(Boston), September 19, 1808; the site of the farm was near that of
Peirce's inn, just mentioned. Stone's tavern was afterward kept by one
Day, and subsequently burned.
A FARM--for Sale,
Containing 140 acres of Land, situated in the South part of
_Groton, (Mass.)_ with a new and well-finished House, Barn, &
Out-houses, and Aqueduct, pleasantly situated, where a Tavern
has been kept for the last seven years;--a part of the whole
will be sold, as best suits the purchaser. For further
particulars, inquire of THO's B. RAND, of _Charlestown_, or the
Subscriber, living on the Premises.
Sept. 12. JESSE STONE.
About a generation ago an attempt was made to organize a company for the
purpose of carrying on a hotel in the village, and a charter was
obtained from the Legislature. The stock, however, was not fully taken
up, and the project fell through. Of the corporators, Mr. Potter and Mr.
Smith still survive. Below is a copy of the act:--
An Act to incorporate the Groton Hotel Company.
_Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives,
in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same,
as follows:--_
SECT. 1. Luther F. Potter, Nathaniel P. Smith, Simeon Ames,
their associates and successors, are hereby made a corporation,
by the name of the Groton Hotel Company, for the purpose of
erecting, in the town of Groton, buildings necessary and
convenient for a public house, with all the powers and
privileges, and subject to all the liabilities, duties, and
restrictions, set forth in the forty-fourth chapter of the
Revised Statutes.
SECT. 2. Said corporation may hold such real and personal
property, as may be necessary and convenient for the purposes
aforesaid, not exceeding in amount twenty thousand dollars:
_provided_, that no shares in the capital stock of said
corporation shall be issued for a less sum or amount, to be
actually paid in on each, than the par value of the shared
which shall be first issued. And if any ardent spirits, or
intoxicating drinks of any kind whatever, shall be sold by said
company, or by their agents, lessees, or persons in their
employ, contrary to law, in any of said buildings, then this
act shall be void. [_Approved by the Governor, May 2, 1850._]
In the spring of 1852, a charter was given to Benjamin Webb, Daniel D.R.
Bowker, and their associates, for the purpose of forming a corporation
to carry on a hotel at the Massapoag Springs, in the eastern part of
this town, but the project fell through. It was to be called the
Massapoag Spring Hotel, and its capital stock was limited to $30,000.
The act was approved by the Governor, May 18, 1852, and it contained
similar conditions to those mentioned above in regard to the sale of
liquors. These enterprises are now nearly forgotten, though the mention
of them may revive the recollections of elderly people.
During the first half of the present century Groton had one
characteristic mark, closely connected with the old taverns, which it no
longer possesses. It was a radiating centre for different lines of
stage-coaches, until this mode of travel was superseded by the swifter
one of the railroad. During many years the stage-coaches were a
distinctive feature of the place; and their coming and going was watched
with great interest, and created the excitement of the day. In early
times the drivers, as they approached the village, would blow a bugle in
order to give notice of their arrival; and this blast was the signal at
the taverns to put the food on the table. More than a generation has now
passed away since these coaches were wont to be seen in the village
streets. They were drawn usually by four horses, and in bad going by
six. Here a change of coaches, horses, and drivers was made.
The stage-driver of former times belonged to a class of men that has
entirely disappeared from this community. His position was one of
considerable responsibility. This important personage was well known
along his route, and his opinions were always quoted with respect. I can
easily recall the familiar face of Aaron Corey, who drove the
accommodation stage to Boston for so many years. He was a careful and
skilful driver, and a man of most obliging disposition. He would go out
of his way to bear a message or leave a newspaper; but his specialty was
to look after women and children committed to his charge. He carried,
also, packages and parcels, and largely what is to-day entrusted to the
express. I recall, too, with pleasure, Horace George, another driver,
popular with all the boys, because in sleighing-time he would let us
ride on the rack behind, and even slacken the speed of his horses so as
to allow us to catch hold of the straps.
Some people now remember the scenes of life and activity that used to be
witnessed in the town on the arrival and departure of the stages. Some
remember, too, the loud snap of the whip which gave increased speed to
the horses, as they dashed up in approved style to the stopping-place,
where the loungers were collected to see the travelers and listen to the
gossip which fell from their lips. There were no telegraphs then, and
but few railroads in the country. The papers did not gather the news so
eagerly, nor spread it abroad so promptly, as they do now, and items of
intelligence were carried largely by word of mouth.
