Worcester County, Massachusetts - By P. Emory Aldrich, I,l.d, 1889 (part 1 of 2)

i 1. An outline of the history of Worcester, from the earliest attempts at settlement to the close of the Revolutionary War, is all that will be undertaken in this initial chapter ; a fuller narrative of the events of that period will be given by other writers, to whom that duty has been assigned. The origin of New England towns has occupied the attention of many students of our early institutions, and much has been written and published on the subject within the last few years. These writings disclose a very considerable divergence in the views held by different writers as to the true origin of towns, and the formative influences by which their development has been controlled.

As this chapter is devoted to an account of the origin and early annals of Worcester, it has seemed to the writer that some discussion of the general subject of the origin and growth of towns in the Plymouth and Massachusetts Colonies would not be out of place in this connection.

The origin of these towns was not the same in all cases. The mode of acquiring title to the soil and the means of effecting settlements were not the same in all towns. But, although the methods of acquiring title to land might vary in different cases, yet the primary sources from which all land titles in these colonies were derived were the same. At the time of the discovery and settlement of this country it had become a fixed principle of international law, among the European nations, that prior discovery by any of them gave to them the prior and better title, and grants from them passed an absolute title to the grantee, subject to the Indian occupany. And it became a rule of law, also, in all English colonies that the Crown had the sole and absolute right to acquire or extinguish the Indian title. This statement does not agree with the very common opinion as to what was the real nature of the Indian's title to the land over which they roamed, but upon which they could hardly be said to dwell, or of the manner in which that title or right could be acquired, and yet the statement is strictly true. Chief Justice Marshall, in giving the opinion of the United States Supreme Court, in a case in which the question arose, says, "The power now possessed by the government of the United States to grand lands resided, while we were colonies, in the Crown or its grantees. The validity of the titles given by either has never been questioned in our courts. It has been exercised uniformly over territories in the possession of the Indians.

" The existence of this power must negative the existence of any right which may conflict with and control it. An absolute title to lands cannot exist at the same time in different persons, or in different gevernments. An absolute, must be an exclusive title, or at least a title which excludes all others not compatible with it. All our institutions recognize the absolute title of the Crown, subject only to the Indian right of occupancy, and recognize the absolute title of the crown to extinguish the right."' It would not be difficult to demonstrate, if this were the proper place to do so, that what is called the absolute right of the Crown was, in reality, the right of the people of England, which, by their free choice, they had vested in the Crown. -

The Crown, in the exercise of that sovereign right, granted certain lands, lying within defined limits, to the Massachusetts Colony ; subsequently the colony, through its constituted authorities, granted specific parcels of these lands to companies or proprietors, and the latter, sooner or later, became the founders of towns; and these proprietors, either before or after their organization into townships, conveyed, in sm dler parcels, the lands they held in common to individuals who held the same in severalty.

In this way Worcester had its origin, as will hereinafter be more fully set forth, with the conditions upon which the original grant was made and the struggles and hardships through which the early settlers passed before they finally succeeded in laying the foundations on which this goodly city of eighty thousand inhabitants now, after the lapse of more than two centuries, securely rests.

Worcester furnishes a good illustration of the manner in which many of the Massachusetts towns originated, and it will hardly be necessary to seek among the primitive Teutonic institutions on the continent or look to the Anglo-Saxon or Norman institutions in England for models on which these towns were built. " In that land," says De Tocqueville, speaking of America, " the great experiment was to be made by civilized man of the attempt to construct society upon a new basis ; and it was there, for the first time, that theories hitherto unknown, or deemed impracticable, were to exhibit a spectacle for which the world had not been prepared by the history of the past."

It is true that local self-government, in a modified form, had been known both in Germany and England before the earliest colonization of America. But long before that colonization commenced the Crown had, by repeated encroachments, deprived the people of their ancient right of self-control, and that right or power had been vested in municipal councils or other local boards, and which were self-perpetuating bodies.' But when removed from the presence of that dominating power of the few over the many, the colonists at once returned to what has been called the natural order of society in the establishment of government.

Writing upon "The American System," a writer already quoted says : " The village or township is the only association which is so perfectly natural that whenever a number of men are collected it seems to constitute itself. The tithing or town exists in all nations, whatever their laws and customs may be ; it is man who makes monarchies and establishes republics, but the township seems to come directly from the hand of God."

This may be regarded as an ideal or speculative, rather than an historical statement of the origin of towns, yet it contains the announcement of a fundamental truth connected with the subject, and that is, when men come to live together in society, they find it necessary, when left to regulate their own affairs, to establish, within comparatively narrow territorial limits, some form of local self-government ; and this they do, not because some more or less remote ancestors may have done the same thing, but rather in obedience to a necessary law of social existence.

And every generation or community of men, when left free to act, will establish such local instituti ms as will best subserve the necessities and wants growing out of their environments ; and this they will do without any servile imitation of those who have gone before them. The late Professor Parker, of the Dane Law School, a learned writer on legal and historical subjects, said, in a paper on "The Origin, Organization and Influence of the Towns of New England," that " a careful examination of the history of New England towns will show that they were not founded or modeled on precedent ; . . . they were not contrived in the closet, nor in the hall of a legislative assembly, and brought into existence, with the powers and duties which we find attached to them, by the enactment of a law for that purpose. They did not burst into mature life by any previous contrivance. But, like most other useful machinery, they had their origin in the wants of the time, and came into existence by a gradual progress from imperfect beginnings." The learned author of a memoir of Plymouth County declares that " the origin of town government in New England is involved in some obscurity. The system does not prevail in England. Nothing analogous to it is known in the Southern States; and, although the system of internal governiuent in the Middle States bears a partial resemblance to that of New England, it is, in many respects, dissimilar."

In another part of the same memoir the author says: "To the independent churches we may trace the original notion of independent communities, which afterwards assumed the name of towns, and which, having passed through an ecclesiastical state, and after the proprietaries became extinct from the special appropriations of all the lands within the bounds of their charter, assumed the shape of political corporations, with municipal and in part legislative powers within their limits." This will hereafter

Another late writer on this subject, and quoting tlie opinion of an earlier author, says, " New England towns are models after the plan of King Alfred's hundreds."

To show the fallacy of this theory of the origin of our towns, it may suifice to state that it is but a tradition that Alfred devised the arrangement into hundreds and tithings ; and, beside-', the tradition itself is inconsistent with the facts of authentic history.^ And, moreover, the English hundred had very little in common with the New England townships or towns.*

In his " History of Charlestown " Mr. Frothinghara atlirms that " the nearest precedent for New England towns were those little independent nations, the free cities of the twelfth century, or the towns of the Anglo-Saxons, when every officer was elective." In another connection the same writer says, that "the German and Anglo-Saxon principle of local government was early asserted in all the colonies, and that whether the organization was called parish, borough, hundred, town or county, the principle was carried out that the inhabitants should manage their local affairs through officers legally elected. Municipality in New England was the simplest of all municipal f. rms, and the best adapted to develop the republican idea."

An inquiry respecting the origin and constitution of the free cities of mediaeval Europe would show that they differ very widely from the towns of New- England. Most of these cities bad existed before the full of the Eoman Empire in the West; they had suffered from invasions and civil wars, and "upon the fall of the Empire had still been repressed by the feudal polity." Their inhabitants had been despoiled and their commerce and industry destroyed. " But the municipal traditions of Rome had survived, and were confirmed by the free customs of the Teutons. The towns gradually obtained from the crown, and from feudal superiors, charters of enfranchisement, which secured to them the rights of maintaining fortified walls, of raising troops and maintaining self-government."

In Italy and other parts of Europe some of the principal towns grew into sovereign municipal republics and formed alliances among themselves more or less permanent; hence arose the Hanseatic League and the other great confederation called the Rhenish League, and the confederation of towns and cantons in Switzerland. And, above all, the Roman law, the greatest monument of legislative wisdom the world has ever seen, survived the fall of the empire, and became the Ibw of the nations that overran and destroyed the empire, and exerted a

From these brief statements the great dissimilarity between the so-called free cities of the twelfth century and New England towns is apparent. The former had existed as component parts of pre-existing nationalities, and had been over-run by barbarians, and their liberty destroyed by feudalism, and after centuries of struggle they succeeded in throwing off the oppressions of feudalism, and regained, in a measure, their franchises as independent municipalities; whereas, the New England towns were original creations, on a virgin soil, and far removed from the scenes of older civilizations, and instead of being separate and independent municipalities, these towns were component parts of the State, forming together one body politic. "In their origin our boroughs," says the author of the " History of the English People," " were utterly unlike those of the western world. The cities of Italy and Provence had preserved the municipal institutions of the Roman past ; the German towns had been founded by Henry the Fowler with the purpose of sheltering industry from the feudal oppressions around them ; the Communes of Northern France sprang into existence in revolt against feudal outrages within iheir walls. But in England the tradition of Rome passed utterly away, while feudal oppression was held fairly in check by the Crown. The English town, therefore, was in its beginning simply a piece of the general country, organized and governed precisely in the same manner as townships around it. Its existence witnessed, indeed, to the need which men felt in those early times of mutual help and protection. The borough was probably a more defensible place than the common village. But in itself it was simply a township, or group of townships, where men clustered, whether for trade or defense, more thickly than elsewhere.

