until the import
tax was removed. They knew also that the
tea-chests and their contents had been thrown
overboard, as if they were, as Samuel Adams
classed them, “inveterate enemies” of the
country. They also may have heard of the
Boston port bill, an act of Parliament to sus-
pend the foreign and coastwise trade of Bos-
ton as a punishment for the tea-chest riot;
but they made no sign. Gifts of cattle, fish,
firewood, pork, clothing, butter, flour, grain,
vegetables, and money were sent to Boston
from many towns to relieve its distress under
the port bill, during the summer of 1774.
The records show that nothing was sent from
Wareham.
A few months later a lawless event in their
neighborhood brought to the notice of the
Wareham farmers the disturbed condition of
public affairs. · A large number of young
men met in the adjoining town of Rochester,
176 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
September 26, 1774, and organized them-
selves " to make an excursion into the county
of Barnstable," and there by forcible means
to prevent the Inferior Court of Common
Pleas from holding its regular session. This
was one of the oldest courts in the province;
its jurymen were selected in town meeting ;
from its decisions an appeal could be taken
to the Superior Court of Judicature in which
jurors were drawn by the sheriff. Political
agitators declared that the method of draw-
ing jurors by a sheriff, instead of drawing
them “out of the box" in town meeting, put
in jeopardy the rights of the people.1 By
breaking up the county court it was intended
1 “May ye 3d 1756 the Town chose Simon Hathaway
Petit Jureyman as the Law Directs by Drawing him out
the Box to Serve for Trials at the next Inferior Court to
be holden att Plymouth.” —"July ye 13 day 1756 The
Town Drawd Thomas Whitten out of the Box to Serve
on ye Petitt Jurey.” — Wareham Records, 1756.
“ About eight o'clock Sunday evening there passed by
here about two hundred men ... they had taken Vinton
(the Sheriff) ... they called upon him to deliver two
warrants (for juries). Upon his producing them they
made a circle and burnt them. They then called a vote
whether they should huzza but it being Sunday evening it
passed in the negative.” — Letter of Abigail Adams, Brain-
tree, 14 September, 1774.
TOWN LIFE IN WAT
THE REVOLUTION. 177
to destroy an avenue through which business
could pass to the higher tribunal.
This band of young men, intent on disor-
der, styled itself “The Body of the People,"
a title which recalls the three tailors of Too-
ley Street, who in an address to Parliament
styled themselves, “We the People of Eng-
land.” It passed through Wareham, where
it was joined by Noah Fearing, John Gibbs,
Nathan Briggs, and Salathiel Bumpus, and
arrived at Sandwich in the same evening.
The next morning it marched to Barnstable,
a part on foot, a part on horseback, a drum-
corps at its head, and Wareham men or boys
riding as guards in its rear. On arriving at
Barnstable the band was increased to a large
mob, which took possession of the grounds
in front of the court-house and sent scouts
through the town to ferret out loyal people
and compel them to renounce “toryism.”
The justices, who were dining together, were
notified that the “ Body of the People" de-
sired them not to open the court and would
send them an order to that effect in writing.
These worthy men received the order, and
soon appeared in the street, wearing their
official robes, and led by the high sheriff, on
1
S
178 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
their way to the court-house to discharge
their duties. As the mob did not make way,
the chief justice asked for what purpose they
were assembled. The leader of the mob,
standing on the court-house steps, replied, in
the style of a modern politician, “ All that is
dear to us and the welfare of unborn millions
direct us to prevent the court from being
opened.” To this the chief justice answered,
- according to the report written by a Roch-
ester boy named Abraham Holmes, who was
one of the mob, — “This is a constitutional
court, the jurors have been drawn from the
boxes as the law directs, why do you inter-
rupt us?”
The leader then justified himself by the
reply: “But from the decisions of this
court an appeal lies to a court whose judges
hold office during the King's pleasure, over
which we have no control!”.
The mob prevented the session of the
court and compelled the justices to sign cer-
tain political obligations in harmony with its
own views. It was not dispersed until it had
made a general disturbance in the town, had
resolved to boycott British goods, and to sup-
press peddlers who sold Bohea tea.
TOWN LIFE IN THE REVOLUTION. 179
WIV
· While such events were transpiring there
was nothing written upon the town records
indicating any sympathy with the rebellion.
Town meetings were held, as usual, and the
· Town's Mind expressed its will in regard to
sheep, foxes, hogs, alewives, highways, the
minister, the schoolmaster, the meeting-
house, the rates, the paupers, as it had done
in preceding years.
Then came the year 1775, and the town
records began to speak as follows:-
“At a Town meeting regularly warnd & held in
Wareham Ianuary ye 16 1775 made ily choice of
Capt Noah Fearing moderator. 2\y Voted not to
Send A man to the Provincial Congress. 3ly Voted
to allow to each minute man 1%. 44. per Week.
4ly voted not to make any Province and County
tax. 5ly Voted to adjourn to February ye 6th
Day.”
The wages fixed for minute men, the vote
about the province tax, the refusal to send a
representative to the Provincial Congress,
show that rebellion was in the air, but its
spirit had not yet seized upon the town. The
little that exhibited itself had probably been
worked up by the moderator, who was one of
the principal men engaged in the Barnstable
180 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
riot.1 The next town meeting was held on
the 20th of March ; when it was voted “to
Purchase six Guns for use of ye Town," and
the minute men, having no occupation by
which they could earn the one shilling and
four pence (22 cents) per week which the
1 “At an adjourned Town meeting held in Wareham
the 6th Day of February 1775
ily Voted not to allow to the Revd Mr Thacher anything
for the year Past more than his Stated Salery
2dly Voted to vendue the Ministree Lands & meadows
in the West End of ye Town the Improvement of it for
one year & the Profits to go towards Defraying the Revd
Mr Thachers Sallery
3dly Voted Deacon Willm Blackmer & Samll Savery &
Joshua Briggs Be a Committy to Vendue the same
4ly Voted to pay the Province tax to Andw Mackie &
he to keep it till the town Shall order it otherways
5ly Voted To Dissolve the meeting.”
“By Virtue of the annual Warrant Set up by the Select
Men The Town met together on Monday the twentieth
Day of March 1775& acted as follows —
ily made Choice of Capt Noah Fearing moderator
2dly Chose Andrew Mackie Town Clerk
3dly Voted to chuse three Select Men one in each End
& one in the Middle part of the Town
4ly Chose Ebenz Briggs Smll Savery Capt Noah Fear-
ing Selectmen & Assesors
5ly Voted to hire constables
6ly Chose Barnabas Bump Jabez Besse Jur Wardions
7ly Capt Fearing Thomas Whitten Joseph Bump 2d Sur-
veyor of highways
TOWN LIFE IN THE REVOLUTION. 181
town had engaged to pay them were or-
dered “to assist in takeing Care of the Ale
wives.” On the 3d of April it was “voted
not to allow the minute men Wages any
longer."
The news of the battle at Lexington
8ly Ebenz Swift Rowland Thacher fence Viewers
gly Thomas Norris Prince Burgess Tything men
Toly Saml Savery Surveyor of Lumber Sealor of weights
and measures
Illy Joseph Sturdifant Samll Briggs Enos Howard Hog
Reaves
12ly Jabez Burgess Sealer of leather
13ly Zepheniah Bump Jonathan Gibbs Deer Men
14ly Deacon Blackmer Thomas Whetten John Fearing
Nathan Briggs Barnabas Bate to take Care of the Ale-
wives
15ły Voted for Capt Israel Fearing with his company to
assist in takeing Care of the Alewives
16ly Voted that there should be no Shell fish nor shells
sold nor carryed out of town.
17ly Chose David Nye Jonathan Gibbs Jesse Swift
Saml Swift to Inform relating to the Shell fish
18ly Chose Jeremiah Bump Town treasurer to serve for
one Dollar
19ly Voted Sheep to go at large without a Shepherd &
Swine yoked & ringed.
