Norfolk County, Massachusetts - Franklin.!, 1884

Early History as Precinct - First Cession of Dedham - Purchase of Wrentham - The New Precinet - Church Organized - First Minister - Meeting-House - Chureh Musie - Discords - Precinct Ministers - Revs. Haven, Barnum, Emmons - Civil History - Move for a Town - Town History - Incorporation - Why named Franklin - Town Library - Topography - Maps - TIndian Traditions - Revolutionary War - Sentiments in Town-Meeting - Soldiers' Second Meeting-House - Its Site, Cost, Bell - Moved and Modernized - Interior Glimpse of Home Life - Military Affairs - Trainings and Musters - The Poor- - Burial- Grounds - Post-Offices - Temperance - Early Industries.

More than two hundred and forty years ago, when the forest-trees had withdrawn their shadows hardly the distance of an Indian's arrow-flight from Boston

Following rather than leading this impulse, the Governor and his court, in session at Newtowne, Sept. 2, 1635, ordered ''that there shall be a plantation settled about two miles above the falls of Charles River, on the northeast side thereof, to have ground lying to it on both sides the river, both upland and meadow, to be laid out hereafter as the court shall direct."

September 8th of the next year, 1636, this order was followed by another, naming the new settlement " Deddham," and this grant of territory was so large as to include what now forms thirteen towns and parts of four others.

Twenty-four years passed away, and the new settlers so spread that in 1660 thirty-four of them bought of the Wampanoags six hundred acres of land still farther was granted "the next day,' - so say the colonial records. Thus Wrentham, the namesake of the English home of some of the settlers, took her place and name in history.

three months' school. These afterwards became substantially the shoots of three substantial towns, the chief of which was Franklin, the others Norfolk and Bellingham. The next year (1719) the first precinct was set off and called Bellingham.

After many petitions and refusals, Wrentham reluctantly gave her consent, and, on the 23d of December, 1737, Governor Belcher with his signature cut off a second precinct, which in forty years grew into the town of Franklin.

when built and listen to a minister yet to be called. Some twenty brethren, having secured letters from the mother-church at Wrentham, kept the 16th of February, 1738, '"'as a day of solemn fasting and prayer to implore the blessing of God and His direction in the settling of a church, and in order to the

And on that day in a large assembly the covenant was read and accepted, and Rev. Mr. Baxter, of Medfield, moderator, pronounced them a duly-organized

The first meeting was held on the 16th of January, 1737-38, at twelve o'clock. The needful officers were chosen, and four days later, at a second meeting, they went to work with a will. First, they voted | eighty pounds for preaching, and appointed a committee to secure it; another committee was chosen to provide materials for a meeting-house in place of the small building heretofore provided, to be forty feet long, thirty-one wide, and twenty-feet posts. They | also sent a request to Wrentham for the fulfillment of a promise made them ten years before, that money | paid by them, amounting to one hundred and thirty | pounds eleven shillings, towards its meeting-house should be repaid to them. At first Wrentham refused, but after four months' delay the request was granted.

their first selected preacher. On Noy. 8, 1738, Rev. Elias Haven was installed as the first pastor of the new church. The audience assembled, not in the meeting-house, as it was not yet built, but in a valley near its future site. After sixteen years of ministerial work, performed in physical weariness and pain, Rev. Mr. Haven died of consumption, and God gave him rest from his labors, Aug. 10, 1754, in his fortieth year. The stones placed by a remembering town over his grave in the old cemetery still stand, and the inscription thereon may be legible for years to come.

The Meeting-House. - The precinct having an organized church, a settled minister and his salary provided, and materials ready for a church building, its next duty was to select a site whereon to build. This, as in the first settlement of all New England towns, must be at the centre of its territory; for in those early days no house was permitted to be built above half a mile from the meeting-house without At a meeting of the settlers, held the 7th of April, 1738, five men were sent into a corner "'to Debate and Consider and Perfix upon a place for Building a Meeting-House on and bring it to the Precinct in one hour." Meanwhile, the rest spent that hour in voting and unvoting until they reached an apparent finality, - to set the house "at the most convenientest place on that acre of Land That was laid out By Thomas Man for the use of the West Inhabitants in said Precinct." But who shall decide where this 'most convenientest place" is? Mr. Plimpton, "survair" of Medfield, is selected to they conveniently can." But next year, May 9, 1739, a new question arises, whether this be in the exact centre of the precinct, and a new surveyor is

" To the Inhabitants of Wrentham Westerly Precinct. " Gmnt!: - These may Inform you that I the Subscriber Have Been and Measured to find the Center of st Precinct, Mess'.

ing to be South westerly from the Present Meeting-house a little Beter than an Hundred Rods, where we Pitched a Stake and Made an heap of Stones. " ELEAZER FisHer, Surveyor."

The deed of one acre of land from Thomas Man was accepted Sept. 11, 1759, and was put for safekeeping into the care of Simeon Slocum. In the same month of September, another committee put seats in the barn-like building according to the timber provided, and "one lock and key and bolts and latches for the doors, and cants" for the gallery stairs, and also a foundation for the pulpit and pulpit stairs, and rails round the galleries, and made five | ' pillows,' - a small number fora modern audience. |

The bills, presented March 3, 1740, show that the committees had been reasonably expeditious. The final cost of the meeting-house was £338 13s. 6d., as reported in October, 1741. The boys, too, were promptly at work, for in July, 1740, Capt. Fairbanks is directed to get the windows mended, and to prosecute the depredators. ;

Pari passu with the meeting-house arose the '"horse-houses,"' whose long strings of successors afterwards made the Franklin Common so famous. They were all planted and grew on Thomas Man's

Of this oldest real meeting-house no picture or description is in existence. Some of the sashes, two feet square with five-inch panes of glass set diagonally in lead, were visible in an old house not many years ago, but of their present whereabouts, if they exist at all, no man now knoweth.

