Bristol County, Massachusetts - Chapter 19: Dighton.1, 1883 (part 1 of 3)

Frederick Almy

Frederick Almy, third son of Thomas and Sarah Almy, was born in Dartmouth, Mass., April 30, 1811, where he lived until 1837, when he settled in business in Boston, Mass., and lived there or in the vicinity till the time of his death.

In 1828 he commenced business at Russell's mills, Dartmouth, Mass., keeping a small country store, and continued there till 1837, the time of his removal to Boston. He then, with his elder brother, William Almy, Joseph W. Patterson, and Jarvis Slade, formed the firm of Almy, Patterson & Co. Mr. Slade retired in 1846, and Mr. Patterson in 1865, when the firm became Almy, Hobart & Co. ; this firm lasted two years, and was succeeded by Almy & Co. Jan. 1, 1868, Frederick Almy being the senior, Henry Almy (William Almy's son), Francis N. Foster, and George P. Slade (Jarvis Slade's son), being associated with him. This firm was dissolved December, 1872, on account of Mr. Frederick Almy's ill-health, and so ended the succession of firms which had been as land-marks in the dry-goods business for so many years.

His life was entirely devoted to business, and, with the exception of a directorship in the National Eagle Bank of Boston, he held no public office.

He died Aug. 6, 1875. In 1847 was married to Susan H. Niles, daughter of Thomas Niles, of Boston ; there were four children, - Elizabeth B. Almy, Frederick Almy, Edward P. Almy, Henry N. Almy.

It is probable that, in common with several other towns, the territory now the town of Dighton was first visited by white men on that memorable occasion in July, 1621, when Winslow and Hopkins, with the friendly Squanto as guide and interpreter, journeyed from Plymouth to Pokanoket, on the shores of Narragansett Bay, to visit the sachem Massasoit.

Yet their discovery of this region may have been forestalled in the eleventh century by the Norsemen, in their visits to the uncertain region they had named Vinland, or possibly by the Florentine, Verazzano, who, as every school-boy ought to know, sailed up Narragansett Bay in 1524 and lay at anchor for a fortnight in the sheltered haven that is now Newport Harbor, from whence he may have sent exploring parties up the Cohannet, or Taunton River; but in the absence of any record of previous discovery, Dighton Rock being nearly given up as a relic of the Norse rovers, the Plymouth worthies must be considered as the discoverers of our township.

As we read the quaint narrative of their journey into the unknown wilderness, it is not difficult to imagine what must have been the aspect of the country through which they passed, where vast silent stretches of forest were occasionally broken by sparkling ponds and streams, or by deserted Indian plantations, from which the inhabitants had been swept by the great plague of 1617.'' Whether this terrible sickness was the yellow fever, as some suppose, or some other equally fatal disease, will never be known, but whatever it was it devastated the country from the Penobscot to Narragansett Bay, sparing only the Nausets on Cape Cod. " As we passed along," says the historian of the journey, " we observed that there were few places by the river that had not been inhabited, by reason whereof much ground was cleared, save of weeds which grew higher than our heads."

The two sturdy explorers, tramping on after their taciturn guide, must have had even their unpoetic minds touched by the solemn grandeur of the primeval forests, with its dim religious light and its awe-inspiring stillness, broken by scarcely a sound save their own footfalls. At times, perhaps, the spell would be broken by the chatter of a chipmunk overhead, or the howl of some beast of prey in the dim recesses of the woods. But silence and solitude were the chief characteristics of the land.

The difference between the magnificent forest scenery of that day and the sapling woods, choked with briers and underbrush, of the present time is shown by the statement that " though the country is wilde

- The old historians did not agree as to the exact time when this great Indian pestilence took place, some placing the date as early as 1012.

and overgrown with woods, yet the trees stand not thieke, but a man may well ride a horse among them." This park-like eharacter of the forest was due to the Indian custom of regularly burning the leaves under the trees in the spring, thus preventing the growth of underbrush, with no injury to the trees. Only the wettest swamps escaped these annual fires. Journeying through the woods in the days of the Pilgrims could be performed as easily and quickly as over cleared land. There was a well-beaten path from Plymouth to Pokanoket, remains of which are supposed to still exist in this town in the rows of flat stepping-stones that are found at swampy places, where no path made by white men would be likely to be encountered.

Although Dighton was settled at a later date than many other towns in the State, yet its settlement is mostly veiled in obscurity, and only a few traditions, perhaps not wholly reliable, have been handed down concerning the first settlers and the time previous to Philip's war. One of these traditions, related to a friend of the writer of these pages by a soldier of the Revolutionary army named Snell,1 then an old man of eighty, is to the effect that when the first white men settled in this township, the only cleared land they found, excepting the salt marshes and perhaps a few plantations by the river, was a level tract lying mostly to the north and west of what is now the Lower Four Corners. This tract, perhaps a mile in length from east to west, was several hundred acres in extent, and was used by the natives for their plantations on account of its level surface and its somewhat light, sandy soil. The squaws, who did most of the labor, found it easy to plant and to cultivate with their clam-shell or moose shoulder-blade hoes.

The eastern limit of this aboriginal clearing wras east of the old stage-road that runs northerly from the Four Corners, while at its western end it took in the tracts that are now the farms of C. W. Turner, F. A. Whitmarsh, and Isaac Pierce. At its southeastern corner it included the site of the village at the Four Corners, and also the cemetery of the Unitarian Society. A portion of this large tract has long been known as the Old Field, and formerly belonged to Capt. Rufus Whitmarsh, and afterwards to Dr. Alfred Wood, who established the Dighton Nursery on its eastern end. It is now owned by a number of persons. Nearly in the centre of this great clear space, which was surrounded on all sides by the primeval forest, was a large white-oak tree, wdiich is still standing, and which bids fair, unless some thoughtless vandal shall cut it down for timber or firewood, or, as was done with Shakespeare's mulberry, to make

1 Anthony Snell, the old Revolutionary soldier referred to, saw a good deal of fighting in Rhode Island and elsewhere. He was Anally taken prisoner and carried to England, where he was kept until the etui of the war. He lived in the house on the Broad Cove road now owned by the heirs of Jonathan llatliuway. Anthony Snell's brother John was also a Revolutionary soldier.

into relics, to stand for centuries to come. The growth of this oak has been very slow in that light soil, and it may have been a good-sized tree when Columbus landed at Guanahani. It is not the largest white-oak in the town, but it is a stately and handsome tree, whose sturdy branches have stood the onset of a thousand gales. Close to its trunk runs the private lane or avenue through the Old Field. If the leaves of this ancient tree had the gift of speech, like those of the talking oak in the fable, they could undoubtedly tell strange stories of the transactions which have taken place under its spreading foliage, for here, according to tradition, was a noted and favorite rendezvous of the natives, a sort of alfresco hotel, where they were accustomed to stop all night when out hunting or on the war-path, wdiere powwows were held and, very likely, captives tortured. The sachem Philip and sagamores", it is said, used frequently to visit this tree. Yet the sagacious and wily Metacom did not consider even this isolated spot a safe trystingplace for himself and his braves when they were conspiring against the whites, but paddled his canoe to the barren little island at the mouth of Assonet River, known to this day as Conspiracy Island.

Its isolated position, remote from other large trees, the traditions connected with it, and its great age make this oak the most interesting tree in this vicinity. Some distance to the north of this tree, but within the limits of the clearing, was an Indian village and cemetery. A house was built not far from their sites in the last century by one Simeon Perry. It was afterwards known as the Rooney house, and is no longer standing.

One-third of the great tract or farm that has been described was planted in rotation by the natives each year, which left two-thirds of the ground fallow, giving the soil a chance to recuperate for two years after each crop. Their method of planting was laborious. It consisted in scooping out holes about four feet apart, and nearly a foot deep, into each of which was placed one or more herrings. The holes were then partially filled with earth, and the seeds planted and covered. Besides corn, they raised beans, squashes, and a sort of sunflower with an edible root, resembling the artichoke. With the savory succotash and the toothsome parched or roasted corn ; with nuts of various kinds to be had for the gathering; with fish, clams, and oysters; with venison and other game meat, the Indian, gastronomically considered, would not have been badly off if he had not been so constitutionally lazy and improvident.

The natives who inhabited the village mentioned and cultivated the adjacent plantations were undoubtedly the Pocassets; this tribe also inhabited the territory that is now covered by the towns of Tiverton, Somerset, Swansea, and a part of Rehoboth. Like the Wampanoags, the Namaskets, and the Natisets, they were under the authority of Massasoit, and after him, of his sons, Alexander and Philip.

The traditions which have thus far been followed place the first white settlement in the territory now Dighton around the great Indian farm above described. The earliest settlers were undoubtedly squatters, but whether they were hunters or lumbermen, or farmers or trappers, or a little of each is not related ; neither do we know who they were, nor where they came from. Their houses were at first probably log huts for temporary shelter. One of them stood, it is said, west of what is now called the Pine Swamp, and not far from the site of the Rooney or Perry house referred to. Another was built on the southern edge of the clearing, on the land now owned by Isaac Pierce, while a third was on the eastern edge of the cleared land, not far from the grape-house on the estate of the late Dr. Gardner Peck. These spots were selected as the sites of their homes by the pioneer settlers on account of their natural advantages, being on the edge of the deserted plantation, and with plenty of wood and excellent water close at hand ; at each of these places there was a fine spring, which saved the trouble and expense of digging a well. These springs were fully appreciated by the natives, who would not willingly drink out of a stream or a pond, but would go long distances to slake their thirst at a spring. This was one of their whims, or perhaps a superstition.