20ly Voted to lay out the road by Zepheniah Bump if it
could be done without Purchasing any land
21ly Voted to Purchase Six Guns for use of ye Town
lastly Voted to adjourn this annual meeting to the twenty
fourth Day of April three o'Clock afternoon"
182 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
C
:
reached Wareham by a rider from Boston on
the 20th of April. When the town met on
the 24th, no allusion to the battle was made,
and the meeting was adjourned for five
months, with as little concern as to the mag-
nitude of current events, as if they involved
no issues greater than those which had in-
terested town meetings in previous years. On
receipt of the news from Lexington a com-
pany of militia started for Boston, and an-
other started for Marshfield, where many
“At Town meeting regularly warnd held on the third
Day of April 1775 —
Ily chose Capt Noah Fearing moderator
2dly chose Saml Savery Deacon Blackmer Joshua Gibbs
Noah Fearing Barnabas Bates to be a Committee to Ven-
due the Improvement of the ministree lands & meadows
for one year
3dly Voted not to allow the minute men Wages any
longer
4ly chose Lieut John Gibbs to Provide a minister for the
town & a Place for him to bord at
lastly Voted to adjourn this meeting to the twenty fourth
of this Instant at two o'Clock."
“ Town Meeting April 24th, 1775. Voted
ily to Pay the Province tax to Henry Gardner Esqr of
Stowe
2dly to adjourn this meeting to 18th September next.” —
Wareham Records, 1775.
TOWN LIFE IN THE REVOLUTION. 183
loyalists were living under protection of the
King's troops. The latter company was com-
manded by Major Israel Fearing, whose wife,
Lucy Bourne, was an ardent loyalist. The
tradition is that as he passed out of his door
to lead the men who were waiting for him,
his wife, desiring to prevent his going, seized
fast to the skirts of his military coat. But,
like Captain Sir Dilberry Diddle in the song,
“ Said he to his lady, My lady, I'll go ;
My company calls me, you must not say no,”
and he broke away from her, leaving a part of
his uniform in her hands..
During the summer of 1775 the town was
principally interested in efforts to make a
shrewd bargain with Josiah Cotton -“to
see,” as the records state it, “on what Terms
he will Preach and on what Terms he would
settle," and in preparing for the festivities
which were to celebrate his ordination in the
new meeting-house. An indifference to pub-
lic affairs continued until the Declaration of
Independence, when the town was called
upon to express its preference for a new form
of government; and it declared in favor of
that which had been enjoyed under the
colonial charter, in these words :-
.
.
.
184 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY,
“At a town meeting regularly warnd & held
on October ye 14: 1776 To Consider of a request
from the Honble Generall Court. Resolved as
follows: that we Judge it best that ye Plan of
Government by ye late Charter viz by the house
of Representatives And Councill be still contin-
ued & strictly adhered to & that no alteration be
made therein Respecting a form of Government
at least during the present war.”
This expression of opinion was elicited by
a decree of the Provincial Congress, which,
since the first events of the Revolution, as-
sumed to act as the government. It had al-
ready ordered that legal writs and processes
should no longer run in the name of the
King, but in the name of "the government
and people of the Massachusetts Bay in New
England," and the towns had been requested
to instruct their delegates on the subject of
independence, and to empower them to adopt
a new “frame of government.”
The revolutionary cause had now become
the fashion and craze of the day.1 Open loy-
1 “The American Revolution, like most others, was the
work of an energetic minority who succeeded in commit-
ting an undecided and fluctuating majority to courses for
which they had little love, and leading them step by step
to a position from which it was impossible to recede.”-
Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century.
TOWN LIFE IN THE REVOLUTION. 185
alists, who were mainly of the most respecta-
ble and substantial class of citizens, had been
driven out of the colonies, their property was
to be confiscated, rebels were to be trans-
formed into patriots, and the time had come
when no man nor measures could reconcile
the people of Massachusetts to British rule.
In every town an organized system of intimi-
dation, or bulldozing, was put in operation,
the object of which was to coerce the agri-
cultural population into permanent rebellion
against Great Britain. It was first author-
ized by a resolve of the Great and General
Court in February, 1776, directing the towns
of Massachusetts to choose, by the written
votes of persons qualified to vote in town
meetings, a certain number of freeholders
whose principles were known to be friendly
to the “Rights and Liberties of America,"
to serve as a “Committee of Correspondence,
Inspection, and Safety.” William Rotch, in
his memoirs of those times, says: “There
were so many petty officers, as Committees
of Safety, Inspection &c. in all parts, and too
many of them chosen much upon the prin-
ciple of Jeroboam's Priests, that we were
sorely afflicted." Wareham elected this com-
186 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
2
mittee every year during the war. It was
charged to ascertain what inhabitants vio-
lated the resolves, directions, or recommen-
dations of the Continental Congress, or of
the General Court, respecting the struggle
with Great Britain. Such persons were to
be arrested and confined in the county jail,
“without the use of Fire or Candle Pen Ink
& Paper or conversing with any Person
whomsoever.” The committee arrested those
who said, “Damn the country!”1 and those
who sold tea, or who, in order to evade the
stigma of “tory," drank it secretly in their
families. They removed those whose resi-
dence in the town was thought to be incom-
patible with public safety ; they filed infor-
mation before the justices against persons
1 “Information being given to this Committee that one
Isaac Harper had behaved in a very unfriendly manner to
his country, - Several Persons were sent for to be in-
quired of. Mr Thomas Moor attends, and informd the
Committee that he heard said Harper Damn the Country.
Mr William Daws attends and says that he had been often
at Harpers House and discoursed him, and that he had
heard him say that we were more arbitrary than the regu-
lars that he had rather be with them than us. Voted
that complaint be entered with the Court of Enquiry
against Isaac Harper of this Town as a Person inimical to
the American States.” -- Records of Boston Committee.
TOWN LIFE IN THE REVOLUTION. 187
whom they suspected; they watched chan-
nels through which information might be
carried to the enemy, examined private let-
ters, detained trading vessels and fishing
boats, kept a list of persons capable of bear-
ing arms, ordered them on parade, appointed
officers to command them, fined those who
failed to answer the muster roll, and from
the ranks of this militia they drafted recruits
for the Continental army.
There are no means of knowing how vig-,
orously this committee worked in Wareham,
as its records have not been found. But the
records of a justice of the peace, commis-
sioned by the new Commonwealth, indicate
that the committee had to do with some of
the most respectable residents of the town:--
“On ye Third Day of June 1778 in ye Name
of ye Government and People of ye Masschussis
Bay in New England Personally appeared Before
me Noah Fearing Esqr one of ye Justices of ye
Peace for ye County of Plymo David Besse and
Joshua Crocker Both of Wareham and acknol-
idged themselves to stand Bound each in ye Sum
of two hundred pounds For that Docr Andrew
Mackie of Wareham Shall appear at ye next In-
ferior Court of General Sessions of ye peace to
be holden at Barnstable within and for sd County
188 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
their to answer to an Inditement Found against
him by ye Grand Jurey in April Courte Last.
Noah Fearing Justice of ye Peace.”
Bondsmen also appeared before this justice
and bound themselves to produce Rowland
Thacher and Martha Fearing of Wareham
before the same court, whose next session
was to be held “on ye Last Tuesday of this
Instant June." As the records of this court
were destroyed with the burning of the Barn-
stable court-house in October, 1827, no ex-
planation of the proceedings can be made.
Nearly one hundred men of the town
served in the war. Powder was bought for
public use; and when,
“ In their ragged regimentals
Stood the old Continentals
Yielding not,
While the grenadiers were lunging
And like hail fell the plunging
Cannon shot,"
the town sent clothing, rations, and recruits
to support them. As the struggle was car-
ried on at a distance, the townspeople suf-
fered from none of its desolations, but they
felt the great burden of the war in repeated
calls for money, in the disturbance which it
TOWN LIFE IN THE REVOLUTION
189
produced in their ways and means of living,
and in the yearly increase of the public taxes,
which caused the prices of all articles to ad-
vance rapidly. In order to prevent traders
from practicing extortion in the sale of the
necessities of life, — after the manner of
modern “trusts," — the legislature passed an
act under which “ John Fearing Esquire
Joshua Gibbs and David Nye were chosen to
see that there Bee no Forestalling or Mono-
polizing in ye Towne.” Nevertheless office-
holding was not without profit. Two per
cent. was paid in 1779 for "going to Boston
to fetch the money due to the town,” and
frequent official journeys were made at public
expense. 1
1 The following extract from a petition to the General
Court in November, 1779, from “Several Towns in the
County of Lincoln,” may be considered as describing the
condition of the rural population of Massachusetts at that
time: “When we Look about us and behold the Dis-
tress of the People almost Destitute of most of the Neces-
saries of Life, no Exports or Imports by Sea as Usual in
time past, whereby our wood and Lumber, the Little we
got in our perplexd Circumstances Lays upon our hands,
and no provision brought to us, and no money to purchase
any with, we Stand amazd at the Prospect, and when we
Look forward and behold the Monsterous Taxes that are
Laid upon us, and no money to Pay it with, we are Aston-
ishd & know not what to do.” “We humbly trust we may
190 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
1
In 1780 the town was taxed £104 for the
redemption of bills of credit and for paying
interest in specie on notes issued by "the
Province colony or now State of Massachu-
setts Bay;" and it was also taxed £8096 for
defraying the public charges and carrying
into execution the resolves of Congress. In
the same year the town paid to each of its
six months' recruits for the army, “sixty-
nine silver dollars and one hundred and
thirty dollars as mileage money.” In 1781
it held a lottery “to raise two hundred and
eighty hard dollars to raise soldiers with ;"
at the same time it sent nearly ten thousand
pounds of beef to the Continental army. On
the IIth of February, 1784, its war record
was closed by ordering its British colors to
be sold, and by voting “that the five years
Pay granted to the Continental officers is
Unjust and Ought Not to be paid them."
