VALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 07672 8949 "et'-iuen historical society, '"etiiuen, Mass, Publics tion. v. 2 t >n t*m 1929 ^SJIigSR'.l . PUBLICATION, NO. 2. Zbe flfcerdmacfc Dalles An address delivered May 13th, 1896, before the Methuen Historical Society, B$ IRobert 1b. Gewfcebut^. Methuen — the only township in the wide world to receive and retain its pleasant English name — is rich in distinctive charms and has rare historic associations peculiarly its own : it shares also in the broader char acteristics and more romantic history of the wonderful Merrimack valley through which the river that gives it name winds by pleasant intervales and enduring hills from the mountain to the sea. The ffl|tory of this valley is too large a subject to be fully treated in an address of one hour, fdr it covers what is quaint and romantic or repulsive and horrible in Indian life and warfare : it illustrates also the beginnings of town and municipal government in New England, the evo lution of religious thought,, freed from state control, and the found ing and development of free educational institutions and manufacturing industries in' a new world and a new way. Our view tonight is but a glance backward : you may look long and investigate patiently without exhausting the subject. Methuen Historical Society Publication. This river valley, showing as a mere ink spot on the map of the world, is a land of complex natural endowment and of startling contrasts. In the bold alphabet of nature, visible from our homes and from adjacent hill tops, scientists and intelligent observers read a story of long continued turmoil, disturbance and adjustment through ages of preparation and change. Lenticular hills of Andover and hills and ridges in Methuen, Lawrence and vicinity seem to be unimpeachable witnesses to the truth of the theory that vast masses of ice covering every mountain top in New Eng land, excepting the bald cone of Mount Washington, moved, in pre-his- toric ages, slowly and irresistibly across this valley, in a south-easterly direction, over a base of bare rock, among the oldest strata in the world, to the sea. The soil is but the grist of grinding ice masses left in the wake of movement and distributed by subsiding waters. It is altogether probable that this ridge upon which your beautiful building is located, where we now are, was the northern wall or bluff of an immense lake, above the surface of which, rounded hill-tops that rise about us projected as a group of islands, while the entire valley, westward, eastward and southward, was covered with waters as picturesque in outline, perhaps as widely extended, as far famed Winnepesaukee. Forces both gigantic and gentle, startlingly terrible and abrupt in operation at times, or, working through centuries in slow and almost im perceptible processes, have torn, tossed, ground, polished and beautified this valley land. Within the first hundred and fifty years of settlement by whites, two hundred earthquakes, of more or less violence, occurred. So severe were these shocks in 1727 that the old Church in Newbury ap pointed a day of thanksgiving because of deliverance from the earthquakes of the preceding winter. There was a great earthquake in 1638, a terrible earthquake in 1693, a very violent shock in 1727, eleven earthquakes in 1730, eleven more in 1731, and a great earthquake in 1755, soon after the Lisbon earthquake of that year. The very course and character of the Merrimack river is entirely exceptional. You will look long before you find a river flowing in open country, doubling upon its course and seeking outlet in direction nearly at right angles with its general path of progress. The river flows almost The Merrimack Valley. directly southward from the lakes to old Chelmsford ; there it sweeps gracefully to the northeastward to drop over shelving ledges at Pawtucket Falls and suggest and make possible the city of Lowell. It continues on and drops over inclines at the location of Lawrence and thence winds majestically among hills of North Essex to the ocean. Nowhere in the wide world outside the Merrimack valley are the mountains in just such relation to the sea, the lakes so visibly natural storehouses and distributors of accumulated force and power. The valley is a vast natural machine. Its parts are mountains, lakes, rivers, old ocean itself. Clouds and vapors go lazily up from the sea ; the moving power is the force of ocean tides, of unseen currents of electric energy, of invisi ble currents of air. Upon mountain summits and forest inclines these clouds and vapors are condensed to descend in streams that men force, through channels of their devising, to drive the wheels of monster mills. The floods are captured and led through systems of water works to every dwelling and warehouse of lowland tcities, and this majestic movement goes on forever, however men may come and wherever men may go. Old ocean ever waits the return of waters laden with civilization's filth and art's impurity and washes out the stain of contact with men in its depths profound. It has been said that we of the Merrimack valley are the world's drudges, working for all the world. We accept the saying as true and complimentary in whatever spirit it may have been spoken; but the reverse of this assertion, that all the world works for this valley is also true. In mines of iron, of coal and metals, on tropical cottonfields, in the great interior forests of the Amazon where rubber and gums are gathered, on Australian table-lands and steppes, and western mountains and prairies where the wool-crop and hides are collected, wherever, in regions tropical or temperate, fibrous material for textiles or paper, or materials for dyes are found, compounded or distilled, in every land and upon every sea, laborers are toiling to supply with raw material machinery and waiting labor gathered here from every civilized land. This northern valley, is a centre of peculiar importance in the industrial world, and it is not conceit but loyalty and duty for its sons and its daughters to claim its just and proper place in the world's activities. There goes out from hence to every part of the Methuen Historical Society Publication. world raw materials the world has sent us changed to fabrics for use and adornment. A complete system of mercantile circulation is thus estab lished with the broad earth, and a throbbing pulse of the system is in the valley of the Merrimack river. It is a matter of interest to note how many first things of vast im portance to the entire country have had birth or inception on the line of our lowland river. The first American privateer to sail the seas went out from the mouth of the Merrimack river at Newburyport and was built upon the lower river. The first fulling mill in the country was at old Rowley. The first machine to make cut nails operated in America was set up at Amesbury. The first flannel made by machinery for the American market was produced at North Andover and among the first satinets made in this country Andover had the most