The building stood on the slight hill north of the present Catholic Church, in a surrounding girth of dwarfish pitch-pines. It was guarded by platoons of horse-sheds and some small dinner-houses, where the forefathers of the hamlet shared their lunch and exchanged opinions, and the mothers nursed their in- |

This first house was used - subjected to occasional internal modifications as the congregation increased and the taste changed - until Oct. 12, 1789, fortyeight years from its completion. then chosen to sell the outgrown and aged building within twenty days, or to pull it down at their dis-

The Church Music of '' y° Olden Time.' - The "Old Bay Psalm-Book" was used at first in all the A chorister started the tunes with a pitch-pipe, and the congregation, each in his own good time, - which might be faster or slower than the leader's, - followed on or hastened ahead.. All sang the same part, and with an energy begotten of facing northeasters, felling forest-trees, and shout- No two sang alike, and the sounds were so grievous to the ears of the people that their distress found voice in a vote of the precinct, June 26, 1738, "To sing no other tunes than are Pricked Down in our former Psalm-Books which were Printed between Thirty and forty years Agoe,and To Sing Them as They are Prickt down in them as Near as they can." The older people remonstrated against this invasion of their liberties, but the precinct refused, in September, 'to ease those that were inclined to sing the old way." Six months later, March 8, 1738-39, the church 'voted to sing by rule, according to note," and chose Joseph Whiting to set the tunes in the church.

Later in the same meeting some curious soul stirred up the brethren by the query, '' What notice will the church take of one of the brethren's stricking into a pitch of the tune unusually raised February 18th ?" For answer, another vote was recorded :

"WHEREAS, our brother, David Pond, as several of our brethren, viz., David Jones, Ebenezer Hunting, Benj. Rockwood, Jr., Aaron Haws, and Michael Metcalf, apprehend, worship in the forenoon raised above what was set; after most of the congregation, as is thought, kept the pitch for three lines, and after our pastor had desired them that had raised it to fall to the pitch that was set to be suitable, decent or to that purpose; the question was put, whether the church apprehends this our brother David Pond's so doing to be disorderly; and it passed in the affirmative, and David Pond is suspended until satisfaction is given." went below zero, where it stayed for thirteen years. At last, Jan. 12, 1751-52, he melted into confession of error, and all discord was drowned in harmony. Another vote of the church on this subject is significant. May 18, 1739, it was voted "that the man that tunes the Psalm in the congregation be limited till further direction to some particular tunes, and the tunes limited are Canterbury, London, Windsor, St. David's, Cambridge, Short One Hundredth, and One Hundredth and Forty-eighth Psalm tunes; and Benj.

Rockwood, Jr., to tune the psalm." Ten years' practice so wore upon these seven permitted tunes that, April 5, 1749, the church removed the limitation and the hymns thereafter flowed smoothly on in| many separate streams like the voice of many waters. - All went musically, as between the tunes, for a time; | but on April 15, 1760, sprang up a war of rival | hymn-books which lasted for five years, until the 4th of July, 1765, when it was decided by the victory of | Dr. Watts' version of the psalms over the Old Bay | Psalm-Book, and Tate and Brady's version of psalms | and hymns. Dr. Watts remained in possession of the field for nearly ninety years, until the Puritan hymn- - and tune-book, born in Mendon Association in 1858, | raised him also onto the shelf of antiques.

of pastoral labor in failing health, through which he was tenderly helped by a loving people, died of consumption in 1744, and was buried in the central cemetery of the town, where a stone still stands to his memory. Then came the trying experiences of hear- | But they | sat down patiently to scrutinize whomsoever came before them; and the sitting, if not the patience, lasted | for six years.

One after another preached in review | before them. Aaron Putnam, Joseph Haven, Stephen | Holmes, Thomas Brooks, a Mr. Norton, Joseph Manning, to whom they said, "Stay with us," but he declined; Messrs. Parsons, Goodhue, Phillips, Payson, who also declined their call; Jesse Root and | Nathan Holt, who refused to stay; John Hals, Mr.

Gregory, and at last came Caleb Barnum, of Danbury, | Conn. He, the fourteenth candidate, was urged to stay by one hundred and two votes, and was offered | seventy pounds salary per annum, and one hundred | and thirty-three pounds settlement as an additional | motive.

Rev. Caleb Barnum was the son of Thomas and | Deborah, born in Danbury, June 30, 1737; graduated at Princeton, 1757, and received an A.M. in 1768 from both Princeton and Harvard. His brief pastorate of eight years was full of divers disturbances, not the least of which was the hymn-book conflict already mentioned. Some differed also from | his opinions and beliefs as preached from the pulpit, and some left to attend Separatists' meetings, but the majority vindicated the pastor. The differences seemed to be more between the precinct and the church than in the church itself; but the minister | stood as a central figure between the two parties, and | was attacked by both. His resignation was caused by these dissensions, and being made final, despite their reluctance to grant it, he was dismissed March 6, 1768.

The next February he was installed over the First Congregational Church in Taunton. In 1775 he joined the army of the Revolution, and became chaplain of the Twenty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment, Col. John Greaton, then near Boston, Feb. 10, 1776. On the return of his regiment from Montreal he was taken sick at Ticonderoga, and discharged July 24, dying at Pittsfield, Aug. 23, 1776, aged thirty-nine.

Once more the pulpit was empty, and again a procession of candidates appeared. One and another was called upon to stop, but each declined, and they all moved on. Then the people looked each upon his neighbor, and asked, " Why will no one stay with us ?"

The meeting-house, now thirty years old, and too small as well as growing old-fashioned (for there was even then a fashion for meeting-houses), was pondered upon as a possible obstacle. Therefore, in 1772, they chose five men to "consult upon the conveniences and inconveniences of enlarging and repairing their meeting-house, and to draw a plan thereof and report."