The earliest line of stage-coaches between Boston and Groton was the one
mentioned in The Columbian Centinel, April 6, 1793. The advertisement is
headed "New Line of Stages," and gives notice that--
A Stage-Carriage drives from _Robbins'_ Tavern, at Charles-River
Bridge, on Monday and Friday, in each week, and passing through
Concord and Groton, arrives at _Wyman's_ tavern in _Ashley_
[Ashby?] in the evening of the same days; and after exchanging
passengers there, with the Stage-Carriage from _Walpole_, it
returns on Tuesdays and Saturdays, by the same route to _Robbins's_.
* * * * *
The _Charlestown_ Carriage drives also from _Robbins'_ on
Wednesday in each week, and passing through _Concord_, arrives
at _Richardson's_ tavern, in _Groton_, on the evening of the
same day, and from thence returns on Thursday to _Robbins'_.
* * * * *
Another Carriage drives from _Richardson's_ tavern in
_Groton_, on Monday in each week, at six o'clock in the morning,
and passing by _Richardson's_ tavern in _Concord_ at ten o'clock
in the forenoon, arrives at _Charlestown_ at three o'clock in the
afternoon. From _Charlestown_ it drives on Tuesday and Thursday in
each week, at three o'clock in the afternoon, and returns back as far as
_Richardson's_ tavern in _Concord_--and from that place it starts
at 8 o'clock in the mornings, of Wednesday and Friday, and runs again to
_Charlestown_. From there it moves at six o'clock on Saturday morning,
and returns to _Richardson's_ tavern in _Groton_, in the evening
of the same day.
It was probably one of these "Carriages" to which allusion is made in
Mr. Winthrop's Memoir of the Honorable Nathan Appleton,[Footnote:
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, v, 249, 250.] as
follows:--
At early dusk on some October or November evening, in the year
1794, a fresh, vigorous, bright-eyed lad, just turned of
fifteen, might have been seen alighting from a stage-coach near
Quaker Lane,[Footnote: Now Congress Street.] as it was then
called, in the old town of Boston. He had been two days on the
road from his home in the town of New Ipswich, in the State of
New Hampshire. On the last of the two days, the stage-coach had
brought him all the way from Groton in Massachusetts; starting
for that purpose early in the morning, stopping at Concord for
the passengers to dine, trundling them through Charlestown
about the time the evening lamps were lighted, and finishing
the whole distance of rather more than thirty miles in season
for supper. For his first day's journey, there had been no such
eligible and expeditious conveyance. The Boston stage-coach, in
those days, went no farther than Groton in that direction. His
father's farm-horse, or perhaps that of one of the neighbors,
had served his turn for the first six or seven miles; his
little brother of ten years old having followed him as far as
Townsend, to ride the horse home again. But from there he had
trudged along to Groton on foot, with a bundle-handkerchief in
his hand, which contained all the wearing apparel he had,
except what was on his back.
It has been said that the first public conveyance between Boston and
Groton was a covered wagon, hung on chains for thoroughbraces: perhaps
it was the "Charlestown Carriage," mentioned in the advertisement. It
was owned and driven by Lemuel Lakin, but after a few years the owner
sold out to Dearborn Emerson.
The following advertisement from The Columbian Centinel, June 25, 1800,
will give a notion of what an undertaking a trip to Boston was, at the
beginning of the century:--
GROTON STAGE.
The subscriber respectfully informs the public that he drives
the Stage from _Boston_ to _Groton_, running through
_Lexington, Concord_, and _Littleton_, to _Groton_: Starts from
_Boston_ every _Wednesday_ morning, at 5 o'clock, and arrives
at _Groton_ the same day; Starts from _Groton_ every _Monday_
morning, at 7 o'clock, and arrives at _Boston_ the same day at
4 o'clock. Passage through, 2 dols. per mile, 4_d_.
DANBORN EMERSON.
Seats taken at Mr. SILAS DUTTON'S in _Royal Exchange Lane_.
Newspapers supplied on the road, and every attention paid to
conveyances.
The given name of Emerson was Dearborn, and not "Danborn," which is a
misprint. Two years later he was running a stage-coach from Groton to
New Ipswich, New Hampshire, and on the first return trip he brought
three passengers,--according to the History of New Ipswich (page 129).