Many Indian relics have been picked up on the clearing under consideration, such as arrow-heads of quartz and sandstone, fragments of tomahawks, stone pestles, and other implements used in hunting or for domestic purposes. These relics are especially numerous in the vicinity of the site of the aboriginal village and cemetery previously mentioned. No traces of the Indian graves are now to be found, as they had neither mounds of earth nor tombstones to mark their sites.

The squatters, whom the tradition states had their domiciles on the edge of the great plain, very probably removed elsewhere before the outbreak of the Indian war of 1675. There is another tradition that when hostilities commenced by the slaughter of the Swansea people only one family of white persons was living on the South Purchase, now Dighton, which was that of Capt. Jared Talbot. It is related that he and his family were hastily removed to Taunton in boats in the night. At Taunton there was quite a settlement, and there was a block-house for refuge and defense in case of an attack by the savages. The block- or garrison-house stood on or near the present site of Music Hall. Jared Talbot's name occurs frequently in the old records, as will be seen farther on in this sketch. Before Philip went to war with the English he had sold most of the territory that had belonged to Massasoit, including the land in this township; of the latter transaction the following is a brief account.

Dighton, as is well known, was once a part of Taunton. It was called the Taunton South Purchase, and was bought by a company of Taunton men of the

Sachem Philip for one hundred and ninety pounds, lawful money. The land was bought in two sections and at two different times. The first section was stated to be three miles broad on the river, and extended back into the woods four miles. The deed of the first section was dated the 28th day of September, 1672, and the consideration mentioned was one hundred and forty-three pounds. The land was conveyed to a committee of the associates, consisting of William Brenton, Esq., William Harvey, James Walker,1 Richard Williams, Walter Deane, George Macy, and John Richmond, who transferred the deed, excepting their own rights, to the Rev. George Shove, third minister of Taunton, and seventy-six associates, or proprietors of the land.

The second section purchased was on the south side of the first section, and was one mile wide on the river and four miles in length. The price paid for it was forty -seven pounds, and the deed was dated Oct. 1, 1672. It was ostensibly bought by Constant Southworth, treasurer of the Plymouth Colony, who immediately transferred the deed to the committee of the associates mentioned. It will thus be seen that, according to the value of unimproved land in those days and the much greater value of money then than now, the purchasers paid Philip a reasonable price for the tract, but in some unexplained way they managed to get excellent measure, the town being over five miles in length on the river. Soon after the acquisition of the South Purchase, the proprietors sold a tract of it a mile wide from east to west, a, rid two miles in length, lying in the southwest corner, to the town of Swansea. The date of the transaction and the price paid for the land I have not been able to find a record of. The tract has since been known as the Two-Mile Purchase.

Previously to the deeds given to the proprietors by Philip, the only mention of the tract comprising the South Purchase is in a paper given by Philip in 1663 to the colonists, confirming certain grants of his father, Ossamequin, or Massasoit. The latter had at an early period granted to the Plymouth people the privilege of establishing a trading-house at Store- House Point, now in the town of Somerset. Philip, in the document mentioned, confirmed the privilege, and included the use, but not the fee, of certain other lands. He refers to " the meadows upon the great river downwards so far as Store-House Point so called, with all the meadows of Assonet and Broad Cove, with a small tract of land bought of Ishben, lying betwixt the marked tree at the pond and the mouth of Nistoquahannock, or Three-Mile River." It would be interesting to know where the pond and the marked tree mentioned in the grant were situated.

ton proper and from other towns, but neither written documents nor traditions tell us much in regard to their names or their doings until the early part of the eighteenth century. The earliest record of a marriage to be found in the town books is as follows : " Jared Talbut and Rebecca Hathway were marryed in ye year one thousand six hundred and eighty and seven, ye fourth day <>t' May."

Then follows an entry of the birth of a son, the name obliterated : " , the son of Jared Talbut by Rebecca, was born March 26 Anno Domini, 1688, died ye eleventh day of ye same month." But this loss was made, good the next year by the birth of another son, - " Jared Talbut, ye son of Jared Talbut by Rebecca, his wife, was born April ye fourth day, 1680." In 1691 another son was born, who was named Josiah, and in 1692 twin girls made their appearance, but both died in a few days. In 1693 another pair of girls were introduced upon the scene, but, like their predecessors, their lives were cut short before the month was out. Thereafter, in quick succession, came other children, - Jacob, John, Elizabeth, Seth, Rebecca, Ebenezer, Benjamin, - fourteen children in all, but not more than half of them surviving the perils of infancy.

Besides Jared Talbot, only three other heads of families are mentioned in the brief records of the births, deaths, and marriages in the South Purchase in the last part of the seventeenth century. These are Ephraim Hathaway, the first birth in whose family of eleven was in 1690; Nicholas Stephens, the first of whose nine children was born in 1696 ; and Edward Babbitt, who had nine children, the first being born in 1695. The names that occur in the records of the early part of the eighteenth century, prior to 1712, when the town was incorporated, are as follows, only heads of families being mentioned: David Walker, Edward Shove, Ebenezer Pitts, Samuel Talbut, Nathan Walker, John Burt, and Abraham Hathaway. The records were very imperfectly kept in those days and for many years afterwards, and many of the births, deaths, and marriages that occurred were, probably, not recorded at all. This imperfection of the old record books is more noticeable in the marriages and deaths than in the births.

It will be seen from the foregoing extracts that Jared* Talbot, one of the first authentic settlers of tin/ South Purchase, was not married until ten years after the close of Philip's war, so that the tradition in regard to his family's removal to Taunton on the breaking out of hostilities is apparently incorrect.1 The house that he built has long since been torn down. It stood near the town burying-ground on the hill, on the east side of the old Bristol and Taunton road, and not far from where Dexter Pierce's house now stands. The Rebecca Hathaway that he married was probably the daughter of John Hathaway, one of the original proprietors of the South Purchase. Talbot appears to have been a man of considerable influence in the settlement on the South Purchase, active in church matters, as well as in secular affairs. In the records he is sometimes called Capt. Jared Talbot and sometimes Jared Talbot, Esq. He died Jan. 21, 1733. His wife survived him nine years. He was the second clerk of the town, the first having been Joseph Deane. He also served the town as one of the assessors, and was a representative to the General Court in 1722. He also took an active part in securing an act of the Legislature incorporating the town. His influence in the community is shown in the following agreement, drawn up in 1708, between the inhabitants on the west side of Taunton River and those on the east side :

" To all Christian people to whom these presents shall come: Know ye, that, whereas, we, ye subscribers, inhabitants of Taunton Joint Purchase, together with some of ye inhabitants of s'd Taunton on ye east side of Taunton great river, have preper'd a petition to ye General Court to be drawn oft' from s'd Taunton and to be a Township or a precinct by ourselves, our heirs and successors voluntarily agree to and with ye inhabitants on ye east side of s'd river, viz., all and every of them that are contained within ye bounds set in s'd petition, to all and every of ye following articles, and we do by these presents, bind and oblige ourselves, ours and every of our heirs ami successors, to fulfill and perforin all and every of ye following articles :

"First. We, ye inhabitants of s'd Taunton South Purchase do covenant, promise, and engage, to and with ye inhabitants on ye east side of s'd Taunton great river, viz., all those that are contained within ye bounds or limits of our petition, that at, or any time after ye expiration or end of fifteen years after ye date of these presents, if s'd inhabitants on ye east side of said river, with the rest of their neighbors living convenient, doe judge themselves capable and doe goe about to obtain a part out, or township, in order to settle ye gospel among themselves, that we, ye said inhabitants of ye South Purchase, will not molest, detain, or hinder them, but that they shall be free from all ye obligations to us, and we putting them to no charge on any account.

" 2ndly. We, ye inhabitants of s'd South Purchase, do covenant, promise, and engage to and unto ye inhabitants on ye east side of ye s'd river, that we will, on our own cost and charge, build ami completely finish a convenient Meeting House, of convenient bigness for all our inhabitants contained within ye confines of our said s'd precinct, and s'd Meeting House to be completely finished, within and without, within ye space of one year's time after s'd petition is granted, if granted at all. - Further, s'd inhabitants of s'd South Purchase doe engage, as above, that they, at their charge and cost, will provide a sufficient settlement, both of housing and lauds, for s'd minister, from all of which charges aforesaid ye s'd inhabitants of s'd South Purchase doe engage to free s'd inhabitants on ye east side of s'd river; and, further, that when s'd meetinghouse is so finished, then our neighbors on ye east side oi s'd river shall have as good right in it as though they had carried on their parts in building it, according to ye proportion of rates they doe pay. Ne.xtly, we, ye inhabitants of ye east side of s'd river, doe covenant and promise as aforesaid, that we will be at equal charges with them of s'd - Purchase in procuring and maintaining a minister so long as we continue to meet together and no longer.