" The towns were different in the circumstances of tht ir rise. Some grew up in the fortified camps of the English invaders. Some dated from a later occupation of sacked and desolate Roman towns. Some were the direct result of trade. There was the same variety in the mode in which the various town communiies were formed." This passage has been quoted partly for the purpose of testing the soundness of those theories which attempt to trace the beginning of New England towns to a definite German or Anglo-Saxon origin. Neither English towns nor towns on the continent of Europe had a common origin, and they differed essentially in the elements of their organization and powers. The historian Stubbs, who seems to have explored the beginning of English institutions more thoroughly than any of his predecessors, says : " The historical township is the body of allodial owners who have advanced beyond the stage of land community, retaining many vestiges of that organization ; or the body of tenants of a lord who regulates them, or allows them to regulate themselves, on prin- ciples derived from the same. In a further stage, ihe township appears in its ecclesia.stical form as the parish, or portion of a parish, the district assigned to a parish." The same writer clearly shows that in diflerent parts of England these primary divisions of territory or people assumed different forms, and passed under different names.

The description of an English town, by the distinguished historian of the Norman Conquest, exhibits a most marked contrast, rather than similarity, between an English and a New England town. "An English town," says that writer, " was a collection of every class of inhabitants, of every kind of authority, which could be found in the whole land, all brought close together. Lords with their sac and soc ; churches with their property and privileges; guilds - that is, artificial families, with their property, their usages, their religious rites ; thanes and churls in the language of one age, barons and villains in the language of another, merchants, churchmen, monks, all the elements of English society, were to be seen side by side in a small compass. The various classes thus brought together were united by neighborhood, by common interests, by common property and privileges."' There is very little in all this to remind one of the simple and homogeneous character of a New England town, either of the earliest or latest type. The statement of Maine, in his interesting work on "Village-Communities in the East and West," "that the earliest English emigrants to North America organized themselves at first in Village-Communities for purposes of cultivation," is too broad and umiualified for the facts upon which it is based. It is true the Pilgrims at Plymouth held and cultivated their lands in common for 'a short time, but they soon made a division of the common property and each person held his own in severalty. As early as 1625 every man at Plymouth planted for himself, and all the products of his labor were to be his own individual property. The fact that the Colonial Legislatures made grants of lands to companies, who undertook to establish towns, were made with no expectation or design that the members of the company should continue to hold the lands as tenants in common, but rather that they should make allotment of portions of the lands to the several members of the company, and convey the remaining portions to other persons they could induce to join them in the organization of a new town. One ingenious writer on the origin of our early political institutions declares "that here (in New England) the fathers laid deep and broad the foundations of American freedom, and that here was developed the township, with its local selfgovernment, the basis and central element of our political system - upon the townsbip was formed the county, composed of several towns similarly organized; the State, composed of several counties, and finally the United States, composed of several States." But this remarkable genesis of town, county. State and nation is wholly imaginary, resting on no basis of fact. In any consideration of this subject an essential fact to be remembered is that both the Plymouth and Massachusetts Colonies were settled under charters, which incorporated the grantees and empowered them " to make, ordain and establish all manner of orders and laws for and concerning the government of the colonies and plantations which should be necessary and not contrary to the laws of England." So that in both colonies, before the organization of any towns, a government in fact, though not in name - equivalent to the State government - existed, with ample powers of legislation and administration in all matters, both civil and criminal. And the right to establish towns and the title to all lands within the territorial limits of the colony were to be derived from and through the colonial government. It is therefore manifest that so far from its being true I that the State, by some imaginary process of evolution, is derived i'rom the town, towns are in every instance dependent on the State government for their very existence. And the origin, organization and functions of towns can be shown in no better way than by the following statement which has been condensed from judicial decisions and legislative acts : The towns of Massachusetts have been established by the Legislature for public pin-poses and the administration of local affairs, and ihey embrace all persons living within their territorial limits. At the first settlement of the colony, towns consisted of clusters of inhabitants dwelling near each other, and by means of legislative acts designating them by name, and conferring upon them powers of managing their own prudential affairs, electing representatives and town officers, making bylaws and disposing - subject to the paramount control of the Legislature - of unoccupied land within their territory ; they becanie, in effect, municipal or 1 quasi corporations, without any formal act of incorporation. Indeed, it is not known that any formal act, similar to modern acts of incorporation of towns, was passed until near the close of the colonial government and the establishment of a new government under the Province charter. And not until after the adoption of the Constiturion of this Commonwealth was it for the first time expressly enacted that " the inhabitants of every town - within the government were declared to be a body politic and corporate." In some cases the General Court granted land to proprietors, who maintained an organization separate from that of the town, having the same territorial limits, and divided the land among the settlers who participated in the grant, or sold them to others for the common profit of all the original grantees. The records of the proprietors were kept in books commonly called " proprietors' books," many of which are still in existence, and are often referred to for evidence in controversies in the courts respecting land-titles.

In other cases of the settlement of towns, there was no grant of land to a separate body of proprietors, but the town itself became the owner of all the land within its assigned limits. Sometimes the land granted was called a district or outlying portion of an existing town ; again, in other cases, the grant was called a plantation, which in process of time became a town as population and wealth increased.

Grants were sometimes made to a considerable number of settlers, who were afterwards recognized as a plantation, settlement or town by a proper name, vested by general laws with certain powers, and had their bounds declared ; or at a much later period, grants of a tract of land were made to a company of individuals named, with a view of constituting a town afterwards. In either case, their rights and powers, both of soil and jurisdiction, were derived from the existing government. And in all cases, and from the earliest period, the Legislature of the colony exercised the unquestioned authority of deciding what rights should be possessed by towns and what public duties they should perform.

The town of Groton, which dates its origin back to 1665, furnishes a good illustration of the manner in which many towns came into existence. A number of individuals who seemed to be in want of " fresh woods and pastures new," petitioned the General Court for a ..grant of land, and the answer to them was, " The Court judgeth it meet to grant the petitioners eight miles square in the place desired to make a comfortable plantation, which henceforth shall be called Groton." A certain number of persons named in the act were at the same time appointed by the court to act as selectmen for two years, at the end of which time other selectmen were chosen by the inhabilants of the town. It appears from the earliest records of the Massachusetts Colony that, before the arrival of Winthrop and a majority of the assistants with the charter of 1630, a great number of private grants of land had been made by Governor Endicott and his special council, and as these grantees would naturally desire to take their grants in proximity to each other for mutual defence, convenience and comfort, they formed themselves into settlements or villages ; and the first step towards forming these settlements into corporations was to give them a name. But as they had no fixed limits or boundaries, and it became necessary to fix such limits, in order to ascertain what proprietors should be rated in any assessment, and who should be subject to the duties and entitled to the immunities of each village or settlement, these settlements, first namied and then bounded, must have assessors to ajiportion and collect their taxes. They were also, by gpueral acts of the Legislature, vested with authority to choose other necessary ofiicers and to manage their own prudential affairs and thus they grew to be " quasi corporations ; " and afterwards, either with or without formal acts of incorporation, these settlements or villages became towns. It is true that many of the powers now possessed by towns in this State are the product of comparatively recent legislative grants ; but in all its essential features as a corporation vested with the right of local self-government, the town has undergone no material change from the first settlement of the colony to the present time. These towns, as has been said, grew out of the wants, the dangers and necessities pressing upon the early settlers of the Pilgrim and Puritan Colonies, and they were from time to time clothed with such powers and privileges, as were best adapted to meet those wants and ward off those dangers. And as advancing civilization has created new local wants, the Legislature has granted corresponding municipal powers and privileges to provide lor them.

The Pilgrim and the Puritan came to these shores for certain definite purposes - purposes which could never have been accomplished except through and by means of just such institutions as they founded. They were not living among the ruins of ancient empires, nore were they surrounded by hostile feudal barons, by whom they might at any unguarded moment be plundered. They were confronted only by the unbroken forest and the untamed savage, and they built their houses, organized their towns, adopted means of self-defense and common safety against the actual dangers by which they were surrounded; they cultivated their fields either in common or severalty as they chose ; they erected churches and school-houses, enacted laws and provided for the administration of justice, and in all things else acted with reference to the exact situation in which they found themselves. They built according to no archaic or mediieval patterns, but established institutions as original in their character, as their own situation was novel.