Meanwhile, the committee of supply had in some way heard of a young graduate of Yale College who had preached in New York State, and was now He was small in stature, with a thin, small voice, and he hesitated about appearing before a church containing two such But he came, October, 1769, and essayed to fill the vacant pulpit. So well did he supply their needs, and so thoroughly did they test him, that on Nov. 30, 1772, the church, by a vote of thirty-two out of thirty-four, invited him to become their pastor. Two weeks later the precinct heartily seconded their invitation, and April 21, 1773, NATHANAEL Emmons was settled as the third precinct minister. The service was held out of doors, like that of both of his predecessors, in the valley west of the present Catholic Church.

The memory of Dr. Emmons' life and ministry is still bright in the town where he lived and labored for more than fifty years. His namesakes are found in many a family, and many a town and State, while anecdotes of him and his pithy apothegms are still current, and still bright as new coins, and more valuable for use.

as any. In the pulpit his clear-cut and logical sentences sharpened the intellects of his hearers and made them alert, discriminating, and clear-headed thinkers, having settled opinions of their own.

his people's intelligent convictions. They knew him to be simply following truth, and they had to follow his guidance because he justified to them every step of his way.

Twice during this time, in 1781 and again in 1784, he became discouraged in his work and asked for a dismission ; but his people unanimously refused to grant - | Common.

it. Before the close of 1784 a powerful revival added seventy to his church, quickened his weary spirit, and ended his discouragements. During his fifty-four years of work three hundred and eight were gathered forever second the strong spirit within, and in his | eighty-third year he fainted in the pulpit while preaching a sermon from Acts ii. 37 (see " Emmons' ©

Master's call to "come up higher" was all that remained to him here. His letter of resignation to his people is worthy of a place in this history for its loving simplicity : "FRANKLIN, May 28, 1827. "To the members of the Church, and to the members of the relation to you for more than fifty years, which is a long ministerial life. The decays of nature, and increasing infirmities of old age and my present feeble state of health, convince me that it is my duty to retire from the field of labor which I am no longer able to occupy to my own satisfaction nor to your benefit. I therefore take the liberty to inform you that I can no longer supply your pulpit and perform any ministerial labor among you; and, at the same time, that I renounce all claims upon you for any future ministerial support, relying entirely on your wisdom and goodness to grant or not to grant any gratuity to your aged servant during the residue of his life. "NATHANAEL Emmons."

After thirteen years of patient waiting, he died Sept. 23, 1849, at nearly ninety-six. funeral, Monday, September 28th, was attended by It was the ministers and people from far and wide. last service held in the old church which his voice had dedicated fifty-two years before. The next day the carpenters began their alterations.

as a tenement-house, as historic buildings are wont to do in our hurrying age. June 17, 1846, a granite monument, paid by a public subscription, was erected with public services near the centre of the Common, across which the venerable pastor had traveled to and from his church for more than half a century. An address was given in the church by Rev. M. Blake, and then the large company adjourned to the Common, where the dedicatory address was made by the then pastor, Rev. T. D. Southworth. These addresses were printed.

A few years ago this monument was moved into anew part of the cemetery, out of public sight and contrary to the unalterable provision of the society which procured, located, and erected it on the

The ecclesiastical history of the precinct, which in those early years was practically identical with its civil record, here practically ends.

movelack of maternal sympathy quieted them till March 4, 1754, when a petition was actually presented to and refused by Wrentham. Discouraged by this rebuff, and absorbed in the political events which preceded the Revolution, the people postponed further action, and continued to journey to Wrentham But the question soon War meetings became eight miles to Wrentham so often was wearisome for man and horse. The population of the precinct had also increased, and was fully large enough to justify a separation. Therefore, Dec. 29, 1777, another petition was addressed to Wrentham " for liberty to be set off into a district township, according to grant of court that they were at first incorporated into a precinct, with a part of said town's money and stocks. Deacon Jabez Fisher, Esq., Jonathan Metcalf, Samuel

Hawes, and Capt. John Boyd, chief men of the precinct, are put in charge of the matter." In response to this petition, Wrentham sent nine men as February 21st they reported that 'said inhabitants be set off as a Separate township by themselves." The process of division was speedily begun. It involved many and complicated matters of importance. The men already raised as the whole town's quota for the Continental army were proportionately accredited to each section.

divided. The salt allowed by the General Court and all other properties were duly adjusted. Kven of the five solitary paupers dependent upon the whole town, two were assigned to the forthcoming town. All preliminaries being thus arranged, another committee was elected to present their petition to the -

General Court. The charter of incorporation, granted in answer to this petition, appears among the acts of 1778, and is dated in the House of Representatives, February 27th, and in the Council, March 2d. It

"Beit Therefore Enacted By the Council & House of Representatives in (reneral Court Assembled & by the Authority of the same, That the Westerly part of said Town of Wrentham separated by a line, as follows, viz., Beginning at Charles River, where Medfield line comes to said river; thence running rod East of y® Dwelling-House of William Man; thence a strait line to the eastwardly corner of Asa Whiting's barn; thence a strait line to sixty rods due south of the old cellar where the Dwelling-House of Ebenezer Healy formerly stood; thence a Due West Cource by the Needle to Bellingham line, said Bellingham line to be the West Bounds and Charles River the Northerly Bounds, Be and hereby is incorporated into a Distinct and separate Town by the name of FRANKLIN, and invested with all the powers, Privileges, and immunities said Town of Franklin shall pay their proportion of all State, County, and Town charges already granted to be raised in the Town of Wrentham and also their proportion of the pay of the Representatives for the present year; and the said Town of Wrentham and Town of Franklin shall be severally held punc-