This opinion was universal with the rural
population of Massachusetts, which had been
impoverished by the war, and it found ex-
Decently petition that Power which has Taxed us Unrep-
resented, as we have a President from these Colonies of
Partitioning the Parliament of Great Britan in a Similar
Case."
TOWN LIFE IN THE REVOLUTION. 191
1
pression in many resolves as bitter as those
adopted by the neighboring town of Roch-
ester: “That however the power of Con-
gress may be we think the Grant by them
made to sd officers was obtained by undue
influence & if no Negative to sd Grant is
yet to be admitted, notwithstanding all their
good services we shall esteem them Public
Nusances & Treat them in that Curracter."
The army had become a power greater
than the State, and it was not ready to dis-
band, after peace had been declared, without
some unusual recognition of its importance.
Abigail Adams, writing from Braintree in
June, 1783, said: “Congress has commuted
with the army by engaging to them five
years' pay in lieu of half-pay for life. With
security for this they will disband contented;
but our wise legislators are about disputing
the power of Congress to do either, without
considering their hands in the mouth of the
lion, and that, if the just and necessary food
is not supplied, the outrageous animal may
become so ferocious as to spread horror and
devastation.” So the farmers of Wareham
and Rochester had reason for their opinions.

minimo
XIII.
TOWN LIFE AFTER THE WAR.
may EACE was welcomed by everybody.
Although the town warrants ran no
more in His Majesty's name, and the
Revolution had effaced all marks of the royal
authority, the customs and manners of the
people had suffered no change. Farmers at-
tended again to their own business — ship-
ping away timber and firewood cut on the
decrease of the moon, making salt by the
evaporation of sea water, building vessels,
increasing their flocks of sheep, gathering
iron ore from the bottoms of ponds, making
charcoal for forges recently set up, and nails
from slit iron rods in their home smithies.
To those who had been induced to neglect
their farms for the sake of the war, peace
brought many discouragements; and when
stories came of fertile lands to be had in
the region known as the Ohio, the pressure
TOWN LIFE AFTER THE WAR.
193
of poverty, and perhaps of public opinion
also, caused an emigration thither, and to the
district of Maine, as well as to places less
remote, of some who had been active in
encouraging the war. From the following
quaint soliloquy, written in Israel Fearing's
account-book by a young woman descended
from him, it may be inferred that many re-
grets were felt on leaving the ancestral
homes:
“ The painful hour is fast approaching when I
must say adieu to my native place. My home,
days of my cherished youth farewell. The pain
of sepperation is continually hovering on my
mind when I must extend a parting hand to many
dear relatives. The fond recollection of the many
happy hours I have spent in their edefying com-
pany fill me with raptures, and now often drenches
my eys in tears."
From early times there had been a path
through bars and gates along the river's side
from the centre village to the Narrows. It
was opened as a highway after the Revolu-
tion, and until recent years it was a thor-
oughfare of sand, into which the ship-car-
penter cast his chips, the harness-maker his
scraps, the tinman his clippings, and the
LUI
194. COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
butcher his bones. Now it is a smooth, broad
road, hardened by oyster shells, on which
summer visitors disport themselves in their
equipages, and the owner of fast horses tries
their speed. It ended at the ferry which was
kept by a “sutable person" appointed by
the town, who was allowed to charge two
pence for a passage in his boat. From the
ferry stones on the Agawame side of the
river was an old road, called by the first plant-
ers the Woonkinco Way. Now, shaded by
oaks, it is a pleasant way to the dwelling
houses of urban families along the shore,
whose yachts may be seen on summer days
trolling the bay or bound on pleasure cruises.
Near the ferry at the Narrows several
houses were built, on the close of the war, and
one now standing has some celebrity as having
been the home of John Kendrick, discoverer
of the Columbia River, who sailed from Bos-
ton in 1787 as master of the ship Columbia,
and returned in 1790, having, it is said, made
the first American voyage around the world.
Four Lombardy poplar-trees stood in front of
the house, and the flood tides nearly reached
its door-yard gate. Now its one solitary pop-
lar looks down upon a busy street, which is

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“TROLLING THE BAY." Page 194.
TOWN LIFE AFTER THE WAR. 195
bordered on the harbor side by warehouses
and wharves where schooners are discharging
coal for iron-works, and corn and lumber for
traders in Plymouth and Barnstable counties
who come to Wareham for supplies.
After the war was over, the farmers con-
tinued to make their reckonings in colonial
shillings and pence. They called the quarter
of the Spanish milled dollar a “one-and-six,"
the eighth was a ninepence, the sixteenth a
fourpence or "fopensapny;" and the coins
into which the dollar was divided were kept
in circulation until the marks of their origin
in the mint of Spain were almost obliterated.
Their method of trading with each other is
shown by the settlement of an account with a
shoemaker, which began in 1780 and ended in
1803. It was credited every year with shoe-
making for the family, and was debited from
time to time with salt-hay, cheese, mutton,
molasses, corn, tallow, sheep's wool, hire of
horse, hauling firewood, sole-leather, a goose,
wheat, candles, sugar, rye, pork, and three
shillings.
Money was not abundant; farm products
were the staple values, and were exchangeable
at the village stores for merchandise. Sugar,
196 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
tea, molasses, rum, and other comforts thus
obtained, were kept on hand by thrifty farm-
ers to be used in paying for hired labor.
Undisturbed by the political questions of
the times, the Wareham farmers kept the
noiseless tenor of their way as their fathers
had done under the rule of the King. In
early spring alewives came into the rivers,
and for a while formed the staple of trade
and conversation. Their annual return “with
such longing desire after the fresh water
ponds” — as an old chronicler writes — was
the most important event of the year. At
the birth of the town the prosperity of ale-
wives was a public concern; and from that
day to this, these historic fishes have aroused
the state legislature, have vexed town meet-
ings, and have formed a platform on which
the rising politician has aired his wisdom.
The Woonkinco River, fed by cold springs
in Plymouth Woods, and having no ponds at
its source, was not inviting to migratory fish;
for these reasons, the yield from it was al-
ways insignificant, while the Weweantet and
Agawame rivers, flowing out of large ponds,
furnished attractive spawning grounds, and
in these rivers the town's fishery yielded
TOWN LIFE AFTER THE WAR. 197
large results. Two kinds of alewives came
to the rivers: the larger, coming first, sought
the Weweantet, swarming in the deep ravine
called the Poles in such numbers that it was
. impossible for more than a small portion of
them to pass up stream during an ebbing
tide; the smaller, called black - backs, tar-
ried in the bay until the temperature of the
rivers became warmer, and then they invari-
ably entered the Agawame.
In colonial times the March town meeting?
1« The Town meet att the Day and time Sot att the ad-
jurdment. The Modarater Put to vote whether the town
was for Haveing 410 Barels of hering Cetcht out of ye
several Streems In Wareham ye Present year for markit
Provide the men that Cetcht them would Pay to ye town
four shillings Bountey on each Barel for ye youse of the
town and ye vote Past in the Affarmitive.