serviceable samples. Delaines were first made in America for market, at Ballardvale ; Lowell was one of three localities to engage simultaneously in the product of calicoes or prints. Lawrence introduced fine woolen shawls, opera flannels, worsteds for men's wear and worsted ladies' fabrics as American manufactures. At Frye Village, three and one-half miles from here, the first powder mill in this region (one of the first in New England) was built during the Revolutionary war and furnished powder for the patriot army. This mill blew up three times during the years it was operated killing several persons. One of the first paper mills in New England was built near by the powder mill. It is claimed that Clark, the maker of telescopic glasses, the most delicate and scientific form of mechanical work, first conceived of and experimented upon his work while tarrying with his son, a student in Andover ; and the idea of heating and plumbing houses for steam or hot water, using a system of pipes for circulation, was first proposed by Ben jamin Thompsom — Count Rumford — while he was a resident of this valley. The first passenger railroad in New England, the second in this country, touched this valley at Lowell. The beginnings of great moral and political reforms were in this valley. Garrison was born in Newburyport and there began his ideal conflict with the fearless declaration "I am right — I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat, and I will be heard." The Merrimack Valley. There is something in our local atmosphere compounded as it is from breezes of old ocean, blasts from the mountains and perfume from forests that nourishes every form of intellectual and spiritual activity. Every phase of doctrine and form of teaching has had illustration here, from rigid declarations of ancient orthodoxy to the mystical teachings of Concord philosophers. That fiery and flaming patriot of the Revolution, James Otis, who, in life, charged the New England mind with intellectual lightning, who had expressed the wish that his life might go out as in a flash of expiring flame, while standing in the doorway of an Andover farm house, was in stantly stricken lifeless by a bolt from an overhanging cloud. History gives all too little prominence to the fact that in 1689, the men of Massachusetts Bay in their uprising of April 18th in that year at Boston, overthrew the administration of Sir Edmund Andros and lodged that arbitrary representative of James II. and of England's power in prison : and we fail to remember that the bold revolutionists turned to Simon Bradstreet of North Andover, in our own neighborhood, as their natural and efficient leader and that he ministered affairs so wisely that this boldest act of New England freemen made possible the later Declaration of Independence. New England ('perhaps American) literature had its beginning in this valley. Fair Anne Bradstreet, the . most unique character in early local life, wrote and published, in England and America, the first volume of poems given to the world by an American woman. She was the daughter of Governor Thomas Dudley, a ruler of the province, and the wife of New England's early commoner, Simon Bradstreet, Governor or Lieutentant Governor of the province of Massachusetts Bay for thirteen years, excepting during the short incumbency of Sir Edmund Andros. (It is well to note here that the province of the Bay did not include the whole Commonwealth ; the colony of Plymouth maintaining a separate government until the union of the two colonies seventy-two years after the landing at Plymouth.) Anne Dudley was married to her afterwards famous husband, Simon Bradstreet, when only sixteen years of age, at Northampton in England and came over in the historic craft "The Arbella Johnson" with the unfortunate lady for whom the ship was named Methuen Historical Society Publication. and the most distinguished company that ever arrived in New England. Delicate, educated and refined, Anne Bradstreet came to the wilds of this frontier in Ipswich and Andover and her writings tell the story of her new life in contact with roughness, wildness and mystery in a new world. The old mansion, for years the residence of the distinguished couple, the home of the colonial executive for thirteen years, (Anne being, by virtue of her position, the first lady of the province,) stands today but a few minutes drive from this spot, the best preserved and most genuine specimen of the spacious New England home that has been saved from the seventeenth century. Here was collected by Governor Dudley , and his family one of the most valuable libraries then in the new world — nearly 1000 volumes of standard works, and great was the grief of these cultured pioneers when it was totally consumed by fire in 1666. It is not generally known that the library of Harvard College was largely stored in Andover, for safety, during the seige of Boston ; nor is it generally known that the Mayflower, the Pilgrim craft, forever and only associated in our minds with Plymouth Rock, repeatedly visited New England during the following twenty years of emigration, landing pioneers, as patriotic and persevering as the pilgrim band at Salem, and at Charlestown. The poetry of Whittier could hardly have been written outside of this valley. The sweetest of his songs relate to our "lowland river" or to the lakes and mountains about its source, or are founded upon legends and episodes in valley life. Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau and Alcott dwelt and wrote by the sources of the Merrimack. Some of the writings that made one woman famous throughout the world were conceived of beneath the Elms of Andover by Harriet Beecher Stowe, long a resident of that village. The national hymn "America" was written on Andover Hill hard by and that notable book that changed in many minds the conception of future life — Gates Ajar — was written by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, almost within hail of where we now stand. Today the religious world looks with interest to Andover to know the result of the evolution in religious thought going on in that theological centre and the heathen have their ears to the ground awaiting a message from our neighboring theologists regarding their possible chance for salvation by The Merrimack Valley. any regular or special .plan. Here in Methuen the New England Lyceum, a powerful educator before printed literature became so cheap and abundant, had its suggestion and beginning. If a stranger to this planet wished to visit its most interesting and productive locality he would if wisely advised come to this valley, for here he could secure for commercial purposes, any kind of sailing craft from ship yards upon the lower river. At Amesbury or Merrimack he could purchase any pattern of carriage from a chariot to a wheel-barrow ; at Haverhill he could be shod with any style of foot gear as yet devised ; at Lawrence or Lowell he could be clothed in fabrics pleasing to the most fastidious taste. At Andover any branch of human knowledge