Contained and Expressed in a vote of the Town of Wrentham passed at Publick Town-meeting the sixteenth Day of February, 1778, according to y® plain and obvious meaning thereof; and Be it also Enacted by y® authority aforesaid, That Jabez Fisher, Esq., Be & he hereby is authorized & required to issue his warrant to one of the principal inhabitants of said Town of Franklin, authorizing & requiring him to Notifie and warn the Freeholders & other inhabitants of said Town to meet together at such time and place as shall be expressed in said warrant, To choose such officers as Towns are authorized shall be expressed in said warrant. And be it further enacted, That the inhabitants living within y® Bounds aforesaid who in the Late Tax in the Town of Wrentham were rated one-half part so much for their Estates and Faculties as for one single Poll shall be taken and Holden to be Qualified and be allowed other meetings as may be Called in said Town of Franklin untill a valuation of Estates shall be made by Assessors there. "Tn tHE House or REPRESENTATIVES. "Feb. 27, 1778. "This Bill having been read three several times, passed to

In the original draft of the charter, as preserved in the State archives, the name of the new town is written as Exeter. Why its name was first written Exeter is a conundrum, whose answer is inaudible among the echoes of the past. Why it was changed to Franklin is apparent. After the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Benjamin Franklin with two others was sent forthwith to France, to arrange for a treaty of alliance with Louis XVI. The king dallied with the ambassadors until the close of 1777, when the capture of Burgoyne settled his doubts, and a treaty of amity and commerce was formed with them in January, 1778. this country while the petition of the new town was waiting decision. The charter was doubtless amended in honor of that event, and Exeter was changed for the honored name of FRANKLIN, the jist of the twenty-nine towns in our States who have since followed her example in calling themselves by the same

Dr. Franklin showed his appreciation of the compliment by sending the town a valuable library of one hundred and sixteen volumes, selected by Rev. Richard Price, of London, a strong friend of Franklin's and of American liberty. Of these, mostly folio volumes, the most secular and sensational was "The Life of Baron Trench." These one hundred and sixteen seed volumes were subsequently increased by a social library three thousand or more, constituting the present Public Library, for which maintenance annual grants of money are made by the town. Topography. - Franklin, in the limits of its original charter, included 17,6023 acres, or 27.6 square miles; lying longer north and south than its width east and west. It is twenty-seven and a quarter miles southwesterly from Boston by the New York and

The earliest map of the territory of Franklin was made in 1735, by Samuel Brooks, surveyor, and is kept in the town office of Wrentham. only the four ponds, Uncas, Beaver, Popolatic, and Long, two or three short streets, and the names of the first settlers. The outline of the West Precinct is dotted within it, and follows nearly the present boundaries of Franklin. A later map is in the archives of the State-House at Boston, and is dated May 27, 1795. It was from surveys made by Amos Hawes and Moses Fisher in September, October, and November, 1794. Nov. 2, 1795, the selectmen were directed to have another map of the town drawn on parchment, but if

Charles River forms its northern boundary and receives the overflow of the ponds that lie, like bits of broken mirrors, among its hills. Chief of these ponds are Beaver, Uncas, Popolatic, and Kingsbury's, with their outlets of Mine Brook, and Stop, or Mill River, drawing their surplus waters through Charles River into Massachusetts Bay and the sea. The geological formation of the town is sienitic, though very few ledges of rock appear on the surface. Traces of limestone have been found, and a deposit of amethysts, | now exhausted. Green meadows, deep, shady valleys, | and sunny hills make the natural scenery of Franklin beautiful. It is one of the highest towns in the county, and from some of its elevated highways the blue hills of Milton and the round head of Mount Wachusett, in Princeton, are visible.

Its own hills and rocks have retained but few traditions of their aboriginal owners and their deeds. Yet Indian Rock still records the story of the fortytwo of King Philip's warriors, who stopped for a night and laid themselves down to sleep around its base. They had been on the war-path to Medfield, burning he was back again, with a dozen men in command of Capt. Robert Ware, to watch and take care of the sleeping murderers. When the Indians arose at daylight a dozen bullets quickly found their mark. Their punishment was so swift and fatal that only one or two escaped to tell others of the steady and sure aim of the white man. Hence came the name of the ledge, which still rears its monumental head above the trees some five hundred yards east of the The Fourth of July, 1823, was celebrated on this rock, and its stony breast is still marked with

Uncas Pond also holds the tradition that the wily Mohegan sachem, in some of his campaigns with the Pequots in this region, made the shores of this pond one of his occasional haunts, and the early settlers attached his name to the wood-sheltered sheet of water as a memento of the fact. But the settlement was too insignificant at the time of the Indian war to attract any massacres or conflagrations as befell its neigh-

The Revolution. - The young town took her stand courageously beside her older sisters in the troublous Instead of the horn of Ceres, she must grasp for a while the sword of Mars. Many of her men had been enrolled two years before among the five companies of minute-men formed within the Some of her inhabitants were among those who, on the first alarm from Concord, ''marched from Wrentham on the nineteenth of April (1775) in the Colonial service." The exigencies of the Revolution demanded many townmeetings. Thirty-one were held in the five years between January, 1773, and Feb. 16, 1778, this being the last before the separation of Franklin from Wrentham.