"3d. Jared Talbot, for himself and bis successors, doth covenant as above, to and with ye inhabitants oh s'd east side of s'd river, and their successors, that both himself and they shall and will allow and find a convenient way to s'd meeting-house from ye great rive, to ye country road on ye we8t Side of s'd Talbot's land, for S'd inhabitants to go to B'd meeting-house, s'd way to be just above Legreganset river mouth, and so to go along on ye south side of ye new dwelling-house of s'd Talbot, so long as they meet together and no longer.

"4thly. We, ye inhabitants of s'd purchase do promise, as aforesaid, that we will lie at equal cost and charge with ye s'd inhabitants of east side of s'd river, in building and maintaining a ferry-boat sufficient for

" 5thly. It is mutually agreed by both parties afores'd and as above s'd, that ye meeting-house shall be set on ye hill, on ye west side of ye way, over against Talbot's new dwelling-house, and adjoining s'd way.

"Gthly. It is mutually agreed by both parties afores'd, that when we have a school kept, it shall he kept sometimes on one side of s'd river, and sometimes on ye other side of s'd river, according to ye proportion of rates they do pay,

" In witness whereof we, ye s'd inhabitants on ye west side of s'd river, and ye inhabitants on ye east side of ye river, have interchangeably set our hands to these presents, this twenty-fifth day of February, Anno Domini, 1708.

This agreement certainly shows a very liberal spirit on the part of the people of the South Purchase. At that time Assonet Neck, on the east side of the river, was a part of Taunton.1 It had been annexed to the colony in 1677 as part of the domain forfeited by Philip when he took up arms against the colonists, and it was purchased from the government by six Taunton men, Rev. George Shove,2 James Walker, James Tisdale, Walter Deane, William Harvey, and Richard Williams. In July, 1682, it was annexed to Taunton. May 30, 1712, the town of Dighton was incorporated, and Assonet Neck was joined to the South Purchase as a part of the town. The name of Dighton, it is well known, was bestowed upon the new township out of respect for the wife of Richard Williams, one of the original proprietors of the South Purchase, and who has been called the father of Taunton. His wife's maiden name was Frances Dighton. She was a very estimable woman, and was a sister of the wife of Governor Thomas Dudley. Until within a few years there was only one Dighton in the United States, which was a great advantage in preventing the miscarriage of mail matter addressed to the po<t-offices here, but the name is no longer unique, there is a young Dighton in the thriving State of Kansas.

It is much to be regretted that the early records of this town were so imperfectly kept, The proprietor's book gives some interesting documents, copies of the deeds of the South Purchase, with facsimiles of the marks of Philip and his sagamores, and a few other

- Rev, George Shove, third minister of Taunton, and one of the original proprietors of the South Purchase, as well as of the North Purchase and of Assonet Neck, was probably born in Dorchester, in this State, was ordained Nov. 19, 1665, ami died in April, 16S7. He was the progenitor of all the Shoves in Bristol County. Tbe name was originally Shovel, having lost an / by elision after crossing the Atlantic. An eminent member of the name in England was Sir Cloudesly Shovel, admiral and naval hero of the last half of the seventeenth century. The name is said to have been derived from the French cheoal, a horse.

documents that are read over with interest, but very much is omitted that we would like to know about, nor was the record much better kept for many years after the town was incorporated. The earliest recordbook of town affairs was kept with very little regard for sequence of dates in the entries, the clerks apparently making use of whatever part of the book they happened to open upon first, and sometimes, it would seem, forgetting to open it at all. This makes it a matter of great difficulty, if not an impossibility, to give anything like a connected history of town affairs as far as the first half of the eighteenth century is concerned. The record of births, deaths, and marriages, was quite as imperfectly and carelessly kept as the record of town affairs. For instance, the " intentions of marriage," in the . oldest book, outnumber the marriages by several hundreds, from which a person having no knowledge of the slackness of town clerks in those days might infer that people then were wiser than now, and that instead of the post-nuptial repentance, which now loads with libels the dockets of the divorce courts, they repented before the fatal knot was tied.

" At a legal meeting of the South Precinct in Taunton, voted that Capt. Jared Taulbut, Joseph Deane, Richard Hopkins, Ebenezer Pitts, and John Crane shall he a committee to treat with and make a full agreement with Mr. Nathaniel Fisher in behalf of the precinct to be our minister during his life time."

This was a very important step in the young community on the South Purchase. Hitherto the scattered farmers and their families, which comprised the settlement, had been obliged to attend meeting at Taunton ; they had no riding carriages, but some probably rode in the rude farm-wagons, while others rode on horse-back or on ox-back, for ox-saddles were not unknown to that generation, the women and children riding behind the men on' pillions, while many no doubt walked the five to eight miles distance and return, most of the way being through the woods and over a rough road but little better than a cart-path. The year before a meeting-house had been built. It stood on the hill where the old town burying-ground now is. It was probably a small and rude affair, but it was better than none, and answered the purrjose for which it was built, The hill upon which it stood is a bare, bleak, gravelly knoll, such as formed the favorite sites of our ancestors for the meeting-house and school-house; partly, perhaps, because in such places nothing would grow but brambles and huckleberry bushes. The first mention of the new meetinghouse in the records is as follows, the date being (obliterated) 1710:

" It was also voted by us of the South Purchase to allow Joseph Pool, Thomas Jones, and Matthew Briggs sixteen pounds and ten shillings for seting (seating) at the meeting-house."

ing-house, as well as photographs of the preacher and his flock. Yet, while their dress was somewhat different, the fanners and their families of that day probably looked very much like the people we see around ns. In looking at old portraits and statues the same types of features are recognized that are seen every day in the streets, and one is reminded of Hawthorn's remark that the heads of the old Roman emperors look like those of Yankee politicians. Even in the oldest antiques, like the Cesnola statues from Cyprus in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, we see faces that recall those of people we have known, although these portrait-statues antedate by hundreds of years the Christian era. The constancy of human nature to itself throughout the ages is one of the marvels of existence.

Not much is known of Nathaniel Fisher, whom the people of the South Purchase called to be their first spiritual shepherd, but from the meagre information we have he appears to have been, if not a brilliant preacher, at least a worthy and conscientious man and a faithful minister. He was born about the year 1686, where is not certainly known, but probably in one of the towns of Norfolk County. He graduated at Harvard College in 1706 ; was ordained in 1710, when he commenced preaching in the Taunton South Purchase, and he continued in office until his death, which occurred Aug. 30, 1777, at the age of ninetyone. He had four children, - Elizabeth, Abigail, Jeremiah, and Nathaniel. His wife, Elizabeth, died Sept. 23, 1765, in her seventieth year.

A story has been handed down concerning his daughter Elizabeth, which is as follows. It seems that she had an admirer named Pitts, who dropped in frequently to spend the evening, and sometimes stayed till a late hour. It is probable that his visits were not altogether unacceptable to the presumably fair Betty, as >he was called; but having a fun-loving disposition, she played him a practical joke that put an end to his attentions to herself and caused a good deal of gossip in the neighborhood. The lovers were sitting up together one Sunday evening in the front room, alter the family had retired, and as the courtship was pretty well along, Betty was sitting in her admirer's lap. While in this interesting situation, young Pitts was ungallant enough to fall asleep. Whether he was naturally of a somnolent habit, or whether he was fatigued by the labors of the week, can only be conjectured. At all events lie fell into a deep slumber, which Elizabeth perceiving, she gently disengaged herself from her sleeping beau's arms and very carefully put a churn, which stood in the room, in the place she had vacated. Then she softly went up-stairs to her little bed and awaited the result of her practical joke. She did not have to wait long, for soon there was a surprising racket in the room below as the heavy churn fell from the astonished sleeper's arms and rolled over the floor. Her reverend father hastily got up and, in scanty raiment.

came out to see what all the noise was about. Pitts made such explanation as his naturally bewildered condition permitted, and with scant ceremony left the house never to enter it again.

This story of the beau and the churn was published in a local newspaper many years ago, but the scene was laid in another locality and with different dramatis pcrsona>. As the writer had the story from one of Mr. Fisher's great-grandchildren, who vouched for its truth, there is no doubt that the affair happened in this town, and in the house of the Rev. Nathaniel Fisher, and that his daughter Betty was the chief actor in the little comedy. Whether she found the result of her practical joking as amusing in the end, when her lover did not come back, is questionable.1

The following report of the committee chosen to make an agreement with Mr. Fisher in regard to the amount of his salary, will show the manner of paying the ministers in colonial days :

The salary arranged for the future by the rules of arithmetical progression, according to the probable increase of heads and estates, was paid one-third in money and two-thirds in "merchantable pay, equivalent to money." A part of this merchantable pay consisted of rum and lumber. Mr. Fisher having with his growing family more use for provisions than for rum and lumber, succeeded finally in getting provisions substituted therefor.