could be investigated and acquired. Locomotives, railroad stock and machinery could be had at Manchester, Nashua, and Laconia ; he could delight in the scenery of a rugged agricultural country covered with model rural homes or admire the quiet beauty of northern lakes, or the majesty of mountain peaks and ranges about the sources of this wonderful river. Having enjoyed all these exceptional advantages without leaving the val ley he would naturally have no inclination ever to depart therefrom and would wisely return via Methuen and, finding here all the sanitary, educa tional and artistic advantages needed by a modern mortal, would here settle to spend his life in contemplation and philanthropic action in the quietest and fairest township of the world's model Commonwealth. You accept this assertion- as pleasantry born of harmless conceit and good nature, but facts as we follow them, go far to prove it a simple statement of incontrovertible truth. The winning of the valley of the Merrimack River, from the domain of savagery and primeval wildness, for civilization, freedom and culture, by the hardy race we proudly call our .ancestry, was an achievement far reaching in its importance to the world, and the account of the battle of a century here fought for the possession of nature's highway from the mountains to the sea forms a romantic and fascinating chapter in Amer- cah history. An unremembered era in local annals is that eighty-five years of pioneer life in this region (from 1640 to 1725) when Methuen was the wild border section of the great frontier township of Haverhill — the In- Methuen Historical Society Publication. dian Pentucket or Ward's Plantation. The territory of this ancient township, of Haverhill, with that of the other great river town of Andover, was a battlefield whereon the advance guard of civilization maintained a picket line at the border for three-fourths of a century. For thirty-seven years, Haverhill, Methuen and Lawrence territory lay in the old and lost county of Norfolk, (Norfolk originally meaning north-folk.) In 1679-80, state lines were run to include part of this old county in New Hampshire, and the remaining towns were joined to Essex County, old Norfolk disappearing from the map. The present Norfolk County, in this Commonwealth, has no connection whatever with the old division and includes no portion of its area. The battle of a long lifetime, fought out upon this field that is now our home was a test of human courage, patience and endurance such as the world has seldom seen. The battle lasted for more than half a century. Victory, or sure promise of victory, did not come until every actor who joined in opening the campaign had passed to final rest. To this great frontier township of Haverhill (which originally had a frontage of nearly fourteen miles by the winding course of the river) in 1640, and to Andover (another great frontier town with eleven miles of river front) in 1642-3, came the first settlers of this immediate region. Emigration that has rapidly peopled the lower towns of the valley ceased almost entirely just at the time of settlement here. Parliament then made stringent laws forbidding people of means and standing to leave the country. Political changes about that time and Cromwell's accession soon after relieved non-conformists from persecution. Early rose-colored reports from the new world gave place to tales of privation in the rigorous climate of New England, and emigration ceased and had no considerable revival for seventy-eight years, or until the arrival of the Scotch- Irish settlers who went forward to Londonderry in 1718. Settlers in this borderland were therefore left without aid or acces sions from the mother land. There was only the natural increase and such as came from less desirable settlements. The pioneer farmers and mechanics selected sites for homes, and commenced that long, hard, unaided process which has been described as The Merrimack Valley. "Saving by pinches, Gaining by inches, And holding by clinches." while they worked and fought their way to final success. The town fathers or proprietors instituted a civil service examination of applicants for privileges of citizenship, and all undesirable, shiftless or unhealthy characters were notified that the town was full and could not harbor them. Hence it was thirty-two years after settlement before the town of Haverhill ever aided a pauper, then the charge was but six shillings for the year. Eighty years after settlement Andover expended but forty shillings per annum for maintaining or aiding its poor. I wish I had such power in word painting that the scenes of the early years in this valley could be made to pass visibly before us in a panorama of succeeding pictures. We should see, at the beginning, a vast primeval forest covering the vales and crowning the hills within the limits of vision. Away down river would appear a little log village at Haverhill clustered about a meeting-house of hewn timber or of logs, possibly of mud. The first meeting-house in Boston had walls of un- burned clay and a roof of thatch. There were thatched houses in Haver hill thirty years after settlement. Across the river to the southward we should see the cluster of log and timber dwellings at the village of Cochickewick or Andover, with the little church building in the centre, from which sounded the first bell to wake musical echoes and call men and women to worship in this valley. Here and there an Indian planting ground or a clearing showed in the stretch of forest and the rivers wound through green woods unrestrained in their flow. As the years pass, a slow process of change came over the scene : clearings were multiplied and enlarged. Here and there modest dwellings of settlers were seen, forests gradually disappeared, rude high ways expanding from Indian trails gave rough passage for horsemen and rude vehicles. If we could make the vanished scene visible we should see the fortification and guarding of towns against northern savages during half a century and, in Revolutionary days, a grand uprising of this people to repel invasion. We should see peace finally established and the whole region developed as an agricultural community showing every sign of rural 10 Methuen. Historical Society Publication. thrift. Still later we should see another change more radical and rapid. A railway touched the valley and a spirit of mercantile enterprise took possession of its streams and water falls, building huge workshops by the river rapids, working an industrial revolution far reaching in its effects upon domestic life and mercantile methods. So rude were first roads or trails (mere paths for cattle and for horseback riding) that there is no record of the expenditure of a dollar by the town of Haverhill, which covered all this region, for its roads until about ten years before the organization of Methuen as a separate town. Then, in 1715, seventy-five years after settlement the town invested six shillings in highway repairs as a beginning. But the town was not mean or niggardly in some