I 2. Having presented these general considerations respecting the origin and organizations of towns, the remaining portion of this chapter will be occupied with the narration of some of the principal facts relating to the settlement of Worcester and an outline of its history for the first century of its existence.

May 6, 1657, a grant of three thousand two hundred acres of land was made to Mr. Increase Nowell, of Charlestown. May 6, 1662, one thousand acres were conveyed to the church in Maiden, to be forever appropriated to the use of the ministry. October 19, 1664, two hundred and fifty acres were given to Ensign Thomas Noyes, of Sudbury, who had served under Capt. Hugh Mason in the military service of the Colony. The above statement of a grant of land to Mr. Nowell, and which will be found in existing sketches of the " History of Worcester," is not entirely accurate, as will appear from the following entry in the Colony Eecords under date of October 14, 1656 : "The court, being sensible of the true condition of the late honored Mr. Nowell's family, and remembering his long service to this Commonwealth in the place not only of a magistrate, but also secre- tary, for which he had but little and slender recompense, and the county's debts being such as out of the country rate they cannot comfortably make such an honorable recompense to his family as otherwise they would judge meet, therefore do give and grant to Mrs. Nowell and his son Samuel two thousand acres of land, to be laid out by Mr. Thomas Danforth and Eobert Hale." Under date of May 6, 16.57, there is this additional entry:

" Mr. Thomas Danforth, of Cambridge, and Mr. Kobert Hale, of Charlestown, are appointed as commissioners to lay out the land, being three thousand two hundred acre.s of land granted by the General Court, 22d 3d mo., 1650, to the executors of the last will of Mr. Isaac Johnson, to Mr. Increase Nowell's executors, according to the grant, provided the ten pounds due to the county from the executors of the said Mr. Nowell be first paid to the county's treasurer or security given for tlie same."

These extracts from the record are interesting as showing who Mr. Nowell was and why lands were granted, not to him, but to his family ; and also as showing the extreme poverty of the country in everything but land, and that this grant of land was only made upon the express provision that the last pound of the indebtedness of Mr. Nowell's estate to the Colony should be paid into the public treasury.'

The grant of 1,000 acres to the church in Maiden was made upon the petition of that church, and was made to be forever appropriated to the use and benefit of the ministry of the place, and not to be aliened or otherwise disposed of, "and all this on condition that they cause it to be bounded out and put on improvement for the ends professed within three years next ensuing." The grant of the land to Ensign Noyes was accompanied with this recital : " Whereas, Ensign Thomas Noyes, of Sudbury, was chosen to be a lieutenant under Capt. Hugh Mason, for his Majesty's service, and he having expended some time and money about that design, there being a considerable sum due him upon that account, the court judgeth it meet to grant the said Lieut. Noyes two hundred and fifty acres of land, for and in consideration of the premises, and in answer to a former petition, he being willing to take it as full consideration for what is justly due to him.'' As these were the tirst grants of land within the present limits of Worcester, it has been deemed proper tu show upon what considerations and conditions they were made.

John and Josiah Haynes, of Sudbury, Nathaniel Treadaway, of Watertown, and Thomas Noyes having purchased the Nowell grant, they became proprietors of a large tract of land, extending along the west shore of Quinsigamond, including two of its islands near the "outgoing of Nipnapp" (now Blackstone) '-River;" they petitioned the Great and General Court for the appointment of a committee to view the country. Upon this petition Capt. Daniel Gookin, Capt. Edward Johnson, Lieut. Joshua Fisher and Lieut. Thomas Noyes were appointed a committee, Oct. 11, 1665, to make survey to determine if there be a " meet place for a plantation, that it may be improved for that end, and not spoiled by granting of farms," and directed to report to the next Court of Elections. The death of Lieut. Noyes and the unsettled state of the country prevented the execution of the order to this committee.

The attention of the Legislature was again called to the'subject of effecting a settlement in this locality, and May 15, 1667, Captain Daniel Gookin, Captain Edward Johnson, Mr. Samuel Andrews and Andrew Belcher were appointed a committee and directed "to take an exact view as soon as conveniently they can, to make true report whether the place be capable to make a village, and what number of families, they conceive, may be there accommodated. And if they find it fit for a plantation, then to ofi'er some meet expedient how the same may be settled and improved for the public good." The first two and the last-named members of that committee performed the duty assigned them and made their report to the Legislature October 20, 1668, which is a document of sufficient importance and interest to be copied in full in this place. The committee in their report say : " We have, according to the Court's order, bearing date loth May, 1667, viewed the place therein mentioned, and find it to be about twelve miles westward from Marlborough, near the road to Springfield, and that it contains a tract of very good chestnut tree land - a large quantity ; but the meadow we find not so much, because a very considerable quantity of meadow and upland, about five thousand acres, is laid out unto particular persons, and confirmed by this Court, as we are informed, which falls within this tract of land; viz., to Ensign Noyes, deceased and his brethren three thousand two hundred acres; unto the Church of Maiden one thousand acres ; unto others, five hundred acres, bought of Ensign Noyes ; but all this, notwithstanding, we conceive, there may be enough meadow for a small plantation or town of about thirty families; and if those farms be annexed to it, it may supply about si.xty families

" Therefore, we conceive it expedient that the honored Court will be pleased to reserve it for a town, being conveniently situated, and well watered with ponds and brooks, and lying near midway be- I tween Boston and Springfield, about one day's jour- ! ney from either ; and for the settling thereof we do ' offer unto the court that which follows : viz., That there be a meet proportion of land granted and laid out for a town, in the best form the place will bear about the contents of eight miles square. That a prudent and able committee be appointed and empowered to lay it out ; to admit inhabitants, and order the affairs of the place, in forming the town, granting lots, and directing and ordering all matters of a prudential nature, until tbe place be settled with a sufficient number of inhabitants and persons of discretion, able to order the affairs thereof, in the judgment of the Court.

"That due care be taken by said committee that a good minister of God's word be placed there as soon as may be; that such people as may be there planted may not live like lambs in a large place ; that there be two or three hundred acres of land, with a proportion of meadow, in some convenient place, at the discretion of the committee, reserved and laid out for the commonwealth ; and the committee to have power and liberty to settle inhabitants thereupon for lives or times, upon a small rent to be paid after the first seven years."

This report was accepted by tbe Legislature and its recommendations adopted, and Captain Daniel Gookin, Captain Thomas Prentice, Mr. Daniel Hinehmau and Lieutenant Richard Beers were appointed a committee to carry them into execution.

The suggestion in this report that the eight miles square of territory, on which a thriving population of from 80,000 to 100,000 inhabitants now dwell, in the enjoyment of all the necessaries and many of the luxuries and elegancies of civilized life, might possibly support thirty or sixty families, - that is, from 150 to 300 persons, - was made without any anticipation or thought of that magnificent development of mechanical and manufacturing industries so characteristic of the present age.

The committee, in making their report, were only thinking of the capability of the territory for agricultural purposes. And when we contrast the toilsome journey of a whole day between Worcester and Boston with the fact that that journey can now be made in little more than an hour, and with a degree of comfort which our ancestors in their forest homes never dreamed of, we gain some just conception of the great changes in the conditions of human life that have been wrought here during the lapse of two centuries.

Notwithstanding the Legislature had, by its order of May 15, 1667, prohibited the laying out of lands within the new plantation, yet the committee, in the execution of their powers, were embarrassed by the selection of lots made by claimants under tbe earlier grants hereinbefore mentioned. And to relieve themselves from these difficulties they asked for the intervention of the Legislature in the following petition, May 27, 1669 :

We, the committee of tlie General Court, being empowered to lay out, settle and manage a plantation, at or about Quinsigamond Pond, twelve miles beyond Marlborougb, in the roadway to Springfield and lladley, wliich place is very commodious for the situation of a town, the better to unite and strengthen tiie inland plantations, and in all probability will be advantageous for travelers, it falling near midway between Boston and Springfield, and about a day's journey from either ; we having lately been upon the place to make an exact discovery and survey thereof, accompanied with sundry, honest and able persons that are willing forthwith to settle themselves there: but fluding some obstruction in the work, which, unless this Court please to remove, and, we conceive, they may justly do it, the proceeding will be utterly hindered ; and, therefore, we shall humbly otier them unto the honored Court, desiring their help.