1 As a sequel to this little romance the following entry in the townrecord of marriages may be interesting, at least, to the lady readers of this sketch:

"September ye 29th, 1743, Jobe Winslow and Elizabeth Fisher were married by Rev. Nathaniel Fisher." The Job Winslow that married Elizabeth was afterwards lieutenant-colonel in the Second Regiment, Second Brigade of the Rristol County militia. He had previously been In active service as a captain, and also as a major in the French and Indian war. They had four children. Their son Job was a colonel in the militia.

Elizabeth Fisher's first lover, George Pitt*, the hero of the chnrn married and had children. He was afterwards one of the Selectmen of the town, and held other offices. He appears to have been a capable, worthy man.

On the theatrical stage, tragedy is sometimes followed by a comedy or a farce, but on the stage of life the order is usually reversed, and the tragic lags not far behind the comic. Capt. George Pitts died of smallpox. Dec. 10, 1763, in his forty-ninth year. His wife, Elizabeth, died during the following March, of the same dreadful disease, as did also an infant daughter. They were all buried in an out-of-the-way spot, on the western bolder of the pine swamp. Within a few years the old slate stones marking their graves have been removed to the burying-ground of the Unitarian Society.

Hiring a minister for life, as was the custom in those days, was a very serious business, and the people of the South Precinct no doubt gave the matter a great deal of consideration. It was almost like choosing a king to rule over them. The ministers then were the most influential men in their precincts. They were not only arbiters in things spiritual and ecclesiastical, but they were frequently men of affairs, engaged in large business transactions, like the Rev. Hugh Peters, of Salem, in commerce, and the Rev. George Shove, of Taunton, in real estate; they were, besides, sometimes the only physicians, lawyers, and teachers in their precincts, so that each local town government in the colonies might well be termed a hierocracy, tempered by the town-meeting. With the lapse of years and the mental emancipation they have brought the hierocracy has, in secular matters at least, taken a back seat, and the town-meeting, as the embodiment of the common sense of each community, is the chief arbiter under the law of local affairs outside of the cities.

Nathaniel Fisher was the sole minister of the town for more than half a century, and in his declining years was furnished with an assistant. His name will occur hereafter in the course of this sketch.

The town in 1713 was fairly started upon its corporate history. At that time it was divided into two parts by Taunton River, which was a great inconvenience in many ways, for as yet a bridge was hardly thought of. On the east side of the river the town included the whole of Assonet Neck, and extended northerly as far as the present site of the old meeting-house on Berkley Common. It having become necessary to make provision for the impounding of stray cattle and for the punishment of offenders against the laws, the following vote was passed at a town-meeting held Dec. 21, 1713:

" Voted to make two pounds ; that on the west side of the river Capt. Talbot gives the land to set it on, joyning to the road, near the meeting-house ; the one on the east side of the river, Edward Paull gives the land to set it on. Voted also that the Selectmen should exact (i.e., survey) the lines of the township, set up stocks and whipping-post, and make the pounds."

There has been an advance in the methods of punishing criminals since that vote was passed. If stocks and whipping-post were to be set up now in front of the town hall, they would not probably remain there very long. There was a public ferry at that time between the two sections of the town. It was located about half a mile below the present site of Berkley and Dighton bridge. In 1715 it was voted to put the ferry-boat into the hands of Capt. Jared Talbot and Deacon Abraham Hathaway for three years, " the boat to be free for the use of the inhabitants on all public days, the said Talbot and Hathaway agreeing to keep said ferry-boat in good repair all said time at their own cost." Afterwards another ferrv was established about a mile farther down the river, at a narrow place opposite the lower wharves in Dighton. The point of land on the Berkley side is still known as the Ferry Point, and is a part of the fishing-ground of Shove & Nichols.

The tax-rate was probably of more general interest among the necessarily frugal people of the colonial period than at present, when wealth and the means of getting wealth have so largely increased, and the following bill of charges for the first year after the town's incorporation was undoubtedly closely scrutinized by the tax-payers in town-meeting assembled :

The cost of living could not have been high at that time, when ten pounds would board the schoolmaster for a year. The salary of a schoolmaster was from twenty to thirty pounds a year. Some of the schoolmasters were men of good education, and could teach Latin and Greek if occasion required, and most of them had firm faith in the truth of the Solomonic dictum that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. If the master gave satisfaction - and the people were easily satisfied - he was almost as much of a fixture in the community as was the minister, teaching in the same little school-house year after year. The curriculum of the common schools was made up of much fewer studies than at present. To be able to read, write, cipher, and spell in a passable manner, and to know a little about the countries of the globe, was about all that was expected of a boy when he left off going to school and began his battle with the material forces of nature, whether on the land or on the sea. There are those who think that the schools of that time turned out young men and women having more force, earnestness, and probity of character than is shown by the young men and women of the present day when they leave school, although they may have obtained a smattering of many studies that their great-great-grandfathers and mothers knew nothing of, - -physiology, drawing, book-keeping, algebra, music, and the like. But schools, although an important factor, are not wholly responsible for the formation of the characters of young men and women. The mode of life and the example and teaching of the parents have quite as much influence in the formation of the characters of children as the school they attend. The people of the colonies were a serious, industrious, earnest people, thoroughly impressed, through their religious teachings, that this life is but the prelude to either endless joy or endless torment; hence even the children had much of the earnestness and staidness of their elders.

Whether the people enjoyed life as much then as people do now is a question that has been often discussed. It is argued that cultivated perceptions of the beautiful in nature and art are one of the chief aids to rational enjoyment of life, and that such cultivated perceptions being lacking in colonial times, the people then were deprived of a great source of enjoyment; and, furthermore, that, having few books, and those chiefly dreary homilies or tedious disquisitions on the doctrinal points of their gloomy religion, while newspapers and magazines were almost unknown, they knew but little of the enjoyment to be derived from a healthy love of reading.

On the other hand, it may be said that, living a simpler and more physically active life, those who survived the perils of infancy had better health than the majority of people have now. They knew but little of nervous disorders or of dyspepsia, which make life a torment to so many people nowadays, and if having plenty of work to do is a chief source of happiness, as Carlyle and other philosophers have taught, they found labor enough to do at hand in clearing the wilderness and finding food and clothing for themselves and their large families. On the wThole, it is to be doubted whether existence is more enjoyable to their descendants than it was to them.

Most of the dwellings of that period have disappeared long ago, and the few that remain have, with rare exceptions, been altered and modernized until it is difficult to tell how they originally looked.

The most striking feature of the architecture of one of these old houses is the huge chimney, around which the house was apparently built. The kitchen fireplace was usually an enormous chasm, in which cord-wood was burnt without sawing, and in which one could sit and look up the sooty cavern to the sky. On cold winter evenings the huge high-backed settle was drawn up in front of the fire to keep off draughts. The mug of cider was brought up from the cellar, and perhaps a dish of apples or nuts passed around, or oysters were roasted on the coals. While the fire blazed up brightly there was little need of the tallow candles which flared and sputtered and sent miniature eruptions of melted grease down the candlesticks. Punctually at nine o'clock the family retired to their four-post bedsteads and feather-beds, to be up in the morning at break of day or earlier.

In one aspect of their lives the colonists were intensely'practical and seemingly devoted to material interests, but when we think how their religious belief dominated over their lives, and what sacrifices they were ready to make for the support of the church, we perceive that they led dual lives ; with

The town officers chosen for 1712, the first year of the town government, were as follows : Town Clerk, Joseph Deane ; Col. Ebenezer Pitts, Edward Paull, and James Tisdale were chosen selectmen ; John Burt and David Walker, constables ; Samuel Waldron, Daniel Axtel, and Abraham Shaw, assessors ; Ensign John Crane, town treasurer ; John Wood and Isaac Hathaway, tithingmen ; Abraham Hathaway and John Wood, surveyors for ways; Thomas Burt and Isaac Pool, fence-viewers; Johu White and Richard Wood, field-drivers; Joseph Maxfield, flax'-culler.

The pay for doing the town's business was very moderate, as were the prices for other kinds of work. The town clerk and the selectmen charged at the rate of three shillings a day, and land surveyors had the same pay. Town-meetings were held in the meetinghouse. This saved the expense of a town hall, and was appropriate enough, as much of the town busipess related to church matters. It was the town that built the meeting-house, hired the minister, and collected his rates.