forms of expenditure ; it buried a deceased minister Rev. Mr. Gardner at an expense of 34 pounds and odd shilling and pence, providing for the solemn occasion a barrel of cider, and sugar and wine,1f brought from Boston on horseback by a special messenger. Glass, hardware, nails, anything but the simplest and commonest clothing, and much even of that, was imported. It was one hundred years before ordinary people knew the taste of tea or coffee, and fifty more years before these came into general use. A party of wealthy people travelling through the country brought their own coffee in the berry, and delivering a package of it to the landlady at a Haverhill tavern asked that it be served for breakfast ; she was a famous cook and scorned to ask for directions, she therefore placed the berries in' a small bean pot with the proper quantity of pork, and, though not fully understanding the results, cooked and served without comment and awaited results ; of course the service was not entirely satisfactory and she became willing to take in struction. It was an Andover woman that boiled a half pound of tea sent her as a present, as greens, with a generous piece of corned beef, and wasted much butter in trying to make it palatable. From old memoranda and from local histories and records we collect a few facts and narratives that give a dim outline picture of pioneer life. We are surprised to find what a formidable enemy that robber insect the Caterpillar was to comfortable life hereabouts. Six years after settlement a sudden and innumerable army of caterpillars destroyed all corn, wheat and barley. The seventh winter was remarkably mild, no snow at all dur- The Merrimack Valley. 11 ing the entire season. During the eighth year there was a combination of afflictions. In November of that year there was a fast held in the lan guage of the call, "On account of blasting, mildew, drought, grasshoppers, caterpillars, small-pox and sin in New England and war and pestilence in Old England." In 1734 there came again a plague of caterpillars covering the oak trees in the woods. In 1735 the caterpillars increased a hundred fold. In 1736 caterpillars took possession of this region. In Haverhill, Andover, Bradford and Methuen many trees were killed outright. Decid uous trees stood in midsummer as bare of foliage as in winter. They travelled in great armies from tree to tree and from forest to forest ; they built no nests but swam the streams like dogs ; the wheels of carts were green from the crushing of caterpillars in the roads ; they chose the oak leaves first, but, when they were gone, took the leaves of every other de ciduous tree. When all eatable things were consumed they died in heaps from starvation. As late as 1789, after the Revolutionary war, there was a time when crops failed and food was so scarce that many poor families in Essex county towns made soup of tadpoles and pea straw before new crops could be raised. As the modern gourmands of the cities consider frogs a dainty why should not tadpoles —young, tender and innocent frogs — be delicious, and why was not the mucilage of pea straw as nutricious as that from Irish moss ? Possibly we can learn from our ancestry of a new dish for this season of the year when cloyed appetites long for a change, and house wives wonder how they can please critical consumers of their cookery by some preparation that shall be at once palatable, delicate and fashionable. There was no post office in this region for a generation. It was thirty-five years after settlement before even a post-riding to old Haverhill was established, when a rider on horseback brought the meagre mails from Boston once or twice per week. There was not a newspaper published in the country until sixty-four years after settlement and they were not com monly found in settler's homes for one hundred and seventy-five years. Amusements, as we define them, were unknown for three generations. The number of books possessed by the well-to-do even, could be counted upon the fingers ends and were not as a rule intended to lighten or brighten 12 Methuen Historical Society Publication. human life. Young scholars, gathered by firesides in dwellings, taught by dames, used the ancient horn book — a thin shaving, or square of, trans parent horn, upon the back of which the alphabet and short words were pasted. These were practically indestructible and could be passed from hand to hand. The one book (aside from the Bible) found in almost every home was the "Day of Doom," by Wigglesworth, a picture in verse of the final judgment. In this book the archangel Michael is represented as assign ing to every class of offenders their final place : to the gathered army of Infants he thus speaks : "You sinners are and such a share As sinners may expect. Such you shall have, for I do save None but my own elect. Your sin's a crime, therefore in bliss You may not hope to dwell, But, unto you I shall allow The easiest room in hell." Adult and incorrigible sinners have no such comforting assignment but are thus described and addressed : "They wring their hands, their cartif hands, And gnash their teeth for terror ; They cry, they roar, for anguish sore, And gnaw their tongues for horror : But get away without delay, Christ pities not your cry, Depart to hell, there may you yell And roar eternally." We can hardly conceive of a generation delighting in this kind of literature (the book was committed to memory by women and children,) until we remember that only one in two of the men and one in four of the women could write their names, that they lived in perpetual danger from a savage foe, surrounded by gloomy forests, out of which, at nightfall, came the yell of the wolf and the scream of the wild cat. We cannot The Merrimack Valley. 13 cease to wonder that, in spite of such a literature and of such surround ings, they advanced steadily towards a broader life. Is it a wonder that the minds of masses of men and women, brooding in perpetual heart-hunger, under the shadow of continual danger, took on at times sombre and melancholy phases and came to that state of unrest, longing and desperation, when even the mystery and delu sion of witchcraft came as a welcome excitant. It is to the credit of old settlers in Methuen that the delusion did not apparently demoralize them as it did their neighbors across the river. The only Methuen victim of witchcraft, I find, was Timothy Swan and he was sinned against rather than a sinner. He died in 1692. He was buried in the old North Andover ground. Mary Parker, Mercy Ward- well and William Barker confessed to having afflicted him during his sickness, and poor old widow Ann Foster testified that she had killed the hog of John Lovejoy, caused the death of Andrew Allen's child and had been guilty of hurting Timothy Swan. It was seventy-nine years after settlement before settlers knew any thing of that now necessary vegetable, the potato. The first potatoes were brought to the new world by the Scotch Irish, who came over in 1718 and tarried for a while in Andover and the lower towns