1. We find that, though the place contains a tract of good land, yet it is much straitened for meadow. We cannot find above three hundred acres of meadow belonging to it within several miles ; but there are swamps and other moist lands that, in time, with labor and industry, may make meadow,

2. We find there is a grant of one thousand acres to the ministry of Maiden, May 7, InO!^, which grant is laid out in this place. This farm contains a choice tract of land, and swallows up about one hundred acres of the aforesaid meadow-; but the condition of tbe grant, as the record will declare, is that it be improved, within three years after the grant, for the end wherefore it was granted ; but that being not done, fur it is now about six years since, and no improvement made, we apprehend the grant is void ; but yet, if the Court pleases to renew it in any other place, we speak not to oppose it, but if it be continued and confirmed in this place, it will utterly hinder the settling a plantation here.

.3. There is another grant of land, unto Ensign Noyes, deceased, laid out in this place, containing two hundred aud fifty acres of choice land, with a considerable quantity of meadow, lying in the heart of this place, aud by him was sold to one Ephraira Carter, a young man living in Sudbury We desire that the Court will pleiise to make void this grant ; being not laid out regularly for quantity or quality, as we conceive, and it will very much prejudice this town. The person concerned may have his land in another place, bordering upon this town, where there is sufficient to accommodate it, aud also may have a lot in this town, if he desire it.

4, Whereas, the Court, in their grant of this town, hath reserved two or three hundred acres of land, with a proportion of meadow, to be laid out for the Commonwealth, if it please the Court, because of the straitness for meadow, to abate that reservation, so far as coucerns meadow, it will greatly encourage the work. If the honored Court please to remove these obstructions, we hope it will not be long before this place be settled in a good way, for the honor of God and the public good.

The Committee, in their journey, having discovered two other places beyond this to tbe westward, that will make two or three towns, the one called Pamaquesset, lying upon the head of Chaquabee River, the place called Swquakeag.l upon Connecticut River, nearer to Boston than Hadley, we desire the Court will please to order that these places be reserved to make towns, the better to strengthen these inland ports, and the laying out of particular grants prohibited in the said places.

In response to this petition, the reservation to the public in the meadow was released ; but the General Court did not undertake to recall or declare void the grants to Maiden and to Noyes. At the first meeting of the committee, held July 6, 1669, in Cambridge, it was proposed " that the territory, including Worcester and which is now Holden, and a large part of Ward (now Auburn), should be first divided into ninety twenty-five-acre house-lots, and in the apportionment of these to the settlers, respect should be had to the quality, estate, usefulness and other considerations of the person and family to whom tbey were granted ; that the most convenient place, nearest the middle of the town, should be set apart and improved for placing the meeting-house for the worship of God ; a convenient lot of fifty acres for the first minister should be laid out as near to it as might be; another lot, in the next convenient place, not far from them, for the ministry that should succeed in all future times ; that twenty acres should be reserved, near the centre, for a training-field, and to build a schoolhouse upon ; that a lot of twenty-five acres should be appropriated for the maintenance of a school

Provision was made for the equal apportionment of common charges upon the proprietors of lots, for erecting mills, opening and repairing ways, and for the equitable division of the remaining lands.

i 3. The efforts of the committee to effect a permanent settlement proved unavailing for several years, but finally, in the year 1673, a company of thirty families were induced to commence the plantation, and in the spring of 1674 thirty house-lots were laid out and the settlers began to build hou.ses and cultivate their lands. But the adverse claims of Mr. Curtis, who, it is believed, had taken possession of a tract of land near the centre of the town, continued to embarrass the committee to such an extent that the following petition for relief was presented to the Legislature by tho?e who proposed to become inhabitants of the new town :

The humble petition of Daniel Gookin, Senior, Thomas Printice, Richard Beer? and Daniel Henchman, a committee, appointed and authorized by the General Court to order and manage a new plantation sranted by this Coiut, lying and being on the road to Springfield, about twelve miles westward of Marlborough, together with divers other persons hereunto subscribed, who have lots granted and laid out there, liumbly sheweth :

That, whereas, your petitioners have been at very considerable expense, both of time and estate, in order to settle a pliiutation there, which they conceive, when it is effected, will more conduce to tlie public good of the country than their partiiular advantage, and have so far advanced in that work as to lay out about thirty house-lots and engage the people to settle them speedily ; also have begun to build, plant and cnt hay there ; but now, meeting with an obstruction and hindrance, by a young man called Ephraim Curtis, of Sudbury, who does lay claim unto two tracts of land, containing about five hundred acres, lying in the centre of this plantation, especially one of the parcels, being about 25U acres, in which place the committee have laid out a minister's lot, a place for a meeting-house, a mill and ten other panic ular men's house-lots, so that if this place be taken from us, this town is not like to proceed, to the damage of the public and your petitioners ; now, although we cannot grant that the said Curtis hath any legal right to debar our proceeding, yet, for peace sake, we have offered him a double share in the plantation, viz.: two house-lots and accommoda lions to them, which will, in the end, amount to much more land than he pretends unto ; but all offers he declines ;

Therefore, our humble request unto the Court is that you will be pleased to order that the said Curtis may be sent for, and that both him and your Committee may be examined eitlier before some Committee of the Court, thereunto to report the matter, or by the -whole Court ; for the substance of the case will, as we conceive, turn upon this hinge ; whether an order of the General Court, dated in May, 1667, prohibiting the laying out any particular grants in this place, in order to reserve it for a village, shall be of force and efScacy to nullify the acceptance of a particular grant laid out in this place, as is pretended, a year after: namely, at a Court held /Inno 1068 ; the untying of this knot, which none can do but the General Court, will resolve tlie matter of controverey one way or other ; so that this town will proceed or cease, and that your committee, and others concerned, may not be wrapt up in trouble and contention abo\it this matter, whose scope and aim is the public good, and that the good of many may be preferred before one, wherein we have no cause to doubt of this honored Court's favor and encouragement.

This petition was signed by the aforesaid committee and twenty-nine other persons. Having heard the parties upon this petition, the deputies adjudged, the magistrates consenting, that said Curtis "shall have fifty acres of the land that is already laid out to him, where he hath built, so it he in one place, with all manner of accommodation appertaining th'ereto as other inhabitants have." And also that he shall have liberty to take up two hundred and fifty acres of land without the bounds of the town, but near and adjoining thereto.

This closed the controversy between Mr. Curtis and the other settlers, a controversy which ought not and could not have arisen if the Colonial Legislature had exercised more care in making grants of land. The grant which Curtis had acquired by purchase was to Noyes, of two hundred and fifty acres, with the right to locate upon any lands not already granted. This was earlier than the grant of the eight miles square for the Worcester plantation, and yet the latter grant was made without excepting the tract of land which had then been located under the grant to Noyes within the limits of the eight miles square. But it was not an infrequent occurrence in those ev'.V times, when land was of comparatively little value, for successive grants to overlap each other, and thus endless confusion in land titles' ensued ; and even to this day it is well-nigh impossible to fix with any certainty the exact boundaries of some estates in this county, especially estates which have never been under cultivation or enclosed, and consisting of forest or swamp

§4. Having- adjusted their controversies with all other claimants and established rules for conducting the affairs of the settlement, the committee proceeded to obtain a release of title from the Indians to the lands embraced within the limits of their grant from the Legislature, and for the sum of twelve pounds in lawful money of New England, or the full value thereof in other specie, the Indians relinquished their title (whatever that was) by a deed, executed by several of their Sagamores with great formality, July 13, 1674. The receipt of part payment, viz., two coats and four yards of trucking cloth, valued at twenty-six shillings, as earnest in hand, was acknowledged. The conveyance was to the committee in fee, and to the rest of the people admitted, or to be admitted, to be inhabitants - a most indefinite designation of the grantees. Another peculiarity about this deed was the fact that the acknowledgment was taken by Gookin, one of the grantees. But in reality it mattered little what was the form of deed executed by these untutored and nomadic savages, for, according to the law as interpreted by the highest courts in this country and in England, the Indians had no fee in ' the land, hut only a right of temporary occupation, and the Crown, only, had the power to extinguish that right. But, nevertheless, as a means of promoting friendly relations with their uncivilized neighbors, it was good policy for the settlers of the town to go through the form of purchasing their lands from them ; yet the ivorthlessness of the covenant contained in that deed, that the grantees, their heirs and as- ' signs, should forever peacefully enjoy the granted premises, was made painfully manifest not many mon ths after the giving of tlie deed, when the Nipmucks and other neighboring tribes joined Philip in his war of attempted extermination of the English settlements throughout the colony. But Gookin and Eliot, had the amislest means of knowledge on the subject, earnestly asserted that the praying Indians of the Nipmuck and other tribes remained faithful and true to the English.