The records of town-meetings for many years after the town was incorporated contain but little that would interest the general reader. They are mostly brief entries, poorly written and worse spelled, of the election of town officers and representatives to the General Court, varied by transcripts of bills paid by the treasurer. Some of the town offices that were annually filled then have long since been abolished. Such were the cullers of flax, clerk of the market, tithing men, and hog-reeves. What were the duties of clerk of the market in a farming community, such as Dighton was then, I have not been able to find out. The tithingman was required by law to be selected from the " most prudent and discreet inhabitants," and he was a sort of inspector-general of the township. He was required "to inspect all licensed or unlicensed houses where they shall have notice or have grounds to suspect that any person or persons doe spend their tyme or estates by night or day in tippling, gaming, or otherwise unprofitably, or doe sell or retayle strong drink, wine, cider, rumm, brandey, jerry, or methylin without a license." They were also required " to inspect the manners of all disorderly persons, and to present to the magistrate the names of all single persons who live from under family government, stubborn and disorderly children and servants, night-walkers, tipplers, and Sabbath-breakers, by night or day, and such as absent themselves from the worship of God on the Lord's dayes." The tithingman was required to be provided, at the expense of the town, with "a black staff, two feet long, tipt at one end with brass about

1 Emerson somewhere hyperbolically remarks that the Puritans and their immediate descendants were so righteous that they had to hold ou to the huckleberry bushes to prevent being translated.

three inches." It has been handed down that these black batons were sometimes tipped at the other end with a rabbit's foot or a turkey's tail feather, wherewith to tickle the eyes or noses of the sleeping saints in the congregation, while sinners who wandered in the land of Nod during the services were smartly rapped on the head with the brass end of the staff. Such were the important duties of the tithingmen, and it is needless to say that they were regarded with a wholesome fear by evil-disposed persons.1

The duties of the hog-reeve, as might be inferred from his title, were of a very different nature. It was customary to allow hogs to run in the streets, and the hog-reeve was required to provide them with yokes around their necks to keep them out of fenced incisures, and to put rings into their noses to prevent their rooting. The hog-reeve was paid for his services by the owner of the animals.

" In Dighton, at the Annuel Town meeting in march ye 20, anno 1733, the Inhabitanes of said Town did uanumosley vote that thare Reprasantative, Mr Edward Shove, should Exhibit a pettion to the great and genral court for so much un propriated Lands as thay in thare great Wisdom shall think fit to be for the supporting the scool in said Dighton."

There was certainly need of a liberal grant of land by the Great and General Court for the support of a "scool" in this town, if the orthography of the town clerk is to be taken as a sample of the literary qualifications of the people.

It was customary then to establish by a vote of the town the prices at which farm produce and other merchandise should be sold at. The following are some of the prices fixed by vote in 1727: Winter wheat, six shillings and sixpence per bushel ; Indian corn, two shillings and sixpence; oats, one shilling and five pence; bayberry (this was vegetable wax, tried from the berries of the bayberry, or wax-myrtle), fourteen pence per pound; butter, ten pence per pound ; bar-iron, two pounds three shillings per hundred ; tobacco, three pence per pound. (Think of that, ye slaves of the weed, and sigh for the good old times !)

In 1728 a town-meeting was called " to consider what to do, and send such instructions to our representative, Mr. Edward Shove, as the inhabitants of the said town of Dighton shall think fit under our difficult circumstances, by reason of His Excellency the Governor, his long and vehemently insisting on a fixed and stated salary, which we humbly conceive, if it should be granted that a Governor should have a fixed or stated salary granted him in this province, contrary to the former custom and practice of this

1 The last tithiugmen chosen in this town were Anthony Reed, Joseph Briggs, and Thomas Porter, who were elected at the annual meeting in 1834.

our General Court in granting allowances to our former worthy Governors in time past, it would greatly infringe on the privileges and freedoms granted to us by their Majesties' royal charter." The town thereupon instructed its representative to oppose this dangerous innovation and infringement of the people's rights, not seeming to consider that the Governor had any rights in the matter of his own salary. The Edward Shove who represented the town at that time was a son of the Rev. George Shove, of Taunton. He lived on the east side of the river, and was a prominent man in town affairs. The Rev. George Shove was much opposed to the Quakers, and it is a little singular that most of his descendants belonged to the broad-brimmed fraternity.

It was the custom in those days for the selectmen to warn out of town any new-comers whom they thought might become a charge to the town ; their warrants to the constable to this effect frequently occur in the records. The following is a sample of one of these warrants :

" Bristol ss. Dighton, October the 2d. "You are in His Majesty's name forthwith required to warn the following persons out of town as the law directs, they being not lawful inhabitants of said town. The names of said persons is (as) followeth : The man's name is Stephen Huchinson, and his wife's Abigail Huchinson, and seven children, whose names are Daniel, Stephen, Richard, Joseph, Lemuel, Abigail, and Lydia, who are now in the house of Thomas Joslin, as we are informed, in Dighton. Fail not, and make return of your doings to us, or one of us, quick as may be. "To Ebenezer Pool, Constable of Dighton.

In 1751 the population had increased to such an extent that it was voted to build three school-houses, one near Mr. Jonathan Burt's house, one near Col. Richmond's, to be under the care of Josiah Talbot, Esq., and one near the house of Robert Vickerv, to be under the care of Mr. George Gooding. Two of these houses were sixteen feet square, and one was twenty feet. They were probably painted red, as that was the favorite color for the district schoolhouse. At almost every town-meeting the bills for boarding the schoolmaster were voted to be paid, but only once was there mention of that functionary's name; in 1755 one John Richmond is mentioned as the schoolmaster.

Another singular omission of the records is that no mention is made of either of the wars between Great Britain and France, although in Queen Anne's war, as it is called, which lasted more than a dozen years, in the early part of the eighteenth century, men from this town must have served ; while in George the Second's war, towards the middle of the century, a number of men from Dighton were enlisted. The

Bristol County regiment which went with the expedition that captured the fortress of Louisburg, on Cape Breton Island, in 174"), was commanded by a Dighton man, Col. Sylvester Richmond, who was born in 1698, so that he was forty-seven years old when he went on the expedition mentioned.1 How he acquitted himself as colonel we do not know, but his military conduct might have surpassed that of his associate officers or of his commander and yet not have been worthy of special commendation. There was no lack of bravery, but there was very little judgment shown in the conduct of the siege, and not much discipline among the troops. Only the mutinous condition of the garrison in the fortress made its capture possible. The siege was conducted in a most unsoldier-like manner, the rear of the besieging army being a scene of disgraceful confusion, the men being chiefly engaged in the unmilitary occupation of skylarking, running races, pitching quoits, wrestling, shooting birds, or chasing the balls shot from the fort, a bounty being paid for each one brought into camp. A wellconducted sortie from the fortress would have destroyed the undisciplined besiegers. On the 17th of June, however, the Dunkirk of America, as Louisburg was sometimes called, surrendered to the New England troops. " If any one circumstance," says a historian of that time, " had taken a wrong turn on our side, and if any one circumstance had not taken a wrong turn on the French side, the expedition must have miscarried."

Before undertaking the expedition Col. Pepperell, the amiable merchant who was placed in command, had consulted the celebrated preacher Whitefield, who gave his approval, and, after manner of the crusades, furnished a motto for the flag : " Nil desperandum Christo duce." The grand battery was captured without bloodshed in a singular manner. The warehouses in the northeast part of the town having been set on fire in the night, a strong wind drove the dense smoke into the battery, and caused such a panic among the French that they hastily abandoned the battery and fled into the city. In the morning, as a young lieutenant named Vaughan was reconnoitering with thirteen men, he observed that there was no smoke issuing from the chimneys of the barracks, and that the flag- Btaff was without a flag. He thereupon bribed an Indian to climb in through an embrasure and open the gate. He thus found himself in possession of the works, and immediately sent the following report to the general in command : " May it please your Honor to be informed that, by the grace of God and the courage of thirteen men, I entered the Royal Battery about nine o'clock, and am waiting for a reinforcement and a flag." Before reinforcements could arrive the French had sent a hundred men in boats to retake the battery, but Vaughan and his baker's dozen of New Englanders gave them so warm a reception that they were prevented from landing. Europe was astonished at this victory, and in England it was sought to claim all the glory for the navy at the expense of the provincial army.

After his return from the French war, Col. Richmond took a prominent part in town affairs, and was soon appointed high sheriff of Bristol County, holding the office for many years. His father's name was Sylvester, and he had a son and grandson of that name. His wife's name was Elizabeth, and they had eight children. He was a justice of the peace, and married many couples in this town. Marriage was considered only a civil contract in those days, and justices enjoyed almost a monopoly of the splicing business. There is no record of any marriages by Rev. Nathaniel Fisher for many years after he was settled in Dighton. Col. Sylvester Richmond died in 1783, aged eighty-four years. His wife died in 1772, at the age of seventy-two.

Col. Richmond's house and farm were on the north slope of Richmond Hill, to which his ownership gave the name. Only a part of one of the chimneys of the house is now standing to mark its site. It was a picturesque, gambrel roofed old mansion a generation ago, with an immense fireplace in the kitchen, where, it was said, the colonel's slaves were wont to gather in cold weather. For many years it was inhabited by two old maiden ladies, granddaughters of Col. Sylvester, who made some pretence of carrying on farming. The cart-path from the road to the rear of the house was a thoroughfare for the school children while going to and from the huckleberry pastures during the summer vacations, and they could not always resist the temptation to pocket some of the red-cheeked lady-apples and luscious sugar-pears that often strewed the path, for which pilferings they were generally roundly scolded by the watchful guardians of the premises, whose names were Sally and Nancy. In return for these jobations, one of the older bovs, who had a reprehensible propensity for punning, was wont to speak of the scolding Sally as " Sally-rate-us," while an admonition from her sister was termed the " Edict of Nance," an allusion, probably, to the historical Edict of Nantes. The house had the reputation in its later years of being haunted; stories of strange sights and sounds seen and heard by some of its tenants are still current in the neighborhood. One of these stories, related to the writer by an Irishman who is known by the sobriquet of "Sleepy Bill," and vouched for as true by his wife, was to the following effect. Let it be premised that the house stood six or seven rods from the nearly disused road that leads over the hill, and was approached by the cart-path already mentioned, which was closed at the road by bars. This cart-path ran along within a foot or two of the south side of the house, on the lower floor of which was the bedroom occupied by the Irishman and his wife Kate, the head of whose bed was against the south wall.