| 5, 1776, one day less than a month before the Declaration of Independence, a paper of instructions to their representatives to the General Court was, "after being several times distinctly read and considered by the town, unanimously voted in the affirmative without even one dissentient."" This paper is inserted as a sample voice of the times, indicating the clear and decided convictions of that day, and the hopelessness of attempting to dragoon such study yeomanry into duty : half ago, obliged our forefathers to quit their peaceful habitations and seek an asylum in this distant land, amid an howling wilderness surrounded with savage enemies, destitute of almost every convenience of life was their unhappy situation; but such was their zeal for the common rights of mankind that they (under the smile of Divine Providence) surmounted every difficulty, and in a little time were in the exercise of civil gov- But after some years had passed and the Colonies had become of ernment under a charter of the crown of Great Britain. some importance, new troubles began to arise. The same spirit which caused them to leave their native land still pursued Letters began to be wrote against the government and the first charter fore another charter could be obtained, and although many of the gifts and privileges of the first charter were abridged by the last, yet in that situation the government has been tolerably quiet until about the year 1763, since which the same spirit of oppression has risen up. Letters by divers ill-minded persons have been wrote against the government (in consequence | of which divers acts of the British Parliament made, mutilat- | ing and destroying the charter, and wholly subversive of the | constitution); fleets and armies have been sent to enforce them, | and at length a civil war has commenced, and the sword is drawn in our land, and the whole united colonies involved in one common cause; the repeated and humble petitions of the good people of these colonies have been wantonly rejected with cision. Money as well as men were furnished often and heartily, and the town bore with marked unanimity the heavy expenses of the Revolution as well as the depreciation of the currency as their home part of the price paid for liberty.

instruments of his hostile oppression to lay waste our dwellings | with fire and sword, to rob us of our property, and wantonly to | stain the land with the blood of its innocent inhabitants; he | has entered into treaties with the most cruel nations to hire an army of foreign mercenaries to subjugate the colonies to his eruel and arbitrary purposes. In short, all hope of an accommodation is entirely at an end, a reconciliation as dangerous as it is absurd; a recollection of past injuries will naturally keep alive and kindle the flames of jealousy. We, your constituents, therefore think that to be subject or dependent on the crown of Great Britain would not only be impracticable, but unsafe to the State. The inhabitants of this town, therefore, in full town-meeting, unanimously instruct and direct you (v.e., the representatives) to give your vote that, if the Honorable American Congress (in whom we place the highest confidence under God) should think it necessary for the safety of the United Colonies to declare them independent of Great Britain,

Sept. 15, 1774, soon after the encampment of Gen. Gage on Boston Common, Wrentham voted to buy two cannon "of the size and bigness most proper and beneficial for the town," and ordered them to be made Ammunition was also bought, and men were armed and trained in military exercise. The last vote of the whole town touching the war previous to the incorporation of Franklin, Feb. 16,

1778, was the acceptance of a committee's report, that the full quota of the town, "being the full seventh part of the male inhabitants of the town," had been secured.

The First Meeting of the town of Franklin was called by Jabez Fisher, justice of the peace, and was held Monday, March 23, 1778, at 9 o'clock, A.M. The requisite town officers were chosen. They were Asa Pond, town clerk; Asa Whiting, treasurer ; Samuel Lethbridge, Deacon Jonathan Metcalf, Asa Whiting, Hezekiah Fisher, Ensign Joseph Hawes, selectmen ; and Ensign Hawes was representative to the General Court. The Committee of Correspondence, who looked after the affairs of the war, were Capt. John Boyd, Deacon Daniel Thurston, Lieut. Ebenezer Dean, Capt. Thomas Bacon. they meditated for a month upon the new State Constitution, preparatory to an intelligent and wise de-

It voted to report all Tories to the It directed the soldiers' families to be "supplied with the necessaries of life at a stipulated price at the town's cost." They voted not to deal commercially with any who did not conform to the scale of prices recommended by the Concord convention of 1779. They furnished their quota of beef for the army - thirty-three thousand nine hundred and eight pounds - in eighteen months, taking almost the cattle on a thousand hills. They voted in 1779 - when the money credit of the government was rapidly sinking - that all who had money to lend,

Harpies, Forestallers, and Tories, with as much caution as they avoid a pestilence," and rather to lend to the Continental and State treasuries. There was the irrepressible spirit of liberty here.

Franklin has not preserved any muster-rolls or other data to make up a list of its soldiers in the Revolutionary war. From the muster-rolls of Wrentham preserved in the archives of the State one can select the residents of Franklin proper only by similarity of name. But an examination of these rolls shows that they do not include all who should be on them, for the names of many men whose military record is known from other sources are not-on the lists. Of the five companies of Wrentham, under the command of Capts. Oliver Pond, Benjamin Hawes, Samuel Kollock, Elijah Pond, and Asa Fairbanks, the last two of the companies were mostly of Franklin names, as follows:

In Capt. Cowell's company, of Col. Benjamin Hawes' regiment, sent on a secret expedition, 23d of September, 1777, occur the names of Michael and Timothy Metcalf and Benjamin Rockwood, Franklin men.

There were at least seventeen Ponds that flowed from Franklin into the American army and are not recorded. One, Elisha Pond, escaped one night from the old Sugar-House at New York, where he had been imprisoned and nearly starved by the British. Another Pond, Pennel, " died Dec. 16, 17 - , in York harbor on board a guard-ship, supposed to be poisoned | by ye British doctors." So his only record says, writ- Philip | afterwards called McLane, and a native of Attleborough, came to Franklin, and married a wife in Ten years after he started for Canada as general of a secret project, said to be originated by the French minster to this country, to incite the Canadians

Quebec, - the last and probably the only instance in America of the ancient brutal mode of hanging, McLane was, without doubt, more an unhappy lunatic than a criminal. But the spirit of those days was full of animosity and cruelty. The later wars of the Republic will find mention farther on.

The Second Meeting-House. - The war was at last ended, and the country had won for itself inde- The old town question soon presented itself again, - whether There were evidently two opinions in the town, for April 26, 1784, two hundred pounds were voted to buy But October 3d of the next year the opposition carried the day, and the constable was ordered "to pay back the money collected for the meeting-house and return the tax-bill into the town clerk's office, and that the town clerk pull off the seal of the warrants and write on the back that they are null and void;' and secondly, "that a committee view the meeting-house and report Asa result, 10d. were spent in patching the shingles, supto repair the house of worship or build anew.