We have now reached a stage in the history of the settlement of Worcester when, as appears from the foregoing brief narrative, a grant of a territory eight miles square had been made by the Colonial Legislature to a committee, representing in reality the future inhabitants of the place, and that committee had procured from the Indians whatever right or title they might have had in or to the territory. Provision had been made for the public worship of God and popular education;, a training-field had been laid out, and a block-house or fort erected for purposes of defence in case of need ; public highways had been provided for, and other appropriate measures adopted fur establishing a civilized and Christian community.

And in the spring of 1674 as many as thirty house-lots were laid out and houses began to be erected. But " most of those who had expressed an intention to become planters, and who joined in the petition of the Committee in May, 1674, discouraged by difficulties or delay, had abandoned their purpose." Still, notwithstanding this desertion of many who had pr imised to give aid to the new enterprise, the work of settlement was pushed forward with vigor by those who were willing to encounter the inevitable hardship and dangers connected with the planting civilization in regions inhabited only by wild beasts and nomadic tribes of savage men. In the spring of 1675, and in the early summer of that year, the settlement had so far advanced that, in the language of an annalist of the period, the inhabitants "had built after the manner of a town." This was the hopeful state of affairs when, in midsummer of 167.3, King Philip's War broke out in Plymouth Colony, and soon carried devastation and terror into every part of that and the Massacliusetts Colony.

The commencement of hostilities in that desolating war, in what is now Worcester County, furnished an illustration of a trait in the Indian character which education and Christianity combined seem powerless to eradicate. Matoonus, a Christianized Indian, had a son who was executed in 1671 for the murder of an Englishman. Matoonus, described as a grave and sober Indian, and who had been specially befriended by Gookin, and appointed by him as one of the police officers of the neighborhood, still cherishing the vindictive spirit so characteristic of his race, visited Mendon, with others of his tribe, July 10, 1675, and there avenged, according to his notion of retributive justice, the death of his son by the murder of five of the unoffending inhabitants of that town.

"This," says Lincoln in his admirable "History of Worcester," " was the signal for the commencement of a desperate contest. Common dangers produced that efficient union of the Northern Colonies, cemented by the necessity of self-preservation. The war was not of long duration. Energetic and rapid excursions laid waste the resources of the hostile tribes; the allies enticed to their support, foreseeing their fate, grew cold towards ancient friendships ; their supplies were destroyed ; their wigwams were consumed, and Philip and his forces, hunted from post to post, deserted homes, and took refuge among the Nipmuck villages, where they received shelter and reinforcements. Unable to maintain open fight, they continued an unsparing predatory warfare upon the exposed homes and garrisons. Alarm prevailed throughout New England. None knew when to expect the visitation of the foe, lurking unseen in the solitude of the forest, until the blow fell, as sudden as the lightning, and left the effects traced with fire and blood. The husbandmen went forth to cultivate the field, armed as if for battle ; the musket and the sword rested by the pillow, whose slumber was often broken, as the war-whoop rose on the watches of the night. The planters of Worcester, placed hard by the seat of the enemy, remote from friendly aid, with no dwelling of civilized man nearer than Marlborough on the east, Lancaster towards the north, and Quabaug (now Brookfield) westward, to afford assistance and support, were compelled to desert their possessions, and dispersed among the larger towns. The silence of desolation succeeded to the cheerful sounds of industry, and the village was abandoned to the wild beast and fiercer foe." And so ended the first act of the heroic struggle to plant a new town on this then perilous frontier.

§ 5. Before proceeding to any account of the second unsuccessful attempt to establish a permanent settlement here, it may be well to call the reader's attention to the absolutely original plan upon which the settlement was to be effected, and how every step in the progress of the enterprise was directed and controlled by the character of the planters and the peculiar circumstances under which they were compelled to act ; to the original constitution of the committee ; their petition to the colonial government for a grant of territory ; the grant and its conditions ; to the meetings of the committee and the measures devised by them ; to the principles announced by them upon which they proposed to act and to the objects to be attained by the planting of a new town in this unsettled part of the colony ; to their early and embarrassing controversies respecting the title to land within the limits of the territory assigned to them and to the constant dangers by which they were menaced from the surrounding tribes of hostile Indians ; to their early and careful provision for popular education and to that supreme purpose of theirs, the establishment, in its purity, of the worship of

God ; to their sublime faith in the unseen and eternal, which inspired them with a courage adequate for every temporary peril and with an invincible fortitude for every trial and disappointment. It was these peculiar qualities in the character of the founders, combined with their lofty and well-defined purposes and the wholly novel circumstances under which they were called to act, that distinguished the origin and organization of towns during the first decades of the Massachusetts and Plymouth Colonies from those of any other municipalities of any other age or country.

And the writer has set forth in the foregoing pages, in more of detail than may seem necessary, the principles, resolutions and plans adopted by the first settlers of Worcester, for the purpose of showing how broad and deep and abiding were the foundations upon which they proposed to build. For although the first attempt and the second failed, yet the principles and objects of the subsequent and successful founders of the town remained the same as those of their predecessors. In this connection brief notices of the members of the committee, by whom the affairs of the plantation were managed during the first twenty-five or thirty years, may not be deemed inappropriate ; especially as every great enterprise, like the founding of a new community, derives its characteristics from those who control it in its origin and early developments. The most distinguished and influential member of that committee was Daniel Gookin, sometimes spoken of in our annals as Captain and at other- times as General Gookin, for he was promoted in the military service from the office of captain to that of major-general of the colony. He was also appointed by the General Court in 1656 as superintendent of all the Indians who submitted to the government of the colony. He was the associate and fellow-laborer with John Eliot in the work of civilizing and Christianizing the Indians; he was one of the host and firmest friends the Indians ever found among the colonists, and for more than twenty years preceding his death, in March, 1687, his devotion to the interests of the Worcester settlement was constant and unabated. He was a native of the county of Kent, England, and the son of Daniel Gookin, who became one of the patentees of Virginia, and in 1621 planted a colony at Newport News, in that colony. Major- General Gookin, then a youth of nine or ten years only, accompanied his faiher in this attempt to plant a colony, and after his father left the colony, as is supposed, young Gookin remained, and subsequently secured large grants of land in difi'erent parts of Virginia. In 1642 missionaries were sent from Massachusetts to Virginia to convert the people from the error of their Episcopalian ways. These missionaries were not well received, and the year following their advent the Assembly passed an act forbidding them from preaching or teaching in public or private, and they were finally expelled from the colony ; but not until Captain Gookin, as he was then called, had become one of the converts, and in 1644 he left Virginia and removed with his family to Massachusetts ; by which removal Virginia lost and Massachusetts gained one of the noblest of men. A few days after his arrival in Boston he became a member of the First Church ; was made a freeman of the colony ; resided in successive years in Roxbury, Boston and Cambridge ; he was a Representative in the General Court from Cambridge in 1648 and 1651 and Speaker of the House in 1651. In 1652 he was elected an assistant and reelected thirty-four successive years. He revisited England in 1654, and while there was appointed by Cromwell a commissioner to induce New Englandors to emigrate to the island of Jamaica. On his return to this country he endeavored to promote Cromwell's colonization scheme, but without success, and in 1657 he resigned and asked to be relieved from any further duty under his commission, vv'hich request was granted. Gookin was at that time living in Cambridge, and was appointed one of the first two licensers of the printingpress at that place.

Upon the outbreak of King Philip's War the Indians who had been gathered into villages by Gookin and Eliot, and there taught some of the arts of civilized life, became objects of suspicion and dread to the people, notwithstanding Gookin and Eliot's assurances that they would remain faithful to their vows of friendship for the English. And so great did the excitement become among the people that Gookin, for the safety of his wards - the praying Indians - removed three thousand of them to Deer Island and provided for them there and in Cambridge until the close of the war, when they were sent back to their villages. By these acts of fidelity to the Indians Gookin became excessively unpopular, for a time^ with the colonists, and his life was repeatedly threatened, but he continued the undaunted friend of the Indians, and never lost faith in their loyalty. Many of these Indians enlisted in the war against Philip, in many memorable instances rendering signal services as soldiers and spies. In 1674 Gookin published "Historical Collection of the Indians in New England ; of the Several Nations, Customs and Manners, Religions and Government before the English planted there." He also wrote an account of the doings and sufferings of the Christian Indians in New England in 1675, '76 and '77. His manuscript "History of New England," in eight volumes, was lost. In 1657 the General Court granted to him five hundred acres of land for services in behalf of the colony. His services to the colony were constant and of the highest value, both in the civil and military line of public duty. General Gookin descended from an ancient and honorable family In England, and his descendants in New England became distinguished in various departments of public service, and by intermarriage they became connected with several of the leading families of the colony. Captain Daniel Henchman, another member of the committee, and second to General Gookin only in the value of his services to the early settlers of Worcester, made his first appearance in the colony as a teacher of a grammar school in Boston in l<i60.