•
oute of Weantet River ........... 300
oute of agewam River ......... .. 80
oute of wampinco River .... ...... 8
oute of Cohasit Crick socaled ... ..... 16
oute of ye Brook By micah Gibbs . .......6
•
•
•
410
the men that appeard in meeting to Cetch ye herings and
Give ye 4 pr Barel Capt fering for his suns Decon Joshua
Gibbs for himself & Suns Rowland Swift for himself But-
ler Wing for himself and ye other men Concernd with him
In ye fishing affare." - Wareham Records, March 31, 1747.
198 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
fixed the number of alewives to be caught
and the price to be paid by the catchers. In
later years a change of this custom has added
an important day to the town's calendar; the
day when, at the tavern, is sold by auction
to the highest bidder. the exclusive right to
catch alewives on three days of the week
between sunrise and sunset. On these days
the buyer of the right is obligated to sell
four hundred alewives — generally called
“herrin'” - for sixty-four cents to each
householder applying for them, and to give to
all widows in the town a barrel-full of the fish
without price. The cruel tradition is that
this “bar'l o'herrin” has sometimes appeared
to be, as respects the support of a dependent
family, a full compensation to the widow for
the loss of him of whom she was bereft.
After the townspeople had pickled and
dried their alewives and strung them on twigs,
and hung them, away from the reach of do-
mestic animals, in wood-sheds and barn-lofts,
the season of sheep-shearing came, accom-
panied with northeast winds and fogs from
the sea; a weather called from generation
to generation “the sheep-storm.” In town-
meeting warrants there was always a stroke
TOWN LIFE AFTER THE WAR. 199
about sheep, and orders were made that they
shall “not run at large on the Commons
from shear time til ye Twentyeth of Decem-
ber & if any ram shall Be taken up the
Owner Shall forfeit & Pay One dollar.” To
protect them while pasturing in the woods,
the town kept four hounds and paid a bounty
for every fox's head brought in.
In the autumn, salt grass, shell fish, and
cider were cared for. In the winter, firewood
was cut, nails were wrought in the smithies,
charcoal was made, the shoemaker and the
schoolmaster went their round of visits. All
the year through, intentions of marriage were
screamed in the meeting house. The town
clerk certified each intention in his best style
of handwriting, and the minister, or the jus-
tice of the peace, took the certificate and
three shillings, performed a marriage cere-
mony, and drank a bumper to the new man
and wife.
The records of a justice of the peace begin-
ning in 1804 show that the jurisdiction of this
court was more extensive than it had been
before the war. On his farm he vegetated
without a law library, but by his common
sense maintaining a tribunal before which
200 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
eminent lawyers pleaded causes. Once a
year the town officers came before him to
take the oath of office, as their predecessors
came before his father to swear allegiance to
King George the Second. But now it was
required of the town constables to subscribe
an oath before the justice, in which they did
“renounce and adjure all allegiance subjec-
tion and obedience to the King, Queen, or
Government of Great Britain, and every
other foreign power whatsoever.”
The sessions of this court were held in
the dwelling-house on Fearing Hill. Hither
came plaintiffs and defendants from the vil-
lage and from neighboring towns to lay their
cases before the justice, who was known in
all the region as the Squire, and the witnesses
loitered by the lilac-trees at the front door
while they waited a summons to come into his
presence. If the defendant did not appear
at the time appointed for trial, his name was
solemnly called three times, and, no response
being heard, judgment was immediately en-
tered against him. The wardens brought in
all the boys and girls whom they had seen
laughing in the meeting-house, and the
Squire fined the girls five shillings and the

2.
ILIR
fag
UNITS
s tex
TRENOBLE
THE DWELLING-HOUSE ON FEARING HILL. Page 200.
TOWN LIFE AFTER THE WAR. 201
boys ten, for they were able to laugh louder
than the girls. Persons against whom com-
plaint had been made for traveling on Sun-
day, for raking hay on the Lord's Day, for
cursing a townsman, or swearing in the pres-
ence of a neighbor, were brought here to
pay the fines assessed by law for the benefit
of the town's poor. He who had been over-
taken with strong liquor confessed his error
to the Squire and paid to him the penalty
in colonial shillings. Here the constables
brought the culprit who had pulled an or-
chard, or had stolen a sheep, or had willfully
knocked down a neighbor, spat in his face,
pinched his nose, rubbed his ears, or other-
wise maliciously dishonored him. The Squire
tried the man accused of obstructing the
passage of alewives up the town's rivers, as
well as the man who had failed to appear
in the ranks of the train-band, according to
orders, on training day. He listened to the
suit of the schoolteacher for her wages of
one dollar a week, and to the claim for dam-
ages to her dignity because the committee-
man had locked her out of the schoolhouse.
He took the affirmation of the mother of a
bastard child, certified the oath of the admin-
202 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
istrator of a widow's estate, recorded in sol-
emn form confessions of debt, in which the
debtor pledged that the debt should be paid
out of his goods, chattels, lands, and tene-
ments, “and in want thereof of my body.”
He issued writs against insolvent debtors by
which they were put into the county jail,
condemned others who could not satisfy a
creditor's claim to a year's labor in the cred-
itor's service, and he married together"
those who came to him to be married.
It was a custom of the town to put incom-
petent persons under a guardian, and to ex-
ercise parental authority over those who,
according to public opinion, stood in need
of it. A case of this sort is described in
the records as “ that business concerning
Noah Bump's daughter, that married a certain
Frye,” which the town took in hand in 1794.
This certain Frye was an uncertain vagrant
who had obtained employment on the farms
and whom an indigent daughter of Noah
had married, instead of marrying a coachman
as she probably would have done had she
lived at the present time. What the town
did with the twain is not known. But the
consequences of the business were tragical,
TOWN LIFE AFTER THE WAR. 203
and illustrative of the heredity of pauperism.
Years afterwards, in a drunken brawl the wife
was killed by the husband, and the support of
their pauper descendants is to this day con-
tested judicially between Wareham and the
neighboring towns into which they drift.
In 1801 smallpox appeared and caused
great alarm. It was ordered by the town “to
set up Inoculating," and a house was taken
"for to Inoculate in," to which families re-
sorted, and where they were fed on bread and
molasses while passing through a course of
smallpox, as was the custom of the times.
Every spring the keeping of the town's
poor was sold by auction with their children
and chattels, if they had any, and the sales
were recorded in the town clerk's book. For
example: “Vandued the Child of Lynda that
was before she was married the Child she
had on Nantucket. Bid in by Ezra Swift at
59 Centes pr week to be clothed fed & nursed
by sd Ezra — the Docter's bil by the Town -
til neaxt anuel meeting if not taken away
suner.” It was a nameless child, needing a
home, a nurse and a doctor, farmed out to
labor by the week, if not taken away sooner
by death! Another hard-hearted sale by auc-
204 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
tion was :-"the Suporting of the widder of
the late Jonathan perrey and Child & also two
more of the youngest Children and also one
Cow & one heifer" - a curious herding of
children and cattle. Later it was voted in
town meeting "to put up the poor in lump
or together, and if," says the record, “they
will not go five dollars lower why then they
are to go separately.” This attempt to
cheapen the cost of supporting them failed;
and the widows were again set up at auction
annually, and sold "to be kept one year their
clothing to be kept in repair and to be re-
turned as they now are.” The sales were
made in the bar-room of the inn, where the
landlord, as he served the thirsty guests from
his decanters, discussed with them the value
of the services of the paupers for whose
keeping they had come to bid. The sales
records ran as follows:-
1814—“Jurned from the meeting-house down
to Benjamin Fearings house to vandue the poor
1 The town records show many transactions which would
now be considered as scandalous : William Perce was paid
fifty dollars “for keeping his mother," and eight dollars
and eight cents "for supplying his father ; " and the town
also gave him two hundred and sixty dollars, for which he
"promised to support his mother during her natural life.”
TOWN TYTA
LIFE AFTER THE WAR. 205
- the boy Lynda Boyer brot from Nantucket bid
of to John Bates at 95 Dollars to be kept til 21
yeares the money to be paid in saven yeares
in proportion yearly — the Wd and Daughter
Bethany Barrowes bid to prince Burges at $84 &
one half Dollars for one year to clothe victual
& Docter & nurse her - Salome Bump bid of by
James Leonard at 38 Dollares & 75 Centes for
one year to cloth & nurse & pay the Docteres
bil — the Wd Mary Bump bid of by Ebenezer
Raymond at 40 Dollares for one year to vittle
and cloth & nurse & Doctor her."