The somnolent William said that one night about one o'clock he and his " old woman" were awakened by what seemed to be a long procession of carriages that appeared to come up the cart-path from the road, and go past the house down into the swamp at the rear. Having previously heard unaccountable sounds in and about the house, they were too much frightened to get up and see what was going on, while the twenty or more carriages rumbled and jolted along over the frozen ground close to their heads. They appeared to move slowly, like carriages in a funeral procession. Another night they were awakened by a terrible crash in the front hall, as if the whole staircase had fallen and been broken into fragments, but no assignable cause for the racket could be found in the morning. A boarder of theirs related that, coming home rather late one moonlight evening, he was astonished and very much frightened to see several people, dressed in the costume of long ago, dancing what he termed a " breakdown" in the front door-yard. He did not tarry to make the acquaintance of these ancient disciples of Terpsichore, but beat a retreat in doublequick time, and found a lodging elsewhere.

The uncanny reputation given to the old house by these stories and others of a similar nature, together with its dilapidated condition, made it difficult to obtain tenauts who would stay in it long, and it rapidly went to ruin. While it was tenantless the cellar was dug over more than once in the night-time by parties acting under the direction of clairvoyants, who professed to see large sums of money buried there. Whether any pot of doubloons or of Spanish dollars ever rewarded the diggers is not known, but, judging from the ill success that has attended the long-continued search for Capt. Kidd's buried treasure, it is probable that the search in the old Richmond cellar was unsuccessful.

In 1767 the meeting-house on the hill was destroyed by fire, the work of an incendiary. The building of a new meeting-house had been agitated for sometime. The old house was found too small for the increasing congregation, but there was a division of opinion as to the proper location for the new one. Some thought the old place the best situation that could be found ; others preferred Buck Plain, as that would be nearer to their own homes, while a few were in favor of enlarging the old house. One dark night there was a blaze upon Meeting-House Hill, and the question of repairing and enlarging the primitive structure that stood on its summit was decided beyond reconsideration in the negative. After the fire the dispute about the site for the new house still continued to agitate the community, and there being no prospect of agreement, it was found necessary to call in referees from another town to settle the vexed question. The names of five men were drawn from the juror-box in Attleborough, and the referees thus called upon, after a careful hearing of all parties in the dispute, decided to stick up a stake on Buck Plain as the spot where, in their opinion, the new house should be built. The place chosen was about a mile westerly from where the first house stood. There were but few houses in the immediate vicinity. Nature has not been lavish in her gifts to that level portion of the town known as Buck Plain. The land is not remarkable for fertility, and the plain is chiefly covered with a low growth of scrub-oaks, and such was undoubtedly the case in the early settlement of the locality.

The origin of the name is said to have been as follows: Informer times there were three distinct families bearing the name of Briggs in the town, and to distinguish them they were called respectively the "Stout Briggses," the " Buckhorns," and the " Whippoorwills." What was the signification of the latter appellation is not, perhaps, known at the present day. Possibly some members of the family lived in the woods, and were nocturnal in their ways. The " Buckhorns" were so called from certain curious protuberances like budding deers' horns that appeared on the heads of many of that branch of the name, even down to a late period. The "Stout Briggses" were distinguished for great bodily strength, the word stout being here used in its original sense of strong, and not in the later sense of corpulent as Washington Irving used it in his sketch of the " Stout Gentleman." According to the story which has been handed down, one Samuel Briggs, of the Buckhorn branch, lived not far from the locality that is now called Buck Plain ; how long ago the tradition does not state, but it was some time, probably, in the first half of the last century. Samuel was crossing the plain one day when he came upon a large buck lying under a rock among the scrub-oaks fast asleep. Being an active young man he determined, as he had no gun to shoot the animal with, to attempt to capture it alive. He therefore crept cautiously up to the sleeping deer, and sprang upon its back, seizing one of its horns in each hand. The astonished and frightened buck leaped to its feet, and made off at a headlong pace in the direction of the river, which was more than a mile distant, Briggs clinging to his back as best he could. On they tore through bushes, briers, and scrub-oaks, and reaching the river at last, the panic-stricken animal plunged in with its rider, who managed to drown and capture it. According to the tale, when Briggs reached the river he was very nearly in purls naturalibus, all of his clothing having been torn off excepting his shirt collar and wristbands. Mazeppa's famous bareback ride was a tame affair compared to Samuel Briggs' ride on the buck. Although the Cossack hetman's condition as to clothing was much the same throughout his involuntary ride as Briggs' condition was at the end of his, yet, unlike the latter, his clothes were not torn from him piecemeal by cruel thorns, nor was he in danger of falling off, being securely tied to his horse's back. While Mazeppa's ride has been the theme of poets like Lord Byron, of novelists like Bulgarin, and of

Dig H Ton

The meeting-house that was built on the plain was much more capacious than the one that was burnt. It was fifty-five feet long by forty-five wide, and with twenty-four-feet studs. The sum of five hundred pounds was appropriated in town-meeting for building expenses. While it was building meetings were held at the house of Samuel Whitmarsh, nearly opposite. In after-years this Buck Plain meeting-house was cut down to one tier of windows, and used exclusively for a town hall. When the present townhouse was built a few years ago the old house on the plain was sold at auction, and torn down by the purchaser.

Among the names that are prominent in the records of vital statistics of the period before the Revolutionary war are those of Shove, Walker, Talbot, Gooding, Hathaway, Pitts, Stephens, Atwood, Deane, Ware, Briggs, Pool, Whitmarsh, Waldron, Jones, Andrews, Fisher, Paull, Williams, Westcoat, Austin, Bobbitt, afterwards Babbitt, Goff, Wide, afterwards Ide, Burt, Nichols, Crane, Hoar, afterwards Hoard, Smith, Perry, Baker, Simmons, Phillips, Pierce, Shaw, Luther, Cleveland,- Tuels, afterwards Tew, Vickery, Linkhorn, afterwards Lincoln, Peck, and Francis. The number of children to a family at that time would probably average more than twice the number of the average family of to-day, twelve to fourteen being not uncommon in the days of our great-grandfathers.3

1 It is no more than just to state that there are some reasons for doubting whether the honor of this exploit belongs to Samuel Briggs or to one Matthew Gooding, it having been claimed by some that the latter was the hero of the affair. The writer does not pretend, in the absence of authentic data, to decide to which party the credit belongs, but when the above account was written he had not heard the Gooding side of the story. It is evident, however, that there would scarcely be two claimants to an apocryphal exploit, so it may be set down as tolerably certain that either Samuel or Matthew performed the feat above related. Perhaps as much controversy will be excited in the future over the question, " Who rode the buck?" as has been caused in the past by such unsettled problems as who the "man in the iron mask" was, who wrote the "Junius" letters, who killed Tecumseh, and who wai the author ot " Beautiful Snow."

2 The name of Cleveland has been brought before the public lately by the election iu New York of a Governor of that name. Moses Cleveland came to America from Ipswich, Eugland, about 16o5, and settled in Woburn, in this State. He had a family of seven sous and four daughters. He died in 1701. From him are descended all the Clevelands in this country who are of New England origin. The city of Cleveland, Ohio, was named after one of his descendants and a relative of the Dighton Clevelands. Winiuan, in his " Puritan Settlers," states that the family derived the name from Cleveland, in the county of Durham, England. Early in the thirteenth century, Sir Guy de Cleveland was present at the siege of Boulogne, in Frauce, afterwards at the battle of Poictiers, where he commanded tbe spearmeD. The name is a corruption of ClifTeland.

3 Children were so numerous in those days that it is probable they were individually less thought of by their parents than are the individual boys and girls of one of the small families of the present day. Thus it is stated in the records »f the Walker family that Capt. Elijah Walker, born in 1730, and who married Hannah Pigsley, had fourteen children, of whom " two or three were drowned by falling at different times

The Revolutionary Period. - The town records of the Revolutionary period are, as usual, provokingly meagre and unsatisfying, being generally only brief entries of certain expenditures for war purposes, and mentioning only a few of the names of those who served in the army.

The first indication of the coming contest with the mother-country is found in the record of a townmeeting held Dec. 12, 1767. A town-meeting had just been held in Boston, at which resolutions to abstain from certain " foreign superfluities" had been passed, and copies of these resolutions had been sent by the selectmen of Boston to the selectmen of Dighton, and probably to the selectmen of most of the towns in New England. The foreign superfluities mentioned were glass, paper, printers' colors, and tea, on which articles the British Parliament had recently fixed an import duty when brought into the colonies, thereby causing great indignation throughout the country.