One question towards it had been settled January, 1784, in regard to the fixedness of the centre of Franklin. Two surveyors and three chainmen had, at a cost of £26 3s. 4d. (of which £1 12s. 11d. was for '"lickquer"), discovered that " forty-seven rods from the centre of the west door of the meeting-house where it now stands" was the same unmoved centre found fifty years ago near the same Morse's mudpond.

Whiting, and Ensign Joseph Whiting presented the following report which was accepted, and a larger site for the new building than the Thomas Mann's ing-house leading to the Rev. Nathanael Emmons and the way from the said meeting-house to Ensign John Adams', being nine acres, at £1 10s. per acre; same rate; also one and a half acres in the hollow south of the old meeting-house at three pounds. of Nathaniel Adams one hundred and forty rods of land east of the way from said meeting-house leading to Mr. Emmons at the rate of £1 10s. peracre. Also a road three rods wide through his improved land, beginning at the road from John Adams', Jr., to go a straight course between his house and well to the land above mentioned, for which he is to receive as a satisfaction eight pounds in money and the acre of land on which the meeting-house now stands, with the road that is now wanted, in by his house, to said acre." at sixpence per rod. This lot completed the nine acres, of which the present Franklin Common was a part. This land, when first bought, was covered with a dense growth of pitch-pines, standing with their feet firmly planted among small bowlders. It cost sixty dollars and ninety-one cents to clear this untamed spot and cover it with grass. Three sides of this wedge-shaped nine acres were afterwards mon was sold for building sites, and on the centre lot Dr. Amory Hunting built a house in front of the old gun-house, since removed. After the meeting-house had been moved to its present site and reversed, the town bought the Common of the parish and com- This

A plan for the new meeting-house was presented by a committee of thirteen, and accepted by the town December, 1787. lows : Sixty-two feet long and forty wide, with a porch at each end fourteen feet square. It had fifty-nine pews on the floor and twenty-one in the gallery, besides the singers' and boys' seats. The centre of the house had at first long benches on each side of the

The building was carried on with characteristic energy and finished in July, 1788, seven months from the acceptance of the plan. The cost, as rendered by the committee to the town, March 7, 1791, was as follows: a th ee Ie | .Lumber at Boston ...........00. 57 19 3 0 Carting from Boston........... 16 19 3 0 Rum, sugar, molasses, and lemons at Boston............. 12 6 3 0 Lickyuers bought at home..... 33 4 0 Cost of raising the house..... 26 8 9 0 Nails and other iron-ware at BOStON ese vcsewsicecescleeseres seco Mey 7 Nails and other iron-ware at OM Ctscee-cseiassesesueosesecescs Pi Gy 27 Painting, tarring,andglazing 73 6 5 0 Boards, clapboards, and shingles at home: .-.2<.....--s0cese- 3: 5/0) 10 Plastering and whitewashing 18 4 3 2 Underpinning the house....... 26 12 5 0 Boarding the workmen......... Sl 147.8) 0 Carpenters' work...........2.00+ 233 0 8 0 Door - stones and _ paving round the house..............+ Oe ela 250 Window-weights.............006 5 18 4 0 Cost of the curtain (behind thre pul pits) eeccsescetesacewiee'sen By (Rok U) Expenses of the committee... 69 3 7 O - - - - _ - - _ - - - £ EB th fe OUD Se veccessisecescesiacerrestasetcesasesscrse 2/2 Oi Ome Donations. Hezekiah Fisher, to purchase £ 8. d. /. thie Pol assccecescciacstececsieceass 29 4 4 3 Nathaniel Thayer............+0. ZO iene Jonathan! Waless......s0csccc ae Ibe aly 0) JOsiah) EIAWeSter-ssscsleeccescssenss 144 3 0 O Nathan Maniijcsccccseecscacecesss t 3 Gal: (So added in the original) £ 35 8 8 3 ef Re th) MotalsOficlass-tiXccccwssssescsees ede else ele wl Received from sale of pews... 622 11 0 0 Interest on securities forpews. 13 17 6 0 From the old house............. 3) 2) 16090 £943 18 1 1

This bill was not accepted as readily as the plan had been; but examination of the charges by an auditing committee, March 10, 1794, showed that £18 5s. 5d. more were due to the committee than they had charged. The honest town voted that this balance should be paid, with interest for four The bill probably included the cost of preparing the land. In 1806 the east porch was raised into a belfry to receive a clock and bell, which bad been given to the parish, costing seven hundred and forty-five dollars. The bell has never told the name of the giver, nor the clock-hands pointed to the time or place of its record, and none of the living know the generous donor or donors.

In 1830, while workmen were painting the belfry, they spattered the bell, whereon some bright genius among them, thinking to better the matter, painted the luckless bell all over. voice of the bell was almost silenced, - it was supposed forever. It was thereupon sent to the foundry at East Medway in exchange for a heavier one. The dumb bell came forth from the fiery furnace freed from the smothering paint and musically toned as ever. It now tells the people of Paxton the times when it was moved about eighty feet directly north, and turned a quarter round, with its belfry towards the south. modern slips, and all the congregation were seated in

Upon the completion of the third and present Coneregational meeting-house, the second, which was in its turn the old, was sold and deeded, through Davis Thayer, Jr., to J. L. Fitzpatrick, and by him transferred to the Right Rev. J. J. Williams, now archbishop of Boston, for the use of the Catholic congregation.

he stated that in its eighty-four years of service there had been 8736 Sabbath sermons preached from its pulpit, which had been in the charge of 13 ministers ; 900 infants received the rite of baptism; and unnumbered dead reposed in it while the last services for them were being held before burial.