1819-“Voted to vandue some of the poore
Children such as could not be put out. The
Fry girl was bid of by Moses S. Fearing at $89
to be paid by proposion acording to the number
of yeares he keepes her. The perry boy and girl
bid of by Joseph Gibbs at fifty nyne Dollares to
be paid in proposion. One boy bid of by Joshua
Gibbs at Seventy nyne Centes pr week.”
1822. “Voted not to build a poor or work-
house. Ada Bumpas was then set up to be kept
untill next March meeting and was bid off by
Curtis Tobey for $1 pr week."
A condition of the sales was that the buyers
should pay the doctor's bills; a condition
often disregarded, and when the unpaid doc-
tor sent his bills to the town meeting they
-
206 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
were sharply criticised ; and when Peter
Mackie, the town physician, rebelled against
this treatment, it was proposed that he
should doctor all the paupers for twenty-five
dollars a year. “And he agreed to do it for
that sum,” triumphantly wrote the town clerk
in the town records.
Physic was held in veneration. It was a
custom of all well-regulated families, in the
spring, to take large purges of senna, or mix-
tures of brimstone, rhubarb, and molasses.
In a serious illness cupping and leeching
were resorted to; mercury was administered
until the teeth became loose; water was de-
nied to the sufferer in a raging fever, and
salt clam juice was offered to assuage thirst.
One might have an aching tooth jerked out
by the fall of a ten - pound weight tied to it,
or the pain might be destroyed by pressing
quicklime into the cavity. But fortunately
the race was hardy, and many people lived to
an old age in spite of the doctor and his nos-
trums. Those who died in old age were said
to have died “of a hectical decay." Other
causes of death noted in the church records
were : “of the numb palsie; of a dropsical
consumption; of the quimsey; of a carking
TOWN LIFE AFTER THE WAR. 207
humour about the throat; of a putrid fever;
of a canker rash; of a perizeneumony; of a
stoppage by eating cherries; of a yellow ner-
vous fever ; of a carbuncle; of a cramp in
her stomach ; of a mortification."
When the war was ended there were no
conveniences for traveling to other towns.
The roads, overgrown by trees, were more
suitable for horses than for wheeled vehicles.
A coach began to run regularly from New
Bedford to Boston in 1797, the trees on each
side of the highway having been trimmed to
make room for it to pass; but as Wareham
was not on its route, a post-rider rode once a
week through the town, calling at the inn for
letters and connecting with the coach. This
was the only line of communication with
Boston for many years, except by sea.
The isolated position of the town did not
hinder its prosperity. Farms were fertile,
shipyards touched homesteads at the Nar-
rows, where freighting and whaling vessels
were built. The owners of these were the
thrifty farmers, tradesmen, and mechanics of
the town, who were able to furnish, for the
building of a ship, timber from their lands,
materials from their stores, and labor with
208 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
their own hands. The abundant fisheries in
Buzzard's Bay and its influent streams also
contributed to the town's prosperity. Colo-
nial laws restricted the use of seines and
nets in these fisheries; and although similar
laws are now in force, contraband fishermen
are sometimes discovered in the bay, at early
dawn, filling their sloops with fish unlawfully
taken.
The Woonkinco River entered the bay by
a deep channel, and the harbor was often astir
with sloops, schooners, and ships arriving
and departing. Small sailing vessels from the
bay passed up the Weweantet River to the
“brickkiln landing," near Blackmer's Pond,.
where bricks were made, and farmers landed
crops gathered on the bay shores. Squire
Fearing's farm included lands in Agawame,
and as they were six or seven miles from his
dwelling-house, the crops were brought to
this landing, and carted thence to his barns.
One autumn, as the story goes, he had corn
to be harvested on the island off Fearing
Neck, and his neighbor, Captain Uriah Sav-
ery, had a sloop which the Squire hired to
bring home the corn; having assured the
captain that he knew the channels and could

Dar Hey
CONTRABAND FISHERMEN – BUZZARD'S BAY
TOWN LIFE AFTER THE WAR. 209
pilot the way to the island. They started
from the landing and easily ran down the
river to Great Hill. After passing this prom-
ontory the Squire lost the way. Looking
across the bay, all the headlands and coves
appeared alike to him, and he could recognize
no landmark by which to direct a course. He
gave the captain orders to steer in so many
diverse directions that the old mariner was
convinced that this justice of the peace, who
dispensed the laws of the Commonwealth
from Fearing Hill, was more of a farmer than
a navigator. In his humiliation the Squire
confessed that he did not know the marine
way to the island, but he had often gone to it
by land and swum his carts and oxen across
the channel. The captain put the sloop be-
fore the wind, and running her towards Tem-
pest Knob had the good fortune to make
Fearing Neck. As they passed along the
shores not a landmark was recognized by the
Squire. Suddenly he vindicated his claim to
be a pilot by exclaiming: “Uriah! Uriah! I
told ye I knew the way; there's old Mac-
manaman and his striped oxen on the shore
for sartin !"

M
:::::
.
YILI
-
XIV.
THE BRITISH RAID.
T HE second war with Great Britain,
declared by Congress in June,
1812, excited no interest in the
town. Public sentiment throughout Plymouth
County was not only opposed to it, but found
vent in resolutions which, if they had been
made in 1776, would have caused those who
made them to be expatriated as tories. Public
meetings proclaimed it “to be disrespectful
in the inhabitants” to do anything for the
prosecution of the war, and that they would
“support each other against all attempts of
whatsoever nature to injure them for any-
thing they rightfully do or say." A spirit
of independence was everywhere exhibited,
which would not have been allowed expres-
sion in the years when a “Committee of Cor-
respondence, Inspection and Safety” tyran-
nized over all personal opinions.
THE BRITISH RAID.
211
.
A Wareham schooner bound home from
Turk's Island in the Bahamas, and another
outward bound to Brazil, had been captured
by the enemy; but as hostilities were con-
fined mainly to the coast of the Southern
States, the town considered itself secure in
its isolated position. This illusion was dis-
pelled on Monday morning the 13th of June,
1814, when the British brig-of-war Nimrod
came up the bay and anchored near Bird
Island. She belonged to a blockading squad-
ron which for several months had worked off
and on the coast, foraging at unprotected
places, seizing small craft, and harassing the
commerce of Newport, Nantucket, and New
Bedford. A few days previous her boats had
come up the bay and cut out three sloops
belonging to Wareham and carried them off.
From her anchorage the Nimrod sent away
six boats containing 220 armed men; they
spread lateen-sails, and with a fair wind and
a flood tide, filled away for Wareham. Their
coming was discovered by a man on the
beach at Crooked River, who rowed over to
the Narrows and told the selectmen. An
alarm was sounded through the town, house-
wives buried their silver spoons and porrin-
212 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
gers in gardens, and some of the inhabitants
assembled at the inn to consider what they
should do. As an armed resistance was im-
possible, they sent a white flag to meet the
boats at the landing. The British marched
up the road unopposed, set fire to a cotton
factory and to several vessels, and then de-
parted as they came.
News-gatherers were quickly abroad, and
the Boston newspapers were furnished with
various accounts of the raid.1 A brief account
1« Fairhaven, June 14. Yesterday morning we were
alarmed by the appearance of the British brig Nimrod
with 7 barges with her manned from the 74 now lying at
Quick's Hole. About 8 o'clock she bore away up the Bay
and as we supposed was bound into Rochester. We there-
fore with a party of men proceeded with a small canon to
assist the citizens, but the brig had come to an anchor and
manned 6 barges with about 150 men and proceeded to
Wareham where they arrived at 12 o'clock and destroyed
12 or 13 sail of vessels, among them a new ship and a brig.
They set fire to the factory and left it soon, when the peo-
ple collected and put it out.” - New England Palladium.
June 16th, 1814. “A gentleman from Plymouth states
that on Monday about 200 men in 6 barges from a 74 and the
Nimrod brig came in to Wareham and set fire to seven ves-
sels, three or four of which were consumed. The others
and a factory which was likewise set on fire were extin-
guished.” — Boston Daily Advertiser.
June 18th, 1814. “We learn by gentlemen from Ware-
ham that the 13th inst. several British barges landed about
THE BRITISH RAID.
213
of it was sent to a New Bedford newspaper
by two of the selectmen :-
“WAREHAM, June 14.
“ To the editor of the New Bedford Mercury.