before proceeding to Londonderry ; the first potatoes grown in this country were from seed, brought by them and grown in the garden of Nathaniel Walker of An dover, probably not four miles from this spot. The people were so en tirely ignorant of the character of this vegetable as to suppose the crop of green balls on the vines was the eatable portion ; these were cooked in all possible ways in the endeavor to make them palatable, and only in the following spring did they learn that the valuable product lay underground. It was seventy-five years after this first crop before potatoes came into general and universal use. It was one hundred years after first arrival of pioneers before many of the settlers saw a comfortable carriage, one hundred and fifty years before they crossed Merrimack river on a bridge other than a bridge of ice. Household utensils were few and simple. There was not an or dinary eating table fork in any common family for fifty years after settle ment. 14 Methuen Historical Society Publication. For the first twenty-five years little trouble came to pioneers because of Indians but, for the fifty years following the outbreak of hostilities, set tlers lived under continual apprehension of attack, in constant prepara tion for defense. The very isolation of first comers to Methuen ensured their safety, as the French and Indian expeditions attacked only villages, as at Deerfield or Haverhill. The raid resulting in the capture by Indians of Mrs. Dustin occurred forty seven years after first settlement and, in all those years, Haverhill had grown to a village of but thirty small houses. A few days after the capture, a solitary canoe floated down the Merri mack, bearing Hannah Dustin, Mary Neff and a boy, Leonard Ronaldson, ten Indian scalps, the savages muskets and tomahawks. We need not repeat the familiar story, the most notable in Indian warfare from the fact that, after the heroine had killed her captors and had started on her way down river, she bethought herself that her story would not be believ ed, rowed back, scalped the entire company and brought away the bloody trophies. The reality of danger, that for a lifetime menaced settlers of this border land, is seen in the fact that fifty years after settlement citizens of present Haverhill, Methuen and Lawrence were called together in town meeting at old Haverhill meeting house to seriously consider the question, whether or not the town should continue longer to fortify against enemies or to "draw off and remove to a more secure locality." Sixty years after settlement Andover and Methuen citizens had a trained band of armed snow-shoe men prepared to move instantly in dead of winter, a time usually chosen by northern enemies to attack the de fenseless villages. Sixty-one years after settlement Andover built four garrison houses, in addition to the eight it had previously built, and re paired them all, including one located on the present circus ground in Lawrence, opposite the Pemberton Mills. Seventy-two years after settle ment Haverhill townsmen, remembering the fate of minister Roffie, built a fort or fortified stockade about the house of its minister, Rev. Mr. Brown. The town of Andover also fortified the residence of its minister, Rev. Francis Dane. In local Indian warfare a good share of the honors seem to rest with the women of the valley. Seven years after the Dustin raid, The Merrimack Valley. 15 sixty-five years after first settlement, there was an attack at Haverhill. It was soap making day at the Bradley home, and a savage and eager Indian had effected partial entrance. With open mouth and eager eyes he was preparing for his work of slaughter, when Mrs. Bradley, with superhuman strength, seized the kettle of boiling soap and threw it in the face and breast of the savage ! He swallowed a huge mouthful of the seething com pound and was so terribly burned that he was at once converted into a non-combatant. It was probably the first instance where a savage had been treated heroically with an application of soft soap applied both ex ternally and internally, and the results were astonishing. In 1708, sixty-eight years after the settlement of the town, occurred the noted Indian massacre at Haverhill, when the pastor, Rev. Mr. Rolfe, and fifteen others were killed. Mrs. Swan saw her husband giving way and the Indians forcing entrance at the door ; she seized the iron spit from the fireplace, an instrument three feet long, and ran the foremost savage through the body. Nothing so demoralizes Indian fighters as to be attacked in an unexpected way, with unusual weapons, hence her novel defense saved her home and household. It is related that one Keezar, caught, when mowing in the fields of Methuen, without his gun, rushed upon his Indian captor and hewed him down with his scythe before the savage recovered from his astonishment. Many instances of bravery and patriotism may be. cited as pertaining to old time life in this immediate vicinity. James Frye, an enrolled minute man, had a farm in the river district of Methuen ; he was ploughing on the intervale near his house when the alarm bell announced the com mencing of hostilities at Lexington and Concord; he left oxen and plough in the field, and his wife, running from the house, saw him going at full speed towards the rendezvous, a local Paul Revere, waving his hat in farewell. This Frye or his relatives had reared the frame of the Lever- v ett Bradley house just before this incident and the unboarded frame stood through the war, exposed to the winds and storms, until, after five *or six years, it was possible to secure workmen to complete it and a blacksmith to make the nails and hardware. A portion of the ell is said to be the old original riverside house. 16 Methuen Historical Society Publication. It becomes difficult to find who were not, rather than who were, com batants in the time of the Revolution. This seems to be true of the en tire valley. It would seem that Methuen sent one-half of all its tax payers to the war. The little settlement where now stands the present city of Manchester, N. H., had thirty-six men, and gave thirty-four of them to patriotic service, under command of Capt. John Stark, afterwards General John Stark. In the old picture of the battle of Bunker Hill there is the figure of a burly negro in the foreground. Andover men agree that this figure represents Salem Poor, the faithful slave of Mr. John Poor of that portion of Andover now South Lawrence. When Lieutenant Abercrombie of the British forces leaped upon the redoubt, waving his sword and shouting "the day is ours," Salem covered him with his musket and at its discharge the gallant Briton fell a corpse. This is no fancy sketch or romantic story. His conduct is set forth in a document addressed to the Mass. General Court, signed by the Col. and Lieuts. of the regiment in which he served, commending his bravery. Salem was in every way a romantic character. Mrs. Poor, his mistress, one morning mounted the family nag and rode to Salem in search of bar gains : she had made her