At the Dighton town-meeting Joseph Atwood was chosen moderator, and it was voted to refer the matter to a committee of three, consisting of Ezra Richmond, Esq., Abiezer Phillips, town clerk at that time, and Capt. Stephen Beal.4 The meeting was then adjourned. What action the committee took is not mentioned. It is probable that the people of this town were somewhat conservative at that time and not quite ready to follow the lead of the fiery radicals in Boston, and that nothing came of the resolutions that were sent to Dighton.

In 1771 a vote was passed to release " the Quakers and Anabaptists from all the charge relating to the meeting-house," and from all taxes to support the minister. This vote shows the advance in liberal ideas since the settlement of the Rev. Mr. Fisher, when Quakers and Baptists were obliged to contribute to his support.

" Voted, unanimously, that it is highly necessary at this time for this town to enter into an agreement not to consume any British manufactures which shall be imported from Great Britain after the 31st day of August, 1774."

" Voted, to choose five men to take into consideration and draw a covenant, or something similar to the Boston covenant, which should be proper for ye inhabitants to agree together in and sign, and the company chosen was Doct. William Baylies, Capt. Elkanah Andrews, Sylvester Richmond (3d), Deacon George Codding, David Walker."

into the well in the back-yard, the well having been left for years without a curb." In a family of fourteen childreu two or three down in the well would hardly be missed. Elijah Walker was captain of the Ninth Company, of forty-six men, of the Second Regiment of Bristol County militia iu the Revolutionary war. He was a farmer, and was one of the selectmen in 1780. His children may have been drowned while he was away soldiering, and so unable to attend to having the well curbed.

1 Stephen Beal was made captain of the First Company of the Dighton militia in 1762. He lived on Richmond Hill, where the cellar of his house is still to be seen. He was pound-keeper for many years, the old pound being only a few rods from his house. It was owing to his ownership that the picturesque piles of rock that crown the hill were named Beat's Hocks.

" At a Town-Meeting held at Dighton on Monday, the third day of October, Voted to choose Col. Elnathan Walkerand Dr. William Baylies to represent the said Town of Dighton in the General Court, to be empowered and directed to act at the Provincial Congress to be holden at Concord on ye second Tuesday of October, provided the business of the General Court will admit of their attendance." 1

"Gentlemen, - We have chosen you to represent us in the Great and General Court to be holden at Salem, on Wednesday, the fifth of October next ensuing.

" We do hereby instruct you that in all your doings as Members of the House of Representatives you adhere firmly to the Charter of this Province, granted by their Majesties, King William and Queen Mary, and that you do no act which can possibly be construed into an acknowledgment of the validity of the act of the British Parliament for fettering the government of Massachusetts Bay, more especially that you acknowledge the Hon. Board of Councillors elected by the General Court at their session in May last, as the only rightful Constitutional council of this Province ; and we have reason to believe that a conscientious discharge of your duty will produce your distinction as an House of Representatives, we do empower and instruct you to join with members who may be sent from other Towns in the Province, and to meet with them at a time to be agreed upon in a general Provincial Congress, to act upon such matters as may come before you, in such manner as may be most conducive to the true interests of this Town and Province, and most likely to preserve the liberties of all America."

The above instructions were read in town-meeting, and were voted without dissent. On the 26th of December following another meeting was held, as the warrant set forth, " To elect and depute as many members as the town should deem necessary to represent them in a Provincial Congress, to be holden at Cambridge on the first day of February next ... to consult upon such further measures as under God shall be effectual to save this people from impending ruin, and to secure those inestimable privileges derived from our ancestors, and which it is our duty to preserve for posterity."

At the meeting it was voted to choose a committee "to carry into execution the resolves of the Continental Congress," and the following-named persons were chosen : Sylvester Richmond (3d), Rufus Whitmarsh, Peter Pitts, Joseph Gooding, Dr. William Bayl Elnathan Walker was lieutenant-colonel of the Second Regiment in the Second Brigade from about 1760 to 1762. He was the son of Lieut. James Walker, of Taunton, the third of that name. Col. Walker's farm was in the northwest corner of Dighton. He had three wives, viz., Hannah Crossman, daughter of Robert, of Taunton ; Bethia Tisdale, daughter of Joseph, and Mrs. Phebo King, daughter of Deacon Samuel Leonard, of Raynham. Col. Walker's will was probated in 1775. The inventory amounted to four hundred and thirty-seven pounds. He had ten children. He was deacon of the First Congregational Church, and gave more towards the building of Buck Plain meeting-bouse than any other person. The building committee consisted of himself, David Walker, and Dr. George Ware. He was one of the selectmen for several years, and was several times representative to the General Court. He was a justice of the peace, and was often chosen moderator of the town-meetings. His influence in town affairs was large, and he was a worthy and respected citizen.

In March, 1775, a vote was passed to raise minutemen, who were to train two half-days per week, and were allowed one shilling each for every half-day employed in training. The town also assumed the cost of an instructor in military tactics. In May of the same year it was voted to hire one hundred and thirtyfive pounds, lawful money, to be paid into the hands of Henry Gardener, of Stow, for the use of the province. At another meeting in May it was voted that the selectmen should purchase " twenty small arms for the use of the town," and a committee was chosen to see that the militia was provided with arms and ammunition. At that time the qualifications necessary to be a voter included the owning "of an estate of freehold in land of forty shillings per annum at ye least, or other estate to ye value of forty pounds sterling."

In October, 1775, a meeting was held "to choose a field officer," and Sylvester Richmond1 (3d) was chosen. In this year the sum of thirty-five pounds was raised for school purposes.

At a meeting held May 20, 1776, it was voted " that if ye Honorable Congress should for the safety of the united colonies declare them independent of the King of Great Britain, they, the said inhabitants, will solemnly engage with their lives and fortunes to support them in the measure." This vote, it will be perceived, was some six weeks before independence was declared. The town was now as radical as even Boston could desire. On the 22d of July it was voted " to give, as a bounty to each soldier who has enlisted, or shall enlist, to go to New York, ye sum of five pounds, exclusive of the province bounty." These men were enlisted for two months. At that time the prices of

- William Brown was a merchant and vessel-owner. His store was at the Four Corners, and he owned the house now belonging to the estate of the late Dr. Charles Talbot.

3 Abiezer Phillips held the office of town clerk for thirty-five years. He was a deacon of the church, was representative to the General Court for several years, and was several times chosen selectman. He was twice married, and had twelve children.

4 Silvester Richmond (3d) was son of Col. Silvester, who was at the taking of Louisburg. He was born Nov. 20,1729. Silvester (3d I was major in the Second Regiment in the Second Brigade from Feb. 7, 1776, to June 9, 1778. He was then promoted to be lieutenant-colonel, holding the office till 1781. In August, 1778, he served under Gen. Sullivan on Rhode Island, having about one hundred and fifty men and company officers under his command. About nine hundred men from the Bristol County brigade were with Sullivan's expedition. After his return from the war, Lieut. -Col. Richmond was made a justice of the peace.and took a somewhat active part in town affairs until his death, which occurred near the close of the last century. Before his death he gave a large tract of woodland to the Second Congregational Society, which had recently built a meeting-house at the Four Corners, for the support of a minister. He lived at the old homestead on the north slope of the hill. His wife was Abigail Nightingale, of Providence, and they had seven children, including Sally and Nancy, the two old maids previously mentioned, and a son named Silvester.

most commodities were regulated by law. In 1776, the price of a day's labor was fixed at three shillings. " The best of grass-fed beef three pence a pound ; potatoes one shilling a bushel; flour one pound and five shillings a barrel ; cord-wood thirteen shillings a cord ; ' rum by ye gill and good flip by ye inugg one shilling, and toddy ye same;' a dinner boiled and roast one shilling two pence; only boiled one shilling; board per week eight shillings, and most other things were proportionally cheap.

In those stirring times town-meetings were held every few weeks, but at only a few of them were the proceedings of interest at the present day. In August, 1777, the selectmen were instructed to hire eight hundred and fifty pounds "to raise Continental soldiers with." A committee was also chosen to carry out the provisions of the act of the general court, " to prevent monopoly and oppression." Speculators were getting control of the markets for provisions, clothing, etc., and prices were raised faster than would naturally happen from the depreciation of paper money. Salt had become so scarce and dear that a small lot, secured by the town authorities, was by a vote of the town distributed by the selectmen according to the number of persons in each family, and a quantity of molasses was divided in the same manner. The smallpox was making ravages in this and neighboring towns, and an article was inserted in the warrant " to see if this town will set up anocolation for the smallpox" (that was before the discovery of vaccination by Jenner), but the article was voted down. Soon afterwards, however, an inoculating hospital was provided by the town, and many persons were there inoculated with the smallpox virus, and had the malady in a mild form, while a few died after being inoculated. Ammunition was exceedingly dear at that date, powder being eighteen shillings a pound, and lead four shillings. Flints were sixpence apiece.

In 1778 the subject of preventing the spread of the smallpox was again before the town. Probably inoculation had not worked well, for a vote was passed "to prosecute all offenders who shall inoculate for the smallpox within this town, contrary to the laws of this State." At the end of this year paper money had depreciated to such a degree that it was " voted to each man that enlisted to go to Rhode Island seven dollars per day" for the seven days they were gone. Slaves were still held in Dighton at that date, and some of them were serving as soldiers in the army, fighting to keep their masters from becoming slaves; there were also a few Indians in the town, one family of which, named Simon, being supported out of the poor rates.