“SIR — Yesterday morning we were informed
of the approach of the enemy, and at about II
o'clock A. M. they landed at the village called the
Narrows, with a flag. There were six barges con-
taining two hundred and twenty men. They de-
manded (before the proper authority could arrive)
all the public property ; and declared, that in case
they were molested, every house within their
reach should be consumed. We were not pre-
pared to make any opposition, and promised not
to. To prevent a violation on our part, they de-
tained a number of men and boys as prisoners
for their security; declaring that if any of their
men were injured, they should be put to imme-
diate death. Having stationed sentries back of
200 men at that place about noon. They proceeded to set-
ting fire to a large ship and an elegant brig on the stocks,
which they said was intended for a privateer, and several
other vessels. They threw a rocket into a cotton factory :
which they said they considered public property. They
did not molest the fishing craft, and seeing the name of
Washington on the stern of one of the vessels, one of them
ordered it to be burnt. One officer exclaimed – Not a!
hair of the head of this vessel shall be scorched,' and she i
was spared.” — Columbian Centinel.
214 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
the village, they proceeded to fire the vessels and
cotton manufactory. Twelve vessels were fired,
five of which were totally destroyed; the remain-
der were extinguished after the enemy departed.
The cotton manufactory was also extinguished.
"Damage estimated at 20,000 dollars. It is
supposed that the enemy came from the Nimrod
brig, and Superb 74.
BENJA. BOURNE, 2 selectmen of
BENJA. FEARING, S Wareham.”
A more detailed account was sent by some
of the inhabitants to Commodore Perry. It
was as follows:-
"WAREHAM, June 21, 1814.
“To commodore Perry. Sir - The following is
a correct statement when the British landed at
this place with their barges the 13th of this inst.
June. We the undersigned do testify and say,
that on the 13th of this inst. June, about II
o'clock, A. M. we saw the British with six barges
approaching this village with a white flag hoisted
in one of them at which time our flag was not
hoisted, but Thomas Young was carrying it down
the street towards the wharf, where it was after-
wards hoisted. We the undersigned do further
testify and say, that on the landing of the com-
manding officer from the barge where our flag
was hoisted, he the commanding officer did agree
THE BRITISH RAID.
215
that if he was not fired on by the inhabitants
that he would not destroy any private property
belonging to the inhabitants; but he would de-
stroy public property which did not belong to the
town, and requested one of us to point out the
Falmouth property or vessels, which we agreed to
do, and one of us went into the barge with the
second in command, and then they took down
their flag of truce and proceeded to set fire to
the Falmouth vessels. They then landed a part
of their men, and in violation of their agreement
proceeded to set fire to private property, by set-
ting fire to a vessel on the stocks and five others
which were at anchor and a Plymouth vessel.
They were reminded of their agreement, and that
they had taken advantage of us by false promises,
but they threatened to set fire to the village, and
put the inhabitants to the sword if any resistance
was made or any attempts made to put out the
fires, for they did not care about any promises
they had made, also they landed a party of men
and set fire to a cotton manufactory. They then
returned to their barges, took twelve of the in-
habitants with them on board their barges, and
said if they were fired upon by the inhabitants
they would put them to death. Then the com-
manding officer ordered the flag of truce to be
hoisted, and the second in command swore it was
216 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
a damned shame and disgrace to any nation to
enter a village under a flag of truce and commit
the greatest outrage and depredations possible,
and then return under a flag of truce, but on or-
ders being again given by the commanding officer
the flag of truce was hoisted. Our men were
landed about three miles below the village, and
the barges proceeded on board the brigantine
Nimrod, then lying in the bay.
DAVID NYE, JR. NOBLE EVERETT,
ABNER BASSET, WM. BARROWS,
ISAAC PERKINS, PEREZ Briggs,
JOSIAH EVERETT, WM. FEARING.
“P. S. This is known only by the undersigned,
no other person being present, that is, that the
British fired three muskets under the flag of truce
before the agreement.
ABNER BASSET,
DAVID NYE, JR."
The twelve hostages were set free near
Nobska Bluff on Cromeset, where the rivers
meet the bay. From this point the boats
were watched, on their return to the Nimrod,
until they disappeared around the point of
Great Hill. Then the little village at the
Narrows aroused itself for defense. There
was a mustering of the militia, rifle pits to

joustarione
NOBSKA BLUFF ON CROMESET, WHERE THE RIVERS MEET THE BAY. Page 164.
THE BRITISH RAID. 217
command the channels were dug, and senti-
nels were posted to keep watch and ward
against another surprise from the sea.
Although this raid attracted attention from
all parts of the country, and was commented
upon as an unnatural retaliation for the neu-
trality of Wareham, the town having fur-
nished neither a man nor a gun for service
against the British, during the war, up to
this date, the town records are silent about
it. The only allusion to it is to be found in
the treasurer's account-book, in which, under
the date of 1815, it is written : “Paid Archip-
pus Leonard for standing guard when the
British landed, seventy one cents.” And
that sum was all that the British raid drew
out of the town treasury.


.
Tui
XV.
1
THE TOWN'S BASS-VIOL.
GLIMPSE of the congregation in
the meeting-house, in the early part
of this century, is revealed in an old
sermon, which mentions “Mackie at the holy
supper reading off the hymn in Scottish style,
Fearing in the gallery leading the choir with
a loud voice, Savery with white locks bend-
ing over his staff, Nye with powdered wig
like an English judge, the aged men and
women sitting in front of the pulpit in open
seats, mothers with babes in their arms seated
in chairs in the porch."
To this congregation the propriety of using
a bass-viol in the services of worship was
an ever-present question. When new ideas
about church music reached Wareham, in
1794, the question was considered by the
church, and after the town meeting had been
consulted, it was decided, “Notwithstanding
THE TOWN'S BASS-VIOL. 219
the opposition of some, to have the Bass viol
used." This decision aroused that Puritan
prejudice which classed the use of musical
instruments in worship as an abomination;
and therefore the church called a meeting to
reconsider the question, when it was voted
" that it is expedient that a Bass vial should
not be used.”
Nevertheless the instrument held its place
in the choir until 1796, when, by an order of
town meeting, it was put out of the meeting-
house. It remained outside, making various
attempts to get in, until 1802; then a request
for its readmission was considered, and the
church was induced to vote, in April, “that
we are willing that the singers should make
use of the Bass vial on trial till next sacra-
ment lecture.” On a second request the
church refused to grant any further indul-
gence. The singers then went to the Sep-
tember town meeting, and obtained “ Leave
for the Bass Vial to be brought into ye meet-
ing-house to be played On every other Sab-
bath to begin the next Sabbath & to Play if
chosen every Sabbath in the Intermission
between meetings and Not to Pitch the
Tunes on the Sabbaths that it don't Play."
220 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
The town's bass-viol, like the song of the
sirens, lured many pilgrims to forget the
country to which they were going; and they
so far renounced their loyalty as to turn away
from the meeting-house on those Sundays
when the instrument was to be heard therein.
The most obstinate of these pilgrims was
Captain Joshua Gibbs. From the outset he
would neither listen to it nor make a compro-
mise with it. “The thing is an abomination,”
he said. “Can't we sing in meeting without
sich a screeching and groaning? My father
and grandfather worshiped God in Wareham
without a bars vile. I won't abide it!”
The church asked the town to stop it; and
in October, 1803, the town meeting ordered
“Ye use of the Bass Vial in Publick Worship
to be stopped.” Then the singers and their
allies stayed at home on Sundays, leaving
nothing for the town to do but to turn around
again; which it did in February, 1804, when,
as the records say, —
“The Town met & Ily Voted to have Singing
in the time of Publick worship.
“ zly Voted that ye Singers Shall appoint their
head Singer.
THE TOWN/
//
'S BASS-VIOL. 221
“zly voted to make use of the Bass Viol the
one half of the Time & to begin with ye Viol
next Sabbath day."
Years passed, and through them all the
bass-viol held its place in the meeting-house,
and its enemies kept themselves safely be-
yond the sound of its strings. In 1826 a
church meeting was called to consider the
case of some members who for a long time
had neglected to attend public worship.
“Three of those brethren," say the church
records,“ being present, stated that the rea-
son of their withdrawing themselves from
public worship with the church, was the
use of instrumental music in singing." It
was proposed to submit their case to an ec-
clesiastical council,2 when Joshua Gibbs, who
had become a deacon of the church, refused
to submit his grievances to the decision of
1 "Decem. 13. 1807. The church tarried and Voted
that the singers be requested not to make use of the Bass
vivl in public worship in the meeting house unless they
give Cap. Joshua Gibbs, or his family in case of his ab-
sence, previous notice." - Wareham Church Records.
