and energetic persons. It was a singular arrangement, and gives a vivid
idea of the state of things at the time. Its design was probably, not
merely that expressed in the vote of the town, but also to prevent any
disorderly conduct on the part of those not attending public worship,
and to give prompt alarm in case of fire or an Indian assault. The
population had not then spread out far into the country; and the range
of exploration did not much extend beyond the settlement in the town.
None but active men, however, could have performed the duty thoroughly,
and in all directions, so as to have kept the whole community under
strict inspection.
Mr. Downing probably expended liberally his fortune and time in
improving his farm, upon which there were, at least, four
dwelling-houses prior to 1661, and large numbers of men employed. He
was a ready contributor to all public objects. His education had been
superior and his attainments in knowledge extensive. He was of an
enlightened spirit, and strove to mitigate the severity of the
procedures against Antinomians and others. He seems to have had an
ingenious and enterprising mind. At a General Court held at Boston,
Sept. 6, 1638, it was voted that, "Whereas Emanuel Downing, Esq., hath
brought[i.42] over, at his great charges, all things fitting for taking
wild fowl by way of duck-coy, this court, being desirous to encourage
him and others in such designs as tend to the public good," &c., orders
that liberty shall be given him to set up his duck-coy within the
limits of Salem; and all persons are forbidden to molest him in his
experiments, by "shooting in any gun within half a mile of the ponds,"
where, by the regulations of the town, he shall be allowed to place the
decoys. The court afterwards granted to other towns liberty to set up
duck-coys, with similar privileges. What was the particular structure
of the contrivance, and how far it succeeded in operation, is not
known; but the thing shows the spirit of the man. He at once took hold
of his farm with energy, and gathered workmen upon it. Winthrop in his
journal has this entry, Aug. 2, 1645:—
"Mr. Downing having built a new house at his farm, he being gone to
England, and his wife and family gone to the church meeting on the
Lord's day, the chimney took fire and burned down the house, and
bedding, apparel and household, to the value of 200 pounds."
This proves that his family resided on the farm; and it indicates,
that, when he first occupied it, he had only such a house as could have
been seasonably put up at the start, but that a more commodious one had
been erected at his leisure: the expression "having built a new house"
appears to carry this idea. On his return from England, he undoubtedly
built again, and[i.43] had other houses for his workmen and tenants;
for we find that one of them, in 1648, was allowed to keep an ordinary,
"as Mr. Downing's farm, on the road between Lynn and Ipswich, was a
convenient place" for such an accommodation to travellers. Public
travel to and from those points goes over that same road to-day. That
it was so early laid out is probably owing to the fact, that such men
as Emanuel Downing were on its route, and John Winthrop, Jr., at
Ipswich. Downing called his farm "Groton," in dear remembrance of his
wife's ancestral home in "the old country."
Originally, travel was on a track more interior. The opening of roads
did not begin until after the more immediate and necessary operations
of erecting houses and bringing the land, on the most available spots
near them at the points first settled, under culture. Originally,
communication from farm to farm, through the woods, was by marking the
trees,—sometimes by burning and blackening spots on their sides, and
sometimes by cutting off a piece of the bark. The traveller found his
way step by step, following the trees thus marked, or "blazed," as it
was called whichever method had been adopted. When the branches and
brush were sufficiently cleared away, horses could be used. At places
rendered difficult by large roots, partly above ground, intercepting
the passage, or by rough stones, the rider would dismount, and lead the
horse. From this, it was called a "bridle-path." After the way had
become sufficiently opened for ox-carts or other vehicles to pass, it
would begin to receive the name of a[i.44] road. On reaching a cleared
and fenced piece of land, the traveller would cross it, opening and
closing gates, or taking down and replacing bars, as the case might be.
There were arrangements among the settlers, and, before long, acts of
the General Court, regulating the matter. This was the origin of what
were called "press-roads," or "farm-roads," or "gate-roads." When a
proprietor concluded it to be for his interest to do so, he would fence
in the road on both sides where it crossed his land, and remove the
gates or bars from each end. Ultimately, the road, if convenient for
long travel, would be fenced in for a great distance, and become a
permanent "public highway." In all these stages of progress, it would
be called a "highway." The fee would remain with the several
proprietors through whose lands it passed; and, if travel should
forsake it for a more eligible route, it would be discontinued, and the
road-track, enclosed in the fields to which it originally belonged, be
obliterated by the plough. Many of the "highways," by which the farmers
passed over each other's lands to get to the meeting-house or out to
public roads, in 1692, have thus disappeared, while some have hardened
into permanent public roads used to this day. When thus fully and
finally established, it became a "town road," and if leading some
distance into the interior, and through other towns, was called a
"country road." The early name of "path" continued some time in use
long after it had got to be worthy of a more pretentious title. The old
"Boston Path," by which the country was originally[i.45] penetrated,
long retained that name. It ran through the southern and western part
of Salem Village by the Gardners, Popes, Goodales, Flints, Needhams,
Swinnertons, Houltons, and so on towards Ipswich and Newbury.