purchases and, taking in the sights of the sea port town, found a little negro baby on one of the wharves, whom nobody owned, who was for sale for a trifle to anyone who would assume his care. Something in the honest eyes of the little waif appealed to the motherly instincts of the good woman ; she gathered him in her arms with her pur chases, mounted her horse and brought him all the way to present South Lawrence. When the little waif cried she put the horse into a canter or easy trot and little Salem was rocked to sleep by horse power. He be came the pet of the household and was the servant of Capt. John Poor who kept the old hotel at Shawsheen corner, one-half mile south of Falls Bridge, on present Broadway in South Lawrence. It is almost impossible to conceive from our standpoint of the limi tations restricting pioneer life. It was a generation before anything like domestic fruits could be plentifully grown; wild fruits and nuts were plenty. It was almost as long before herds and flocks of domestic ani mals became sufficiently numerous to bring supply of meat, hides and wool ; even raw cotton came from Barbadoes and other islands. During The Merrimack Valley. 17 the Revolutionary war it took at one time four months pay of a private soldier to buy one bushel of wheat. A week's wages of a woman would buy one yard of ticking or two yards of cotton cloth. Salt was eight dollars per bushel at one time. About the time of first settlement here the English Parliament made stringent laws forbidding the emigration of people of wealth and sub stance or of special skill in mechanics and manufacturing to the American colonies. The exportation to the colonies of any machinery or tools for making machinery was made an offense punishable with heavy penalties. Pitt, the champion of Americans in their resistance to taxation, declared in Parliament, that while he would never favor taking money out of the colonists' pockets by taxation without their consent, he would so shape the laws as to compel them to remain consumers of English manufac tured products. In 1699 colonists were prohibited from exporting wool yarn, or woolen fabrics, or from carrying them coastwise, from one colony to another. No hatter could export hats, or sell them outside of his own locality, or employ more than two apprentices, or make hats of any kind unless he had served seven years apprenticeship. Parliament passed a law in 1750 prohibiting the erection or contrivance of any mill or engine for slitting or rolling iron, or any forge to work with a tilt-hammer, or any furnace for making steel in the colonies; affixing heavy penalties and declaring all such mills to be common nuisances which colonial governors were to suppress, or themselves forfeit five hundred pounds to the crown. The only machinery obtained from the mother country was smuggled in separate parts, a wheel in bedding, a crank in another package, a shaft elsewhere, etc. ; by good luck some of these scattered parts were finally combined in proper connection. It was made about as difficult to obtain any but commonest tools with which to construct new inventions. There were more wolves than sheep in New England for many years and legislation was shaped and effort directed towards destroying the wolves and multiplying the sheep. The first sheep that came were pas tured on islands in Boston harbor where they were safe. A great flock was easily protected on Nahant, but in 1687, forty-seven years after set tlement, the selectmen of Old Haverhill called upon citizens "For the sake of back, belley and purse to turn out at Michaelmas and clear and 18 Methuen Historical Society Publication. protect land for the raising of sheep at the town's ends and sides," and this spot was either an end or side of the town. Young ladies in Andover were required to watch the flocks pastured on common, unfenced lands, while their fathers and brothers worked in the fields, and while they watched they were to knit or spin, but were forbidden to hold converse with young men meanwhile. In 1656 the selectmen of towns were di rected by the General Court of the Province "to consider the condition and capacity of every family as to the ability of women, girls and boys to spin, and assess each family for one or more spinners. Families not assessable for a whole spinner to be assessed for one-half or one-fourth of a spinner, and the work of a spinner was to produce three pounds of linen, cotton or woolen yarn each week for thirty successive weeks in each year and in that proportion for each half or fourth of a spinner. It will be seen that the town fathers were of necessity domestic economists and practical statesmen, that the pioneers had a hard struggle to obtain even the commonest supplies of clothing. The scarcity of wool compelled the pioneers to use flax or linen warp for their cloth with only a wool filling and "Linsey Woolsey" was the name of the fabric, while "Fustian," another product, was an admixture of cotton and flax. Human nature appears to have been very much the same as now, in the early days. Many fads and fashions that we believe to be our own invention, and of latter day adoption, are very old. The dainty school girl writes Xmas for Christmas to-day and thinks it a new abreviation, but two hundred years ago Christian was written Xtian, and other like words in that way, and that abbreviation was constantly used even in legal docu ments. We think the five o'clock tea is a modern, mild, and maidenly form of dissipation, but in 1740 a correspondent writes to England say ing "Tea has become the darling of women of means in New England. They bestow thirty or forty shillings upon a tea equipage as they call it, silver spoons, tongs, china cups, etc." We had supposed that big sleeves were modern, but it was deemed a measure of public safety two hundred years ago to specify by local law that no lady should wear sleeves of more than an ell in breadth and that sleeves should reach and cover the wrist. The Merrimack Valley. 19 In another town the sleeve was limited to half an ell in breadth. The mothers survived all these legal cruelties. The law punished sins of omission as well as sins of commission. They fined citizens for not attending town meeting, for not attending church, for talking too much in town meeting ; there were fines for near ly every offense. There was a whipping post maintained for half a century, not eight miles from here, as a terror to evil doers. Perhaps the most important and certainly the most quaint feature in early local history is that pertaining to the religious life of pioneers. The intensity of conviction in their minds, or rather the seriousness of their whims and the importance they gave to trifles and non-essentials is ob servable. Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, a marvel of persistence, in dustry and devotion, believed and taught that the horrors of King Phillip's war were permitted by Providence because of the sins of the people, par ticularly because of the heinous sin of wearing wigs, countenanced by some of the ministers and wealthy people. The church at Newbury dealt with Brother Richard Bartlett who refused communion with the church for the reason that the minister wore a wig and the church allowed it. Brother Richard stoutly defended himself and warned minister and people that, if they persisted in wearing wigs and did not desist and re pent, they would certainly be damned. The meeting-house was the re ligious, business and political centre of the town and the structure was never in early days misnamed a church. The New England meeting house seems to be the legitimate successor and copy of the "moot house" or "moot hall" of the Saxons in their old home by the North Sea. These Saxons were the invaders and the real founders of England's civilization. In some way their old time customs endured and were a model for New England settlers after a thousand years. In the old "moot halls" in their Saxon home, all questions of local concern were "mooted" or discussed. Hence our phrase "a mooted question." In the old home of the Saxons, the tuns, or towns, (tun being the obsolete name of town) were independent walled villages, electing annually their local officials by vote of every land owner. In these old separate tuns, or towns, the tithing or tenth men were selected 20 Methuen Historical Society Publication. by their ancient method, one man in every ten being chosen to be com mander or leader of the nine. They voted then by responding Aye or Nay, and for forty-two years after settlement in this valley all voting in town meeting was by vocal response or showing of the hands — no written ballots — and tithing or tenth men were selected. The old Saxon method differed from the modern only that the old sea rovers and pirates when they voted, raised sinewy arms, grasping and waving the battle-ax and the spear, to give emphasis to their action. Flemish refugees and their de scendants were among the settlers in Merrimack valley longing to revive the principle of local freedom in all ordinary matters of local con cern, that ruled in the free cities of Holland before persecution and change of government drove them out. Huguenots and Waldenses, many of whom had escaped from persecution in France to fret under the re straints of English formalism, no doubt suggested many of the religious customs of early New Englanders. The first act of a new town was to provide a place for a meeting house and settle an orthodox pastor. This was the first important work of first settlers of Methuen. The great ad vance here made was in the fact that the chosen religious teacher was not the appointee and favorite of a King or an archbishop, but a man of his hearers own selecting, chosen presumably because of fitness, and respon sible to them as an independent body. So determined were the people to entirely divorce the church from the state, that ministers did not perform the marriage ceremony for forty years after first settlement of this and adjoining towns. Marriage was considered a civil contract and the ceremony was performed by the village squire or local magistrate. One high-born couple in old Boston desired to have a sermon preached on the occasion of their marriage, but the magistrates notified them to forbear, objecting to it as introducing an English, a formal and objectionable, custom. The most they would per mit was that the preacher might be present and make a short exhortation. It is not recorded whether they allowed the good man to kiss the bride or not. Parson Ward preached in Old Haverhill for forty years, when the town gave him an assistant and continued the venerable preacher's salary, but they distinctly specified that Mr. Ward should, at his own cost, board or diet the new assistant, and both minister and assistant were paid in The Merrimack Valley. 21 wheat, rye and Indian corn in equal proportions. There was not a school house in the town for nearly a generation after settlement (schools were temporarily kept in private dwellings.) When the town was required by the colonial law to secure a schoolmaster it paid him a small salary in wheat and corn, and pupils paid four cents per week tuition, or, when writing was taught in addition to reading, six cents per week each. The first school house, built thirty-one years after settlement, was used also as a watch house and as a rendezvous and shelter during the noon hour for persons attending meeting from a distance, as they did from this neigh borhood. Thirteen ladies, all living along the river district from Lawrence to Hawkes' brook, had leave from the old Haverhill church in 1710 to build and occupy a pew in that building, "providing they did not stop the light or damnify the building," the word damnify being used in those days as we use the word damage. Most of these thirteen wives went from four to eight miles to church and sadly needed a pew in which to rest, they and their mothers having sat upon benches for seventy years. Among these pioneer pew builders was Bethuel Bodwell, wife of Henry Bodwell, a first settler upon Methuen (now Lawrence) territory ^'¦'several other Methuen dames. Perhaps in this old church you might have heard sung one of those quaint old hymns now obsolete, like the following, from an old hymn book published in 1755 : "Gracious God, thy children keep, Jesus, guide thy filly sheep. Fix, oh ! fix our fickle souls, Lord, direct us ; we are Fools. Lay us low before thy Feet, Safe from Pride and Self- Conceit. Be the Language of our Souls ; Lord, protect us ; we are Fools. May we all our Wills resign, Quite absorpt and lost in thine. Let us walk by thy right Rules, Lord, instruct us ; we are Fools." 22 Methuen Historical Society Publication. or, another, "Though God's Election is a Truth, Small comfort there I see, Till I am told by God's own Mouth, That he has chosen Me. That Sinners black as Hell, by Christ Are sav'd, I know full well : For I his Mercy have not miss'd ; And I am black as Hell." These were exceptions, the body of the old hymns being inspiring in tone and worthy of the favor accorded them in all times by all reverent souls. The minister was the great man of the community ; he was also the servant and employee of the town, and the people watched his every movement and kept him humble by reminding him that he was a servant. In the town of Palmer, Mass., there is the following town record : "Palmer, August ye 23d, 1754. At a meeting of ye Inhabitants of this District, Legally Convened and assembled at ye Public Meeting House in said place. On ye third article in ye warrant for said Meeting, voted that Rev. Mr. Kniblows be allowed foure pounds, sixteen shillings, for each Sermon he Preached on Sabbath Days, in this District, Except three Sermons, which we can'prove he preached other mens words. A true Entry pr. Sam'll Shaw, Junr., town clerk." These early settlers were the hardest people in the world to practice deception upon. The old meeting house at Haverhill, where many first Methuen settlers attended, was the storage place for the town's stock of gunpowder. There was a bounty of forty shillings for each wolf killed, during forty years, the wolves heads to be nailed to the meeting house wall. Think of attending a church with no pews, with gunpowder enough stored in one corner to blow up the town, wolves heads grinning from the wall. The gunpowder arrangement was tolerably safe as no fire was provided in church for the first hundred and forty years. Service commenced not later than 9 o'clock A. M. After the afternoon service there was a time for the trial of accused persons and for the admonishing and reproof of The Merrimack Valley. 