2 The Council advised “the Church in behalf of their
aggrieved brethren, respectfully to request the Society to
discontinue the use of instrumental music, particularly on
days of communion.”
222 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
any council, and abruptly left the meeting ;
and such was the power of his obstinacy that
this disloyalty was allowed to pass without
further notice.
When the church was reorganized, in
1828, and was taking possession of a new
meeting-house, the bass-viol appeared at the
threshold like a ghost from colonial times. A
new generation had inherited the prejudice
against it, and William Mackie, Nathaniel
Crocker, and Abisha Barrows were sent to
the singers with an offer to give fifty dol-
lars a year for the support of a choir, if the
choir would sing without musical instruments.
Their errand was unsuccessful. Again the
controversy was renewed in 1829, but the
church had become weary of it. The spirit
which for thirty-five years had kept up the
revolt was broken; and the venerable Deacon
Gibbs went to his grave leaving the town's
bass-viol triumphant in the meeting-house.

VAL
:
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rado
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XVI.
FINAL TRANSFORMATIONS.
SAHE manners and customs of colonial
times lingered on into the present
century, until enterprising men, who
had come into the town bringing capital, be-
gan to erect cotton-mills and iron-works on
the dams where, for more than a hundred
years, the farmers had sawn their logs and
ground their corn. These new enterprises
created new centres of population, and quick-
ened the social life of the community; and
when the manufacture of iron hoops for the
oil-casks of whaling-ships, and of iron nails
by machinery, was begun in 1821, the town
was awakened to a new and noisy existence.
A brisk commerce enlivened the bay between
Wareham and New Bedford, conveying
1 The Tobeys, Pratts, Murdocks, Lincolns, and Leonards.
224 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
1
Swedes iron for the rolling-mills, and return-
ing hoops to the whalemen's town. Packets,
-- one of which bore the ferocious name of
“Galloping Tiger," — loaded with nails, sailed
regularly to New York, and brought back
ores, blooms, flour, West India goods, and
cotton. Cotton shirtings made in the Ware-
ham mills for slaves' use were shipped direct
to buyers in Virginia. Schooners loaded with
iron wares from the Wareham furnaces sailed
to the Kennebec and Penobscot, the Connec-
ticut and Hudson, to retail them in the river
towns. Trade increased at the harbor, ship-
building yards were enlarged, and the little
landing-places formerly existing alongshore
became substantial wharves of stone extend-
ing into the edge of deep water.
The antique meeting-house felt this en-
terprising spirit. Its outside was painted,
and its neglected surroundings were cleared
up. Carters were forbidden to leave their
ore-laden wagons near it, and farmers were
forbidden to cord firewood about it. Inside
the house on Sunday there was the sound of
fiddles and a showy parade of singers in the
galleries. The oaken benches bordering the
great alley were taken away, and one of the
FINAL TRANSFORMATIONS.
225
three outside doors was permanently closed.
In the spaces thus acquired pews were built,
which were sold by auction at high prices,
the town clerk having been cautioned “to
give no Deeds till the money is paid.” The
new-comers demanded that the money re-
ceived for new pews should be used to build
a steeple and to buy a bell. To this the
farmers objected, and as they were a major-
ity in the town meeting, it was there voted
“Not to build a steeple neither buy a bell.”
The meeting-house had never had a warm-
ing. During winter its interior was as cold
as a refrigerator ; sometimes so cold that no
service of worship was attempted. Parson
Thacher wrote in the church records : “Feb-
ruary 21. 1773. This was a remarkable cold
Sabbath. Some by their glasses found it to
be many degrees colder than ever was known.
Many were froze. I myself coming home
from meeting had my face touched with frost,
so that we had no meeting in the afternoon.”
When wintry winds whistled through the
crannies of the meeting-house, and flying
snow drifted under its doors and darkened
its rattling windows, the rigors of the Mo-
saic law were preached to an audience shiv-
226 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
ering upon the brink of the freezing-point.
Women found some comfort by resting their
feet upon iron boxes filled with embers
brought from their homes. Men shrugged
themselves into as small a space as possible;
while the preacher, encased in a great-coat
and mittens, stood at his post of duty as if
determined to answer the Psalmist's question,
“Who can stand before His cold?”
The selectmen proposed "to purchase a
stove and pipes and furnish wood and attend-
ance" for the meeting-house. But the ma-
jority in town meeting, believing, it may be
presumed, that the preaching ought to be hot
enough to warm the house, voted “Not to
purchase a stove and pipes. Not to furnish
wood and attendance." As descendants of
colonial farmers they could read their “title
clear to mansions in the skies,” without the
aid of fires and bells.
Although the meeting-house was cold,
church discipline was active enough to warm
the thoughts of erring members, who, when
brought to a condition of penitence, were re-
quired to make confessions in public, as was
the custom in former times. A young man,
who probably, as the song says,
FINAL TRANSFORMATIONS.
227
“Danced all night, till the broad daylight,
And went home with the girls in the morning,"
became conscience -stricken; and, being a
member of the church, sought and obtained
its forgiveness. The records of 1823 state
that "Harvey Bumpus, having a short time
since mingled with the world in the frivolous
amusement of dancing, came forward and
made a confession which was read and ac-
cepted.” One stood up and confessed that
she had been "guilty of a breach of the
seventh commandment;" another sinner,
well advanced in years, confessed that he
had “indulged to excess in the use of ardent
spirits.”
Intemperate drinking was not unusual
in New England towns. Ministers, as well
as parishioners, drank rum moderately, or
otherwise. At the stores it was sold for two
shillings and three pence the gallon, and a
decanter of it was at hand in the living-room
of every dwelling-house. At an ordination,
a wedding, a funeral, a house - raising, a
launching, a husking, it was freely offered.
If two men went to the salt meadows to mow,
or into the woods to fell trees, they carried a
pint of rum as a matter of course. Although
228 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAYT
.
farm laborers worked from sunrise to sunset,
if a job was to be done after the day's work
was over, a sufficient compensation to the
men was an invitation to “Come in and take
a grog!” During the haying season it was
a custom of the farmer to go to the meadows
at eleven o'clock in the forenoon and at four
o'clock in the afternoon, carrying a tum-
bler and a decanter of rum for the refresh-
ment of his laborers. In 1830, through the
influence of the church, a society to promote
temperance in drinking was organized in
Wareham; and to “sign the pledge" was
then believed to be, for the signer, a com-
plete riddance from the sin of drunkenness.
Annually, in April, the governor's fast-day
was observed by going to the meeting-house
to listen to a long sermon; and in November
Thanksgiving day was observed by a similar
service, followed by the cheer of an ample din-
ner at home, for which preparations had been
going on for a long time. But Easter and
Christmas were unknown. Reminiscences
of Christmas festivals as described in London
story-books may have caused a child, here
and there, to hang up its stockings by the
kitchen fireplace, which was spacious enough
FINAL TRANSFORMATIONS. 229
to allow the entrance of Santa Claus and all
his reindeers. He never came to fill the
stockings, and childish faith was turned into
unbelief. In the opinion of fathers and moth-
ers, any special observance of Christmas day
was a deference to the Pope of Rome.
Still, social life was far from being gloomy.
There were frolicsome assemblies for husk-
ing corn and paring apples; there were after-
noon quilting-bees, and evenings enlivened
by romping games, such as blindman's-buff
and spin-the-platter. The sports and pas-
times of these evening parties not unfre-
quently bordered on rudeness; the youthful
merrymakers running a gauntlet, dashing
through files of their companions who, with
uplifted hands and waving arms, cut off the
progress of the willing victim, while all sang:
“The needle's eye that doth supply
The thread that runs so true,
It hath caught many a fair young heart,
And now it hath caught you.”