On the 30th of September, 1648, Governor Winthrop, writing to his son
John, says "they are well at Salem, and your uncle is now beginning to
distil. Mr. Endicott hath found a copper mine in his own ground. Mr.
Leader hath tried it. The furnace runs eight tons per week, and their
bar iron is as good as Spanish." Whatever may be thought by some of the
logic which infers that "all is well" in Salem, because they are
beginning "to distil;" and however little has, as yet, resulted here
from the discovery of copper-mines, or the manufacture of iron, the
foregoing extract shows the zeal and enthusiasm with which the
wealthier settlers were applying themselves to the development of the
capabilities of the country.
Mr. Downing seems to have resided permanently on his farm, and to have
been identified with the agricultural portion of the community. His
house-lot in the town bounded south on Essex Street, extending from
Newbury to St. Peter's Street. He may not, perhaps, have built upon it
for some time, as it long continued to be called "Downing's Field." Two
of his daughters married sons of Thomas Gardner: Mary married Samuel;
and Ann, Joseph. They came into possession of the "Downing Field." Mary
was the mother of John, the progenitor of a large branch of[i.46] the
Gardner family. Mr. Downing had another large lot in the town, which,
on the 11th of February, 1641, was sold to John Pickering, described in
the deed as follows: "All that parcel of ground, lying before the now
dwelling-house of the said John Pickering, late in the occupation of
John Endicott, Esq., with all the appurtenances thereunto belonging,
abutting on the east and south on the river commonly called the South
River, and on the west on the land of William Hathorne, and on the
north on the Town Common." The deed is signed by Lucy Downing, and by
Edmund Batter, acting for her husband in his absence. On the 10th of
February, 1644, he indorsed the transaction as follows: "I do freely
agree to the sale of the said Field in Salem, made by my wife to John
Pickering: witness my hand," &c. The attesting witnesses were Samuel
Sharpe and William Hathorne. This land was then called "Broad Field."
On his estate, thus enlarged, Pickering, a few years afterwards, built
a house, still standing. The estate has remained, or rather so much of
it as was attached to the homestead, in that family to this day, and is
now owned and occupied by John Pickering, Esq., son of the eminent
scholar and philologist of that name, and grandson of Colonel Timothy
Pickering, of Revolutionary fame,—the trusted friend of Washington.
Emanuel Downing was the father of Sir George Downing, one of the first
class that graduated at Harvard College,—a man of extraordinary talents
and wonderful fortunes. After finishing his collegiate[i.47] course, in
1642, he studied divinity, probably under the direction of Hugh Peters;
went to the West Indies, acting as chaplain in the vessel; preached and
received calls to settle in several places; went on to England; entered
the parliamentary service as chaplain to a regiment; was rapidly drawn
into notice, and promoted from point to point, until he became
scoutmaster-general in Cromwell's army. This office seems to have
combined the functions of inspector and commissary-general, and head of
the reconnoitering department. In 1654, he was married to Frances,
sister of Viscount Morpeth, afterwards Earl of Carlisle; thus uniting
himself with "the blood of all the Howards," one of the noblest
families in England. The nuptials were celebrated with great pomp, an
epithalamium in Latin, &c. All this, within eleven years after he took
his degree at Harvard, is surely an extraordinary instance of rising in
the world. He was a member of Parliament for Scotland. Cromwell sent
him to France on diplomatic business, and his correspondence in Latin
from that court was the beginning of a career of great services in that
line. He was soon commissioned ambassador to the Hague, then the great
court in Europe. Thurlow's state papers show with what marvellous
vigilance, activity, and efficiency he conducted, from that centre, the
diplomatic affairs of the commonwealth. At the restoration of the
monarchy, he made the quickest and the loftiest somersault in all
political history. It was done between two days. He saw Charles the
Second at the Hague, on his way to England to re[i.48]sume his crown:
and the man who, up to that moment, had been one of the most zealous
supporters of the commonwealth, came out next morning as an equally
zealous supporter of the king. He accompanied this wonderful exploit by
an act of treachery to three of his old associates,—including Colonel
Oakey, in whose regiment he had served as chaplain,—which cost them
their lives. He was forthwith knighted, and his commission as
ambassador renewed. After a while, he returned to England; went into
Parliament from Morpeth, and ever after the exchequer was in his hands.