sides, with a drop-seat across the narrow door, and the straight, cushioned chair in the centre for the grandmother, filled every one with sedate faces over which gray hairs usually predominated. The open space before and below the pulpit, where in winter a massive wood stove reared its iron head and opened with blocks of hard wood big enough to hold fire through the following services, and keep the circle of old men who sat around it in a sleepy warmth while the unfortunate sitters in the outer corners To it at noon came the mothers, bringing their small tin hand-stoves, with perforated sides and an iron box within to hold live coals, for a fresh supply to keep their feet warm through the afternoon service. The long balustrades hemming the side galleries were crowned with hats against the two stairways, which a puff of wind from the open porch-doors sometimes sent scattering down upon the uncovered heads below. 'The singers' seats filled the long gallery fronting the pulpit, in which nothing louder than a wooden pitch-pipe for years dared to utter a note. But about 1825 a singing-school timidly prepared the way for a violin, which soon introduced a bass-viol for the support of itself and The boys had seats in the southwest elbow of the gallery, each boy with one eye on the tithing-man sitting high up in the northwest corner pew and the other eye wandering or asleep, while both ears were enviously open to the neighing of the horses in the hundred horse-sheds and the twitter of birds in the Lombardy poplars near by."

Not only was the irrepressible boy from the first looked after by the tithing-man, chosen " to take care of y° children, to prevent their playing in meeting," but in May, 1791, another duty was laid upon these " May, 1791, on complaint that divers persons have from time to time behaved in a very unbesame officers.

coming manner by standing in the porches of the meeting- house of this town on the Lord's Day, and otherwise conducting in a manner not only inconsistent with the purpose for which they professedly assemble, but highly unbecoming a person-of good breeding or the character of a gentleman: Voted, that such conduct ought to be highly reprobated and discountenanced by every sober man, and they will hold them as scandalous and infamous persons; and the tithing-men are to take their names and publicly expose them next town-meeting, and post up this vote and the Absentees had to Kven after the congregation were all safely in their pews, and under the vigilance of such sentinels, the minister could not always control their attention. It is said that on one July Sunday in 1790, when the audience were unusually torpid and sleepy, Dr. Emmons closed his manuscript, took down his three-cornered hat, came down from the pulpit, and went quietly home, leaving his comatose congregation to finish their naps or dismiss themselves without a benediction. After giving them a fortnight to consider their ways and be wise, he explained the reasons of this conduct, and his penitent church voted: '1. It is reasonable the pastor should insist upon having the proper attention of the people in time of public worship. reasonable the church shall desire and endeavor that proper attention be given in the time of public worship, and discountenance all inattention."

As a result of the alterations and modernizings of 1840, the top of the old sounding-board lighted upon a well-house in Ashland; the old pulpit ended a long journey in the lecture-room of the Chicago Theological Seminary. At the same time, also, the long rows moved to the rear of the new site. The noon-houses had disappeared some years before 1840. They had been built for a resort in the intermissions on cold Sundays. each side and a narrow floor in front of it.

They were four-square, with a seat on A large stone hearth filled the centre, on which a fire was built in a pile within reach of the cold feet aimed at it from the four sides, while the smoke found its way, when ready, through a wigwam-like hole in the roof.

territory, and, being busy all the week at home, the Sunday noon intermissions spent in the horse-sheds and noon-houses were their only opportunities for interchange of family greetings and friendly gossip. The rude connecting roads were too long, rugged, and lonely to be traveled for evening gatherings, and the young folks had to supplement by the few weeks of the winter their Sunday talks school. The town among the stumps and rocks of the slowly civilizing acres and at looms in the attics. only external necessities.

The population of the town increased slowly, from less than one thousand at its incorporation in 1778 to seventeen hundred and seventeen in 1840. The first sixty-two years of its town life showed less than six per cent. increase.

For many years after the war for liberty the chief | business of its town-meetings was discussions of town _ boundaries and laying out of roads. On March 23, 1795, the selectmen were directed to erect the first eulde-posts.

Military Affairs. - The military spirit, first called ' forth by the stern service of the Revolutionary war, did not die out with the close of the eighteenth century, but was revived at least on two days of the year,

' - of the May training of the two military companies, the North and the South so called, and of the fall | muster of the regiment to which they belonged. The of these two companies, when they both manceuvred _ at opposite ends of the Common, marched around Davis Thayer's store and Dr. Emmons' house, and halted in front of Joseph Hill's store under the poplars, and when the voices of the captains, and the fifes and A troop of cavalry was enrolled, mostly within the town, and the horses, fresh from the plow and harrow, pranced and danced at the unwonted music of the bugle among the sweet ferns at the south end of the Common. But greater was the excitement, especially among the boys, when the Franklin Artillery appeared in all its brazen majesty on the same Common where its gunhouse, cannon, tumbrels, and harnesses were kept. The dark-blue uniforms, the Bonaparte chapeaux with their long, black, red-tipped plumes, the flashing long swords, the slow march to the dirge-like '" Roslyn Castle," as the lumbering brass four-pounders were | dragged over the tufts of grass and bushes by dragropes, angling outwards like wild geese lines reversed, were always followed by a crowd. But the climax of military excitement was reached when, about 1825, the Franklin Cadets made their first public appearance. Their white pantaloons, blue coats, abundantly buttoned and silver-laced, black shining leather caps crowned with black-tipped, perpendicular plumes, and above all their new glinting muskets, made each boy wish himself a man and a cadet. | Many of the after prominent citizens of the town were proud to be called captain of such an admirablydrilled corps. The Franklin Cadets, the Wrentham Guards, and the Bellingham Rifles were the flower of the old Norfolk County regiment.