Others, joining hands and wildly swinging
around in giddy rings, chanted “Green grow
the rushes, O”; all the measures of the
chant being zestfully marked, and interspersed
with kisses. It was a common custom to
230 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
invite neighbors or kindred "to spend the
day," the guests arriving at nine o'clock;
women prepared for knitting and needle-
work, the elder men prepared to talk about
wool, cattle, and crops. At noon a bounti-
ful dinner was served for them, the great
oven having been fired the day before, and at
five o'clock in the afternoon the supper-table
was spread with all the varieties of cake, pas-
try, and sweetmeat for which the hostess was
noted. In winter evenings there were sleigh-
ing parties that pulled up at the tavern to
drink mulled wine; there were voluntary sing-
ing clubs; there were neighborhood gather-
ings of young people, who, seated in a semi-
circle around the large glowing fireplace,
passed the hours in telling fortunes, drink-
ing cider, cracking nuts, and eating apples,
whose peels, pared off without a break, were
twirled around the parer's head, and, falling
on the floor, were supposed to form the initial
letter of somebody's husband that was to be.
A joyful event was the arrival of a son from
the city, whose tailor-made clothes and dandi-
fied airs were the pride of his mother; or of
a son returned from a whaling voyage, his
sea-chest stored with shells and curiosities

VIGO
THE QUILTING BEE
" WHOSE TAILOR-MADE CLOTHES AND DANDIFIED AIRS." Page 220.
FINAL TRANSFORMATIONS. 231
from the islands of the Pacific Ocean, and
perhaps bringing a piece of China crape or
· India muslin for his sister's wedding-dress.
Weddings were important events in the so-
cial life of the town. Special journeys were
made to Boston or New York to buy the out-
fit, and brides were often arrayed in gowns
of such richness that those which have been
preserved to the present day are held as
heirlooms of great value. Although the
church looked upon dancing with disfavor,
there were balls at the tavern occasionally,
where young beaus prided themselves on
the dexterity with which they “cut the pig-
eon wing,” and whirled through the meas-
ures of “money-musk” and Sir Roger de
Coverley. At evening parties, too, the guests
were accustomed to join hands with the
hosts in a “ dance around the chimney,"
passing from room to room, a merry go-round
of old and young. Going to meeting on
Sunday morning was also a social enjoyment.
It was like going to a country-side gathering
of friends and neighbors. The meeting-
house door was the Sunday newspaper con-
taining, as in former times, all kinds of an-
nouncements interesting to the congrega-
232 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
tion; and the noon-time intermission fur-
nished the great opportunity when women
who had received the latest fashions from
Boston could see each other in their new
bonnets and “dandy-gray russets,” and could
humanize their minds by an unlimited range
over the fields of gossip.
So old-fashioned were the farmers that new
appliances for saving work were not in favor,
Farming tools were wrought on the anvil of
the village blacksmith, and so were the plow-
share and the iron straps binding it to the
mold-board. The well-to-do farmer kept a
horse and shay, but it was only for hire and
to carry the women folks to meeting. To
him time was not money, and if he must go
to a neighboring town he preferred to walk
the distance rather than devote the establish-
ment to his own use for the journey, except
on unusual occasions. Clothing material was
made on the farms. On the kitchen hearth
stood dye tubs in which fleeces were colored
red and blue. The industrious wife and her
daughters were skilled in carding the wool,
spinning it into yarns, and weaving the yarns
into cloths, which, after passing through the
fulling-mill, were made into clothing for the
FINAL TRANSFORMATIONS.
233
family. They also made fine linen from flax
grown in their own fields. The shoes of the
family were also a home product. Hides sent
to a tannery remained in the vats a year, the
tanner taking one half of them for his work;
when the leather was sent to the house, a
shoemaker was summoned, who made and re-
paired for every member of the family shoes
enough to last a year, taking in payment for
his labor various products of the farm.
When the farmer made his last will and
testament he began it “In the name of God,"
declaring that he was now “of a disposing
mind and memory," and expressing his reli-
gious faith by the following language :-
“In the first place I give and bequeath my
immortal spirit to God who gave it and my body
to the earth to be buried in a decent Christian
burial with a comfortable hope that at the general
resurrection it will be raised in a glorious state."
To his wife he gives “the use and im-
provement of one third part” of his real es-
tate and household furniture, with perhaps
“two cows, one riding beast, ten sheep," and
a seat in the family pew in the meeting-house.
To his unmarried daughter he gives “the
privilege," or exclusive use, of a designated
234 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
chamber in his dwelling-house, with a feather
bed and furniture, so long as she lives un-
married, with storage space in the cellar,
laundry space in the lean-to, a seat in the
family pew, “ firewood for one fire cut at the
door, sixteen bushels of Indian corn and four
bushels of rye a year, all to be provided by
her brothers equally between them." To his
oldest son he gives the homestead, land and
buildings, subject to the mother's and daugh-
ter's privileges, and he divides the remainder
of his estate between all his sons. On his
gravestone, set up in the old churchyard
where his ancestors were buried, some pious
rhymes were carved, expressing the belief of
mourning hearts :-
“ So sleep the saints and cease to groan,
When sin and death have done their worst.
Christ hath a glory like his own,
Which waits to clothe their waking dust."
In those days there was no mania for trav-
eling, no longing for fashionable resorts at
“the springs" or in the mountains, to de-
stroy the charm of village life. Perhaps
once a year a farmer with his wife journeyed
to Boston in the family shay, a little hair-
covered trunk containing their best clothing
FINAL TRANSFORMATIONS. 235
strapped to its axle, to make a brief visit to
relatives. But families generally stayed at
home, excepting the daughter who found a
husband in another town, and those restless
sons who longed to see Boston, - from which
news came at regular intervals by a stage-
coach and a six-horsed baggage wagon,
or who hankered after the sea and gladly
trudged afoot to New Bedford to join a
whaling ship and pursue their sea dreams
beyond Cape Horn. Occasionally one of
the home-staying daughters became so
skilled in needlework that her services were
sought for by neighbors, the usual compen-
sation for a day's labor being her diet with
sixteen cents in winter and twenty cents in
summer. Children were taught to work as
soon as they were taught anything, and
some, contented with their labors, grew to
be men and women before they had crossed
the boundaries of the town; while others,
more ambitious, having inherited the ster-
ling qualities and steady habits which this
honest mode of life produced, sought serious
occupation in distant cities, where they be.
came the founders of prosperous families,
distinguished in social and in commercial life.
TTA
LLL
236 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
The farmhouses were low, rectangular,
built around a large square central chimney.
Beneath them were spacious cellars for the
storage of various products of the farm and
other household supplies, with which the
thrifty farmer was abundantly provided.
Near or connected with the dwellings were
barns, cart-sheds, corn-cribs, and wood-piles.
A picket fence, or a rough stone wall, sepa-
rated the highway from the front door, and
a straight path divided the turf between.
"Adown the path the poppies flamed,
Stiff box made green the border,
And sweet blue violets, half-ashamed,
Grew low in wild disorder.”
At last -- it was in 1847 --a railroad from
Boston, creeping towards Buzzard's Bay on
its route to Cape Cod, entered the town
and completed the social revolution which
for several years had been in progress. It
wrought great changes. It had already
changed the face of the country by starting
fires in the woods and turning streams from
their channels. It now changed the home
life of the people, weakened their religious
habits, lowered the value of their farms, cre-
FINAL TRANSFORMATIONS. 237
ated new wants, and brought in a population
of alien blood and faith. The influences of
manufacturing and commercial affairs domi-
nated the town meetings. A stress and
hurry of life began ; and that peace of mind
with time to look about, which was charac-
teristic of a farming community in colonial
times, disappeared never to return.
The farmers, who had been contented
with the world bounded by their town's hori-
zon, and with labors which produced such
wealth as they required, found it difficult to
conform their slow-going habits and inherited
opinions to the new conditions surrounding
them; and, being no longer lords of the
manor, they lost the independence which
they had always enjoyed.
Now the farmer who is tilling the ex-
hausted soil pieces out his scanty income by
trifles derived from a mechanical trade. His
sons work in the iron mills, the nail factories,
on the cranberry bogs, on the oyster beds,
or. they go to sea. Some, seeking a better
destiny, wander away to the great city and
to the far West, where a successful career
leads them to forget the old homestead, or
misfortune compels them to return at last
and seek the shelter of its roof.
238 COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.
Others, who are nearing old age and who
delight to recall the incidents of their early
days in Wareham, are sometimes drawn back
to gather up the ancient household relics —
“The varnish'd clock that click'd behind the door,"
the three-cornered arm-chairs, the brass
warming-pan that drove the cold out of fea-
ther beds in winter, the spinning-wheel, the
grandmother's sampler wrought in strange
devices, and to re-light their fire on their
paternal hearthstone.

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