Emerson was a noted driver in his day; and he is mentioned, with
pleasant recollections, by the Honorable Abbott Lawrence, in an
after-dinner speech at the jubilee of Lawrence Academy, on July 12,
1854. Subsequently he was the landlord of one of the local taverns.
It is advertised in The Massachusetts Register, for the year 1802, that
the
GROTON Stage sets off from J. and S. Wheelock's [Indian Queen
Inn], No. 37 Marlboro-Street [now a part of Washington Street,
Boston], every Wednesday at 4 o'clock in the morning, and
arrives at Groton at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, same day;
leaves Groton every Monday at 4 o'clock in the morning, and
arrives in Boston at 6 o'clock in the afternoon, same day.
(Pages 19, 20.)
It seems from this notice that it took three hours longer to make the
trip down to Boston than up to Groton,--of which the explanation is not
clear. In the Register for 1803 a semi-weekly line is advertised, and
the same length of time is given for making the trip each way.
About the year 1807 there was a tri-weekly line of coaches to Boston,
and as early as 1820 a daily line, which connected at Groton with others
extending into New Hampshire and Vermont. Soon after this time there
were two lines to Boston, running in opposition to each other,--one
known as the Union and Accommodation Line, and the other as the
Telegraph and Despatch.
One of the drivers for the Telegraph and Despatch line was Phineas
Harrington, known along the road as "Phin" Harrington. He had orders to
take but eight passengers in his coach, and the trip was made with
remarkable speed for that period. "Phin" was a man of small size, and
the story used to be told of him that, on cold and stormy nights, he
would get inside of one of the lamps fixed to his box in order to warm
his feet by the lighted wick! He passed almost his whole life as a
stage-man, and it is said that he drove for nearly forty years, He could
handle the reins of six horses with more skill than any other driver in
town.
William Shephard and Company advertise in The Groton Herald, April 10,
1830, their accommodation stage. "Good Teams and Coaches, with careful
and obliging drivers, will be provided by the subscribers." Books were
kept in Boston at A.M. Brigham's, No. 42 Hanover Street, and in Groton
at the taverns of Amos Alexander and Joseph Hoar. The fare was one
dollar, and the coach went three times a week.
About this time George Flint had a line to Nashua, and John Holt another
to Fitchburg. They advertise together in the Herald, May 1, 1830, that
"no pains shall be spared to accommodate those who shall favor them with
their custom, and all business intrusted to their care will be
faithfully attended to." The first stage-coach from this town to Lowell
began to run about the year 1829, and John Austin was the driver. An
opposition line was established soon afterward, and kept up during a
short time, until a compromise was made between them, Later, John Russ
was the owner and driver of the line to Lowell, and still later, John M.
Maynard the owner. Near this period there was a coach running to
Worcester, and previously one to Amherst, New Hampshire.
The following is a list of some of the old drivers, who were well known
along their respective routes. It is arranged in no particular order and
by no means complete; and the dates against a few of the names are only
approximations to the time when each one sat on the box:--
Lemuel Lakin was among the earliest; and he was followed by Dearborn
Emerson. Daniel Brooks drove to Boston during the period of the last war
with England, and probably later.
Aaron Corey drove the accommodation stage to Boston, through Carlisle,
Bedford, and Lexington, for a long time, and he had previously driven
the mail-coach. He was succeeded by his son, Calvin, the driver for a
few years, until the line was given up in 1850. Mr. Corey, the father,
was one of the veterans, having held the reins during thirty-two years;
he died March 15, 1857, at the age of seventy-three.
Isaac Bullard, 1817-30; William Smart, 1825-30; George Hunt, Jonathan
Buttrick, Thomas A. Staples, Obediah Kendall, Albert Hayden, Charles
Briggs, Levi Robbins, James Lord, Frank Brown, Silas Burgess, Augustus
Adams, William Dana, Horace Brown, Levi Wheeler, Timothy Underwood, ----
Bacon, Horace George, 1838-45; Lyman W. Gushing, 1842-45, and Joseph
Stewart. These drove to Boston. After the stages were taken off, "Joe"
Stewart drove the passenger-coach from the village to the station on the
Fitchburg Railroad, which ran to connect with the three daily trains for
Boston. The station was three miles away, and now within the limits of
Ayer.