He was admitted freeman in 1672, a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in 1674, and appointed captain of Fiftli Boston Company of Colonial Militia. In May, 1675, he was sent with his company of one hundred men to the assistance of Plymouth Colony against the Indians. In July of the same year, the day after the attack by the Indians on the whites at Swansea, he again marched with his company and was present and took jjart in the attack upon Philip and his men at Pocasset Swamp, when the conflict only ended with the darkness, which rendered its further continuance impossible. All the other troops having been withdrawn. Captain Henchman was left with his men to watch the movements of the wily Philip, whom, having made his escape, Henchman, with only a few of his men, pursued as far as Mendon and Brookfield, in this county. He continued in active military service during that fearful and final struggle of the ruthless savage to regain possession of New England. He was regarded as one of the bravest and most skillful Indian fighters. Captain Henchman was a cousin of Judge Samuel Sewall, and allied by family ties to the Hulls, Gookins, Quincys and Eliots.

At the close of Philip's War Captain Henchman again became active as a member of the committee having charge of the " Plantation at Quinsigamond." He erected a house here in 1683, which was the home of his family till his death, in 1685. Before his death, although he had shown himself for years as a stanch friend of the plantation, he had become very unpopular, in consequence of his action respecting a controversy between Captain Wing, a favorite of the people, and Mr. Danson, about the title to a small tract of land, which both of the contestants claimed ; and although, as it subsequently appeared upon full inquiry, Capt. Henchman was entirely right in his view of the case. But this vindication of his conduct was not until after his death and burial, the latter of which was attended by the immediate members of his family, two servants (one white and one black), and one or two other friends, presenting a striking illustration of the fickleness of popular favor and of the gross injustice that may be committed by what is sometimes called public opinion.

Captain Richard Beeres, an original proprietor of Watertown - admitted freeman March, 1637 - was selectman more than thirty years, and represented his town many years in the General Court. He was also actively employed in the militar/ service of the Colony. In 1675 he marched with his company to the relief of Brookfield, thence to Hadley, thence to Hatfield and Deerfield ; in the months of August and September was present in several engagements with the Indians, in which he exhibited the qualities of a brave and skillful leader. September 3, 1675, he started with only thirty-six men to bring off the men from the garrison at Northfield. The next day, while pushing on towards the fort with a part of his men, they fell into an ambuscade, and were driven back by the deadly fire of the Indians to a place called Beeres' Hill, and there the conflict was continued until the brave leader and most of his men were slain.

Captain Thomas Prentice, born in England 1620, came to this contry 1649 and settled at first in Cambridge. He was a farmer. He became a member of the church in Cambridge and freeman in 1653. He was elected lieutenant of a company of troopers in 1656. In 1662 was captain, and represented Cambridge in the General Court in 1672, '73 and '74 ; was chairman of the Board of Selectmen of New Cambridge many years. He was an extensive landowner in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York. He was noted for his courage, self-possession and keen sense of justice. He was a terror to the Indians in war and a firm and judicious friend of theirs in times of peace. He was ever ready to answer the call of the country and served with marked distinction during the war with King Philip. He commanded the troops sent to escort Sir Edmund Andros, who had escaped to Rhode Island, back to Boston. Upon the death of General Gookin, Captain Prentice was appointed superintendent of the Christian Indians as his successor upon the petition of the Indians. He was in command of the troops that escorted them to Deer Island by order of General Gookin in 1675. His death, at the age of eightynine, was caused by a fall from his horse, July 7, 1709.

Adam Winthrop, grandson of John Winthrop, born 1617 and graduated at Harvard in 1668; was made freeman in 1683 ; was one of the commissioners for the town of Boston 1684, 1685 and 1690 ; selectman, 1688-89 ; Representative in the General Court, 1689, 1691 and 1692. He was appointed a member of the Governor's Council under the provincial charter, but failed to be elected by the people in the following year (1693). At his death, in 1700, he left one son, graduate of Harvard 1694, and one daughter,

Captain John Wing, of Boston, acquired his title, it is believed, by his service as a mariner ; was appointed constable in Boston in 1671-72. In 1676 was chosen to " look after too much drinking in private houses." This was probably done more to secure the excise duties on liquors than for the purpose of promoting moderate drinking. He was for many years the popular landlord of the Castle Tavern, which stood on the corner of Elm Street and Dock Square. He was elected a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery in 1694. He became interested in the plantation near "Quinsigamond Pond," and undertook, as early as 1684, to supply the town with a grist-mill and saw-mill, two indispensable things for a new frontier town. In October, 1684, he was made a member of the committee for the plantation. He gave much of his time for the next six years after his appointment to the business of the committee. He was the first town clerk elected by the inhabitants. He died in Boston, February 22, 1703.

Captain William Bond, of Watertown, son of Thomas Bond, of Bury St. Edmund's, Suffolk County, England, was a man of large and varied capacity for affiurs, and filled many public oflSces, the duties of which he never failed to perform acceptably. He was successively selectman, town clerk, justice of the peace (not an unimportant office in his day), member of the Council of Safety, Representative and first speaker of the General Court, under the Provincial charter ; and he was one of the committee for rebuilding the town of Lancaster, after its destruction by the Indians.

Captain Joseph Lynd, of Charlestown, was a wealthy merchant and large land-owner. Representative in the General Court, member of the Committee of Safety in l(i89, and one of the Council under the new charter.

Penn Townsend, born in Boston, 1651, made freeman in 1674, and the same year was elected member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. He was promoted in the military line until he reached the rank of colonel. In civil life he was, in succession, selectman, Representative, commissioner and judge.

Captain Ephraim Hunt, of Weymouth, was of English origin. He accompanied the expedition to Canada in 1690. This was the expedition devised by the congress of the Colonies which met in New York in May, 1690. The conquest of Canada was to be attempted by marching a land force by way of Lake Champlain against Montreal, while Massachusetts should, with a fleet, attack Quebec. It was the latter that Captain Hunt accompanied. He afterwards served as colonel on an expedition against the Indians at Groton, in 1706-7. He was a Representative and Councilor.

Deacon John Haynes, at one time a member of the committee, resided in Sudbury, and was a Representative of that town in the General Court, and was a person to whom his neighbors frequently resorted for the adjustment of their controversies. Such is a brief record of the men who were conspicuous actors in the settlement of Worcester ; and any community may deem itself fortunate, which can find names of such men upon the roll of its founders.'

^ 6. The war, which had desolated many parts of New England, ended with the death of Philip, its chief instigator; and upon the return of peace the committee renewed their efforts for a permanent settlement

1 Manj- of tha facts contiiined in these notices are derived from the historicai notes published with the Joings of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the naming of Worcester.

One of their first acts in this new attempt was to Picquire any right Pannasumet, a Sagamore, who did not sign the first deed from the Indians, might have had in the territory upon which the town was to be built. This second deed, bearing date of December, 1677, was executed by the widow of Pannanimet and his heirs. It contains covenants that the grantors had "good and just title, and natural right and interest in the territory, and that they would warrant its enjoyment" by the grantees. The committee, in 1678, directed the planters to return before the year 1680 ; but this direction was disregarded - no one of all the former settlers returned.

At a meeting in Cambridge March 3, 1678, attended by Gookin, Henchman and Prentice of the committee and by sixteen other persons, it was agreed "that, God willing, they intend, if God spare lile and peace continue, to endeavor, either in person or by other persons and means, to settle said plantation sometime next summer." They proposed to build a town according to a model furnished by " Major Gookin and Major Henchman."

The objects sought to be attained by this new endeavor show how firmly the planters adhered to their original purposes. They were, " 1st, security from their enemies ; 2d, for the better conenity of attending God's worship ; 3d, for the better education of their children in society ; 4th, for tlie better accommodation of trades people ; 5th, for better helps to civility ; 6th, for more convenient help in case of sickness, fire or calamity."

But these good resolutions were not then carried into execution ; and no effectual measures had been adopted for a re-settlement when, in October, 1682, the General Court gave notice to the committee, that the grant to them would be considered forfeited unless some decisive measures were soon taken to form a plantation.

This led to renewed efforts on the part of the committee, and such arrangements were made as induced a small number (not exceeding five or seven) of the former settlers to return ; and they, with other new associates, undertook to rebuild, on foundations that had once been laid and abandoned, a citadel as a refuge for all in times of alarm and danger. " Care was to be taken to provide a minister with all convenient speed, and a school master in due season." Until a minister could be provided, the people were to assemble on the Sabbath and conduct religious services as well as they could. The land was divided into lots of ten and twenty-five acres. The north part of the territory, called at one time North Worcester, but is now the town of Holden, was divided into two hundred lots.