By his knowledge, skill, and ability, he enlarged the financial
resources of the country, multiplied its manufactures, and extended its
power and wealth. He was probably the original contriver of the policy
enforced in the celebrated Navigation Act, having suggested it in
Cromwell's time. By that single short act of Parliament, England became
the great naval power of the world; her colonial possessions, however
widely dispersed, were consolidated into one vast fountain of wealth to
the imperial realm; the empire of the seas was fixed on an immovable
basis, and the proud Hollander compelled to take down the besom from
the mast-head of his high-admiral.
Sir George Downing did one thing in favor of the power of the people,
in the British system of government, which may mitigate the resentment
of mankind for his execrable seizure and delivery to the royal
vengeance of Oakey, Corbett, and Barkstead. He introduced into
Parliament and established the prin[i.49]ciple of Specific
Appropriations. The House of Commons has, ever since, not only held the
keys of the treasury, but the power of controlling expenditures. The
fortune of Sir George, on the failure of issue in the third generation,
went to the foundation of Downing College, in Cambridge, England. It
amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling. It is not
improbable, that Downing Street, in London, owes its name to the great
diplomatist.
This remarkable man spent his later youth and opening manhood on Salem
Farms. In his college vacations and intervals of study, he partook,
perhaps, in the labors of the plantation, mingled with the rural
population, and shared in their sports. The crack of his fowling-piece
re-echoed through the wild woods beyond Procter's Corner; he tended his
father's duck-coys at Humphries' Pond, and angled along the clear
brooks. It is an observable circumstance, as illustrating the
transmission of family traits, that the same ingenious activity and
versatility of mind, which led Emanuel Downing, while carrying on the
multifarious operations of opening a large farm in the forest,
presiding in the local court at Salem, and serving year after year in
the General Court as a deputy, to contrive complicated machinery for
taking wild fowl and getting up distilleries, re-appeared in his son,
on the broader field of the manufactures, finances, and foreign
relations of a great nation.
A tract of three hundred acres, next eastward of the Downing farm, was
granted to Thomas Read. He[i.50] became a freeman in 1634, was a member
of the Salem Church in 1636, received his grant the same year, and was
acknowledged as an inhabitant, May 2, 1637. The farm is now occupied
and owned by the Hon. Richard S. Rogers. It is a beautiful and
commanding situation, and attests the taste of its original proprietor.
Mr. Read seems to have had a passion for military affairs. In 1636, he
was ensign in a regiment composed of men from Saugus, Ipswich, Newbury,
and Salem, of which John Endicott was colonel, and John Winthrop, Jr.,
lieutenant-colonel. In 1647, he commanded a company. During the civil
wars in England, he was attracted back to his native country. He
commanded a regiment in 1660, and held his place after the Restoration.
He died about 1663.
Our antiquarians were long at a loss to understand a sentence in one of
Roger Williams's letters to John Winthrop, Jr., in which he says, "Sir,
you were not long since the son of two noble fathers, Mr. John Winthrop
and Mr. Hugh Peters." How John Winthrop, Jr., could be a son of Hugh
Peters was the puzzle. Peters was not the father of either of
Winthrop's two wives; and there was nothing in any family records or
memorials to justify the notion. On the contrary, they absolutely
precluded it. By the labors and acumen of the Hon. James Savage and Mr.
Charles Deane, of Cambridge, who have no superiors in grappling with
such a difficulty, its solution seems, at last, to be reached. "After
long fruitless search," Mr. Savage has expressed a conviction that Mr.
Deane has "ac[i.51]quired the probable explication." The clue was thus
obtained: Mr. Savage says, "This approach to explanation is gained from
'the Life and Death of Hugh Peters, by William Yonge, Dr. Med. London.
1663,' a very curious and more scarce tract." The facts discovered are
that Peters taught a free school at Maldon, in Essex; and that a widow
lady with children and an estate of two or three hundred pounds a year
befriended him. She was known as "Mistress Read." Peters married her.
The second wife of John Winthrop, Jr., was Elizabeth, daughter of
Colonel Read, of Essex. By marrying Mrs. Read, Peters became the
step-father of the younger Winthrop's wife; and, by the usage of that
day, he would be called Winthrop's father.