Among the drivers to Keene, New Hampshire, were Kimball Danforth,
1817-40; Ira Brown, Oliver Scales, Amos Nicholas, Otis Bardwell, Abel
Marshall, the brothers Ira and Hiram Hodgkins, George Brown, Houghton
Lawrence, Palmer Thomas, Ira Green, Barney Pike, William Johnson, Walter
Carleton, and John Carleton. There were two stage routes to Keene, both
going as far as West Townsend in common, and then separating, one
passing through Ashby, Rindge, and Fitzwilliam, while the other went
through New Ipswich and Jaffrey.
Anson Johnson and Beriah Curtis drove to Worcester; Addison Parker,
Henry L. Lawrence, Stephen Corbin, John Webber, and his son, Ward, drove
to Lowell; the brothers Abiel and Nathan Fawcett, Wilder Proctor, and
Abel H. Fuller, to Nashua; Micah Ball, who came from Leominster about
the year 1824, drove to Amherst, New Hampshire, and after him Benjamin
Lewis, who continued to drive as long as he lived, and at his death the
line was given up. The route to Amherst lay through Pepperell, Hollis,
and Milford.
Other drivers were John Chase, Joel Shattuck, William Shattuck, Moses
Titus, Frank Shattuck, David Coburn, ---- Chickering, Thomas Emory, and
William Kemp, Jr.
The sad recollection of an accident at Littleton, resulting in the death
of Silas Bullard, is occasionally revived by some of the older people.
It occurred about the year 1825, and was caused by the upsetting of the
Groton coach, driven by Samuel Stone, and at the time just descending
the hill between Littleton Common and Nagog Pond, then known as
Kimball's Hill. Mr. Bullard was one of the owners of the line, and a
brother of Isaac, the veteran driver.
Besides the stage-coaches the carrier wagons added to the business of
Groton, and helped largely to support the taverns. The town was situated
on one of the main thoroughfares leading from Boston to the northern
country, comprising an important part of New Hampshire and Vermont, and
extending into Canada. This road was traversed by a great number of
wagons, drawn by four or six horses, carrying to the city the various
products of the country, such as grain, pork, butter, cheese, eggs,
venison, hides; and returning with goods found in the city, such as
molasses, sugar, New-England rum, coffee, tea, nails, iron, cloths, and
the innumerable articles found in the country stores, to be distributed
among the towns above here. In some seasons, it was no uncommon sight to
see forty such wagons passing through the village in one day.
In addition to these were many smaller vehicles, drawn by one or two
horses, to say nothing of the private carriages of individuals who were
traveling for business or pleasure.
For many of the facts mentioned in this paper I am indebted to Mr. Moses
Gill, an octogenarian of Groton, whose mind is clear and body active for
a man of his years. Mr. Gill is a grandson of Lieutenant-Governor Moses
Gill, and was born at Princeton, on March 6, 1800. He has kept several
public houses in Groton, already mentioned, besides the old brick tavern
situated on the Lowell road, near Long-sought-for Pond, and formerly
known as the Half-way. House. This hotel came within the limits of
Westford, and was kept by Mr. Gill from the year 1842 to 1847. In his
day he has known personally seventy-five landlords doing business
between Davenport's (opposite to the celebrated Porter's tavern in
Cambridge) and Keene, New Hampshire; and of this number, only seven are
thought to be living at the present time.
THE FAMILY IMMIGRATION TO NEW ENGLAND.
BY THOMAS W. BICKNELL, LL.D.
The unit of society is the individual. The unit of civilization is the
family. Prior to December 20, 1620, New-England life had never seen a
civilized family or felt its influences. It is true that the Icelandic
Chronicles tell us that Lief, the son of Eric the Red, 1001, sailed with
a crew of thirty-five men, in a Norwegian vessel, and driven southward
in a storm, from Greenland along the coasts of Labrador, wintered in
Vineland on the shores of Mount Hope Bay. Longfellow's Skeleton in Armor
has revealed their temporary settlement. Thither sailed Eric's son,
Thorstein, with his young and beautiful wife, Gudrida, and their
twenty-five companions, the following year. His death occurred, and put
an end to the expedition, which Thorfinn took up with his marriage to
the young widow, Gudrida; with his bride and one hundred and sixty-five
persons (five of them young married women), they spent three years on
the shores of the Narragansett Bay, where Snorre, the _first_ white
child, was born,--the progenitor of the great Danish sculptor,
Thorwaldsen. But this is tradition, not history. Later still, came other
adventurers to seek fortunes in the New World, but they came as
individuals,--young, adventurous men, with all to gain and nothing to
lose, and, if successful, to return with gold or fame, as the reward of
their sacrifice and daring.