On the 10th of September, 1684, according to Lincoln, the General Court passed an act, at the request of Gookin, Prentice and Henchman, that their planta- tion at Quinsigamond should be called Worcester. Honorable George F. Hoar, in bis instructive and eloquent address on the occasion of the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the naming of Worcester, says this act of the General Court granting the request of Gookin and his associates, was passed October 15, 1684. Captain Henchman, one of the most active and efficient members of the Committee, died in 1685 or '86 - both dates are given by different writers. At that time the public affairs of the Colony were conducted by a President and Council appointed by the Crown, after the Crown had most unjustly procured the abrogation of the Colony charter.

Upon application to that President and Council - for there was then no other competent authority to appeal to by the proprietors of Worcester - General Gookin and Captain Prentice, of the old committee, were reappointed, and Mr. William Bond, of Watertown, Captain Joseph Lynde and Deacon John Haynes, of Sudbury, were appointed new members. This committee was entrusted with the general powers to order and regulate all matters relating to the settlement. From this date, 1686, till 1713 authentic information respecting the transactions and progress of the new settlement is meagre and fragmentary. The Proprietors' Book of Records contains no entries of transactions during that interval of twenty-seven years. It is known that appointments were made to fill vacancies in the committee as late as 1691, from which it is safe to infer that the number of settlers was too small, or that other reasons existed to render them unable to manage their own community affairs. It is also known that at this time an unfortunate controversy arose between Captain Wing, a man of great popularity among the planters, and Mr. Dawson, a Quaker and resident in Boston, respecting the title to a tract of land. This controversy, although a private one, seriously disturbed the harmony of the little settlement and retarded its growth.

Another cause which still further disturbed the peace and harmony of the settlement was the building, or attempting to build, a second citadel in the southerly part of the plantation, the first being in the northerly part ; this was in 1G92.

In consequence of the dissensions growing out of these causes, some of the planters were induced to remove to otherand older towns in the colony, and some into the adjoining colony of Connecticut. In 1699 still another event occurred which depressed the fortunes of the struggling settlement. Application had been made to the Governor and Council for aid, but instead of granting the desired assistance, the General Court, on March 20, 1699, passed an act striking Worcester from the list of frontier towns, and left it to its own resources, without much hope of further aid from the government. After this the plantation ceased to flourish, and finally there was only one family remaining on the whole territory of eight miles square, and that was the family of the brave Digby Serjent, who at last, while heroically defending his lonely dwelling on Sagatobscot Hill, fell a victim to the ferocity of his savage foes, and his wife and five children were carried off into captivity. The wife and mother, however, being unable to endure the hardships of a hurried journey through the trackless forests, was slain by her captors, and the children alone held captive, from which some of them never returned, and, it is said, two of them having become enamored of the wild freedom of savage life, did not desire to return to the pleasures and restraints of civilized society. This final avenging blow fell upon the new settlement, according to differing accounts, in 1702, '03 or '04. And from that time silence and desolation reigned over the " Plantation at Quinsigamond," until the last attempt to give permanency to this plantation was made in 1713.

27. In the year 1709 Joseph Sawyer and fifteen other persons presented a petition " To his Excellency Joseph Dudley, Esq., Capt. General and Governor in Chief in and over his Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, and to the Honourable the Council and Representatives in General Court assembled," etc., saying they were willing to undertake the settlement of Worcester, if they could have a firm foundation of settlement laid and a fort built and needful protection. Upon this petition the Council ordered that Elisha Hutchinson, Samuel Sewall and Nathaniel Paine should be a committee to consider the expediency of granting the request and the course to be adopted. But the House of Deputies refused to concur, as the disturbed condition of the times rendered the enterprise too dangerous to be sustained by legislative approbation.

The dangers here adverted to were not those alone which the colonists had reason to apprehend from their Indian neighbors. During the thirty years from 1683 to 1713, many events, with which the Indians had no connection, occurred to disturb the public tranquillity and to hinder the peaceful settlement of country and seriously to retard its growth ; such as the unjust, if not absolutely illegal, abrogation of the colony charter in the reign of Charles II.; the subsequent establishment of a new and arbitary government here under Andros. The commission of James II. to Andros contained a suggestion that the King claimed title to all " lands, tenements and hereditaments " in the colony, and that they were to be granted to such persons and upon such conditions as tlie monarch might see fit to select and impose. And the charter having been annulled, the people were told that " their land was the King's, that the grants from the General Court had not been made under the seal of the colony," and were therefore worthless, and that all who would perfect their titles must take out new patents upon such terms as the King in his pleasure might be disposed to grant. This alone was sufficient to check, for a time, all attempts to estab- lish new settlements. But, fortunately for the cause of human liberty and good government, the infatuated James was soon driven from the throne, and the tyrannical rule of his minion, Andros, over the colony was speedily brought to an end. But the unsettled state of public affairs during and following the Revolution of 1788, the struggle on the part of the colonists to regain their ancient charter, of which they had been most unjustly deprived, ^nd the change from that to the less liberal provincial charter, produced a condition of things in the colony wholly unfavorable to the building up of new towns. And during the first years of the eighteenth century Massachusetts, with the other New England colonies, was .almost continually exposed to the hostile incursions of the French from Canada and their Indian allies, and was only relieved from that menace at the close of the war between England and France, which was terminated by the treaty of Utrecht, April 11, 1713. It will be remembered that as long as Canada remained under the dominion of France, the colonies of necessity became involved in any general war between that country and England.

Six months after the last-named date, that is, on October 1.3, 1713, Colonel Ad.am Winthrop, Gershom Rice and Jonas Rice, of Marlborough, presented a petition to the General Court, on behalf of themselves and others, setting forth that they desired to enter upon a new settlement of the place from which they had been driven by the war. Their petition was received with favor, and Hon. William Taylor, Colonel Adam Winthrop, Hon. William Dudley, Lieutenant-Colonel John Ballantine and Captain Thomas Howe were appointed a committee " to direct in ordering the prudentials of the plantation till they come to a full settlement."

This committee made their first report June 14, 1714. They had allowed thirty-one rights of former inhabitants, and twenty-eight new settlers were allowed to take lands upon the payment of twelve pence per acre for their planting or building-lots only, and upon the further condition that they would build and dwell "on each right, whether acquired by purchase, grant or representation." Provision was made for the support of the ministry and schools. The report was accepted and approved by the proper authorities. The first of the former planters to return and begin the re-settlement was Jonas Rice ; and the permanent settlement of Worcester takes its date from the day^of his return, October 21, 1713. He, like the unfortunate Serjent, built on Sagatobscot Hill, and with his family he'remained for eighteen months sole inhabitant of the place, till he was joined by his brother Gershom, in the spring of 1715. The daring and fortitude of the pioneer builders of these pleasant and now peaceful towns cannot be too much admired or too highly honored. Twice had the attempt been made to settle Worcester, and twice had the infant" settlement been left in ruins

And now the third attempt is to be made in the midst of lurking dangers and well-known hardships, which would have daunted a less sturdy and heroic race of men. They made provision for guarding against the dangers by which they were surrounded by building garrison-houses and fortresses, and even their own dwellings were built for defence as well as for shelter. Mills were early constructed for the manufacture of lumber and the grinding of grain, roads were built, and soon a tavern - that species of a temporary home so much admired by Dr. Johnson and Shenstone - was opened by a Mr. Rice on the site of the present Walker building.

A building was erected on Green Street in which the people assembled for worship from Sabbath to Sabbath, until a meeting-house was erected in 1719, on the site recently occupied by the " Old South."

From evidence furnished by the proprietary records, and derived from other sources, it is probable that the inhabitants of Worcester had increased to two hundred in 1718-19. About that time a company of Scotch immigrants attempted to settle in Worcester; they were a portion of a larger emigration from the north of Ireland, where they had formed a plantation in the lime of James I. They were Presbyterians, and although under William they were permitted to retain their form of worship, yet they were required to aid in the support of the Established Church. They, therefore, like the Pilgrim Fathers, not being satisfied with the new home, for which they had left their native country, again embarked for a country where they supposed they would be allowed to enjoy both religious and civil liberty. But they soon learned that the spirit of intolerance had crossed the ocean with those who came to these shores to escape the intolerance to which they were subjected in the land from which they came.