23 delinquents. It is recorded that the Sunday service often continued until sunset and, after the benediction, it was the custom for the entire congre gation to remain in their seats until the minister and his family had passed down the aisle, bowing right and left to the people, and out of the door when they were free to disperse. Reading of the Scriptures was not a part of the church service for a half century or more, that being consid ered formal repitition. A prayer lasting for one hour and a sermon con tinuing for another hour were the strong features in each service. There was a committee to seat the meeting house or to "dignify the pews," but it was necessary to have another committee to seat the seating committee and relieve them from embarrassment. To the great credit of old time ministers it is remembered that nearly all of them were intensely patriotic. Among these clerical patriots was Rev. Israel Evans, said to be the only chaplain in the revolutionary armies that continued to serve during the whole struggle. He was a fighting chaplain, was for many years preacher at Concord, N. H., was with Montgomery at Quebec, accompanied Gen. Sullivan in his Indian expedition and was at the sur render of Cornwallis at Yorktown. While with Washington's army it is related that he prayed fervently before the marshalled patriot soldiery as follows : "O, Lord God of Battles, we pray Thee to fight for us to-day as thou didst fight for thy people Israel in the olden time, and give us the victory. But, O Lord, if in thy dealings with men and with nations thou canst not fight with us on this plain, stand neutral we pray thee for once and thou shalt see what our arms of flesh can do when battling for the right." There were many beautiful characters among the old time ministers. Rev. Dr. Peabody, an old fashioned retired preacher, lived in the north east part of present North Andover, on a farm known as the Gage farm in 1790 to 1800. It was the custom of the good old man to provide an immense wood pile for what he called the "Stranger's Fire," and every cold and stormy night in the fall, winter and spring months a great fire blazed upon his broad hearth in* the old kitchen through the long night, for the benefit of travellers and teamsters passing his house, near the old ferry, during the night hours, for many of these travelled night and day in their journeys to and from market, carrying their own provisions and 24 Methuen Historical Society Publication. provender for the teams. He wrote in his diary, "Many a time did I hear in the quiet watches ofthe night, strange voices by' my kitchen fire — voices of passing strangers, tarrying for a while under my roof to enjoy my fire and shelter." The "Strangers Fire" went out long ago upon that ancient hearthstone, but the light of it will brighten a dim and fading page in local history forever and forever, and who can doubt that the kindness which prompted it made bright a way for the good man through the valley of darkness and shadows to eternal brightness beyond. The younger Winthrop had stored his library near his corn bin. There was one volume including a testament, psalms, and book of com mon prayer bound together. The mice made nests for themselves of the common prayer book and left untouched the testament and psalms. This was publicly cited as a case where even the insignificant mice were in struments to destroy and testify against the formal ritualistic literature of the Church of England. In our irreverent and practical age we suppose the prayer book may have been of softer paper than the others and better adapted to nest building, but who knows ? The administration of the re ligious policy during the seventeeth century in this region, when ministers and magistrates united to stamp out freedom of thought, resulted in total and complete failure. George Whitefield, the noted preacher, asked the privilege of preaching to the people hereabouts in the old Haverhill church. He was firmly refused by the authorities ; they desired and tol erated no new lights or innovations. He came however and preached in the open air near the old meeting-house. There he read the letter of the authorities warning him not to come, and, in answer thereto, appointed another open air meeting at sunrise the next morning which was largely attended. The people that would not be coerced by an arrogant English church could easily defy an arbitrary American one. A Catholic was a curiosity and a moral monstrosity in the valley in early days ; now they are the largest single denomination in New England cities. Quakers were banished, cropped in the ears, their property con fiscated. In more than one instance a sturdy Quaker was,, as the old record states, "beaten to a jelly." If Quakers returned the second time after banishment the punishment was death, but they worship today in peaceful security. The Merrimack Valley. 25 These mistakes and prejudices were but for a time. Inate manli ness in men and natural womanly kindness in women increased, even in an atmosphere charged with all that was sombre and depressing, and here, in the wild border, pioneers of civilization conquered savages, sub dued forests, exterminated wild beasts, and, greatest achievement of all, conquered themselves and came out of the shadows into light and liberty. We enjoy the completed and extended results of their pathetic ex perience and from the windows of this beautiful hall you can overlook a peculiar country. From your streets and homes you can hear the bells of old Andover calling students of all lands to learning's shrine and to religion's altars, or speeding them on missions to every people ; you can also hear the bells of Lawrence summoning toilers from every civilized land to daily labor in changing the world's raw material into fabrics of use and of beauty to protect and adorn the people of the world, and, sounding from turrets (gifts of wealth and creations of art) rising as artistic sur prises, from hill sides here at your feet you can hear the bells of Methuen ringing in restful chimes the notes of "Home Sweet Home". In this musi cal triune there is no note of discord and blending sounds tell of the triumph of civilization, labor, learning and the modern home over savage life and the forest gloom of an olden time. May we come to the full realization that we live not only in a grand and awful time but in a rare and notable place and that there is no high er civic honor than honorable citizenship in our own industrial Republic — the Valley of Merrimack River.