A few additional particulars, in reference to Peters and our Salem
Read, may shed further light on the subject. While a prisoner in the
Tower of London, awaiting the trial which, in a few short days,
consigned him to his fate, Peters wrote "A Dying Father's Last Legacy
to an only Child," and delivered it to his daughter just before his
execution. This is one of the most admirable productions of genius,
wisdom, and affection, anywhere to be found. In it he gives a condensed
history of his life, which enables us to settle some questions, which
have given rise to conflicting statements, and kept some points in his
biography in obscurity. In the first place, the title proves that he
had, at the time of his death, no other child. In the course of it, he
tells his daughter, that, when he was[i.52] fourteen years of age, his
mother, then a widow, removed with him to Cambridge, and connected him
with the University there. His elder brother had been sent to Oxford
for his education. After residing eight years in Cambridge, he took his
Master's degree, and then went up to London, where he was "struck with
the sense of his sinful estate by a sermon he heard under Paul's, which
was about forty years since, which text was the _burden of Dumah or
Idumea_, and stuck fast. This made me to go into Essex; and after being
quieted by another sermon in that country, and the love and labors of
Mr. Thomas Hooker, I there preached, there married with a good
gentlewoman, till I went to London to ripen my studies, not intending
to preach at all." He then relates the circumstances which subsequently
led him again to engage in preaching. He is stated to have been born in
1599: his death was in 1660. Putting together these dates and facts, it
becomes evident that he could not have been more than twenty-two years
of age when he married "Mistress Read." The "Last Legacy" shows, not
merely in the manner in which he speaks of her,—"a good
gentlewoman,"—but, in its express terms, that she was not the mother of
the "only child" to whom it was addressed. "Besides your mother," he
states that he had had "a godly wife before." There is no indication
that there were children by the earlier marriage. If there were, they
died young. He married, for his second wife, Deliverance Sheffield, at
Boston, in March, 1639.[i.53]
His first wife, the time of whose death is unknown, had left the
children by her former husband in his hands and under his care. He
evidently cherished the memory of the "good gentlewoman of Essex" with
the tenderest and most sacred affection. She had not only been the dear
wife of his youth, but her property placed him above want. No wonder
that the strongest attachment existed between him and her children.
John Winthrop, Jr., and his wife, called him father, not merely in
conformity with custom, being their step-father in point of fact, but
with the fondness and devotion of actual children. It was on account of
this intimate and endeared connection, and in consideration of the
pecuniary benefit he had derived from his marriage to the mother of the
younger Winthrop's wife, that he made arrangements, in case he should
not return to America, that his Salem property should go to her and her
husband. Having married a second wife, and there being issue of said
marriage, he would not have alienated so considerable a part of his
property from the legal heir without some good and sufficient reason.
The foregoing view of the case explains the whole. The solution of the
mystery which had enveloped Roger Williams's language is complete.
Elizabeth, the daughter of the second marriage, to whom the "Last
Legacy" was addressed, was baptized in the First Church at Salem, on
the 8th of March, 1640. It does not appear, that, during her subsequent
life, there was any intimacy, or even acquaintance, between her and
the[i.54] Winthrops, as there was no ground for it, she being in no way
connected with them.
May not Thomas Read, of Salem, have been a son of Colonel Read, of
Maldon in Essex, and a brother of the wife of the younger Winthrop?
Peters says, in the "Last Legacy," "Many of my acquaintances, going for
New England, had engaged me to come to them when they sent, which
accordingly I did." Thomas Read came over some time before him; so did
John Winthrop, Jr., and wife. They were the same as children to him.
They sent for him, and he came. After it was ascertained and determined
that Peters should settle in Salem, Read joined the church here, and
became a full inhabitant. Peters located his grant of land in sight of
Read's residence, on the next then unappropriated territory, at a
distance of about two and a half miles. When Read returned to England,
he left his property here in the care of the Winthrops. Wait Winthrop,
as the agent and attorney of his heirs, sold it to Daniel Eppes. If, as
I conjecture, Thomas Read was a son of Colonel Read, of Essex, his
coming here with Peters, and his connection with the Winthrops, are
accounted for. His strong predilection for military affairs was natural
in a son of a colonel of the English army. It led him back to the
mother-country, on the first sound of the great civil war reaching
these shores, and raised him to the rank he finally attained. The
conjecture that he was a brother of the wife of the younger Winthrop is
favored by the fact, that her son, Fitz John Win[i.55]throp, was a
captain in Read's regiment, at the time of the restoration of the
Stuarts.
During the short period of the residence of Hugh Peters in America,
professional duties, and the extent to which his great talents were
called upon in ecclesiastical and political affairs, in all parts of
the colony, left him but little opportunity to attend to his
two-hundred-acre grant. It was to the north of the present village of
Danvers Plains, on the eastern side and adjoining to Frost-Fish Brook.
The history of this grant confirms the supposition of his particular
connection with the family of the younger Winthrop. It seems that it
had not been formally laid out by metes and bounds while Peters was
here. Owing to this circumstance, perhaps, it escaped confiscation at
the time of his condemnation and execution. Some years afterwards, June
4, 1674, a committee of the town laid out the grant "to Mr. Peters."
The record of this transaction says, "The land is in the possession of
John Corwin." Captain John Corwin had married, in May, 1665, Margaret,
daughter of John Winthrop, Jr. She survived her husband, and sold the
same land, May 22, 1693, to "Henry Brown, Jr., of Salisbury, yeoman."
These facts show that this portion of Mr. Peters's lands did go,
according to the agreement when he left America, to the family of John
Winthrop, Jr.