These " frugal, industrious and peaceful " people formed a religious society here, and began to erect a meeting-house in which to " worship God according to the dictates of their consciences," following the Presbyterian formularies. But while the building was in process of construction, a mob of citizens assembled at night and completely demolished the structure. These people were otherwise persecuted and annoyed to such an extent that many of them left the town and settled in the town of Pelham, in Plampshire County. And thus Worcester, by intolerance and bigotry, drove from her borders many who would have been among the most valuable of her early inhabitants. But this unjust treatment of Presbyterian emigrants was not peculiar to Worcester. Wherever they settled they were subject to outrage and persecution. It is said that this was, in part, at least, due to the fact that these people came from Ireland, and were represented as Irish, who, at that

This prejudice against both Irish and Presbyterians admits of a ready explanation, if this were the time and place for it, but it cannot be justified.

All of these emigrants from Scotland through Ireland did not leave Worcester, but some of them became permanently settled here, and their names are still borne by their descendants, who are among the more honored and respected citizens of Worcester of the present generation.

The population of the place had become so great by the year 1721 as to have outgrown the government and management of its affairs by a committee, and the freeholders and proprietors, therefore, petitioned the General Court for an act of incorporation.

lie&olved. That the inhabitants of Worcester be vested with the powers and privileges of other towns within this Province, and tliat it be earnestly recommended to that Council only of the seven churches which did meet at Worcester in September, 1721, to whom the contending parties submitted their differences relating to the Rev. BIr. Andrew Gardner, that the said Council proceed and go to Worcester on or before the first Wednesday in September next, to finish what is further necessary to be done for the procuring and establishing of peace in said town, according to the submission of the parties ; and that the Freeholdei-s and inhabitants of Worcester be assembled on the last Wednesday in September next, at ten o'clock in the forenoon, to choose all town officers as by law accustomed for towns to do at their annual Bieeting in March ; and that, at the opening of the meeting, they first proceed to the choice of a moderator by written votes.

This is commonly cited as the charier or act incorporating Worcester as a town. It is in form a resolve, and not an act, and confers only such powers and privileges as were possessed by other towns in the province. And it was long after the date of this resolve - in fact, not until after the adoption of the State Con.stitution, in 1780, that the first act was passed (St. 1785 ch. 75) declaring towns within this government to be bodies politic and corporate. No town was formally incorporated in the colony, province or State until the passage of that act ; Init by that act all towns that had been previously erected by resolve or otherwise were made bodies corporate. It is true that " the earlier statutes of the colony and province concur with those under the present constitution investing towns with the power to agree upon and make rules, orders and by-laws for managing and ordering the prudential atlairs of the town." ' But they were not thereby made municipal corporations, as that term is now understood.

The same learned judge (Chief Justice Shaw), from whose opinion in the case cited the above quotation is made, says, in another part of the same opinion, that "townships were originally local divisions of the territory, made with a view to a settlement and disposition of the property in the soil.

But the proprietors or inhabitants of such territorial divisions were not at first invested with political or municipal rights and powers." It was in this way that Worcester originated, and it was nearly or quite fifty years after the first settlement before the plantation pas.sed from the control of a committee, and the inhabitants and proprietors began to exercise municipal powers and rights in the choice of their own officers and the management of their own affairs.

The first town-meeting called under the foregoing resolve was held September 28, 1722. The necessary town officers were chosen, who entered at once upon the discharge of their duties ; and Worcester then, released from its fifty years of pupilage and discipline, asserted its individuality as a corporate power, and has since performed no inconspicuous part in the history of the Commonwealth and nation in times both of peace and war.

^ 8. Having now briefly sketched the various stages through which Worcester passed, from the first heroic struggles of its founders till it assumed its equal place among the other organized communities of the Province, the main purpose of this chapter has been accomplished.

And as the writing of its military, ecclesiastical, educational and industrial history, during the sixty years that intervened between 1722 and the close of the Revolutionary War, has been assigned to other hands, a few only of the more strictly municipal events of that period will be touched upon in the remaining pages of this chapter. Although the town had become firmly established, and was no longer menaced by hostile tribes of Indians in its immediate vicinity, yet for many years its growth and prosperity were retarded by the actual or apprehended hostility of what was called the Eastern Indians, then inhabiting portions of what is now the State of Maine and the adjoining Provinces of Canada and Nova Scotia. This state of insecurity made it necessary that considerable numbers of the ablebodied men of the town should be employed to guard the outposts and to give warning of approaching danger. And it may with historic truth be affirmed, that the inhabitants of Worcester and other frontier towns were never permitted to dwell in safety and free from the apprehension of hostile invasion from the French or Indians, or both together, until after the crowning victory of Wolfe at Quebec and the treaty of 1763, by which France lost her North American possessions forever, and the Indians, left without civilized allies, became less formidable and obstructive to the planters of frontier settlements.

At the date of the resolve conferring municipal powers upon Worcester, the town formed a part of Middlesex County, and was situated on the western border of that county. On April 2, 1731, an act was passed by the Provincial Legislature establishing the county of Worcester, and Worcester was made the shire-town of the new county, not because of its relative importance so much as by reason of its central location.

There was a proposition, says Mr. Lincoln in his history, "to make Lancaster and Worcester halfshires, having the sessions of Court held alternately in each, and it would have prevailed, except for the opposition of Joseph Willard, Esq., who remonstrated against the administration of justice in Lancaster, lest the morals of the people should be corrupted.''

There can be no reason to doubt the correctness of the historian's statements that such a proposition was made and that Mr. Willard opposed it; but the assignment of the reason for his opposition can hardly be accepted without material qualifications. The real reason influencing the careful Mr. Willard may probably be found in another passage from the same historian, in which he records the fact that " the terms of Court were the great holidays of the county, and its population assembled in Worcester, as a general exchange, for the transaction of business, or pursuit of amusement in the rude sports of the period. The judicial proceedings, now forsaken, except by parties, witnesses and officers, were generally attended by a multitude that thronged the streets. Wrestling, fighting and horse-racing were common exercises, and frequent exhibitions of discipline in the stocks and pillory and at the whipping-post attracted crowds of spectators.''

Hor.se-racing in Main Street during the terms of courts was at length forbidden under a penalty of twenty shillings lawful money. This was in 1745. But the prohibition was, by the terms of the vote, to continue for the space of three years only. This was a very common method of legislation during the Colonial period and even later. And the statutes whose duration was fixed by definite limitation were called "temporary laws " in contradistinction from other laws which were termed " perpetual." The establishment of the courts in Worcester at that early period was an event far more important to its prosperity as a municipality than any similar transaction would be at the present day, when our great mechanical and manufacturing industries, extensive trade and unsurpassed railroad facilities render the presence of the courts here relatively an insignificant factor, in the aggregate of influences, which are carrying Worcester forward in its marvelous career of increasing population and wealth. It is indeed true now, as it always has been, that the existence of the courts here makes Worcester the residence of a large proportion of the members of the county bar, who constitute a very influential body of citizens, and whose influence in the main is beneficial to. and confers honor and strength upon, the place of their residence.

In 1722 the owners and tenants in common of the two hundred lots forming the north part of the township held a meeting duly convened for the purpose, and organized a distinct proprietary, called North Worcester, which, however, continued to be a part of Worcester until 1740. In 1730 the planters in the north part were exempted ffom town rates in the south part for seven years, on condition of making and maintaining their own highways. In 1740 the town voted to consent to the incorporation of North Worcester as a separate town, " if it be the pleasure of the Great and General Court, in consideration of the great distance from the place of public worship." And on the 9ih of January, 1740, an act was passed whereby the northerly part of Worcester was set off and " erected into a distinct and separate township, by the name of Holden.'' The date of this act is given in Lincoln's " History of Worcester" as November 2, 1740 - upon what authority does not appear. The above date of January 9, 1740, is taken from vol. ii., pp. 1043-1044 of the "Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay," recently printed by authority of the Legislature.

The new town was called Holden in honor of Mr. Samuel Holden, who died in London the same year the town was incorporated. He was a man of wealth and a leader among the Dissenters in England. He was a friend and benefactor of the Province, and was distinguished for his general benevolence and many charities.

After his death his heirs, to whom he left an ample fortune for those times, followed his worthy example in deeds of charity, and it was to them and the widow of Mr. Holden that Harvard University is indebted for Holden Chapel.

In 1733 the proprietors of the township of Worcester passed the following vote, viz. : " Voted, that 100 acres of the poorest land on Mill Stone hill be left common for the use of the town for building stones.'' This vote, nearly one hundred years after its passage, became the cause of an interesting lawsuit, in which the inhabitants of Worcester were the plaintiffs and William E. Green the defendant. They claimed that the vote conveyed to them the one hundred acres in fee simple ; the defendant, who derived his title from the same proprietors by mesne conveyances, claimed that the fee was his ; and the Supreme Judicial Court so held, saying, " It was no doubt the intention of the proprietors to secure to the town or its inhabitants a valuable and perpetual interest in the land described in the grant, but that the land itself did not pass." This suit was in 1824.'