In August, 1779, a committee of twenty-three persons was chosen to regulate prices of labor and merchandise. The names of the committee are as follows : Dr. William Baylies, Thomas Church, Esq.,1 Capt.

Regulating the prices when the currency was so rapidly depreciating was a Sisyphean labor; prices would not stay regulated. In 1780 the price of board had risen to nine pounds a week, and probably there were few luxuries in the bill of fare at that price. In this year the town raised the sum of twenty-two thousand seven hundred pounds. In 1781 it took sixty dollars in paper money to be equal to a silver dollar. On the first day of March in this year the town issued an emancipation proclamation, as far as the negroes serving in the army were concerned, which indicates that the iniquity of slavery was be-

"Voted, that, whereas, the following Blacks, viz., Peter, ye servant of Job Winslow, Reuben, ye servant of ye Widow Prudence White, of Taunton, Caesar, ye servant of Col. Thomas Church, Neos, ye servant of Capt. Elkanah Andrews, Prince, ye servant of John Pierce, Thomas, ye servant of David Dean, and Benoni, ye servant of Jonathan Williams, the town at the General Court in 1795. He was born in Seaconnet, now Little Compton, R. I., in 1727, and died June 8, 1797. He was a man of considerable influence in the community. He was interested in vessels and ship-building, us was also his sou Gamaliel, who represented the town of Wellington at the General Court in 1817. The Church farm is now owned by A. W. Paul, Esq., one of the most successful farmers in Bristol County. The Church wharf and former place of business is situated just above Rocky Nook, formerly one of the most dangerous places to navigate on the river. Gamaliel Church removed to Westport from Dighton.

2 A story that has been handed down about one of these slaves shows that they could make themselves very useful upon occasion, and also proves that fur soive purposes the African head is superior to the Caucasian. Among the quota of twelve men who went in the expedition to Rhode Island at the time the British General Prescott was captured was a slave named Prince, belonging to Capt. John Pierce, a sturdy, bullnecked negro of pure African blood. Some difficulty was encountered by the soldiers in breaking open the door of the house in which the British general had been surprised. At this juncture Prince came to the front. " Golly ! massa," said he, "jess you stand little one side and gib dis nigger chance at datdoah." Retreating a few steps in order to get a better impetus, be rushed at the door, head foremost, like an animated battering-ram, and knocking hinges and bolts from their fastenings, so that the soldiers entered without further difficulty.

Prince was a somewhat noted violin player, and once, while serving under Gen. Washington, his fiddle-bow became scant of hairs, and he pulled a quantity out of the fine long tail of the general's charger to replenish it with. Washington happened to appear on the scene while he was in the very act, anil gave him two or three 6inart cuts with his whip. Prince used in after-years to boast of this interview with the Pater Patriae.

On the occasion of the capture of Prescott, a Dighton man named Paull, a stalwart sou of Anak, whose feet required at least number fourteen shoes, was among the party. Gen. Prescott was a small man, and had remarkably small feet, lie had not had time to put on bis shoes before he was hurried off by his captors, and on the way complained that the stones hurt his naked feet. Thereupon Paull gravely took off bis huge foot-coveriDgS and offered them to the captive. It is needless to say that the offer was not accepted, as the shoes would not have remained on the general's feet an instant while walking.

have enlisted into ye army of the United States for three years as part of the quota of the Town of Dighton, hy the consent of their masters, who have made ever all their right in said Blacks to the Town of Dighton ; the said Town does in consequence thereof declare the aforesaid Peter, Reuben, Cfesar, Neos, Prince, Thomas, and Benoni Freemen."

The town further agreed to support any of these men that might become disabled or incapable of supporting themselves. The Dighton Emancipation Proclamation was issued nearly eighty-two years before the more famous one of President Lincoln. At the election of Governor in April, 1781, only fifty-six votes were cast, all of them for John Hancock. This small vote indicates the extent to which the town had been depopulated of voting citizens by the war, and the call for money was quite as urgent as that for men. The sum of nine hundred pounds in silver money was voted for war purposes in June of this year. The early part of this year was one of the most gloomy periods of the Revolution for the American cause. Treason and revolts in the army, and reverses in the field, had brought many patriotic men to doubt the final success of the Continental armies. But it was the darkness that precedes the dawn, lor soon the surrender of Cornwallis heralded the final triumph of the Americans, and the loyal people of Dighton rejoiced with their compatriots in the other towns of the State, and of the other States. In 1784, the year after peace was declared, one hundred and two votes were cast. The people had settled down to the peaceful vocations of life.

After the war ship-building, which, after farming, was the chief business carried on, received an impetus which lasted until the famous Embargo Act, just before the second war with Great Britain.1

The population of the town received large accessions from other towns, and the newcomers were duly warned to remove out of town within fifteen days, under the penalties prescribed by law for not doing so. This warning people out of town was a mere technical formality gone through with by the selectmen, so that if any of the new population came to want, the expense of their support would not fall upon the town. The persons who were warned were not expected nor desired to depart unless they chose to do so. In 1791 more than two hundred persons were warned to leave the town. They were people of various occupations, hatters, carpenters, cordwainers, and " spinsters."

In 1789 the commercial and ship-building interests had increased to such an extent that Dighton was made a port of entry, and Maj. Thodijah Baylies was appointed collector of customs, holding the office until 1809.

Ship-building had been carried on here at an early period. In 1693, Thomas Coram came over from England to Boston in the interest of several London

1 American ship-owners, whose vessels were rotting at the wharves while the embargo lasted, probably considered the act an infamous rather than a famous one.

merchants to build ships. In 1699 he bought a piece of land on Taunton River, in the South Purchase, of one John Reed, and set up a ship-yard near what is now known as Zebulon's Landing, and not far from the wharf of the Old Colony Iron Company. Coram stayed in this country about ten years; he became involved in lawsuits and took a strong dislike to some of the people, although he was finally victorious in his controversies before the courts. In 1700 his land and house in the South Purchase, together with two new ships, one of them rigged and ready for sea, were attached by one Stephen Burt, who resided in what is now the town of Berkley, in the house lately occupied by Thomas J. Burt; this property Coram afterwards recovered.2

Thomas Coram was a notable man in his day. As one of the early residents of Dighton, and perhaps the first man to carry on ship-building here, a brief sketch of his career* will not be out of place. He was born in 1668, at Lyme Regis, in England, his 'father being the captain of a fishing vessel. Having been apprenticed to a shipwright, and having thoroughly mastered the art of building vessels, Thomas, at the age of twenty-five years, came to New England, where timber was more plentiful than at home, to put his ability as a mastership-builder to a practical test. While residing here he married a Boston girl named Eunice Wait. After his return to England he engaged in various schemes and enterprises connected with the development of the American provinces, particularly in a persistent endeavor to further the settlement of Nova Scotia. His unwearied efforts were eventually crowned with success, and in 1749 a colony was sent over, which founded the town of Halifax. Carlyle says of the founding of this city, "Thanks to you, Capt. Coram, though the ungrateful generations (except dimly in Coram Street, near your hospital) have lost all memory of you, as their wont. Blockheads, never mind them."

Coram's philanthropic sympathies led him to join Gen. Oglethorpe's enterprise to colonize Georgia with the thousands of poor debtors released from the English prisons, through Oglethorpe's humane efforts. He also exerted himself in behalf of the Mohegan Indians, who had petitioned to the British government for redress for the encroachments of the people of Connecticut upon their lands. But the great work of his life was the London Foundling Hospital, in the chapel of which he was buried, and where this inscription commemorates his name:

" A man eminent in the most eminent virtue of the love of mankind, little attentive to his private fortune, and refusing many opportunities of increasing it, his time and thoughts were continually employed in

2 For several of the facts in this sketch relating to Thomas Coram the writer is indebted to a paper read by C. A. Reed, Esq , before the Old Colony Historical Society in 1879, and published by the Society.

endeavors to promote the public happiness both in this kingdom and elsewhere, particularly in the colonies of North America, and his endeavors were many times crowned with success. His unwearied solicitation for above seventeen years together (which would have baffled the patience and industry of any man less zealous in doing good), and his application to persons of distinction, obtained at length the charter of incorporation .... for the maintenance and education of exposed and deserted young children, by which many thousands of lives may be preserved to the public, and employed in a frugal and honest course of industry.

"He died the 29th of March, 1751, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, poor in worldly estate, rich in good works, and was buried at his own request in the vault underneath this chapel, .... many of the Governors and other gentlemen attending the funeral to do honor to his memory.

"Thy actions will show whether thou art sincere in the praises thou mayest bestow on him, and if thou hast virtue enough to commend his virtues, forget not to add also the imitation of them."

Coram's unremitting perseverance enlisted art, as well as rank and wealth, in aid of his hospital. Handel in music, and Hogarth in painting, lent their best efforts in furtherance of the project. As an illustration of the way this establishment strikes an American of cultivated and poetic mind, the following extract from a letter from London to the Neiv York Tribune may not be out of place. It was written by William Winter, the accomplished poet and the dramatic critic of that journal :