The fall musters, however, condensed the highest interest. They came after the sowing and reaping of the year were done, and all were glad for a holiday. The following description of an old-time regimental muster from a frequent participant will be entertaining: afternoon. A boundary was also roped along the eastern side, next the road, which marked the limit for spectators. On this side were built rough booths for the sale of eatables and drinkables and gewgaws to the crowd of the coming day. With the earliest o'clock the long roll from a score or less of kettledrums called the companies together. Drills, evolutions, and marchings displayed the skill of the capnine o'clock, when, at the vociferous shouting of the adjutant, the musical squads headed their companies up to the toe-line. The musicians were then gathered at the head of the regiment, near the gun-house, to receive the colonel and his staff whenever they country and the protection of life and limb. On straightening out again, then came the march of the single fife and drum down and back the length of the line, the official inspection, the regimental manceuvreings, and the dodging of the line of guards by the spectators.

line for the grand finale - the sham-fight. | Sometimes the infantry tried to capture the guns of the | artillery ; sometimes, divided into two equal battalions, they furiously bombarded each other; sometimes a tribe of pretentious Indians rushed from behind Dr. Pratt's barn with indescribable yells upon their invisible wigwams. Sometimes the whole regiment formed a hollow square, facing outwards, with a cannon at each corner in defense of their officers, and banged away at unseen and unanswering enemies, while the cavalry dashed in all possible directions to repel imaginary sallies. Trumpets blared, drums rattled, horses reared and snorted, children screamed, through the poplars, till a cloud of villainous saltpetre enwrapped in suffocating folds soldiers, spectators, booths, and landscape, and until cartridge-boxes were emptied and military furore was satiated. The hubbub subsided about five o'clock into an occasional pop from tardy muskets, and the wounded - by pocketpistols - were picked up in the booths and along the poplars, and the crowd took their winding - to some very winding - way to their supperless homes."

The Poor. - It was not until 1799 that public provision had to be made for their poor by this thrifty Then there were but five persons. They were at first boarded by the lowest bidder, who must be approved by the selectmen, and was held strictly to take good and generous care of them, furnishing

' everything needed except clothes and medical care. | These were separately supplied by the town. tains and astonished the fast-gathering crowds until |

If he failed in any respect, he was to remove his charge In 1835 the dwelling-house and farm of Alpheus Adams were bonght for an almshouse at a cost of three thousand dollars.

Burial-Grounds. - Land was set apart at the beginning of the settlement for the burial of the dead. One '" God's acre" was at Stop River, now the City Mills Cemetery; the other at the Centre. Both of They were open and uncared for until 1768, when they were

These cemeteries have been enlarged from time to time as needful, and the dead of to-day are laid near where the forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

In 1864, November 8th, a third burial-ground was This is called the Catholic Cemetery, and lies some one hundred and fifty rods west of their churah.

The Post-Office. - Franklin had no regular postoffice until 1819. Letters and papers were few and These were left at Wrentham by the carriers, who passed three times a week between

Providence and Boston. Any one who chanced to visit Wrentham brought them to the owners. In 1812, Herman C. Fisher, then a lad of fifteen, was hired by a few families to go on horseback Saturdays to South Wrentham and bring the mail to Nathaniel Adams', afterwards Davis Thayer's, store. His route was through Wrentham and Guinea to the old tavern on the Boston and Providence turnpike.

This brought the but letters for the northern part of the town were brought from Medway village. Mills was built by Eli Richardson, who secured a post-office there. Fora while Mr. Richardson brought the letters and papers for Franklin Centre to meeting in the box of his sulky every Sunday, and H. C. Fisher carried them to the store of Maj. Davis Thayer to be distributed. Centre people began a movement for a post-office of their own.

In 1822 they succeeded in securing a regular office, of which Maj. Thayer was postmaster. His successors have been Spencer Pratt, Theron C. Hills, David P. Baker, Cyrus B. Snow, Charles W. Stewart, David P. Baker again, A. A. Russegue, as-

Early Industries. - Sawing or splitting the foresttrees into boards for their houses and grinding the corn raised on their cleared land were the first neces- The first corn-mill was built in 1685, by John Whiting, on the site of the present Eagle Mill, at the foot of the long and for- respect for his uniform urbanity and kindliness. His successor, and the present postmaster, is Oliver H. Ingalls ; assistant, Laura E. Blake. The income from the office at first was not more than thirty dollars per year ; but it gradually increased till in 1882 the salary was raised to seventeen hundred dollars. now rated in the third class of post-offices.

This mill was owned In 1713 the North Precinct settlers sought for mill privileges nearer home, and Daniel Hawes, Jr., and Eleazar Metealf associated with others to utilize the falls in Mine Brook for a saw-mill. which they signed: wone quarter, John Maccane wone quarter, Eleazar Metealf and Samuel Metcalf wone quarter, Robert Pond Sen. wone quarter. We doe covenant & agree as follows: to carry on his part of said mill shall pay half a crown a day to the rest of the owners that did said work. "3 We doe agre that said land shall be for a mill pond soe good people cast about for some external check upon the appetite. When said strength became too frequent and dangerous to the home-peace, their names were posted by the selectmen so that the dealers, 'who in regard of their remoteness from Boston had such as stood in need thereof,' should not sell to such But the evil habit of drinking increased in spite of church and minister. As early as 1825, after a lecture given in the Popolatic schoolhouse by a son of Dr. Lyman Beecher, Caleb Fisher, Elisha Bullard, and several others not only signed a pledge, but. refused to furnish liquor to their men at

"to lay out each man's loot as they are drawn - the first loot is to be gin four foot from the upper sil of the streax sil and soe up unto the ind of the sleapers, and to devid it equal into fower loots & from the sleapers towards the road so as not to interrupt still is a temperance town. It has always voted no license, and now has two active temperance organizations - a Temperance Alliance and the Woman's

In the laying out of a surveyor's district, May 29, 1736, there is mention of '"' The Iron Works," said to be located near the foot of Forge Hill, ' Ben Works' saw-mill'' and " Adams' corn-mill'" at City Mills, sites now occupied by other works; but of other mills or factories no record is preserved until the beginning of the present century.