Six hundred years pass, and a colony of one hundred and five men, not a
woman in the company, sailed from England for America, and landed at
Jamestown, Virginia. Within six months half of the immigrants had
perished, and only for the courage and bravery of John Smith, the whole
would have met a sad fate. The first European woman seen on the banks of
the James was the wife of one of the seventy Virginia colonists who came
later, and her maid, Anne Burroughs, who helped to give permanency and
character to a fugitive settlement in a colony, which waited two hundred
and fifty years to learn the value of a New-England home, and to
appreciate the civilization which sprang up in a New-England town,
through the agency of a New-England family.
An experience similar to that of the Virginia settlers--disappointment,
hardship, death--attended the immigrants who, under George Popham,
Raleigh, and Gilbert, attempted to make a permanent home on the coast of
Maine, but their house was a log camp, with not a solitary woman to
light its gloom or cheer its occupants. Failure, defeat, and death were
the inevitable consequences. There was no family, and there could be no
permanency of civilization.
The planting of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies was of another
sort. Whole families embarked on board the Mayflower, the Fortune, the
Ann, the Mary and John, and other ships that brought their precious
freight in safety to a New World. Of the one hundred and one persons who
came in the Mayflower, in 1620, twenty-eight were females, and eighteen
were wives and mothers. They did not leave their homes, in the truest
sense,--they brought them with them. Their household goods and
hearthstone gods were all snugly stowed beneath the decks of the
historic ship, and the multitude of Mayflower relics, now held in
precious regard in public and private collections, but testify to the
immense inventory of that one little ship of almost fabulous carrying
capacity. To the compact signed in Plymouth harbor, in 1620, John Carver
signs eight persons, whom he represents; Edward Winslow, five; William
Brewster, six; William Mullins, five; William White, five; Stephen
Hopkins, Edward Fuller, and John Turner, each, eight; John Chilton,
three,--one of whom, his daughter Mary, was the first woman, as
tradition says, to jump from the boat upon Plymouth Rock. In the
Weymouth Company, under the leadership of the Reverend Joseph Hull, who
set sail from Old Weymouth, England, on the twentieth of March, 1635,
and landed at Wessaguscus,--now Weymouth, Massachusetts,--there were one
hundred and five persons, divided into twenty-one families. Among these
were John Whitmarsh, his wife Alice, and four children; Robert Lovell,
husbandman, with his good wife Elizabeth and children, two of whom,
Ellen and James, were year-old twins; Edward Poole and family; Henry
Kingman, Thomas Holbrook, Richard Porter, and not least of all, Zachary
Bicknell, his wife Agnes, their son John, and servant John Kitchen.
Families these,--all on board,--households, treasures, all worldly
estates, and best of all the rich sympathies and supports of united,
trusting hearts, daring to face the perils of an ocean-passage of
forty-six days' duration, and the new, strange life in the wilds of
America, that they might prove their faith in each other, in their
principles, and in God. "He setteth the solitary in families," says the
Psalmist; and the truth was never better illustrated than in the
isolated and weary life of our ancestry, two and a half centuries ago.
To the Pilgrim and the Puritan, wife, children, house, home, family,
church, were the most precious possessions. Nothing human could divorce
ties which nature had so strongly woven. And whenever we think of our
honored ancestry, it is not as individual adventurers; but we see the
good-man, the good-wife, and their children, as the representatives of
the great body of those, who with them planted homes, families, society,
civilization, in the Western World. They came together, or if alone, to
pioneer the way for wife and children or sweetheart by the next ship,
and they came to stay, as witness the names of the old families of
Plymouth, Weymouth, Salem, Boston, Dorchester, in the leading circles of
wealth and social position in all of these old towns. "Behold," says Dr.
Bushnell, "the Mayflower, rounding now the southern cape of England,
filled with husbands and wives and children; families of righteous men,
under covenant with God and each other to lay some good foundation for
religion, engaged both to make and keep their own laws, expecting to
supply their own wants and bear their own burdens, assisted by none but
the God in whom they trust! Here are the hands of industry! the germs of
liberty! the dear pledges of order! and the sacred beginnings of a
home!" Of such, only, could Mrs. Hemans's inspired hymn have been
written:--